In the first Revolutionise Your Love Life podcast, Heather Garbutt talks with Angela Barrett about Calling in The One Love and Relationship Coaching.
You can listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below:
Heather: 00:02 Hello, we’re making this recording in advance of Valentine’s day to strike a for coming and listening to us and making a stand for true love in your life and for more love in the world. Welcome.
Angela: Hello Heather and hello everyone. I guess we should introduce ourselves. Should I do you first?
Heather: Oh, thank you, yes.
Angela: 00:30 A world renowned psychotherapist and coach specializing in loving relationships, Heather Garbutt brings Swift and effective change to people struggling in their romantic life. Her hybrid model Blending Coaching and Psychotherapy provides deep and permanent results for her clients. She utilizes both Calling In the One and Conscious Uncoupling coaching programs. Heather shines a light on the challenges and solutions of healthy relating, how to heal past hurts and gives powerful tools to transform unhelpful thoughts, emotions, and behaviors into a rich and happy love life. Heather is on a mission and has created an evolutionary wave of change in love relationships worldwide through her celebrated movement with the goal of empowering 10 million women to create true loving, mutually supportive relationships. Amazing Heather.
Heather: Oh, thank you. Angela. You are so aptly named; such an angel of a woman. Let me introduce you too. Thank you.
Angela: Thank you.
Heather: 01:37 Angela Barrett is a psychotherapist and qualified love coach based in Australia. She works with successful women and men who are ready and motivated to create a committed romantic relationship. She’s one of only two coaches in Australia, certified in both Calling In the One and Conscious Uncoupling. Her coaching supports people to identify and release the unhealthy patterns of the past so they can call in the high quality relationships they deserve. Her psychotherapy training and life experience bring a depth to her coaching that help facilitate change at a foundational level. In her former career, Angela was a passionate, but love-starved health journalist. She’s now happily married with two children. She says her 20-year relationship provides her with at the coal face, daily relationships learning, which she incorporates into her sessions.
Angela: 02:37 Thanks Heather. So I thought we should start perhaps by just looking at the state of love in our parts of the world and in Australia interesting, we’ve not only had an environmental drought up until recently, except for some great rains that we’ve had recently. But whilst we’ve had an environmental drought, we also have a man drought in Australia. For every 100 women, there are 98.6 men and that was in 2018. Every capital city in Australia has more men than women, except for Darwin. In terms of how we are meeting romantic partners, more people meet their partner online than any other way and it has been that way since 2010. A third of Australians who met their partners last year, 2019, did so online; meeting someone through friends was the second most common way of meeting their partner at 21%; while 13% met their partner through work.
Heather: 03:44 Yes, there are similar stats in the UK of 250,000 opposite sex marriages in the UK each year. There are more than 7 million people registered for dating sites. One in three relationships starts online. At the same time, so many people are struggling to keep their relationships flourishing. I did a little bit of research and found stats to suggest that over a 100,000 people will divorce each year. Relate, the couples’ therapy service in the UK, estimate that 20% of marriages are in distress. There’s a real crisis in love and we are doing our little bit to address through both Calling In the One and Unconscious Uncoupling coaching some of those difficulties that arise.
Angela: 04:53 Yes, our aim is to give people who have been disappointed in love, the absolute best chance of finding a true committed, rich and thriving relationship. We’re focusing today on our experience with Calling In the One coaching and how it works.
Calling In the One coaching gives the tools to increase self-esteem to the point where you are empowered and enabled to choose your partner from a position of strength, wisdom, and personal magnetism. I love this quote from Sufi poet, Rumi, which could be the Calling In the One client’s motto.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Heather: 05:39 That’s so beautiful, isn’t it? This is exactly what we’re facilitating in Calling In the One. Should we give people a brief outline of how it works and what we love about it, and then address some of the questions that people often ask?
Angela: Yes. And why don’t we begin with some of the stories of the people that we’ve worked with.
Heather: 06:02 Oh yes, that’s a good idea. Okay. Let me think.
Ann came to see me following the end of a long marriage. We worked together over a period of a few months. She was able to trace patterns in her early relationships that she could see with the blueprint for her early life; for her adult life, from her early life. She found she was doing the same things as an adult that she did in her relationships with her parents. Although her parents had provided all that she could wish for on a practical level, they’d not been close to her as a child. She was left craving love and feeling bad if she asserted her need for it. She had a history of pleasing people as a consequence, feeling that she could only have the crumbs from the table of affection, if she was a really good girl.
So this led her along the path of codependency in her adult relationships. She felt if she could only give enough, she would get the love she craved. But in doing that she lost respect, dignity and power. In our coaching together we addressed and dissolved the guilt she felt for taking care of herself. She became much more assertive and self-confident, more self-aware and started to give herself the kindness and attention she gave to others. She also commanded much more respect from others. She realised she’d been holding back at work from lack of self-worth and not expecting any recognition.
Latterly, she’s negotiated a promotion and a pay rise. She’s learned new personal skills in herself, and that’s changed the way that she’s seen it work and how she interacted and that spread right through her life. I was delighted when she started online dating.
From this new position of strength in herself, she attracted a lot of attention from high-quality men and soon found herself in a relationship with a man who is loving and respectful, gives her the space that she needs to be herself and is honest and open. They can talk easily about how they want to arrange things. They take care of each other’s feelings, but without cost to their own. I think they have a really good future ahead of them. So Angela, is there somebody you’d like to talk about?
Angela: 08:27 That’s a beautiful story, Heather. And yes, so I do. There are so many clients whose transformations I’m so in awe of and privileged to be a part of. The one I’d like to talk about today is a lady called Jessie. Jessie’s a smart and successful, social lady in her thirties, who was drawn to charismatic men who found her cheeky confidence, quite alluring. But her relationships rarely got past the three, four-month mark. They’d follow a pattern. She met a guy, think he was amazing and they’d be totally smitten with her. But around three months, they started losing interest in her just as she was starting to lose herself in them. They’d disregard her, they’d go out with the boys instead of her and their eyes started wandering in other directions. She was cheated on by several of the men. But instead of his deterring her, their disinterest made her try even harder.
She was devastated with every breakup that would happen and left feeling not good enough and wondering what was so wrong with her that a man wouldn’t want to stay with her and marry her. All of her friends were marrying. In our coaching sessions, Jessie discovered that at the heart of it all, she had a firm belief that she wasn’t good enough, which had its basis in early childhood at the hands of a spiteful, older brother. She adored her brother and no matter how hurtful he was; her response was to try harder. Sound familiar? So that’s exactly what she was doing in her romantic relationships too. In giving her power away by investing so heavily in the man that she was with, the confident woman they first met was nowhere to be found. Once she recognized this and saw how these patterns of mistreatment were evident elsewhere in her life with some of her old friends, at work and in her family of origin, she made quick progress.
She was quick to understand and to really see that her brother’s treatment of her didn’t actually mean that she wasn’t good enough. It was just her interpretation and she started to realize that she actually was good enough. She then set her sights on finding a wholesome, healthy man who only had eyes for her, and she became more adept at detecting and avoiding the charismatic men with wandering eyes. She found her voice in relationships and learned how to be bold in asking for what she wanted. And she was delighted and somewhat surprised to discover that when she upped her game in this way and had her own back, good honest men started appearing and being interested in her. She’s now in a committed relationship with a man who has shown over and over again in his actions, that she is a priority to him and they’re planning their future together, including marriage and babies. Stories like this just make me so happy.
Heather: That’s beautiful work, Angela. Oh, she’s so lucky to have you. Ah —
Angela: Thanks.
Heather: Heartwarming. Heartwarming. Shall we give a little bit more of an outline of how Calling In the One works?
Angela: 11:54 That’s a good idea. Well, first we start with an intention, which is not just a mental goal, but this is a commitment from your heart and soul. To set a course, to really attract the love of your life, your love partner, your life partner, and to do the work needed to fulfill your intention.
Heather: 12:17 Beautiful. So your next step, is to create your vision of love fulfilled in your life. Really get clear on who and what you want. Get the qualities in images that come to mind and write them down. I often will take a whole session to do that with clients. Write down everything they want of the qualities and the ideal day that they would have together. And then I record all of that in a little recording that they can take away and listen to, to feed their dream, really live into it. I really want people to feel it; really feel who they are in that moment, in those moments, feeling loved and loving.
Angela: 13:11 And that’s beautiful. And it’s something that I’ll find that people rarely do. We rarely think to really get clear on who is this person? How would it feel to be with them? And who am I in that picture? Who would I need to be? Lovely. So our next step is the clearing out of old encumbrances and resentments. These are old resentments, as I said, in relationships; toxic relationships that you might currently be in and old agreements and these are some of the internal barriers we have for love coming to us.
Heather: 13:55 So working through and fundamentally changing the largely unconscious beliefs that you hold, which holds you back from truly embracing love in your life, that’s the next step. Now, this is where our skills as psychotherapists really deepen and enhance the coaching experience to make it a strong and enduring change. This is a really profound piece and if you don’t do this piece, chances are all the visioning and intending in the world aren’t going to make it happen because your core beliefs will really hold you back.
Angela: 14:31 Absolutely Heather, and it’s from that place when you’ve done the work on the core beliefs and created that strong foundation that we take on the next step, which is learning new ways of being, skills and behaviors in relation to yourself and others and that will enrich your whole way of being. It will likely affect all areas of your life as we saw with Heather’s work with Ann. They can be profound, spiritual shifts through this work too. Paulo Coelho, I’d just like to actually read a quote from Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist who says,
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
Heather: That’s beautiful. So true.
Angela: Shall we move into some more questions?
Heather: That’s a good idea.
Angela: 15:41 Okay. So one of the questions that I’m often asked is why can’t I just use the book and do it on my own? So what would you say to that, Heather?
Heather: Of course you can. Of course you can. It’s really, though, designed to be the workbook that accompanies the coaching program. It stimulates thoughts and ideas and raises your awareness. But there’s no substitute for the presence and profound skills of a loving, supportive and wise coach to help you think outside of your own box, those familiar grooves; the water you swim in that you’re not aware of. To quote Einstein,
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Angela: 16:31 I couldn’t agree more and I think there’s really something in walking this journey with somebody on your side because it can be very isolating when you’re feeling lost in love, when you’re in that painful, very isolating experience. it’s so beneficial to actually have somebody to walk that path with you. Someone who is an experienced guide and who walks beside you and shines the light. I’d also like to add that because we are constantly in training and mentoring with the creator of the Calling In the One program, that we have cutting edge technologies that the author has taught us to augment the effectiveness of the program and the book. And the book content is obviously – it’s quite evergreen, but we bring additional practices and strategies. And the value in having a coach is also because as Heather said, we help you see past what you can’t see yourself, particularly about how you’re playing a part in the pattern that’s happening to you. We feel like these things are happening to us in love, but we help shift the focus in a productive way to how it’s happening through you so that you can start to see clearly what you need to do differently in order to have a different result.
Heather: 18:02 Yes, absolutely. So another question that comes up quite a lot is who comes for Calling In the One coaching? What age are they? Are they men? Women?
Yes. I find they’re people of all ages and often people who’ve had relationships in their life that have been ultimately unsatisfying. People who are in the state of once bitten, twice shy, who’ve had a bad experience in a relationship and want to make sure they choose differently this time and don’t repeat the pattern. Is that the same for you, Angela? You find the same groups?
Angela: 18:47 Absolutely. My clients have ranged from 30 up; thirties, 40’s, 50’s, mostly. Some have been married and wounded and wanting to get back into the dating game with confidence and some sort of, you know, personal assurance or sense that they’re not going to repeat the same patterns. Some have yet to meet their special someone but are wanting to optimize their ability to do so. And I have worked primarily with women, but also a surprising and impressive number of men have come for help as well, which I love.
Heather: 19:31 Yes, I’m finding that there are more men coming. It feels really good. It bodes well for our world that men are becoming so much more emotionally intelligent, aware, curious and excited by this field. It’s lovely. Welcome men, if you’re listening.
Angela: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Heather: 19:52 And also people — I’ve noticed that that there is a growing number of people who’ve never felt they’ve had a proper relationship at all. That’s another group that’s increasing, I think, for me,
Angela: 20:06 I’ve found that as well because sometimes like you and I might be talking about the pattern that happens and some people might be thinking, “Well, I don’t have a pattern because I don’t even see anyone. I haven’t dated anyone in years.” But that pattern of, maybe, aloneness can actually be the pattern.
Heather: Absolutely. Aloneness, loneliness and the shame and feeling of lack and isolation. Claire Zammit talks about those three things as being soul crushing for women. So, full of longing. I find women who are full of longing.
Angela: And it’s a beautiful thing to work with that.
Heather: To see the change; to see the change when people really grow and find love.
Angela: 20:59 That’s so heartwarming. And what about to the question of, is it ever too late for love, Heather? What do you think?
Heather: No, never. It’s a human need to want to be close to someone. Like, you, my clients are forties, fifties, in their sixties. Have you got a thought about it?
Angela: I always would say, never too late for love. I think the decision to seek love and the barriers that you’ve created against it is a decision that you can make at any time in your life. And I always get excited when I hear someone in later life kind of deciding to reinvigorate their love life, to reinvent or to just to get back out there. I love it.
Heather: 21:46 Beautiful. So I’m wondering what common ground you and I might have in terms of what drew us to this work? What attracted you to it, Angela?
Angela: Well, for me, Heather, what attracted me to this work was, not surprisingly, my own distress in romantic relationships that put me on the path to help others. So in order to do that, I first studied psychotherapy and whilst I value the role of therapy enormously in helping people process trauma, I became passionately drawn to this particular transformative coaching model because it is proactive and forward-focused. I like that it helps people find their path and know how to go on their path and to identify, like we said earlier, to identify the intention, which is like the light at the end of the tunnel. So it really helps take the mystery out of it, as far as I’m concerned, this process, and the principles of Calling In the One were also what I use to break my bad relationship habits and finally meet someone who is really good for me.
Heather: I’m so pleased for you. I’m so pleased for you.
Angela: Thank you.
Heather: So for me, what drew me to this work is I’ve been a psychotherapist for 35 years with lots of success in helping people recover from trauma, depression and anxiety, as well as painful early life experiences. So when I came across this work, I saw a path where I could help my clients release themselves from old ways of being and relating and make swift and lasting changes in their lives. It worked for me really quite quickly. I feel that it’s a revolution for me and I really wanted to share that with others. I don’t want anybody to stay stuck for longer than they have to. I was so inspired that I trained in both the models, in Conscious Uncoupling and Calling In the One coaching. It felt so important for me – learning to relate in healthier ways to ourselves, our partner and our broader relationships for us to do good in the world, good in life, but also for future generations to come.
People often ask me if there was a defining love or lack of love experience in my life that set me up for this work. I’m going to ask you that question first, Angela. What about you?
Angela: There really was. For me, it was my first experience of love, which was a two-year relationship with a man who was clever. And funny, but actually very cold, cruel and heartless. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but now I would say he displayed strong narcissistic tendencies and it was the most intensely painful experience of my life. So I made it my mission to learn about the deep relationship pain I’d experienced and then to help other people not to have that or to at least help them to find their way to happy, healthy relationship where they are treated with the utmost kindness.
Heather: That’s so lovely. So lovely.
Angela: What about you, Heather?
Heather: Thank you. Yes. For myself, it was a really early experienced. I was a hospitalized baby and that was in the times when they didn’t let moms and dads stay overnight or stay with you. They’d just go in at visiting times. I had a dislocated hip at birth and that wasn’t discovered till I was about 15 months old when I wasn’t learning to crawl properly and after various intervention had been tried, I needed an operation and a stay in hospital. My parents did visit as often as they could, but I felt in my little self very alone and abandoned, and I clung to each nurse who came to me and I made an unconscious decision. You couldn’t possibly make a conscious one at that age. It was just like an instinctive thing to be independent, not to really rely on anyone emotionally in an intimate way, but to grab the first person who came and hang on. So as a baby, having loving and care and attention is a life and death need, and that formed the pattern of my future relationships, not to expect emotional connection and settle for proximity in place of closeness.
This blueprint led to quite empty relationships that I hung onto for fear of being alone. So this connected in a way with my beginning of my work with Calling In the One.
I woke up on Valentine’s day 2016 feeling that loneliness and an email dropped into my inbox from Katherine Woodward Thomas, which said, “Do you want to create a miracle in your love life?” And from that position in isolation, loneliness, after a string of unsatisfying relationships, I decided to take the leap and make the investment and do Calling In the One. I was so taken with it that I went on to do the coach training. And the rest, as they say, is history. J
Angela: Wow, that’s so serendipitous. And I’m so glad that dropped into your inbox and has led you to become a coach because the world is a better place for having you doing this work, Heather.
Heather: Thank you. J
Angela: 28:02 And it’s fascinating, I think. Our stories of the love pain that we both experienced is so different, but it’s both led us to this place of wanting to help other people to transform their own pain.
Heather: 28:22 So this has been such an enjoyable conversation, Angela. And as we wind up, I’d love just to hear how doing this work has affected you in your life.
Angela: Thank you. In many ways it’s affected my life across the board really. And for me and my passion being a love coach involves a number of things that I’m passionate about; love, obviously, people’s stories. I’m fascinated by people and their stories and what makes them who they are and helping other people. So this works really well for me. It’s the answer to my dreams. It also affects me in my day to day life by requiring me to walk the talk really, to continually step up my own game in relationships across the board in my life. So it’s a never ending journey of self-reflection and growing and evolving and being brave. But I absolutely love it and I wouldn’t have it any other way. What about you, Heather?
Heather: I completely relate to everything that you said. This feels like if I wasn’t doing this, I’d go and train all over again so I could. It’s just I love the work; love it. I love seeing people grow and change. I love it when you see somebody who’s been in despair, flourishing six months later. It’s just beautiful and it’s changed my life completely. I’m a very different person. I think I may be closer to who I might have been before hospitalization and being in plaster. I’m so much more confident and outgoing. I’ve up-leveled myself in so many ways; in my career, my business and I’m with a man in the best relationship of my life. Ah, it’s lovely.
Angela: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. It’s so all encompassing. The work, isn’t it?
Heather: 30:27 It is. It changes you on every level in every area.
So Angela, just one last question. Is there anything you know about love now that you wished you’d known sooner?
Angela: Yes, plenty, plenty. Probably the one thing I would say is that I wish I knew to have higher expectations of the people who I would let close to me. It would have saved me a couple of years of soul smashing experiences really, if I’d known to only spend time with people who showed care for me and my heart. What about you, Heather? Is there — What do you know now that you wished you’d known sooner?
Heather: That it was possible to have true love, respect, healthy boundaries, and not to have to over-give to be accepted. It’s just so freeing.
Angela: So freeing.
Heather: 31:31 So thank you Angela for being with me today.
So Angela Barrett is her name. Her website is www.relationshipinsight.com.au and her email address is angela@relationshipinsight.com.au
Angela: Thank you Heather. It’s been such a joy and privilege to be with you today. I’ve loved speaking to you about our shared passion of Calling In the One. So thank you.
Heather: 32:05 Shall we make a wish for everybody who’s listening to this?
Angela: A great idea.
Heather: Okay. So I’m going to invoke the law of attraction. Dearest universe, this is my Valentine wish. I sincerely desire that anybody who is listening to this podcast, video recording, in whatever form it reaches you, that you are happy in love, fulfilled in love, enriched by the love in your life and that everybody you touch feels your radiance, your glow, the love that you are giving and receiving and demonstrating for others is possible and so beautiful. I asked this for the good of all concerned. So it is. So it shall be, and thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Angela: So it shall be. That was beautiful, Heather.
Heather: 33:25 Thank you. I think you’ve got a lovely quote for us to finish with, haven’t you?
Angela: I have actually, another quote from Rumi, who said,
“Wherever you are and whatever you do, be in love.”
Thank you for listening.
Heather: Bye, bye for now.
Angela: Bye.