New Life LIVE: October 2, 2026

Brian Perez: Hey, welcome to New Life Live. I'm your host, Brian Perez, still not over the fact that it's already October, but it is. We are here to talk to you about whatever it is you're going through. By "we," I mean clinical psychologist Dr. Jill Hubbard and licensed marriage and family therapist Chris Williams. Great to be with you guys again. Jill, what's on your mind to start us off?
Dr. Jill Hubbard: Hello, guys. I don't know that I'm going to do a confession, Chris, but sort of. I'm going to talk about worry. Last week, I shared some things on worry. Chris, you were not here. We talked about being a worry wart, having rumination, and kind of obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors. How often being a worry wart is that we are trying to keep bad things from happening by injecting or inserting our worry into a situation. There's sort of this magical thinking that goes along with worry that somehow we can control the outcome. We don't always consciously think this, but in our behavior, it's almost like the worry is going to control what happens. We talked a lot about that last time and that also some people tend to run more anxious, people that tend to have had anxious parents or have an anxious attachment, will generally run more anxious. Here are some strategies, though, some kind of DIY, do-it-yourself strategies at home. Now, that doesn't mean if it's really chronic and you're ruminating, seeing a therapist can be really helpful with this chronic anxiety and worry. But here are some things you can try. First, you can try to identify the root cause of your thoughts. Ask yourself: Why does this matter to me? Is this based in facts, or is my mind kind of engaging in what-ifs? And then, can I do something about it, or is this something beyond my control? A lot of times, we will ruminate on things that are way out of our control. Then we need to increase our emotional willingness to be more specific. We talked about getting out of vagueness. When we're ruminating, we've got these worrisome thoughts and we think the worst; we're still staying kind of up here and vague about things. Let's journal. Let's gain some perspective. Start writing some things down. Let's talk to another person and get some feedback, because inside our own head, things can just spiral out of control. Name the feelings that are going on besides worry and anxiety, and do they match the thoughts? Another thing we can do is actually create a time that's called worry time. Set aside fifteen minutes where you're going to do these things, intentionally reflect, and do some problem-solving. This is versus having the worry be a filler for idle time, as we talked about. Those are just a few of the strategies that I have. Another time, I will name more strategies that you can do at home yourself.
Brian Perez: I love it. If you missed that other episode where Jill was talking about worry, you can find it in the archives. I looked it up. It's the September 24th episode, so it was from last week. Just go to newlife.com. You can also find it on our YouTube channel. There are so many ways to connect with us nowadays and to go back and listen to an episode that you might have missed or an episode that really blessed you. You can find that online at newlife.com. We'll be right back here on New Life Live. Thanks so much for joining us today, whether you're watching or listening. Thank you so much. We'll be back. Have you seen on our website, newlife.com, the digital downloads section? It is there with helpful resources that we've got available now, including past webinars and so much more. Check out the online store at newlife.com. Thank you so much for watching and listening today. My name is Brian Perez. I'm here with clinical psychologist Dr. Jill Hubbard and licensed marriage and family therapist Chris Williams. If you can't call us when we're here in the studio, you can send us an email or leave us a voicemail. The instructions on how to do that are on our website, newlife.com/radio. If you go to that page, you'll see when we are here in the studio. It also shows you the phone number where you can leave your voice message or the form that you can fill out to send us an email. Here's one of those emails now. It's from Tom in Philadelphia, who listens to us on WFIL. Tom asks: What must I do to humble myself without becoming a doormat for my wife? After fourteen years of marriage, together for twenty-three years, Tom says: My wife and I argue every day about everything. I feel like she's punishing and scolding me. As soon as I disagree with her, the arguments begin. It's becoming toxic. I'm prideful and my wife is a know-it-all. It's my first marriage and my wife's third marriage. We're both Catholic and we pray every day. All right, what do you guys say to Tom? Chris, we'll start with you.
Chris Williams: Prideful people and know-it-all people typically don't get along really well. That's my first impression. But really, underneath this, there are much, much deeper patterns of relationship going on. Without getting more into the details that we don't have about Tom and his wife and how they're relating to each other, again, my first recommendation is at our next Intimacy in Marriage Intensive, you need to be at the front of the line there. There is an attachment pattern that's being played out here over and over and over that they can't figure out. I do know it's driven by fear, because there's a lot of control issues. That's what I would encourage you to look at, Tom. What are the control issues? The backside of control is fear. That's why what you're afraid of is a really important question, and also what you need. Oftentimes, people who are struggling with pride, meaning they have a hard time hearing feedback because somehow anything negative to them is threatening to them, they're over-attached with needing to be right. That's a control issue. We can look at past childhood experiences or past relationships, like were your weaknesses used against you? Were your faults punished over and over and over again? You're invested in being good, or being right. What you're doing is you're protecting yourself from pain. Understanding our histories is really important. The know-it-all oftentimes struggles with the idea that agreement equals connection. Agreement equals closeness, or that you haven't heard me unless you agree with me. Disagreement means discord. Disagreement means that we can't be close, distance, or even sometimes rejection or judgment. These are all patterns that are playing themselves out. Each of you are fighting to be understood and feeling misunderstood the entire time. That's why deeper work needs to dig in here.
Dr. Jill Hubbard: Absolutely. I'm wondering here, your wife tends to be a know-it-all, and I'm wondering how soon that surfaced in the marriage. In some ways, was she not feeling safe? You talked about control, Chris. She's needing to step in and take control, fearing that you aren't seeing things. It is hard to humble yourself if you feel like you're under constant criticism. That's what we women do; we criticize to correct, thinking that we're being helpful and that if you just understood what was wrong here, then you would change it and you would get it right. It could be, too, your wife has been married three times. She could fall into that vacillator attachment style where things just are never quite right. That's a hard one, especially, Tom, if you tend to want to avoid and kind of hide behind your pride. She's really wanting you to engage with her. I think if you can really work on not being defensive, that would help. The thing that we all want to do when somebody points out something we've done is we deflect, we defend. "No, that's not what I meant. That's not what I was doing." Instead, we need to suspend ourselves for a moment and hear what they're saying. It doesn't matter initially what our intent was; it's how they felt or how they're feeling. If you can set your part aside, which is really hard to do—most couples have a hard time doing that, and husbands—and just say, "I really want to understand how you're seeing this." Once the other person feels heard, then they're more receptive to your perspective. "I think my intent was different than how it came across. I'm hearing you, but I see it this way. We might not see things the same way." They're much more open if you've been able to remain calm and non-defensive, but it takes lots of practice to do that.
Chris Williams: That's why starting to address what are the things inside of me is so important. How am I hearing this? I have all these filters inside of me. So if you're bringing something to me and, Jill, you say you cut me off on the radio—
Dr. Jill Hubbard: You do that all the time, Chris. It's like cutting off on the freeway as road rage. Now I'm cutting him off on the radio. I'm not an inconsiderate driver; I'm an inconsiderate host.
Chris Williams: If she brings that to me, and what I hear is that I'm a terrible co-host and I can't ever get it right—that's not what she's saying, but that's what I'm hearing. We must grab hold of our filters. We must grab hold of how we are hearing things and how I am hearing myself in the context of this. This interferes with what I refer to as the oxygen of relationship, and that is empathy. The oxygen of empathy can be described as seeing, hearing, and understanding. I need to see you, I need to hear you, I need to understand you.
Dr. Jill Hubbard: In that example, Chris, if I came to you and said, "Chris, you keep cutting me off," instead of defending yourself, if you were to maybe see and realize, "Maybe Jill's not feeling heard. Maybe she's not jumping in and I need to give more room for her. How can I come alongside her and we can work together in a better way? Maybe it's really not about me; maybe it's about her." Sometimes when we say things to a person, it's often about us.
Chris Williams: Absolutely. To your point, Jill, one of the most difficult things is slowing it all down. Put it to the side, slow it down, put it to the side, and let me really, really seek to understand.
Dr. Jill Hubbard: This is where you may have to break the tension. I always say, "Hold that thought. I have to go to the restroom; I'll be right back." Going to the restroom gives you enough time to regroup, take a few deep breaths, and come back and go, "Okay, now I'm ready to address it."
Chris Williams: One of the things to pay attention to there, I like to call it our intensity dial. Intensity and intimacy do not go well together. If I'm feeling all of this intensity inside of me, I'm not going to be able to see, hear, or understand well. It's going to be too much internal noise and frequency. I've got to turn that down. Go to the bathroom, turn it down, regulate it a little bit. My job right now is to understand a person. It's not even to agree with them, or even to say they see this correctly. I'm going to see, hear, and understand them, and then work into reciprocal mutual communication where we both can be seen and heard and understood, even though we may not fully agree on how we're experiencing it.
Dr. Jill Hubbard: Also for Tom, again, his wife's been married three times. What is she bringing in from her past marriage? I know being newly married now, when I approach certain things, without even realizing it, I have expectations of how my husband's going to respond. And you know what? He responds completely differently. It's so refreshing. I laugh. Oh my gosh, you're so great because you're not defensive, you don't respond negatively. But if we're armed with, "I know he's going to get defensive and be mad, and so I'm ready for this," she's got two previous husbands that she's got in the back of her head that she's gearing up for when situations feel old and familiar. For Tom, you get to be her Mr. Wonderful. Her Prince Charming, because the third time's the charm. By responding differently, and it's your first marriage, so asking: "I'm new to this. Let's figure out a way that works for both of us here."
Brian Perez: For the record, I'm not saying to get married three times. Just in case somebody's about to write to us and say, "I can't believe that he—" No, that's not what I meant. Tom, thanks so much for sending in your question through newlife.com/radio. Let's go to the phones right now with Sarah in Seattle, who watches us on YouTube. Hey there, Sarah. Thanks for calling in today. What's on your mind? How can we help you?
Sarah: Hi, I'm so excited to get through. I love Dr. Jill Hubbard. I can definitely relate to her. Congratulations on your marriage, Jill. And also to Chris, the king of confessions. I love that you're honest. My dilemma is I'm single. I've been divorced ten years. But what I notice is that when I go to singles events, there are a lot of competitive women. How do I deal with competitive women? For example, I was about to sit next to a man and one woman told me to move. she said, "Oh, let me sit by him. I'm going to sit by him." And so how do I deal with the women that seem to be competing for men? Because as you know, there may not be as many men who attend these events as women do.
Dr. Jill Hubbard: So true, Sarah. There are less eligible men. It's always funny to stand back and watch; I've been in those situations where the one eligible guy and all the women are fawning around that person. I don't think it bodes well for any of them. The man has his pick. I just think that's a lot of attention. But how do you deal with the other women? Obviously, you can see that even though they're trying to hide it, when they're competitive, there's a little bit of desperation in the competitiveness. Having confidence in yourself, certainly not shying away and being able to engage in conversation, but kind of stepping out of the competition and not competing with them. It's like a power struggle; step out of the power struggle. Let them go at it, but you're going to do something different. It's trusting in the process. There really isn't an easy answer here, but what kind of woman do you want to be? Because we typically attract who we are.
Chris Williams: There was a lot I want to say on this one. I'll start here: the guy is going to be attracted to who the guy wants to be attracted to. Proximity typically doesn't matter, to be real honest. But there's more that I want to add to what you said, Jill. I think it's so critically important because we see this whether on the male or female side of things that cause damage to relationship rather than causes closeness or strength in relationship.
Brian Perez: Sarah, can you stick with us for another segment?
Sarah: Sure, yes.
Brian Perez: Awesome. Going to put you on hold. We'll come back to you and talk about this dilemma that you find yourself in with competitive women. You're trying to find the right guy and everybody keeps jumping in line in front of you. How do you deal with that? We'll talk about it when we return on New Life Live. Sarah, you still with us?
Sarah: Yes.
Chris Williams: Quite honestly, when I hear these situations, it's a little bit heartbreaking. Here's why: I know what it's like obviously to be a man in this world, but I also live with a woman and I also work with women in the sense that being a woman is very, very difficult. Women need each other. Competition does not help. There is strength in collaboration, shared experiences. What happens is that we get into this real dangerous scarcity place. There are a few men for all of us women. Ironically, probably because I primarily do work with men in my practice, I work with men of divorce or single guys and I'm like, wait a second, there are a lot of single guys out there. A couple of my friends that I'm thinking of right now would make fantastic partners and mates. I mention all of that because one of the things I think is really important is that when we get into scarcity places, people don't become valuable image-bearers of God; they become competition for survival. Therefore, the relationship shifts significantly. That's why, just to reiterate what you were saying, Jill, is that to not play the competition game is the game. It's the way to win the game, to not play the game. When you approach it from that perspective, you want to attract the guy that is worthy of being in relationship. If there's a guy who loves the attention of women...