Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 98. The Attachment Series: Anxious Attachment Style and its Impact on Relationships and Divorce

Transcript

98. The Attachment Series: Anxious Attachment Style and its Impact on Relationships and Divorce · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi, love.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Today marks the beginning of a series we're going to do on attachment styles and this is very exciting because of how our attachment style, our style, the way that we bond with other close people in our lives, dictates everything as we move throughout our day.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Our attachment style, love.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It dictates who you're attracted to, how you function inside of those relationships, it dictates aspects of your personality, how you connect or relate to God, how you experience sex, how you interact with your children, your families at work, and it is the set of beliefs and expectations that define how you do relationships love.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So your attachment style and your ex's attachment style very much have to do with how you began that marriage, how and why that marriage ended and what your next steps in terms of dating and relationships look like, and also if you have children and they're having to do split schedules.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It defines so much of their own attachment styles and how they're setting up their own beliefs and expectations about intimate relationships.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: This series is going to be so powerful and we're going to honor and acknowledge the researchers, like John Bulby, who is the father of attachment styles, but also his assistant, mary Ainsworth, and, over the years, people like Harry Harlow and Sue Johnson.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: There's so much data available to us for us to really understand how we function and then to make decisions about where we want to make changes.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Come along as we dig in today to anxious attachment style specifically.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: If you have a sense that yourself or someone in your life is an anxious attachment, this episode is for you.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome to Dear Dvoris Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, we're going to specifically touch on the correlation between an anxious attachment style and codependency.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So if codependency has been on your radar and it feels hard, this will just kind of illuminate that a little bit further.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the benefits of an anxious attachment style.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: That's not something we think of that often and we are going to talk about an attachment concept that's not commonly discussed that really kind of loops in how we can address our attachment style and move it into a more healthy parameter, right, how we can start to shift our set of beliefs and expectations, and this attachment concept is one that is not commonly discussed.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It was even new to me.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Love, can you like let's dig in If you've been around for a minute, you've heard me say that I believe that attachment theory is one of the major underpinnings to divorce.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Right, that it is one of the most massively contributing factors to divorce, and really understanding that and knowing how to, shall I say, manipulate your attachment style to a healthier parameter, right.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Just massively improves your chances of having a sustainable marriage that is rewarding and fulfilling and feels good, right.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And so let's dig into what an anxious attachment style looks like and how and why it came to be.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Now, first things first.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Humans are one of the most vulnerable species for the longest period of time in their early years.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So, for instance, horses, hours after they're born, can get up and run away.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Humans, on the other hand, cannot.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: We are massively dependent on our caretakers for longer than, I think, maybe any other species, but most other species for sure.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: We, even from just the function of movement concept, being able to feed ourselves, being able to elude our prey those things are years in the making, right.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And then it's really not until we're seven or eight years old that certain smart thinking parts of our brain come online.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So when you think about it, we are massively dependent.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Like, how old would a human have to be before if they were homeless on the streets, they could protect themselves, feed themselves, care for themselves, right?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: It's something that's unique to our species.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And so when you think about an infant who was first in utero and then they're, especially their first one to two years of life, and how much a caregiver has to provide for that baby, you start to get a sense, if you really think about day in and day out, of why a baby would start to feel a sense of insecurity because of how dependent.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Think about how it feels for you to be dependent on people.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I had a 20-minute conversation with producer Joy this week about which person I should ask to pick my kid up from school, because I didn't want to feel like a burden PS classic anxious attachment style stuff, right there, right.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So think about how it feels for you to be dependent on people, and then just let's trace that back to infancy that that was a couple of years of complete dependency on other people, and so there are a lot of factors that affect a caregiver's ability to provide consistent care early on.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: One of them happens to be overwhelm, right?
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Think about how many parents are juggling jobs as well as parenthood, and think about how many parents are juggling multiple children plus jobs plus parenthood.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: And think about how hard it is to be consistent when a dependent child needs something to be consistently responsive, meaning baby cries and caregiver consistently comes and responds appropriately.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: So that's, there's two things there, right?
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So baby cries, caregiver comes consistently and then responds appropriately consistently.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So what do I mean by appropriately?
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Well, how many times I know I fall into this, right?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Is baby crying and I feel exhausted, I feel frustrated, I feel angry.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I feel I'm angry at my husband and therefore I go pick up my baby, and I'm angry when I pick up my crying baby.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And maybe it has nothing to do with my baby, but I'm angry, right?
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: This is what I mean by response, but not appropriately, because a caregiver's ability to be attuned to their baby is what gives the baby the sense of security when they're in that dependent place for the first years of their life.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And so when we think about parents like myself who were traumatized or who had things going on right, I had chronic illness I was struggling with.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I had definitely still in the process of treating my own complex post-traumatic stress disorder right, how that affects the way we connect with and bond with our babies.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Then let's talk about this sexy topic, the idea that we were taught in a lot of parenting books to let babies cry it out and learn how to self-soothe.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: And there's that's like ooh, a polarizing topic right there.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: But for the most part I would say that when you put that over the lens of attachment theory, that that's largely not a great idea.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: That, yes, we want to, over time, help our children learn how to self-soothe and regulate, but for babies to be able to do that, it's an unrealistic expectation.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: You think about the course of human development.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: We've slept in rooms together as families for a very, very long time and the amount of disconnect we experience in modern living is too much.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: We function so much better in community.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: We are wired for love and belonging.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: We do well when we are in proximity with community.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Even my dogs don't like to sleep alone.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: They're back animals.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: They like to sleep in puppy piles.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And so, as mammals, right, we want to be close, we want to be proximate, we want to be sure of each other and we've put an unreasonable expectation on our babies, or like, maybe, as babies, our generation.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: There was an unrealistic expectation, right, remember that commercial back in the 80s?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: It's 10pm, do you know where your children are?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Right, there was just too much space.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And so the very specific conditions that create an anxious attachment stop.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Because, remember, in this series we're going to talk about avoidant and we're going to talk about disorganized.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: But specifically anxious would be a baby who experienced inconsistent responsiveness from a caregiver.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So I cry, and maybe sometimes you come, maybe sometimes you don't come, maybe sometimes you come and you're, you're in a mood, you know there's a vibe and that vibe doesn't feel good to me, right?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: And so what the baby develops is an adaptive way of relating to their caregiver, which is I am going to be more needy to make sure I get my needs met more consistently.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And so that anxious style would be developed, not just with the primary caregiver or primary caregivers, but also with other caregivers, which could be teachers or nannies or siblings, and that anxiousness would look like a clinginess or a neediness, right.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: And so the anxious attacher longs to almost become one with their caregiver.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So think about that right, scan in your mind, body and notice is there a part of you who wants to be so close Like this is me?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Right, I want to.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: I said to producer joy um, we were around our family together last week.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Like I want best friends where I can just pop over to their house and climb in their bed with them.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: That's classic anxious attachment style language.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Right, I want this amount of closeness that, um, is maybe in many instances not completely appropriate, right, this is where the emotional support animal has come from.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Right, anxious attachers who long to be really close to someone function really well with emotional support animals because there's someone always there.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: And so if you've ever had a thought that, like, you want to be closer to people and you're aware that that makes them uncomfortable, that's a pretty classic kind of hallmark of anxious attachment.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: If you've ever been accused of being needy or you've ever become aware of that, you feel a bit needy.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: That's kind of classic attachment style stuff.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And so in your brain map because our brains are being mapped and are very neuro plastic, meaning they are able to be shifted and changed, especially zero to seven in your brain map there is a map that says that loved ones are not always consistent, and I must overcome that by being ever present and needy, and I'm doing that to ensure that I get my needs met more often.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: So that is the brain map, and the brain map can be shifted because we understand that.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: That brain map comes from a set of beliefs and expectations from early childhood that was before you had language.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: For any of this it was energetic, right?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So think about you're a baby and you're in the crib and all of this feels like energy to you, right?
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: It's not that you know the words the caregivers are saying.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: You're noticing their facial expressions.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: You're learning, noticing their tone of voice.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You're noticing their body language.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: You're noticing whether or not it's open or closed, whether it's warm and soft or it's anxious or hard or angry or aggressive, right, and so all of that is experienced for the infant on an energetic level.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: They're not putting language to oh, my caregiver doesn't want me, or oh, I'm not a good enough baby.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: That's not language or concepting that a baby has in the way that we think of it.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: It feels energetic.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: It feels like the baby either feels at ease and safe or feels tense or wound up in response to their environment right.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: And so this is why, with all of the tools that there are to help create a greater sense of security and a healthier way of attaching to people, there are so many tools, right Tools to create a greater sense of security inside of oneself, tools to shift the beliefs and expectations that have been internalized on a subconscious level.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So we talk about these tools a lot.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: We talk about journaling, eft, tapping, emdr.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: We talk about even how we can practice creating greater security in dating right in practicing relationships.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: This is where we help heal sometimes attachment wounds.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Right is in healthier relationships, where we have healing experiences.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Producer joy and I had a very long conversation yesterday after work where we had to work some things out about how our girls get along, and in that conversation it was hard for both of us but we talked about inside of it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, look at us, you know addressing our attachment styles and our anxious attachment behaviors while we're negotiating this with one another right.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: So so in relationship is one of the ways we heal our attachment styles.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But the most profound thing that I have seen help shift attachment style because of that pre verbal, pre picture memory experience that the baby had on an energetic level PS you're the baby is homeopathy, and the reason for that is because homeopathy is energy medicine, and so it cuts through all of the you know what we think of as memory and what we think of as language, and it cuts through all of that and it goes to our energetic core.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So just know that you know my passion about attachment styles and divorce and healthy marriages and relationships in general and healing and trauma and all the things that that's why I've become so passionate about homeopathy lately is because I know that to truly change the course of how we're doing relationships in the world, we have to heal our attachment styles, and so I want the most efficient means to do that, and so this is just, in my experience, one of the most efficient means I have seen in the course of my 20 plus year career 25 year career right.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: So if you're in a anxious attachment, the very first thing to notice is when you're doing anxious attachment stuff right, when you're doing clinging, when you're doing I need you a lot more and I don't feel confident in my ability to meet my own needs.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I need you to do it for me.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So and that isn't, in essence, what codependency is.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: It's that I don't perceive I can function outside of this relationship, or if this relationship isn't smoothed over right now, right.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: If this relationship feels threatened to me right now.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I feel threatened right now, right.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: This is, this is how codependency functions and thrives.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It's almost like the anxious attache never developed the awareness that she could right, that she didn't have to any longer rely on her attachment figures to provide all of her needs, that she could, in essence, provide for a lot of her own needs, and that there are a lot of people out there in the world that are willing to help her provide her needs not any one person.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So when we think about how the anxious attache does sex, well, she's going to want probably.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: She's less likely to do one night stands, right, she's more likely to want consistent sex partners or monogamy.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: We think about the anxious.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: How the anxious attache does God, right, she would have kind of a needy way of relating to God, like I need you, I need you, I need you.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Not a lot of faith, embodied faith in God right, it would be more of an anxious way of relating to God.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: We think about how an anxious attache would do friendships.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: It would.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: That would be the friend that needs you to respond to their text messages, right?
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: That doesn't cope as well when you, when there's a text message sent and it's not responded to, that anxious attache Even if they, even if they don't ask for the response, in inside they're like did I do something wrong?
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Oh God, she's mad at me, they're mad at me, right.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Like that kind of response.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I think the anxious attache as a parent is more of a helicopter parent.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: The anxious attache has a harder time letting their kids go to a certain extent right To go have adventures and to go try new things and make their own mistakes and become independent.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Anxious attache have a harder time doing that with their children and in love relationships.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Here is life's great irony An anxious attache has a strong likelihood of attracting either an avoidant attache or a disorganized attache, because that will most similarly mirror what they experienced as an infant is someone who was not consistently available.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: So, meaning it's called the anxious avoidant paradox, right?
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: The idea that the anxious attracts the very thing that perpetuates their anxiety the avoidant attache, right.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And so it's massively important that when we are considering how we live, love, parent, relate to our, the people who are closest to us in our lives, and especially how we start dating and attracting future partners, that we really become aware of and integrate attachment theory into how we're selecting our loved ones and not just lovers, right, but friends and jobs and right like we really need to be considering how, how, how we're wired, dictates to a certain extent what we need in order to feel secure.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: So a concept that's not commonly discussed.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: That was a new concept to me, super fascinating.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I, in preparation for this series, was brushing up on attachment theory and I read the book that I had had on my shelf for a long time but reread it.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: It's called the Attachment Effect by Peter Levenheim.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: It's a beautifully written book where Peter kind of walks through his own journey of understanding his attachment style.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: He talks to all of our modern day researchers, gets into the historical research, love it so good.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: So in the book, when Peter is sitting with a mental health professional who is assessing Peter's attachment style, did you know that there is a?
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: There's a tool that therapists can use and become certified in to assess attachment style Formally?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: It's very cool.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: So Peter is going through this process right of having his attachment style assessed and when the evaluator comes down to you know, do you want me to score these results or do you want me to give you my impression?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Peter says, give me your impression of my attachment style.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And he says.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: The provider says my sense is is that you are an earned secure Peter, and I heard this phrase earned secure and I had never heard that phrase before knocked my socks off.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: So an earned secure attachment style honors and acknowledges that you did not grow up with a, with a secure attachment style.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: That's just not a brain map that was available to you based on your early childhood experiences.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: However, through a series of events of therapy there's a lot of talk about therapy as a tool in the book right Therapy and examination of your expectations and beliefs and relationships and an intention of overcoming those early childhood experiences you can develop and earned secure attachment style, and that is what the evaluator said most likely this particular author's attachment style had become over time, and so I think that that gives us so much hope right for both you know our world right as a population and our ability to heal our relationships, but also so much hope and optimism for ourselves as people that hey, this is possible, this is available to cultivate a sense of security in our relationships, and it's not easy to do, right.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: It's vulnerable work, and you're going to hear me talk a lot more about vulnerability as a means to creating an earned, secure attachment style over the course of this series.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Vulnerability is one of the most massive components that's needed in order to help shift your attachment style.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Let's talk for a minute about the benefits of an anxious attachment style, because pretty much everything that exists has some evolutionary purpose, right?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And so what is the evolutionary purpose or benefit of having an anxious attachment style?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Well, we know that anxious attachment styles have strong radar for threat or danger or something that feels off right, because, again, you're the baby in the crib and you're trying to perceive am I going to get my needs met?
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Let me read the room, let me read the vibe of this caregiver to get a sense of whether or not I'm going to get my needs met.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: So I know whether or not I need to cry harder or I can stop crying, right.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And so anxious attachments are really good sentinels in our society.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: They're really good at calling our attention to threats and dangers that are happening in the world around us.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And so oftentimes, because anxious attachments are anxious, they get a bad rap for being neurotic or consumed with things that the boy who cried wolf kind of thing right, it's like if the sky is always falling.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: How can I trust you, anxious attachment, that you actually make sense?
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: But I think that anxious attachments the reality is is they are really good at pointing out the flaws in the fabric of our society that are dangerous, that are concerning, that need to be shifted.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And when anxious attachments say something's off here, there's a really, really good chance that something is off because they're really good at reading energy.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: So, whether or not we call this a highly sensitive person or someone who's intuitive or empathic, yes, there's a strong correlation between anxious attachment, attachment and being highly sensitive, and there is a benefit to that right, because you're going to have a good read on a situation more often than not.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Now, the downside of that is your read on the situation.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: You may not always have the tools to regulate your nervous system or to know what to do about that, because when you're anxious right, you don't always have a clear strategy for resolving a problem.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: A lot of times, the anxious attachment automatic solution is fight, flight, freeze, fawn, not necessarily a grounded strategy for resolving conflict or or creating safety or security, and so there is a benefit in that someone who had an anxious attachment orientation but became an earned secure, they would have a great read on a situation but, as an earned secure, would have a healthier approach to resolving conflict and creating a sense of security for themselves and the people around them.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Now it's time for our getting unstuck segment, where a listener writes in and says Don, I am having a stuck moment and I need some insight.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: If you are feeling stuck in a certain area, please, please, please.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: This is so helpful for all of our community.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Every listener out there, right, send me your struggle and I will anonymously help you work through it on the episode.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: So today's submission is from Susan.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: She says this time last year is when my life blew up and everything hit the fan, and I'm really afraid that I'm going to spend the next several months mentally reliving this time of my life last year, which was the most painful time of my life ever.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I've already noticed thoughts like at this time last year, blank was happening and I can just see myself spiraling into this pattern of thought, and I don't want to do that.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: What should I do next, susan, thank you so much for sending us your stuck moment.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I think this is a stuck moment that is so relatable for every woman who is processing divorce, and anniversaries are such a massive aspect of processing divorce and working through grief, right, whether it's holidays or you know, various events like that's just so common, whether and and you know we've all gone through that with so many things whether it's the death of a loved one, but especially with this right.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: And so Susan said that time in her life where everything blew up was the most painful time.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And so, susan, you may or may not like my advice, but this is one of those instances is of the only way out is through, and that means, if those thoughts are coming up, that at this time last year I was blank.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: What I actually want you to do, a percentage of the time, is to allow yourself to go completely into that moment, but again, apply a tool, and so the tool of distraction is very valuable.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It's a necessary tool, but it's not a healing tool.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Right, it keeps me treading.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Water tool, distraction, or numbing, or avoidance.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a tool that allows me to get from here to there till I'm in a better spot to work on it or I have a little more bandwidth to work on it or have a little more support to work on it.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, what has to happen is you have to use a healing tool which would be ooh, in the next episode, our hidden healing gem.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a very specific tool that I have not talked about on here before, so you could check that one out in the next episode EFT tapping massively helpful tool when this time last year I was feeling X right To go to either the Tapping Solution app or Brad Yates or any of our favorite tappers and to do a tapping video specifically on that, because it helps rewire and reprocess and desensitize that painful season.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: So if you think about that painful season as being like a pile of trash, we have to take the trash out one pile at a time before, eventually, it's no longer so painful.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: We can feel neutral or positive about it.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: That's a process, and it often takes years to get that pile down to nil, right?
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: So?
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: But the more you avoid or numb or distract, the more you're not addressing the pile.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: So I just want you to ask yourself, love, am I actively addressing the pile, at least consistently, even if it's just little bites at a time right.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: So am I using EMDR, or am I using journaling?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Or am I using energy healing or EFT or homeopathy to make the pile smaller a little bit at a time?
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Or am I relying on avoidance?
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And so when those thoughts come back up, love.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: We tend to think that those thoughts are intrusive and frustrating and annoying and we just want to be done with them.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: We think we should be further along in our healing journey.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: That is a bunch of bullshit.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: You're exactly where you need to be love.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: The amount to which we feel grief is directly to proportionate to the amount that we felt and experienced love.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Do not piss on the love that was there by denying yourself a lengthy grief process.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: We want you to heal your heart so that you can love deeply again.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: You loved deeply.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Honor that by grieving deeply.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: That's really the brilliance right there.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So when the thoughts come up, those thoughts are a gift.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: They're saying, hey, it's time to attend to this trash pile.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: You are right on track.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I love you so much.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: You can find more at MyCoachDawncom.