Airdate: January 28, 2026
Julie Rose: One in four Americans is estranged from
someone in their family.
Kelsey Blahnik: And I think our society's kinda done
this pendulum swing over to a more extreme no-contact trend, cutting people out
more aggressively.
Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy. Lately,
it just really feels hard to stay open to others when it seems like we're all
living in completely different realities. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells
in every encounter, just constantly uncomfortable. But I don't wanna give up on
connection or retreat into a bubble where everybody is just like me. I wanna
stay curious, hopeful, and human, and that's what this show is about. So, let's
get Uncomfy.
Kelsey Blahnik: Oh, I know when I start to get really
uncomfortable in a social setting, I start sweating. I get a little shaky, I
get a little cold, and that's when I know there's a part of me that's wanting
to shrink in and even close off my body, uh, and, and get out.
Julie Rose: Folks, this is Kelsey Blahnik. She's a
licensed clinical social worker, and she's author of a new book, it's called "The
And Way: Assertive Peacemaking in a Divided World." I'm really excited to
hear her stories today. Kelsey, welcome to Uncomfy!
Kelsey Blahnik: Thank you so much for having me.
Julie Rose: So, it sounds like your, uh, your response
when you feel threatened is the freeze one, right? Like sometimes we hear
fight, flight, freeze, and you're talking about wanting to shrink in on
yourself. Tell us what happened in that moment. How did you end up in that
position? What's going on?
Kelsey Blahnik: Yeah, sometimes freeze, sometimes flight,
and I also had a part of me that wanted to fight in that moment. I was at
dinner with some friends that I had been doing life with for a long time, and I
just made an error in judgment, making an assumption when I made a comment
about a political candidate. "Oh, well, at least they're, uh, far superior
to voting for them," and when I made that comment, it got silent, and my,
one of my friends looked over at me and said, "We don't all feel that
way," and it shocked me because I thought I was making it so casually,
assuming we were all on the same page about how obvious this was.
Julie Rose: So, you say these are people you had been
doing life with for a long, like these are good friends.
Kelsey Blahnik: Yes, very dear friends.
Julie Rose: and are you at, like, at a public setting,
in a restaurant? What's...
Kelsey Blahnik: We were at a restaurant enjoying a meal
together. We hadn't, we hadn't seen each other in a few weeks because we were
starting to have a little less frequent contact once we had young kids, but we
were still making an intentional effort, and we had had, you know, little
conversations here and there where we could tell we weren't on the exact same
page about every issue, but it really did still shock me, and I noticed a part
of me wanted to jump right into the debate, and then another part of me wanted
to just leave the friendships altogether. I wondered, "Should I not even
be here Anymore? Am I not a part of this group anymore?" It, it questioned
my desire to even be associated or be, you know, in, in deep community with
folks that felt so strongly differently than I did.
Julie Rose: So, what did you do in that moment?
Kelsey Blahnik: It was awkward, and I, I mostly shut
down in that meal, and then—
Julie Rose: Meaning you stopped talking? You—
Kelsey Blahnik: Yeah, I got a little quiet. I, I went
internal. I started processing and I did, I, I had a lot of judgment in my
head. "How could they? How could you?" And, uh, I recognized that
judgment and decided I didn't wanna voice that immediately. I wanted to get
curious, so I, I took some time I, continued to interact a little bit later in
the meal, and, you know, we ended up being able to leave things in a good
place, and then I came back to those questions with curiosity at a later date
and in a, in a more one-on-one setting or two-on-two setting instead of at a
large dinner table.
Julie Rose: What did that, what, how did that play out?
Kelsey Blahnik: I love asking, just kind of in an
open-ended way, "What's most important to you about this election?"
Or, "Tell me a little bit about why you feel connected to that
candidate," you know, just opening up conversations, um, and there were
also instances where specific things on the news would come up, and I would,
you know, clearly feel differently than my friends did and, and inquire a
little bit more. It's a lot of asking questions.
Julie Rose: How did, how did this become a part of your,
um, your framework, the work that you do as a, as a therapist? What, what's the
connection here between the personal experience that you've worked on and the
lessons you've learned and kind of what you do in your book and in your day
job?
Kelsey Blahnik: Yes. Well, I noticed constantly that my
clients were struggling with this decision of, "Do I cut people out of my
life or do I maintain connection and kind of shut down my conviction, shut down
the things that I think the other people won't like about me or my
beliefs?" And I strongly believe it doesn't have to be one of those two
options. There are so many ways in between where we can still maintain
relationships and still have boundaries, still have our own convictions, and so
I was constantly navigating that with clients, and—
Julie Rose: And what kind of resistance were you getting
from them?
Kelsey Blahnik: Tons, because I think we, everybody I've
met so far, uh, that has reflected on this, has some part of them that wants to
see things in black and white, that wants to see things more rigidly as a, as
an instinct to protect ourselves because it's what our brains do to go,
"Oh, this is safe, and this is a threat." It's something that
benefits us, absolutely; it's just something that we've overutilized now in our
culture, especially with other humans. You know, we, it makes sense that, after
all this time, we would wanna make sure that whoever we're with is gonna keep
us safe, and that the sign of threat, at the sign that somebody's going to hurt
us, that we'd wanna push them away and keep ourselves safe. It's just not
always necessary. There is, there are a lot of opportunities for repair that
we're missing out on.
Julie Rose: And so, what do you counsel people to do
instead?
Kelsey Blahnik: One of the things I like to start with
is recognizing, "It makes sense why this instinct is here," give me a
little compassion that this, this idea that at the dinner table, I wanted to
leave the relationship. It makes sense because I wanna make sure that I am
holding my convictions true, and then the other part of that is the, the
seemingly opposite side of things, and, "I can maintain a relationship
with someone that I don't 100% dis 100% agree with. I can maintain relationship
with someone that doesn't value things in the same priorities as I do,"
um, and holding both of those things, noticing how uncomfortable that makes me
to hold both of those things at the same time, and getting in the habit of
practicing that with internal conflict as well. So, honestly, the first half of
my book is about how we do that internally first before we get to doing that
with other people. So, within myself, yes, with, within myself, I may
recognize, uh, with the, with, for example, If I have a part of me that wants
to have all these food rules and be on a diet, it makes sense that I have that
part of me that wants to operate that way because that's the, that's the
messaging I've been given my whole life, and it's okay that I have a part of me
that wants to seek food for pleasure and enjoyment because I know that, you
know, food is fuel, and it doesn't have to just be in this one rigid way. I
don't have to just value nutrition or just value pleasure. I don't have to be
in one extreme or the other, and same with cutting people outta my life or
having that more aggressive response, uh, versus being passive, avoiding, you
know, asserting myself and just putting up with the way people treat me at all
times, and I think our society's kinda done this pendulum swing over to a more
extreme no-contact trend, cutting people out more aggressively, and I wanna
make sure that we know we can, we can have both options in different scenarios.
Julie Rose: Can you share an example, without sharing
any sort of private details, like, an example of how that's actually worked for
somebody that you've, you've worked with?
Kelsey Blahnik: There are some times where families have
a really difficult time, say I'm working with an individual and they have a
family that has a lot of expectations from them, whether they're cultural
expectations or family culture around, "This is what we've always done. We
always spend Saturday nights together. This is what we do. We, we just spend a
lot of time together," when an individual is starting to feel
uncomfortable because they hold very different beliefs than the rest of their
family members, or they are, you know, just wanting to parent differently, you
know, take politics out of it for a second, that's a constant thing I see
individuals struggle with. "My parents want me to parent in a way that
they did," and then here is this person, their partner, wanting to parent
a, a little bit differently, and that's constantly making them not wanna be
around the grandparents anymore, not even wanting to have family time. Instead
of saying, "Oh, we don't need to have contact altogether," having a
version of a relationship that, like, different, different degrees of, of
connection and time spent together that can vary. You know, that can look like,
" Hey, I wanna spend time with you once a week, I, but we're, when we go
on vacation, we wanna do a vacation, you know, just our family, not spending
every waking moment together," or, "I would love to talk to you on
the phone, and if you start to, you know, condescend toward me or name call me,
I'm going to tell you, 'I'm gonna get off the phone now'." You know, there
are all kinds of ways we can put out requests for our family members to let
them know what we are and aren't comfortable with by being assertive, and then
our boundaries are the, the ways that we actually implement them and follow up
with them.
Julie Rose: As you talk about this, it all makes so much
sense and yet it also feels so counterintuitive to so many of us because, you
know, sort of being like, "Yes this and this? It feels like a kind of a
wishy-washy middle, and what do I do?" And so, um, what's, what's like the
very first step, would you say, to kind of getting into the habit of seeing
things with more nuance?
Kelsey Blahnik: Yes. Oh, I'm glad you brought that up
because it's so important that The And Way isn't just being centrist or finding
the middle of, of all these issues or all these inner conflicts because it's a
matter of being able to hold my own beliefs and being really clear on what
those are, being really assertive about being able to hold those at the same
time as I can be in relationship with someone that doesn't feel the same way
about them, and so one of the things that I recognize in my inner conflict is
the way that we can call each other hypocrites. I could do that when I look at
my own self, okay? I value the environment. I value eating, you know, as clean
as possible, trying to reduce microplastics, and I go to Whole Foods, and Whole
Foods is lined up with plastics, and I bring these foods home, and I eat them
right out of a plastic container, right, and so I'm holding all this inner
conflict. It doesn't mean that I don't value that. It's that, because of
systemic barriers, I am compromising that value in order to sustain my life. In
order to, um, continue to hold that and still make room for other people that,
don't believe exactly what I do, I have to be able to look at myself in that
messy, not middle, but in that messy reality, that I'm, I have inner conflict
and so do they, so I can give them a little bit more compassion next time
instead of just pointing the finger.
Julie Rose: I hope this isn't too personal, but, Kelsey,
is there a relationship in your own life that has been transformed by The And
Way?
Kelsey Blahnik: Absolutely. There are a lot of them. I,
I think I've had very sweet friendships that have deepened because we're able
to respect one another and not necessarily be out to change one another's minds
and still be willing to share the things that we disagree on, but most of all
in my extended family, I think that's where it's been really powerful. Um, I
think that there, there were times where I would see something on social media
and just cringe and, and wanna look away and wanna pretend like I didn't see
that, and, instead, being able to acknowledge it and ask questions about it, it
allows me to not have as much of that judgment, that pointing the finger about
something being hypocritical or about, um, you know, "How could you,"
all the judgmental thoughts that I had in my mind, I can be curious and
actually have a way more intimate relationship with people that way. I.
Julie Rose: Kelsey Blahnik is a licensed clinical social
worker, a therapist and author of a new book called, "The And Way:
Assertive Peacemaking in a Divided World." You can find out more at
theandwaypress.com. Kelsey, thank you so much for sharing your stories
with us today.
Kelsey Blahnik: Thank you for having me.
Julie Rose: And thank you for
listening today. What's making you Uncomfy these days? I'd love to hear it, how
you're coping with it, what works, what doesn't. Email uncomfy@byu.edu
with your story, or find us on social media to continue the conversation; we
are @uncomfy.podcast on Instagram, and if there's someone in your life
who you think might enjoy listening to this conversation we had today with Kelsey
Blahnik, please share the episode with them. We'd love to have more people
joining us. Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it.
The team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by
Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.
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