Speaker 1: That's honestly what our relationship baggage is. And those are
Speaker 1: all things that interfere the most in our relationships. Oh
Speaker 1: I felt abandoned as a child, Okay, I project that
Speaker 1: as an adult. Oh I felt now good enough as
Speaker 1: a child. That's what I bring into my relationships as
Speaker 1: an adult. But those are solvable problems.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose today. My guest
Speaker 2: is Tyy Gibson, the founder of the Personal Development School
Speaker 2: and the creator of the New Attachment Theory Integrated Attachment Theory.
Speaker 2: Being a leading expert in the space, she helps people
Speaker 2: understand their relationship patterns. He'll call wounds and build secure,
Speaker 2: lasting love. In Tys's book, The New Attachment Theory, heal
Speaker 2: every relationship by rewiring your brain and nervous system. She
Speaker 2: shares practical tools to change the patterns that shape how
Speaker 2: we connect. Tedys Gibson, welcome to On Purpose.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. You're lovely and
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm really excited to chat with you.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful to have you here. Today's I feel
Speaker 2: like the world got addicted to attachment styles and got
Speaker 2: fascinated with the languaguage, and I think what so often
Speaker 2: happens is we find language to support how we feel,
Speaker 2: how we think. But then you're encouraging us with the
Speaker 2: new attachment theory to actually encourage us to heal, to transform,
Speaker 2: to grow. And I feel this is a conversation that
Speaker 2: every single person needs to hear because whether it's their
Speaker 2: love life, whether it's their workplace, whether it's their personal
Speaker 2: image of who they are, this conversation will make a
Speaker 2: difference in their life. Could you start by telling me
Speaker 2: if someone listens to our conversation today, what will change
Speaker 2: for them?
Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing, And to your point, like,
Speaker 1: I love that everybody. I've been studying this work for
Speaker 1: a long time and in this field for a long time,
Speaker 1: and when attachment style started becoming more mainstream, I was
Speaker 1: so excited. And then over time I started thinking, like, wait,
Speaker 1: it's almost becoming to the point where people are just
Speaker 1: identifying with it almost as a label, going oh, I
Speaker 1: just am this attachment style, rather than being in a
Speaker 1: position of going wait, I have to heal this, Like,
Speaker 1: let me understand this. This temporary label gives me contacts
Speaker 1: into the things within me that may need a lot,
Speaker 1: little bit more love or healing or support. But the
Speaker 1: actual work is being able to say, Okay, here are
Speaker 1: my patterns, where do they come from, and then actually
Speaker 1: rewiring them at the subconscious level. And that's what I
Speaker 1: definitely hope the key takeaway is for today.
Speaker 2: If someone has no idea what attachment styles are and
Speaker 2: this is their first time even hearing that term, how
Speaker 2: would you break you down for them and define it
Speaker 2: for them?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the first thing is everybody has an attachment
Speaker 1: style and there are four of them, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest studied bodies of work. Originally, and
Speaker 1: it originally came from John Bowlby and Mary Answorth of
Speaker 1: Cambridge University and they said, hey, there are four attachment styles.
Speaker 1: The first one is securely attached style. So they represent
Speaker 1: about fifty percent of the population data shows us. I
Speaker 1: always have a hard time with that. I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: it seems like it may not be quite so high.
Speaker 1: But basically, they have securely attached individuals are people who
Speaker 1: grew up in childhood with what we call a lot
Speaker 1: of approach oriented behaviors from their parents. And it sounds
Speaker 1: like such a small thing, but it goes such a
Speaker 1: long way. So approach oriented behaviors really means that when
Speaker 1: a child is young, if they cry or they get distressed,
Speaker 1: the parent is a tuned They're very present and they
Speaker 1: notice it and they approach the child to be like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong, and they attempt to sue them and make
Speaker 1: the child feel better. And what that conditions a child
Speaker 1: to believe at a very young age is my emotions
Speaker 1: are worthy of being seen and heard. It's safe to
Speaker 1: rely on other people. I can trust that people are
Speaker 1: going to be there for me, and also I can
Speaker 1: communicate and almost most importantly, I am worthy of love
Speaker 1: as I am on my good days, on my bad days,
Speaker 1: and my good moments and in my hard moments. And
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of really healthy condition that that
Speaker 1: child adopts. And so of course that's the type of
Speaker 1: patterning they bring into their relationships as adults. And what's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me is it securely attached people, they
Speaker 1: report not just having the longest lasting relationships, but they
Speaker 1: report the most satisfaction in their relationships. And that's a
Speaker 1: very meaningful thing. And I'm just a big believer in relationships.
Speaker 1: I love people, I care about people, and I really
Speaker 1: think that relationships determine the quality of our life in
Speaker 1: so many ways, and so that's very meaningful in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, the stats on that. And then we have
Speaker 1: three insecure attachment styles. This makes up the other fifty
Speaker 1: percent or so of the population.
Speaker 2: I call many fifty percent of people are secure. That's
Speaker 2: that's huge.
Speaker 1: That's what I think all the time.
Speaker 2: I feel like, oh, my girlfriends are struggling to find
Speaker 2: that that kind of person, Like all my friends who
Speaker 2: are dating, all my friends are dating, are definitely struggling
Speaker 2: to find that fifty percent.
Speaker 1: I always think that myself, and to be honest, first
Speaker 1: of all, it's conditioning, and we'll get into a lot
Speaker 1: of this, I'm sure, but condition changes. So somebody could
Speaker 1: be security young age when a lot of these experiments
Speaker 1: are originally done, and then they can go through relationship
Speaker 1: struggles and become insecure later. And secondly, I'm always like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe it's my sample size of people, you know, because
Speaker 1: I always see people wore insecurely attached become secure, So going, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe that's why. But securely attached people often end up
Speaker 1: in relationships pretty early with other securely attached people, and
Speaker 1: we can get into why that happens at a subconscious level,
Speaker 1: because you usually pair up with people of a specific
Speaker 1: attachment cell for specific reasons. But to your point, I
Speaker 1: wonder the same thing. I'm like, come on this out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the other fifty percent of the insecure attachment is.
Speaker 1: Exactly So then we have three and I like to
Speaker 1: think of the other three as being along a continuum
Speaker 1: in a way. So one end of the continuum of
Speaker 1: the anxious attachment style anxiously attached individuals. They grow up
Speaker 1: with either real or perceived abandonment. Real abandonment is the obvious.
Speaker 1: You know, a parent passes away at a young age
Speaker 1: god forbid, or a parent is you know, they leave
Speaker 1: at a young age for a child, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, that child grows up feeling like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: am I going to be left or abandoned again. Perceived
Speaker 1: abandonment is really interesting because the neuroscience of trauma tells
Speaker 1: us that small tea trauma repeatedly enough over time has
Speaker 1: a quite similar impact to a singular big tea trauma.
Speaker 1: So perceived abandonment consistently in a child's upbringing cause them
Speaker 1: to have real, real abandonment wounds as an adult, similar
Speaker 1: to if there was a real abandonment that took place,
Speaker 1: and perceived abandonment is things like you have very loving parents,
Speaker 1: but they're really busy. They're always working, they're always traveling
Speaker 1: for work. And so children grow up in this environment
Speaker 1: going Okay, love is here and then love is taken
Speaker 1: away and love is here and it's taken away, and
Speaker 1: that inconsistency there causes this child to really brace and
Speaker 1: deeply fear love being taken away. And so as adults,
Speaker 1: these individuals they adapt in their life to be like,
Speaker 1: let me really be charming and charismatic and well legged,
Speaker 1: so I win people low and they end up having
Speaker 1: superpowers in that way in many forms, but also anxiously
Speaker 1: attach adults. They people please so much to the point
Speaker 1: where they can burn themselves out, or they people please
Speaker 1: to the point of self silencing, and they're big wounds.
Speaker 1: So we took this original body of attachment theory and
Speaker 1: they know it, said here're your for attachment cells. Good luck,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of like, wait, but you can
Speaker 1: recondition pretty much anything, like you can rewire these things.
Speaker 1: And I originally started in this work for that reason.
Speaker 1: And so what we found is that anxious attachment cells
Speaker 1: They have big core wounds, specifically around the fear of abandonment,
Speaker 1: the fear of being alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, not good enough.
Speaker 1: These are like these huge wounds and triggers in their relationships,
Speaker 1: and they need very specific things in relationships. They need
Speaker 1: more validation, approval. They really like certainty if somebody cancels
Speaker 1: plans with them, they really want to know, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: canceling plans, but tell me what I'm going to see
Speaker 1: you next, and then they can sort of rest and
Speaker 1: feel comfortable and safe. And so they end up in
Speaker 1: situations where they sometimes struggle with their boundaries. Growing up,
Speaker 1: they often end up in situations as well where because
Speaker 1: they're so busy making sure that everybody else is good,
Speaker 1: they kind of forget about themselves and they put themselves
Speaker 1: on the back burner. So anxious attachment sells. As adults,
Speaker 1: they often also were very much invested in and attracted
Speaker 1: to emotionally unavailable people, and that becomes really problematic.
Speaker 2: It's different way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they become attracted to emotionally unavailable people because
Speaker 1: and I guess maybe I'll give a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a backstory to this, you know, for me, I
Speaker 1: originally got into this work because I, you know, had
Speaker 1: a turbulent childhood and actually got addicted to pain killers
Speaker 1: after a knee surgery at fifteen, and I you know,
Speaker 1: really struggled with about a six year daily use of
Speaker 1: opioids and tried in patient rehab and out patient rehab
Speaker 1: and had all of these these things come up. And
Speaker 1: what was really interesting is I felt like life was
Speaker 1: really hard, and I felt like relationships were really hard
Speaker 1: at that point, and I tried a lot of things
Speaker 1: that weren't really working. And I was in school for
Speaker 1: psychology and like maybe all the outside my life looked
Speaker 1: like you're doing well, You're you're okay, but on the inside,
Speaker 1: I was like a mass, like I was really hurting.
Speaker 1: And I was in a psych class and I was
Speaker 1: seriously thinking, like I think I need to leave school,
Speaker 1: like I don't think I can take this handless. And
Speaker 1: somebody said to me in a class they were like
Speaker 1: I wasn't even the professor as a student, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: your conscious mind can't outwill or overpower your subconscious mind.
Speaker 1: And for me that was like so powerful because I
Speaker 1: was sitting there going, oh, so you're telling me that,
Speaker 1: Like all the times they say I'm going to get clean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to change my life. I'm gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: stop all these these really painful things that I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to delete people's numbers from my phone. I'm
Speaker 1: going to change, and then I don't. It's not that
Speaker 1: I'm weak or powerless or not capable. It's that, like,
Speaker 1: this is actually what's going on, it's my subconscious mind.
Speaker 1: So I originally started this work by getting sober and
Speaker 1: then being obsessed with learning about the subconscious mind and
Speaker 1: the ego and how all this works from sort of
Speaker 1: this like spiritual perspective to how do we sort of
Speaker 1: transcend those patterns in those conditions. So I was originally
Speaker 1: working for the first few years of my actice not
Speaker 1: with attachment cells, but actually with people in their core wounds.
Speaker 1: So like, what are these big triggers that we carry
Speaker 1: from our past into our present and you know, how
Speaker 1: is this showing up in our life? And so what
Speaker 1: was really interesting about that is I was working with
Speaker 1: people on rewiring their triggers, learning their own needs and
Speaker 1: how to meet them in healthy ways, learning to regulate
Speaker 1: their nervous system, learning to communicate and set boundaries. And
Speaker 1: then I came to attachment cells actually because I met
Speaker 1: my now husband and we both had our own little
Speaker 1: things we hadn't worked out in relationships yet, and I
Speaker 1: started revisiting attachment theory, which I had learned at a
Speaker 1: very high level in university, and I was like, wait, Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, if I know somebody's attachment cell, I
Speaker 1: now know exactly what their core wounds are going to be,
Speaker 1: exactly what their needs are going to be, exactly what
Speaker 1: these emotional patterns are going to be in relationships, and
Speaker 1: what their nervous system is going to be functioning like.
Speaker 1: And I know what types of boundary issues they're going
Speaker 1: to have and how they tend to communicate in relationships.
Speaker 1: And it was so interesting because like original attachment theory
Speaker 1: didn't cover any of that. It was more about like
Speaker 1: temperament and some of your behaviors. And so I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, tell me somebody's attachment cell and I can
Speaker 1: help them rewire all these different patterns and themes. And
Speaker 1: so what was really exciting to me is like attachment
Speaker 1: styles became mainstream, but then it was like, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: your attachment cell. And that's when people start to identify
Speaker 1: instead of like, hey, let me do that underlying work.
Speaker 1: So going back to detoured there, but going back to this,
Speaker 1: that's the anxious attachment cell in the nutshells, Like, those
Speaker 1: are their themes and their patterns. They fear, like the abandonment,
Speaker 1: feeling not good enough, feeling excluded, dislike rejected. Those are
Speaker 1: those big triggers that they're bringing from their past because
Speaker 1: their subconscious mind was imprinted with that, and then we
Speaker 1: always project that into the present. And I often give
Speaker 1: people this analogy of like a bear in the woods.
Speaker 1: If you go into the woods tomorrow and you see
Speaker 1: a bear and you run from it and you're safe,
Speaker 1: thank goodness. But then the very next day you go
Speaker 1: back into the woods, Well, what does your mind do.
Speaker 1: You're like bracing for the bear. You're like the bear
Speaker 1: is coming. The trees blow in the wind, and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the bear. And so what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is that we all do that, right, we all have.
Speaker 1: Oh I felt abandoned as a child, Okay, I project
Speaker 1: that as an adult. Oh I felt not good enough
Speaker 1: as a child. That's what I bring into my relationships
Speaker 1: as an adult. And that's honestly what our relationship baggage is,
Speaker 1: and those are all things that interfere the most in
Speaker 1: our relationships, but those are solvable problems. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of the anxious attachment s all And do you want
Speaker 1: me to go into the other two?
Speaker 2: Yes, exact, Okay, so we have.
Speaker 1: Our secure we have are anxious. At the other end
Speaker 1: of the continuums are dismissive avoidant, So the dismissive avoidant
Speaker 1: attachment style. They grow up with their overarching theme being
Speaker 1: childhood emotional neglect. And sometimes you hear that and you
Speaker 1: kind of imagine that, Okay, this person is going through
Speaker 1: their childhood and you know they have this really intense
Speaker 1: dynamic where they're alone at three years old and they're
Speaker 1: trying to find food. Like of course it can be
Speaker 1: these really extreme scenarios, but most often childhood emotional neglect
Speaker 1: is very much that you have these kids who food's
Speaker 1: on the table, so there's structure and order, they're at
Speaker 1: school on time, but their parents are not emotionally available
Speaker 1: and not attuned. And it's usually not the inconsistency like
Speaker 1: once attuned and one's not. It's usually both are not
Speaker 1: really attuned, and they're much more uninvolved, and because children
Speaker 1: are literally wired for attunement, they are wired for connection.
Speaker 1: We need as children to feel safe and to feel
Speaker 1: seen and to feel special. Children come into this environment
Speaker 1: and they're like, Okay, well, I guess this part of
Speaker 1: me that needs this is defective and wrong. And so
Speaker 1: what they end up doing to adapt to an environment
Speaker 1: like that is repressing their attachment needs and minimizing their
Speaker 1: need for emotional connection. And so they feel better and
Speaker 1: like they have a sense of control when they're able
Speaker 1: to do that. But then as adults that really causes
Speaker 1: destruction to their relationships because they've learned, Okay, this part
Speaker 1: of me, my emotional, vulnerable self, is defective or shameful.
Speaker 1: If I express it too much, I'll be weak. These
Speaker 1: are their big triggers. They end up feeling very afraid
Speaker 1: of relying on other people and being helpless or trapped
Speaker 1: in a situation or engulfed, and they very much internalize
Speaker 1: a lot of shame from childhood because as a child,
Speaker 1: if you yearn for connection and it keeps getting rejected
Speaker 1: and nobody's paying attention, well, then of course as an
Speaker 1: adult you're like, oh, deep down, if people really see me,
Speaker 1: they're going to reject me like that too, and it
Speaker 1: must be shameful, like something deep down must be defective
Speaker 1: or broken within me. And so it's so interesting because
Speaker 1: they're very stoic. Dismissable winds are very stoic. You often
Speaker 1: don't see it, but that tends to be what they
Speaker 1: bring into their relationships. Those are their biggest core triggers
Speaker 1: and fears from this new attachment theory perspective. And so
Speaker 1: then we have these adults who go into their relationships
Speaker 1: and there are the types of individuals as adults who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, they're great at the beginning when everything's
Speaker 1: easy and light, and then after you date them for
Speaker 1: four or five six months, when things get a little
Speaker 1: more real and serious, they jet or they pull away,
Speaker 1: or they retreat, and then they end up in situations where,
Speaker 1: you know, even if they make it through that period
Speaker 1: of time and keep dating somebody and keep investing, they
Speaker 1: really retreat emotionally and they shut down. And so then
Speaker 1: you have these individuals as adults who are like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I'm trying to connect with
Speaker 1: you and my partner's not really available or present, and
Speaker 1: they really cope by trying to always minimize their attachment
Speaker 1: needs and create space, and so they become quite distant
Speaker 1: in relationships. And then the very last one is the
Speaker 1: fearful avoidant attachment style. Fearful avoidance are basically characterized by
Speaker 1: more big T trauma growing up, some more emotional chaos.
Speaker 1: You know, it can be anything from like having a
Speaker 1: parent with narcissistic personality disorder to having a parent who
Speaker 1: is an alcoholic or parents an active addiction, are really
Speaker 1: intense divorce growing up. You have more extreme kind of
Speaker 1: scenarios that that children are exposed to, but they're wiring
Speaker 1: is such that. Well, an anxious attachment style is like
Speaker 1: they always want more closeness than to win people over,
Speaker 1: and avoidance always want more space and to keep distance.
Speaker 1: Fearful avoidance learn that love is both a really good
Speaker 1: thing and a really hard thing. Interesting, so they grow
Speaker 1: up essentially going, well, love is a good thing because
Speaker 1: let's say, for example, that mom is an alcoholic. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe one day mom comes home and she's had a
Speaker 1: few drinks, but she's in a good mood and she's
Speaker 1: loving and she embraces you, and you're like, oh, love
Speaker 1: is safe, love is good. I want more of this
Speaker 1: and then other days, maybe mom's an alcoholic and she's
Speaker 1: drinking more heavily, and now she's angry drunk, and she's
Speaker 1: cruel and she's mean and she's unpredictable. And a child
Speaker 1: is like, well, love is a really good thing, but
Speaker 1: it can also really hurt me. It will be really
Speaker 1: harsh and critical and cruel sometimes to me, And so
Speaker 1: they end up having very competing associations about the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're like, love is both really good and really bad.
Speaker 1: And then as adults what ends up happening is they're
Speaker 1: the very hot and cold partner. A lot of their
Speaker 1: core wounds from their childhood. Their version of the bear
Speaker 1: in the woods is they fear abandonment because they feel
Speaker 1: that abandonment when that love isn't there. They fear being
Speaker 1: trapped and helpless if they rely on people, because they've
Speaker 1: had times where they rely on somebody who's really unpredictable
Speaker 1: and scary, and they have a huge core wound around
Speaker 1: feeling betrayed. That's the biggest wound we found from the
Speaker 1: new attachment theory perspective, is like always waiting for the
Speaker 1: other shoe to drop, always waiting to be on high alert,
Speaker 1: like is somebody gonna hurt me. And what happens to
Speaker 1: fearful avoidance is they get into relationships and love feels
Speaker 1: like a very bittersweet experience. And I'll speak for myself
Speaker 1: because I was a fearful avoidant, and I remember before
Speaker 1: doing a lot of deep in our work, my early
Speaker 1: serious relationships when I was much younger, feeling like I
Speaker 1: would fall in love and feeling like I loved the
Speaker 1: feeling of being in love and connecting and really wanted
Speaker 1: that depth and connection. But it was also very bittersweet
Speaker 1: because the more I loved, the more I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're for sure going to hurt me that much more,
Speaker 1: Like this is going to be a really bad ending,
Speaker 1: and there was this sort of belief that everything was
Speaker 1: going to inevitably be really bad and really painful. So
Speaker 1: love feels so good, but it also feels like a
Speaker 1: threat and it's scary, and it causes you in a
Speaker 1: relationship to be like come get close, coming close, and
Speaker 1: somebody get closer, like get back. I changed my mind.
Speaker 1: And so you see this, and you see it like clockwork.
Speaker 1: I've seen this with tons of thousands of clients I've
Speaker 1: worked with the same themes the same patterns. And I
Speaker 1: remember having one woman and she said to me, I
Speaker 1: could tell by the way my mom got home from work.
Speaker 1: I would be upstairs in my room, and I could
Speaker 1: tell by the way my mom closed the door on
Speaker 1: her way in if I should close my door quickly
Speaker 1: or not. And it's like, fearful avoids learned to be
Speaker 1: very hyper vigilant. They learned to read between the lines.
Speaker 1: They read like every little micro expression and body language
Speaker 1: and change in a tone of voice, because that's how
Speaker 1: they've learned to attach. So anxious people are like, let me,
Speaker 1: let me get close to you, and people please Dismissive
Speaker 1: avoidance are like, let me keep space. Fearful avoidance are like,
Speaker 1: let me notice little thing about you so I can
Speaker 1: predict your future and I can know how to respond.
Speaker 1: And it gives them that superpower in a way. But
Speaker 1: often then when you have these wounds and then you
Speaker 1: jump to conclusions like, oh, something change, something's off, you're
Speaker 1: gonna band and or betray me, or you're trying to
Speaker 1: control me, and you sort of jump to those conclusions.
Speaker 1: It makes for a really turbulent set of relationships and lifestyle.
Speaker 2: I think what you just explained I think everyone listening
Speaker 2: is like, that's who I am, that's who i've dated,
Speaker 2: that's who my parents are, right Like, when you break
Speaker 2: you down that way, I feel it gives people so
Speaker 2: much clarity to actually recognize all the mistakes they're repeating,
Speaker 2: all the things they're carrying. Why we walk into relationships
Speaker 2: where we can sense something doesn't quite make sense, or
Speaker 2: why we get attracted to familiar patterns that we saw
Speaker 2: in our parents. It feels like this can help people
Speaker 2: actually give them a map of how to make sense
Speaker 2: of their emotions and even the people they meet. What
Speaker 2: would you encourage someone to do differently? If someone's listening
Speaker 2: right now and they're dating, how can they use what
Speaker 2: you've just shared to date differently?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so really good question. So you touched on something
Speaker 1: earlier and I sidetracked and good to come back to.
Speaker 1: But it's actually this, It's that we you were like,
Speaker 1: what causes that sort of attraction piece and this place
Speaker 1: right into this, which is we are attracted to people.
Speaker 1: So your conscious mind is responsible for three to five
Speaker 1: percent of all of your beliefs, your thoughts, your emotions,
Speaker 1: your actions. Your subconscious and unconscious collectively are ninety five
Speaker 1: to ninety seven percent. And so what's really interesting is
Speaker 1: consciously our conscious minds, our logical analytical mind, and our
Speaker 1: subconsciousness are our habituate itself, our programming or conditioning, and
Speaker 1: our conscious mind will say, I want the emotionally available partner,
Speaker 1: I want the person who is ready to be and
Speaker 1: a related We'll say all the things in the world,
Speaker 1: but secure people feel that consciously and subconsciously. Insecure people don't.
Speaker 1: Insecurelyttuch people don't really have that same experience. So, for example,
Speaker 1: our subconscious mind equates familiarity to safety and thus survival,
Speaker 1: and ultimately we're survival wired. And so what ends up
Speaker 1: happening is people who are let's say anxiously attached, for example,
Speaker 1: they'll often say consciously that they want the emotionally available partner,
Speaker 1: but they will feel most attracted to and be most
Speaker 1: likely to invest in because your subconscious mind runs the
Speaker 1: show people who are most familiar. What is most familiar
Speaker 1: to each of us is actually the way we treat ourselves.
Speaker 1: And so if you look at the anxious person, how
Speaker 1: does the anxious person treat themselves well? Because they're so
Speaker 1: externally focused on everybody else's feelings, and needs. They often
Speaker 1: dismiss and avoid their own feelings, their needs, their boundaries,
Speaker 1: and so what happens as a result of that is
Speaker 1: they are very much often attracted to people who will
Speaker 1: mirror that back to them. And even if you flip
Speaker 1: that around to the dismissive avoidant, dismissive avoidance end up
Speaker 1: in situations where they're like preoccupied with their own time
Speaker 1: to themselves. They're going, do I have enough time to
Speaker 1: myself to regulate? Do I have enough space? And so
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is consciously they'll say, oh, I want
Speaker 1: somebody who gets my freedom and respects it. But subconsciously
Speaker 1: they'll often go and invest in people who are very
Speaker 1: preoccupied with them. And so that's why you often pair
Speaker 1: up with people of different attachment cells, and that's often
Speaker 1: why you see secure people will be with secure people.
Speaker 1: And so when it comes to dating, the most important thing,
Speaker 1: and I will say this forever and nobody likes to
Speaker 1: hear of, but it's the truth, is that the most
Speaker 1: important thing you're ever going to do is learn to
Speaker 1: have a secure relationship with yourself first. And that's going
Speaker 1: to be through rewiring these insecure patterns. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: we can get into all the ways, how but rewiring
Speaker 1: those insecure patterns. Because you can say that you want
Speaker 1: the healthiest relationship, you can have your checklist, you can
Speaker 1: know your needs, you can try to ask all the
Speaker 1: right questions on the dates and go to the right
Speaker 1: places and find the right people. But ultimately you often
Speaker 1: will find that you're in relationships with people who might
Speaker 1: have all those things on the checklist, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I just don't feel trafted to them. Oh this person,
Speaker 1: And I've heard this all the time. I actually used
Speaker 1: to do this when I was much younger, before doing
Speaker 1: the work. I had people who would date them or
Speaker 1: start to get to know them, and they were very secure,
Speaker 1: and I would be like, this is kind of boring.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: Where's the roller coaster? Because that's what was most familiar,
Speaker 1: And this is like a conversation about with thousands of people.
Speaker 1: At this point, we are not going to be attracted
Speaker 1: to the right people according to our conscious mind's evaluation
Speaker 1: of it until we do that in our work for
Speaker 1: us to heal to become secure to self, and then
Speaker 1: that will be attracted to and want to invest in
Speaker 1: with other people.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense. It's why making the list
Speaker 2: of everything you want in your ideal person doesn't just
Speaker 2: make sense because that's a conscious mind. Or this idea
Speaker 2: of oh, if you vision them and dream them and
Speaker 2: vision board them doesn't make sense because that's your conscious mind.
Speaker 2: And while everything meanwhile, everything's happening in your subconscious mind,
Speaker 2: which isn't ready, isn't prepared. Is rejecting someone that's actually
Speaker 2: good for you is boring and accepting someone who's terrible
Speaker 2: for you because it's familiar, and so the chaos and
Speaker 2: the ups and downs, and so that may it now
Speaker 2: makes sense listening to that why we're attracted to the
Speaker 2: people that make us feel insecure or people that are
Speaker 2: not emotionally available, because we've had that before, so we
Speaker 2: know what behaviors to play into, which is, I'll be hypervigilant,
Speaker 2: if I'm a fearful avoidant, I'll be super distant. If
Speaker 2: I'm one of you knows, it's fascinating to me that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just listening to that just makes it make sense. And
Speaker 2: as you said, the advice you just gave is becoming
Speaker 2: secure in your relationship with yourself. You're not just saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you have to love yourself first, or you have to
Speaker 2: you're saying to actually, you can actually technically develop a
Speaker 2: subconscious relationship with yourself that is based on security and safety.
Speaker 1: Yes, so earlier when I was saying there was the
Speaker 1: original attachment theory was like these are the attachment styles,
Speaker 1: but kind of just talked about their temperaments and some
Speaker 1: of the themes and their childhood and how they behave.
Speaker 1: I had already been doing this work with like the
Speaker 1: core wounds and the needs and the nervous system frameworks
Speaker 1: with people and help people communicate and how they behave,
Speaker 1: and I was specifically in the body of work for
Speaker 1: the first few years I was working with people, just
Speaker 1: helping people like rewire their painful patterns and a lot
Speaker 1: of it was from their childhood conditioning. But I hadn't
Speaker 1: ever put it into the theme of like attachment styles.
Speaker 1: And then when I met my husband and we started
Speaker 1: getting more serious, and I was like, ooh, I still
Speaker 1: have a little like relationship work to do. I don't
Speaker 1: a lot of work to be really peaceful with him myself,
Speaker 1: but I had a little relationship work to do with him,
Speaker 1: and I kind of felt like he also had some
Speaker 1: work to do with me, and I revisited more about
Speaker 1: learning about relationships, and the first time I went back
Speaker 1: to it was like, oh, attachment cells, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness. Once I know somebody's attachments cell, Every attachment
Speaker 1: cell has these core wounds and these patterns with their
Speaker 1: needs and these patterns with their nervous system communication behaviors.
Speaker 1: And so what we ended up creating is this whole
Speaker 1: body of work that's you can actually rewire each of
Speaker 1: those things at the subconscious level, because your subconscious mind
Speaker 1: is literally driving your life. And so it's like all
Speaker 1: of the condition that we've picked up from past experiences
Speaker 1: in our own personal warehouse, how do we start to
Speaker 1: recondition and we really boil it into those five pillars.
Speaker 1: So the first pillar and this is like, I love
Speaker 1: that you said it's not just about self love, because
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't know. Sometimes you hear stuff and people
Speaker 1: say just forgive people, and you're like, that would be
Speaker 1: nice if I felt like that. How do I emotionally
Speaker 1: arrive there and how do I actually feel that deeply?
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the work is how do
Speaker 1: we actually get to our subconscious mind because that's how
Speaker 1: things unfold this way, And same with self love. It's
Speaker 1: a subconscious process because if you didn't get love mirror
Speaker 1: too in healthy ways growing up, you're going to mirror
Speaker 1: that back in the relationship to yourself and as adult,
Speaker 1: and then you're going to be attracted to unhealthy forms
Speaker 1: of love as an adult with other people. So first
Speaker 1: pillar of really healing is to learn to rewire your
Speaker 1: core wounds, and we can go through a natural exercise here.
Speaker 1: So first step, there's three steps in doing this. Let's
Speaker 1: just say, for EA's sake, that the core wound is
Speaker 1: not good enough when we talked about each of them
Speaker 1: for the different attachment styles earlier, So people can kind
Speaker 1: of hold that core wound in their mind that stood
Speaker 1: out to them, and you ideally want to work on
Speaker 1: one at a time. So not good enough? What is
Speaker 1: the opposite? I am good enough. That part's really easy.
Speaker 1: The second piece when it comes to actually rewiring these
Speaker 1: things is I'm not a big believer in affirmations. The
Speaker 1: reason being that affirmations are of the conscious mind. Your
Speaker 1: conscious mind speaks language. Okay, your subconscious mind does not
Speaker 1: speak language. It doesn't really understand language much at all.
Speaker 2: What does a subconscious mind speak?
Speaker 1: It speaks in emotions and images. So if I say
Speaker 1: to you, Okay, whatever you do, Jay, do not think
Speaker 1: of a pink elephant. Like you probably flash an image
Speaker 1: of a pink elephant even though you heard do not,
Speaker 1: your conscious mind herd do not. And then after you
Speaker 1: flash the image and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: thought of the elephant. That's because our subconscious also reacts
Speaker 1: a little bit more quickly than our conscious mind in
Speaker 1: many ways. So we have to actually use our conscious
Speaker 1: mind to rewire our subconscious mind, because we can do that,
Speaker 1: but we actually our conscious mind cannot outwill or overpower
Speaker 1: our subconscious mind, can only rewire it. Part of why
Speaker 1: you hear people be like, oh, I said I was
Speaker 1: going to quit eating chocolate for my New Year's resolution,
Speaker 1: and then they go back to eating chocolate three days later.
Speaker 1: Because the last things are built into your subconscious we
Speaker 1: really have a hard time changing behaviors. So first step,
Speaker 1: I am not good enough. I am good enough, the
Speaker 1: opposite of your core wound. I'll be abandoned, I'm worthy
Speaker 1: of connection, I'll be unloved, I'm lovable. Right, so we
Speaker 1: pick the opposite step two because we need repetition of
Speaker 1: emotions and imagery because repetition fires and wires in neural pathways,
Speaker 1: emotions and images do it at the subconscious level. So
Speaker 1: you're like, how do we find emotions and images? Well, interestingly,
Speaker 1: every memory we ever have is a container of emotions
Speaker 1: and imagery.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So if you say, okay, what was your favorite childhood
Speaker 1: memory and you were playing at the beach or the ocean,
Speaker 1: and you see the reds bucket and you see the
Speaker 1: waves and your family's faces, like you see the images,
Speaker 1: and we've all seen when people have an exciting experience
Speaker 1: or a happy memory, they smile or they laugh or
Speaker 1: their body language changes. And so what we do is
Speaker 1: we're going to come up with ten memories to support
Speaker 1: the new idea that we're trying to drive to the
Speaker 1: subconscious mind. So, for example, I am good enough ten
Speaker 1: times I actually felt good enough. And they do not
Speaker 1: have to be big. It can be things like I
Speaker 1: was a good friend last week, I had our conversation
Speaker 1: with my spouse two weeks ago, whatever it is. It
Speaker 1: can be small things. But we need to just elictit
Speaker 1: a little bit of emotion, that imagery of the memory,
Speaker 1: and we need ten of them. Step three, we record
Speaker 1: ourselves sing out loud, so ideally we write them down.
Speaker 1: We record ourselves singing into our phone, and then our
Speaker 1: subconscious mind actually sponges up a lot of information more
Speaker 1: effectively when we are in a suggestible state, meaning our
Speaker 1: brain is producing more alpha brain waves. And so what
Speaker 1: we get people to do is to sit down. They
Speaker 1: record themselves saying this out loud. It takes two minutes
Speaker 1: to listen back, and your brain produces a lot more
Speaker 1: alpha brain waves. After a good meditation, the first hour
Speaker 1: that you wake up, before drinking coffee, the last hour
Speaker 1: before you go to sleep, after intense exercise, breath work,
Speaker 1: these types of things, you're in more alpha brain wave mode,
Speaker 1: when your mind is more relaxed, more still. And then
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're listening back to those things
Speaker 1: during that time, the voice in your own voice exactly
Speaker 1: saying it out loud. You're listening back and you're very
Speaker 1: much focusing on the images and the emotion as you
Speaker 1: feel back in that suggestible state. A neuroscience search tells
Speaker 1: us if we are in a suggestible state, Doing that
Speaker 1: for twenty one days builds new neural networks that are
Speaker 1: very strong that they are highly likely to stet And
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is we surveyed people who did this.
Speaker 1: We're like, okay, let's actually track how people are doing this.
Speaker 1: People said they stuck to it every day for twenty
Speaker 1: one days. We had like tens of sixty thousand people
Speaker 1: who we did the survey on. People said they did
Speaker 1: not miss a day for twenty one days. Reported a
Speaker 1: ninety nine point seven percent score in actually rewiring the wounds.
Speaker 1: So it's highly effective, it's very simple, and it's something
Speaker 1: like anybody can do right now. And if you really
Speaker 1: look like those wounds, those are the things that recavoc
Speaker 1: on people's lives in relationships. Those are the really painful
Speaker 1: things that Those are a relationship baggage that we're really carrying,
Speaker 1: and those are why we keep choosing the wrong scenarios
Speaker 1: over and over again or that same unavailable partner. So
Speaker 1: really simple starter tool for rewire and that's when I
Speaker 1: like to share it to begin with. And it's something
Speaker 1: people can just do at home from listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is something you help people do in
Speaker 2: your school, right this. Yeah, so this is the transition
Speaker 2: that you're helping people build these skills and abilities exactly.
Speaker 1: So we really focus on. We do these ninety day
Speaker 1: programs that help people go through these five pillars and
Speaker 1: rewire each of these pillars at the subconscious level. That's
Speaker 1: just the first pillar of core wounds. And I'm happy
Speaker 1: to go through like each of the pillars and share
Speaker 1: about them. But that's a really good exercise we start
Speaker 1: people off because it's high effective, it's super simple. There's
Speaker 1: other cool tools that you can use as well, but
Speaker 1: it's a really good and to start. As people went
Speaker 1: through our programs, people reported a two hundred percent increase
Speaker 1: in relationship satisfaction, feeling more connected, more happy, more fulfilled,
Speaker 1: fifty percent less conflict because people were more regulated and
Speaker 1: have all these triggers coming up, and obviously less fighting
Speaker 1: as a result, feeling more connected from that perspective. And
Speaker 1: then people who are out of a relationship doing this
Speaker 1: work on themselves and just preparing to go into dating
Speaker 1: reported three hundred percent more confidence in their dating life
Speaker 1: because they felt like they knew what they wanted, but
Speaker 1: also they weren't always triggered going into dating and panicking
Speaker 1: and having all these things come up, which is really
Speaker 1: important if you're going into relationships that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I assume that unless you've done this work,
Speaker 2: even what you want may not be right or good
Speaker 2: for you, even consciously or subconsciously right.
Speaker 1: To be honest, like, I don't like to fear monger
Speaker 1: people from saying it, but I've just seen a lot
Speaker 1: of people over the years who they know you build
Speaker 1: a relationship from insecure attachment first, and you go in
Speaker 1: and you're in this power struggle stage of your relationship
Speaker 1: and you're fighting and you're going back and forth. It's
Speaker 1: really difficult, and then people end up sometimes doing the
Speaker 1: healing work and being like, my partner's not willing to
Speaker 1: do any work with me, or communicate differently or do anything,
Speaker 1: and like, maybe I'm in the wrong relationship. So there
Speaker 1: is a risk if you're not with the right person
Speaker 1: to do that. Now, sometimes people do the work in relationships,
Speaker 1: and that's beautiful and it's a really powerful potent place
Speaker 1: to be doing the work. But I always tell people too, like,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, each person in a relationship is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent responsible for their fifty percent of their relationship,
Speaker 1: so it can't be one person doing all the emotional
Speaker 1: load for both people, and work looks different for different people.
Speaker 1: It's not always both people sitting down doing the reprogramming
Speaker 1: and doing the work in that way, but one person
Speaker 1: has to be willing to practice hashing out conflicts learning.
Speaker 1: You know, if one person's following or communication frameworks, the
Speaker 1: other person has to be willing to listen and jump
Speaker 1: in and move through conflict that way, because otherwise we
Speaker 1: don't really get resolution.
Speaker 2: If you could summarize for us the second to the
Speaker 2: fifth so that we have a process of what it
Speaker 2: looks like to build that relationship with ourselves, because as
Speaker 2: you're saying, that's the most important stying point, and I'm
Speaker 2: thinking for all of our audience, before we get into
Speaker 2: certain relationship dynamics, it might be useful for them to
Speaker 2: have one step by step process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the first wound, the first pillar is rewiring
Speaker 1: your court wounds. That gives people so much relief, and honestly,
Speaker 1: just as somebody who's done a lot of this work
Speaker 1: on myself, first, I was my own first guinea pig,
Speaker 1: you know, fourteen fifteen years ago before really getting into
Speaker 1: working with people. The biggest change I noticed is that
Speaker 1: I used to always be in this like internal emotional drama,
Speaker 1: like this person is going to abandon me, this person
Speaker 1: is going to can I really trust? Is this person
Speaker 1: trying to control me? Like all of these my mind
Speaker 1: was so busy, and when I really did a lot
Speaker 1: of this rewiring out of all those painful patterns, it
Speaker 1: felt I had so much space back in my mind,
Speaker 1: Like I had space to think of how I wanted
Speaker 1: to design my life and create things, and just like
Speaker 1: room to be present in things. And that was just
Speaker 1: such a beautiful piece. So that's pillar number one, pillar
Speaker 1: number two. As people have to learn their own needs
Speaker 1: and how to meet them in the relationship to themselves.
Speaker 1: We'll get into how to communicate them after, but in
Speaker 1: the relationship to self first. And the reason for this
Speaker 1: is it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes
Speaker 1: from gaber Matte, and he says, trauma are the things
Speaker 1: that happened that shouldn't have happened. That's the obvious, like
Speaker 1: the abuse things like that in childhood. But trauma's also
Speaker 1: the things that happened or that sorry, that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: that should have happened. And that's like the neglect, you know,
Speaker 1: or that's it. Maybe you didn't feel safe as a child,
Speaker 1: or scene or protected or you didn't feel like your
Speaker 1: parents were present enough with you growing up. So that's
Speaker 1: also trauma because in a perfect world, we actually would
Speaker 1: have had our needs met in a healthy and consistent
Speaker 1: way where we felt like we could really rely on people.
Speaker 1: And so that's our second pillar is I get people
Speaker 1: to go in and audit what are your biggest unmet
Speaker 1: needs from childhood, and you'll see people. For some people,
Speaker 1: it's like I didn't feel like my parents were present
Speaker 1: enough with me, or I didn't feel protected, or I
Speaker 1: didn't feel like I had that ability to really learn
Speaker 1: from a parent or be deeply seen or known or
Speaker 1: attuned to. I mean, there's a lot of needs in there,
Speaker 1: but we give a big list of needs and it's
Speaker 1: okay if these are your deepest on met needs. What's
Speaker 1: really interesting is we internalize all of that condition and
Speaker 1: so whatever we didn't get met, we're often not meeting.
Speaker 1: In the relationship to self. If somebody wasn't present enough
Speaker 1: with you growing up, that's actually a huge part of healing.
Speaker 1: It's okay, well, I'm probably not very present with myself.
Speaker 1: Or if people said I really need validation, I didn't
Speaker 1: feel validated growing up. Unfortunately, usually you're playing up that programming,
Speaker 1: and you're the one struggling to validate yourself the most,
Speaker 1: and you're sort of validating everybody else before you. And
Speaker 1: so what's really beautiful is it's deeply healing for people
Speaker 1: to go in audit where they're missing these deep needs
Speaker 1: and then for twenty one days, through that repetition and
Speaker 1: emotion to really fire and wire those nural networks. We
Speaker 1: get people to go through here my deepest on met
Speaker 1: needs and actual actions and practices to meet them within
Speaker 1: relationship to self. And once we do for twenty one days,
Speaker 1: very repeatedly, and it elstits this emotional impact and we're
Speaker 1: doing it physiologically, so we have that like imagery that
Speaker 1: we're reaching our subconscious mind. That becomes our new baseline,
Speaker 1: it becomes our new step point, and we just become
Speaker 1: good at doing those things. And as an example, as
Speaker 1: somebody who did all this work on myself first fourteen
Speaker 1: years ago, fifteen years ago, one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: I really wanted was emotional depth, Like I always cared
Speaker 1: about that with other people and liking to go deep
Speaker 1: into things. And I realized, oh my gosh, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to and we always do this. We try to resource
Speaker 1: from other people the most, the things we struggle to
Speaker 1: self source.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, well said yeah.
Speaker 1: We try to resource the most from other people the
Speaker 1: things that we struggle to self source the most with itself.
Speaker 1: And so what ends up taking place is that we
Speaker 1: also put all that pressure on those relationships, you know,
Speaker 1: anxious attachmentselves for example, they really struggle to self soothe,
Speaker 1: so they're like, my partner always needs to be available
Speaker 1: to soothe me, or fearful avoidance end up being like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can trust people. I feel
Speaker 1: like they're going to betray me. So that person better, oh,
Speaker 1: always be one hundred percent congruent, they better never tell
Speaker 1: a white behind nothing, or or you know, I might
Speaker 1: have to leave the relationship, or dismissile avoidance. They end
Speaker 1: up in situations where they're going, Okay, well I don't
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know that people understand me, and
Speaker 1: you know, I really need them to understand me without
Speaker 1: me having to communicate, because they really struggle to communicate vulnerablely.
Speaker 1: So we all accidentally pressure our external relationships because we
Speaker 1: don't how to self source, and so self sourcing is
Speaker 1: obviously profoundly healing for our relationships in life, but also
Speaker 1: it's profoundly healing in the relationship to self.
Speaker 2: First, where does self sourcing come from? When you've never
Speaker 2: had it and never felt it? Like I think people
Speaker 2: struggle to like, where do you find it? Because I'll
Speaker 2: often talk to my friends about this idea of self validation,
Speaker 2: and I'll talk about how self validation is the most
Speaker 2: powerful form of validation I've ever given myself, more than
Speaker 2: any form of external validation. But often something they come
Speaker 2: up against is like where do you even find that?
Speaker 2: Where do you discover that? Because if no one's ever
Speaker 2: valid if you've never experienced it, where does it appear from?
Speaker 1: Okay, so really beautiful question. So is the analogy I
Speaker 1: give to people all the time for this. It's not
Speaker 1: the prettiest analogy, but it's the cold hard troup. If
Speaker 1: you remember the first time I were started to drive
Speaker 1: a car. I remember the first time I tried to
Speaker 1: drive a car. Was so sided to drive a car,
Speaker 1: and then I got in the highway and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, keep the wheel turt you know, keep
Speaker 1: between the lines, and look in your re your mirror
Speaker 1: and your side mirrors, and put your signal and oh,
Speaker 1: like I just felt like, oh my gosh, it's very
Speaker 1: mechanical to learn to drive a car, and then you
Speaker 1: do it for a while, and then you end up
Speaker 1: in a situation where you're, you know, a year later
Speaker 1: or in a pretty short time later, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: days later, you're listening to a podcast while you're driving,
Speaker 1: or listening to your favorite radio station, or putting on music,
Speaker 1: or talking on the phone to your front whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. And it's because what we're actually doing is
Speaker 1: doing something that it first feels mechanical. We're giving to
Speaker 1: ourselves what we didn't get, and over time, through repetition
Speaker 1: and emotion, it actually seeps into our subconscious mind and
Speaker 1: that's when it feels normal and natural. So what we
Speaker 1: get people to do is we actually have a list
Speaker 1: of every major need that people reported over collecting all
Speaker 1: the data, and then we have people we have like
Speaker 1: three or four, Hey, you can do these three or
Speaker 1: four things that are usually the healthiest, most direct ways
Speaker 1: of getting those needs met, and then we get them
Speaker 1: to actively practice it across that twenty one day. So,
Speaker 1: for example, self validation is usually things like it can
Speaker 1: be as small as just writing out three of your
Speaker 1: wins each day and just taking the time to really
Speaker 1: pause and be like, hey, I did this today. I'm
Speaker 1: proud of these things today. Big or small. It can
Speaker 1: be like I made it to work early, it can
Speaker 1: be anything, but just having that ability to start training
Speaker 1: your subconscious mind to practice recognizing those things in your life.
Speaker 1: And of course there's a slightly different one for each need,
Speaker 1: but when people start giving those needs to themselves. This
Speaker 1: sounds very cliche, but I really believe that if we
Speaker 1: had attachment wounds growing up, healing really happens when we
Speaker 1: become our own parents, and instead of trying to externalize
Speaker 1: our parents should have done it for us. Are perfectly
Speaker 1: like our parents are human beings too, and so when
Speaker 1: we give to ourselves what we felt like we couldn't
Speaker 1: access through them, and we do it through that repetition,
Speaker 1: that's that second big pillar.
Speaker 2: Understood, got it very clear? You know, I'm glad that
Speaker 2: you you clarify that piece about validation, and I assume
Speaker 2: what I'm hearing from you is it is practice. It
Speaker 2: is going to feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable, but
Speaker 2: there isn't another magic pill there or any piece of
Speaker 2: advice that solves it. It's like we're going to have
Speaker 2: to build that muscle over time of learning to validate ourselves,
Speaker 2: which we just haven't developed exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh, just the last things that you can look in
Speaker 1: the seven areas of life. For if some people are
Speaker 1: just really stuck, they sit at the sheet and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: three wins, I have no idea. You can look through career, financial, mental, emotional, spiritual,
Speaker 1: physical relationships. You can break relationships down into friends, family, romantic,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that helps, Like those prompts can get wheels turning,
Speaker 1: and it starts as something that you're sitting there doing,
Speaker 1: but it becomes something and they usually buys some day
Speaker 1: seven or so people are like, oh yeah, this is this.
Speaker 1: Oh three, like that took me two seconds. Oh. And
Speaker 1: then what's really beautiful is we have this mechanism in
Speaker 1: our brain called the reticular activating system, and it's our
Speaker 1: filtering system of information. People always talk about this in
Speaker 1: the personal for oh, if you see a car and
Speaker 1: you're trying to buy a white jeep, you're going to
Speaker 1: see a whitejeep everywhere. It is. It's your filtering system
Speaker 1: in that way. But it also filters information according to
Speaker 1: what we already believe, and so you know, if your
Speaker 1: core beliefs are working against you, then that becomes problematic.
Speaker 1: But if you rewire them in pillar one, that helps
Speaker 1: a lot. But also, according to the information you're really
Speaker 1: giving and taking in repeatedly, you start noticing more and more.
Speaker 1: It sort of opens up that filtering system to notice
Speaker 1: those things. So what's really beautiful is when people start
Speaker 1: doing that work, they often end up in a situation
Speaker 1: where they're going, oh, yeah, I did have this one. Oh,
Speaker 1: and they notice it in real time throughout the day
Speaker 1: and they feel it, and so it really gives that
Speaker 1: ability to start noticing that in a more natural way
Speaker 1: across time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And step three, so third pillar is nervous system work.
Speaker 1: So we always hear things like people are in sympathetic mode,
Speaker 1: you know, fight flight, freezer, fawn mode, or pair sympathetic mode.
Speaker 1: It's actually particularly relevant to attachment styles because all three
Speaker 1: insecure attachment styles spend far too much time in fight
Speaker 1: or flight. Interesting, yes, because if you grow up an
Speaker 1: environment where you don't feel fully safe because your needs
Speaker 1: are not met consistently enough and a few have more
Speaker 1: bears in the woods aka core wounds or triggers. Then
Speaker 1: you spend more time on high alert in various ways.
Speaker 1: So anxious attachment cells are very alert about when people
Speaker 1: are going to abandon them. Dismissed avoids are very much
Speaker 1: on high larder. But are they going to feel rejected
Speaker 1: and seem like they're defective or shamed? And they do.
Speaker 1: They need to create space and not to you know,
Speaker 1: not be a burden to anybody. And fearful avoidance are hypervidual.
Speaker 1: It's about everything about all of the above, and so
Speaker 1: you know what ends up happening is your nervous systems
Speaker 1: in overdrive. And a big part of healing is learning
Speaker 1: to get back into your body. I've actually found deeply
Speaker 1: that each of the three insecure attachment cells struggles at
Speaker 1: the beginning to identify their emotions in real time, which
Speaker 1: is a form of dissociation. Like people often think of
Speaker 1: dissociation as being this really traumatic, catatonic thing, but it's not.
Speaker 1: People can spend a lot of time in mild dissociation.
Speaker 1: So we do a couple of things. We take people
Speaker 1: through a process of retraining their nervous systems to do
Speaker 1: things like completion cycle work and a lot of that
Speaker 1: sort of polybig theory work to actually practice getting into
Speaker 1: parisympathetic nervous system over time, so it becomes your new baseline.
Speaker 1: But we also one of my favorite practices, and I
Speaker 1: was saying this to you before we record it, is
Speaker 1: when I started really diving deep into a lot of
Speaker 1: this work. I did thirteen different certifications in everything from
Speaker 1: like CB to cogitive behavioral therapy to neurolinguistic programming and
Speaker 1: hypnosis and just all this stuff. But I was actually
Speaker 1: like really rooted in a lot of studying all different religions.
Speaker 1: Like I was really obsessed with spirituality and on sort
Speaker 1: of a spiritual journey, and I've always loved where those
Speaker 1: two things intersect. And I remember actually reading years ago
Speaker 1: one of Eckert Toli's books, and it was all about
Speaker 1: the pain body. And at the time, I was reading
Speaker 1: these case studies on these individuals and they go into
Speaker 1: the researchers were taking individuals and putting them in fMRI scanners,
Speaker 1: and they were getting them in these fMRI scanners to
Speaker 1: recall triggering experiences where they felt upset, and then they
Speaker 1: were watching their brain activity. And what they found is
Speaker 1: that participants' brain activity when they would feel triggered would
Speaker 1: drain out of the neocortex regions like the prefrontal cortex
Speaker 1: region of the brain and into their reptilian brain, and
Speaker 1: all this activity would come there. And we've all seen
Speaker 1: people in their triggered they become kind of the like reptilian,
Speaker 1: animalistic version of themselves. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people would be sitting there in this sort of panicked state,
Speaker 1: and what they would find is that people would start
Speaker 1: being dysregulated like they would be in sympathetic nervous system
Speaker 1: fight or flight. They would see their heart rate increase,
Speaker 1: their their you know, hair in the back of their
Speaker 1: neck often stand up. And then what they had participants
Speaker 1: do is they had them practice just witnessing their emotions
Speaker 1: and their body and labeling the sensations, which is a
Speaker 1: form of somatic processing. And they had them say, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, in this experience, instead of being so stuck
Speaker 1: in the story in their mind, they had them go, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel you know, anger, and anger feels like heat
Speaker 1: across my chest and down my arms. Or I feel
Speaker 1: anxiety and that feels like butterflies in my stomach and
Speaker 1: a ball in my throat and a clenching in my job,
Speaker 1: and when they actually had people go through this, they
Speaker 1: found that all this brain activity came back online in
Speaker 1: the neocortex regions of the brain. And it was so
Speaker 1: interesting because that Kert totally has to sing, oh the
Speaker 1: pain body, witness your emotion or you know, being witnessing
Speaker 1: consciousness consciousness, And it's so beautiful to see people practice
Speaker 1: that because in real time, when they are triggered before,
Speaker 1: they're doing a lot of wound rewiring and meeting their needs.
Speaker 1: A really powerful practice is to do that form of
Speaker 1: somatic processing work, which is, yes, do things to train
Speaker 1: your nervousystem through breath work or meditation daily. All of
Speaker 1: those things are amazing, but in those moments throughout the
Speaker 1: day where you feel those emotions arise, practicing witnessing the sensations,
Speaker 1: being with the sensations, noticing what those sensations feel like
Speaker 1: in your body, it actually takes the emotional charge down
Speaker 1: quite strongly, and it gives people the opportunity to feel
Speaker 1: reregulated and back to more of their conscious mindself again.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, we get people to practice that
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, and it's powerful for emotional regulation.
Speaker 1: But my favorite part of it is that it gives
Speaker 1: you the gift of self attunement because rather than being
Speaker 1: in a position where we feel emotion, let's like hide
Speaker 1: it through scrolling on social media or turning on the TV,
Speaker 1: or drinking a beer or whatever it might be. It's
Speaker 1: actually the practice of learning, in hard moments to come
Speaker 1: back and return to being fully present with it oneself.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, I mean, just listening to you say that,
Speaker 2: it's almost like we're getting to a place not only
Speaker 2: of self security or self soothing, its self regulation. And
Speaker 2: we're gaining the ability to not expect our partner to
Speaker 2: regulate our emotions, regulate our nervous system, which is contagious,
Speaker 2: and we are going to you know, blend and bond
Speaker 2: and energy. But I feel so many of us our
Speaker 2: nervous system is completely dependent on everyone else around us,
Speaker 2: and therefore we can feel really good when we're with someone,
Speaker 2: feel really bad when with someone else, and we have
Speaker 2: no control anymore. So today's tell us about pillar four.
Speaker 1: So pellar four. So you actually said this the moment ago,
Speaker 1: and I thought this was you were like on the money,
Speaker 1: you knew it was coming. So you mentioned regulation. So
Speaker 1: people are regulating through other people, and what I actually
Speaker 1: found over and over again for people is that people
Speaker 1: can't coregulate very effectively in relationships if they have no
Speaker 1: ability to self regulate on their own, because it goes
Speaker 1: back to that kind of concept where they overpressure the
Speaker 1: person to kind of do it for them. And that
Speaker 1: may work in specific cases for periods of time, like oh,
Speaker 1: you have a friend there and they really help you
Speaker 1: and they make you feel better. But like, let's take
Speaker 1: an anxious attachment sel somebody who's very anxiously attached, for example,
Speaker 1: they would usually end up in these themes or patterns
Speaker 1: over time where they would always be relying on their
Speaker 1: friends to do that. And then eventually their friends say, well,
Speaker 1: they always come to me for stuff. But then they
Speaker 1: don't change their patterns or behaviors, and then the friends
Speaker 1: are it kind of drifting back or pulling away or
Speaker 1: not being as present, and then the anxious person gets
Speaker 1: frustrated or stressed, and then the other friend is becoming
Speaker 1: more resentful. And it just what may work in the
Speaker 1: short term isn't really working in the long term unless
Speaker 1: we learn to self regulate. So in those five pillars,
Speaker 1: the first three are all about self. They're all about
Speaker 1: how do I heal my own internal conditioning, rewire the wounds,
Speaker 1: meet my owneede needs, regulate my own nervous system. The
Speaker 1: next two are actually about regulating with so with people together.
Speaker 1: So the next two pillars are about communication and boundaries.
Speaker 1: So what we do for the communication pillar number four
Speaker 1: is now that we know our needs, we can communicate
Speaker 1: about them. And what often happens is people go through
Speaker 1: life and they don't even know what they need in
Speaker 1: a relationship, and then we're left saying things like, oh,
Speaker 1: you hurt me and you did this. And I've seen
Speaker 1: this all the time with communication, even if people are
Speaker 1: so well meaning when they say hey, even though they're
Speaker 1: trying to be vulnerable and they're saying, hey, you hurt
Speaker 1: me last week when XYZ happened, the other partners like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't want to hurt you, but I don't know
Speaker 1: how to solve for it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And unless.
Speaker 1: We're actually empowered to know what we need, then we
Speaker 1: can't say those things properly. So the communication pillar is
Speaker 1: about us taking our learning and understanding of self. Now
Speaker 1: we know our triggers, we know our needs. Now we
Speaker 1: are equipped to do the work with other people and
Speaker 1: so what I get people to do and it depends,
Speaker 1: like we have a couple of frameworks, but one is
Speaker 1: whenever we are in a conflict, like if that'suffre coming
Speaker 1: up for us, people feel very resolved in conflict when
Speaker 1: they do basically three things. Both parties have to communicate
Speaker 1: what came up for them in the conflict and then
Speaker 1: validate each other's emotions. Step one, okay, so validate each
Speaker 1: other's emotions. Step two, then we have to say what
Speaker 1: we actually need. And step three we have to paint
Speaker 1: a picture of what that looks like. Because I ran
Speaker 1: far too many times into situations with couples who I
Speaker 1: remember working with a couple once years ago, and it
Speaker 1: was a husband and a wife and they they had
Speaker 1: this conversation, the wife that I need to feel more
Speaker 1: supported in this relationship. And I was like a year
Speaker 1: into working with couples, and they seem to have a
Speaker 1: really constructive conversation about it. And they left, and they
Speaker 1: came back the next week and literally before they sat
Speaker 1: on the couch, like they didn't even finish sitting down,
Speaker 1: and the wife said, my husband didn't even support me
Speaker 1: this week. We talked about it and he didn't even try.
Speaker 1: And the husband looked shocked and he was like, what
Speaker 1: do you mean. I took up the trash, I did
Speaker 1: the dishes, I tried to help it around the house.
Speaker 1: And she was like, oh, but support for me is
Speaker 1: somebody actually like giving me encouragement and we're of affirmation
Speaker 1: and telling me like they love me, they appreciate me,
Speaker 1: noticing my hard work. That's support. And so we have
Speaker 1: to paint the picture of what the need looks like
Speaker 1: so it's clear. So for example, let's say two people
Speaker 1: are in a conflict, and let's say it's an anxious
Speaker 1: and a dismissive avoidant, and the anxious person saying, hey, like,
Speaker 1: you're not calling me enough. Often what happens when people
Speaker 1: try to communicate is they do what we call negative framing.
Speaker 1: So you know, and I always say to people, behind
Speaker 1: every criticism is just a need, And we say you
Speaker 1: don't care about me, you didn't call me enough, you
Speaker 1: didn't make an effort, and all that people here when
Speaker 1: that happens is that you're criticizing them, and all people
Speaker 1: are going to do a shutdown. Because as a child,
Speaker 1: when you were criticized, what happened you then got punished,
Speaker 1: So now you're bracing for punishment, not trying to figure
Speaker 1: out and decide for what somebody's needs. So we would
Speaker 1: get people to say, okay, let's free frame behind that
Speaker 1: actual experience. What is the need? Convert your criticism into
Speaker 1: a need. And it's like, okay, well, if you said
Speaker 1: you didn't call me enough, obviously that the need is
Speaker 1: for more consistency in calling or communication. Good paint the picture.
Speaker 1: What does that actually look like? Oh, that looks like
Speaker 1: a call every evening for fifteen minutes before bad or
Speaker 1: once a week, whatever it is. We got to get
Speaker 1: really specific because otherwise it gets lost in translation like
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the time. So what we do is
Speaker 1: we get people to say, hey, this is what came
Speaker 1: up for me. So for example, hey, I felt a
Speaker 1: little bit hurt this week because I didn't hear from
Speaker 1: you as much as I hope to. And can we
Speaker 1: do a call every evening before bad for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And when they're able to say that, now we actually
Speaker 1: have constructive communication. And then we flip it back around
Speaker 1: because if there was a conflict, usually there's two sides
Speaker 1: and then maybe the person on the other side if
Speaker 1: it originally wasn't done. While they say, oh, like, if
Speaker 1: somebody was a little bit critical, they might say, okay,
Speaker 1: I hear your need. I can see why you felt
Speaker 1: like that. So they validate the person's feelings and then
Speaker 1: they turn around and they get to say okay, and
Speaker 1: you know, for me, I'm a little sensitive if communication
Speaker 1: is harsh or a little critical, And not that that
Speaker 1: example was harsh, but oftentimes that's how it starts. And
Speaker 1: so they might say, you know, can you just be
Speaker 1: a little bit more mindful with your delivery next time,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be more mindful in terms of communicating
Speaker 1: and calling more consistently. I think we can make that work,
Speaker 1: and that's how we really resolve. So each person expresses
Speaker 1: their feeling and gets it validated, shares their need, paints
Speaker 1: a picture for what it looks like, and it's something
Speaker 1: you can actually train yourself to do naturally, and we
Speaker 1: get people to get into the mindset of feeling need,
Speaker 1: feeling need, like, just know your feelings and needs and
Speaker 1: if it's top of mind, and if each person feels
Speaker 1: like they're able to communicate it that way, that's where
Speaker 1: we get real resolution. And then that's where we get
Speaker 1: actual breakthroughs. And I truly believe that doing the work
Speaker 1: to gather in a relationship to become secure, you have
Speaker 1: to become good at having those conversations.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of people struggle to do
Speaker 2: that for two reasons. One is when they're saying their need,
Speaker 2: their need is based on their attachment style, and if
Speaker 2: it's one of the anxious attachment styles, often their need
Speaker 2: can feel like a burden to the other person because
Speaker 2: it's such an intense demand where the other person just goes.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of people know that their need
Speaker 2: is intense, therefore they won't verbalize it because they actually
Speaker 2: think it will push the other person away. So if
Speaker 2: they don't say it, it brews up and then one
Speaker 2: day it's up and you break up anyway, or they
Speaker 2: say it it's a burden to the other person and
Speaker 2: the other person goes, well, I can't do that, and
Speaker 2: then they walk away. So how do we know our
Speaker 2: need is valid or is realistic? And how do we
Speaker 2: know if our partner is even should be capable of
Speaker 2: doing that need? Because I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: will be like, well, my need is every day I
Speaker 2: need someone to tell me I'm beautiful and amazing or
Speaker 2: every day I need you know, and it's like, well
Speaker 2: maybe someone else doesn't have the capacity to do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I love this question, and this is why
Speaker 1: we do ninety day frameworks for people. In the first
Speaker 1: thirty days are rewiring your core wounds first, because then
Speaker 1: you don't have these things that are causing a lot
Speaker 1: of that negative internal dialogue that will then overpressure you
Speaker 1: to source from somebody else. So if somebody feels not
Speaker 1: good enough, they're going to be like, you better tell
Speaker 1: me I'm good enough all day every day. But if
Speaker 1: we learn to do the rewiring first is pillar number
Speaker 1: one that makes sense. And then pillar number two is
Speaker 1: that we learn to self source because now we're feeling
Speaker 1: our cup halfway. And what's really powerful. As soon as
Speaker 1: we start self sourcing, we we ingrain that in the
Speaker 1: first thirty days, Well, now all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: not this crazy amount of pressure, and now it's really
Speaker 1: clear to say this is what.
Speaker 2: So by the time you get to this stage exactly,
Speaker 2: quest is actually already more reasonable and thoughtful exactly. But
Speaker 2: the problem is if you jump to this stage too quick, yes,
Speaker 2: you could end up asking for something you should be
Speaker 2: self sourcing exactly, and that that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where it's really important. I love that
Speaker 1: you ask that, because what ends up happening far too often,
Speaker 1: and this is a really crazy part of this is
Speaker 1: because our subconscious mind wants to maintain its comfort zone
Speaker 1: because it equates familiarity to safety and survival. So frequently
Speaker 1: people think that they want somebody to give them their
Speaker 1: need and that's the solution. And let's take like typical
Speaker 1: examples to somebody has they're anxiously attached. They believe they're
Speaker 1: not good enough. So now just by that they have
Speaker 1: more negative internal dialoguey're criticizing themselves, sort of magnifying their
Speaker 1: mistakes and minimizing their wins in their own natural set
Speaker 1: point of their conditioning. Then they are often not meeting
Speaker 1: their own need to feel you know, gonna for validated
Speaker 1: or reassured. So now they have what we what I
Speaker 1: call like a hole in your bucket, like you're gonna
Speaker 1: go And because the subponscious mind will only receive, well,
Speaker 1: what's familiar because it equates it to safety, then you
Speaker 1: go and you say, oh, hey, tell me I'm good enough,
Speaker 1: tell me all these things. But then it's like there's
Speaker 1: a hole in the bucket. It feels really good when
Speaker 1: that water is going into the bucket. You get that
Speaker 1: initial head of dope. Mean, oh my god, my partners
Speaker 1: said I'm good enough, and then it just leaked right out.
Speaker 1: And then that's why you see anxious attachments alls needing
Speaker 1: so much of that because they first struggle with those
Speaker 1: two pillars so profoundly. And that's where we get you know,
Speaker 1: confused in relationships because then we're like, you need to
Speaker 1: do this, you need to do that. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: when it becomes unreasonable because it's coming from lack and
Speaker 1: imbalance first, then it puts too much pressure on relationships
Speaker 1: and becomes problematic.
Speaker 2: That completely makes sense now and I and I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about a lot of people that I know who sadly
Speaker 2: feel a lot of shame and guilt for their needs
Speaker 2: from their attachment style. But without doing this work in
Speaker 2: this order as the pillars being developed, you'll never actually
Speaker 2: request something in a healthy way that natural and you're
Speaker 2: scared it will push someone away because it probably will
Speaker 2: because it's coming from an anxious attachment style. Yeah, one
Speaker 2: hundred percent taste. Please tell us about pillar five.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the last pillar is learning healthy boundaries. So
Speaker 1: healthy boundaries when people hear them, I think some people think,
Speaker 1: especially more anxious attachment styles, think that boundaries mean a separation.
Speaker 1: But truly every boundary is adjoining because a boundary is
Speaker 1: an authentic expression of your true yeses and your nose,
Speaker 1: which is an authentic expression of you as a whole
Speaker 1: human being. And so you know, when we look at
Speaker 1: boundaries per attachment style, there's unique patterns. This is when
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa each attachment style that you have?
Speaker 1: These thenes with boundaries, anxious attachment cells are kind of boundaryless,
Speaker 1: like if they're really anxiously attached, they struggle with boundaries altogether,
Speaker 1: and so they're going to end up people pleasing into oblivion.
Speaker 1: They get scared to set boundaries because they believe that
Speaker 1: boundaries are going to get them abandoned or disliked or rejected.
Speaker 1: Part of also why we do the core wound work
Speaker 1: first in that order, And so they end up just
Speaker 1: struggling with boundaries at all, dismiss some avoidance they set
Speaker 1: too strong a bound They are scared to make compromises
Speaker 1: because they equate that to vulnerability. And so they end
Speaker 1: up keeping distance and saying, you know, they're the types
Speaker 1: it instead of saying, hey, I've had a long week,
Speaker 1: it's Friday, I'm tired, instead of going out, can we
Speaker 1: just stay in and watch a movie? Instead of setting
Speaker 1: small boundaries and requesting those needs within that framework, they'll
Speaker 1: instead go canceling, not coming over, sorry, not going to
Speaker 1: be there. And it's because they have these huge boundaries
Speaker 1: because they don't know how to corregulate and communicate in
Speaker 1: that way, and so then we have fearful avoidance and
Speaker 1: fear of the wounds are very interesting with their boundaries.
Speaker 1: I call it the fearful avoidant boundary cycle where they
Speaker 1: are boundaryless at first because they start to people please.
Speaker 1: Usually then they get frustrated because they're very generous. They
Speaker 1: tend to overgive and kind of under receive, so they set,
Speaker 1: you know, no boundaries. They're super generous, and then they're
Speaker 1: you know, they eventually are like, oh, I feel taken
Speaker 1: advantage up and then they get really triggered because they've
Speaker 1: got a lot of big core wounds. And then they
Speaker 1: get angry and they set boundaries from anger or frustration
Speaker 1: and they say things harshly or critically, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: a little bit you know, too harsh or critical, and
Speaker 1: then they feel terribly guilty about it and they go
Speaker 1: back to having no boundaries. So they're like no bound budies,
Speaker 1: get frustrated, express anger, feel guilty, you go back to
Speaker 1: no boundaries, and they kind of just go around in
Speaker 1: a loop. And so what we get people to do
Speaker 1: is first and it actually has to be done in order.
Speaker 1: And I'll speak from personal examples, but this is what
Speaker 1: I would see replicated at with like thousands of people.
Speaker 1: When I was first doing boundary work, I knew I
Speaker 1: had to do boundary work. I was like, I really
Speaker 1: struggle with boundaries. So I read all these boundary books
Speaker 1: and I learned about boundaries, and I read you know,
Speaker 1: publications on boundaries and all these things. And yet I
Speaker 1: would get into situations and I would be sitting in
Speaker 1: a situation being like, I know this is where I
Speaker 1: should set the boundary, but I would clam up and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it because I didn't realize that I
Speaker 1: still had core wounds around my boundaries. So consciously, I'm like,
Speaker 1: set a boundary. And too many people intellectualize boundaries as
Speaker 1: this concept but you're not actually going to do it
Speaker 1: in real time until you first read. Because if your
Speaker 1: conscious minds I set the boundary, or so conscious mind says, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be unsafe. And as a child I
Speaker 1: had some kind of heavy handed punishments at times for
Speaker 1: setting a boundary or saying no. So my subconscious minds
Speaker 1: that boundaries equals unsafety rather than safety and a healthy dynamic.
Speaker 1: That's what your brain would think. And so then I
Speaker 1: would in real time climb up, not say it, and
Speaker 1: then be like walk away, going why didn't I set
Speaker 1: the boundary? So what we get people to do is
Speaker 1: step one, know your boundaries. We get people to audit
Speaker 1: their bundies in the seven areas of life, go through career,
Speaker 1: where are you lacking boundaries? Financial area of life, etc.
Speaker 1: Through the seven areas. Then we get people to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I set a boundary, what am I afraid will happen?
Speaker 1: Or what do I make it mean? It's a good
Speaker 1: way to surface some of your subconscious stuff that may
Speaker 1: be they're oh, if I set a boundary, then I'm
Speaker 1: going to be abandoned. If I set a boundary, people
Speaker 1: are going to reject me or think that I'm a burden,
Speaker 1: you know, you can really see what comes up. And
Speaker 1: then we get people to rewire using some rewiring techniques
Speaker 1: that fear of setting boundaries and then practice doing exposure work,
Speaker 1: which means you don't go set your your first boundary
Speaker 1: with your boss who you think has narcissistic personality disorder,
Speaker 1: because your brain's not going to take that very well.
Speaker 1: We set boundaries with, you know, small boundaries with trusted people,
Speaker 1: like ask your coworker you love, hey, can you bring
Speaker 1: back my stapler when you borrow it? Like the small
Speaker 1: things first, so your brain. We try to set one
Speaker 1: boundary a day, and it's the repetition and emotion. I've
Speaker 1: seen that incrementalism work, and you've rewired the core fear
Speaker 1: that was stopping you from sending boundaries in real time.
Speaker 1: And what I found in my own life and what
Speaker 1: I've seen with thousands of people is that unless you're
Speaker 1: actually doing boundary work at the subconscious level, you can
Speaker 1: know it, you can intellectualize it, but it's not actually
Speaker 1: going to change things.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense in your program because you
Speaker 2: have so many daily tasks. How are people interacting with you,
Speaker 2: your team or with these tasks on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: How does it work?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what we do is we get people they
Speaker 1: go through ninety days, they do like one pillar at
Speaker 1: a time, and we get them to start with a
Speaker 1: reprogramming pillar. We actually have you know, people come in
Speaker 1: they take their actual program. It's a course for each pillar,
Speaker 1: so they can go through take the course, and then
Speaker 1: we have two events per day. So I'm in there
Speaker 1: three days a week with our students. We have colleagues
Speaker 1: in there so that they actually have two events every day,
Speaker 1: just at different time zones things like that, so people
Speaker 1: can get in there. We have events that help people
Speaker 1: actually practice the tools and model out especially for communication
Speaker 1: or boundary setting, Like they actually get to practice it,
Speaker 1: they get feedback, it's relaid back to them, and then
Speaker 1: we teach classes about the tools in more depth. You
Speaker 1: ask questions in the chat. Then we have live questions
Speaker 1: at the end, so people can really get in there
Speaker 1: and like form those skills across time as they go
Speaker 1: through each of those pillars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real commitment, yeah, really doing the.
Speaker 1: Work absolutely, and we set it up so that it's
Speaker 1: really only like two to three minutes a day that
Speaker 1: people need. They don't have to come into those events
Speaker 1: to get their results, but they have the support there
Speaker 1: if they need it. And what's really beautiful too, is
Speaker 1: that people end up making all these friends, and they're
Speaker 1: like people make friends from all sort of parts of
Speaker 1: the world, and they can stay after the events and
Speaker 1: chat with each other in the breakout rooms. But we
Speaker 1: set it up so that we try to keep it
Speaker 1: as simple as possible. Here's your course. The course is
Speaker 1: only like two hours long or so they can go.
Speaker 1: They can take the course, get the fall up support,
Speaker 1: but the course will have Hey, here's your daily exercise
Speaker 1: for the next twenty one days. Then you finish that one. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's your next daily pillar for twenty one days, and
Speaker 1: it takes you know, they're very smile side this.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant. It's so well structured. Thank you. Just hearing
Speaker 2: about it makes it feel so it feels like such
Speaker 2: a seamless process because you're getting to exclusively focus on
Speaker 2: one thing at a time, as opposed to like a
Speaker 2: million habits that we're all trying to develop exactly tays.
Speaker 2: We wanted to ask you about real life scenarios. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: because we feel that you know when you look at
Speaker 2: all of these attachment stars. Really the way we experience
Speaker 2: them is in a relationship or when we start dating.
Speaker 2: So here are some real life scenarios. One partner is
Speaker 2: anxious and the other is avoidant. The anxious partner clings,
Speaker 2: the avoidant pulls away. How do they break that cycle
Speaker 2: instead of repeating it?
Speaker 1: Okay, so really good question. So first thing is we
Speaker 1: do do that work? Like, the actual way is not
Speaker 1: going to be to will yourself through it, which unfortunately
Speaker 1: is sadly so many people are like, oh, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna try to you know, self silence and not say
Speaker 1: what we need and then it comes out in a
Speaker 1: negative way. So first thing is you do the rewiring work,
Speaker 1: then we actually.
Speaker 2: Start to work.
Speaker 1: Okay, great question. So here's what we do in that case.
Speaker 1: So this is actually I would see this sometimes when
Speaker 1: working with couples where somebody's like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be doing the self work. We're not really going to
Speaker 1: be moving from that perspective. Well, people tend to think
Speaker 1: that because people have different needs, that different needs mean
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive needs, okay, which is not the case. So
Speaker 1: people think like typical scenario anxious attachment style and exactly
Speaker 1: that scenario side, what do they want they what's their need?
Speaker 1: More time together? What's the dismissible avoidance need more space,
Speaker 1: more freedom, more autonomy. So what we do in that
Speaker 1: case is just because somebody wants more time, when somebody
Speaker 1: wants more space, doesn't mean that that can't work. What
Speaker 1: we get people to do is talk it out from
Speaker 1: that feeling need framework enough or you have pockets of
Speaker 1: time to meet both each other's needs. So he'll probably
Speaker 1: see this. But whenever we have a trigger, we always
Speaker 1: think of the worst case scenario, right, we jump to
Speaker 1: the worst case conclusion. So dismissive avoidance when somebody's like,
Speaker 1: why I want more time, they're like, you're going to
Speaker 1: take over my life, Like they think you, oh, you
Speaker 1: want like seven hours every evening together?
Speaker 2: Like well, well, they're thinking, well I just gave you
Speaker 2: time this weekend, like we were just hanging out, Like
Speaker 2: how much more can I give you?
Speaker 1: Exactly? And then when dismissive woodn't say I need more
Speaker 1: space or time to myself, anxious attach themselves are like
Speaker 1: you're leaving me, You're abandoning yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's because of me. It's like you want to
Speaker 2: get away from me one.
Speaker 1: Hundred percent, and instead it's because they struggle to code regulate.
Speaker 1: So what we get people to do is the feeling
Speaker 1: need framework. They each say what they feel. Hey, this
Speaker 1: comes up for me. Then it's a beautiful opportunity to
Speaker 1: say I need space because that's how I recharge. I
Speaker 1: need time because that's when I feel connected. So now
Speaker 1: they actually understand what's going on, and then okay, what
Speaker 1: do we need. Paint the picture. And when people paint
Speaker 1: the picture, they realize it's actually very reasonable from both ends.
Speaker 1: Usually an anxious attachment style will say, okay, you know
Speaker 1: what can I actually do as a baseline in terms
Speaker 1: of how much time I need together? I think two
Speaker 1: nights a week would be you know, acceptable for me,
Speaker 1: and then maybe a fifteen minute phone call a couple
Speaker 1: other nights a week. I could do that. And if I
Speaker 1: know that we're going to do that and commit to that,
Speaker 1: I can feel good about that and then dismiss some avoidance.
Speaker 1: They're not going, oh, you want to spend every night
Speaker 1: with me all day every day. You know you want
Speaker 1: to take up my whole life. They're like, oh, two
Speaker 1: evenings a week and then I can do my own
Speaker 1: thing on Sunday afternoon. I can do my own thing
Speaker 1: on Monday Tuesday evenings, and I have, you know, all
Speaker 1: this other time to see friends, whatever it might be. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's actually feasible. So what I find is, even if
Speaker 1: people don't want to do the work, if they can
Speaker 1: communicate very clearly and specifically use that ingredient of painting
Speaker 1: a picture for what that looks like, we resolve a
Speaker 1: lot of those projected fears that cause those miscommunications to
Speaker 1: begin with, and now things can really work together.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's possible to be in a relationship
Speaker 2: with someone who's not willing to have these conversations.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. I'll be really honest. What I
Speaker 1: believe is that you know, and I'll see this a lot.
Speaker 1: One person can lead the way. Okay, So I see
Speaker 1: a lot of time one person starts doing the work,
Speaker 1: they learn to communicate, they become really good at it,
Speaker 1: and the other person, like, once they see their partner
Speaker 1: communicating so healthily and they're regular and they're not so
Speaker 1: triggered from their wounds, and they're so clear about their needs,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of time, it gives the other person
Speaker 1: permission to do the same and they follow their lead.
Speaker 1: But I will say in roughly ten percent of cases,
Speaker 1: somebody's in a position where they're like, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: any of this stuff. I don't want to communicate, I
Speaker 1: don't want to have these conversations about your needs. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that at all. It's usually
Speaker 1: from their own woundedness that their unwillingness is there. But
Speaker 1: I say to people like, hey, if that's the case,
Speaker 1: I tell people, set a deadline. Try your living heart out.
Speaker 1: Do everything you can in the deadlines. So deadline might
Speaker 1: be ninety days, it might be six months. If you're
Speaker 1: in a longer term relationship, or if you're in a
Speaker 1: marriage with children, it might be a year or a
Speaker 1: year and a half. Do everything you can as that
Speaker 1: one person in that period of time to show up
Speaker 1: the best that you can, you know, without your wounds,
Speaker 1: no your needs, regular your nervous system, communicate beautifully, set
Speaker 1: healthy boundaries. If it doesn't work and the person's literally
Speaker 1: unwilling at the end of that period of time, your
Speaker 1: only choice if you want to be in a healthy
Speaker 1: relationship is probably to walk away. And that's because you're
Speaker 1: going to if you're not happy in that situation. You
Speaker 1: cannot have one person doing the emotional labor for both people.
Speaker 1: And then usually what happens is your position for a
Speaker 1: win win because you have healed so much and you're
Speaker 1: gonna be in a place where you feel stable and
Speaker 1: emotionally well enough to walk away from something that may
Speaker 1: actually not be a fit for you. And so you're okay,
Speaker 1: And you also know I can walk away guilt and
Speaker 1: regret free. I tried everything, or your best case scenario
Speaker 1: is ninety percent of the time, the other person jumps
Speaker 1: on board and the relationship evolves because you led the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how does the attachment theory explain love bombing?
Speaker 1: Great question. So love bombing I think of existing along
Speaker 1: a continuum. Love bombing in extreme cases is usually because
Speaker 1: of a narcissistic personality disorder, and that's somebody love bombing
Speaker 1: with the premeditated intention to win you over as a
Speaker 1: means of control. But what actually happens if we look
Speaker 1: way further down the continuum, love bombing can be more
Speaker 1: from a place. Usually we're going to see anxious or
Speaker 1: fearful avoidance do love bombing, and it's because a much
Speaker 1: lesser degree and their relationship to it is not because
Speaker 1: let me win you over so that then you're addicted
Speaker 1: to me and I can control you. It's from a
Speaker 1: place of that They usually because of having so many
Speaker 1: core wounds and people pleasing behaviors as their adaptation to
Speaker 1: those core wounds, they have people on a pedestal, and
Speaker 1: so you're gonna love bomb somebody that you admire and
Speaker 1: you look up to and you want to win over
Speaker 1: and people please, and so that's often what will happen
Speaker 1: is you get a lot more of those compliments and
Speaker 1: trying to win somebody over and charm them and all
Speaker 1: those things because of their own insecurity compared to how
Speaker 1: high they see other people that they're in relationships with.
Speaker 2: If someone comes on quite strongly to you, sometimes it
Speaker 2: can be quite infatuating because you're like, wow, I finally
Speaker 2: found someone who likes me, who loves me. Who. But
Speaker 2: I've noticed as people are getting wiser, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: as they do the work, they're like, well, that's a
Speaker 2: bit strong. It's too early, Like that feels unnatural for
Speaker 2: you to have such intense feelings. We just met two
Speaker 2: weeks ago. What would you do in that scenario where
Speaker 2: you kind of see positives in this person, but their
Speaker 2: feelings are too strong and you don't want to get
Speaker 2: love bombed, but you still want to continue seeing them.
Speaker 2: How would you navigate that?
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful question, So a couple of things. The
Speaker 1: first answer is that in that early stage, you can
Speaker 1: have that conversation. You can say to somebody, Hey, I
Speaker 1: really like I really like spending time with you. I'm
Speaker 1: super interested in you and getting to know you, and
Speaker 1: I feel like we're moving a little bit quickly. Here's
Speaker 1: the pace I like to go at. I want to
Speaker 1: manage your expectations, and that forces somebody to kind of
Speaker 1: check in with themselves and be able to do that work.
Speaker 1: I also tell people all the time, if you're concerned
Speaker 1: a little bit, you think somebody's amazing, they're very charming,
Speaker 1: and they're very charismatic, and you're concerned a little bit
Speaker 1: that their love bombing and their charisma could be a
Speaker 1: sign of a narcissist instead of just an insecure attachment
Speaker 1: cell be cause they're vastly different. Then one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to just vet them is to set a
Speaker 1: boundary with them, because narcissists do not like your boundary
Speaker 1: whereas insecure attachment cells, they'll like really honor your boundary.
Speaker 1: They'll usually be like, oh, I'm so sorry, and they'll
Speaker 1: be accountable and apologize and acknowledge, and so that's a
Speaker 1: really good way to separate out the two interesting.
Speaker 2: That's so yeah, because I find that that's what I
Speaker 2: feel so many of my friend I'm struggling with, where
Speaker 2: it's like they do set a boundary, the person won't
Speaker 2: respect the boundary, but there's still so many good things
Speaker 2: about them. Is that dangerous to keep? Do you have
Speaker 2: to tread carefully?
Speaker 1: It's a great question. And from that particular scenario, if
Speaker 1: somebody is not respecting your boundary early on, that's a
Speaker 1: big red flag. You know, if somebody doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to honor boundaries, then I would say in those types
Speaker 1: of cases, that's a vetting situation. Like vetting in a relationship,
Speaker 1: when we, forst start dating should be for the first
Speaker 1: three four months of a relationship. You should be asking
Speaker 1: the hard questions, having those early conversations, talking about your needs.
Speaker 1: I always say to people when you're when you're going
Speaker 1: into dating, know your needs and know your not negotiables,
Speaker 1: and then go in and ask one or two really
Speaker 1: meaningful questions a date. You don't want the dating situation
Speaker 1: to be like a job interview. Here's my seventeen needs.
Speaker 1: Are you going to meet them? You know, it needs
Speaker 1: to be something where like each date you say you know,
Speaker 1: for example, I know for me, you know, I've been
Speaker 1: in a marriage, shouldn't been with my husband for eleven
Speaker 1: years and and but if I were dating again, I
Speaker 1: would One of my non negotiables early on would be
Speaker 1: you need to be able to have things out, like
Speaker 1: we got to talk through things, because it's so important
Speaker 1: to prevent any kind of resentment and relationship. So I might,
Speaker 1: you know, have the first date, see if there's a connection, chemistry,
Speaker 1: have fun, and then by the second date that might
Speaker 1: be a question I bring up pretty early, hey, like
Speaker 1: how do you handle conflict? And then that way I
Speaker 1: can see if they say, oh, I would never you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like to talk about things. I don't go there.
Speaker 1: I don't like conflict. I don't believe in like having conflict.
Speaker 1: I would be like, whoa red flag? And so then
Speaker 1: we bet And what we want to do is if
Speaker 1: we see those things and we're not sure red flags?
Speaker 1: If you're interested in somebody. Otherwise, people think red flags
Speaker 1: you should bolt No red flags, you should go to
Speaker 1: words and figure out because sometimes somebody might accidentally disrespect
Speaker 1: a boundary that you said, Hey, I want to move slower.
Speaker 1: But sometimes that red flag is well, you weren't clear
Speaker 1: enough at what slower means to you didn't paint the picture.
Speaker 1: So that should be a conversation you move towards, they
Speaker 1: really get to the bottom of like kind of a
Speaker 1: detective like, hey, I mentioned last week wanting to move slower.
Speaker 1: I feel like we still moved at a really quick
Speaker 1: pace this week. For me, moving slower looks like seeing
Speaker 1: each other a little bit less, you know, so, spending
Speaker 1: a little more time getting to know each other before
Speaker 1: traveling together, whatever it might be. And then we really
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of it. And that's part of
Speaker 1: the vetting that should be taking place in that early stage.
Speaker 1: And then if we see red flags and we see
Speaker 1: oh no, no, that's just the red flag, they're going to
Speaker 1: keep going without those boundaries. Now we know the answer
Speaker 1: and now we're really clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, another scenario here. I love these
Speaker 2: with you. These are a secure partner, feels steady, but
Speaker 2: their anxious partner keeps searching for signs something is wrong.
Speaker 2: How can they help without becoming the emotional regulator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really good question. So this happens fairly frequently. But
Speaker 1: what's very interesting about this is that I have yet
Speaker 1: to see it be any kind of frequent occurrence in
Speaker 1: somebody who's deeply anxious and deeply secure stay in a
Speaker 1: long term relationship together because their subconscious comfort zones are
Speaker 1: going to reject each other. Securely attached people there's too
Speaker 1: much emotional burden over time and that person's not self
Speaker 1: regulating at all, or the needle's not moving, they usually
Speaker 1: do because they're really good at being mindful of their
Speaker 1: own boundaries. They will pull away from that person or
Speaker 1: move in a different direction. Attachment seals are always a continue.
Speaker 1: If somebody's a little bit anxious, we'll see some movement there, right.
Speaker 1: But if somebody sometimes you hear things like oh, just
Speaker 1: dat a secure person, it doesn't usually work out that way.
Speaker 1: Just like you know, people who are deeply insecure often
Speaker 1: are like, where's the spice? Where's the excitement? Is that
Speaker 1: this is the stability seems boring? Or they can reject
Speaker 1: the secure person as well. So you know, that really
Speaker 1: brings back to the work of like, you got to
Speaker 1: do the work in healing yourself first if you really
Speaker 1: want that to happen. But if that were to be
Speaker 1: the case where you have somebody who's a little less
Speaker 1: anxious and then somebody who's really secure, then you're going
Speaker 1: to have the secure person say hey, I need you
Speaker 1: to be able to make sure that your self soothing sometimes,
Speaker 1: or I need you. In maybe less clinical terms, they
Speaker 1: might say something like, hey, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be here for you, and I'm going to do my
Speaker 1: best to be here for you, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be sometimes where I'm suck late at work, I'm going
Speaker 1: through my own human things and I need you to
Speaker 1: see me too, and I need you to practice being
Speaker 1: okay and on your own. And so they'll set those boundaries,
Speaker 1: they'll communicate their needs, and in doing that it actually
Speaker 1: provides this beautiful opportunity for somebody to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I should practice that, maybe I should sort of
Speaker 1: train myself to do that, And that's often where we
Speaker 1: can see those good outcomes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's it's interesting you say that because I
Speaker 2: can agree more that one person is usually rises to
Speaker 2: be the fixer in the beginning because they feel valuable
Speaker 2: through it as well. And then afterwards they start to
Speaker 2: feel less and less valuable because their fixing doesn't work
Speaker 2: and they feel like all of their efforts are in
Speaker 2: vain because naturally that person still needs to learn self
Speaker 2: regulation and you end up pushing them right one percent.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's some thing we created that we that
Speaker 1: I talk about sometimes, and it's the six stages of relationship.
Speaker 1: It's based off of some of doctor Susan Johnson's work.
Speaker 1: And there's the dating stage, which is usually the first,
Speaker 1: like you know, zero to six months you're dating or betting.
Speaker 1: Then there's a honeymoon stage, which usually lasts for another
Speaker 1: year to year and a half rose color classes. That's
Speaker 1: a long time, yeah, And then and then we enter
Speaker 1: into the power struggle stage. And to your exact point,
Speaker 1: and I kind of laugh at this with endearment, it's
Speaker 1: not fun when you're going through it. Then people after
Speaker 1: the power struggle, there's the rhythm stage. You get into
Speaker 1: your rhythm. Then you get into the commitment stage long term,
Speaker 1: and then the bliss stage, like things are really good
Speaker 1: long term, highly likely to break up in that stage
Speaker 1: but what's so interesting is it in the dating stage
Speaker 1: of relationships, usually we are very attracted to people who
Speaker 1: express or repressed traits, so the thing will invest in
Speaker 1: longest term or people whom you are back to us
Speaker 1: how we treat ourselves. But one of the other things
Speaker 1: that does drive attraction early on psychologically is somebody who
Speaker 1: expresses your repressed traits. Okay, so if that office is attracted.
Speaker 1: So let's say, for example, that you're somebody who struggles
Speaker 1: with boundaries. If you meet somebody really assertive, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be like wow, like ooh, let me get close to them.
Speaker 1: Or if you're somebody not a bad thing, or if
Speaker 1: you're somebody who's very type A organized, intense, and when
Speaker 1: somebody's really easy going, you're gonna be like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: like look at them. And so we're very drawn because
Speaker 1: the mind likes to attach, and when we attach to something,
Speaker 1: we have an allostatic or homeostatic impulse at the subconscious level.
Speaker 1: We feel more holes through that person. But what's so
Speaker 1: crazy is over time we are still going to invest
Speaker 1: in the most people who mirror our subconscious comfort zone.
Speaker 1: So in the early stages were often attracted and then
Speaker 1: in the power struggle stage, it's the very thing that
Speaker 1: has one of the greatest likelihoods of driving the relationship apart,
Speaker 1: and that looks like this. They were so assertive. I
Speaker 1: loved that early on, and now in the power struggle
Speaker 1: station you're like, they never compromised. Early on, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I love that they go with the flow.
Speaker 1: They're so flex the when he's going. And then you're like, hello,
Speaker 1: like we have plans, get here on time, and you're
Speaker 1: really stressed. And it happens like clockwork in every relationship.
Speaker 1: And what I believe to be both the psychological and
Speaker 1: even spiritual lesson is to integrate those traits collectively. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, So for example, let's say, let's pretend it's
Speaker 1: me and my husband, and actually we were kind of
Speaker 1: like this. I met my husband, my little little boundary
Speaker 1: work to do, and he was so good at setting boundaries,
Speaker 1: just like so direct, so straight up, so to the point,
Speaker 1: and I remember really admiring it. And then sure enough
Speaker 1: I knew. We got in the power struggle station and
Speaker 1: started to dives was like hello, and so I went
Speaker 1: to him and I said hey, And I knew this already.
Speaker 1: I was a quick thank goodness, and I knew that
Speaker 1: I was going to start feeling frustrated unless I took
Speaker 1: on some of the trade of assertiveness better and if
Speaker 1: he took on some of my flexibility a little bit more.
Speaker 1: So I went to him. I had the conversation, said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I need you to make compromise with me sometimes, and
Speaker 1: this is really important to me, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be important for you to be more flexible and more
Speaker 1: mindful of me at times as well. And I gave
Speaker 1: some examples and sort of painted a picture. And what
Speaker 1: was really beautiful about that is I knew I had
Speaker 1: to communicate my needs more consistently and say my boundaries
Speaker 1: and do it better in real time. And I did.
Speaker 1: It was profoundly healing for me and helped me in
Speaker 1: so many relationships going forward, especially in things like work.
Speaker 1: And for him, he became so much more flexible and
Speaker 1: I saw it really strengthen his relationships with his friends,
Speaker 1: his family members, like it was really beautiful to see
Speaker 1: him evolve in that way. And that's everybody. That's if
Speaker 1: you're the type a person, you got to learn that
Speaker 1: easygoingness sometimes and surrender. If you're the easygoing person having
Speaker 1: some discipline is really valuable. So I really believe that
Speaker 1: relationships are not here for love, although that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: They're also here for growth. And a lot of it's
Speaker 1: that we're attracted to people that way, because that's are
Speaker 1: subconscious mind calling us to take on some of those
Speaker 1: things internally, and that's how we become more whole together
Speaker 1: in that power struggle stage. And now instead of having
Speaker 1: these two different people that are attracted, we're now to
Speaker 1: whole people collectively, and that strengthens us individually and collectively
Speaker 1: long term.
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more if whenever people ask me and Rady,
Speaker 2: it's our tenure, wedding anniversary, this year, congratulation, and when
Speaker 2: I think about what's worked, because there've been tough conversations,
Speaker 2: there's been growth, there's been both of us taking responsibility
Speaker 2: and accountability, and I'm like, the best thing that's happened
Speaker 2: is the best parts of us have rubbed off onto
Speaker 2: the other person and the worst parts haven't. I love
Speaker 2: that is the only thing I can come down to.
Speaker 2: It's like, so me and Rady similarly ratherly spontaneous. I'm
Speaker 2: super hyper focused and I've become more spontaneous and more
Speaker 2: casual in our relationship with our timing and things like that,
Speaker 2: and she's become more organized in her work and focused
Speaker 2: and driven in her profession. And then Radi super healthy
Speaker 2: and you know, really health conscious and exercise, diet, everything
Speaker 2: that's really rubbed off on me. And so she's taught
Speaker 2: me that and I'm like, that's what's worked. And it's
Speaker 2: but you both got to have the humility to be
Speaker 2: able to learn from the other person. And I think
Speaker 2: you have to have the humility to not want to
Speaker 2: teach the other person. So I don't think in what
Speaker 2: you said in the way you're talking about these conversations.
Speaker 2: I never went up to Radi and said, I think
Speaker 2: you need to be more organized, and she never came
Speaker 2: up to me and goes, I think you need to
Speaker 2: be more healthy. Like if it's almost like the humility
Speaker 2: to not teach and the humility to learn. And that's
Speaker 2: fascinating because most of us think, oh, yeah, I wish
Speaker 2: my partner was a bit more like me, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to go tell them how they can be like me,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh no, no, no, it's you live
Speaker 2: the quality so well that it becomes attractive. Like I know,
Speaker 2: RADI like really values going to the gym, really values
Speaker 2: eating well. She sees how alert it makes And when
Speaker 2: you see see that change in someone, you feel inspired
Speaker 2: that I want to do it too, And so it's
Speaker 2: so fascinating. How Yeah, I'd say successful relationships are when
Speaker 2: the good things you both have rob off on each
Speaker 2: other and the bad things don't. And that simple principle
Speaker 2: allows you to have the humility to learn from your
Speaker 2: partner and not have the ego to want to teach them.
Speaker 2: And those two things seem to make sense.
Speaker 1: I thought that was so beautiful the way you said that.
Speaker 1: I actually really touched my heart. You said the best
Speaker 1: things rubbed off on one another, but the harder things didn't,
Speaker 1: And like, I just think that's such a beautiful example
Speaker 1: of a truly healthy, harmonious relationship. And that's that's that
Speaker 1: For people who are like, how do I have the humility?
Speaker 1: How do I communicate? That's that feelings need framework when
Speaker 1: you communicate, hey I need this, Hey I need a
Speaker 1: little flexibility sometimes from you, or hey I need you
Speaker 1: to sometimes be mindful of me. When you say it
Speaker 1: with like this this humbleness, you come to the table
Speaker 1: of like I care about you and sometimes I need
Speaker 1: to lean on you in this way and vice versa.
Speaker 1: That is a big part of what opens those dialogues,
Speaker 1: those conversations to be more mindful. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: like you said, when somebody's living in their best version
Speaker 1: of themselves, they step into that truth and that's inspiring
Speaker 1: to be around one hundred person.
Speaker 2: Okay, one more scenario before we do a couple of segments.
Speaker 2: So this one is one partner is ready to commit,
Speaker 2: the other becomes uncertain as things deepen. How do you
Speaker 2: tell fear from a real mismatch?
Speaker 1: Beautiful question? So I always find it's going to boil
Speaker 1: back down to these same types of themes and pillars.
Speaker 1: So first thing is you have to have a real conversation,
Speaker 1: like if we sort of have these trajectories that relationships follow.
Speaker 1: That I've found, which is that if you don't do
Speaker 1: anything really direct, if you don't have a really vulnerable conversation, instead,
Speaker 1: what happens is one person's like, oh, they don't want
Speaker 1: to commit. They make it mean things about themselves, especially
Speaker 1: if they have a lot of core wounds, are like
Speaker 1: oh am I not good enough? Am I unlovable? Am
Speaker 1: I unworthy? And then they project those onto situations or
Speaker 1: the person keeps dragging their feet and the other person's
Speaker 1: self silences and they just feel resentful in the relationship.
Speaker 1: Then that out in different ways and it's more arguments
Speaker 1: or disagreements. So the only actual reasonable solution is to
Speaker 1: truly hash it out. And so we go and we say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, here's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for
Speaker 1: a commitment. Here's why, and here's like what you know,
Speaker 1: paint that picture, what does that timeframe look like, and
Speaker 1: be really honest and transparent, And then the other person
Speaker 1: has to say what's holding them back? And oftentimes what
Speaker 1: I foun because they've done a lot of these specific
Speaker 1: conversations with people in relationships, and usually what's actually happening
Speaker 1: is that that conversation will be the catalyst for some
Speaker 1: deeply unresolved needs and relationships. More often than not, the
Speaker 1: person who's dragging their feet and commitment the most is
Speaker 1: deeply directly running in parallel to the person who's also
Speaker 1: not communicating their needs and relationships, and so they're afraid
Speaker 1: to commit. And a lot of times people's commitment fears
Speaker 1: are yes coming from core wounds and being trapped or
Speaker 1: helpless or powerless in that pillar. But a lot more
Speaker 1: of the time, commitment fear are rooted in somebody not
Speaker 1: knowing how to communicate their needs. So they're more scared
Speaker 1: to get trapped because they're like, well, what if I
Speaker 1: commit to this and then I don't feel fully fulfilled
Speaker 1: or have my needs met. But once they learn to
Speaker 1: communicate their needs, a lot of those conversations usually end
Speaker 1: up being things like, Hey, yeah, I guess like one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I'm afraid to commit is I'm scared
Speaker 1: that I'm going to lose, you know, my time with
Speaker 1: my friends sometimes and I need to be able to
Speaker 1: have that in the long term and go off and
Speaker 1: hang out with the boys sometimes, or go have a
Speaker 1: girl's weekend or whatever it might be. And then the
Speaker 1: person's like, oh, I can honor that, I can make
Speaker 1: that a part of our marriage. I can, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's this catalyst to a huge breakthrough, or sometimes
Speaker 1: it's things like, hey, I guess what's holding me back
Speaker 1: is sometimes I feel like I get criticized more than
Speaker 1: I feel good about and it makes me want to
Speaker 1: pull away, and I'm not sure if I see that
Speaker 1: being you know something, I'm really happy in long term
Speaker 1: and then the person hears that and they're able to say,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's time for me to clean up
Speaker 1: the way I communicate, and then there's this breakthrough when
Speaker 1: they both feel safer. So I would love to tell people, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's some manipulative easy fix where you tell them this
Speaker 1: thing and you say I'll do if you don't, you know, commit,
Speaker 1: I'll leave and give an ultimatum. You're selling yourself short
Speaker 1: and the relationship short by not saying, hey, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm really looking for. Here's why. Tell me what's
Speaker 1: coming up for you or want to understand. And when
Speaker 1: we do that and have that same humility to really
Speaker 1: go there with an open heart and open mind, usually
Speaker 1: there's big breakthroughs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens when we've talked a lot about dating,
Speaker 2: we've talked about being in a relationship. What happens when
Speaker 2: you set your boundary, You've done some of the self work,
Speaker 2: maybe they have to, and then they decide to leave you.
Speaker 1: Beautiful question and.
Speaker 2: Someone breaks up with you and you've done the work,
Speaker 2: you've been trying to figure it out. But the subconscious
Speaker 2: and the conditioning was so strong that it was overriding
Speaker 2: everything and for both of you, just too difficult. That
Speaker 2: person breaks up with you, How does an anxious attachment
Speaker 2: style and an avoidant attachment style how can they correctly
Speaker 2: deal with the breakup?
Speaker 1: I love this question too. Okay, So one of my
Speaker 1: favorite topics is actually grief, and a breakup is grief,
Speaker 1: and when we actually look at grief, I think grief
Speaker 1: is one of the most misunderstood things in our society
Speaker 1: because we think time heals all wounds, or we think
Speaker 1: these things, and honestly, it's just not the case. Wounds
Speaker 1: can last for a very long time. But when we
Speaker 1: go through a breakup, it's grief because what happens when
Speaker 1: we get into relationship is the mind attaches to another person,
Speaker 1: and when we attach to another person deeply, that's when
Speaker 1: our attachment behaviors exhibit themselves the most. But when we attach,
Speaker 1: what we're actually attaching to is very much the non physical.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of a morbid example, but if
Speaker 1: somebody passes away, it's not their physical body that you miss.
Speaker 1: If their physical body was around in your house or
Speaker 1: something like, You're not going to be the way I
Speaker 1: feel better it's all the non physical true that we miss,
Speaker 1: and so we have to then ask the question, well,
Speaker 1: what is the non physical? Well, it really boils down
Speaker 1: to a couple of really major things. Number one, the
Speaker 1: needs somebody met in your life that we were used
Speaker 1: to them meeting. Maybe that person made you feel seen
Speaker 1: or heard, or loved or validated, and maybe they weren't
Speaker 1: even doing a good job because it led to the breakup.
Speaker 1: But if they met your need a three out of
Speaker 1: ten and you were meeting your need one out of
Speaker 1: ten to feel validated, you're going to keep going back
Speaker 1: for those breadcrumbs because you're starving. So the first part
Speaker 1: is that grief is the detachment we were used to
Speaker 1: having these needs met in our life. Suddenly the person's gone.
Speaker 1: They took our needs with them, and there's a void
Speaker 1: left behind. And that void is a big part of
Speaker 1: what we experience as grief. Step one. Number two grief,
Speaker 1: and this is a very sacred thing, I believe, But
Speaker 1: grief is also who we became around that person, the
Speaker 1: part of ourselves that we got to express. And I
Speaker 1: had times back in my practice when I was running
Speaker 1: my client practice before our online programs, where I'd work
Speaker 1: with people on loss. And I remember one time I
Speaker 1: worked with somebody on the loss of a child and
Speaker 1: it was a very tragic situation. And her really big
Speaker 1: breakthrough that led her to really start healing is she
Speaker 1: realized what she was grieving the most. Years later, when
Speaker 1: she came to me, she'd been grieving for years and
Speaker 1: wasn't really getting anywhere. She realized that what she missed
Speaker 1: the most was that she felt like she was a
Speaker 1: nurturer and a protector and a caretaker and a contributor
Speaker 1: and these really beautiful, sacred expressions of herself that she
Speaker 1: because she was going through that grief and then hadn't
Speaker 1: had another child again, she didn't feel like she had
Speaker 1: anywhere to express that or become that. And so you
Speaker 1: know what she ultimately did is then started this beautiful
Speaker 1: charity that helped kids in a similar situation, and that
Speaker 1: deeply healed her heart. And so grief is also when
Speaker 1: we lose somebody, we lose the aspects of ourselves that
Speaker 1: we got to express in their company. And so you know,
Speaker 1: those are two big pillars of grief. And then third
Speaker 1: is we have all these stories we say it was
Speaker 1: all my fault. I'm not good enough, you know, the
Speaker 1: backs of a poor wound. So that's a big part
Speaker 1: of rewiring it. But what I actually get people to
Speaker 1: do if they go through a breakup, and usually when
Speaker 1: people go through a breakup like that, it's because they
Speaker 1: tried to start doing the work when they already had
Speaker 1: too many resentments and they were already you know, half
Speaker 1: checked out. But if you go through that breakup, one
Speaker 1: of the fastest ways to truly heal great from a
Speaker 1: breakup is to write out what we're all of those
Speaker 1: needs this person met. I know, I have to start
Speaker 1: meeting those needs in myself and I have to start
Speaker 1: sell or I have to start resourcing them in healthy
Speaker 1: ways with healthy people in my life. And as we do,
Speaker 1: we fill up that void that was left behind from
Speaker 1: that person, and it heals our heart. It heals us deeply.
Speaker 1: And part of why people say time heals all wounds
Speaker 1: is because human beings are naturally adaptable, and in time
Speaker 1: they start to learn to resource their needs in other ways.
Speaker 1: It's not time doing that, it's our natural adaptiveness that's
Speaker 1: doing that for us. But we can fast track that
Speaker 1: process by being more unconscious and intentional about it. The
Speaker 1: secondary part of it is who were you? Who did
Speaker 1: you become when you had this loss, And a lot
Speaker 1: of times it's these beautiful things like I was a protector,
Speaker 1: I was a caretaker, I was a contributor. And when
Speaker 1: we look at who we became and we work to
Speaker 1: keep expressing those aspects of self, that is deeply healing
Speaker 1: for us as well. And that's a really good way
Speaker 1: to kick start moving through the breakup much more quickly.
Speaker 2: Do you ever truly get over someone?
Speaker 1: I very much believe that you do, And I think
Speaker 1: that there's times where you know people when we look
Speaker 1: at grief too, which is really interesting, is one of
Speaker 1: the ways that it's actually another step that we have
Speaker 1: for how to heal grief. It's funny because actually forgot
Speaker 1: about this one. Is sometimes when we feel like we
Speaker 1: lost somebody, there's this old saying that there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as gain or loss, it's only ever changing forms.
Speaker 1: And when I think of in more extreme forms of grief,
Speaker 1: even like the law, like a death of somebody, oftentimes
Speaker 1: yes they're not here in the physical form, but they're here,
Speaker 1: and you know, we can meet those needs and we
Speaker 1: can become that expression of ourselves. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times they're still within you in their conditioning that they
Speaker 1: imprinted or impressed upon you. In other words, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's the loss of a parent, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: there it gets people to sit down around losses like
Speaker 1: that and they say, okay, what was your father?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: My father was a protector. He was strong, he was assertive,
Speaker 1: he thought five steps ahead. Where did you become that?
Speaker 1: And what's really beautiful is when people sit down and
Speaker 1: they do that. They a lot of times you hear
Speaker 1: people say things like, oh my god, my father's like
Speaker 1: here as a part of me. And so I think
Speaker 1: that we can truly move through a point where we
Speaker 1: get over the grief in terms of the suffering. And
Speaker 1: there's this old thing that grief is love with nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. And I think that when we don't know
Speaker 1: where to put the love because we don't know how
Speaker 1: to express that part of ourselves, or we don't know
Speaker 1: how to get the needs met, or we don't recognize
Speaker 1: that that person they're with us in all of these
Speaker 1: non physical ways, then it feels like it's very hard
Speaker 1: to get over somebody. But I think when we start
Speaker 1: to actually move through those steps in terms of how
Speaker 1: we process grief, we kind of feel this connection to
Speaker 1: somebody in our heart and we get over the deep mourning,
Speaker 1: the deep grieving, and sometimes we'll miss the person still,
Speaker 1: or sometimes we'll feel that care for people we love
Speaker 1: so deeply, but it doesn't have to be this painful
Speaker 1: relationship that we have to that person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, should you feel one hundred percent sure about your partner?
Speaker 1: Oh? Good question. These are good questions. I love these things. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the answer is I would say one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a fallacy. I would say
Speaker 1: that we should feel highly certain. But it's almost like
Speaker 1: when people say, and I hear this all the time,
Speaker 1: are you one hundred percent ready to have kids? You're like,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever one hundred percent ready for me? Are you
Speaker 1: one hundred percent ready to take that new job, to
Speaker 1: move across the country to You're never going to feel
Speaker 1: one hundred percent ready, But there should be a high
Speaker 1: enough degree of certainty where you feel like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is me falling my hard or taking that leap of faith,
Speaker 1: and that bridge in that leap of faith shouldn't feel
Speaker 1: like the bridge is like something you can't surmount or
Speaker 1: jump over. It should feel like Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take that small leap of faith and there's a smaller
Speaker 1: gap there.
Speaker 2: That's a good answer. Yeah, it's I agree with you.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's one hundred percent surety. If anything,
Speaker 2: that surety gets stronger than more time you spend with someone.
Speaker 2: And I think that's partly the challenge that a lot
Speaker 2: of these things are only tried and tested and proven
Speaker 2: over time because there is no substitute for time in
Speaker 2: a relationship because people change, people grow, people evolve. You change,
Speaker 2: you grow, you evolve, And it's it's really crazy to
Speaker 2: think when you say on your wedding day, like you
Speaker 2: know till death do us apart the idea that you
Speaker 2: don't really even know what life's going to look like,
Speaker 2: and so there is a big risk in that commitment
Speaker 2: because you don't even know the version of the person
Speaker 2: that you're going to have to be with in like five, ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty years.
Speaker 1: That used to be my biggest fear in relationships, and
Speaker 1: this is something that really is true, like runs deep
Speaker 1: to my heart. I always used to be like, how
Speaker 1: can you ever know that you trust them?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: You love them?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: How can you know you won't change? Your mind or
Speaker 1: they won't change their mind. And it was always this
Speaker 1: big fear. And earlier I mentioned those cycles of relationships dating, honeymoon,
Speaker 1: power struggle stage, then we have the rhythm stage, commitment, blissage.
Speaker 1: And what I actually found over and over again and
Speaker 1: I experienced is so deeply firsthand. And this is actually
Speaker 1: something I'd want people so deeply to know and understand,
Speaker 1: because I know there's gonna be a lot of people
Speaker 1: like me who really struggle at points in relationships early on.
Speaker 1: And I had only ever done relationships in dating honeymoon,
Speaker 1: power struggle, breakup, date again, dating honeymoon, power struggle, breakup.
Speaker 1: So you think that relationships are just infatuation or pain.
Speaker 1: And what I learned exactly to your point, is that
Speaker 1: real love is built in the power struggle stage the most,
Speaker 1: because we drop the mask we're not in our best behavior,
Speaker 1: and you learn to work through things. And the power
Speaker 1: struggle is this opportunity. It's this crisis, but it's also
Speaker 1: this opportunity to start saying, hey, this is what's come
Speaker 1: up for me, this is what I need in these situations,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm feeling, Hey, this is sensitive for me.
Speaker 1: That's a pain point for me, can you be more mindful?
Speaker 1: And I believe that we really move the needle from
Speaker 1: more conditionally based love to more unconditionally based love through
Speaker 1: having those deeper conversations, through doing that work, and then
Speaker 1: we deep and it's almost like in the early stages,
Speaker 1: you have this really pretty sapling, like this really nice
Speaker 1: little tree, but a windstorm can take it out because
Speaker 1: it's so fragile. But when we have those meaningful conversations
Speaker 1: again and again and we build and we grow, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden and you know your partners,
Speaker 1: you know biggest pain points, and you're mindful of them,
Speaker 1: and you know when somebody else hit them and you're
Speaker 1: there to show up for them and caretake for them
Speaker 1: and be sensitive to them and that and they're that
Speaker 1: for you too. Now you deepen roots and love in
Speaker 1: such a different way where those ideas of like, oh
Speaker 1: what if somebody else came along and one of us changed,
Speaker 1: you know that it's such a silly thing. And I
Speaker 1: could never conceive of that at one point in my
Speaker 1: life because I had so many wounds around relationships and
Speaker 1: so many fears. And it's only through that beauty of
Speaker 1: like having those conversations and doing the work and deepening
Speaker 1: that connection in such a real way that then like
Speaker 1: some silly, frivolous thing, that oh, something attractive could come
Speaker 1: along and you could change it. Like it seems so
Speaker 1: almost like you know, like silly, like you can laugh
Speaker 1: at it after a while. But that's because I think
Speaker 1: the real work isn't that you're going to be one
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure. It's that you build that hundred or
Speaker 1: close to one hundred percent certainty through all of those
Speaker 1: meaningful conversations that you're building over time. And I really
Speaker 1: believe love isn't just given. I think love has really grown,
Speaker 1: and I think that's part of what allows us to
Speaker 1: foster that with people.
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I was having this conversation with
Speaker 2: someone that life would be in one what you just explained.
Speaker 2: Life would be somewhat more entertaining if you went from
Speaker 2: dating to honeymoon and then broke at the power struggle
Speaker 2: and just kept doing that circle again because you keep
Speaker 2: getting this honeymoon period. But the honeymoon period requires no growth,
Speaker 2: and the growth over time is what allows you to
Speaker 2: realize the value of any relationship. And when I wrote
Speaker 2: my second book, Aprils, of love. It was all based
Speaker 2: on the Eastern teachings, which is every stage of life
Speaker 2: is called an ushram, and an usherm by definition, is
Speaker 2: a place of growth, and so being on your own
Speaker 2: is an ushroom, and then being with a partner is
Speaker 2: an ushrom, and the ushroom is a place of growth,
Speaker 2: a place of evolution. And so I think our views
Speaker 2: of love have been so warped by just happiness or
Speaker 2: pleasure that you forget that the greatest joy a human
Speaker 2: can feel is the challenge. And ultimately you're choosing someone
Speaker 2: that you like to be challenged by, that likes to
Speaker 2: be challenged by you, and where the challenge becomes enjoyable
Speaker 2: and joyful as opposed to the challenge being exhausting and
Speaker 2: tiring and painful. Absolutely right, that's at least what's resonated
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 1: That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that idea too, that like, the relationship is
Speaker 1: the ushroom and sort of like we were talking about,
Speaker 1: like yeah, really that One of my favorite quotes that
Speaker 1: reminds me of this is from Roomy and Roomy says
Speaker 1: if I am irritated by every rub, how will I
Speaker 1: ever be polished? And it's this idea that like everything
Speaker 1: I think, we so were so quick to jump to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that the hard things or the painful things
Speaker 1: are things that oh no, like this shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 1: Why is this happening to me? But I actually believe
Speaker 1: then this is actually again I'm going to throw a
Speaker 1: lot of this work on myself first, but I remember
Speaker 1: being so scared to see people in pain. I couldn't
Speaker 1: handle it as a little codependent and somebody to be
Speaker 1: in pain I wanted to like because it for them
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, And when I really started to reflect,
Speaker 1: they did this exercise once and I went and looked
Speaker 1: at the hardest times of my life. I wrote them
Speaker 1: all on paper, like the big ones, the really hard ones, individually,
Speaker 1: and I went through and I looked at, Okay, what
Speaker 1: did this give me? What was the hidden gift? And
Speaker 1: how did this serve me? How did this grow me?
Speaker 1: What did I learn? And oh, my goodness, by the
Speaker 1: end of that, I was like tears of like relief
Speaker 1: and gratitude because I noticed that in every really hard
Speaker 1: time there was this like invaluable lesson that I learned.
Speaker 1: And I really believe that God puts on our path
Speaker 1: for a reason, and I was able to go, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, Like there was a time where I was
Speaker 1: going through and trying to get sober, and I tried
Speaker 1: to reach out to people and I really didn't get
Speaker 1: the support that I needed at that time. And also
Speaker 1: because I was difficult at that time of my life too,
Speaker 1: I understand why. And it was so painful for me
Speaker 1: at the time, and I thought like I'll never get
Speaker 1: over it, And it was so healing for me to realize,
Speaker 1: like because I didn't go looking outside of myself for
Speaker 1: something in those moments that brought me into relationship to myself,
Speaker 1: into relationship to God. I felt like I really found
Speaker 1: a relationship to in those moments and through those times,
Speaker 1: and it was like, how could you ever want something
Speaker 1: other than that? Like how could like thank God that
Speaker 1: I went through that, and it was like this really
Speaker 1: big relief. And so I think sometimes we were so
Speaker 1: quick to think pain shouldn't be happening, bad thing shouldn't
Speaker 1: be happening, things in relationships should just be easy all
Speaker 1: the time. But it's like sometimes pain is the greatest
Speaker 1: teacher and actually presents to us if we are willing
Speaker 1: to look and find those things. The greatest gifts in
Speaker 1: what's going to grow us in that next season of
Speaker 1: our lives?
Speaker 2: Well said, Tase, we want to play this game with
Speaker 2: you called this or That Relationship Edition. So we're going
Speaker 2: to ask you this or that. Let you choose. So Tayse,
Speaker 2: slow things down to match their pace, even if you
Speaker 2: want more, or move on, to honor your timeline, even
Speaker 2: if it means losing them.
Speaker 1: I'm scared all my answers are going to be like
Speaker 1: communicate and find the middle ground. But I would say,
Speaker 1: for sure, be honest, be upfront, tell somebody what your
Speaker 1: timeline is, stand in your truth, be really authentic, and
Speaker 1: if somebody is unwilling to move and meet you parway,
Speaker 1: then you have to yourself and keep it moving. And
Speaker 1: I often found I know these are probably supposed to
Speaker 1: be quick questions, but I've often found that people who
Speaker 1: are anxious think, oh, I'll just slow down to win
Speaker 1: them over. Doesn't work like that, never works like that.
Speaker 1: What you do is you honor your truth, you speak
Speaker 1: your needs, you stand in it, and you let that
Speaker 1: person either grow and move towards or you don't. And
Speaker 1: usually if you're into people pleasing, it's the self betrayal,
Speaker 1: and then that feeds back into the subconscious comfort zone.
Speaker 1: It just never works that way.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, okay, cool, next one, stay with someone who feels
Speaker 2: safe but doesn't excite you, or choose someone who excites
Speaker 2: you but keeps you on edge.
Speaker 1: I would say stay with the person who feel safe
Speaker 1: because it's more green flags. But then build things that
Speaker 1: create mutual excitement into your relationship. So it's actually one
Speaker 1: of the ways it's the right of passage to get
Speaker 1: out of the rhythm stage and into the future stages
Speaker 1: of relationship is if you feel like there's a sense
Speaker 1: of safety but not enough excitement, then you have to
Speaker 1: build novelty into the relationship, spontaneity, things that make you
Speaker 1: feel that sense of chemistry and connection. So safety is
Speaker 1: really healthy and good, but then build those things in
Speaker 1: that keep that that sparkle live.
Speaker 2: It's easier to add excitement to a safe relationship than
Speaker 2: it is to build safety in an exciting relationship.
Speaker 1: That makes beautifully right.
Speaker 2: And it's like we we think that, oh, if something's exciting, oh,
Speaker 2: I can make this film more safe. I can make
Speaker 2: this film more secure. But that's a much harder thing
Speaker 2: to develop from that foundation than the other.
Speaker 1: Way around, and like caveat being that you have to
Speaker 1: actually feel attracted as the person the person. I can
Speaker 1: see some people being like, oh so I should say
Speaker 1: with the person I'm not interested in no way, But like,
Speaker 1: the reality is exactly what you said, And sometimes the
Speaker 1: constantly on edge is for really painful reasons, especially if
Speaker 1: the other person's are going to be willing to do
Speaker 1: the work with you.
Speaker 2: Okay, next one, build stability slowly with someone dependable, or
Speaker 2: follow instant chemistry and risk the uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Build you know' id actually almost go and reverse on
Speaker 1: that one. I would say follow the chemistry as long
Speaker 1: as you're going to do the work on it. Chemistry
Speaker 1: tells us a lot about ourselves those times you get
Speaker 1: those really exciting like connections and that like oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: That is always we have limreents or intense infatuation for
Speaker 1: three reasons. Number one, somebody's expressing your repress trates, like
Speaker 1: we talked about, do that integration work. Number two, somebody
Speaker 1: is meeting your deeply unmet needs from childhood. That'll be
Speaker 1: the spark early, and then it'll be the thing that
Speaker 1: pressures the relationship later because you're trying to just source
Speaker 1: from them, So do that work to really build those
Speaker 1: It's sort of this key that unlocked all this awareness
Speaker 1: and to yourself. And then the third thing is how
Speaker 1: somebody's you know, treating you. If it's how you treat yourself,
Speaker 1: we got to work that out. So I would say,
Speaker 1: follow the excitement, but vet that somebody is going to
Speaker 1: do the work with you, not negotiably.
Speaker 2: Yes, getting closure from yourself or closure from your ex
Speaker 2: after a breakup.
Speaker 1: From self, through and through, because what you're looking for
Speaker 1: is needs from that person who often can't supply them anyways.
Speaker 1: And closure. When people break down, closure, closure, they're actually
Speaker 1: looking for certainty. Okay, the best way to get certainty
Speaker 1: is to question all of your stories that you're telling
Speaker 1: after the breakup. So people want the certainty of their
Speaker 1: act saying, oh, it wasn't all your fault, it was
Speaker 1: this and this and it was me. They want to
Speaker 1: hear all those details. You know, what you're gonna do
Speaker 1: is you're gonna sit down and write all your stories
Speaker 1: on paper. It was all my fault, I wasn't good enough,
Speaker 1: I'm unlovable. You're gonna put all those things and you're
Speaker 1: gonna sit there and you're gonna question them and you say, really,
Speaker 1: I wasn't good enough? How was I got enough? How
Speaker 1: did I show up? I'm not lovable? How am I lovable?
Speaker 1: And you're going to honor those things. And that's those
Speaker 1: things that we're trying to get from your exsor neck
Speaker 1: that your ACX is never going to give them to
Speaker 1: the way that you need, but you can give them
Speaker 1: to yourself in that way, and that's healing and its
Speaker 1: growth and you have a sense of control over it
Speaker 1: and I help you way.
Speaker 2: It's been incredible talking to you today. I feel like
Speaker 2: I've learned so much. I truly believe you've given me
Speaker 2: the book, the podcast, and the program to recommend to
Speaker 2: all of my friends that are struggling in love and
Speaker 2: dating in relationships right now, because I don't think I've
Speaker 2: heard a stronger foundational way that people can actually engage
Speaker 2: and interact with each other. The framework so much gravitas,
Speaker 2: but the way you've built the program to be so
Speaker 2: simple and specific, feels so practical and tactical and easy
Speaker 2: to do for people. It's truly remarkable. Congratulations, Like it's
Speaker 2: really fulfilling hearing that I have something to give for
Speaker 2: people that I you know that I want to help.
Speaker 2: We end every on Purpose episode with a final five.
Speaker 2: These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum,
Speaker 2: So Teddy Skipson, these are your final five. The first
Speaker 2: question is what is the best love advice you've ever
Speaker 2: heard or received?
Speaker 1: To learn to be compassionate towards yourself and gentle towards yourself.
Speaker 2: Second question, what is the worst love advice you've ever
Speaker 2: heard or received?
Speaker 1: To try to change other people if they're not willing
Speaker 1: to do the work?
Speaker 2: Can you ever change someone?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: People can choose to change themselves, but you can only
Speaker 1: show up and lead by example. And that how somebody
Speaker 1: else responds Question number three?
Speaker 2: A couple here ates that I really wanted to get
Speaker 2: to So question number three, what does this really mean?
Speaker 2: In dating?
Speaker 1: The spark really means that somebody is the expression of
Speaker 1: your repressed traits, needing your deeply on that needs, or
Speaker 1: mirroring back to you. How you treat yourself when people
Speaker 1: have extreme sparks?
Speaker 2: It's always that good answer. Question number four? How do
Speaker 2: people unintentionally push away the love they want most?
Speaker 1: Because people end up trying to make somebody the person
Speaker 1: who's going to fill it all for them, complete them,
Speaker 1: do it all for them, when really we're supposed to
Speaker 1: do half that job for ourselves too. Otherwise we can't
Speaker 1: receive it properly from anybody, and we to put too
Speaker 1: much pressure.
Speaker 2: And fifth and final question, we asked this to every
Speaker 2: guest who's ever been on the show. If you could
Speaker 2: create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 2: what would it be.
Speaker 1: It would be for people to learn about their own
Speaker 1: subconscious conditioning and how to rewire it, because unless we
Speaker 1: deal with things at the subconscious level, we'll always set
Speaker 1: intentions or say we're going to do things, and then
Speaker 1: will often feel so defeated. It was a big part
Speaker 1: of what I went through trying to get sober originally,
Speaker 1: like what the heck is going on? And I just
Speaker 1: I think that's the key that unlocks so much for
Speaker 1: people in a deep way.
Speaker 2: The book is called The New Attachment Theory. Heal every
Speaker 2: relationship by rewiring your brain and nervous system Tay Gibson.
Speaker 2: If anyone wants to learn more about you, follow you,
Speaker 2: connect with your work, commit to the program. Where should
Speaker 2: they go so that they don't miss out on doing
Speaker 2: this work?
Speaker 1: So they can go to Personaldevelopment School dot com. We
Speaker 1: have these really in depth reports. People can get on
Speaker 1: their attachment style and take her free quiz and it
Speaker 1: goes through all of your pillars and your whole profile.
Speaker 1: And then I am also all of our programs are
Speaker 1: through there, and I'm also on YouTube which is ty
Speaker 1: S Gibson Dash Personal Development School or at the Personal
Speaker 1: Development School on Instagram. And I just want to say
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. You're a phenomenal host.
Speaker 1: I just honestly felt so connected to you and chatting,
Speaker 1: and thank you for bringing all this out of me
Speaker 1: and letting me share.
Speaker 2: No I said this to earlier. Thank you for being
Speaker 2: a resource that I can direct people too, who I
Speaker 2: really feel this is such a foundational thing for having
Speaker 2: a successful life, like relationships, dating, work, it's everything. So
Speaker 2: tell us, thank you so much. Thanks me such a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and I'm excited to have you that concern.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3: If you enjoyed this conversation, you love my episode with
Speaker 3: the world's leading relationship therapist Esther Parrel where we talk
Speaker 3: about why your ego is ruining your relationships and how
Speaker 3: to date more effectively.
Speaker 2: I think we need to differentiate. Are you looking for
Speaker 2: chemistry for a love story or are you looking for
Speaker 2: chemistry for a life story.