Why do you keep reacting the same way in conflict — even when you’re trying not to?

Most of the time, the fight isn’t really about what it looks like on the surface. It’s about the meaning you’re making. When your husband says something that lands wrong, your brain moves fast — it takes his words and turns them into a story. About him. About you. About whether you’re loved, seen, or alone. And that story drives everything that happens next.

In this episode, Jill teaches a tool called "sitting far" — the CTFAR model — that helps you slow down and separate what actually happened from the meaning you assigned to it. You’ll learn to identify the one thought underneath your reaction, trace how it created a feeling, drove your actions, and produced a result that confirmed the story you started with. Then you’ll build a new, intentional model — one that opens the door to a different conversation entirely.

This is part three of the series Why You Keep Having the Same Fight and sits inside the regulation phase of the Flood Plan. It’s the inside work that makes going back into the hard conversation actually possible.

In This Episode
•How to use journaling to process what happened before you try to analyze it
•What the CTFAR model is and how to walk through it step by step
•Why the result of your unintentional model always loops back to prove your original thought
•How to identify one thought — not five — and examine it honestly
•Two directions for building an intentional model when you’re not ready to think generously about your spouse
•Why feeling seen by God is often the bridge between where you are and where you want to be

Key Takeaways
•The circumstance doesn’t create your feelings — your thought about the circumstance does
•You can enter the CTFAR model from the feeling, the action, or the thought — wherever you have the most clarity
•Sometimes the generous thought toward your spouse is too far to reach right now, and that’s okay
•You can have a thought that helps you feel settled in yourself before you can have a thought that opens curiosity toward him
•Regulation isn’t just calming your body — it’s also understanding the story you were telling when you flooded

Series Note
This is Episode 3 of 4 in the series Why You Keep Having the Same Fight. Start with Episode 160 if you’re new to the series.

Keywords
relationship conflict, recurring arguments in marriage, emotional flooding, thought work for women, Christian marriage help, how to stop fighting with your spouse

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