Welcome to the Love Dog Podcast.

I'm your co host Rana Butcher here with our host, doctor Sarah Hensley, the owner, founder, and CEO of the love Doc relationship coaching services and of course of this podcast.

You can find her at the lovedoc dot com or on all social media handles at doctor Sarah Hensley.

Hey, Hey, what's up.

You know, just recording our lovely podcast.

Our favorite thing to do, which we say are dane to do.

It is the most fun part of what we Oh, absolutely, and it's like this for me, it's therapy.

It is because I get to come here and like you know, I mean, obviously we're talking as best friends like we would if we were just talking, but on this really like on a deeper level.

Yeah, absolutely, on a much deeper level.

And so it's a I get I get first class access to the doc Herson.

Yes, it's it's so fun because it's just a way to be a little bit more myself and a little bit and it makes me sad when people like, stop talking about yourself, We don't care, Just tell me how to have our relationship.

And I'm like, fine, but there is a part of me that's like I desire to be known and understood.

I'm a former FA and that doesn't really go away.

You just learn how to not demand that people read your mind right right becomes secure.

I just I want to be cool too, Yeah a little bit.

Yeah you are cool.

I don't know, maybe I'm not.

I actually don't really care that much if I'm cool, But I want to be able to connect with people on a more human level.

And the podcast just feels like we get to do that.

It feels like we get to share some of our personality and some of our personal struggles and wins yep with our audience, and we love to do that.

We are so thankful for you guys being here.

Which, speaking of sharing amongst diverse people, we are going to talk about attachment styles across generation today, which I will preface this conversation by saying, we don't have a lot of data.

There's not a lot of data on this.

Yeah, so a lot of what we do have is speculative based on the small amount of data that we have.

So side note footnote, yeah, asterisk, Yeah, and we don't have a lot of data on this, so but let's talk about it.

Yeah, And just to kind of line out, you know, give y'all the timeline and you might have helped me with this.

So we have our baby boomers, well.

We have the greatest generation before them, so that was our grand.

Poh okay, and ye I guess some of those are some of them are still living?

Yes, absolutely?

And what is that generation called?

That is the greatest generation?

The greatest they live the Great Depression.

I wish that was the name of mind.

Because they lived through the Great Depression.

Yeah, the greatest generation.

Okay, Then we have baby boomers.

And we have baby boomers.

Then were their children?

Right?

Then we have Gen X, Then we have Gen X, and then we have millennials.

Then we have Gen Z, then we have Gen Alpha correct, and I have two.

I have one Gen Z or a one Gen Alpha kid, so I get to be exposed to both of those.

The oldest Gen Alphas I think are twelve.

I was looking at like the timeline in terms of dates last night because I was like, oh, Gen Alpha, I didn't even know that exist.

It is the skimmity toilet generation.

Gimbty toilet, skimmy toilet.

Ohio Riz Sigma.

Huh what did you just say?

Hopefully I made some parents laugh in their car, Yeah, because maybe the kid can't quit saying skibbity Yeah, maybe ohio sigma six seven whatever.

That crazy.

That's I don't even know what any of it.

That's.

That's a foreign language to me.

And the gen Z language is a little bit foreign to me too.

Yeah, And I have a like I've found myself saying low key all the time, low key, don't do that, legit, don't do that.

And then they say literally, but they really mean figuratively.

They're like, literally, I'm going to die.

I was like, I think you mean figuratively because you're literally not going to die because you can't find your hoodie.

I do catch myself saying that a lot, because Josh will even call me on it.

I'm like, I'm literally starving and he's like.

Are you though, are you mountain nourished?

Yeah?

Are you starving?

Oh you're not.

It's interesting, it's interesting.

So the data that we do have there was a adjacent cohort study.

I believe it's made meta analysis, which is an aggregate of data.

A meta analysis is an analysis of a bunch of different studies.

It could have been a meta analysis.

I'm not a one hundred percent sure, but I know.

It was a generational cohort study that looked at individuals from nineteen eighty eight to twenty eleven, and we saw a statistically signific My goodness, it's been a while since I've used that term, since I'm not teaching statistics anymore.

Statistically significant finding, which just means greater than chance, Okay, that we see a rise in dismissive avoidance by about five percent interest, so that attachment style is increasing.

And I'm not gonna lie.

It was the Baby Boomers that raised them.

So the Baby Boomers raised more dismissive avoidance, and I would absolutely say that that mirrors what I see in my practice.

The Baby Boomers were very emotionally dismissive as a generation.

Why, I don't exactly know.

They grew up in a lot of chaos too.

Later When I think about my parents growing up, I think about like the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War, and they were basically being told there could be nuclear war at like every moment.

So maybe they were just like, you.

Know what, we know what we had to live through, and theirs their parents were, you know, lived through the Great Depression, so they're living through like one of the hardest times in terms of our nation's economic health.

So they probably dismissed the boomers as being whiny little babies, and then the boomers dismissed us.

Yeah.

Right, there's a trickling down effect there for sure, Right.

I think so, because we don't have the data before that those boomer parents.

We only have this nineteen eighty eight to twenty eleven data really is all we have in terms of co wort effects.

Yeah.

So I think though now we are seeing a rise in attachment anxiety.

And here's why, because I think we are seeing that especially Gen Z is the most well connected generation, but they're also the most depressed.

So the connections that they have are very shallow, which gives some degree of intermittent reinforcement, like the need is partially met, but it's not stable enough to create feelings of safety.

And I think that we have parents that are so distracted on their phone, and I'm not going to say that I am not guilty of at times being one of them and having to be extremely intentional.

I have to be so intentional about my phone around my kids because being a business owner, it's just like ding ding ding, ding ding ding ding, like notification after notification constantly, and at the end of the day, you know, the person at the top has to eventually hear about this stuff.

But you guys are sometimes great about putting out the fires before they come home.

I really do try.

I know you do, and I'm so appreciative of that.

And so we have a lot of distracted parents, but we also have a lot of parents that are trying to be emotionally aware and trying to be emotionally present for their kid.

Now, millennials are known as like the therapy generation.

We went to therapy.

We did go to therapy.

We found out we were dismissed as children.

So I feel like we not dismissed and we enable a little maybe that risks.

So there's this fine line in parenting, fine freaking line.

We're walking a type rope here, and it's not fair.

You know what, Life's not fair.

We're walking the tightrope between not dismissing our children's feelings and raising a bunch of dismissive avoidance that can't tolerate intimacy and vulnerability, versus enabling every feeling as completely valid and teaching our kids to catastrophize and become hysterical, and to become anxious about the smallest things in life, and to not be able to do anything for themselves, and teaching them to be guilty step over people's boundaries concre there's a fine line, right, And so I always say Donald is the best freaking parent.

He's just such a good parent because like when I start to fail, like my girls will personally push me a little bit, because the all kids push their parents, sure, and of course I'm their only surviving biological parent.

And Donald has been in the picture for four going on five years now, and I still think they have some a little little bit of the okay, like I have to do what you say.

I'm not going to push back on you like I would push back on my mom, right.

But also I think there's this beautiful parenting dynamic when we have a nuclear family, and again I don't have a full nuclear family.

I have a piece together, a nuclear family that I think now operates as a nuclear family, which I really love because you know, Donald has adopted my girls.

But it really shines the light on the role of a mother versus a father, where I think the mother's role is to be a little bit more nurturing, more validating.

And then it is the father's role to help a child sit in discomfort and face the fact that you have to be tough sometimes too, because we're trying to teach our kids empathy but also grit at the same time.

And that is such a fine line, is so such a tight rope.

And when we say, oh, you just have to be a good enough parent.

Kids are resilient, that's actually not true.

Yeah, that's actually not true at all.

Kids are adaptive, not resilient.

Resilient means I've overcome adversity and I'm still very highly functional.

Adaptive means I went through adversity and any behaviors that I have that may be dysfunctional or a result of that of adapting to dysfunction.

Yeah, there's a difference, and that's I mean, that's just way more scientifically proven, I.

Would say, way more scientifically sound.

Kids are not resilient, they're adaptive.

So yes, they may be able to be somewhat functional, but we are going to see adaptation to dysfunction if the kids are around dysfunction constantly, as it is modeled to them and as they experience it in their nervous system.

So our parents are our first mirrors of intimacy.

They are are first experience with what does it feel like to be close to someone, and that experience will be so profound that it will shape all the rest of their intimacy experiences throughout their life.

So when we say have to be a good enough parent, don't worry, They're resilient.

I think we need to take a step back and say no, Actually, parenting is the most important job that we have.

It is the thing that we should focus on the most in terms of quote getting it right, and we should let everything else come sort of secondary with putting our kids first, meaning actually putting our marriage in our relationship first, because that is their model under which they will imprint what does it mean to be close to someone inside their nervous system.

I would give anything if I knew the basis of attachment when JP, before I had JP.

I knew it, and I still couldn't use it.

So that's where awareness doesn't matter.

When your nervous system is shaped in a certain way, you can have all the awareness and all the good intentions in the world, and your nervous system will override you every single time, which is why we have to understand that attachment is based in a subconscious blueprint that is intimately tied to how the nervous system functions around intimacy.

So which is what you teach.

Which is what I teach.

So when you earn your security, you're not just becoming securely attached in your romantic relationship.

You are earning the ability to shape your children's attachment security, which I think is a really really amazing and profound thing, and I have gotten to witness it with my older daughter.

So my older daughter is now fourteen, and she's on her second boyfriend now first boyfriend.

She went a little avoidant and I was like, oh, here's the FA right, like they lost her dad, they've had she's had childhood trauma.

She I know she has fearful avoidance and we've been working on it.

Come to find out though, you know, I can read her phone, yeah, and she'll let me.

She'll put her phone up, and now I go through it if I want to.

Come to find out, there was a little too much attachment anxiety on the other end of that relationship, like that high high, high, high high levels of attachment anxiety.

And when my dad started opening up to me about the things that this boy was saying and doing.

I was like, baby, girl, that would even make a secure person want to run.

So the fact that you noticed that you were slipping into your avoidance and you were open with him.

You were saying, Hey, I'm feeling like I'm slipping into a little bit of my attachment avoidance because I feel a little overwhelmed here.

You're making Gosh, you're communicating so openly and so beautifully and respectfully.

And that's when I'm like, yes, you're.

Doing it, doing it, You're doing keep doing it.

And now she has this other boyfriend, and he's very he's showing at least right now, he's showing up very secure.

She's aware that you know, if you're only a couple of months in, it could change, right.

And so I'm like, if he starts pulling wife, he starts being inconsistent, you need to know those are red flash.

She really liked this one.

She does, but because he's my daughter.

Again.

She is a very busy lady.

She has all ap glasses, is a varsity athlete.

She is doing private lessons and tumbling to get better.

I heard that cheer.

There's not a moment of that child's day.

I feel like where she can just relax.

And so, you know, a relationship at this age it looks a lot different right than in adult.

Really good though, because then it allows her to not no, she to not get too to not get too attached, because I think that that's not that JP didn't have things to keep him involved when he was in high school.

He had the ROTC and that kept him busy.

But man, once he found that girl, it was just all in.

And here we are.

Gosh, we're going on three years now that they've been together, and and I love you so much, Jessica, I couldn't love you more.

But like they they're pretty consumed with each other, and they have been consumed, like I keep like Josh, and I keep like secretly waiting for it to kind of like fizzle, and it it.

Has had, it has If anything, it's ramped for sure, for sure.

So it's very hard to see your children go through these things.

And once you are attachment aware and you see their attachment style coming out, you just want to be like, oh my gosh, no no no, no, no, no, don't do it wrong.

Don't do it wrong.

Don't do it, and then you want.

To teach them.

You want to teach them so badly, like all the things that you know, But of course they can't conceptualize the things that you know.

A forty plus year old brain knows versus you know, a teenager or you know, eighteen nineteen year old.

Knows, right, And that's why it's really hard to come to come to them after the fact and be like, oh no, now you're doing it wrong.

Right, if we have the chance to start in childhood, when we are their mirrors of intimacy before someone else comes into the picture who does not love them like a parent and is their mirror for intimacy, let's be a good mirror.

Let's be a stable mirror.

So a lot of people ask me in my my groups, well, what does a secure parent look like?

And I try to give them some examples, like, say you have a three year old little you on the playground and you're running around and playing and going down the slide, and you come down the slide and you have a hard fall and you face first and you scrape your knees and your elbows and you see blood and you're crying and you're three, right, you don't know what is this stuff coming out of me?

Scary?

Scary, and it hurts and it stings.

And you have a parent that comes to you, and that parent goes, oh, sweet, do you fell down?

Oh my gosh, that hurts, doesn't it.

So a child is trying to answer the question, what just happened to me?

I'm feeling something?

What is this?

And so we just had a parent that that modeled you are feeling hurt.

Oh that's scary.

That was scary, wasn't it.

Okay, this is fear.

So you're helping a child understand their emotions.

But then when that parent is also very regulated, what happens is that child borrows their parent's nervous system so they don't feel regulated, but their parent is like this oak tree that they can essentially like grab onto during the storm.

Right, And so what that teaches the child when the parent is stable and the parent is attuned and is labeling the emotions and is inquisitive about them and is not trying to just make it go away, which we can create some anxious kiddos when we just try to bandaid their emotions, right, when we try to fix their problems for you and don't allow them to sit into some discomfort When you can allow your child to sit in that discomfort while you name it and why you provide safety, that is developing a securely attached nervous system because they're learning to sit in difficult feelings without overreacting, while still staying calm.

And I also think another big mistake the parents made, speaking from personal experience here, is that when an incident happens that brings about fear in the child, I have a specific circumstance.

Jap and I were pa.

He was probably eight.

We were carving pumpkins and he sliced his thumb wide open.

My reaction was fear and panic.

Oh yeah, and made that mistake plenty of times.

Yeah, And so of course my fear and panic he feeds off of, you know, And I can I can look back on my parents, like my core parents in years and think, oh gosh, oh, I did so many things wrong.

And the sad thing is because we don't know what we don't know.

And even though I knew all this stuff about attachment, I had already chosen my mate.

By the time I was learning about attachment, I was already married.

And probably super anxious because.

It's because of who I chose to marry.

So when I started learning this back in two thousand and six ish, I think that's right, two thousand and six to that, Yeah, two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, I was already married.

Yeah, like I was already well, I was engaged, and I wasn't going to call off the marriage.

And then when I really learned the deep stuff, when I knew I was in deep shi T, I was already married and I was already pregnant.

Yeah, and then you're already in it, do you well?

And and then you go into survival mode.

And when you're in that survival mode and that in your fight flight responses, it's hard to You can't.

And then execute anything.

And this brings me back to really the subject of the podcast, and you know, talking about maybe the baby boomers and you know, raising the gen xers and the millennials, is that I think so much of their life was spent in survival mode that they could never learn how to build the capacity around how to regulate their nervous system.

No, my parents were one hundred percent chronically dysregulated.

Same and my dad not so much.

My dad I think a lot of what helped Daddy was he was a pastor, you know, faith, and he had had so much childhood trauma.

I mean, I don't even know the extent of his childhood trauma, to be honest.

That it made him so much more.

Aware, right, Yeah, absolutely.

With certain things and then disassociate with certain things.

I had awareness for so long, but I had no ability to execute because I was in a marriage with somebody who was an addict, who was cheating on me constantly, who was abusing me constantly, And then I was trying to be a mom and I had no idea what I was doing there either.

And I had a lot of sickness and a lot of problems with my health.

Obviously I've talked about that.

But I just had no capacity to execute.

I was in my capacity.

Isn't that still tesching that what.

I was about to say, I'm still learning, you know, so much about parenting in this new season of parenting, which is parenting an adult.

It's it's a totally new error.

But now knowing what I know, it's this was one of the reasons why I wanted to have another child, which I have come to terms with is just not going to happen, but it's because I felt so much more well equipped for it.

Yes, I get that a lot, I do.

I do get that.

I think the gen xers were very much latch key kids' clo millennial.

They're known as the latch general.

I am one year away from being a gen Xer.

So gen X ends in nineteen eighty one and I'm in nineteen eighty two, baby, and so three.

Yeah, you're You're always be younger than May.

It's fine.

So the latch key kids there was just there was instrumental neglect as well as emotional neglect, so parents weren't around.

This is really when we saw a two household workforce start to become a big thing.

Yep, and a worked I'm not hating on two household workforce, but what I'm just saying, or two parent workforce, but we can't be blind to the fact that a lot of kids were left alone to their own devices and that there was some bitterness.

There was one time mentioned it before I'll mention it again where I pretty much pissed off all of gen z on the internet.

Oh yeah, that was pretty epic.

It was epic, And now it's hilarious because I said that I thought gen X grew up kind of tough, and that gen Z doesn't really get what it feels like to be alone and isolated when all you have is a house phone if that no internet, no cable and no parents.

You know, the things that we.

Did what an awesome time in the world.

Would do anything to go back.

To, Oh my gosh, where you could do stuff and it wasn't just all captured in video.

It was like true freedom.

So what I'm just saying is I think that that I think a lot of gen xers looking back are like, I was kind of neglected, and there's something about just again.

I don't think they're crying victim, but I think they're saying, listen, maybe there's something in between what we had to go through and then how the millennials now are raising gen Z and gen Alpha, which the pendulum with the millennials swung way too far the other ways.

We can't hurt someone's feelings, so.

We have to get everything validated.

Everything is validated, every little fear, concern, et cetera.

And I do think that's dangerous to validate every little feeling through agreement.

Now, do I I really do love empathy through understanding.

I think our job is to understand others.

And I think that's why Donald has just the golden keys to parenting.

He's he says, it's empathy plus boundaries plus consistencystency and consistency is key, and He's like, one thing that my kids are going to know about is that I'm consistent.

I'm consistent across all four of them, and I'm consistent with what I say and do, and he's one hundred percent consistent.

And I am more prone to being pushed into dropping boundaries.

And what I have come to understand in earning my own attachment security and parenting these kids is I'm not going to drop my boundaries, especially when they start getting tested.

When they get to the age of eight nine and all of a sudden, they're starting to test you a little bit more in ways because they're becoming a little bit smarter and they know what your pain points are and they can press on your pain points.

And what I will say to that is, yeah, I understand you're disappointed, and it really stinks when we don't get what we want, and I get that you're feeling mad or frustrated, by disappointment.

Disappointment inherently creates frustration, That's what I'll say.

And so that's a normal thing to feel.

And this is still what's happening here, and this is the boundary, and this is still what I think is best for you.

End of story.

We're not arguing about it.

You got to tell me how you felt.

I understand, and it's not changing the boundary.

I think the boundaries in the consistency part is definitely the most difficult, especially when you have multiple children.

And I can attest to this.

It's interesting because my family dynamic.

I am the baby of four, but I am the only millennial, and so all three of my siblings are gen xers, and to if you knew us all four personally, you could see it clear as day.

Like it is.

So it is so so clear that I am the only millennial out of that group.

But I'll say this about my parents.

I think what ended up happening is specifically with Ryan, my brother, who is the oldest.

You know, they came in strong, they were ready, they were prepared, they wanted that child.

They you know, I mean, I remember the day that my mom told me.

I asked her openly I was like, was Ryan and oops, baby and she was like, no, actually you are a baby, and I was like, excuse me, what what?

No?

So, you know, I think by the time that mama, you know, it came to me coming of age, she was exhaust tired.

She was tired, so tired, and so the consistency fell off, and you know, I think it shaped me and molded me in ways that you know is for a totally different episode, but it made me.

It made me pretty much dynamically, very different from my three siblings.

I think.

I think a lot of millennials they got tired.

They got tired, I agree, and they were just like, you know what, do what you want.

You're going to do it anyway.

Yeah, and at the end of the day.

But then then they would scream at you when you did do something wrong.

Right, And then I was like, you know, I'm like nine doing my own laundry, you know, like because my mom was like, you're I'm not doing this anymore.

I'm exhausted and you're on your own.

You're you either you know, wash your own clothes or you have dirty clothes.

And so there was like, like you said, there was this intermittent reinforcement of I felt one percent loved by my parents, but then at the same time somewhat dismissed and and I don't know.

And it happened later too, when I went off to college.

Because not throwing myself a pity party here, guys, I'm just saying, I'm just talking about the dynamics of my family, you know, when my sister went off to college, when my other sister went off to college, like daddy was paying for it, you know.

And then my parents divorced, and then I went off to college, so it was like, sorry about you.

You're on your own here.

Yeah, and we ran out of money.

Yeah, we have no money.

We're going through a divorce and sorry, you're on your own, which made me extremely resilient.

And I don't want to say it's not fair for me to say that I'm more resilient than my siblings, but I am.

But you are here.

And here's the thing, too, is boundaries create safety.

Boundaries create safety for your kids because your kids are constantly trying to test where are the parameters, where are the lines in the sand, and they want it is inherently in human nature to see how far the boundaries go if you were in a wide open field all of a sudden, just I don't know what am I trying to say.

Beamed beamed made me up, Scottie, right, like you were just beamed into an open field and would you not walk forward and to see where it ended?

Of course your kids are going to test boundaries.

Doesn't make them bad kids.

That make some curious humans, right, that's human nature.

But boundaries in place let them know what's safe, and so they might not like them in the immediate, but in the long term, it trains their nervous system to trust you, and to trust closeness and to trust intimacy because you've set parameters around what that looks like.

And I think what's so interesting is when we're boundary less in our relationship, can we really fault our part for them testing them and pushing them because you've never held them?

And so we teach people how to treat us.

When you don't hold boundaries in your relationship, do you sit there and wonder why your partner's not treating you well?

I think it is human nature to test how far can I go with something?

And subconsciously very much so, and kids will test this.

They will act out, they will do things because they're saying to you, if I act out, am I still safe?

If I am annoying?

Do you still love me?

If I break the rules?

Are you gonna throw me away?

Does that take your love away?

They're trying to see how conditional your love is.

And so when you validate through understanding, you're showing them that you still love them, that they're still important, that they still matter, that their feelings matter.

But then when you set the boundary, then you give them trust you and you can trust me because I know what's best for you and the line ends here.

And I'm sorry that that frustrates you in the moment, but guess what long term, that's going to teach you that intimate relationships are actually safe and you know where you can move within them.

And I think that's the beauty of like what let's say the baby boomer generation gave us, because I think their boundaries were set because they had to be set right, like they had no choice.

But then that trickling down effect of that has created, you know, the gen X and millennial generation that's raising these gen zers and who are but we're more self aware and what those boundaries need to look like And you know, again, I think there, this isn't about me and the ways that I failed as a variant.

But I can't help but just go there, like my brain cannot help, but go there.

I go there too, I go there too.

I go there a lot, I go there a lot.

And then I have to realize Donald's really great about saying and you can't change it.

Yeah, And we're not going to sit in self pity and we're going to say that things are okay now.

Yeah.

And I'm grateful for okay now to have you know, Josh as a partner for that same reason.

And I often think about, you know, in this empty nest era of my life, because you know, you've heard me talk about in other episodes about you know, I'm moving into this era of empty nest, and but I've never really gotten into you know why, I think it is so painful.

And I think the reason why it is so painful is because you're letting go and looking back on all the ways that you could have done things differently, and then you come to face face to face with that at this time more than any other time.

Right, you come face to face that with who what kind of adult did I create?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that's I'm and you're like, I'm seeing in the future to that.

Yeah, but I can only imagine that.

Yeah, it's hard, and regret is really painful, which is why I always tell people try everything before you end your relationship.

Be christ.

Regret is very painful.

You don't want to end your relationship and then go.

But I maybe if I would have shown up differently, Yeah, right, So start showing up differently, and then if your partner doesn't respond to you, then you know, well, I did everything I could.

I showed up well on my end and they didn't match me.

So I can actually leave and feel good about leaving because I did the work first to show up as the most secure partner I could be.

And if that doesn't create enough safety and allow my partner to sort of lean into that and stabilize into their own security, then I can go and I can be like, Okay, it wasn't ever going to change no matter what I did.

And regret is so painful, and I think it's easy to look back as a parent and regret a lot, and I know that I do, and it is a fact that again all we have is now.

Life is made up of many moments of now.

Well, and that's what I was going to say too, again bringing it back to the generational topic, is that I think we are better as parents at the repair.

At the repair, yeah, because my God love them, you know, there's no repair, no, no, and like there would be blow ups and like I don't know, like I just remember blow ups and then my mom would either just always be mad and they're like I don't know if ever, and then my dad would just kind of disappear, and so I don't ever recall and even like when there was a blow up between my mom and me, I don't know if there was ever any true deep repair.

And here's what I'll say after kind of beating myself up through this episode about like, oh the regret, the regret, is that one thing that I have tried to do differently in my parenting journey is when I do mess up, I make sure to always go back and repair.

It absolutely, And I think that that's what we need to focus on as parents.

It's not perfection, it's repair.

Yeah.

And if you are finding yourself having to repair all the time because you're so dysregulated, then I think it is worth checking into your attachment security and doing the nervous system work and the work around intimacy because your kids will trigger you too, trigger you in a different way than your partner does.

Your kids trigger you as a mirror of yourself one hundred because when they do wrong, it's a subconscious reflection on you.

Right, You're the one that grew them and taught them and model model to them, and so when they do wrong it feels personal.

It feels extremely personal, but it's not personal.

Yes, we may have made them, but at the end of the day, they are going to have to as adults, be responsible for their own own well being and their own behavior.

And do we help shape that, Yes we do, But they still have some of their own true personality, their own temperance, temper their own you.

Know, I mean societal things that they're genetics, waited by peers, that they're persuaded.

A situations can't control that they've interacted with.

There's a lot of variables that we can't control.

But one of the things I think we can control and we should try to control as much as possible is modeling love, respect and repair, communication, communication, empathy, and having good boundaries with our kids and when there is a blow up, you go back and you make it better and you take accountability.

And I think that was one of the things that was really hard for the Boomer generation.

It is still incredibly hard.

Oh and I mean, think about it.

Their parents didn't do that.

Oh my god, listen.

My mom grew up her entire life and had a mother who never even said she loved her.

So, I mean love was just too hard for her to express period.

She couldn't even say the words.

And I mean, could you imagine now, could you imagine living your whole life and never telling your children that you love them?

No, I couldn't imagine going one day not telling my girls that I loved it.

But that the greatest generation, that was just kind of the norm.

It was.

I think it was the norm.

Children are to be seen and not heard, and speak only when spoken to and deal with your problems and get over it and life is tough.

And then that transferred to the boomers, and then the Boomers were also part of.

A huge group of dismissive avoidance.

Radical rebellious group too, kind of so we have some rebellion from that.

And I think the boomers are kind of a mix of fas and das, but certainly a lot of avoidance as the theme.

Right, They did have a lot of childhood trauma for sure.

Yeah.

So yeah, like hiding under your desk thinking there's a nuclear bomb coming.

I think they did that a lot, apparently, apparently, and our kids are doing it with school shooter drills.

I mean, maybe we're just no different.

I just don't want the pendulum to swing so far in either direction, so far in the direction that we're just life stuff.

Get over it.

Dismiss all your kids' feelings, which is going to make them not know how to be intimate with others, not know how to be vulnerable, not how to repair not They're going to disassociate or dissociate and suppress all of their feelings.

Versus.

The other side of going too far is validating every little discomfort, trying to make sure they don't experience any discomfort, trying to save them from too many hardships and struggles.

Of life, because then they have no coping scus, then.

They have no coping skills, because then you just coped for them, and then you have one great ball of anxiety.

And then if we have a combination of the two, then we get a fearful avoid it because they both have neglect and lack of boundaries and son and potentially heightened emotionality from seeing dysfunctional emotionality.

So we have to model regulated emotions.

We apps.

I always tell my daughter, You're welcome to talk about your feelings, but I'm not going to let you scream them at me.

When as long as you're screaming at me, I'm going to step aside and you don't get access to me.

But I will always be here when you want to talk about your feelings.

So you can even cry about your feelings, but you're not going to scream them at me.

Secure parenting might be, like you said, the most important thing we can do in our lives.

The most important thing.

And I wish, I wish we could earn our attachment security before we have kids.

Yes, and do it right from birth, do it right from pregnancy.

We're shifting.

I think we're shifting as you know, our consciousness around it, as a as a as humanity.

I mean, I want to believe that because it gives me hope, and you know, the generations to come, and it gives me more hope, you know, based on the episode you know that dropped last week and what happened, you know, because I want to believe that the generations to come and the generations that are to come after us will have the ability and the level of consciousness that we cannot yet reach.

Yeah, because that's the goal.

The goal is to have to reach your higher self.

And the only way to do that is through a level of consciousness that you and I might not even fully understand as we sit here talking about christiousness.

Consciousness, Yes, christ consciousness.

And at the end of the day, there's one unifying factor and that's love.

And love doesn't just mean agree.

It doesn't.

It doesn't always mean agreement, and it doesn't just mean validating.

Sometimes it means telling hard truths and sometimes it means holding hard boundaries.

Because enabling someone's bad behavior isn't love either.

That's the furthest thing.

All the time.

Love without boundaries is not love.

It's not love.

It's enabling and it's teaching people that they're bad behaving.

It's abandoning.

It is abandoning yourself.

Yeah, and there is a self sacrificial part of love, but it shouldn't be one hundred percent self sacrificial.

It's a balance between sacrificing some of what you need and in giving and receiving right and your partner sacrificing some of what they need.

It's about leaning in with compromise.

It's not about taking on someone's reality.

And again, we only get if there's a winner and a loser in your relationship.

You have a losing relationship.

Let me just say that right now, whether that's in your parent child relationship or whether that's in your romantic relationship.

It shouldn't be about winning and being right.

It should be about are we being productive and are we being healthy?

And are we collaborating to make sure that we are reaching shared goals?

And I know a lot of you at the.

Bottom of the episode here, we're going to kind of wrap it up here.

Yeah, And I think that you know this just leads me into wanting to say, in terms of your practice for our listeners and all of your followers, I think an ultimate goal of ours is to introduce, you know, an element of you teaching secure parenting because it is so very important.

It's not just about your becoming securely attached.

Isn't just about your romantic relationships.

It's about every loving relationship that you have, or any relationship, even relationships with coworkers and bosses.

It plays into every aspect really of your life when it comes to relationships.

And so maybe that will be to come.

But in the meantime, doctor Hensley does have a free guide that you can download on specifically the fearful avoidant, and there's also one for the dismissive avoidant.

But if you are wondering, because a lot of people I know come into your practice and they're often confused, right, are they fearful avoidant?

Are they anxious preoccupied?

Because of course the fearful avoidant has both the avoidant and the anxious side, and it's sometimes hard to tell because a lot of fearful avoidance live in that anxious side.

Absolutely or the dismissive side.

And so a lot of people come into my practice they really think they're one attachment style and they're not.

And so the first step and healing attachment is being aware of what your attachment is.

So yes, you can go to courses dot thelovedoc dot com, slash DA or the courses dot the loovedoc dot com, slash FA and download those free guides if you want to deep dive into both of those attachment styles, because just calling someone attachment avoidant doesn't do anybody any favors because the two different types of avoidance are so different.

And really we have two different types of anxious attachment too, because fearfuls can absolutely be anxious, and the majority of the fearful avoidance I see are anxious in my practice.

So please go check out those free resources.

We would love for you to have them and to start your journey through awareness.

And if we can be here to be helpful on any part of your journey, we want to be.

So please keep writing us, Please keep sending us you know, messages that help us grow, you know, positive feedback or constructive feedback as well.

We thank you guys for listening in.

Yeah, we love you guys so much.

Course we also want to thank one of our affiliates.

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Yeah, so thank you so much Budget, And of course we cannot leave without saying thank you to our other affiliate, Armor, which I of course have wal cup today.

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So and of course another you know, guys, we got to, we got to.

If you are looking for your attachment security, we highly highly encourage you to seek out doctor Hensley Services at the lovedoc dot com.

I'm biased, but I think she's the best of the best.

Thank you.

I continue even after eight years of friendship, I still continue to learn something new all the time from her.

I'm still encouraged to like sit in on group.

Like the other day when I was at the house, I was like, you know what, I think I might just sit here and like listen to group for a little bit because I always learned something.

And so please go check out her services at the lovedoc dot com.

For all of our listeners, we offer a special promo code love dot twenty seven for twenty seven percent off because we love you guys so so much, and please keep tuning in because we want to provide the world with so much freak content so that we can heal.

Right, we can heal and hopread that's right, and this is what this podcast is for.

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