Latest / Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman / Dr. Judy Ho - The New Rules of Attachment

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Dr. Judy Ho - The New Rules of Attachment · Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman

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Vox Novus, the new Voice, Vox Novus, the new Dimension, Vox
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Novus thought and movement leaders who will share from their experience and offer tools to
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help us navigate our rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Furman. Welcome
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to Vox Novus, the New Voice. Attachment style forms the foundation for how
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we understand trust, security, and build our self concept and self esteem,
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which then affects how we achieve goals, approach physical and mental wellness, and
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how we relate to friends, family, colleagues, and romantic partners. How
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may we heal negative attachment styles and embrace positive attachment styles? My guest this
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week on Box Novis Doctor Judy Hoe reveals how insecure attachment style, which affects
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up to seventy five percent of the population, impacts our lives more than we
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realize, and how we can heal the wounds that prevent us from living our
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best lives at any age. Doctor Judy Hoe is a triple Board certified and
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licensed clinical and forensic neuropsychologist, a tenured associate professor at Pepperdine University, and
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author of the twenty nineteen best selling Stop Self Sabotage. Her website is doctor
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Judyhoe dot com and she joins me this week to discuss her path and just
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published book, The New Rules of Attachment, How to heal your relationships,
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reparent your inner child, and secure your life. Please join me in welcoming
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to Vox Novis doctor Judy. How welcome, doctor Judy. Thank you so
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much for having me on your show. Victor, I'm really glad to be
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here. Thank you so much. It's wonderful for you to join us and
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share some information that'll be very valuable to our listeners. For our listeners meeting
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you for the first time, please share your path and how it led to
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your calling as a clinical psychologist. Of course, so I actually had my
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first sees planted for a career in the psychology field as a high school student.
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I was a participant in the Big Brother Big Sister club when I was
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a high school student. At the time, I thought this sounds like a
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great time hanging out with some cute kids. It's a great resume builder for
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college. But I did not know that it was going to have such a
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huge impact on me just as a person and also professionally. I was paired
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with a ten year old little girl. I was fifteen at the time,
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and so what did I know, Right, She's ten years old, I'm
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fifteen. I had no psychological training whatsoever. We didn't even have a psychology
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elective class in my high school. But I just continue to show up every
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week, take her to to ice cream, take her for a movie,
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go to the park, sit with her. And she had been in no
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less than eight or nine group poems at the time that she was ten,
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and pretty quickly it became clear that I was really the most consistent person in
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her life and that really had a positive impact on her own belief in herself,
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her ability to feel that she could be cared for, in loved by
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somebody. And really all I was doing was showing up and having conversation with
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her. So I think that was the first time that I really understood the
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impact one person can make on another person simply just by showing up, essentially
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just by being mindful. But at the time, of course, I didn't
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know what that term really meant, and so that really sparked my interest in
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psychology, and fortunately for me, I feel very blessed to have been in
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this career for a long time. Absolutely, you know, I have a
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sense from reading your books and talking with you now that you were actually a
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very good listener even before that experience, and that you cared about people.
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Yeah, thank you so much. You know. For me, I think
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that the most important thing about my journey as a psychologist has always been to
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try to destigmatize mental illness for people. I have definitely noticed, just even
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among my close friends and colleagues, but definitely with patients that I've worked with,
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that so much of it is that they're not able to admit to themselves
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that maybe they're struggling because they think that admitting that they have mental health concerns
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looks like a weakness, looks like a character weakness of some sort. And
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that has really motivated me to try to get really helpful information out there,
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but in a way that doesn't make people feel like they have to be ashamed
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at all, you know. I try to describe these terms as universally as
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possible, because I think all of us struggle from time to time, and
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it's really just about when you need to do something about it because it's affecting
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your life to that level. Now, most of us are familiar with the
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work of clinical psychologists, but your extended title is fascinating Clinical and forensic Neuropsychologists.
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When we hear the word forensic, many of us think of forensic investigations
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at a crime scene. Please unpack clinical forensic neuropsychologists for us. Sure.
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So, neuropsychologists is one of my subspecialties. This is a person who specializes
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in the relationships between the brain as well as your behavior. And so oftentimes
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we look at how the brain functions, you know, how we learn,
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how we have memory, our attention span, and I do assessments to look
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at these factors. And so a big part of my private practice is actually
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conducting neuropsychological evaluations where people may have concerns about the way that their brain is
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functioning, and I do assessments to help them understand that whether it's because of
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potentially a traumatic brain injury that's affected they're functioning, or maybe substance abuse,
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or maybe even just getting older having dementia or developmental conditions like autism and ADHD.
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That's a big part of my specialty. But as a result of me
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having this specialty in brain and behavior relationships, I've been sought after in civil
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and criminal cases to talk about how mental health impacts a person in those sectors,
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and so in the civil world, it's mostly people saying, you know,
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I was injured from this particular situation or this event, and then I
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have to evaluate exactly how they were injured and what symptoms are showing up,
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as well as help prescribe a treatment plan. But in the criminal setting,
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oftentimes I'm asked to look at people who might be defending themselves in a criminal
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case and assessing whether or not these individuals have any mitigating factors. Are there
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any other reasons we should be considering that might explain their behavior, Are they
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able to reciivate, are they able to become productive citizens of society at some
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point, and whether or not any of these factors should be taken into account
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during their sentencing as well as trial. Not to spend too much time on
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that topic, but I'm curious, do you see a pattern in people who
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lead to criminal lives? There are some patterns. It's never just one thing,
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but oftentimes you'll find that there are some biological indicators that perhaps their brain
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is slightly different. One thing that we often see is that their reward centers
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seem to be a bit hijacked. They seem like they are not able to
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experience reward enjoy in the same way that people who do not commit crimes do,
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so they need more of a stimulation to start to feel good or to
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start to feel any emotion at all. But also there's a number of psychological
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factors as well in environmental factors. So many individuals who have criminal histories did
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grow up in extremely violent, extremely abusive homes, and they may have grown
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up with parents or other adults who actually, in different ways, showed them
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that crime could be rewarded somehow, and that may have been a huge factor
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in their learning. We'll be discussing your just published new book, The New
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Rules of Attachment a little later in the interview, but please share with us
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the in for your twenty nineteen best selling Stop Self Sabotage. Six Steps to
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unlock your true motivation, harness your willpower, and get out of your own
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way. Yeah. So, I've really found that even in the most successful
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people, there was some element of self sabotage that had occurred either in the
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past or maybe for them now. And for most people, self sabotage doesn't
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occur in every single area of life. It only occurs maybe in one or
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two areas, and I really wanted to impact why this was because it wasn't
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just about people who were blowing up their lives in every single area. These
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are people who are relatively or very successful, but just in a couple of
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areas, it just keep getting in their own way. Why is that?
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So that was a big drive for me to put this book together because oftentimes
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people will even use that term. They'll say, oh, well, I
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self sabotaged X, and then they just kind of move on as if there's
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no solution. So that was really important for me to impart on people.
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There is a scientific way to work through this. There's a reason why this
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is happening, and here is how you can take action and put this back
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in your own hands. What's the wiring behind self sabotage? How does it
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occur? Self sabotage occurs because so many times our brains are just trying to
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achieve that delicate balance of attaining rewards and also avoiding threat. It's what we
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need to be able to survive and thrive. And when things are relatively balanced,
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everything is going well. But oftentimes we end up flipping the switch on
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the threat indicator. So we might sometimes misread a situation, fear the threat
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more so, and then when that threat scale is tipped, you start to
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think about the potential threat so much more that you end up pushing down the
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drive that should be at least equal in trying to attain rewards. And so
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when that happens, all kinds of things happen in our brain. We start
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to have this type of self talk that in essence trying to protect us,
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but actually ends up holding us back from doing things that will really ultimately serve
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us. Is there a self worth component also? Absolutely, many people who
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struggle with self sabotage, especially those who are chronic sufferers of self sabotage,
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there's a self worth component. There's a part of them that doesn't feel like
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they deserve good things. There's a part of the questions whether they deserve good
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things. So then when good things start happening, they start doing things to
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essentially become self defeating in many ways. They start to if they're in a
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great relationship, they start to question that relationship. They start to do things
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to stir the pot to create conflict when there doesn't need to be any.
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When they receive a promotion when they're not certain that they deserved it, they
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will inherently do things like start procrastinating on bigger projects or become really dependent on
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other people's opinions of them to be able to move forward, and then in
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essence that could create a self defeating pattern where they actually end up doing less
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at their job at their new position, and then end up getting in trouble
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with their boss because they're not performing the way that they were hoping they would.
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So a lot of these things can happen, and it's not always conscious.
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Oftentimes this is operating at a subconscious level. But that's why it's important
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to bring it out into the light and talk about what we can do about
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those thought patterns. Is there a common form of self sabotage that you can
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give us an example of and how may it be stopped and avoided. Procrastination
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is a big one, and I think that a lot of people think that
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they're procrastinating because that gives them the impetus, that gives them the drive,
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the motivation to do things last minute. That's where their best ideas come.
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But even if that was true, on occasion, our brains have selective memory.
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Our brains oftentimes will believe or only selectively pay attention to certain situations that
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seem to prove our point, and then you forget all the times where you
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know you didn't sleep and actually you didn't turn in your best work. Inevitably,
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that ends up happening to almost everybody who procrastinates. At some point,
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you just simply run out of time to do your best work, and then
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you will suffer the consequences of that in a variety of areas. And so,
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in terms of how to start eradicating that behavior, it's important to notice
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the thoughts that you have prior to procrastinating, and once you recognize what those
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thought patterns are, you have to start changing them and modifying them in a
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way that is more realistic to the situation. And one of the ways that
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I like to talk about thought modification is not so much just positive thinking and
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a positive mantra that doesn't really work. That type of thinking doesn't work because
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sometimes there's a toxic positivity element to it. You say these positive mantras to
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yourself, but you don't really believe them, so that actually causes you even
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more of a dissonance, making it harder for you to achieve your goals.
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So I like to use a yes butt technique. Yes recognizing something that's not
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going super well or is a problem that you're having, and then but fill
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in the blink with something that you are in progress, that you're working on,
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or something that is going relatively well. So one example is, yes,
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I did procrastinate this last project and my supervisor seemed to be upset at
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me for it. But I have a new plan for how to tackle this
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next project, including a timeline that's outlined from two weeks ahead of when it's
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due. So once you start to practice this alternate way of thinking, you'll
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find that it's a lot easier for you to move forward and to eradicate previous
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patterns of self sabotage. What about self sabotage in personal relationships? Self sabotage
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in personal relationships is one of the most common ways people self sabotage. I
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think it can be very scary for people, especially those who generally like to
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be in control, to leave something up to another person whose thoughts you really
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can't control no matter what you do and how you try. So I think
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that oftentimes people will either write off a person too quickly, tell themselves that
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they don't really actually need the connection and distance themselves from a potentially good partner,
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or because of their own insecurities, end up being so reliant on that
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partner's reinforcements and essentially exhibiting clingy behavior that eventually the partner actually does get frustrated
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with that and ends the relationship. So in those ways, it is important
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to take a look at the underlying factors that are rooted in how you feel
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about yourself. Sometimes people are afraid to take chances on romantic relationships because they
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don't know if they can truly trust another person, and unless you take the
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time to work out that concern, you're always going to find yourself in the
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same exact pattern. Similarly, if the underlying driver is your lower self esteem,
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you can be with the best partner possible and you're still going to want
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to have them reinforce you every few hours so that you feel safe in the
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relationship. So the answer really comes down to working on whatever underlying drivers are
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there for your self sabotage of personal relationships, and working on ways that you
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can start moving past some of those earlier wounds and start healing yourself instead of
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being dependent on something else. Or someone else to heal you. Is self
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sabotage something that starts from conditioning when we're children. It can start from that
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time because there's an evolutionary basis to it. As we mentioned earlier, there
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is a there's two drives that were constantly managing at all times, attaining rewards
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and reducing threat and if those things are out of balance in a chronic way,
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that's when people self sabotage when they think about the threats so much more.
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And that can start as early as your first few days of life.
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Life when you're observing the adults around you, how they respond to stressors,
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how they respond when you express a need. All of those things create these
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templates, these imprints on how we think we should approach life in the future.
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And so some of the roots of self sabotage can absolutely go back to
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the early years of life. How may parents recognize this and help their children?
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Parents can recognize it by just being a little bit more self aware.
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There's never going to be a perfect parent, right and no one's going to
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be that all the time. But I think that sometimes your unhealed wounds end
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up being imprinted onto your children because of your own early negative experiences or perhaps
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patterns of coping that aren't the most healthy that you've learned from your own childhood.
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And so just by being a little bit more aware, being a little
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bit more mindful to your thought processes, to the way that you behave when
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you're under stress, and also how you might make things learning movements for your
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children. You're never going to do things perfectly, but when you do something
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like you know, accidentally emotionally fly off the handle a bit, when your
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child is crying and frustrated and you're also frustrated on the same day, it's
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important to debrief that with your children in a developmentally appropriate way. For younger
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children, you can say, you know, hey, I'm so sorry that
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mom, you know, got a little bit upset at you earlier. I'm
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dealing with some things at work, but I'm trying really hard to not take
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it out on you. And next time I do this, please, you
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know, tell me or here's what I'm working on to make sure I don't
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do this the next time. Right, It's important to be able to talk
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about this so that your children don't feel like they can't come to you when
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they need something or worse yet, even fear you when when you look stressed
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like they can't approach you right. So these kinds of conversations are important because
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they're life lessons for your children, and also they offer an explanation for what's
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going on, because the first thing that children tend to think is that they
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cause something, that it's their fault, and that's just because of the way
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that children think. They're a little bit more concrete, So they don't think,
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well, mom must be having a hard day. They're thinking, well,
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I must have done something to make her so mad, and so it's
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important for them to be relieved of feeling like they have to take care of
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your feelings, and also to let them know it's not their fault and that
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you're working on it. That's positive modeling for your children. What do you
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want the readers to take away from stop self Sabotage? I want readers to
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take away that at any age, you can stop these patterns, no matter
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if they've affected you for a year, ten years, or thirty years.
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And the thing that is most important to remember is that as long as you're
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able to do a little bit a day, you know you're not going to
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change all these patterns. All at once over a weekend. But if you're
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able to dedicate yourself to an exerciser too every single day, you're going to
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start to see some really radical shifts very quickly within a few weeks. And
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that is going to be the fuel that keeps you going. And when you
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start to see all the positive outcomes in your life, you're going to say,
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you know what, this was worth the time, and this was a
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worthy effort. It's all about taking something out of automatic drive, learning that
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manual shift. For a little bit, it will feel difficult, but then
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eventually this new idea, these new thoughts are going to become your new normal,
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and they're going to be a lot easier to implement. Congratulations on your
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brand new book, The New Rules of Attachment, how to heal your relationships,
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reparent your inner child, and secure your life visions. So congratulations,
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Oh thank you so much for that. There's an old joke about Hoover introducing
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the Zen vacuum cleaner. It comes without attachments. What inspired this new book?
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Uh? You know, I felt like once I was seeing how much
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stop self sabotage was positively impacting people, I oftentimes got a question of you
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know what's the next level, like what's the deeper level of work? And
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I really saw that attachments was where everything came down to. You know,
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these early experiences in life, our very first bonds with our primary caregivers in
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our lives. It imparts so many life lessons and gives us a template for
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how to move forward in different areas of life. But most of all,
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gives us the constructs of how we think about ourself and so our own self
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knowledge, our belief and our self worth, who we think we are,
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and ultimately whether or not we deserve good things. That really is the main
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ingredient in almost all things in life where you're trying to think about actualizing,
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moving towards a goal, what you want to involve your life with, what
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your top values are. It all goes back to your sense of and your
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sense of self is developed from attachment. My guest is doctor Judy Hoe.
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We're talking about her new book, The New Rules of Attachment, How to
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heal your relationships, reparent your inner child, and secure your life vision.
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Doctor Judy, please tell our listeners where they can get your books and find
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out more about you. Oh, thank you so much. My books can
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be purchased wherever books are sold. Most people like to purchase it through Amazon
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or Barnes and Noble. Also through my publisher's website, Hashet. You can
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also find out more about me and get free resources at my website Doctor Judyho
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dot com or follow me on social media at doctor Judyho and we'll be back
21:41
with more of Doctor Judy after these words. On the Old Times Radio Network,
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by Ed Cancel and Pepital Ventures. Back on Vox Novus, my guest this
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week is doctor Judy. How we're talking about her new book, The New
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Rules of Attachment, How to Heal your Relationships, repirate your Inner Child,
26:21
and secure your life vision. Doctor Judy, please tell us about the foundation
26:26
of attachment theory. So attachment goes back to those earliest bonds that you had
26:33
with your primary caregivers and your primary care givers are typically the people who provided
26:37
for your needs as a little child on a regular and ongoing basis. Without
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these bonds, we simply could not survive. If you think back to why
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mammalian babies are so cute, they're cute because they have to be. Most
26:52
mammalian babies cannot survive on their own without an adult in the same species,
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and so your baby cuteness is there to try to get people to take care
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of you so that you can survive into the next phase of your life.
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At this time, this is a time of rapid knowledge acquisition, and so
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you're soaking up everything about the world around you, and you're expressing your needs.
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Right as babies, we oftentimes express our needs from crying, pointing,
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gesturing whatever we can before language is formed, and we start paying attention to
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how the people in our lives take care of us or don't take care of
27:27
us when we express these needs, and all of this goes into the makings
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of what you believe about yourself, how you believe the world works, and
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what you think is going to happen when you interact with others, and ultimately
27:37
whether or not you deserve good things in life. That's a huge part of
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your self belief that is constructed from this early time. What are the different
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attachment styles and how do they manifest in personality and behavior. There's three there's
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three insecure attachment styles, and then there's one secure attachment style, so four
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attachment styles total. Someone with secure attachment likely had parents who were relatively attentive
28:03
most of the time and showed up in ways that you found to be helpful,
28:07
especially during stressful times. If this occurred, you're more likely to have
28:11
a relatively high self esteem, to believe that you deserve good things, to
28:15
be able to individually pursue goals while also staying connected with important people in your
28:19
life, and to be able to be resilient in the face of stress.
28:26
If you developed anxious attachment, this oftentimes meant that you had parents who perhaps
28:32
were dealing with some of their own anxiety and stresses and so were less inattentive.
28:36
They were less attentive to you. These are parents who, sometimes because
28:41
of some of their own struggles, made you sometimes feel responsible for their own
28:45
emotions and their own problems, and you trying to solve it for them.
28:49
If this happened, you most likely developed anxious attachment, which means that you're
28:55
more likely to need reassurance from your social environment to feel good about yourself.
29:02
You tend to have a more positive view of other people than yourself, so
29:06
this is something that makes anxiously attach people more prone to codependency and trying to
29:11
rescue everybody around them as a way to get support from them to feel cared
29:15
for by them. On the other side, and generally, people with anxious
29:21
attachment need to feel like they have to touch base with the people around them
29:26
all the time so they can still feel like they're there, that they're being
29:30
cared for. If you have avoid an attachment, you likely were asked to
29:34
grow up much quicker, maybe than you should have. Maybe you were an
29:37
identified parental like parentified child. This is a term that we sometimes use,
29:44
where you were given big responsibilities at a younger age. Perhaps you started to
29:49
associate that people cared most about you when you were achieving or doing things that
29:55
garnered accolades or positive attention, and so then you became more driven to focus
30:00
on that rather than depending on the people in your life as an adult.
30:04
These individuals are the quintessential lone wolves. They're sometimes extreme perfectionists and extreme high
30:11
achievers, and they tended to be less comfortable with emotional expression and deeper emotional
30:17
connections with people. And the last kind of insecure attachment is disorganize attachments.
30:22
So these are individuals who sometimes grew up in families where there was a lot
30:26
of chaos, where the rules were different all the time, it was hard
30:29
to get any kind of consistency. Perhaps they've even been exposed to trauma in
30:33
their childhood. And for these individuals as adults, they're constantly in a fight
30:37
or flight stage. It makes it a lot harder for them to achieve their
30:42
higher level goals because they're constantly thinking about more just basic levels of survival.
30:48
They tend to have more difficulties regulating their emotions and just feeling safe in a
30:52
variety of usual daily environments. And so those are the four different types.
30:56
And I think something that's really important to point out is that even if it's
31:00
a type that you feel like you started out with, or maybe you're still
31:03
exhibiting some traits from, the key is knowing that you can heal from your
31:08
attachment at any age and stage in your life, and you can begin that
31:15
work at any time, even if your adults in your life and your childhood
31:18
are not available or want to do that work with you. I read that
31:23
insecure attachment styles account for seventy five percent of the population. Is that correct?
31:30
Yes, that's right, So depending on the study, it's anywhere from
31:33
sixty five to seventy five percent is the best estimate. And I would also
31:37
say that for a lot of people, they think, well, this has
31:41
described me some of the time, but not all of the time. And
31:42
I would say that that's probably true of most people who express some form of
31:47
insecure attachment. It's kind of like self sabotage, where it's not every single
31:52
air of your life where you see some of the negative outcomes of these insecure
31:55
attachment types. For the most part, you might actually even be able to
31:57
function rather well. But it's really during those really stressful times, or perhaps
32:01
when you're triggered from something that reminds you of a negative experience in the past,
32:07
or when you're in a new environment and you don't really know what to
32:09
do and you can't get your bearings yet, that's when the shadows of your
32:13
insecure attachment show up. Another thing to point out is that a lot of
32:15
times people will find that they're kind of a combination of types. So they
32:19
might say, well, at work, I'm more anxiously attached, but then
32:22
in romantic relationships, I'm more avoidantly attached. Is that normal? And that
32:27
is also a very normal way to express your attachment styles. You may not
32:30
be just all one attachment style. You could be a combination. They can
32:32
show up at different times in your life. In the New Rules of Attachment,
32:37
you offer a wonderful quiz to help readers identify their personal attachment styles.
32:42
What are some of the questions in the quiz and how do they apply?
32:45
Yeah, so the quiz questions have to do with the different domains of your
32:51
life in terms of showing up in terms of your self concept, how you
32:54
believe about your what you believe about yourself, how you relate to other people,
33:00
what you believe are the rules of the world. And there's thirty seven
33:05
questions total that cover about seven or eight different areas of your life, from
33:09
family relationships to collequial relationships, to friendships to romantic relationships, to how you
33:16
go about your physical and mental wellness, and also what you think about yourself.
33:22
And so from this quiz, you're going to be able to understand which
33:25
of the attachment style speaks most about you in terms of how you think and
33:30
how you behave. And then in my book, I have different sections that
33:35
help you to do the work for different types of attachments. And as we
33:38
shared about self sabotage, the roots of attachment styles are developed when we are
33:45
children. How many parents help their children in developing secure attachment styles, That's
33:52
a great question, and I think for parents, knowing where some of your
33:58
insecure attachment shows up as a big step. And I think that sometimes parents
34:02
will say, well, if I have insecure attachment, does that mean that
34:06
that's going to happen to my child? And it's not. You know,
34:08
you can break that generational trauma if you will, and a big part of
34:15
doing that is just by acknowledging some of the traits of the insecure attachment that
34:20
might be getting in the way of you living your own best life and doing
34:23
the work to try to move that forward for yourself, but also as far
34:29
as your child is concerned, even if your insecure attachment isn't healed while you're
34:34
parenting, that's perfectly okay. The most important thing is just to remember that
34:37
we're actually very very simple. We just want people to show up for us,
34:44
and that's really one of the key things that we need. And so
34:46
you don't have to have all the answers. You just have to show up
34:50
and be there and be willing to actively listen to your child's needs, and
34:54
even if you don't have the answer, just be present for them emotionally and
34:59
physically. I have oftentimes heard from parents, and this is true of myself
35:02
with my own child, where I could think of all kinds of amazing things
35:07
to do to you know, buy toys for my toddler, plan a great
35:12
day at Disneyland, and all those things are nice, of course, but
35:15
sometimes all my child needs it's just for me to sit next to them and
35:19
be with them. And even if you don't have all the answers, if
35:22
you're willing to mindfully show up and show up intentionally for your child, then
35:25
that is going to go a very long way. Presence and listening. Presence
35:31
and listening those are really the most important ingredients of parenting for a secure child.
35:40
As you share, attachment styles affect all of our relationships, personal and
35:45
professional. Please share with us some examples of these and the challenges they present,
35:52
so insecure attachment can present itself in professional realms in a variety of different
35:59
ways. People who have anxious attachment might be so concerned with their social situation
36:06
at work, whether or not everybody likes them, needing to get a lot
36:10
of reinforcement before you can move forward on a project that they actually get in
36:15
the way of them being able to achieve more at work and to do their
36:17
best work. People with avoidant attachment sometimes at work they find it harder to
36:24
work in teams. They want to be the lone wolf all the time,
36:29
but that's not conducive to working in groups or working in a way that feels
36:34
like a collaboration. They can become overly competitive and essentially minimize the need for
36:39
social structure and social connections, and in that way they can self sabotage your
36:45
best efforts as well. People who have disorganized attachment find it really difficult to
36:50
trust people, and so if you're operating in that state of fight or flight
36:53
all the time, it can make it really hard to actualize into some of
36:58
the bigger and more important goals. It can be really hard for them to
37:01
make consistent progress in their job and oftentimes they may find themselves in a state
37:08
of chaos and feel like they can't organize their thoughts to be able to move
37:13
forward in personal relationships. I think that some of the similar themes will emerge.
37:20
So people who have disorganize attachment in personal relationships, they can at times
37:23
pick fights with people just to prove, just to see if they're still going
37:28
to be there for them, just to see if they're going to still be
37:30
there to care for them, And that obviously is going to create a lot
37:32
of conflict in your personal relationships make it harder for you to have long term,
37:37
stable relationships with people when you have avoid an attachment. When you are
37:43
under stressed, you're more likely to withdraw from the world and not talk to
37:46
people, or when people have emotional needs, you're more likely to make an
37:50
excuse and not be around them and not have to deal with it, And
37:52
of course that makes it harder for you to have deeper connections with people that
37:55
are healing. On both sides, people who have anxious attachment, oftentimes in
38:01
their interpersonal relationships, they need so much more attention than the average person,
38:07
so much more reinforcement to feel good, that it can sometimes frustrate the people
38:13
that they're in relationship with because they don't understand why you're asking them for reinforcement
38:17
or reassurance again when clearly you're here, clearly you care about them, and
38:22
that can cause conflict in its own way. How do attachment styles affect our
38:27
choice of romantic partners? Attachment styles can affect your choice of romantic partners because
38:35
you oftentimes will try to find partners that will help you to work out your
38:42
previously negative experiences subconsciously or unconsciously, and so oftentimes a common mix that we
38:49
see is people who have anxious attachment ending up with people partners who have avoidant
38:53
attachment. And that's because there may have been some people in their early life
38:59
where they were not very reinforcing, they were not giving them too much emotional
39:02
support, and that's what caused them of their anxious attachment to develop. And
39:06
so then they look for people with avoidant attachment because it's kind of all they
39:09
know. And then they go through that cycle again of trying to get this
39:13
person's attention, trying to get reinforcement from them and reassurance. But the person
39:16
with avoidant attachment, they feel suffocated sometimes when that happens, and so then
39:21
they start backing away from you more, and that, unfortunately creates this belief
39:27
for the person with anxious attachment, where they're confirming a pre existing belief about
39:31
themselves, which is, will nobody cares about me, And unless I basically
39:35
bend over backwards to meet their needs and essentially put their needs before mine,
39:38
I'm not going to have a good partner. And so sometimes we end up
39:43
replicating some of these negative patterns from our childhood because we're trying, in essence
39:46
to get over it, but then we're using the same formula, which is
39:50
probably not going to work very well. You had touched upon this before.
39:53
What are some of the other attachment style triggers. Attachment style triggers can be
39:59
any thing that really relates to a negative experience that was formative in your ideas
40:04
about life, you're ideas about yourself. So for people within secure attachment,
40:09
these kinds of triggers could be anything from somebody wanting to have a deeper relationship
40:15
with you and expressing that, or somebody saying that they're busy and start to
40:19
become more involved in their own work and not giving you the attention that you
40:22
need. It can happen when you feel like there may be a potential for
40:28
abandonment. It can happen in a lot of different areas, and sometimes you
40:34
don't even realize that that's what's happening underneath. All you know is that you're
40:37
starting to feel emotionally flooded or emotionally frustrated, or maybe even fearful or anxious.
40:43
And sometimes we can't understand why until we look deeper at that situation and
40:46
realize that perhaps it's a mirror, perhaps it's a reflection of something that had
40:51
happened at an earlier time, but it's just with a different person, and
40:53
that it's triggering some of those issues that you haven't resolved. So a trigger
40:58
takes place. How do we handle it when a trigger takes place? The
41:00
most important thing to do is to note that it's a trigger, to understand
41:05
that it's a trigger, but that the same thing doesn't have to happen just
41:08
because the trigger happened. And so it's about intentionally making a different choice in
41:13
terms of how you want to respond, intentionally trying to regroup your thinking to
41:16
say, well, this is catastrophic thinking, So what's a healthier way,
41:21
What's a more balanced way of thinking about this situation. It's about providing some
41:25
of that care to yourself and not necessarily relying on an external factor or another
41:30
person to do it. And this is why the work of reparenting is so
41:35
important. Reparenting, put very simply is just giving your metaphorical inner child what
41:44
it needed back then but maybe didn't get enough of. And the reason why
41:47
reparenting works is as your adult self, you are much more capable and have
41:52
many more resources than your child self, and you are also the person who
41:57
has your unique lived experience. No one knows you better than you. And
42:00
as your adult self, you can start to create the template for a secure
42:04
attachment just by simply showing up and saying, what is it that my inner
42:07
child needs right now? Is what is my inner child scared of because of
42:10
something that had happened in the past, And what's one small thing I can
42:14
do to try to take care of that need or to soothe that inner child?
42:17
One small thing? The New rules of attachment how to heal your relationships,
42:22
repirate your inner child, and secure your life. My guest doctor Judy
42:27
Ho will be back with more after these words on the Old Times radio network.
42:31
Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with a big dream. Since two
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Back on box Nobus. My guest this week is doctor Judy Hoe. We're
44:50
talking about her new book, The New Rules of Attachment, How to Heal
44:53
your Relationships, repirate your Inner Child, and secure your life. Doctor Judy,
45:00
one of the things that I personally struggled with was people pleasing and creating
45:06
healthy boundaries. That started with my childhood relationship with my father. I never
45:10
felt that he loved me until I was eight and he took ill I became
45:15
part of his caring team with my mom, and for the first time I
45:19
sensed that he loved me. And this wired in my young mind that if
45:22
you care for others, you will be loved. And it took until my
45:25
late forties to turn this around and learn to create healthy boundaries and learn to
45:30
say no, what appropriate. What are some of the methods you offer readers
45:35
for overcoming people pleasing and creating healthy boundaries. Well, first of all,
45:40
Victor, thank you so much for sharing that story, and I think that
45:44
that's so relatable and establishing healthy boundaries can be so difficult, especially when you
45:50
know that you are a people pleaser. There's two reasons for that. One
45:53
is it's kind of ecosyntonic, and what I mean by that is it's something
45:58
that makes you feel good that you want to do right. It feels great
46:01
to be able to take care of somebody else and for them to express that
46:05
gratitude, and you want to help other people. That's a genuine part of
46:07
who you are. And so this behavior of like healthy boundaries can feel like
46:12
it flies in the face of that, Well, I want to be helpful.
46:15
So if I say no, does that mean that I'm not being helpful?
46:17
And what's this person going to do? And so there's one aspect of
46:21
that that that is truly driven by just your You're wanting to help and just
46:23
because you're you're wanting to be a good person to others and serve others.
46:28
But I think the other part that is difficult to eradicate is what you mentioned,
46:31
which is that you start to cement this idea that if you care for
46:36
someone, if you provide for them, then you're going to be cared for.
46:38
So you're going to be able to get something for yourself, you know,
46:42
get something for your own self concept to feel secure and That's why it
46:45
can be so hard because these earlier patterns, even that they no longer apply
46:49
to your life as an adult, they stick with us because they're during that
46:52
critical learning period where you're picking all of this up and you're soaking it up
46:55
and you think, well, of course this is the way that the world
46:58
works. It worked in this suation, why wouldn't work in every other situation.
47:02
So the way to actually start to establish healthier boundaries is to actually define
47:07
what that looks like for you. I think if you have been a people
47:09
pleaser for a while, it's harder for you to define that. It's harder
47:14
for you to actually say, hey, I actually took a look, I
47:17
actually took a personal inventory at what my boundaries are and what feels okay to
47:22
me and what doesn't. And it takes time to do that work, and
47:25
most people who are people pleasing have not taken that attention to themselves to be
47:30
able to do that. But I think it's maybe an easier formula just to
47:35
talk about the different areas of boundaries that you might have. So put very
47:42
generally, most people, if they took the time to really think about this,
47:45
would have physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, intellectual boundaries, financial boundaries.
47:53
Right, there's these different areas spirituality boundaries, logistical boundaries, and you ask
48:00
yourself the question of what feels good to me in this area? Does this
48:04
feel okay to me? Does this not feel okay to me? In my
48:06
book, I actually have several different questions for each of these boundary areas in
48:09
case you have difficulty coming up with answers. But before you define them for
48:14
yourself, you don't know how to hold them because you didn't even realize that
48:16
a boundary has been trespassed until you start to feel really bad and you're like,
48:21
I wonder why. So the first most important thing is to actually write
48:24
down what they actually are, because once you have a clearer knowledge of where
48:30
your boundaries really lie, then it's going to be a little easier to enforce
48:32
them. My experience engendered this little poem that came through me called the healing
48:38
power of No Mah. Share that with you, Yes please. A time
48:43
comes for choosing rather than losing the essence that makes us so, and in
48:49
the bestowing. There's power in knowing the freedom that comes with no when said
48:54
with compassion, not angry, in fashion and letting the self love flow.
49:00
There's a sense of renewing and deep soul imbuing the awareness that comes with no.
49:07
So with gentle voice and the power of choice and the courage to make
49:10
it so, I'm still here, my friends. There's no means in this
49:15
end, just the healing that comes with no. Wow. That is so
49:24
on point and also beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with me,
49:29
Victor. I think that that could help so many people because you're really
49:34
speaking to that self critic that happens when sometimes you try to say no to
49:37
people, or maybe there's a part of you that's afraid to say no,
49:39
and you don't realize that there's a loving way to say no, and it's
49:43
actually benefiting both yourself and the person that you love. Thank you, Yes.
49:49
In your book, you also encourage individuals to explore their spiritual or religious
49:54
beliefs, make time for spiritual activities that are meaningful to them and can municate
50:00
their ideas about the meaning of life and belief in something greater than themselves.
50:05
How does this contribute to healing negative attachment styles? Well, this contributes a
50:10
lot, and of course everybody's belief systems are different, and if somebody is
50:15
listening to this and saying, well, I don't know if I'm a spiritual
50:16
person. I think all of us are spiritual people, because human beings are
50:21
spiritual beings. And even if you say, well, religion doesn't really quite
50:24
fit me, or I'm not really sure if I believe in God or you
50:29
know, this higher power, the idea is that you are just a small
50:35
part of this existence. There's so much vastness around us, and so much
50:39
more beyond just yourself, that even if you didn't believe in a higher power,
50:45
there is spirituality to be discovered, even just by being in nature,
50:51
taking in that you're just one person in this huge earth, that the universe
50:54
is so large, and there's other living beings that we don't even know about,
50:58
probably in other planets and other spheres of this universe, you know,
51:04
just really even being able to expreciate that is a form of spirituality. But
51:08
for those who do believe in a higher power, who say I believe in
51:13
God, I think that there's a lot of there's a lot of healing when
51:17
you invest in your spirituality, in your spiritual beliefs, and in establishing a
51:22
secure attachment to that higher power or to God. Human beings are fallible.
51:30
Other human beings are going to make mistakes. You also make mistakes, but
51:37
your higher being, your God, he doesn't make mistakes. It's a completely
51:42
different experience when you can feel unconditionally loved and supported by a higher being,
51:47
by God, and knowing that there's something there that can help you to establish
51:54
a stronger connection to yourself and also to help you to believe in yourself.
52:00
And in many ways it's like also investing in your faith in yourself. If
52:06
this higher power, if God, loves you unconditionally, then who are you
52:12
to not love yourself unconditionally? So I think that in discovering your spirituality and
52:17
spending time and activities like prayer and meditation and reading uplifting literature, it can
52:24
help you to heal yourself by establishing a secure attachment to someone something that has
52:32
no bounds for how much they can love you. In a world of such
52:37
divisiveness, including faith based challenges, how may these techniques promote healing, unity
52:44
and compassion. I think that it's so important for us to remember our common
52:47
humanity, and sometimes that can be hard to remember. Sometimes we want to
52:54
win an argument or prove that our point of view is the best view or
52:59
the right you. But at the very very core of our existence, all
53:06
human beings need connection and all human beings want to be loved. If you
53:13
can keep those two drives at top of mind, especially when you're about to
53:19
enter into a divisive conversation or when you have that inner feeling that rises up
53:23
that wants to correct somebody for something that they said, if you can just
53:29
remember that and just keep that top of mind, I think it can help
53:32
go a long way, even if you don't agree with people, to at
53:37
least have more respectful conversations where you're taking into account each other's internal drives and
53:44
dialogues. Listeners are aware of my background as an interfaith minister, and one
53:49
of the great lessons I learned at the New Seminary was that there's an iteration
53:53
of the Golden rule in virtually every faith and religion. Do unto others as
53:59
you'd have them one to you, Love thy neighbor as thyself. What a
54:02
wonderful world this would be if everyone subscribed to this basic tenet. I completely
54:09
agree with you, you know, put yourself into other people's shoes more often,
54:15
And I know that there's a lot of times when we say, well,
54:16
just be the bigger person. But to me, I'm just like,
54:19
well, just be just be a person, Just be a human being.
54:22
Imagine what it's like to be another human being in the same situation and how
54:25
they might be feeling if you treated them in one way versus the other.
54:30
And you know it, really there is really a big sentiment about people paying
54:35
it forward. We know this from research that if you do something nice,
54:38
just a random kind gesture, that person is more likely to pass that on.
54:43
You know, so we can model positive behaviors for one another even when
54:45
we're in the middle of our own challenges. Kindness and compassion the keys to
54:50
a wonderful world. Exactly what would you like readers to take away from the
54:55
New Rules of Attachment. Well, I think it's important for readers to know
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that secure attachment is attainable at any time, and you just need to start
55:07
fostering a more secure attachment to yourself. Believe in yourself more, believe in
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your ability and your agency as an adult to create different patterns that are healthier
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not only for you, but for all the people you come into contact with
55:19
and the next generation. My guest is doctor Judy how her new book,
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The New Rules of Attachment, How to heal your relationships, reparent your inner
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child, and secure your life vision Doctor Judy, one more time, please
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share with our listeners where they can get your books and find out more about
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you. Thank you so much, Victor, it's been great to speak with
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you. You can find out more about me at my website, doctor judyho
55:43
dot com. There's also information for how to purchase my books. They're sold
55:46
everywhere books are sold, including Amazon, and you can follow me on social
55:50
media at doctor Judy Hooe. Doctor Judy, thank you so much for joining
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us and sharing this wonderful wisdom and this important message with our listeners. Thank
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you so much, Victor, and I really appreciate all the work that you're
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doing and thank you for joining us on Vox Novus. I'm Victor, the
56:07
voice Firmon of a wonderful week