Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk through some of the big
Speaker 1: life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
Speaker 1: mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
Speaker 2: the world, it is so great to have you here.
Speaker 2: Back for another episode as we, of course breakdown the
Speaker 2: psychology of our twenties. Okay, So, one of the big
Speaker 2: hot topics in psychology, online, in the media, especially in
Speaker 2: self help communities at the moment is attachment styles. Attachment
Speaker 2: theory essentially says that we learn how to form intimate
Speaker 2: attachments and bond with others based on our childhood experiences,
Speaker 2: and when those experiences and our primary relationship with our
Speaker 2: caregivers is disturbed or difficult, it can lead to a
Speaker 2: disorganized attachment style. Now, I think that it is so
Speaker 2: amazing that so many more of us have the language
Speaker 2: to describe how we relate to others, how we form attachments.
Speaker 2: It is one of the biggest and most valuable important
Speaker 2: theories in psychology, with a small caveat being that I
Speaker 2: also think it's important that we get it right and
Speaker 2: if we are going to apply these labels of insecure,
Speaker 2: of anxious, of avoidant, we actually know what it means.
Speaker 2: So today we are bringing back a favorite guest of ours,
Speaker 2: somebody who has been on the show before and also
Speaker 2: one of the world's biggest experts on the topic of
Speaker 2: attachment styles and attachment theory, Tace Gibson. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Excited to be back here
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, we've
Speaker 2: previously done an episode on anxious attack theory or anxious
Speaker 2: attachment style sorry last year, which actually goes into the
Speaker 2: overall theory a little bit more around you know John
Speaker 2: bowlby Mary Ainsworth who created this theory and like the
Speaker 2: unique styles. So if you miss that, I would recommend
Speaker 2: going back and listening to that episode. But can you
Speaker 2: tell us a little bit about yourself and yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess where your interest in attachment theory really began.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I really started getting interested in people, I
Speaker 4: think at a really young age. So I went through
Speaker 4: a family dynamic that was pretty chaotic. There was a
Speaker 4: lot of intense fighting and arguments, and so all my
Speaker 4: parents go through like a very long and quite intense
Speaker 4: divorce that went all the way to like the Superior
Speaker 4: Court of Canada, like all these sort of dramatic things.
Speaker 4: And I think I was a really sensitive kid and
Speaker 4: I was parentified a lot. So what that really means
Speaker 4: for anybody who's not familiar with that term is I was.
Speaker 3: Put in the middle at a very young age, sort
Speaker 3: of forced to.
Speaker 4: Play like an emotional parent role for my parents, and
Speaker 4: they would both have vent to me about each other
Speaker 4: a lot, and I think I spent a lot of
Speaker 4: my early childhood wondering, like, why do things have to
Speaker 4: be so difficult? Why can't people who love each other
Speaker 4: just kind of come together and figure it out? And like,
Speaker 4: you know, they obviously care about each other, and they
Speaker 4: care about me and my sister, but why can't they
Speaker 4: just figure out how to not be like this with
Speaker 4: one another?
Speaker 3: Because they really kind of brought out those hard parts
Speaker 3: of each other.
Speaker 4: So from a really young age, I was really interested
Speaker 4: in like people and human dynamics.
Speaker 3: And I was definitely.
Speaker 4: There as sort of the therapist kind of child for
Speaker 4: my parents too, So I think it was just very
Speaker 4: natural for me to evolve into this type of work.
Speaker 3: It was definitely not something I disliked.
Speaker 4: I always liked like talking about real things and breaking
Speaker 4: things down.
Speaker 3: And it was through my own kind of struggles as like.
Speaker 4: A teenager and going into my early adult years that
Speaker 4: I ended up doing a much deeper dive in a
Speaker 4: more serious way into like how do we really heal?
Speaker 4: How do we really work through these things? And it
Speaker 4: was through that that one of the things I revisited
Speaker 4: was attachment styles and ended up sort of combining a
Speaker 4: lot of my research and hypnosis was my background, and
Speaker 4: a lot in like the subconscious mind and then traditional
Speaker 4: psychology and the traditional sort of school system wrote I
Speaker 4: combined that with the principles of CBT and NLP and
Speaker 4: ultimately attachment styles to really create a body of work
Speaker 4: about how not only can we change our attachment style
Speaker 4: and become securely attached, but also diving deeper into the
Speaker 4: work of John Bowlby and Mary an'sworth of how our
Speaker 4: attachment style originally forms. So basically I went on to
Speaker 4: run like a ten year almost ten year client practice
Speaker 4: and then put a whole bunch of programs online with
Speaker 4: the Personal Development School all about the attachment theory kind
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, I love that whole story because I
Speaker 2: feel like you make a great point, which is that, yes,
Speaker 2: the original theory is like amazing and it's such a
Speaker 2: solid foundation, but our understanding of how the human mind
Speaker 2: works has also evolved a little bit, and so it's
Speaker 2: important to kind of evolve our traditional and conventional theories
Speaker 2: with like that more modern understanding. You also spoke about parentification,
Speaker 2: which I find to be such a fascinating subject for
Speaker 2: those of us who don't know what that means. It's basically,
Speaker 2: you become the parent for your parents, so that child
Speaker 2: parent dynamic actually kind of reverses, and so you might
Speaker 2: become a confident you might be a mediated like you said,
Speaker 2: you might have to provide for them physically, emotionally, financially.
Speaker 2: What do you think is there like a specific attachment
Speaker 2: style that that normally contributes to, because part of me
Speaker 2: is like, oh, it would it be secure because your
Speaker 2: parent really needed you, or would it be avoided?
Speaker 3: Such a good question, it's so interesting.
Speaker 4: So a lot of the research and attachment styles actually
Speaker 4: shows that you're more likely to become at least fearful,
Speaker 4: avoidant or dismissive aboidan like hav an avoidant side, the
Speaker 4: more enmeshed you are at a young age with your parents,
Speaker 4: and I think part of what often happens is that
Speaker 4: you'll have that side of like feeling engulfed and overwhelmed,
Speaker 4: and obviously, in like traditional dismissive avoidant, the two fears
Speaker 4: are really about engulfment and then being defective in some way, right,
Speaker 4: so they fear being trapped in the wrong relationship or
Speaker 4: and a lot of that trapped core fear first comes
Speaker 4: from being enmeshed in some form, whether it was through
Speaker 4: parentification or just I talk a lot about this topic.
Speaker 4: It's we have like direct parentification and indirect parentification. So
Speaker 4: direct is like myself and I was a fearful avoidant
Speaker 4: before working on my attachment style, and my direct was
Speaker 4: like I was directly in the middle people directly coming
Speaker 4: to me in client practice and through our programs that pds.
Speaker 4: I've often seen instead that dismissible woidens are indirectly parentified.
Speaker 4: So they may have a parent who's like very depressed
Speaker 4: all the time and the other parent not around, and
Speaker 4: they start worrying like, okay, my parents not okay, and
Speaker 4: if they're not okay, how will I be okay, right,
Speaker 4: because we're very aware that we're completely dependent on our
Speaker 4: caregivers for survival at a young age, and so if
Speaker 4: there's a combination of avoidance and an indirect enmeasurement, I
Speaker 4: find that to be the most consistent output that will
Speaker 4: produce a dismissive avoidant as an adult.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense, Like the engulfment, the enmeshment,
Speaker 2: I feel like we've jumped the gun. I've jumped the
Speaker 2: gun and I went straight to like an in depth
Speaker 2: question about avoidant attachment style. But that's what we're focusing
Speaker 2: on today. What exactly makes somebody avoidant? How common is
Speaker 2: this in society? Can you kind of break down something
Speaker 2: you've already spoken about, is dismissive versus fearful? Can you
Speaker 2: break down what it means to be somebody who is
Speaker 2: avoidantly attached according to theory, according to your own personal
Speaker 2: experiences as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's such a good question. So there's two quote
Speaker 4: unquote avoidant attachment styles. One is fearful avoidant and one
Speaker 4: is dismissive avoidant. So fearful avoidance one of the big
Speaker 4: differentiators is they have an anxious side, so they basically
Speaker 4: oscillate between being anxious and avoidant, and they basically because
Speaker 4: they grow up with conflicting ideas about love, they often
Speaker 4: have some very good experiences with love, like having some
Speaker 4: very loving moments, some caring moments, and then having some
Speaker 4: really chaotic ones. And fearful avoidance are characterized by a
Speaker 4: little bit more trauma than the average attachment style. That's
Speaker 4: the type of trauma we think, like big T trauma.
Speaker 4: So it can be physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse,
Speaker 4: addiction in the family or household, really really intense divorce processes,
Speaker 4: these kinds of things where there's a lot of that intensity,
Speaker 4: and dismissive avoidance are characterized more by emotional neglect, but
Speaker 4: also can be combined with that sense of engulfment or enmeshment.
Speaker 4: So fearful avoidance will tend to have that side of
Speaker 4: like fearing abandonment and yearning for closeness, but then also
Speaker 4: fearing engulfment and enmeshment and entrapment in their relationships, and
Speaker 4: so they can really go from being really hot to
Speaker 4: very cold. So they're kind of the attachment style if any,
Speaker 4: but he's newer to this stuff. That's like come to
Speaker 4: get close to me, come we get close. I want love,
Speaker 4: and then they're like, no, get back, you're too close.
Speaker 4: And I experienced that my whole early teenagers and early
Speaker 4: adult life, Like I would constantly be like, I really
Speaker 4: want connection.
Speaker 3: I really care about connection, and then.
Speaker 4: When I felt really connected or attached to people, it
Speaker 4: would terrify me. I would be like, we're gonna hurt me,
Speaker 4: something bad's gonna happen, and I would try to start
Speaker 4: pushing them away. And I was less like that with friendships,
Speaker 4: but I was extremely like that with romantic relationships. I
Speaker 4: was probably a very difficult person to be with before
Speaker 4: doing the work. And so you know, it's because we
Speaker 4: first have those core fears about like the closeness has
Speaker 4: good moments, but it also has really scary moments, and
Speaker 4: so we go back and forth within ourselves, which really
Speaker 4: mirrors back the way we were conditioned about love and
Speaker 4: attachments to begin with.
Speaker 3: And then dismiss the.
Speaker 4: Avoidance their overarching theme as childhood emotional neglect. So you know,
Speaker 4: generally we'll see that they neglect their own emotions as
Speaker 4: adults because there was never really a lot of emotional atonement.
Speaker 4: And if that's combined with indirect enmashment and the fear
Speaker 4: of getting too close or being engulfed. You'll see that
Speaker 4: they tend to be people who constantly keep people at
Speaker 4: arm's length, and so they may show up in like
Speaker 4: the dating stage of relationships when they're first the attachment
Speaker 4: bond hasn't been built yet, and they may be more
Speaker 4: charming or charismatic or seem to be, you know, quite
Speaker 4: available in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 3: Then, but once they.
Speaker 4: Start to attach, they tend to just exclusively fear being
Speaker 4: trapped or being criticized, and so they'll really push back,
Speaker 4: and they may be the type of attachment style that
Speaker 4: you know, seems unable to commit, pushes away all of
Speaker 4: a sudden note of the blue, even when commitments just
Speaker 4: starting and when things are getting more real, and they'll
Speaker 4: work really hard to maintain their privacy and their distance
Speaker 4: from people a lot of the time because as a
Speaker 4: child's closeness meant I was neglected and I was engulfed,
Speaker 4: and so those are things that they're scared to relive
Speaker 4: as adults, and they'll go out of their way to
Speaker 4: stop that from happening. So those are sort of the
Speaker 4: two avoidant attachment cells, and some of those key differences
Speaker 4: between them.
Speaker 2: That was like so succinct. I also like the point
Speaker 2: that you made around it being kind of a self
Speaker 2: fulfilling prophecy, right, Like you start pushing away, so they
Speaker 2: start behaving the way that you always expected people you
Speaker 2: were close to to behave, and so you reinforce that
Speaker 2: like primary maladaptive behavior of once again avoiding connection and
Speaker 2: perhaps self sabotaging. Okay, I have a hot seat question
Speaker 2: for you, and maybe you probably don't know the answer
Speaker 2: to this, but how common is avoidant attachment in society?
Speaker 3: Really good question.
Speaker 4: So there hasn't been a huge body of recent research
Speaker 4: done about the attachment breakdown. About thirty years ago, a
Speaker 4: research show that it was roughly fifty percent of people
Speaker 4: were secure, and then research showed that somewhere between five
Speaker 4: and ten percent of people were disorganized attachment style. And
Speaker 4: then the rest of the split was between anxious and
Speaker 4: dismissive avoidant and disorganized is also sorry, fear full avoidant
Speaker 4: aka disorganized attachment style.
Speaker 3: They're often referred to as the same thing. It's the
Speaker 3: same attachment style at the end of the day. So
Speaker 3: it's funny.
Speaker 4: Because you know, we have a big attachment sele Quitz,
Speaker 4: and we have a lot of people to come in
Speaker 4: take it, and tons of people will be like I
Speaker 4: tested this way, but I realized through doing some of
Speaker 4: the course work, I'm actually this attachment style. It's one
Speaker 4: of the most common things we see and research shows
Speaker 4: very conclusively historically that self reporting is not always the
Speaker 4: most accurate thing sometimes, you know, although research will show that,
Speaker 4: you know, we're looking at the totality of avoidant attachment
Speaker 4: being somewhere around twenty to thirty percent shared by dismissible
Speaker 4: avoidant and fearful avoidant attachment style. I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 4: if it's a little bit higher, particularly dismissible boidance, because
Speaker 4: dismissible woildans tend to self report is more secure. I've
Speaker 4: absolutely noticed that pattern, and we've had like a couple
Speaker 4: million people take our attachment style Quitz, so it's not
Speaker 4: a small sample size. And what will happen is people
Speaker 4: will think that because you know, they're repressing their emotions,
Speaker 4: which is very dismissible boidened, and because they tend to
Speaker 4: not get into lots of fights are chaos in their relationships,
Speaker 4: they'll often conflate that with being securely attached, rather than
Speaker 4: realizing that what's securely attached actually means is we can
Speaker 4: work through our conflicts, we can express our emotions vulnerably,
Speaker 4: we can let people in and let our guard down
Speaker 4: and let somebody get to know us, and we can
Speaker 4: invest in commitment and invest in a relationship, and those
Speaker 4: are really the cornerstones of what it means to be
Speaker 4: securely attached, rather than the absence of arguing means secure attachment,
Speaker 4: which is what the DA tends to conflate things as so,
Speaker 4: I think that probably that percentage is significantly higher than
Speaker 4: just the twenty to thirty percent, but the more common
Speaker 4: research now it's coming out is at least showing that
Speaker 4: secure attachment style is on the decline over the last
Speaker 4: thirty years as well.
Speaker 2: I don't want to make I'm going to make broad
Speaker 2: statements here and maybe they're not true, and they probably
Speaker 2: should be more research into it, but I do feel
Speaker 2: like there is obviously like a separation between parents and
Speaker 2: children more now, like with social media with our phones
Speaker 2: that really stops children in a way of reaching out,
Speaker 2: but then also like parents from engaging properly with their children.
Speaker 2: And we also know that there is a lot of
Speaker 2: generational trauma that if not broken, gets passed on. That's
Speaker 2: largely like there is like a core moment where you
Speaker 2: can kind of fix that, right, And it's like if
Speaker 2: people aren't doing the work, then it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: Then you know, that's what happens. I feel like, I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's a big broad statement, but we'll
Speaker 2: have to say I.
Speaker 3: Thought that was a perfect statement, Like I really really
Speaker 3: agree with that.
Speaker 4: I think that we're in a generation now or because
Speaker 4: of social media and the phone and convenience, and also
Speaker 4: because of like a lot of our culture and a
Speaker 4: lot of places throughout the world is like hustle culture,
Speaker 4: like work so hard, do all these things, and obviously
Speaker 4: like just some of the things that are happening in
Speaker 4: the world too, like inflation and financial pressures. It's causing
Speaker 4: you know, both parents to often be working, and both
Speaker 4: parents some times to be working multiple jobs or to
Speaker 4: be overwhelmed and stressed. And just like you said, there's
Speaker 4: that generational trauma where if somebody's not right within themselves.
Speaker 3: I always say this, like trauma is literally contagious.
Speaker 4: It's not contagious in like a germ theory way the
Speaker 4: way we think of like contagion, but trauma's contagious. In
Speaker 4: the more proximity you have to somebody who has unresolved trauma,
Speaker 4: the greater likelihood that trauma is going to be passed along, Right,
Speaker 4: And so to your point, if we have this fractured
Speaker 4: culture and this fractured sort of system that we're living
Speaker 4: in in a multitude of ways, of course that's going
Speaker 4: to affect somebody's attachment style. And so much of what
Speaker 4: really creates secure attachment is is a caregiver able to
Speaker 4: be present? Are they able to exercise something called approach
Speaker 4: oriented behaviors and psychology, meaning that when a child cries
Speaker 4: or they seem distressed, the caregiver goes towards that child,
Speaker 4: approaches them and tries to sue them, checking with their needs.
Speaker 4: And what that does is it allows a child to
Speaker 4: think like, Okay, I'm worthy of expressing emotion. I'm worthy
Speaker 4: of you know, negotiating my needs and conveying what they are.
Speaker 4: And I get positively reinforced by my parents when that happens.
Speaker 4: And in a culture where everybody's on their phones, where
Speaker 4: everybody's over stressed or overwhelmed or burnt out and parents
Speaker 4: don't have that emotional availability in that same way, and
Speaker 4: they don't have as much in bandwidth for those those
Speaker 4: approach oriented behaviors. Of course, that's going to affect the
Speaker 4: attachment style of children.
Speaker 2: So I really like that point as well. I feel
Speaker 2: like that is such a compelling thing because I see
Speaker 2: it a lot of the time. And it's not to
Speaker 2: say that people aren't trying the hardest and don't want
Speaker 2: to raise like amazing, beautiful, well rounded children. It's just
Speaker 2: hard to do that when your environment is trying to
Speaker 2: keep you like overly stimulated by your phone or overly
Speaker 2: engaged in social media or in work or in anything
Speaker 2: like that. So this is kind of a follow up question.
Speaker 2: Do you think people who are have a dismissive or
Speaker 2: a fearful attachment style Do you think that they are
Speaker 2: aware as conscious of it? I think you kind of.
Speaker 2: I've already mentioned this, right, they're less conscious of the
Speaker 2: fact that they have this attachment style is because it's
Speaker 2: kind of like protective is they're like, do you think
Speaker 2: that it's because that they implicitly have recognized a benefit
Speaker 2: in being this way, so subconsciously like choose to be
Speaker 2: unaware of it. Why do you think people more so
Speaker 2: self report is secure?
Speaker 3: This is such a good question.
Speaker 4: So I think the first two things is like the
Speaker 4: fearful woiden and dismissable widen are different. So fearful avoidance
Speaker 4: like I was fear who wouldn't trust me? We know
Speaker 4: we're insecurely attached like it is allowed and queer like
Speaker 4: you'll be on the constant, forever roller coaster of relationships
Speaker 4: until you heal your attachment style.
Speaker 3: So like fearable wouldn't they always know?
Speaker 4: They're like the first to know, like something is not
Speaker 4: right with my attachment cell because they have extreme highs
Speaker 4: and lows, like really good moments and then really really
Speaker 4: awful or chaotic moments and trust issues and you name it.
Speaker 4: So fearable avoidance tend to know the most. But again
Speaker 4: that's that like five to ten percent segment of the population,
Speaker 4: the dismissive avoidance, which are a sort of lard or
Speaker 4: portion there you'll generally see that I think you kind.
Speaker 3: Of nailed it.
Speaker 4: You hit the nail on the head there where they
Speaker 4: see it an implicit benefit. You know, first of all,
Speaker 4: if I grow up and I can't get my needs
Speaker 4: met let's pretend I'm a dismissible boiden for a moment,
Speaker 4: and I'm a child and I grow up and I
Speaker 4: can't get my needs met in a relationship for my parents,
Speaker 4: and I'm wired for biology like I'm biologically wired for attunement,
Speaker 4: and my parents are emotionally unavailable. Then what happens is
Speaker 4: I go, well, it doesn't feel good to keep yearning
Speaker 4: for something and get rejected. So I'm going to adapt
Speaker 4: to this by just repressing my need to even attach
Speaker 4: to them, And by doing that.
Speaker 3: It creates relief.
Speaker 4: And so now I think that keeping attachment at a
Speaker 4: distance is a very good thing. It gives me this
Speaker 4: reward feeling instead of it gives me the relief instead
Speaker 4: of feeling like, oh, I'm just yearning for something and
Speaker 4: keep feeling rejected. And on top of that, dismissible boidance,
Speaker 4: because they're suppressing their emotions, are less likely to feel
Speaker 4: their emotions and feel that something is off. And the
Speaker 4: third layer to is a dismissable voidance end up in
Speaker 4: a dynamic where they go, well, I'm the logical one.
Speaker 4: I'm straightforward, I use my brain, and I'm not really
Speaker 4: giving into my emotions and of course there's tremendous benefits
Speaker 4: to that, right, Like, there can be huge benefits of
Speaker 4: all attachment styles that are insecurely attached. They have unique
Speaker 4: and really beautiful characteristics. But that's still going to be
Speaker 4: something that doesn't benefit relationships because when the moment comes
Speaker 4: to be raw and real and vulnerable and build a
Speaker 4: genuine connection, if somebody's so closed off to that, they
Speaker 4: can't even access that properly and they're terrified of it.
Speaker 3: And that becomes a really painful thing.
Speaker 4: So I think to your point, they are already suppressing
Speaker 4: their emotions so they don't even feel as much as
Speaker 4: something's off, and then they see a benefit in themselves
Speaker 4: being that way, which makes it kind of this catch
Speaker 4: twenty two where it's even trickier to realize that something's
Speaker 4: not right.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask a follow up question here, which
Speaker 2: is do you think that men or women are more
Speaker 2: likely to be this way? Because I get this questions
Speaker 2: all the time where it's like the profile that you're
Speaker 2: you're describing, right, being incredibly rational, Right, Like, that's something
Speaker 2: that I think we often associate with men, that they
Speaker 2: are like these rational people when it comes to relationships.
Speaker 2: And women are emotional, whether that is correct or not,
Speaker 2: or this idea of like men are allowed to be
Speaker 2: a lot more emotionally closed off. Also the factor of
Speaker 2: like parentification, right, Like women are perhaps more parentified, So
Speaker 2: does that contribute to them? Like, there's so many questions
Speaker 2: where them, Like it's kind of like a scale to
Speaker 2: me of like which what contextual and external and environmental
Speaker 2: factors are kind of balancing the scale to maybe make
Speaker 2: men or women more likely to present this way.
Speaker 3: It's such a great question.
Speaker 4: So it's interesting in different cultures you'll actually see different
Speaker 4: attachment style spreads ever so slightly, so, Like, it's interesting,
Speaker 4: there is a study done in Japan and it shows
Speaker 4: that a lot of individuals are more dismissive avoidant, and
Speaker 4: culturally it's like negatively reinforced.
Speaker 3: To be too emotional or too vulnerable.
Speaker 4: Right, So you can some of those dynamics, but to
Speaker 4: your point, absolutely, men are more likely to be dismissive
Speaker 4: avoidance and women.
Speaker 3: Are actually more likely to be anxious.
Speaker 4: Attachment styles the spread right now looks like there's competing
Speaker 4: studies on this stuff, but it looks like it's somewhere
Speaker 4: between either eighty twenty or seventy five twenty five men
Speaker 4: to women in terms of who proportionally is dismissive, avoidant
Speaker 4: attachment style. And so it makes a lot of sense, right.
Speaker 4: Men are generally more emotionally shamed, and they're generally taught like,
Speaker 4: don't be a cry baby, grow up, don't be so vulnerable,
Speaker 4: don't let anyone see you cry. Like a lot of
Speaker 4: that messaging, or messaging becomes or conditioning. And so a
Speaker 4: lot of that messaging is conditioning somebody to be like, oh,
Speaker 4: I can't show these sides of myself. I'll get rejected,
Speaker 4: I'll be you know, shameful if I show the side
Speaker 4: of myself. And so it gives even more incentive for
Speaker 4: somebody to repress those aspects of self. Whereas women, you know,
Speaker 4: although this is changing more so recently a little bit,
Speaker 4: but women still tend to naturally be you know, they
Speaker 4: have this culture where it's like, okay, we can express
Speaker 4: our emotions more or share things, or be more open
Speaker 4: and vulnerable with each other than we would generally see
Speaker 4: in a.
Speaker 3: Group of men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a classic social learning theory, right, Like you
Speaker 2: observe how your parents behave, how those around you behave,
Speaker 2: and you replicate and you mimic it. And if you're
Speaker 2: growing up in a community, in a culture, in an
Speaker 2: environment you know, I'm in Australia, right, Like that's a
Speaker 2: huge thing to be like a very march o man
Speaker 2: and to be very like tough and men don't cry,
Speaker 2: and men get out in the field and do all
Speaker 2: the work. Like, if that is the environment you're raised in,
Speaker 2: even if you know it's incorrect, even if your parents
Speaker 2: know it's incorrect and have tried very hard to not
Speaker 2: enforce that within you, Like it is still going to
Speaker 2: bleed in if it's kind of like the if it's
Speaker 2: kind of like what's in the air, right, If it's
Speaker 2: the thing that you breathe in, if it's a thing
Speaker 2: that you see when you go to school, when you
Speaker 2: hang out at your friend's place, when you go to
Speaker 2: like the grocery store, when you watch when you switch
Speaker 2: on TV, Like it's going to be reinforced or rewarded somehow.
Speaker 2: How do you think that both are dismissive and a
Speaker 2: fearful avoidant attachment style separately obviously look different for different genders.
Speaker 4: Such a good question, So I would say, if we
Speaker 4: break down each one, so dismissive avoidance. As men and women,
Speaker 4: they both tend to share some unique characteristics, but men generally,
Speaker 4: it's a little bit more socially acceptable for men to
Speaker 4: be dismissive avoidance, similar to what we're talking about on
Speaker 4: this concept, And so I think it's important to note that,
Speaker 4: like your main first influences will be in the home,
Speaker 4: because basically how we get programmed from a neuroplastic point
Speaker 4: of view is like from neuroplasticity, we get programs farmed
Speaker 4: through a lot of repetition and emotion which fire and
Speaker 4: wire those neural pathways. And so we may if we're
Speaker 4: at home all the time with our caregivers and that's
Speaker 4: the major environment where we are being sort of immersed in,
Speaker 4: then are more likely to see that. But we have
Speaker 4: all these other features and factors coming at us right
Speaker 4: where like then we have these other parts that can
Speaker 4: either reprogram us or shift or change us if we
Speaker 4: have a lot of like I'll share just one quick
Speaker 4: example here.
Speaker 3: I had a.
Speaker 4: Client once and she was a really well known gymnast
Speaker 4: and she was very very successful. She won a couple
Speaker 4: gold medals, and she had a very secure household, but
Speaker 4: she was around coaches all the time. She'd go home
Speaker 4: from school, not spend any time at home, go to
Speaker 4: the gym for four or five hours a night, and
Speaker 4: her coach made her really anxiously attached. So we can
Speaker 4: have these secondary influences and depending on our repeated exposure
Speaker 4: to them, can actually usurp our original attachment style wiring.
Speaker 4: So just to speak to that for a second, I
Speaker 4: thought it was so important. But dismissive avoidance as a whole,
Speaker 4: as a male, you'll tend to see that they present
Speaker 4: as very stoic, very unemotional, sometimes.
Speaker 3: Slow to warm up.
Speaker 4: They can be a lot of like the boys boys, right,
Speaker 4: They tend to really like to spend time with other
Speaker 4: like minded individuals. They get really into their projects a
Speaker 4: lot of the time, their hobbies, those sorts of things,
Speaker 4: and they tend to be logical, rational, practical, all of
Speaker 4: those different dynamics. We'll see those same things as a female.
Speaker 4: Dismissible avoidant, Like, those traits really don't change that much,
Speaker 4: I would say, more of what changes is society's response
Speaker 4: to those traits. So men, it's sort of like they're
Speaker 4: okay to be that logical, rational, practical withdrawn sort of
Speaker 4: person whereas with women, you know, sometimes it's like, well,
Speaker 4: why is she so stand offish or why is she
Speaker 4: not warm?
Speaker 3: Or why is she?
Speaker 4: And I think the external response to it is more
Speaker 4: what changes rather than anything else. And so I find
Speaker 4: that men kind of have an easier time and are
Speaker 4: more socially accepted as being a dismissive awoidant compared to women. Again,
Speaker 4: overarching themes not always the case, but we can definitely
Speaker 4: see that and will sometimes see that dismissive avoidance are
Speaker 4: more likely to be kind of like the engineer types,
Speaker 4: right to get really interested in that sort of style
Speaker 4: of learning, and they tend to really value their safety
Speaker 4: and their comfort zone, and they don't like to go
Speaker 4: and try tons of new things all the time.
Speaker 3: And again that usually comes from childhood programming.
Speaker 4: So men and women share in a lot of those characteristics,
Speaker 4: but it's just the external response to it.
Speaker 3: It seems to change.
Speaker 4: And from a fearful avoidant point of view, generally, fear
Speaker 4: full avoidant women will seem.
Speaker 3: Very warm and very you know, kind.
Speaker 4: And available until real attachment forms, and then they push
Speaker 4: away and they fear and those hot and cold patterns
Speaker 4: come about. And I find that that is kind of easier,
Speaker 4: if I had to say, between men and women, it's
Speaker 4: a little easier for women to be like that because
Speaker 4: they tend to be deep and they want to emotionally
Speaker 4: connect with people and they care about like understanding human
Speaker 4: behavior and psychology. Whereas you know men that are fearful avoidant,
Speaker 4: if they're big feelers, if they really feel everything.
Speaker 3: And then they're like hot and cold.
Speaker 4: It's confusing for them, right because they don't have as
Speaker 4: much support in their ability to emotionally process. So those
Speaker 4: are some of the differences. I would say, like the
Speaker 4: traits and characteristics don't change mine, but more how they
Speaker 4: then relate to a society based on their gender with
Speaker 4: their unique attachment styles.
Speaker 2: I feel like it just goes to show that we
Speaker 2: think that we're just socialized as children, but we are
Speaker 2: continually socialized as adults, right, and there continues to be
Speaker 2: these influences from our environment that can make us who
Speaker 2: we are, and especially influence things like attachment style as well,
Speaker 2: which is a core component of I think becomes a
Speaker 2: more core component of our identity and how we relate
Speaker 2: to others the older we get, as we want to
Speaker 2: form those more serious long term friendships and relationships and connections.
Speaker 2: I feel like recognizing this is one thing, and it
Speaker 2: could probably feel quite overwhelming when you kind of finally
Speaker 2: wake up and smell the coffee or kind of begin
Speaker 2: to realize that this is not helping me anymore, that
Speaker 2: this is something that I needed to survive a childhood
Speaker 2: experience that I am now out of, I'm now separate from,
Speaker 2: and I do want to be able to connect and
Speaker 2: I do want to find meaningful, deep, secure love. How
Speaker 2: do we kind of approach healing when we get to
Speaker 2: that point of acceptance? First, the next step is obviously
Speaker 2: so obviously you can't rewrite history. But the next step
Speaker 2: is to think about your future self and how you
Speaker 2: want to change for them. How some of the ways
Speaker 2: that we go about not undoing but accepting and healing
Speaker 2: this part of us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's such a beautiful question. So we created a
Speaker 4: body of work and we had about thirty one thousand
Speaker 4: people go through our programs and take this information and
Speaker 4: we see within about a ninety day period, we can
Speaker 4: change our attachment style. Now, that's the median of people, right,
Speaker 4: There's people who fall outside of that, who may not
Speaker 4: be you know, who may have way more childhood trauma.
Speaker 4: And it may take more than ninety days, but the
Speaker 4: vast majority of people can become dominantly securely attached in
Speaker 4: that ninety day period and it's through focusing on a
Speaker 4: few crucial areas. So number one, and when we say
Speaker 4: like healing those parts of ourselves and accepting part of ourselves,
Speaker 4: I think it's we walk this really beautiful line between
Speaker 4: being able to be self accepting but also realize when
Speaker 4: there's a need for transformation. Right, Like, we can have
Speaker 4: a child who does something wrong at school, you know,
Speaker 4: breaks something or get angry or throws a temper tantrum,
Speaker 4: and it doesn't mean we like shame the child. We
Speaker 4: can be like, honey, I love you, I care about you,
Speaker 4: I want you to feel okay, and that's not acceptable.
Speaker 4: At the same time, let's work on changing that behavior.
Speaker 4: So it's really like that attitude that we want to
Speaker 4: have to sell first, where we can be accepting of like, hey,
Speaker 4: this isn't my fault.
Speaker 3: I didn't choose my attachment style.
Speaker 4: It was whatever repeated things that got exposed to and
Speaker 4: it is still my responsibility because only I can do
Speaker 4: that work. And so that work can look like going
Speaker 4: to counseling or therapy, but that work can also look
Speaker 4: like doing deep in our self work. And so there's
Speaker 4: really a few crucial areas that when we target these
Speaker 4: things we can become securely attached.
Speaker 3: So crucial area.
Speaker 4: Number one is reprogramming core wounds. Our core wounds are
Speaker 4: like our relationship baggage. It's whatever we've been afflicted with
Speaker 4: as children we will fear as adults. So if you
Speaker 4: had a lot of broken trust as a child, you
Speaker 4: will as an adult be like.
Speaker 3: I will be betrayed, and that's a core wound.
Speaker 4: Or if we had a lot of real or perceived
Speaker 4: abandonment in childhood, you know, through inconsistency or divorce or
Speaker 4: one parent pulls away, you will probably believe I will
Speaker 4: be abandoned. As an adult, if you are criticized or neglected,
Speaker 4: you will believe I am defective.
Speaker 3: And that's how people are going to see me.
Speaker 4: And so you can hear that in the different attachment styles,
Speaker 4: the fear full avoidant, the anxious that dismissive avoidant. And
Speaker 4: so when we can first find our core wounds, we're
Speaker 4: not born with these things. We can just rewire them,
Speaker 4: and so we rewire them and I can always share
Speaker 4: a tool in a little bit, but we rewire them
Speaker 4: through repetition, emotion, and imagery because that's what's necessary to
Speaker 4: recondition the subconscious mind.
Speaker 3: So there's a really easy tool to go through that.
Speaker 4: But Number one area court wounds. Number two we learn
Speaker 4: our needs and how to meet them ourselves. So each
Speaker 4: attachment style is unique needs. Anxious tend to want a
Speaker 4: lot more certainty, consistency, validation, encouragement to be made a priority,
Speaker 4: to feel important.
Speaker 3: Fearful avoidance want a lot of depth.
Speaker 4: They want novelty, they want growth in the relationship, they
Speaker 4: want deep connection, but they also want freedom and independence
Speaker 4: and dismiss of avoidance. They tend to actually respond very
Speaker 4: well to acceptance, support, empathy, and then small pieces of
Speaker 4: appreciation or acknowledgment and then being able to also have
Speaker 4: their freedom and independence. So each attachment style has different needs.
Speaker 4: When we learn to meet our own needs and then
Speaker 4: number three communicate them to other people, that's like the
Speaker 4: framework for how we give and receive love. People talk
Speaker 4: about love languages and that's great and it's meaningful, but
Speaker 4: meeting each other's needs is much more impactful than the
Speaker 4: five love languages and just as an example, like I
Speaker 4: have a big love language around quality time. But if
Speaker 4: I'm watching a movie on Netflix with somebody versus having
Speaker 4: a deep conversation, the deep conversation meets my need for
Speaker 4: emotional connection. That's going to be way more important to
Speaker 4: me than just quality time. As an overarching theme, like
Speaker 4: deeply emotionally connecting with somebody is way better. So our
Speaker 4: needs and learning what those are for each of our
Speaker 4: unique styles and meeting them for each other is like
Speaker 4: this huge set of ingredients and a roadmap to finding
Speaker 4: deeper connection and love. SOEs learning to meet our own needs,
Speaker 4: learning to communicate our needs to others using healthy strategies.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we go you never spend enough time with me,
Speaker 4: instead of hey, I miss you. I feel disconnected this week.
Speaker 4: I'd love to plan something fun on the weekend. That's
Speaker 4: called positive framing. When we positively frame or more likely
Speaker 4: to get heard so we can be core wound reprogrammers,
Speaker 4: meet our needs, learn to communicate better, and then learn
Speaker 4: healthier boundaries in our world. These are four of the
Speaker 4: most important components to becoming securely atime. When we can
Speaker 4: really target those, we can actually heal any maladaptive patterns
Speaker 4: that we were taught and we can leave the relationship
Speaker 4: baggage that we have from childhood in the past where
Speaker 4: it belongs.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is so such like a perfect equation.
Speaker 2: I feel like and I love that you've spoke about
Speaker 2: needs instead of love language. I will say, I think
Speaker 2: love languages are like an amazing idea, but there is
Speaker 2: not as much research on them as you would probably
Speaker 2: like for such a huge term like used in psychobabble.
Speaker 2: And something they say is that it's not really a
Speaker 2: complete picture of what we need as people and as
Speaker 2: emotional beings. You know, five love languages does not make
Speaker 2: a relationship, does not make a human like there is
Speaker 2: a deeper core need behind each of them that can
Speaker 2: be met, not just through that expression that we normally
Speaker 2: talk about. Do you think that it's easier to heal?
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you one final question. It's another
Speaker 2: hot seat question. So yes, I'm sure you have an
Speaker 2: amazing answer, But do you think that it's easier to
Speaker 2: heal and avoid an attachment style, dismissive, le fearful when
Speaker 2: you are single or in a relationship.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, what a great question. So I will
Speaker 4: say it depends on a number of factors. So we
Speaker 4: get this question all the time in our programs. People
Speaker 4: will constantly ask me this in like the weekly webinars
Speaker 4: we do, and I would say that it depends on
Speaker 4: how codependent you are. The reason being that if we
Speaker 4: are in a relationship and we're highly codependent, so what
Speaker 4: usually this means if you're anxiously attached or even fearful avoidant,
Speaker 4: we tend to have a lot of those more codependent
Speaker 4: patterns where will kind of people please or put other
Speaker 4: people before ourselves, And because people wouldn't share in that
Speaker 4: anxious side, it's it's quite a likelihood towards codependency. So
Speaker 4: if we are more codependent and we're trying to heal
Speaker 4: our attachment style, well in a relationship, sometimes it's hard
Speaker 4: because we will get really locked into prioritizing the relationship
Speaker 4: over our own self work. But if you're somebody who's
Speaker 4: highly committed to your personal growth and it's like a
Speaker 4: huge passion and you can really trust yourself to be
Speaker 4: mindful of that, then the reality is we can see
Speaker 4: faster progress in a relationship as well, because that's the
Speaker 4: real life work, right, that's like where we're really going
Speaker 4: to do that work and have to communicate differently and
Speaker 4: have to reprogram our core wounds so we don't take
Speaker 4: things personally and have to like actually share our needs
Speaker 4: with somebody so we can have really profound results in
Speaker 4: a short period of time if we're highly committed. If
Speaker 4: we're not that committed, we're just kind of dabbling around
Speaker 4: and like, oh, you know, I'm kind of I read
Speaker 4: about personal growth once a month or something like that.
Speaker 4: Then it's going to be easier to stay committed when
Speaker 4: we don't have the distraction of codependency by being more
Speaker 4: anxious leaning in our attachment style. Dismissive avoidance tend to
Speaker 4: actually do really well at healing when in a relationship
Speaker 4: because they're more action oriented, So they tend to do
Speaker 4: better when they're actually like showing up if they're committed
Speaker 4: to doing so. And so I would say overall, you'll
Speaker 4: generally see that easiest to hardest to heal. I would
Speaker 4: say anxious and dismissives generally heal a little quicker because
Speaker 4: they have less attachment trauma. Fearful avoidance generally have a
Speaker 4: little bit more, although when you get them into personal
Speaker 4: growth related stuff. They tend to like go a million
Speaker 4: miles an hour and really get stuck into the work
Speaker 4: because they tend to really like the depth of all
Speaker 4: of that stuff. Those are those fearful avoidant needs and
Speaker 4: they like growth. But we will see that as long
Speaker 4: as somebody is highly committed in or out of a
Speaker 4: relationship can work. I personally, when I first started doing
Speaker 4: a lot of healing work, was really single for like
Speaker 4: three and a half years. I was like not dating
Speaker 4: anybody anything, and I was really codependent, and I think
Speaker 4: that was good for me. But in retrospect, like I
Speaker 4: didn't need three and a half years, Like I could have,
Speaker 4: you know, done the first year or two of work
Speaker 4: that I did and then gotten back into relationship and
Speaker 4: I had a lot of work to do. But you'll see,
Speaker 4: if people are committed, that's really the overarging factor. Whether
Speaker 4: you're in or out of the relationship, are you doing
Speaker 4: the work, are you willing to stay consistent with it?
Speaker 4: And as long as you're doing that, I think that
Speaker 4: you can actually have more of an upside on being
Speaker 4: in a relationship because it can create more rapid growth
Speaker 4: more quickly.
Speaker 2: That is such an amazing answer, and I love how
Speaker 2: there's like, it's not just a simple one. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not just like no, yeah, you should be single
Speaker 2: before you fix this. You know, you need to be
Speaker 2: single in order to work through this. It's like, No,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people who are in relationships
Speaker 2: that have been quite successful, but they just want them
Speaker 2: to be better, and they just realize that maybe these
Speaker 2: won't this won't last if this underlying pattern is not addressed.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of all the questions I have for
Speaker 2: you today. Thank you so much for coming on the
Speaker 2: show and breaking this down. Is there anything else on
Speaker 2: avoidant attachment styles, on this on theory that you haven't
Speaker 2: mentioned that you want to quickly say something about.
Speaker 4: I'll think one last really quick thing, which is that
Speaker 4: I find it to also be really be powerful as
Speaker 4: an accompanying healing strategy that we do a little bit
Speaker 4: of nervous systant regulation work. So if anybody is on
Speaker 4: this journey and they can just apply a simple tool
Speaker 4: like meditating in the morning, or breath work in the evenings,
Speaker 4: or just something that's helping them get out of this
Speaker 4: constant fight or flight and just get more back into
Speaker 4: their body and present in the relationship to self.
Speaker 3: It's usually like the fifth major pillar I'll mention after.
Speaker 4: The core wounds and the needs and the boundaries and
Speaker 4: communication as this kind of honorable mention that can just
Speaker 4: fast track the healing process.
Speaker 3: So another really great thing to focus on for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's honestly amazing because I feel like when you're
Speaker 2: i don't know, reconstructing how you see love and how
Speaker 2: you see others and how you see connection, like, it's
Speaker 2: going to be pretty scary and there will definitely be
Speaker 2: moments of like distress and moments of perhaps panic and
Speaker 2: being able to slow down and say to yourself, this
Speaker 2: is just an emotion, this is just a feeling. This
Speaker 2: is nothing that's going to end my life, nothing that's
Speaker 2: going to ruin my life. It's just my nervous system
Speaker 2: doing what it's meant to do, which is respond to
Speaker 2: a perceived threat. Yeah, I feel like we're going to
Speaker 2: be so much more successful. So thank you again for
Speaker 2: coming on a reminder that Ty's had another episode with
Speaker 2: us back in December, I think on Anxious Attachment Stars
Speaker 2: if you want to go and listen to that one
Speaker 2: as well. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please
Speaker 2: feel free to leave us a five star review on
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Speaker 2: we're talking about. If you have an episode suggestion, if
Speaker 2: you have a contribution to this episode, something that we
Speaker 2: didn't talk about, something that you would want us to
Speaker 2: expand on further your own experience, please message me at
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Speaker 2: And as always, until we speak next stay kind, be safe,
Speaker 2: and be gentle with yourself. We will be back next week.