Common Relationship Problems with Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel

Episode Summary of “Common Relationship Problems with Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel”

Welcome to Episode 9 of The Communicate & Connect Podcast, sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, your go-to resource for therapy designed specifically for military and veteran families. I’m your host, Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky, a dedicated military marriage counselor, and today we have an invaluable episode lined up for you.

I am thrilled to be joined by Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel, a retired VA chaplain who has served as the chief chaplain and contributed significantly to the Warrior to Soulmate program for veterans. With a unique expertise in integrating spirituality with mental health care and his licensure as a professional counselor, Dr. Angel brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our discussion.

In this episode, we’ll be delving into some of the most common relationship problems that couples encounter. We’ll explore the big three: communication, sex, and money, with a primary focus on communication—the bedrock of any healthy relationship. Dr. Angel will share profound insights on the importance of emotional openness and physical closeness in bonding, especially for veterans who have experienced trauma.

We’ll also discuss how unresolved childhood wounds and personal baggage impact adult relationships, turning into potential minefields that can cause conflict. Dr. Angel will shed light on the significant role forgiveness plays in relationships, busting the myth of “forgive and forget” and emphasizing the process of making peace with the past.

Additionally, we’ll address the unique challenges veterans face, like anger linked to PTSD and the deep-seated effects of moral and spiritual injury. Dr. Angel will provide actionable advice on distinguishing between managing and resolving anger by getting to the root emotions beneath it. He will also discuss the concept of self-forgiveness, often a monumental step towards personal healing.

Both Dr. Rev. Angel and I will touch upon the transformative power of couples therapy, its effectiveness even through video sessions, and the importance of self-work in fostering intimacy and resolving relational issues.

As always, I invite you to subscribe to our podcast and follow up with our free relationship email course designed to help you deepen your connection and improve communication with your partner. Join us for this rich, enlightening conversation as we aim to strengthen the fabric of your most important relationships.

Guest Speaker Bio – “Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel”

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel is a highly esteemed retired VA chaplain whose career has been marked by an unwavering commitment to the spiritual and mental health of veterans. With a deep sense of purpose, he served as the chief chaplain at the Indianapolis Brown Bush VA Medical Center, where he dedicated his efforts to overseeing spiritual care services and integrating mental health support for veterans. His profound impact extended over the last 11 years of his career in Atlanta, Georgia, where he focused intensively on the mental health needs of veterans, solidifying his role as a pivotal figure in their care.

In addition to his chaplaincy work, Dr. Rev. Angel took on the significant role of national coordinator for the Warrior to Soulmate program. This innovative program was aimed at veteran couples, helping them to build stronger relationships through improved communication and understanding. His efforts in this area were instrumental in providing veterans and their partners with the tools needed to navigate the unique challenges faced by military families.

Moreover, Dr. Rev. Angel specialized in individual counseling, particularly for veterans diagnosed with PTSD and their spouses. He displayed a keen understanding of the complex and often difficult issues associated with combat trauma, offering tailored support that addressed both spiritual and emotional needs. His compassionate approach and comprehensive counseling services have left a profound and lasting impact on the lives of countless veterans and their families, guiding them towards healing and resilience.

Throughout his career, Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel’s dedication, expertise, and empathetic care have earned him a distinguished reputation in the field of veteran support. His work has not only facilitated the mental and spiritual well-being of veterans but has also strengthened the bonds within veteran families, ensuring a legacy of health and unity for those who have served their country.

Visit their website to learn more about Heroes in Transition, Inc. and their mission to assist veterans and military families.

Free Relationship Pattern Assessment

Many couples assume they have a communication problem when they’re actually stuck in a relationship pattern that keeps creating the same conflict.

Take the free Relationship Pattern Assessment to discover what pattern may be keeping you stuck and learn what to focus on next.

👉 https://pages.communicateandconnect.com/relationship-quiz

Episode Transcript for “Common Relationship Problems with Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel”

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:01]:
This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual couples and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Welcome to the Communicate and Connect podcast for Military Relations Relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes. We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast.

And if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too, because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships. This is episode nine on common relationship problems. This is the Communicate and Connect podcast and I am Liz Polinsky, and I’m here with my friend

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:01:25]:
Dr. Clyde Angel. And I’m really excited for him to share a lot of his experience, experiences working with veterans and couples, and maybe I’ll just let him introduce himself.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:01:37]:
Thank you, Liz. I appreciate you inviting me to come and share with you and share with your audience. So I am a retired VA chaplain. I worked in Atlanta, Georgia as a mental health chaplain in the last 11 years of my career. I was the chief chaplain at the Indianapolis Brown Bush VA Medical Center. Also during that time I worked with spiritual care and mental health.

I also was a national coordinator for a program called Warrior to Soulmate, which was a program for veteran couples to work on communications, etc. And then I also did individual counseling with both PTSD spirituality and also working with couples individually and particularly couples where the veteran had experienced combat trauma and was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress syndrome.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:02:40]:
So that was been a very rewarding last part of my career before retiring from the VA last June.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:02:49]:
Yeah, you have told me about your career experience before, but even just hearing it again, I’m like really impressed with all of the types of different, different experiences that you have gotten to have. Yeah, it’s really amazing. And I think something that’s always stood out to me that I really loved about working at the VA was how much chaplains were integrated into mental health and how much I got to collaborate with chaplains. That was such a unique experience. I guess job perk of getting to work at the va. Yeah.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:03:26]:
And you know, I think what makes it really unique even to the public school sector, Liz, is that in the VA we really can do what I call holistic care because we have all the disciplines in one place, and each discipline can bring their part to the table. And I just think that really is a great benefit for our veterans. And I’m a veteran, so as a veteran myself, I really do appreciate the holistic care that the VA provides our veterans.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:59]:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I miss that now being in private practice. So part of how you and I know each other, since, you know, the audience doesn’t know, but I used to do the Warrior to Soulmate workshops, and that’s how we got connected, was by the chaplain at my VA connecting me to you and us talking a little bit about pairs curriculum. And so you have had a lot of experience, a lot of different types of experience, integrating spirituality and mental health care. And I think. I think you’re also a licensed professional counselor also, right?

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:04:40]:
That’s correct.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:04:42]:
You really are maybe one of, like, the experts in integrating those two realms. What are some of the big issues that you have seen come up for couples over your years of working with them? What’s kind of the big themes?

Key issues for couples: communication, sex, money.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:04:57]:
Okay, so what’s really been amazing, you know, I was a local church pastor for 27 years, and so I did couples counseling there, and then I was in private practice for six years before going to the va. And it’s really been the same with couples all the way across the spectrum.

And if I said that there were three broad categories that always come up when I’m working with couples, it is communications, sex, and money. Not to say there’s not other issues that come in, like parenting and so forth. There’s smaller issues that may come. But those three, when I ask couples tell me what’s going on, those three usually get mentioned. So it’s been interesting that that kind of. And then communications.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:05:46]:
What I really come. Liz, to. To really narrow it down to. It really does come down to communications. I think when couples come in for counseling, they’ll bring a lot of different issues. But what I have found at the core of this really, is their inability to communicate with each other.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:05]:
Yeah. What do you think are some of those blocks to communication?

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:06:09]:
Well, I think one of them is. You know, there’s a concept that I learned about that really became the center of the work I did with. With couples and still would do with couples. And it’s a concept called bonding. And bonding is a combination of emotional openness and physical closeness with another person. That’s how we get bonding. And it’s a biological need that we all have. Just like food, water, air, and shelter.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:06:37]:
We have a need to bond. And what’s interesting is we can’t. We can fulfill all the other biological needs. Food, water, air, shelter, safety, we can, we can supply those on our own, but we need another human being to provide that bonding.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:56]:
The type of couples therapy that I’m learning and really trying, I’m trying to get certified in it right now is emotionally focused couples therapy. And it’s all focused on bonding and the attachment bonds and. And that premise that we do actually need someone else, and we need to have that secure, safe place to turn to, to count on someone else to help provide for emotional needs.

Trauma shatters trust, rebuilding requires emotional closeness.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:07:25]:
And, you know, when you’re talking about veterans who’ve experienced, again, trauma and maybe have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress or post traumatic stress syndrome, the interesting thing is you just use the word trust and with trauma. And when I work with folks around spirituality and trauma, I say that the major or the number one wound, spiritual wound of trauma is shattered trust.

And so I think for couples where one or the other has had a significant trauma, that also gets undermined. And so, again, learning how to bond, learning to be emotionally open and physical, close to physically close to each other, becomes a real, real important piece of that communication process.

And so one of, one of the things that I like to say to couples, to also break down and going back to what you said, what are the issues? Kind of set the stage for talking about issues, is I like to remind couples that what, that they love the person, but they don’t like the behavior. You know, I can tell you my whole 40 plus years in doing this work, I’ve had more than one couple come in and one or the other would say, I love him or I love her, but I’m not in love. And I would laugh. I would literally kind of just sit back and laugh.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:09:00]:
And I said, well, great, I can help you with that. Because when you think about it, you can’t make one person love another person. That’s a choice. That’s an internal choice. That’s a decision.

But when people say, I’m not in love, what they’re really talking about is they’re not feeling the emotion of love. And so one of the things that I try to get couples to focus on is that I want them to realize that what they love the person, what they don’t like is the behavior. And so it’s getting couples to refocus away from, well, he’s this or she’s that, and focus on, okay, what specifically is the behavior that is causing the distress? And how can we address that specific behavior and ask Our partners for a behavioral change.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:00]:
Yeah. Versus just getting critical or blaming or destroying someone’s character.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:10:05]:
Exactly.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:06]:
Not. Yeah. Separating what you don’t like that they do from who they are as a person.

Anger resolution instead of anger management proposed.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:10:12]:
Correct. Correct. And, you know, it’s interesting that you mention anger, because I think that’s an important piece also. And again, addressing, again, with veterans, I have never met a veteran who has experienced, again, combat trauma and has the diagnosis of PTSD that isn’t just full of anger.

And so what I developed was a. What I call anger resolution versus anger management. So anger management, and the way I would say it to groups particularly is I said anger management is designed to keep us out of jail so that when we experience the emotion of anger, that we learn to control the anger so we don’t do something stupid. And I often would even use maybe Hebrew, Christian scripture where it says, be angry and sin not.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:11:14]:
And I said, I’ve always read that as be angry and don’t do something stupid. But if all I’m doing is helping people manage the anger, they’re still walking around with the essence of anger. And so, absolutely, I begin to work with folks and talk about, okay, how do we resolve anger?

And so the process of anger resolution is really getting down to two questions. Why am I angry? And what am I feeling? And so treating anger as a secondary emotion. So what I mean by that is the primary emotion that triggers anger. There’s always. We don’t just sit and get angry. There’s something that drives the anger.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:11:59]:
Okay, so if you think about this minute, so why am I angry? What am I feeling? So why am I angry? People can answer that quickly. You know, I was angry because someone pulled out in front of me on my way here today. Or I’m angry because I got cut off in line. Or I’m. I’m angry because someone hung the phone up on me.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:18]:
So the why, in my case. Yeah, in my case, it’s, I get angry because my husband doesn’t do the dishes.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:12:24]:
Okay, so that’s a behavior. Well, I’m angry because he didn’t do the dishes. That’s a behavior. So that triggers the anger. But then where I have to really work with folks is to say, okay, you’re angry because your husband doesn’t wash the dishes. What are you feeling? So, in other words, what’s the feeling that you have that’s underneath the anger itself? Have you ever thought about that?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:52]:
Yes. Yeah. And I think I use this example of the dishes because it’s maybe comical between my husband and I. It comes up frequently, but when he doesn’t do the dishes, I end up feeling like he doesn’t care.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:13:06]:
Okay, Right. So you. You feel hurt or feel that he doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care about your needs or concerns or so forth. And so if. If we can get underneath now, I can communicate. If I just say, well, I’m angry because you didn’t wash the dishes, that creates conflict, and there’s no resolution. But if I can sit down with my partner and say, when you don’t wash the dishes, I feel like now we’re back to feeling. I feel like you don’t care about me.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:13:39]:
So you see the difference there. And so with angers, what we have to do is we have to figure out what the emotion is driving it.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:13:49]:
And then the emotion underneath the anger, underneath the anger.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:13:53]:
And so it may be fear or it may be. And with veterans, a lot of times it’s betrayal or disrespect. And then what I have them do for. And this is all part of the resolution, is then to go back and I’ll say, when’s the earliest time you felt betrayed? Or when’s the earliest time you felt disrespected?

And, Liz, it’s really amazing. Almost every person I take through this exercise will go back to early childhood. Tell me your first memory far back as you can remember. I’ve had people. I even had a therapist who worked with me one time was sitting in a group, and he says, second grade.

Identifying and forgiving wounds from disrespect.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:14:28]:
And I looked over at him and I said, share more. And he shared a very vivid experience with his second grade teacher where he felt disrespected. And so what I do is I get people to go, okay, that’s the first time that you really had a deep emotion that you tied to anger around disrespect.

Now let’s go forward. What’s the next event in your life where you felt significantly disrespected? So what you’re helping people do is identify events where they’ve been wounded. And so the real work comes later in the forgiveness, because if we can mark those major wounds in our life, they become the fertile ground for us to go back and work on forgiving those moments.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:15:15]:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So if I were to kind of summarize, we’re talking about finding the emotion that’s underneath the anger and changing the conversation to where that’s what we’re talking about, the feelings underneath the anger. And not so much like in the case of the Dishes. The conversation is no longer about the dishes. It’s about feelings of betrayal or the deeper emotions.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:15:41]:
Right. Or not caring. So your partner may not realize the feelings that you have because he doesn’t wash the dishes, but once he hears how it makes you feel and what it may connect to in your life. Right.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:15:59]:
Yes. The other times that. That came up for me.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:16:02]:
Right. He may be more motivated then to hear that request, and he may react differently when it comes the next time to wash the dishes because he’s got a different, deeper understanding.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:16:17]:
That’s the hope for sure.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:16:18]:
That’s the bonding. That’s the emotional. So if one person is going to be emotionally open, the other person has to be willing to listen with empathy. Listen to really understand. And I know I’m moving to kind of a little different subject, but hopefully all this ties back in.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:16:39]:
That’s okay.

Effective listening improves communication in relationships.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:16:41]:
Listening is the key to communications. Most of us are pretty good talkers, and the majority of us are not very good listeners. And particularly when in a intimate relationship where a lot of emotion can be tied in, often when we. We begin to get charged up, we start having feelings of being irritated or upset or angry. We get defensive.

And so instead of listening, we’re working on our response rather than really listening. So a real good exercise that I have couples do is I will have one couple just state what the issue is and talk about their issue and their feelings around that issue, while the other person listening simply listens and repeats what they’re hearing. And that’s amazing.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:17:37]:
When someone is. All they’re doing is repeating what the other person is saying, they begin to really listen. And if they do that with empathy, really understand what’s going on with their partner. I’ve watched couples just totally change in the moment in how they begin to react with each other.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:17:55]:
Yeah. Because it’s so validating. If somebody can repeat back to me and confirm that they understood that they heard what I said and understood it and that it makes sense to them. That’s such a great feeling.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:18:10]:
And you know what? I have different sayings that I’ve used.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:18:14]:
I guess, for years, people that know me.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:18:16]:
But, you know, one of the great wounds of life is feeling unhurt, the feeling of not being hurt.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:18:25]:
Yeah, I can really understand that. That hits home. Like, I feel that as you say that right now.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:18:32]:
Yeah. And that can start in childhood. You know, the parent that’s too busy to listen or just says, do what I say. You know, I don’t want to talk about it. Just do what I tell you to do when a parent makes that kind of response to a child, basically are saying, whatever you’re saying, I’m not interested in.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:18:53]:
Yeah. Which I think goes right back to what you said just a little bit earlier in your anger resolution model. You have people go back and see like those first early childhood times where they had that hurt, where they felt in this case, really not understood. And it’s so fascinating to me how those wounds, they continue on into adulthood. And then with romantic partners, they’re like minefields. Like when it’s easy to accidentally step on that raw spot in your partner because it’s been hurting because it’s been such a deep wound for so long.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:19:32]:
Right. And the interesting, you know, we all come into relationships with our baggage. We all do, because we all have baggage, right?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:41]:
Yes.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:19:42]:
From childhood, from other relationships, not just intimate relationships, but friendships and colleagues and peers. I mean, we all just have our baggage and the things that we internally have reacted to over time. So, you know, I. And I think the other probably another big thing when, you know, we’ve talked about bonding, we’ve talked about, you know, learning to listen, talked about anger. I think another really important piece. And again, this is whether we’re. Whatever the subject that the couple is struggling with, whatever the conflict may be, these are the bases that help them begin the good communication. And that next thing would be forgiveness.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:20:24]:
Yeah, I was really hoping you were going to talk about that, because I do know a psychologist who has done a lot of research on forgiveness. But generally for me, I kind of put forgiveness in the realm of a spiritual leader would be able to comment on that way more than I feel like I could as a therapist, because I guess it feels to me like a spiritual undertaking.

Major religions emphasize forgiveness as a central belief.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:20:49]:
And I think that that’s true. And, you know, there’s a lot of people who would tie that back to whatever spiritual belief system that they have, because at least the major religions all have all contain a large concept around free around the issue of forgiveness, Whether it be Judeo or whether it be Christian or whether it be Islamic, all of them have speak very center of their belief system, I guess, is what I’m trying to say is centered around forgiveness.

And even if you take that out of it and just think of it from the concept of spirituality and spirituality, the stack pole of spirituality is purpose and meaning. We all have that within us, that sense of purpose, meaning why am I here? What is it all about? So even going from that standpoint, you know, with forgiveness, we’ve gotten a lot of mixed messages through the years. And, you know, have you ever heard the old saying, forgive and forget?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:55]:
Yes. But that never made sense to me because I don’t know how I’m supposed to forget something.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:22:00]:
It’s impossible. That’s the biggest load of something that somebody floated down. I don’t know where they got forgive and forget. So one of the examples I use is we don’t forget our significant physical wounds. If we were sitting in a room together right now, I’d point to my head and say, this was a scar when I was 6 years old in Alaska. And here’s another one. Here’s a scar that I got in Alaska. Here’s another one that I got in California.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:22:28]:
And back here is bicycle wrecks in Tennessee. And here’s three scars that I’ve had surgery on my back. And here’s a big scar on my leg where I had an ACL surgery. Why do I remember all of those scars? Because they all had some level of pain. Now none of them hurt me. Now. There’s no pain with any of the scars, but I remember them. And it is the same way with emotional and spiritual wounding.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:23:02]:
We remember what we feel. So it’s not a matter of forgiving. It’s a matter of making peace with the past. One of the best definitions of love I actually found in scripture that a lot of people are familiar with, especially with weddings and stuff. It’s the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, and many know it as the love chapter, right?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:23:30]:
Love is it the like. Love is patient.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:23:32]:
Love is patient. Love is kind love. And so in the NIV version of that, it says this. It gets down to a point where it says, love keeps no record of wrongs. Now, what that means is not that you don’t remember what that means, is that you don’t hold it against the person. So forgiveness is very much the glue of a relationship. Because if I’m keeping a tally of all the things that you’ve done, then I’m keeping a record. And true love keep a record.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:24:10]:
I see that so often with the couples that I’ve been working with recently is a lot of times they can come in and then they start listing off all of the things their partner has done wrong. And so that tells me, based on what you’re saying, they haven’t made peace with it yet.

Self-forgiveness involves choice and marking decisions.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:24:28]:
Right? And then the other real piece of forgiveness is self forgiveness. And people really struggle with that one, with making peace, making peace with yourself or just forgiving yourself. Who hasn’t made the bad choice in life I mean, we all look back and go, well, I wished I’d have done this instead of that. Well, what we’re talking about is choice, right?

I chose to do this instead of doing that, or I ignored this and I just did that. And so we all have places that we also have to forgive ourselves. So the process of forgiveness is the kind of three steps that I, when I was working with veterans and, well, non veterans too, is the first thing that we have to do is mark the day and the time that you are choosing to forgive. Whether it’s yourself, whether it’s someone else, whether it’s an event, whether it’s the government, etc. Whatever, it doesn’t make any difference.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:25:26]:
But forgiveness is a decision. It’s intentional. So Job Smith did this to me 30 years ago, but today, August 6, 2020, I’m going to forgive this and I mark it down. The reason I encourage people to mark it down is that when the feeling and memory occurs in the future, you can remind yourself that you already went through the act of forgiveness for that event.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:26:06]:
Yeah. Sort of reminding yourself that you’re forgiving it.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:26:11]:
Exactly, exactly. So holding on to anger and forgiveness and anger really go together. So holding on to anger is like drinking poison, hoping the other person dies. It just hurts us.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:26:26]:
Yeah. And every time I’ve ever wanted it to hurt someone else, I always feel like it hurt me more.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:26:31]:
Oh, absolutely, it does, Liz. And so when that memory comes, if you mark that day and time, you say, and that memory comes back up, then you can just pause and you can go, no, on August 6, 2020, I forgave that. And I’m not going to hold on to that. I’ve let that go.

So you can just remind yourself. And what I find, and I found it in my own personal life, but I’ve also found it in working with others that over a period of time, it does fade, it does lessen that. When the memory comes back, it comes back with less emotion. Now, if the memory or the event continues to elicit angry feelings, then you may need to reinvestigate and go deeper because there may be something else hooked to that.

Forgiveness uncovers anger towards non-protective parent.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:27:23]:
One of the great examples that I have of that is having dealt with women who have experienced their father committing sexual acts against them, I can remember on several occasions that maybe the person, she came to a point where she said, you know what? I forgive my father, but I’m still angry.

And it is really funny because as we explore that, we go back to the event and we begin to explore and Say, well, who else would you have been angry besides your father for what he did? And you wouldn’t believe how many times, Liz, they would say, well, you know, I was really angry that my mother didn’t protect me, or she didn’t stand up or she didn’t believe me.

And often they won’t confront the other parent because that’s all they got left. You know what I’m saying? So they’ve distanced themselves from the one parent, so they’ve got the other parent. And so it’s like that anger got covered up. Right. Because the focus was toward the perpetrator. But once they forgave the perpetrator, then what rose up was the next person in that moment that they either maybe felt betrayed by.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:28:41]:
You know, mom wasn’t there. You know, she didn’t protect me. And so I felt betrayed.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:28:47]:
Yeah. To the two other parts of forgiveness. So the first part is writing it down, the date that you choose to forgive. But what are the. You said there were three parts.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:28:56]:
So the second part is that when the feeling reoccurs, that you can go back and remember.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:29:01]:
Okay.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:29:02]:
And then the third part is if the memory continues, then go back to the event itself and say, okay, I’ve forgiven this person. What else might I still be angry about around this event? Was there something else? Was there another feeling? Was there another person? You know, what else?

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:29:19]:
Have I really dug as deep as.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:29:21]:
I need to dig around that specific event?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:29:25]:
Have I chosen to forgive all the different wounds that happened around that event?

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:29:30]:
Correct.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:29:30]:
And all the different players.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:29:32]:
Right.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:29:32]:
Okay. So we’ve been talking about forgiveness, and I know that you have done a lot of work with moral injury, which I think might be related to forgiveness of self. But for other people who maybe haven’t heard of this term before, could you talk a little bit about what moral injury is and how it relates to some of the concepts we’ve been talking about today?

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:29:55]:
Sure. So when you talk about moral, or I call it spiritual injury, and so the real injury comes around, you know, I believe that part of who we are, you know, the biopsychosocial, spiritual. We have each of these components that make us up as human beings. And, you know, we don’t question our physical self. We know that we have a mental capacity. We can talk and think. We’re social beings. No one crawled out from under a rock.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:30:29]:
We’re all born into a community of family. Now, how we live out our sense of being social, you know, I can be a very gregarious person that goes and likes to be with people all the time, except for in a pandemic. Or I can live on a mountain and only come down for supplies twice a year.

But I’m still a social person. That’s how I’ve chose to live out my sense of being social. So I think the same thing is spiritual. We all have a spiritual component. Whether I’m a believer and I believe in God, or whether I’m an atheist or an agnostic, it doesn’t make any difference.

Spirituality: Meaning, purpose, connection, forming in childhood.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:31:03]:
We still have that spiritual component, which I talked about a little bit earlier, is meaning and purpose. Why am I here? What is it all about? That’s one aspect of spirituality. The other aspect of spirituality is, then, how do I connect? How do I connect to my own sense of self? How do I connect to others around me? How do I connect to the world as a whole?

So meaning, purpose and connection. So our spiritual formation begins in childhood. We start getting moral codes and beliefs from our parents at a very early age. Then we go off to school, and we begin to get that from teachers and our peers. And then when we hit that kind of, what I call the magical age, where we move from pre adolescence to adolescence, we move from concrete thinking to abstract thinking. And that’s when it really hits in gear.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:31:56]:
So we start making our own spiritual beliefs. Some things, if we were raised in a religious family, we may take some of that with us again, we start interacting with friends and colleagues. We may start listening to the news and different events. And so all of this creates what I would call our spiritual formation. And with trauma, what happens is that the trauma shatters that spiritual formation. And again, what I said earlier was the signature wound is that trust. But also what there is is a woundedness. So whatever, let’s say an event happens, someone does something in a combat zone, and then they label themselves.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:32:44]:
You know, I was a coward or I was a murderer. Whatever label they put the label on it, that’s the first level of spiritual wounding. Then the next level is, let’s say they share it with someone, and the person they share with has this response of like, oh, I can’t believe you did that, or how do you deal with that? Well, that’s the second level, because that reinforces the shame and the guilt.

The third level of wounding, then it goes from I think I’m bad or I feel bad to I think I’m bad, which is the third level. You know, I think maybe I am a murderer. I think I am a coward, or I think whatever that is, Then it moves to that fourth level of wounding. And it’s a slight shift. And it shift is where I feel and I think to I am and I am is the core of who we are.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:33:44]:
I am a coward. I am a murderer. I, you know, I, you know, I’m lost. I can’t be connected to anything myself or God or anything else. So that’s where self forgiveness really begins to play the role. And again, I do come from this, you know, I come from a spiritual background. You know, I do believe in God. And so one of the things of self forgiveness that I tell people is I use the example because most of our veterans have children.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:34:14]:
And I’ll ask them the question, what could your child do that you would say, I don’t forgive you, I don’t love you anymore. And you know what the response is?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:34:28]:
I’m hoping that it’s nothing.

Veterans struggle with self-forgiveness and sharing stories.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:34:31]:
I think I’ve had one veteran who brought up something silly, but, yeah, it’s always, well, nothing. Chaplain And I said, and we as humans do not even begin to understand love. God is love. And so if God can forgive, who are we not to forgive ourselves?

If God has forgiven us, then who are we not to forgive ourselves? And often where veterans particularly struggle with self forgiveness is they’ve never shared the story. I can’t tell you the number of veterans, and I mean hundreds over the years that came in my office, sat down, closed the door and said to me, even when I was in private practice, said to me, chaplain or Clyde, I’ve never ever told anybody this.

And we’re talking about, you know, Vietnam veterans that have 30, 40 years have held on to this story that they’ve never told anyone, but they’ve listened to that self talk to that place that I am, I am less than. And so the lifeblood of post traumatic stress is avoidance. So what they’ve done is they’ve avoided this particular wound.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:35:56]:
And when they can finally trust someone enough to share that woundedness and begin to break it down and talk about it, then that becomes the recovery. And that’s really what it becomes, a recovery. But I think that’s not just true with trauma and veterans.

I think that’s true even when we were talking about forgiveness earlier. Liz, I think that’s true of the woundedness that we have all through life, and particularly if it’s around a specific feeling that we’ve wrapped years of anger around that feeling. And when that feeling gets hooked, then we have this. This explosive reaction, right? And if it was around disrespect, you could do Something that just mildly disrespectful. And all of a sudden, I may see this explosion and go, where’d that come from? Right.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:36:46]:
It’s because we’ve tied all of this anger around that particular feeling.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:36:50]:
Yeah. This is so fascinating. I’m. I’m so glad that you are here talking about this. It’s. It’s making me think of. I do acceptance and commitment therapy mostly when I work with individuals, and a lot of it is about what type of person do I want to be? What are my core values that I want to stand for in life?

And so what I think I’m hearing you say is that they maybe had core values like I’m kind or I’m caring or I’m courageous or I’m loyal. And then they do something either either in the military, in combat, or something is done to them, and they start thinking, I’m no longer that person.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:37:34]:
Now I am something less than. I’m bad. I’m not consistent with who I thought I was. And so they have to.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:37:42]:
There’s a conflict. There’s a conflict between what happened in their values. That’s the spiritual wound.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:37:48]:
Yeah. And I’m imagining that that could happen in couple relationships too. Like I’m thinking about, sometimes one partner can be very critical and blaming, and the other partner internalizes that and starts thinking like, I’m not good enough. Either I’m not a good enough partner, or what I say doesn’t matter. I don’t matter type of thing.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:38:14]:
Or the other thing to think about is sometimes when one person reacts, they may hook another person. The other person’s wounded.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:38:23]:
Yeah.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:38:23]:
Okay. So one person gets upset about something their partner did, and they yell. And so it’s in that yelling that the other partner says, people who yell at me don’t love me.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:38:36]:
Oh, yeah.

Trauma hinders communication between veterans and partners.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:38:37]:
And so it triggers. It triggers event for them. So they get hooked up in this kind of circle of each other, triggering a couple of things. I say as we end, two things that I think is important. One to veterans and their significant other is I’ve had often significant others come to me and say, chaplain, you know, if he or she would just tell me what’s going on, I think we could work through some things.

And my response to them is always, if he or she knew what was going on, they would probably be more than happy to share with you. That’s that the problem with trauma is the person is trying to figure it out themselves. They’re trying to come to their own sense of healing, and they can’t explain or they’re afraid to share because they don’t know how the other person’s going to react, or they’re carrying this guilt and shame they haven’t worked through.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:39:37]:
And I. And when I say that to couples, I can just see them an instant change, like, oh, so he or she isn’t holding back because of me. It’s because of their own struggle.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:39:49]:
Yeah.

Self-improvement is key in relationships.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:39:50]:
And that just makes a. That just makes a huge difference. The other thing I want to say is I did this marriage and family work specifically around Warrior SoulMate for about 10 years in the VA and I would often say when I was working with couples in group, when we would hold one of these retreats, as I said, you know, what I keep finding out is that each time I do these retreats, it reminds me of all these different aspects of listening and listening with empathy and looking at the behavior and not the person, all this stuff.

And I said, what I really found out is in my relationship, the person I have to work on the most is myself.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:40:31]:
Yeah, you’re speaking the truth right now. Both of those points.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:40:36]:
Because we all want to blame. Blame. It is so natural. I mean, it’s the beginning of humanity is one, blame the other. Right. And we haven’t stopped. When something happens, we want to blame someone else or blame God. As I would say, it’s when we take personal responsibility.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:40:56]:
And probably the hardest work we do in couples work is the work we do internally with ourselves. Whether that’s dealing with guilt or shame or dealing with understanding or angering, resolving it, coming to places of forgiveness. That’s that self work. But then when we can take the self work and couple it with learning that bonding, learning to be emotionally open and physically close, learning to listen with empathy, when we put all of that together, that’s when the relationship, the bonding, begins to occur and we begin to experience the intimacy that we all long in relationships.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:41:32]:
Yeah. And that. That is something that’s really special and I think unique with couples therapy. Individual therapy can be so powerful. But I would say when. When both couples are able to, like, heal those parts in themselves and then find a way to reconnect together, it’s one of the. For me, personally, I think it’s one of the most beautiful things to watch.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:41:57]:
It’s powerful. I agree. It’s amazing to watch those craters of valleys that have occurred between couples, to watch those come back together and to see that couple. I’ve sat and watched it in the retreats, Liz. I’ve watched couples who were sitting two feet Apart from each other in the middle of a retreat, all of a sudden they’re holding hands and putting their arms around each other and just you can almost see the healing begin in place.

And that’s pretty exciting to watch that. So whether it’s individually in the couples in a counseling room or nowadays, it’s, it’s through zoom and other video connections with which I’ve done counseling. I’ve done couples counseling through video.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:42:39]:
It works. So I encourage couples, you know, seek out if, if you’re not getting to where you want to, you’re not finding the happiness and the love that you desire and want in your relationship. You know, reach out to someone. There’s a lot of folks out here who have a lot of experience, a lot of talent and a lot of caring and compassion to help couples find healing and hope and to be able to move forward.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:43:04]:
Yeah. Well, I think we are probably out of time now, but thank you so much, Clyde, for being on this podcast. I have really enjoyed our conversation and learning from all of your experience. So thank you so much.

Dr. Rev. Clyde Angel [00:43:18]:
Well, Liz, thank you for allowing me to come and just share and thanks to all of those who are listening. And I hope that maybe something that we’ve shared here today creates an ember or touches a place in their lives that brings healing.

Rate, subscribe, relationship course. Not therapy.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:43:48]:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for our free 10 week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it. While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one.

Until next time.