Latest / The Dr. Sarah Hensley Show / The Science of Attachment: How It Predicts Who You Love & How You Love | E8

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The Science of Attachment: How It Predicts Who You Love & How You Love | E8 · The Dr. Sarah Hensley Show

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  Speaker 1: People aren't random. They're incredibly predictable. This is a show
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  Speaker 1: about the science of human behavior, relationships, emotional healing, and
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  Speaker 1: the hidden patterns running our lives that most of us
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  Speaker 1: don't even realize exist. Because once you see the pattern,
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  Speaker 1: you can finally change it.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Dr.
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Hensley.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm Raina Butcher.
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  Speaker 1: You think your life is random. It's not.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Dr. Sarah Hensley Show.
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  Speaker 1: What if relationships weren't complex and messy and so different
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  Speaker 1: across couples? What if relationships were actually predictable by science,
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  Speaker 1: which means the interventions for them are too? Well, that
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  Speaker 1: is actually the case. And today in this episode, we
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  Speaker 1: are going to break down what actually makes up the
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  Speaker 1: science of attachment and relationships. And then what should we
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  Speaker 1: do about it?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we're going to kind of start at the
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  Speaker 2: beginning here. Yeah. It's always a good refresher for me,
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  Speaker 2: even though like being around you, as long as I have,
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  Speaker 2: I feel like I know so much about attachment, but
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  Speaker 2: I always learn something new.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm very curious or interested in just, I guess,
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  Speaker 2: biologically like attachment, how does it form? Where does it start?
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  Speaker 2: Just start from the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: So biologically from an evolutionary perspective, we are dyadic pair
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  Speaker 1: bonding species. So that means that we are monogamous species
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  Speaker 1: built to create lasting bonds with one other person through
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  Speaker 1: which we then mate, raise children, and the security and
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  Speaker 1: safety of those children is best protected by those dyadic
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  Speaker 1: pair bonds staying together. So we are a species that
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  Speaker 1: is monogamous and pair bonding that happens to have infidelity,
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  Speaker 1: not a non-monogamous species that happens to pair bond. So
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  Speaker 1: I think people that deny that we're built for monogamy
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  Speaker 1: are frankly crazy and just don't understand science or specifically
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  Speaker 1: evolutionary science and what we're meant to do as a species.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're biologically created to live among other people.
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  Speaker 1: And this happens in a couple of different ways. We're
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  Speaker 1: biologically created to live in community with other people. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: you can watch the movie Castaway, right? Like Tom Hanks
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  Speaker 1: did not fare very well. He ended up talking to
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  Speaker 1: a volleyball.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Kind of losing his mind slowly in the course of
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  Speaker 1: being that isolated. No man is an island. And so
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  Speaker 1: we're meant to live in community, and that helps us survive.
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  Speaker 1: It helps us survive when we can distribute labor among people,
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  Speaker 1: where everybody kind of pitches in, where there's safety in numbers.
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  Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons why people thrive and survive
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  Speaker 1: in communities. And then, like I said, we're meant to
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  Speaker 1: create lasting bonds that are intimate, that are both emotionally
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  Speaker 1: and sexually intimate. with each other, despite the fact that
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  Speaker 1: relationships can become so unhealthy that one or both of
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  Speaker 1: those things can drop off, that is not representative of
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  Speaker 1: how we are biologically wired. So that is kind of
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  Speaker 1: from just an evolutionary standpoint, how we're created and what
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  Speaker 1: we are meant to do. And so when we form
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  Speaker 1: those pair bonds, we form attachments that actually live in
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  Speaker 1: our nervous system. So our nervous system detects But this
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  Speaker 1: person is very, very important to us. And our first
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  Speaker 1: attachment figures are going to be our parents and caregivers.
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  Speaker 1: So as little children, our survival actually is dependent upon
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  Speaker 1: these attachments. We need our parents to clothe us, to
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  Speaker 1: feed us, to provide shelter for us, to nurture us.
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  Speaker 1: And we need them for actually a lot more than
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  Speaker 1: that if we want to turn out to be psychologically
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  Speaker 1: healthy people. We need them to emotionally connect to us.
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  Speaker 1: We need them to show us around the world, instrumentally
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  Speaker 1: support us, which is like showing us how to do
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  Speaker 1: different tasks to care for ourselves, right? So we can
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  Speaker 1: eventually do those tasks on our own. We need them
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  Speaker 1: to teach us how society works and sort of the
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  Speaker 1: unwritten rules of social norms. We need our parents for
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  Speaker 1: a lot of things. And... There's a lucky set of
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  Speaker 1: people out there that tend to be raised by parents
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  Speaker 1: who are very psychologically healthy, emotionally healthy, and are able
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  Speaker 1: to model both healthy experiences when they're interacting with their kids,
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  Speaker 1: as well as model a healthy romantic relationship with the
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  Speaker 1: other parent. And generally, those folks come from families where
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  Speaker 1: the parents stay together. And parents love each other and
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  Speaker 1: they're affectionate to each other and they resolve conflict respectfully.
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  Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean that they're perfect parents with their kids.
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  Speaker 1: They might get things wrong or overreact. All parents do.
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  Speaker 1: But what we know is that most of the time
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  Speaker 1: they get it right. And then when they don't get
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  Speaker 1: it right with their kids, they focus on repair and
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  Speaker 1: they focus on emotional attunement during that repair. And we've
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  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time defining in the past emotional attunement,
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  Speaker 1: which is just really being dialed in. someone else's emotional
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  Speaker 1: experience and being able to co-regulate with them or help
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  Speaker 1: them feel understood and supported in whatever their emotional needs are.
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  Speaker 2: So are you born with sort of like this clean
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  Speaker 2: slate per se, or do these attachments even happen in
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  Speaker 2: the womb?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good question. We have a little
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  Speaker 1: bit of evidence that there's attachment formation in the womb, um, that, um,
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  Speaker 1: So we know, for example, through studies where infants are
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  Speaker 1: adopted at birth, that they can experience some attachment issues
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  Speaker 1: from that adoption. So we know that in the womb,
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  Speaker 1: infants can sort of have some degree of recognition of
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  Speaker 1: their mother's voice, some degree of recognition of the mom somehow, right?
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  Speaker 2: Or if the mom experienced some type of emotional or
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  Speaker 2: physical trauma.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: The baby feels that.
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  Speaker 1: Correct. And so infants can be in the womb or
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  Speaker 1: subjected to cortisol surges, adrenaline surges, things like that. So
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  Speaker 1: stress in pregnancy does have an effect on the infant.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: And I know that you've said this before, but for
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  Speaker 2: those listening, when does the baseline though of attachment really form?
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  Speaker 1: From birth to five years old. And again, those are
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  Speaker 1: sort of loose boundaries, at least in the five-year-old. And
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  Speaker 1: really the what we see in terms of neurological development
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  Speaker 1: is that the subconscious mind specifically in the development of
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  Speaker 1: the nervous system around stress resilience is very, very important
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  Speaker 1: and profound in the first five years of life. So
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  Speaker 1: what kind of stinks about that though, is that when
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  Speaker 1: adults are trying to get what we call narrative coherence,
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  Speaker 1: and we'll come back to what that means, which is
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  Speaker 1: understanding their life and what has happened to them and, and,
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  Speaker 1: and what that means. And that's going to become important
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  Speaker 1: later in the episode, but we don't have a lot
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  Speaker 1: of great memories.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I think my first memory, I'm sitting in
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  Speaker 1: a laundry basket. My mom is in the basement of
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  Speaker 1: our house doing laundry and I'm like sitting there watching her.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: That's my first kind of coherent memory.
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  Speaker 2: And they're vague. They're cloudy.
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  Speaker 1: They're blurry.
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  Speaker 2: They don't, that you even almost question if they're real.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Because memory, if anything that we've talked about in
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  Speaker 1: the past few episodes around the Lindsay Clancy trial has,
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  Speaker 1: has hopefully taught people is that memory is far more
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  Speaker 1: like Play-Doh than a camcorder. It is susceptible to later information.
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  Speaker 1: It can be false altogether and we can believe that
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  Speaker 1: it's real. It can be subjected to malleability for a
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  Speaker 1: number of reasons. And so when I ask people in
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  Speaker 1: attachment interviews, when I'm trying to assess their attachment style,
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  Speaker 1: what happened in those early years I have to realize
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  Speaker 1: that there's going to be this self-report bias, which means
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  Speaker 1: that they might not be giving me very accurate information.
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  Speaker 1: So I have to sort of take that with a
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  Speaker 1: grain of salt and piece it together with what they
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  Speaker 1: remember about their life with their parents from maybe years
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  Speaker 1: beyond that, you know, 8, 9, 10, adolescence, et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: Because generally, whatever was happening among their parents early in
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  Speaker 1: their life If it was happening then, there's some kind
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  Speaker 1: of outcome, fallout, or continuation of that in the later
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  Speaker 1: years of their life, right, with their parents. So if
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  Speaker 1: their parents were really fighting before the age of five
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  Speaker 1: years old, they probably are going to, unless they underwent
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  Speaker 1: some kind of major intervention and rebuilt their marriage, they
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  Speaker 1: may have been prone to fighting when they start to
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  Speaker 1: have better memories. So I have to really compare information
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  Speaker 1: that they can give me early on versus what do
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  Speaker 1: they say about their family later on. And then also,
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  Speaker 1: this is why I like interview in terms of attachment assessment,
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  Speaker 1: because it allows me to go deeper in the areas
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  Speaker 1: that I need to go in to try to make
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  Speaker 1: cohesive sense out of different information.
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  Speaker 2: Right. It can be very nuanced.
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  Speaker 1: It can be very nuanced.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And so semi-structured interviewing is just, it is a great
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  Speaker 1: way to assess attachment because It can allow me to
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  Speaker 1: go deeper into areas to clarify what the client is
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  Speaker 1: really trying to tell me, to look at overall themes
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  Speaker 1: and to get clarification if there's some mismatch between something
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  Speaker 1: maybe that they felt like was true earlier in their
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  Speaker 1: life and then changed later.
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  Speaker 2: I'd see this very often from your audience, a question
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  Speaker 2: or really just a statement that some people make. They're like, well,
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  Speaker 2: I was secure. I've been secure my whole life. And
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  Speaker 2: then X thing happened to me. And now I'm fearful avoidant. Now,
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  Speaker 2: so can an actual life trauma later on in life,
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  Speaker 2: create a different attachment?
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's important to recognize that we don't
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  Speaker 1: have these finite categories like everybody talks about on the internet. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: we have categories, but they're not finite boxes, okay? They're actually...
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  Speaker 1: these categories themselves are on a spectrum. So the lines
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  Speaker 1: that hold the information in the boxes are like blurry, okay?
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  Speaker 1: What we would generally probably say is there might be
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  Speaker 1: some predisposition towards that attachment style because your attachment style
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  Speaker 1: doesn't just choose how you act or predict how you act,
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  Speaker 1: it predicts who you pick and who you choose. So
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  Speaker 1: if you have some predisposition towards not really trusting people
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  Speaker 1: and believing that love is unsafe and that love and
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  Speaker 1: pain are intertwined, you are more likely to ignore the
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  Speaker 1: red flags of someone who might potentially be trying to
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  Speaker 1: show you that they're not really a safe partner, but
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  Speaker 1: you were blind to them. We call this betrayal blindness.
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  Speaker 1: And this is, again, Jennifer Freed's work where you just
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  Speaker 1: dissociated from those things. And your mind decided to not
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  Speaker 1: pay attention to them or to explain them away. And
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  Speaker 1: then you do feel more shocked when you see this
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  Speaker 1: blatant betrayal by these people in adulthood. So it's not
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  Speaker 1: just this usual coherent narrative of, I was totally secure.
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  Speaker 1: I had no predisposition to this insecure attachment. And then
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  Speaker 1: I chose this person who showed me absolutely no red flags,
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  Speaker 1: And then cheated on me.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Visually, you know how I visualize attachment is like the
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  Speaker 2: scale that you step on in a doctor's office, right?
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  Speaker 2: Where there's like the little notches.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And it's like each of those little notches are maybe
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  Speaker 2: things that have happened in your life. And you can
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  Speaker 2: go up one way this way or you can kind
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  Speaker 2: of go back in the middle or back down the
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  Speaker 2: other way.
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  Speaker 1: That's a real good visual description of what a spectrum
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  Speaker 1: looks like. And attachment is very much on a spectrum.
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  Speaker 1: And where people fall on the spectrum... is what defines
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  Speaker 1: the four categories. And I think it gets, and this
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  Speaker 1: is getting pretty technical, but I think it gets very
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  Speaker 1: muddled when people are talking about it on the internet
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  Speaker 1: because they're talking about it as if they're these finite
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  Speaker 1: categories that you either very well fit in or you
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  Speaker 1: don't fit in very well at all. When I teach
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  Speaker 1: my groups, I tell people, there's probably gonna be about
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  Speaker 1: 10% of you that feel like I'm sort of all
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  Speaker 1: over the place and I feel very, very confused and
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  Speaker 1: I don't sort of have these, quote, normal or most
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  Speaker 1: common traits of one specific style. And honestly, most of
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  Speaker 1: the time, that's sort of an indicator that we have
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  Speaker 1: fearful avoidance at play, but not always. Sometimes we have
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  Speaker 1: dismissive avoidance with significant trauma overlay or anxious preoccupied with
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  Speaker 1: significant trauma overlay. Or we might have personality characteristics like
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  Speaker 1: narcissism or other mental health disorders that are muddying the
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  Speaker 1: picture a little bit. So you have to be really
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  Speaker 1: knowledgeable in assessment in order to make sure you're giving
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  Speaker 1: somebody accurate information. And that's why I want to beat
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  Speaker 1: my head against the wall. I've said it once. I've
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  Speaker 1: said it a million times. When it's just anxious attachment this,
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  Speaker 1: avoidant attachment that. even this week on Call Her Daddy,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know where Alex Cooper just decided to start
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  Speaker 1: talking about attachment, but she spoke about it like anxious
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  Speaker 1: attachment this, avoidant attachment that, and that's not her fault.
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  Speaker 1: The majority of information out there that she's probably receiving
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  Speaker 1: dichotomizes it incorrectly in that way.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about identity and
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  Speaker 2: personality versus attachment and those differences.
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  Speaker 1: Yes. So attachment is a function of your experiences with
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  Speaker 1: deep intimacy that start with your experiences of deep intimacy
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  Speaker 1: with your caregivers. So this is not taking into account
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  Speaker 1: all of your other life experiences with other types of
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  Speaker 1: people in other settings that can contribute to things like
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  Speaker 1: your self-worth. For example, there was a really, really popular
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  Speaker 1: video on social media. I honestly think it had tens
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  Speaker 1: of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of likes. And
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  Speaker 1: the video was like, in order for you to hurt somebody,
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  Speaker 1: you have to matter. And avoidant people, again, global concept
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  Speaker 1: of avoidant people, have very low self-worth. And actually, that's
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  Speaker 1: not what the science shows us at all. Dismissive avoidance
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  Speaker 1: have very high self-worth. In fact, their internal working model
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  Speaker 1: that has been validated across all of the science shows
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  Speaker 1: that they have a positive view of self and negative
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  Speaker 1: view of others. However, when it comes to intimacy, they
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  Speaker 1: do carry a defectiveness wound that somehow they are not
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  Speaker 1: capable of really loving people in a safe way because
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  Speaker 1: love itself is not reliable. So that is very nuanced
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  Speaker 1: and very complex. That is not in any way, shape,
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  Speaker 1: or form the same psychological construct or idea that Of self-worth.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Self-worth is global. You know, how do I feel about
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  Speaker 1: myself as a person in this world? Self-concept is who
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  Speaker 1: am I? And a lot of things can make up self-concept.
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  Speaker 1: You know, your friendships, your talents, your achievements, your personality traits,
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  Speaker 1: as well as your intimate relationships. Whereas attachment focuses just
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  Speaker 1: on what you believe and how you handle intimacy. Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 1: So it's very, very finite in terms of it is
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  Speaker 1: only specifically related to intimacy.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: And this is where identity specifically comes in, correct? Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Now what about personality? Is it one and the same
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  Speaker 2: with identity? Okay.
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  Speaker 1: Personality is a set of more globalized traits that you
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  Speaker 1: embody that are heavily influenced by genetics and somewhat by environment.
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  Speaker 1: And personality for many, many years in psychology was viewed
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  Speaker 1: as extremely stable. Like your traits, you have what you
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  Speaker 1: have and that's who you are and it's going to
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  Speaker 1: control your behavior and you kind of are who you are.
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  Speaker 1: And Walter Mischel, I think it was in the 60s,
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  Speaker 1: I believe, very, very famous paper that started kind of
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  Speaker 1: a shitstorm in the discipline of saying that, well, when
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  Speaker 1: you actually look at the research of how personality impacts behavior,
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  Speaker 1: it kind of sucks. It's only really responsible for about
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  Speaker 1: 30% of the variance in behavior, which means 30% of
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  Speaker 1: behavior is predicted by personality. And so we go, then
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  Speaker 1: what is the other 70% made up of? And what
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  Speaker 1: we found is it's the power of the situation. And
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  Speaker 1: so attachment is really situation-based or trait-based, meaning that the
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  Speaker 1: situation of intimacy is what drives it. So without intimacy...
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  Speaker 1: attachment doesn't really show up.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting. Whereas in personality and identity, other variables can come in.
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  Speaker 1: They'll show up across all areas of life, not just
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  Speaker 1: in your intimate relationships, but at work and with your
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  Speaker 1: friendships and with organizations or hobbies or things, all of
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  Speaker 1: those things, you'll see aspects of your personality show up
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  Speaker 1: across the board. So I'm very introverted person. So a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people don't, I guess from my discipline. Like
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  Speaker 1: I am an introverted person with an extroverted job.
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  Speaker 3: She is.
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  Speaker 2: I can attest to this just knowing her personally.
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  Speaker 1: Very introverted person. I don't like small talk. I don't
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  Speaker 1: like to be around a lot of other people. I
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  Speaker 1: just want to be home with my husband most of
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  Speaker 1: the time and my kids and my one best friend, you.
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  Speaker 1: Or I have a couple other good friends, but one
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  Speaker 1: friend at a time is like enough. I've never been
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  Speaker 1: like a let's bunch of girls like that is my nightmare.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah and even in social situations like I've said this
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  Speaker 2: and I'll say it again you're often misunderstood because introverts
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  Speaker 2: usually are right they think like most people might think
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  Speaker 2: you're rude or you're a bitch or I'm like no
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  Speaker 2: you just don't know her she's just truly an.
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  Speaker 1: Introvert yeah it's because and what we found between introverts
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  Speaker 1: and extroverts which I think is interesting is that introverts
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  Speaker 1: are very stimulated by their own brain and So they
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  Speaker 1: don't need to talk to other people because their brains
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  Speaker 1: are constantly talking to them. Whereas extroverted people get a
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  Speaker 1: lot of mental stimulation from conversations with other people. So
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  Speaker 1: my brain is, it is wild, y'all. I mean, I
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  Speaker 1: am constantly, what is this? What does this mean? What
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  Speaker 1: should I do here? Like it just never stops.
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  Speaker 2: I'm a true extrovert. Through and through. Through and through.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. You and I are very different there.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm just like... Adam Sandler and the wedding singer.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Like but it makes us work it makes us work
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: well together I hate small talk I hate it I'm
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: just like tell me about your childhood trauma how do
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: you feel about your parents tell me about.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: The worst thing that ever happened to you like that's
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: what would make me tune in in a social situation
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: but that's not etiquette like that's not social norm and
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I think I think I had a difficult time as
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: a child because like at school right you're in order
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: to be socially accepted, you have to talk to people.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And introverts don't really want to talk to people that much.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And if they do want to talk to people, they
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: want it to be this intimate kind of one-on-one exchange.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: They don't want to be in this group where their
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: attention has to go here, here, here, here, here, because
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: their brain is already so so overstimulated. That doesn't feel
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: good to us.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Well, and again, it's like you're talking about having really
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: intimate conversations, right? So thinking about when you meet somebody new.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: you can't just lead with that. You usually have to
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: leave with, I really love your shirt.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Or, you know, how's this weather today?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. Something very small to kind of get your
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: foot in the door. And then, you know, over time,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: you know, the relationship may evolve into more intimate conversations,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: but that's not always easy for introverts.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: This podcast is partially brought to you by the verified app.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Verified is the first relationship registry that aims to make
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: cheating impossible. You should get on the app, register your partner,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: and know that you are protected from cheating. So yeah,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: so my introvert-ness is going to show up. My introverted-ness,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I guess would be the correct term, is going to
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: show up everywhere. It's going to show up at a party.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: It's going to show up in my work environment when
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I used to actually work in academia and I was
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: around a lot of people. It's going to show up everywhere.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: It's a more stable aspect of who I am as
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: a person. Attachment is not so. The greater the intimacy,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the greater the attachment is going to show up. So
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: can it show up in like a deep friendship?
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: But not nearly to the degree it's going to show
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: up with an intimate partner. Can it show up at work?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: If you work really, really closely with someone over a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: number of years, you're going to develop a bond with
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: them to some degree. So attachment is going to come
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: into play. But again, that person is not going to
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: trigger you like your intimate partner is because there's not
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the level of intimacy there. You don't live with them.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: You don't see them naked. You don't tell them your
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: deep feelings. It's just not going to happen. So that's
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: one of the first things we really need to understand
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: about attachment is it's not who you are. It's who
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: you are in intimacy. And that makes sense, right?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And then we have to get into what is attachment
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: actually made up of? And this is what a lot
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of people, for whatever reason, don't talk about.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Not at all. Because it directly relates to the interventions
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: you need to fix it. It's made up of what
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: we call, first of all, internal working models. And this
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: is really old science, and it's not disputed. So even
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: John Bowlby, the creator of attachment theory, talked about internal
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: working models. And people incorrectly... again, I want to bang
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: my head against the freaking wall, but I won't because
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I have good self-regulation, is that people treat these as
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: belief systems. They're prediction systems. They're probabilities. Our mind is always,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the brain is fascinating. It is always trying to guess
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: what is about to happen. At every moment of every day,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: it is trying to make sense of its own world.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: And it's using feedback about its own functioning to make
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: some of those predictions. But an internal working model is
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: a prediction about, based on my past experiences, what do
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I think is about to happen to me? And does
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: that make me safe or not safe in intimacy? Because
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: if you think about what is most closely related to
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: our survival as a human, it's connection. Community being one
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: form of connection and then dyadic pair bonding being another
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: form of connection that actually perpetuates the human race, right?
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: We don't form dyadic pair bonds. and raise children, what
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: we would have is be a bunch of men having
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: sex with a bunch of women all the time, trying
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: to impregnate as many women as possible. And then just
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: hoping that all those kids survive to continue to pass
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: down that man's genetics. That is not the way we
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: do things. That's the way that bunnies do things. Okay.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: It is not. Can you go out and have sex
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: with random people and impregnate a lot of people?
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: A lot of dudes do it.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: But is that how we are designed to No. There's
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: something else going on there that is overriding that design
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: for that person.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: And think about the chaos that causes. I mean, think about.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, think about that. Yeah. There'd be no families. Yeah.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Think about people with multiple, like, baby mamas or multiple
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: baby daddies.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I'm married to one. My husband has two baby mamas. Okay?
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Three baby mamas. If you count me, he adopted my kids.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Three baby mamas. And it ain't easy.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: It ain't easy to deal with all those baby mamas.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: And we, you know, I mean, we know what Donald's
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: been through, too. Yeah.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Of course. He's... Lots of childhood trauma, lots of war
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: veteran trauma, lots of relational trauma. And he had a major,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: major point of purposeful healing in his life to come
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: out of that. Which there he earned a lot of
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: attachment security. Which we're going to talk about next. Yeah,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that in a bit. But yeah,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: it causes chaos, right? And then kids aren't as protected
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: in single motherhood. We can just look at the data.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's there.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm not saying that a single mom can't
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: raise a great kid. They can. It's a hell of
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a lot harder than if you had a really great
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: spouse beside you helping you to raise that kid.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: We know that.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: We can both attest to it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't understand why we are in 2026
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: debating this in any way.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know either.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean that people from divorced families can't thrive.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: They can.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: But it's extra hard. There has to be extra effort
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: by at least one of those parents to make sure
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: that kids don't grow up with insecure attachment or are
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: at risk for other types of potential problems.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: And this is what our entire mission here.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: The entire mission.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: It's what it's all about.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: The entire mission that God gave me is to heal
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: families so that we heal generations, so that we heal
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: communities and heal the world.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: One thing. One relationship at a time, if that's all
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I can do. Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: So I want to talk a little bit about your
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: catchphrase that most people know, which is awareness alone is
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: not enough.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: It's not enough. So we have what we call cognitive
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and affective schemas, and then we have behavioral execution. So
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the whole human experience is thought, emotion, and behavior. There's
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: nothing that happens to you when you're not doing one
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: of those things. You're thinking, you're emoting, which is feeling,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: or you're acting, right? If not doing many of those
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: things at one time. There's nothing outside the human experience
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that is made up of anything other than that. So
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: that's why intervention has to happen at all three of
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: those levels. So what is this cognitive affective schema? Essentially,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: these internal working models, if I backtrack just a second,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: are micro predictions that are happening all the time. So
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: in our relationships, prior information, when our nervous system and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: our subconscious mind was developing, there's a lot of imprints
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: there about what does it mean to be me? What
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: does it mean to be close to somebody? And those
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: imprints have a lot of weight. And in order for
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: those imprints to change, you have to have experiences that
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: give you a lot of differing information than that. So
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: think about this. If you grow up with your parents for,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: let's say, 18 years, let's just put the 18 marker
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: on it. That means that every year after that, if
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: those imprints are reinforced, nothing changes. And what we know
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: about these imprints is that they're self-fulfilling prophecies. So for example,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: let's just take the fearful avoidant. You believe that you are,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: they have this wound of betrayal. And it's a wound,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: not just a belief system or internal working model, because
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: it is not just something you think is going to
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: happen to you. It's something unique about you that predisposes
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: you to having that happen. So the I will be betrayed, okay,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: will be future prediction, right? As a schema is this
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: idea that someone will betray me, but not just because
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I'm randomly going to bump into someone who will betray me,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: but because I am unique to being betrayed. Something about
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: me makes other people want to betray me. Think about
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: how deep that freaking is, right? That's deep. That is
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: like that is at the deepest layer of who you are.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And what we know is that the subconscious mind is
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: driving the ship in intimacy, right? And the subconscious mind
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: is sort of, is trying to predict at all times
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: what's about to happen because this internal working model is
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: just essentially like what experiences live in your subconscious mind.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Because the subconscious mind's language is through felt experiences. So
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: those imprints got there because the way your parents treated
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you or what you witnessed from your parents made you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: feel a certain way. And that feeling really solidifies the imprint, right?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: So if your parent was dysfunctional, let's just take my childhood, right?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Talked a lot about my childhood, bipolar dad, very heavily
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: medicated throughout my childhood, very unpredictable, vulnerable, narcissistic traits may
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: have been NPD. I'm not sure. Um, There's a part
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: of me that thinks maybe no. I mean, I did
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: see glimpses of empathy in his life, but highly dysregulated,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: struggled with lots and lots of anxiety, lots of anger.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Him and my mom had a very dysfunctional, poor relationship.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: So what were my felt experiences as a child? One,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: my mom, although she tried her ass off and was
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: a wonderful mom and showed up and was always there
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and was a great acts of service mother, she didn't
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: really know how to emotionally attune because she's dismissive avoidant
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and she grew up in a time where all of
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: her emotions were dismissed and she grew up in a
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: big family, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Right. You know,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: she didn't get any emotional.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: And she had a highly anxious partner, which probably.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Sent her in the other direction. Yeah.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: For sure. So, you know, I'd go to my mom
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: in distress and my mom would immediately either just dismiss
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: it as it's no big deal or try to problem
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: solve it. And that didn't make me feel any better.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Because I wanted to be understood. So then I learned
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that that felt really bad. My emotions, I am misunderstood here.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And that misunderstanding was really like, no, I'm in pain.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: You're not getting it, right? I'm in pain. I'm suffering
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: in some way. And you're not picking up what I'm
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: putting down here. So the way I learned to handle
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: that feeling of betrayal from my mom, which is like,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: how can you not know me? I'm your child. How
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: can you not see how distressed I am? Was to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: learn to escalate my distress in order for her to
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: sort of start to try to collapse and really go, oh, wow,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: she's really suffering. And my dad did that. So I
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: think I watched my dad and learned to do that
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: from him. And so what were my felt experiences, internal
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: working model, aka subconscious imprints, they're all kind of interconnected.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: My felt experiences were, you don't get me, you don't
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: understand me, you don't really see me, you don't really
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: know me, right? Which is a betrayal, right? Same thing
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: that happened with my dad when he would get kind
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: of out of control. I didn't feel understood. I didn't
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: feel important. I felt like I didn't mean to do
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: this thing that you're saying is so bad.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: You felt fearful.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Felt fearful. So then I felt misunderstood. Like I didn't
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: have bad intentions. So like if he would say, you're
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: so effing lazy, you don't pick up your shoes and
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: throw my shoes outside, right? The little child in me
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: was going, but I just forgot. Like I just, I
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: just forgot. You don't understand. I didn't mean to be lazy.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not really a lazy person. So there's that feeling
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: in the body of being deeply misunderstood, which again is
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: a betrayal from the people that are supposed to understand you.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: It makes sense why FAs would be perpetual, like the
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: anxious FA and the AP, I guess would be perpetual
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: people pleasers because it's this constant like battle of trying
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: to prove your, your, Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And who you are.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and who you really are.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, understand me, understand me.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: And what your intentions are. Yeah. Uh-huh. So my internal
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: working model, which is a prediction system, is like I
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: have to be– I kind of have to– and we
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: know FAs become hypervigilant. I have to tune into every
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: little thing because I never know when something is going
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: to get unpredictable in this household.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I never know that, you know, if I do get hurt,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: that somebody will be around to take me seriously. Right.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I never know when my dad's going to walk in
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the door and be really upset at me over something really,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: really small. So I'm taking every little cue and I'm
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: giving it meaning, right? Based on, am I safe or
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: am I not safe? Just take the dismissive avoidance. Everybody
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: wants to know about the dismissive. They are chronically emotionally
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: dismissed in their childhood. Usually the normal AKA common dismissive
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: avoidant experience is generally not a lot of trauma. But
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: parents that are just very emotionally flat, very dismissive, very
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: emotionally absent from their childhood. So, oh, you're fine. Don't
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: worry about that. You're okay. Don't get so upset. Stop crying.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: They put a lot of emphasis on life.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Emphasis on responsibility. Emphasis on achievement. So what is their
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: internal working model? Well, other people are very unreliable, so
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I should only rely on myself, right? My job is
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: to be responsible. My job is to achieve. My job
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: isn't to be weak or to be vulnerable because that
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: puts me at risk of rejection. Mm-hmm.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: So they kind of tune the world out, which is
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: so different than the fearful avoidant, which is why I
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: hate grouping people into, quote, avoidance. Mm-hmm. Because the fearful
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: avoidant's like a radar that, like, picks up on everything,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: and the dismissive avoidant has those blinders or that tunnel vision.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: It's just like, well, other people are so unreliable, so
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I might as well not even pay attention to them.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I don't need them. Mm-hmm. Right? They can't give me anything.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So the internal working model is intimacy itself is unreliable.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: I only rely on myself. And every sort of minute
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: that I'm trying to update that, I'm seeing information that
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: tells me I can handle this myself. Right? And then
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: that's where we sort of merge an internal working model
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: with this what we call attentional bias. In my program,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I call it the attachment filter bias, which is sort
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: of like if you live with that internal working model
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: long enough, you start to become biased or you filter
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the world through that model consistently. So we just take
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the dismissive avoidant. Their subconscious wound, if I back up
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit, is defectiveness. Because if you're rejected for
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: having humanity, it makes you feel like Something's wrong with me.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Because to me, this emotional reaction feels deeply human. But
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: to the adult who's teaching me, it's bad.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: So something must be wrong with me. And it can't
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: be fixed. Because I continually have to suppress my emotions
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: in order to have safe connection to my caregiver. So
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: that dismissive avoidant person, their internal working model is very
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: positive view of the self. I am reliable.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Yet they have this defectiveness wound that says, I can't
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: make other people happy because intimacy in and of itself
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: is not something reliable anyway. So again, there's so much
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: complexity and nuance and people are oversimplifying it, which is
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: why their interventions might not work. So this attentional bias
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: or this attachment filter bias is like now the information
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: that my brain pays attention to in my world confirms
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: all of that. So a DA is walking around only
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: focusing on themselves, not paying attention to their partner because
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: their brain is wired that way. And then if the
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: deep internal working model is intimacy is unreliable and then
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: my partner comes and criticizes me.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Just reinforces.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Just reinforces it.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Even if that criticism is legitimate because they don't realize
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: how distant they are. They do not see it. They
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: don't realize how self-focused they are. They don't get it. Yep.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: And so they feel like this criticism is so unwarranted.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: You're just attacking me. Therefore, the person I am close with,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: you know, is not worthy of being, it's not worth
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: being close to them because they don't bring me anything positive.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: And this is why the FA and DA get stuck
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: in that trap, man. Oh God, it's so bad. The FA,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: DA trap. I know you see that more than anything.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: In your practice. They're the people in the most pain.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Because those two just reinforce each other's wins over and
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: over and over.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: The FA wants to be deeply seen and understood and known.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: They want you to study them and use that information
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: to predict their needs. Well, guess what? The DA has
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: blinders on, so they're not studying jack nothing except what
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: they need and what's going on in their world.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: And then the FAA pushes more and more.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: The FAA pushes and criticizes, and their defectiveness wound is
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: very sensitive to criticism. So then they shut down, and
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: then the FAA feels betrayed and abandoned, and on and
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: on it goes.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: It's as predictable as the sun rising. And that's just
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: what you said at the very beginning of this episode,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: which is what if our intimate relationships– aren't that different.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: They're not.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: They're just not.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: I don't care what you're fighting over. If I know
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: your attachment style, I know exactly how each of you
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: are responding and why that conflict is not getting solved.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why you're so different in therapy because it's
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: not coming in and rehashing.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: The latest argument, which absolutely goes nowhere because we're not
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: getting to the underlying point.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Nowhere.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And maybe you get some tips and tricks for how
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: to fight better, how to communicate better, how to regulate
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: yourself better. But if we don't understand each part of
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: what is happening under the hood for these people.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Your interventions are throwing spaghetti at the wall.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You're not getting to the root.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You're not getting to the root.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Which I know is, I don't want to get
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: into it too much because I know we're going to
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: talk about it in the next episode. So you have
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: to stay tuned in order to hear about why Dr.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Hensley often says awareness alone is not enough. And that attachment,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: you have to be able to do it.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to do it.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to do the work and
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: what does that mean? Well, we're going to really dig
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: into that.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about it and we're going to
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: introduce something to you guys that is really, really exciting
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: that for the first time in a long time, I
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: feel really, really, really excited about in terms of being
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: enthralled in this business and taking on this project because
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: it's a beautiful gift to all of you all. Yeah.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: So exciting. So make sure you tune in next week.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: So that's why we have to have intervention around our
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: thoughts because our thoughts are biased. They're biased based on
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: our filter that's coming from our attachment trauma. Yeah. And
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: these internal working models that are these micro prediction moments
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: are just working in conjunction with our attentional bias and
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: constantly reinforcing our wins. So when you say like, can
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: attachment style change? It generally doesn't because attachment is going
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: to predict the You picking someone that is going to
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: reinforce these wounds, these internal working models, and your attentional
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: filter bias.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Okay? Yep.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: And they're going to give you the same types of
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: felt experiences you had in childhood.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: That's what reinforces everything. So then we have the affective,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: which is emotion component. These felt experiences are felt. They
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: are felt in the body. And all an emotion is,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: is the feeling in the body, like the tight chest
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: and the sickness of the stomach or the shaky hands
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: or the heat in the face or the tense jaw
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: or whatever you want to pinpoint, plus your thoughts or
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: story or narrative around what's happening. Well, I just got
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: done telling you that your thoughts are extremely biased, right?
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: They're coming from the internal working model, which is trying
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: to predict at every moment what's happening, and then the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: filter bias. So your mind is so beyond not objective.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: It's like so not objective. You think it is, though.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Your reality feels so real to you.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: So what do you rely on for objectivity then?
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Challenge. Challenge.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: Metacognition, challenging your thoughts.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, being able to in every given moment know that
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: you're having the thought and actively challenging it against a
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: set of standards.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: And those standards being what?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Truth. Like is this 100% true or is there a possibility?
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Like is there a reasonable doubt, right, to the truth
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: of this thought? productivity? Is this helping me reach my
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: goals and your values? Is this aligned with who I
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: believe I want to be or who I believe I am?
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: And when we get really good at that, we become
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: very mentally healthy and we stop, we break that filter
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: bias and we start to give ourselves new felt experiences.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: It's sort of the first domino that falls. Thoughts, combined
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: with feelings and it predict and and lead to emotion
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: and emotion drives behavior okay so if we can like
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: get our thoughts under control there's this downstream effect yeah
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to our behavior then we have the feelings or the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: emotions feelings are actually just part of emotion even though
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: we use those words interchangeably in english language they're actually
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Different feelings are like the felt sensations. Emotions are the
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: felt sensations plus our narrative of what's happening. Most people
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: do not process their emotions. And we've done whole episodes
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: on this. So please, guys, go back and listen to
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the episode on emotional processing. So many deep nuggets in
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: there of good information.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: And we're going to review it too next week. I mean,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: a little bit.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we will. But most people, because their attachment figures
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: didn't know how to process or cope with emotion well,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: they didn't have any models necessarily. or good experiences with
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: their caregivers for co-regulation, just borrowing the nervous system of
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: someone else to soothe your own. So they didn't have
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: good coping skills as a kid to deal with the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: crap their parents were creating. So they leaned on band-aiding,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: like food, or getting good grades, or what else can
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I do that's going to bring... sort of something positive
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: from my environment to me that can make me feel
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: better on the inside and sort of quell these uncomfortable emotions.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Even Gabby talked about that in her episode about how
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: she played video games a lot, you know, after the
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: death of her father.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so, and so the other side of that
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: coin then is, is distraction and suppression. That's more of
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a dissociative distraction, right? So we can distract away from
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: our emotions. If you've ever heard yourself go, oh, I
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: don't have time to feel this. I don't have time
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: for this. And, or I cringe when I hear clients
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: just say, well, I've just been trying to keep busy
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and that's been helping me. It's like, well, you've just
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: been trying to ignore your emotions and that's why it
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: is helping because you don't have to face them when
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: you're distracted.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Or we have just intellectualizing. We have the overthinkers of
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the world, the people that just stay in their head
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and try to problem solve. Again, the brain has learned
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: it's safer to think than it is to feel. And
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: maybe if we can think our way out of it,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: then we'll be safer. Hmm. So really healing attachment involves
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: healthy emotional processing. Healthy emotional processing is the only thing
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: that leads to true, consistent nervous system regulation over time.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: And that's part of the doing.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: That's part of the doing of attachment.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Right, which we're going to get into.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Intervening in your thoughts is part of the doing. Regulating
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: your nervous system through processing emotion is part of the doing.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: And then we have behaving.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: We have executing behaviors that are secure and executing secure
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: behavior involves a lot of what we call mentalization, which
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: is being able to understand how you view something and
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: being able to understand how someone else views something at
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: the same time. And that's very hard to do when
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: you're dysregulated and it's, it, in, That's why most conflict
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: fails is because there's this lack of mentalization. There's this
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: lack of openness to someone else's reality, experiences, et cetera.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: If you feel under threat, you're going to cling to
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: what you feel like you know to be the truth.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: So that's why most fights are like, my reality is true. No,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: my reality is true. No, my reality is true. And
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: what you're fighting about is kind of subjective.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: It's not like, well, you, you know, kicked me in
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: the shin or It's like, well, what you said felt
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: rude to me. Who gets to decide what feeling rude
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: really is or looks like or feels like? So then
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: somebody tries to be the sensitivity police and says you're
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: too sensitive or you're not sensitive enough.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: It goes on and on and on.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: It's a mess. It's a mess. It's a dumpster fire.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: It's a tale as old as time.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: As old as time. So mentalization is just this ability to,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: even in moments of dysregulation, be able to be like, well,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: My partner has their own independent viewpoint. And just because
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: it's different than mine doesn't automatically make them wrong and
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: me right. Or worse, makes them the bad guy and
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: me the good guy. Yeah.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: And understanding their life experiences.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: And how they may have got to that conclusion or
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: come to that conclusion. Right?
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate intelligence. I was watching something one day.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know who it was from. It was a
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: while back. Yeah.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: A very high EQ.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was talking about that metacognition alone was
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: not the highest form of intelligence. It was actually being
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: able to hold two people's truths.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: That's mentalization.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Yes. At the same time.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. So being able to behave securely involves being
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: able to do that. And that is part of the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: doing of attachment. That means that when you have conflict...
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: When we have conflict rules or a conflict plan, which
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: you would get if you had, you know, access to
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: me and my coaching services or my self-paced program, those
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: rules force you to try to mentalize, right? To attempt
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: to mentalize and clear all the barriers out of the way,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: the cognitive schemas, the affective dysregulation for you to be
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: able to best mentalize, which is what is my partner
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: really wanting and needing? let me take away what their
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: tone sounded like. Let me take away what I think
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: my offense is right now. What are they really feeling
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and thinking and how did they get there?
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Outside of your own.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Outside of your own.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: It's tough.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: It is tough, but it's, it's something.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: That can be learned. It's very doable.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: It is doable. And that's what I want people to
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: know is like secure people. They naturally acquired these skills
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: because their parents, demonstrated them both in how they interacted
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: with them and how they interacted with their spouse or
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: significant other.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: And I know that we're going to introduce this. We're
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: going to introduce something really beautiful. I don't know if
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: there was anything else you wanted to add. I want
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: to save some things, right, for the actual doing episode
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: next week that will drop that, you know, hopefully you
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: guys will tune into that as well because, like I said,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: it's a very exciting project that we're going to take
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: on and is really going to change sort of this
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: landscape of just information overload, right?
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: More information, more information, more information. And I think what
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: makes it hard is that as a scientist, my, my
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: brain goes to, well, here's all this like complex information,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: but I, and this, we did kind of air a
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: little bit more on the science of, in the complexity
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of the science today, but I really in my programs
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: try to make it understandable for, someone who has no
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: psychology background at all.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: And I can attest to that. I've sat in on
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: multiple groups, gone through the course, been around you long enough,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: senior teaching style to where you do, you take this
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: really complex science. Cause even sometimes like when you're talking
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: like in this episode, I'm like over here, like I twitching,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, you know, this is, and that's why
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: I tried to be a voice for the audience to
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: be like, well, how would maybe someone who doesn't know
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: anything about attachment or who is just being introduced to attachment,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: what question would they want to know the answer to?
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: So stay tuned for next week's episode because we are
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: going to not, I don't want to say dumb it down, right?
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: But just we're going to kind of make it a
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: little bit easier, this really broad, complex science. We're going
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: to make it easier for everybody to really understand.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: And to do.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to do.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: We want you to do the science of attachment.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what it takes.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: That's what it takes to heal.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: That's what it takes.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Right? That's what it takes.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: And in a world where we are overloaded with insane
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: amounts of information.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Some is really bad too.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: We've got to break through that. And that's our goal here.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in the age of A. we're only
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: going to see experts survive, if we even do survive.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I think for the good of the people, one beneficial
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: thing that might come out of this is that people
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: that are truly not experts, that have went, wow, you know,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I've watched 100 YouTube videos on this, and so I
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: can I can stop and look at my script and
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: make a three-minute video on this. But maybe you can't
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: be pressed under a sort of on-your-feet situation.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Right, actual facilitation.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: They're going to be revealed.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: They're going to be revealed.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: So lucky you.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Take heart.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Lucky you, girl. Lucky you. So anyway, guys, thank you
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: for tuning in this week. Please continue to tune in
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: next week as we explore more of the baseline of
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: attachment and introduce something really exciting. So until next time, peace. Oh, wait, wait,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: time out. Guys, don't forget. Don't forget.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Download this first.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, download this episode first.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: If you care about us at all, just hit the
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: download button, please.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just hit the download button. And I keep forgetting
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: to mention that for all of our listeners, our LoveDoc27
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: code is still active.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: LoveDoc27 for 27% off the hybrid program.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: 27% off the hybrid group. And I think it's the
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: course too, I want to say. I think we made
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: it to where the course is 27% off too. So
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: please- If you are interested in docs programs, you can
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: use that code as a special discount for being a
• 50:37
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• 50:39
  Speaker 2: to tune in. Like, subscribe, leave us a comment, write
• 50:41
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• 50:43
  Speaker 2: And until next time, peace, love, and perspective.