[SPEAKER_01]: To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Andrea and this is it all child.

[SPEAKER_01]: welcome back to it all child where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, hoi, my dear shit shows for any new listeners, my name is Andrea.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am a total complete shit show.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a adult child of an alcoholic dysfunctional family.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I am the captain of this hot mess of a ship.

[SPEAKER_01]: And why do I have a banger for you today guys?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited for you to hear this.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are diving deep with the one and only Miss Heidi Preeb.

[SPEAKER_01]: She has a big old YouTube channel where she talks about all the topics that we talk about here on this podcast, she is a writer, she hosts her treats, healing retreats, she has a masters in attachment theory and that is what we will be diving into and a really raw real and helpful way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I know that most of y'all are well versed in attachment theory, but since we are just kicking off a new season of the podcast, I thought we could lay just a tiny bit of ground work for anybody who maybe isn't as well versed, uh, anyone who's new to this, anyone who needs a little refresh.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so attachment theory is it's not just about whether your parents loved you or not.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is really about how they responded to you when you were in distress.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what they did when you cried, when you were scared, when you needed their comfort, did they consistently show up for you and help you to regulate?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or did they sometimes show up for you and sometimes not?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or did they dismiss you and make you feel like your emotions were too much?

[SPEAKER_01]: or were they so unpredictable that you never knew what you get?

[SPEAKER_01]: And so those early experiences taught your nervous system what to expect from other people.

[SPEAKER_01]: They shape your window of tolerance.

[SPEAKER_01]: So how much emotional intensity you can handle before you go into a trauma response, before you go into fight flight or freeze.

[SPEAKER_01]: And those experiences developed your attachment style, [SPEAKER_01]: for how to be in a relationship with others.

[SPEAKER_01]: Strategies about whether it's safe to need people or not.

[SPEAKER_01]: Strategies on whether it's closeness or distance that actually keeps you safer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's four main attachment styles.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have secure, which is nobody here, that doesn't apply to anyone here.

[SPEAKER_01]: They say it's like 50% of people, I think that's bullshit, and these people learned that, you know, I can trust that people will be there for me when I need them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then we have anxious, which are those who learned, you know, I'm terrified you'll leave me so I'm gonna cling harder, avoid it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They've learned I'm safer alone so I push people away and then we have disorganized, which is many of y'all listening because disorganizes very common amongst those of us who experienced complex trauma and these people learned that your my source of safety and my source of fear.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I have no idea what the hell to do and this kind of speaks to that relational paradox that I talked about in the trauma bond episode a couple weeks ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, most of the discussion that you see online regarding attachment is very much a discussion from the neck up.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very much a discussion around symptoms.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think it's honestly very beneficial.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like take for example, the book attached, which is like the most well read book on attachment theory out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word nervous system isn't in there once.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is absolutely no discussion about trauma.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is essentially just a deep dive into your assumptions without addressing what's actually creating those symptoms.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like being handed a detailed map of your anxiety without anyone ever explaining to you that your nervous system is in a constant state of threat.

[SPEAKER_01]: And look, like an intellectual understanding does have its value.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's better than walking around completely clueless about why you keep ending up in the same relationship patterns.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you want actual healing, you know, not just awareness, but real change and how you show up in relationships, you have to go below the neck because attachment is in a thinking problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a nervous system problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: So today with Heidi, we are going way beyond just the Are you anxious or avoidant conversation?

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going deeper than just the surface level behaviors.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about attachment from a nervous system lens.

[SPEAKER_01]: What's actually happening in your body?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why it's happening?

[SPEAKER_01]: How it got wired that way when you were a kid?

[SPEAKER_01]: And most importantly, how to work with it in a way.

[SPEAKER_01]: that creates real change.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this isn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you anxious?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you avoided?

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what is your body doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why and what do we actually do to heal it?

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get on with the damn show.

[SPEAKER_01]: Shall we?

[SPEAKER_01]: But first let's talk about why UESU need to damn the join-shit show my online support community where we have six weekly Zoom support groups where you can connect with [SPEAKER_01]: other fellow shit shows who are doing the damn work to heal.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no place out there like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not for everyone, but for the people it's for, it sure is the place to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a support system at your fingertips in your back pocket that you can access on the web or through an app.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have a 24 or seven hour chat.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have tons of subgroups that you can be a part of.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a place where you can shop exactly as you are and you will be loved and accepted for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is relational trauma folks.

[SPEAKER_01]: We heal relational trauma through safe relationships.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the place where you can do foot so for less than a dollar a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd like to reiterate last week in my conversation with Tandayton.

[SPEAKER_01]: She talked about the importance of being in a community as part of your healing journey.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to read to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody posted this in our chat today.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of our fellow members, she said, when I started my healing journey last year, I was adamant on in-person therapy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was so convinced anything virtual wouldn't be helpful that I couldn't join support groups and wouldn't feel safe.

[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot explain how transformative this space has been.

[SPEAKER_01]: I tend so many of the virtual groups and connected with a new therapy source through this platform that has been incredibly healing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do understand how in-person feels better in some ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wish we all met weekly in-person, how cool would that be?

[SPEAKER_01]: But all those hangups about how I couldn't do anything virtual have fallen away and I appreciate everyone here so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't be where I am today without this space.

[SPEAKER_01]: which you cannot achieve in person, of course, and that makes this space incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you, yeah, you, the person that's been wanting to do it for forever, the person who is adamant on online community won't work that you won't feel safe.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe you're wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you're going to be writing these words in a matter of time, too, of all the growth that you've experienced from being a part of this community.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's just do it already.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can see the link in the show notes or you can go to adult child podcast.com slash shit show next.

[SPEAKER_01]: Give me a little follow on Insta on TikTok at adult child pod go to my YouTube channel.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to watch this.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want to watch this interview on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can go and do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's YouTube.com slash at.

[SPEAKER_01]: adult child pod.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can find a link for that in the show notes as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Subscribe to my newsletter.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sending out newsletters every week on topics that I'm discussing in the episodes diving deeper into them this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be sending out a newsletter on disorganized attachment.

[SPEAKER_01]: And last but not least, whenever you do, please please give me a DM5 star read on Apple on Spotify.

[SPEAKER_01]: Please do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, love you all.

[SPEAKER_01]: This woman needs no damn introduction.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know how excited people are going to be to have you on my listeners, my community members, are such a huge fan of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, Heidi.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: How are you feeling about this?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, a little nervous.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel always a little bit nervous at the start of podcast conversations, even though it's been lovely chatting with you before the show so far.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I like to get that [SPEAKER_01]: So this is where I always start.

[SPEAKER_01]: When did you realize that your childhood screwed you up more than you initially thought that it did?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think there's kind of two things in there for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: One is that I thought of myself as quite screwed up since childhood.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that part was not new to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: The thinking of myself as someone who had like some sort of set of issues to work through, I think I can't remember a time before that was in my awareness, but I was probably in my late 20s.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I first started thinking that that might not just be like a kind of moral flaw that I was born with, that the kind of rotating door of things I'd been struggling with throughout my life may have actually had something to do with my early experiences as opposed to me just kind of coming into the world as someone who for whatever reason couldn't seem to cope with life the way other people could.

[SPEAKER_01]: like being like just inherently flawed.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that was like my story about myself for a really long time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I actually remember reading a book when I was 28 years old.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very like specific, esoteric book on all different types of eating disorders.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was called that is a family affair by Judy Hollis.

[SPEAKER_02]: who is this kind of very divergent thinker, I think, in the addiction space back in like the 80s.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she looked, and so she worked with people who had addictions, including eating disorders.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she presented the idea, which was, for some reason, new to me, that most addictive tendencies came about through family systems.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there was something about the environment that we're raised in.

[SPEAKER_02]: and in particular the way in which we either are nurtured or the ways in which we're not nurtured that lead people to have struggles with any type of substance instance but also like addictions go way beyond substances, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: They can be thought patterns like certain behavioral patterns and for my whole life I'd had this kind of rotating door of kind of like mildly OCD like behaviors at certain points and then overt addictions to things at other points [SPEAKER_02]: And I just kind of had this story like I am not as good at coping with reality as other people are for some reason and bringing it into a family systems lens for the first time and giving myself permission to kind of think of what if all of this stuff that I've been dealing with in my life is not just because there's some.

[SPEAKER_02]: inner brokenness to me, but it's actually a reaction to the circumstances of my life or to what I've experienced as I've gone through it or failed to experience, which in the case of like emotional neglect is often a bigger problem sometimes and what overtly happens.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of set my thinking on a whole different trajectory for the first time, like it kind of opened this door for me and to looking at not just what's going wrong in here, but what did not happen around me at the times where maybe there were certain types of development that I needed or certain types of connection or nurturings that I needed that may have actually really impacted my ability to make sense of the world and to cope so it's that book so it was reading that book the the first aha.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know what it was?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't bring the book up a lot because I imagine the title in this day and age might be kind of interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was a gem.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's that is a family affair by the [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's good, I love it.

[SPEAKER_01]: God, I'm trying to decide where I wanna go.

[SPEAKER_01]: So were you the identified patient?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, me too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: At what age were you deemed?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, I imagine by like kindergarten.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so pretty young like the question of what is wrong with me has been the through line of my entire life starting from as young as I can remember just having this idea that there was something about me and the way that I was born that is giving the people around me a lot of trouble and making others very unhappy and that was a really challenging thought to grow up with.

[SPEAKER_02]: But one that I don't think I could consciously have named until I was at least in my 20s.

[SPEAKER_01]: So feel free not to share.

[SPEAKER_01]: But how was that manifesting in kindergarten?

[SPEAKER_01]: Behavioral issues?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I did have, I was diagnosed actually with oppositional defines disorder by the time I made it to kindergarten.

[SPEAKER_02]: damn girl and in this like very apt twist of fate I had this kindergarten teacher who had recently left the military to become a kindergarten teacher and was like so authoritarian and I have this memory of meeting with her before going into kindergarten and my parents telling her like hide is a really difficult kid like you really got to keep your eye on her [SPEAKER_02]: And I just kind of remember thinking like, oh, Emma, like, is, is that true.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I have not a whole lot of memories of kindergarten, honestly, but I do remember that teacher just being like such an authoritarian presence, and it was kind of interesting to me that like that was my first exposure to adults outside of my home environment.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's been a long, long journey of that being kind of the narrative [SPEAKER_01]: were you sent a therapy at that age like how do they treat opposite what is it again, oppositional defiance disorder in a six year old?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I was not still in the DSM.

[SPEAKER_01]: Didn't I don't like it is?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think they got rid of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was not an official diagnosis.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you actually can diagnose a child with that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's dangerous.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was my parents meeting with someone who I believe may have been, you know, it's funny.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of those things where I'm like, when I go back and check on it as an adult, I don't know the answer to who they spoke with that gave them that label.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to see.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember them telling me about it later on in life and going and looking it up.

[SPEAKER_02]: And being like, really?

[SPEAKER_02]: Did that, like, I couldn't imagine myself at age.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went to kindergarten at age three.

[SPEAKER_02]: Damn!

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like yeah, there was something about it that I just didn't shock me because I already did have that kind of narrative of like I was a very bad kid online for myself But I remember when you were normal and can't it right like you're like going like you were like a ridiculously smart, but just like horribly behaved I think she's a really smart like she's like three she's like three years younger than everyone else, but she's horribly behaved Yeah, you got to kindergarten that's not being three [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: You got a kindergarten at four, but I have a birthday.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I started.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like five or six here.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I was going to say, like, of course.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I wasn't sent to kindergarten because I was abnormally smart, but it's funny because I do think I started doing super well at school from an early age in part because I was like, I want to combat this and I like learning.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that kind of became another route that I was able to take was like.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I get approval, acceptance and encouragement at school when I'm just like really focused on being really good at reading or whatever it is that I'm there to do and that actually did help I think a lot in terms of just learning to think of myself kind of differently and seeing myself reflected differently in the eyes of authority figures.

[SPEAKER_02]: So ironically past that first kindergarten experience school was awesome for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: were you always the problem, like in your family's eye, like throughout your upbringing?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's definitely the story that I was always told about myself and really bought into for quite a long period of time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And at a certain point, it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, a big problem that I could identify and retrospect once I became an adult and started reading about all of this stuff was that I started very young, just demonizing a lot of my emotions, [SPEAKER_02]: I had this story that any time I was angry, there was something really, really wrong with the fact that I was feeling that or any time I was sad if something extremely overt like a death or something hadn't happened, I was displaying this really shameful thing and so what kind of ended up happening was I internalized all of these.

[SPEAKER_02]: very normal human emotional experiences as wrong and bad and shameful to have.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so then I started repressing a lot of stuff and then when you're seven, eight years old and even repressing all your feelings they tend to come out all at once as soon as you get triggered or overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I would have these really bad outbursts or like temper tantrums and it took me a long, long time in my life to learn that it was actually the repression that was leading to that.

[SPEAKER_02]: The solution to not having that happen was to actually learn to get in touch with and express those emotions on like a daily basis when they actually occur, but for a lot of my life, I think I was caught in this cycle of like self pathologizing and telling myself there was something wrong with my inner experience, which kind of ends up making it true in its own right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, that's the message that you were receiving, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: So then when was the realization of complex trauma?

[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: That one came a little bit later.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think I read that book when I was 28 years old, and I decided like, okay, it's time to do some work on my attachment style.

[SPEAKER_02]: and I had like a little bit of an idea of what attachment theory was.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went online and started looking at things and I was following that thread for about a year and somewhere in that process, I picked up Pete Warvoy didn't.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Complex PTSD from surviving to thriving and like every page of that book.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was just blown away by like the way in which He described all of these different issues that will kind of stack on top of each other and it felt like reading a book about my own life So I got really into exploring what CPSD meant and I started going to therapy for the first time in a way that I was actually engaging with Around that point in my life and working with a whole bunch of those symptoms and patterns and there's actually a whole year [SPEAKER_02]: It was the year of 2021, I kept that book in my backpack that I would carry with me everywhere because it had these specific steps in it for recognizing when you're in an emotional flashback.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there was like a year where I was like, I can have a different day every day of my life if I keep this book on me and like open it every time I feel myself starting to slip into one of those old patterns or one of those old emotional states.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that really changed my whole experience of like understanding myself and my life and what was possible for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was kind of like when I began understanding what the term emotional sobriety meant and realizing it was a possibility to be able to kind of be in direct contact with reality and not [SPEAKER_02]: and even just realizing that was possible was humongous for me at that point.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so my story is like I, it was when I had nine years sober was when I realized that what I was experiencing in relationships was complex PTSD and emotional flashbacks.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just, I couldn't figure out why I literally felt like I was going to die.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, when a guy didn't text me back or, you know, when a it was I dated a guy for less than a month and he ghosted me and like my reaction was as if my husband of 30 years had just like, you know, tragically died.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was connecting that feeling back to the feeling that I felt as a little girl when I'd wake up in the middle of the night and feel like I was going to die if I couldn't sleep in my mom's bed.

[SPEAKER_01]: So how would you experience like super intense emotional flashbacks?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's interesting actually because I had different flavors of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I imagine that's not super uncommon.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I would have some that were very activating, so where I would have either like a sense of terror and doom, which would quickly trigger those.

[SPEAKER_02]: It depends.

[SPEAKER_02]: It could be like so for me big triggers have always been for kind of variety of reasons I won't go into anything related to home invasion in particular triggers in extreme like terror response in my body and I was very hyper sensitive and like hyper vigilant to any weird noises anything especially if I was home alone or in like a strange place like an Airbnb or a hotel or [SPEAKER_02]: I would just not be able to tune out tiny noises that could be totally normal that would put my body into this super hyper vigilance state.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that was one.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would experience and it took me a long time to realize that was even a trigger.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I wasn't just kind of a paranoid person.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd have terror triggers, anger triggers.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I had a long pattern of just suppressing anger and then enromantic relationships in particular every once in a while.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like all of it would just break [SPEAKER_02]: And I started recognizing those emotional flashbacks actually as how they showed up visually.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if I was in an anger flashback, I would notice that like my visual field almost felt like it was shaking and that was how it would start to identify that I was in this state of I have to get all the anger out at once or else, you know, I'm not going to be okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then the hardest ones to recognize, I think, actually were ones that were more related to feelings of hopelessness and depression.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I would also have emotional flashbacks that would put me in this state of kind of feeling like I had no connection to the outside world to other people, like there was never going to be a way to connect in any meaningful way to others.

[SPEAKER_02]: And those were the hardest ones to recognize because they were so subtle and they were at first sometimes difficult to distinguish from just like being in a low mood and the triggers around them were a little trickier too.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they came in lots of flavors and they still do right like they're not totally gone and I imagine they'll never be totally gone, but the process of getting to recognize them quicker and name them more like accurately.

[SPEAKER_02]: Over time has been humongous because it means that that process of shaming myself for having those feelings can be totally done away with and I can actually just be with them and allow them to exist in whatever way they need to until they don't need to anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so what was your relationship pattern like what?

[SPEAKER_01]: what was your story?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, all right.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you wrote your, I can't write it, but it wasn't your very first book was like this year, like series of essays, like on romantic stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wrote that when I was, I think like 23, 22, 23.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you're a baby.

[SPEAKER_01]: So before you even realized any of this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and yeah, my patterned relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I really latched on early on in the attachment healing work to the fearful avoidant label, which has this very like push pull kind of dynamic to it and all relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for a lot of my adult life, like I was in an eight year relationship between the ages of 17 and 2425 that was very like on and off push pull and I did not understand anything I was feeling was kind of the main thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I do feel like I could only write essays at that point in my life because there was no through line to my own emotional state.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like one day I would feel one thing the next day I'd feel something totally different.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I could be like if you're like afraid that you're never going to meet the one or something it's just like that's okay and I'm like fuck you!

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I say is like you still like, actually.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry to interrupt you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that was an eight year relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I had a couple of long-term relationships actually.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I was always, I mean, one thing that I always found a bit tricky about my psychology was like, I definitely air pretty far on the avoidantly attached side of the spectrum and I'm pretty social as in person.

[SPEAKER_02]: I often found myself getting into these relationships because I like being around people, like I'm just kind of more extroverted as a person.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I would often kind of end up in these relationships where I couldn't tell if I'm being totally honest, like do I wanna be in a romantic relationship or do I just like hanging out?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that actually got me into a little bit.

[SPEAKER_02]: So to friend.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yes, that's not how it works.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think that's that's a one part of how it works and there's supposed to be a bunch of other stuff is what I've learned so you say you're extroverted but wasn't your thing like before oh you're you are what was your other book it was it was it on is this is Myers-Briggs.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what are you?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just looking over here.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you're what you're in ENFP.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the label I identified with for a long time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Myers Briggs as a system, it's funny.

[SPEAKER_02]: Doesn't hit for me the same ways that you still.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for a long time, it really did.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of interesting because looking back on it now, I feel like I kind of built that into this narrative in my head.

[SPEAKER_02]: Where [SPEAKER_02]: really into personality systems for a while.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I used that as like a reason why I wasn't able to connect with in particular my family, like I was like, they're all of this personality category.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm of this other personality category.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't some ways kind of this lifeboat for me where I went, well, if it's just.

[SPEAKER_02]: a personality difference, then maybe there's not something deeply wrong with me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've just happened to be more like this and other people happen to be more like this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I started doing all of this work and noticing how many of the patterns of personality that I just kind of put on myself were actually starting to change as I did more work on myself, then I became less enamored with the personality systems, but also a little [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think that like there's anything wrong with loving personality systems and getting to know your self through them.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do think for me there is an element of wanting to put myself in a particular box and believe that it was just an inborn personality thing as opposed to your entire personality was a trauma response.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, when you realize that, you're like, oh, shit.

[SPEAKER_01]: Newsflush.

[SPEAKER_01]: So as I said to you before we started that you just did a video on attachment that I think is one of the best breakdowns on attachment that I've ever seen and really provides so much depth and nervous system insight in a way that like I haven't ever seen before.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, where I wanted to start was, you know, I think often we think kind of in simple terms of, you know, an anxious attached or mean somebody who had parents that were inconsistent, avoided as having parents that are rejecting and then like disorganized as like having both, but can you talk about how our attachment styles are formed, [SPEAKER_01]: based upon how our caregivers responded to us when we were in distress and specifically speaking to like the whole window of tolerance thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely.

[SPEAKER_02]: So first of all, the things that you just said about the kind of early environments that each style tends to develop in, that is totally accurate.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that a lot of things that you might read or find online about attachment theory kind of stop there, like they look at, okay, what kind of an early environment did you have?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then here's what you're gonna be like as an adult, but they leave out a lot of what happens in between, which is what I started getting really, really curious about.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if let's say you're starting out in any of those developmental conditions, [SPEAKER_02]: What does that actually mean about your development?

[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you actually grow into a different person with a differently regulated nervous system based on what happens to early on?

[SPEAKER_02]: So kind of what I start going over in that video that you're referencing is not only [SPEAKER_02]: how you're early attachment system correlates to what's going to happen later in life, but how the mechanisms of how it develops.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the main things to kind of keep in mind in that category is that when we're really young, so when we are babies and toddlers, we don't really have any real capacity for self-regulation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we learn when to intervene and when to tend to our own distress based on what our parents do.

[SPEAKER_02]: So based on the point at which they intervene, that becomes kind of what our body learns as the point to intervene in our own distress.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there are kind of general trends in terms of what happens if you grow up in different environments.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll start off with anxious.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to tell you about I have I have and this actually might not apply to you, but I have a condiment attachment style theory that's like proven to be like pretty accurate and that is anxious attachers really love their condiments and avoidance are like things plain or maybe like a little bit of mustard and it's like proven to be like 95% accurate, but it sounds like how you dressed your salad that maybe I love condiments.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well, you're not you're not liar.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Mayo in particular though.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can leave almost any other condiment, but Mayo gets me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just Mayo.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is just their condiment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, maybe.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go plus.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to start thinking about that now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Anytime I'm even with people.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm telling you it's accurate.

[SPEAKER_02]: There are certain tells like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I do believe in stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're anxious, yes, sorry, your anxious as you are overdressing your food as a child, something that's supposed to be happening, is that usually you're going to be having the experience as you grow up of not getting regulation from your caregivers until you're already in a reasonable amount of distress.

[SPEAKER_02]: because generally those who grow up in environments that tend to lead to anxious attachment systems later on in life, that might mean that they have one parent who is just superstressed, super busy, they might be the youngest of several kids, or they might have a parent who for whatever reason is just not able to stay that attuned.

[SPEAKER_02]: and so what tends to happen is that in order to get your parents attention, if you're growing up this way, you have to learn to really hone in on what is happening internally and learn to get louder and louder and more and more expressive about it because that is the only way that you're going to get your needs met when you're too young to find it in a way to meet them on your own.

[SPEAKER_02]: But basically what that's teaching the nervous system is that anytime you are in distress, [SPEAKER_02]: because your nervous system is automatically going to be going, okay, how do I ramp up the volume on this?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if I just express it at the volume, it actually exists at, it's not going to get heard.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to get ignored.

[SPEAKER_02]: My needs aren't going to get met.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is super adaptive when you are kid growing up in that environment.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is the thing that keeps us alive.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then, as adults, what that often leads to is an inability to actually be present with one's own distress, [SPEAKER_02]: And instead, this feeling of panic about one's own distress will come on mine and then the attention starts getting hijacked and where it's going to naturally turn towards is who can I get to come be close to me and help me suit this distress and so a lot of the time when I'm talking to anxious attaches who are feeling very preoccupied and we often use that word to describe.

[SPEAKER_02]: anxious experience, anxious preoccupation with generally it's a love interest or someone they're attached to and how to keep that person close and how to keep the attention on them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Something I always like to check in on is what else is going on in your life right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like what else are you feeling stressed out about and how present are you with that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of the time that kind of preoccupation responds with needing to keep someone close, [SPEAKER_02]: is actually happening because the nervous system is aware that there's some type of tension internally that's been building that it doesn't know how to relieve on its own.

[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't know we haven't taught ourselves or learned how to be present with that and do that self-saving.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the attention works in tandem with the nervous system, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it starts directing the thoughts towards how do I achieve comfort or keep someone else close as opposed to how do I put the [SPEAKER_01]: do you think that separation anxiety as a kid is like a manifestation of this of like trying to get your parents attention?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: So actually where attachment theory originally came from was basically a they call it the strange situation experiment where they were looking specifically at what children did when they were separated from their caregivers and anxious children tend to become very highly distressed both when their parent leaves as well as when they come back actually [SPEAKER_02]: which is interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because that's what started things for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was like developing separation anxiety.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I went to a therapist for the first time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about avoidance.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the avoidance experience is almost opposite actually in that they learned that distress is not important to pay attention to.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, it can actually be really detrimental to receiving care.

[SPEAKER_02]: So often what happens in an avoidant households is that expressions of vulnerability or of desire for closeness and care and nurturing beyond one's physical needs being met are met with hostility and rejection fairly consistently by the parents.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think what people tend to think about this is that the child makes this very conscious calculation that goes, okay, I will not express my vulnerabilities because they're bad, but what actually happens is the nervous system just kind of starts hiding those for us like it's not a conscious thought process.

[SPEAKER_02]: it's more that when distress arises in the nervous system, it often doesn't really make it into conscious awareness for the child who's growing up avoiding.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when you ask those children how they're doing and they say, great, good, awesome, even if they're in distress, they don't think they're lying to you a lot of the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: But similar to how the anxious attaches starts naturally focusing on how do I keep other people close when they're in distress without realizing that their distress is present.

[SPEAKER_02]: The avoidant attacher is more likely to start thinking about how to keep themselves looking good or acceptable in the eyes of others when they're in distress because that's what allows them or what wants to allow them to be in their parents could graces when they were behaving the way like a good boy or girl would behave or when they were [SPEAKER_02]: doing whatever it was in their family role that got them that approval.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what their attention is going to be oriented towards.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when the avoidant attachers and distress, they often don't notice it because their nervous system is working really hard to keep that out of their awareness.

[SPEAKER_02]: But they're still going to be feeling it and they're usually going to be feeling an increased kind of desperation and pressure and stress to achieve something or like become some idealized version of themselves, which is not what they would call it in their own head.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's even a bit tricky to talk about this in language that like breaks all the way.

[SPEAKER_01]: How would they view it in their head?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think, I mean, I can just speak firsthand for myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: It feels as though I am chronically falling short of what I believe are perfectly reasonable expectations for myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I check in with the outside world, those are not at all the kinds of expectations other people are holding themselves to.

[SPEAKER_02]: which it took me a really, really long time to learn and still I have to kind of chronically learn.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's funny because it's that thing where nobody who's actually perfectionistic identifies as a perfectionist because they think they're not good enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think that perfectionism is really closely related in a lot of cases to avoid an attachment just this idea of like I have to be chronically working, to improve myself, to get better, to [SPEAKER_02]: achieve things that makes it kind of okay for me to exist and to be in connection with other people, but the attention is not explicitly focused on relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they're doing this kind of subconsciously, but they're not thinking the end goal is I'll be good enough to be in relationships with people, but that's kind of what the nervous system believes.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when the pressure turns on for avoidance, often what happens is that they withdraw from relationships because there's this belief that if there's [SPEAKER_02]: vulnerable, or distressing, or messy, or not perfect, I need to go be alone to deal with that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then once I am okay again, then I can kind of come back to the world and show people the best side of me, which is the only side that anybody ever wants to see, of course.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very different process for the avoidance torture.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think to work with attachment wounds, because they're not as explicitly linked to relationships, as they might be for the anxious attacker who really feels that kind of pain in relationship specifically.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, miserable.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's really interesting because you're almost talking about because when you were talking about the distress for the avoidance.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we're more so talking about when you're feeling distress outside of the relationship, like distress in your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like an important to make that distinction.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Huh.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's fascinating.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then how would this differ with a disorganized attachment?

[SPEAKER_02]: So disorganized can mean a lot of different things, but essentially the way that I kind of defined disorganization just on like a purely functional level is all anxious attackers will do some avoidant like things and all avoidance will do some anxious like things.

[SPEAKER_02]: But with the fearful or the disorganized attachment style, essentially what's happening is that your nervous system is always trying to figure out it's internalized at some point.

[SPEAKER_02]: That sometimes it's really important to pay attention to internal signals of distress or pain or whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And other times it's really important to downregulate away from them and shove them down and not attend to them.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so your nervous system is kind of chronically trying to figure out what situation am I in when?

[SPEAKER_02]: So is now the time to pay attention to my distress signals or is now the time to shame myself for them and shove them down which will be more conscious of a process for the fearful avoidant than the dismissive avoidant.

[SPEAKER_02]: The dismissive avoidance nervous system kind of pushes down the distress automatically with the fearful avoidant they're likely to [SPEAKER_02]: experience a little bit more of it because they've learned sometimes that's important, but then they're going to shame themselves for it a lot of the time to, so there's this really chronic kind of war against the self that is often happening inside of people with disorganized attachment systems, fearful avoidance systems, where it's really hard to figure out consciously a lot of the time for these people when it's time to pay attention to my emotions, when it's time to share them, and when it's time not to.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that will to some extent be present for all of the styles, including secure, which is kind of the style that gets forgotten because it's what happens if you have nobody can relate that's listening.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the podcast they listen to.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, generally I say that like if you have a lot of active distress in your life that comes online by virtue of the fact that you are sometimes completely tuned out from your emotional experiences and can't seem to feel what you think you should be feeling or find a way to connect to people in the way that you want to.

[SPEAKER_02]: be connected, but then other times it feels like there is a very distressing amount of emotion in your system.

[SPEAKER_02]: And your life is almost being chronically disrupted by the fact that those two things are pulling you in different directions quite frequently.

[SPEAKER_02]: there's a high chance you're dealing with something in the disorganization category, even if it's not a full-blown disorganized style.

[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of just informally categorize it as anyone who's really struggling with the back and forth between those two states, probably fall somewhere into that category.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so why, why is this important to understand like for my healing perspective?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that it's not actually as obvious as it seems in that a lot of the time, the goal that people come into the kind of healing process with, so to speak, can in some ways actually be an extension of this patterning that they have internalized?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I'm not saying what that means.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like, I think a lot of people come into this work from let's say the anxious side of the spectrum, [SPEAKER_02]: If I can just learn to chill out a little bit and be a more relaxed partner, then finally I'm going to get into this relationship that is going to save me and it's going to fix all of my distress forever and I'm going to feel good forever and it's this kind of driving fantasy about healing work in and of itself that can actually lead you to a place where you're kind of trying to get better at your own strategy for self avoidance as opposed to actually connecting with yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: which in my opinion is where a lot of, a lot of, if not all of the real healing work actually happens, where we're able to be present with whatever is happening, accepting of whatever is happening, even when we hate it or wish it were different and be able to give ourselves a more robust experience of our entire lives because we're not terrified of certain interstates like feeling separate from the people we love and what happens in us when that happens.

[SPEAKER_02]: but this can happen on any side of the spectrum.

[SPEAKER_02]: So on the avoidance side, having a secure attachment style or being a person who is healed can become kind of another goal that you're just endlessly working towards and deciding that you're not going to be present with yourself, you're not going to get to know yourself until you have achieved this perfect state.

[SPEAKER_02]: And admittedly that was my healing journey for like years and years was just trying to act more and more perfect and look at okay what would an absolutely perfect partner be like and putting more and more pressure on myself to take the right actions well actually staying disconnected for myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that I would not have said this several years ago, but when it comes to working with our attachment systems, I actually think the most important part of this work is just recognizing when we're having an attachment response that is taking us away from the present moment, which [SPEAKER_02]: is generally what they do because if we're panicked at either feeling disconnected from other people or feeling disconnected from the version of ourselves that we need to think of ourselves as in order to stay regulated, we're missing out on a lot of our lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: with this kind of strategizing process that we might not realize we're consciously doing of how do I get back into connection with this other person or how do I become perfect and fix all my flaws and that robs us of like a lot of the good parts of life that in my opinion.

[SPEAKER_02]: Our kind of like the best thing you could possibly get out of healing is being able to actually be present with your entire life as it's happening, you know, to a reasonable extent, but I think that knowing where you're starting from gives you a lot of information about where you are likely to kind of flip into this fantasy version of either yourself or your relationships or your life and then how you can kind of bring yourself back to what's actually happening if you notice yourself doing that chronically.

[SPEAKER_01]: You think that there's anything else important to note as far as attachment and your nervous system.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I mean, I mean, you've talked about how we handled a stress and I mean, we just so often focused on just how it impacts and shows up in relationships.

[SPEAKER_01]: But do you think that there is like something key there that doesn't get talked about or address, like when we think about attachment or attachment styles?

[SPEAKER_02]: You brought up the term window of tolerance earlier and I didn't bring it up in my descriptions of the three attachment, three insecure attachments styles, but it was a term that's coined by Dr.

Dan Siegel and basically the window of tolerance is kind of the nervous system's state.

[SPEAKER_02]: Within which we are relatively present and at choice about what we're doing with our lives and how we're choosing to interact with other people and ourselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: And basically, if you're insecurely attached or have, especially if you have complex PTSD symptoms, you're going to spend a lot of your life outside of that window of tolerance without realizing it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So being in one of those like fight flight.

[SPEAKER_02]: fight, flex, freeze, or fun responses, might occupy a lot of your time without realizing it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you're not actually making choices from a kind of common regulated place about who you want to be close to, what you want to do with your life, what goals you want to pursue, and you might not even realize that for a really long time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And a big way that I like to think about nervous system regulation that I don't see talked about a lot is being proactive about what is going to flip you into those responses.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I see a lot of stuff online around how to basically down regulate yourself from like a fight response or how to up regulate yourself from a freeze response.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what I don't see a lot of people focusing on that I started focusing really heavily on over time was how do I start to notice the patterns of what flips me into those responses in the first place and for a lot of people that is really really related to attachment patterning and how can I start being a little bit more conscious about how I'm designing.

[SPEAKER_02]: My lifestyle as well as the situations I'm putting myself in to make sure that I can give myself the best possible chance of being within that window of regulation much more often because also that's where we're going to learn the best it's where we are going to adopt new skills the quickest if we're doing any sort of healing work that's the place from which we're really actually going to be able to internalize what we're learning.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that looking at your attachment patterns and your triggers that might be very related to your attachment patterns can help you predict where you're more likely to flip into a dysregulated response and I think that there can be a lot of merit in just environmental design in the healing process and making sure that you're able to be an environments more often than not especially if you're rewiring that kind of core very vulnerable stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: where you're not going to be frequently flipping outside of that window of tolerance and into a response where you're not really at choice, you know, in the true sense of the term about how you're going to be responding or acting could you give some examples yeah one thing I feel like.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's important to kind of highlight, is that a lot of my understanding of attachment comes from a model called the dynamic maturation, all model of attachment, which looks at our attachment systems, actually kind of like the fighter flight system, where they're at one more time.

[SPEAKER_02]: The dynamic, maturation, all-model of attack.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this was a system that was created by a woman named Patricia Kritenden, who worked originally with John Bolby and Maryanes worth who were kind of the original parents of attachment theory.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then she went on to do a lot of work in studying what happens to our attachment responses as we grow up and develop.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of her main contributions to attachment theory was [SPEAKER_02]: Proposing this idea that basically our attachment responses come online the most strongly when we are threatened in any way.

[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of us have the experience of feeling very secure and very regulated and very calm in some scenarios.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then another scenario is it's like, oh my god, I'm so doing that anxious attachment thing or that avoidant attachment thing and not really knowing why that is lost the question.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was trying to answer no.

[SPEAKER_01]: I ask for examples of like avoiding your triggers or designing your environment to not go into those states.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, awesome.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the easiest example I can give of this is let's say you have an anxious attachment style and you notice that you are very frequently triggered when dating.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like all of these anxious triggers start coming up as soon as you start getting close.

[SPEAKER_02]: to someone, you might also want to look at things like am I intentionally getting close to people who are kind of mirroring those patterns that I'm very used to of not really paying attention to my distress until it's at like a 789 out of 10.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if that's the case and if I am just kind of endlessly repeating this same situation that I grew up in, [SPEAKER_02]: What might it mean about the way that I'm relating to myself and if I started relating to myself differently so if I started noticing I'm that like a five six level of distress and I can notice that by paying attention to my thinking and noticing like a while I'm really preoccupied with.

[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever this guy I just went on a couple of dates with is thinking about me, can I kind of pause and use that as a checkpoint where I can look at what's happening inside of myself, try to be like a little bit more present with myself and then ask myself the question that a secure person might ask themselves at that five or six level of distress, which is something like, is this relationship feeling good for me?

[SPEAKER_02]: So instead of just kind of flipping immediately into that preoccupied with the other thinking, can I use my capacity to have that connection with myself?

[SPEAKER_02]: To check in and go, is this a situation I want to keep putting myself in?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like if I'm really not getting what I need from this person or if I really feel like my bids for connection aren't being met, can I actually really value that and try to be more intentional about getting into connections with people who are meeting me at the level of [SPEAKER_02]: Generally, you can learn one of two things from that.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can learn, yes, I can do that, which is the kind of the ideal outcome.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you can also learn, oh, maybe I'm actually putting a lot of my distress on these relationships before maybe the relationship is strong enough to bear that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, yeah, but it takes that kind of looking at the environment you're putting yourself in and really questioning like why is it that I'm continuously getting triggered and can I deal with that like a little bit more consciously or with a little bit more awareness and is it actually possible for me to for a while make sure that I'm not putting myself an environments where I'm getting constantly triggered and anxious and overwhelmed by the possibility that someone might be thinking something negative about me.

[SPEAKER_02]: In order for that healing work to actually happen for our nervous systems to be common enough that we can actually internalize and learn new things, we have to make sure that we're not putting ourselves in situations that are just chronically retriggering us.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it will happen to some extent because you can't just avoid triggers forever, but it does really help to bring into one's awareness, I think, as we're doing the healing work.

[SPEAKER_02]: When am I feeling overwhelmed in my nervous system?

[SPEAKER_02]: and are there ways that I can try to take some of the pressure off of it while I'm trying to learn new things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then of course, once you've learned, you can go back out into the wild and practice your new skills, but there is a certain amount of almost like bubbling in some cases that needs to happen for our systems to be common enough to learn those new things in the first place.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can give like a real life example of that for me is, you know, like when I'm first starting to talk to a guy, I won't engage in a question, like if somebody's like, how's your day?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll obviously, I'll ask back how is your day, but I won't carry a conversation further to try to let [SPEAKER_01]: them carry the conversation because I know what will happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if I send something, it's like, I'm putting myself in a position to where I'm going to start thinking those things, however long it takes for them to get back to me of like, oh, did I say too much?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my coming across is needy, pathetic or desperate.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so it's like not even putting myself in a position to where I can get triggered in that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, okay, so this is actually super jogging my memory of something else I forgot to mention in this whole field, which is what it sounds like you're talking about to me is you're being protective of yourself, like you're protecting my nervous system, yeah exactly like what am I capable of handling right now in terms of.

[SPEAKER_02]: possible responses from this other person and making that negotiation.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that I think is also can be heavily related to attachment is there's kind of two ways that we keep kids safe in the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one is we comfort them when something goes wrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we tend to their emotions when something's stressful or difficult.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the other is we protect them.

[SPEAKER_02]: overwhelming or difficult in a way that doesn't really grow them or is too much for them too soon.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then as adults, a lot of us have learned to care for ourselves in one of those two ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we need to kind of even it out with the other.

[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of anxious attaches will do a lot of seeking comfort, but they won't do a lot of self protection.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they will kind of routinely go into those scenarios where they're open-hearted and vulnerable and want to put it all out there.

[SPEAKER_02]: and get hurt over and over again and not internalize that it's actually time to put up a few earlier boundaries or kind of inch into things more slowly.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so that self-protection pieces what has to start coming into play in order for them to feel less hurt, less often.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can't always avoid pain, but [SPEAKER_02]: There's a degree to which you can not set yourself up for it, continuously, too.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then on the other side of wooden attachers are generally pretty almost too good in some cases at self protection.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they will kind of instinctively withdraw themselves from any scenarios that might cause them pain or might even have a chance that they're going to get hurt or embarrassed or whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what they actually need to learn to do is to put themselves in more of those situations and then also learn to comfort themselves when they go wrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: So looking at where we're starting from can also give us a lot of information of what's going to really help us grow based on what we might need to kind of balance out our natural tendencies with.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's just a beautiful example of what can happen in healing from the anxious styles.

[SPEAKER_02]: You start learning like, actually it matters if my feelings are getting hurt here.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I'm going to take the care to protect myself from that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to [SPEAKER_02]: put it on other people entirely.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm also going to make sure that, like, hey, I'm watching out for myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then on the more avoidance side of the spectrum, it might actually be more of a journey of learning to put yourself out there more and take responsibility for attending to your hurt if and when it happens, rather than just kind of withdrawing indefinitely for things that might be upsetting.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you have to understand where you're starting from in order to get the right treatment, so to speak for yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm curious like what an example would be as far as like being mindful of your environment to not get triggered when it comes to being avoiding.

[SPEAKER_02]: It can be a lot harder to recognize for avoidance, which I feel a lot of empathy for always.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for myself, I really notice now at this point in my life, perfectionistic thought loops.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when I'm being incredibly self-critical, incredibly judgmental of myself, and holding myself to really high standards in a way that just kind of feels like, it kind of manifests for me as like, almost feeling like I can't breathe.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm holding my breath as I go through my day-to-day life because I'm so, [SPEAKER_02]: stressed about how I'm not working hard enough for meeting my own goals or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: For me, that's usually a signal that I am actually not in connection enough in my life.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I develop this idea in my head that lives in my nervous system, that until I'm perfect and getting everything perfectly right, until I look perfect, act perfect, have the perfect thing to say at every time, I'm not going to be accepted if I try to connect with everybody.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I need to kind of keep [SPEAKER_02]: my head down, focus on getting my work done or whatever it is that I've identified as like the challenge I'm rising to at the moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if I follow that train for long enough, it starts to feel really isolating, lonely, depressing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've struggled with depression on and off throughout my entire life.

[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: Learning to see that kind of state as a queue, that I might actually be avoiding a lot of situations that would be really connecting and growth oriented for me because I'm afraid of coming across as not good enough or not.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or like I'm going to be taking time and attention away from some goal I have that state and that thought process together are at this point in my life is signal for me that I need to stop I need to go see some people being connection realized that I can be in connection even though maybe I don't look exactly how I want to look right now I don't have the exact [SPEAKER_02]: thing going on with my work or whatever that I want to tell people about and staying associated to like, okay, look, I'm here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in connection with people.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: They are not dying.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am not dying.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have to almost like exposures therapy myself over and over again in life in that department.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that helps me get acquainted to the fact that interpersonal comfort is possible.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can talk to people about what I'm going through.

[SPEAKER_02]: and they're not going to die and I'm not going to die because everything isn't perfect when I'm telling them about how my life is and so that's that piece that needs to come in around comfort like I can be doing whatever I want with my life and my goals and my plans but I don't have to wait until I get there to have connection and to be close to people.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can get comfort on route, especially when it starts feeling really challenging on route, which is when the avoidance are most likely to start self-isolating, like the more stress they're under, the more they're going to isolate, which is a really tricky downward spiral that can be less obvious than the anxious spiral.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is really fascinating to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm wondering like, because I definitely know anxious attachers that are overachiever perfectionists, but is there something unique about the kind of like avoidance?

[SPEAKER_01]: perfectionism, approval seat not I guess more so like overachieving like is there like a unique like twins to it?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's actually so tricky to do this linguistically because I think that actually it's really interesting to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, anxious attackers, I think are going to be more conscious about all of this when it shows up in their psyche because they are so aware that they want connection.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if any of these things are happening for the anxious attacker, which they very much can, they're also much more likely to be conscious for them and for them to be hyper aware of the fact that, for example, they're afraid of rejection.

[SPEAKER_02]: with the avoidant, the tricky part is that avoidance are not going to be very conscious of all of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be what the nervous system kind of naturally does and not what they are thinking consciously about.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is very specific and tricky, but basically I think that when an anxious attacher is trying to figure out if they're an attachment in an attachment response.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I've been very obvious because they're a virtually thinking about what their [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's like the most miserable feeling in your body ever.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, totally, totally.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I remember like, I feel like this can be summed up by this post I saw on an attachment for a month where someone was like, when an avoidant person is avoiding you, what are they thinking about?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like are they thinking about all the things they hate about you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's not or it's not, it's not, it's like, no, it's the total of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's the thing they're not thinking about.

[SPEAKER_02]: like they're thinking about anything other than those kind of like vulnerable intimate connection oriented relational things, and that's kind of the point like the other stuff is a distraction from that that takes the body in the nervous system out of that kind of people oriented attachment oriented space where they're so uncomfortable and puts them into a kind of like more relaxed [SPEAKER_02]: is ordered more logically and just makes clean sense and emotions aren't coloring everything and that place feels so safe and kind of calm relative to the alternative.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think most avoidant attaches I imagine would not at all identify as perfectionists consciously would not say like I'm trying to get everything right in life so that people will accept me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's [SPEAKER_02]: almost the opposite of their conscious thought process in a lot of cases and yet it's often what's driving things under the surface.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's this overall a version to receiving any type of nurture insert care taking.

[SPEAKER_02]: So whereas [SPEAKER_02]: The anxious attacher or those on that side of the spectrum are kind of always a little bit in the back of their minds nervous that people are going to forget about them or not pay attention to them or not see their vulnerabilities.

[SPEAKER_02]: The total opposite is happening all the time in the avoidance attachers mind where they're always a little bit on on edge that they're accidentally going to say something that makes them.

[SPEAKER_02]: seem like they don't have everything under control and that someone's going to be concerned about them or try to help them in some way, which is for a lot of avoiding the touchers, then feels like a burden because they have to pretend they're appreciating the help while actually resisting it and trying to solve all their problems on their own.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a lot, it just is a lot trickier to consciously identify avoidance attachment.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's easiest to identify it through [SPEAKER_02]: Like, are you ending up feeling kind of alone and isolated a lot in life, even if you really want close relationships do tend to feel really intense overwhelming pressure in close relationships because you haven't learned that you can actually take things from them emotionally and so as much as I sometimes don't love the word avoidant attachment, it is kind of app in that way, like you end up kind of having to see it in the negative space as opposed to [SPEAKER_02]: feeling it being super like there and present like it often is for the anxious attacher when they're having a strong withdrawal response.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I've definitely gotten like comment like I always feel like it would be easier to be avoidant, but I know it's not true, but it just feels so much more overtly painful to be anxious.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's actually kind of fair to say that it is in a lot of ways and you know you can make the very diplomatic argument that like all pains are different pains and I agree and there's this kind of very dull pain that a lot of avoidance go through feeling disconnected from people disconnected from themselves and their emotional states and that comes with a ton of its own stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it is literally true that the nervous system of anxious attaches are much more frequently activated into some sort of like really distressing emotional state that they are more frequently just experiencing conscious present moment distress and that they really struggle to feel like those states ever get like truly all the way through relieved.

[SPEAKER_02]: and I think that it would actually be kind of a bad faith thing to not acknowledge that and to not acknowledge that it's just incredibly painful by default, like the nervous system.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, like literally, like the nervous system is literally has learned as a survival strategy to focus on an amplify pain.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wish I had learned to just numb out, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so nice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I wouldn't have become an alcoholic then.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: You see addictive tendencies on both sides of the spectrum.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was just about to ask.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there have been, but yeah, you'll see it on fast-to-family affair.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what healing modalities have been most impactful for you in your own journey?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, actually, a lot of the modalities that have helped me are ones that kind of get me out of freeze.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where a lot of my own wounding lived was in the place of like, any time I felt something that felt inappropriate or I was worried about something relationally for a lot of my life, I would just kind of go into this kind of like freeze and withdraw pattern.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, a lot of the modalities that have helped me have been ones that actually encourage me to really focus on and take seriously my own emotions, which is sort of an opposite healing pattern that a lot of other people go through.

[SPEAKER_02]: philosophies like, so authentic relating and radical honesty are to relational philosophies that basically get people very aware of what's happening for them and their bodies and their emotional systems and then encourage them to express it very directly both modalities have their like pros and cons, but I think those two have actually been the most powerful for me, especially developing communities of people.

[SPEAKER_02]: who I just kind of socially engage with who are practicing these skills all the time has allowed to explain like I'm a little bit more like what authentic relating yeah so authentic relating is basically yes but I don't actually know it's origin story but at this point in time it is a series of practices so kind of like relational games they actually overtly call them that you can play that get you to be more aware of what's happening in your emotional state [SPEAKER_02]: and then being able to communicate that clearly.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they kind of look at communication as happening on different levels all of the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to try not to butcher this model, authentic relating talks about the informational level of connecting, which we tend to think of as more like.

[SPEAKER_02]: small talk like just oh I like the you know leaves behind you right now they're really pretty and then the personal level which is more like oh when I'm looking at those leaves I notice I feel kind of like calm they remind me of [SPEAKER_02]: the tree and the backyard of my home, whatever, and then the relational level is in connection with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: I notice this coming up inside of my body, so I notice myself feeling kind of like nervous or questioning myself and what I'm saying, and the whole philosophy in my opinion, [SPEAKER_02]: Does a really good job at helping people be more honest about like what's at how we're actually impacting each other as people sitting in the same room talking to each other, which for avoidance does not come naturally at all, if we even recognize those thoughts in our brain in the first place, it tends to be a very against the norm kind of pattern.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for me, learning to become aware of all of that, both what's happening inside of my inner world when I'm alone with myself, and then especially when I'm in connection with other people, has totally changed the way that I relate to myself and others, and has also [SPEAKER_02]: allowed me to kind of understand a lot of confusions that were happening in my inner world.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, okay, have these category of things labeled as bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I noticed if I start paying attention to what's happening in my inner state when I'm talking to you, there are certain things maybe I would just naturally filter out.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the more attention I start placing on those things, the more I realize, like, oh, yeah, I filter that out in a lot of my relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I have this history of maybe like failed romantic relationships where I could never tell [SPEAKER_02]: or I could never tell someone I was hurt by something and what might have happened if I had became kind of this growing question for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then radical honesty.

[SPEAKER_02]: Radical honesty, I always kind of give the caveat that I think it's got a tricky history that their company itself is kind of they've gone like a cult.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it started in a way that was a little [SPEAKER_02]: I'll say that, my understanding of its conception, not necessarily cult-like, but just like a little too radical as a philosophy with not necessarily enough trauma awareness.

[SPEAKER_02]: But basically the idea behind radical honesty is very similar to authentic relating, but with more of an edge.

[SPEAKER_02]: So radical honesty encourages people to get in touch in particular with anger and attraction, which for me were two of my absolute most repressed feelings for my entire life.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, fuck you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're hot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: See, you don't need to go.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you know that sentence, you don't need to go.

[SPEAKER_02]: But basically, yeah, it's a similar kind of communication practice where it encourages people to actually upregulate the emotions that are ones they would more naturally downregulate, like feeling really appreciative towards someone, really angry at someone, really [SPEAKER_02]: and to bring those into communication.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then also, and this was the part that was really the most powerful for me to stay associated to your body when you express those things.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in a radical honesty practice, if you said something that I got angry at, I would tell you, [SPEAKER_02]: I am angry at you for saying this, and then I would immediately turn my attention to as I'm looking at you, and as I'm seeing that kind of hit you, what's happening in my body?

[SPEAKER_02]: Can I feel my heart rate?

[SPEAKER_02]: Can I feel, can I be aware of how much I am or I'm not breathing?

[SPEAKER_02]: Am I feeling kind of sweaty and clammy?

[SPEAKER_02]: And the point of that part of the practice is that if we are normally very afraid of communicating in certain ways or connecting with people in certain ways, the first thing we're [SPEAKER_02]: We're just going to build somewhere totally else in our minds and our bodies and we're not actually going to stay and notice the impact of what's happening and notice like, oh, I told you that thing and I didn't die and you didn't die and you're still standing in front of me.

[SPEAKER_02]: You also didn't run away and then you can respond with whatever that brings up in you.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the idea is like learning they don't use this language for it, but for me it's always been a practice in distressed tolerance getting into those really emotionally tricky places and then learning we can survive it was really really huge for me in counteracting that shutdown response that used to be very instinctual for me in like high charged emotional situations.

[SPEAKER_00]: What made it controversial at first?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think so the, so Brad Blanton, who's the founder of this whole school of thought basically, he was originally running all of the workshops on it and then the company got taken over by some other people at a certain point, which in my opinion was great.

[SPEAKER_02]: But my opinion on what Brad was not doing well in the early days was, [SPEAKER_02]: He was kind of adopting this philosophy of like radical self-responsibility that I think could actually be kind of harmful relationally like his idea was kind of that I just need to if I'm mad at you, I just need to tell you so that I can get back into like a regulated state by having told you that and I think there's merit to that and I think if that's kind of where the process ends for you, you're likely to be ruining a whole bunch of relationships left right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right right [SPEAKER_02]: consentor by not caring for the impact that your honesty is having on people.

[SPEAKER_02]: So over the years I've worked with a bunch of people, including a couple of the collaborators I have on the retreats that I run have radical honesty backgrounds who have done the work of trying to make the philosophy a lot more trauma informed.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they're understanding like if you're getting people in a room and some of these people come from abuse of households or households where like yelling always led to violence and they're these really strong danger associations with some of this stuff you have to be mindful of that you have to contain it super well and you also have to give the other person who's receiving this expression of you know sometimes rage or attraction which can also be a really triggering one for people.

[SPEAKER_02]: you also have to make a lot of room for their experience until it gets to have some consideration.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're not just retraumatizing people, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Don't be a dick.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like, well, it's funny because, like, the philosophy would imply you kind of can be a dick more than you think you can, but you have to care about what happens afterwards.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, if you go through life being a dick to everybody, you're probably going to end up pretty isolated.

[SPEAKER_00]: So.

[SPEAKER_01]: don't be a dick for no reason.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Pick your moments.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you have coming up?

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you have more retreat scheduled?

[SPEAKER_01]: I do.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have I have a retreat in Toronto coming up this fall one in Australia in.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's cool.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then another one in Costa Rica that's going to be a week long retreat, which I'm really excited about at the end of January.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then what's your next video going to be on?

[SPEAKER_02]: I just filmed one this morning, actually, that kind of goes over and I imagine it will be out by the time you're watching this podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're listening to it, but on the anxious avoidant spiral and what tends to happen in relationships when the avoidance starts pulling away and it activates the anxious party and what's actually going on for both people in that dynamic, which I see [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of projections floating around online about what's happening.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I try to do a 360 degree view of that and we'll see how well I get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never experienced that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That nobody listening to this podcast is ever experienced that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks, this is awesome.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad we got to do that.