Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon show, where cutting edge science meets innovation and practical application for everybody. In today’s episode, I sit down with Thais Gibson and we learn all about attachment theory, whether you are a secure attacher, avoidant, you name it, you will understand where you sit. Why is this important? I talk a lot about health and wellness, but none of that matters. If your mind and your community and your relationships are not together. Now join me in this conversation with Thais Gibson.

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 Thais Gibson, welcome to the show. I’m so thrilled to have you here. I truly cannot wait to talk all about the inner workings of humans. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so grateful to be here. And I just think you’re incredible. So excited to have this conversation.

 Before we started recording, I had said, you know, I’m really doing my audience a disservice, always focusing on muscle and health. Very important. But what about the mind?

 Because oftentimes people will say that the body follows the mind, which is why I am thrilled to have this conversation. Me too.

 You know, one of the things that I’m really excited to talk to you about is this idea of attachment, attachment styles, which seems to be having its moment right now.

 And really, you know, when you think about it, relationships and community is the backbone and the foundation for a healthy life. Yes. So tell me. Tell me about attachment styles. So attachment theory was originally developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth out of Cambridge University. And what they studied was really the impact of our relationships as children to caregivers, and how they then affected our adult romantic relationships. So there are four major attachment styles. The first one is the secure attachment style.

 Secure children basically grow up in homes where they have a lot of what we call approach oriented behaviors in psychology approach oriented behaviors. Exactly. And so what this means is it’s something small, but it has a huge impact in the way it conditions us and shapes our reality. So what happens is children, if they are distressed, sad, anything like that, the caregivers are very attuned to the child and were wired to need attunement. And so when the caregiver picks up on the distress of a child, they approach them. They try to figure out what’s wrong. They try to sue them. They’re there for them. And of course that won’t be perfect. At the vast majority of the time, the caregivers are very approach oriented. Now what this does is it causes this child to go, oh, I can trust people. I can rely on people. And these are the early conditioning patterns that they’re learning. What age would that be?

So our original attachment style actually develops between the ages of zero to two. And we can talk about how this was studied and demonstrated in a moment, which I think is really interesting. It’s a strange situation experiment out of Cambridge University with John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. And so what ends up happening is because children are constantly getting this conditioning of my caregivers are here for me, they’re supporting me, they learn I can rely on people. I can trust people. It’s safe to express emotion as some of their early conditioning. And they feel comfortable actually leaning on other people. And so as adults, a lot of their early condition patterns say it’s safe to trust people, rely on people I’m worthy of being loved for who I am, even in hard moments. I can share emotions with people and let people in. And so they’re also comfortable with vulnerability.

 So that’s our secure attachment style. And research shows that that’s roughly 50% or so of the population. I saw that statistic. I couldn’t believe that. 50 to 60% of adults have a secure attachment style. Do you read that number? It’s hard for me to say because there’s a whole bunch of more recent research that shows, it’s on the decline, it may be closer to 30%. But I do think that that original number does correlate with some of our divorce statistics. And research shows that individuals who are securely attached actually report being in more long lasting relationships. But even more importantly than that, they report being more fulfilled in their relationships, which I think is a really important metric because you could just be in a relationship forever, but not be happy. And that doesn’t necessarily make it successful. And so when we look at secure adults, they make up roughly 50 to 60% of the population.

 A lot of the research that’s been done since then isn’t as reliable necessarily. So it’s more through like polling, you know, things of that nature. But then we have our three insecure attachment styles. So wow, only one secure. So basically either your secure attachments, and this is just in romantic relationships. This is not in friendships or is this all relationships? Great question. It affects all of our relationships. Because ultimately your attachment style, in my opinion, is the relationship to yourself. It’s your patterns. It’s how you learn to connect. I often give people the analogy that your attachment style is the subconscious set of rules you’ve learned about what to expect when it comes to love and connection.

And so with that subconscious set of rules, what’s really interesting is if you sit down and you have a different attachment style than somebody else, especially in our closer relationships, it’s almost like you are sitting down to play a board game. And you have the rules for Scrabble. And I have the rules for Monopoly. Like we may really want to have a good time, but with different attachment styles, we have different rules for what we expect around our needs, what we expect around communication and vulnerability. And so it can really shape relationships in sometimes great ways, but also sometimes really challenging ways. Yeah, I can totally see that. Yeah. So the three insecure attachment styles. The first one is the anxious attachment style. Now anxious attachment styles, their overarching theme about how they’re conditioned is that they have a lot of love, a lot of care in the household and a good bit of attunement, but it’s inconsistent.

 So they go through what we call either real or perceived abandonment. So real abandonment could be the loss of a parent, you know, somebody passes away or a divorce, a parent leaves, or perceived abandonment, which is really interesting because when you look at abandonment from a neuroplasticity perspective, small T trauma, like if we look at how the brain sort of fires and wires, small T trauma, lots of perceived abandonment, things like parents being there a lot, but then also working all the time, these really long hours. So love is there, love is taken away, love is there, love is taken away. The repetition and emotion of that fires and wires neural pathways that can actually have a very similar impact on what we fear and what our attachment behaviors are as a singular or small set of big T traumas. And so you’ll see anxious attachment styles, even if they go through more of what we call perceived abandonment, they will grow up and they will constantly fear love being taken away.

So there are big fears and wounds and relationships are around abandonment, being alone, being excluded or disliked or rejected, and often not good enough. So they really go into a space of chronic people pleasing. They spend a lot of their time in relationships just trying to maintain proximity, like just trying to keep somebody close. But unfortunately, a lot of the time because they’re so anxious, what ends up taking place is they accidentally push somebody away by holding on too tight, by trying to move the relationship along way too quickly. And I’m sure you’ve probably known people like this in your life. And you see like they’re generally very kind and sweet and they care about people and connection so much, but they really struggle to have a healthy relationship to self, to have healthy boundaries standards for what they accept from relationships. So that’s the anxious attachment style. I will get through the other two, but I do definitely have certain questions. You’re talking, I’m thinking about my little one, my five year old.

And when she interfaces with us, we’ll see her and then we’ll do things like normal families do, go, my husband goes to work. And we don’t have any as parents and for any of the parents listening, I have no control over how she interprets that. Yes. Right?

 I mean, I’m sure that you’ll give us tips as to how to maybe soften that for our children. But then it just makes me think nature and nurture. How do we impact the way that they interpret their experience? I would love to go into that. So we’ll, we’ll maybe when we sort of get to that point, I will have lots of tools and steps for that because it’s such a powerful question that you’re raising. And it’s such an important part of this whole discussion in my opinion, how do we actually rewire what’s not serving?

 So yeah, beautiful stuff. So so then we have on the sort of other end of the continuum, we have a dismiss of avoidant. And the dismiss of avoidant attachment style is somebody who basically grows up with an overarching theme of childhood emotional neglect. Now a lot of times it’s not necessarily overt neglect. It’s not like parents are never in the house, child’s trying to cook on the stove at five years old because they’re hungry. Of course that can be the case, but we’re more likely to see more covert emotional neglect, adulties. So for example, you’ll see a lot of dismiss of avoidant attachment styles grow up in a household where there’s a lot of stability and structure. Food is on the table. Kids are at school on time. Clothes are laid out. Definitely not my house.

 But along with that, if the child experiences emotional distress, the caregivers are not attuned and in fact they may even reject or deny the child’s emotions. And so what their conditioning is, what they’re firing and wiring is, is when I feel negative emotions or express negative emotion, I am met with rejection, deflection, or being ignored and dismissed. And thus my emotions are not acceptable. So this child learns I have to repress my emotions to be worthy of connection and love. And they adapt to that kind of environment and experience by going, I’m not going to show this part of myself. And as adults, they’re often individuals who may sabotage close connection.

 They may actually have a series of relationships where they leave as soon as things get too real. And they may be individuals if they do stay in a relationship that constantly close down, shut down, stonewall, and really go to great lengths to avoid conflict or avoid feeling too much, which of course can be difficult in a relationship because healthy, secure relationships are often founded on acceptance, vulnerability, communication. And they often struggle in those departments to properly work through conflict. And I think that makes, you know, that immediately comes to mind with this dismissive, dismissive attachment style is people are on their phones more.

Parents are on their phones more, right? And I could see maybe that is even probably increasing. You’ll have to tell me, but because of all these electronics, we’re probably setting people up for less than optimal attachment styles. One hundred percent. And then it makes me think about this idea of tough it out, just toughen up, tough it out. And that’s probably what emerges ultimately in a person who is more dismissive. Absolutely. And that’s usually a lot of their messaging. And I think grit is an important part of the human experience, but I don’t think it should be a mutually exclusive process where it’s like tough it out all the time. But just ignore your emotions. Know that we want to balance it both. We want to be able to leverage understanding our emotions and feedback mechanisms because a lot of times emotions are letting us know if we have a boundary crossed, if we have an unmet need in a relationship.

And so if we try to shut down our relationship to our emotions, we lose out on that powerful system of feedback that’s always there. And in turn, as you know, I’m sure we’ll get into, you’ll see that dismissive avoidance, they as a means of repressing go into a lot of self soothing techniques like drinking, comfort food, binge eating. Like it’s significantly more associated with having creature comforts and unhealthy coping mechanisms.

 So so and we can get into, you know, more of that. So the last attachment style is our fearful, avoidant, sometimes referred to as a disorganized attachment style as well. So our disorganized attachment style, they grow up in a household where the overarching theme is chaos. So the types of situations you would see may be things like having a cluster B parent, somebody with narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder, or even worse, antisocial personality disorder, having a parent who is struggling with an addiction, active addiction, alcoholism, drug addiction, substance use.And you would see in these types of situations that there tends to be more abuse, be it physical, mental, emotional abuse, you could also see in various situations, just a really difficult divorce between parents where it’s very challenging and triggering for the child or put in the middle, parentification type of patterns. But in any of these forms, the overarching theme in terms of how a child is conditioned is they never know what they’re going to get.

So when they are young children, and they’re trying to co regulate with their parents and caregivers, and their nervous system is really in training with that of their caregivers around them, there is a tremendous amount of distress in their parents around them. So the child doesn’t know whether to look at their parent as a source of love or a source of fear. And in particular situations, you know, you may see if there’s a parent who’s an alcoholic, one day that parent is drinking a little bit and they’re in a good mood and they’re nice and they’re loving. Another day a parent is drinking a lot and they’re cruel or they’re vicious or mean, or in the case of having a narcissistic parent, you know, one day the parent is love bombing and they’re sweet and kind. Another day the narcissist is scary and potentially volatile or even violent. And so in these particular cases, this trial gets wired with very competing associations about love. Love has really good moments. And I want that. I want that closeness and the connection when I do have those nice moments. And yet love is scary. It’s terrifying. So this child copes with this by becoming extremely hypervigilant. And as an adult, their actual attachment mechanism is not to cling like an anxious attachment style or avoid like a traditional dismissive avoidant. Their attachment mechanism is to read between the lines on everything so they can try to predict two steps ahead to know who or what they’re going to get.

So that’s that seems like that would be a lot for a kid and probably a lot for an adult. Absolutely. And, you know, what we’ll see in the adult life of a fearful avoidant or disorganized style is that they end up being in a position where they in relationships are extremely hot and cold. They’re there one day, they’re very loving one day. And then when people get too close, they shut down and they get afraid. So they want love, but they’re terrified of it at the same time. So they’re very push pull in their relationships. And you’ll see those individuals be individuals who are more volatile themselves, have ups and downs in their relationship dynamics. And as a result, it can be really difficult to have healthy, sustained relationships as a disorganized attachment. You know, I find it so interesting that this is still called a theory. Yes. I don’t know if that’s just vocabulary or is, you know, I was looking I was always looking to see, you know, when I sit down before the podcast, I think, okay, what is it that we know about this? And what is it that potentially we don’t know? And are there criticisms of attachment theory and attachment styles?

 And I found this, these two people, so Harrison Field, have you heard of them? They’re probably very famous. And they said that they disagree with the attachment theory for children and that there’s too much emphasis on this idea that it’s the child and the mother.

 So let’s talk about it. So yeah, so I that what a lot of their research studies how it’s not just our parental relationships that shape our attachment style or relationships as a dog or peers, right? But our peers, our genetics, our environment and societal factors, all of those things, which is actually quite true. But I want to break down in a lot of detail here because there’s we sort of to go through the nuances, I think, for it to come full circle and make a lot of sense. So the original experiments on attachment theory, the original research and studies were something called the strange situation experiment. And they were done with John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth out of Cambridge University.

So what they had is they had children come into a room with their parent that sort of looked like a doctor’s waiting room on the space. And they would have the child come in with the parent and have a stranger also come into the waiting room after. And then the parent would exit the room for a brief period of time. And they would observe how the child would respond to that situation with the stranger in the room. And more interestingly, they would study how the child would respond when the parent reentered. So how they would actually respond to the parent themselves and what they found between zero to two years of age is they could clearly observe four different patterns. It’s so fascinating. So they could observe in a secure child, they would feel fairly comfortable with the stranger in the room. And when the parent would return, they would feel very comfortable with the parent, sort of go towards them, greet them, continue playing or just sort of being themselves in that moment and not experiencing any signs of distress. With an anxious attachment style, the child would become very distressed when the parent left and really cling to the parent when they returned.

 With a disorganized attachment style, so the fearful when the hot and cold one with all the hypervigilance, they would become extremely distressed when the stranger entered and then when the parent returned. And they would have these really interesting patterns of behavior where they would sort of move towards the parent and then move away from the parent, move towards, move away. Or if the parent came and picked up the child, they would sort of look away, then look towards the parent, you could tell they were just very dysregulated, very distressed. And you could see in their body language that wanting of closeness but denying it simultaneously or going back and forth very quickly between the two. And lastly, disorganized attachment styles, what you would see, or dismissive avoidant attachment styles, what you would see is when the parent would leave, they would be fairly comfortable and not express too much emotion. And when they would return and approach the child, the child would look away. So they would actively deny that experience. So then there was a study done after that, that was a much longer spanning study and it’s been decades.

 And it was a psychologist named, I believe his name was Jeffrey Simpson. And what he did is he actually studied for decades. He started with a strange situation experiment. He must have had a lot of funding. And then he proceeded to study years later, decades later into individuals’ 30s, how they exhibited their attachment patterns. And what he found is there was absolutely a direct connection between their attachment style as children and their attachment style as adults. And so he studied as adults in their 30s, their ability to form intimate bonds, their ability to communicate, their ability to be vulnerable. And of course their attachment patterns and found there to be this very direct connection. So that to me was very, very clear at that point, but I want to say something really important. So the individuals you were mentioning, a lot of their work was studying how our societal, our environmental factors affect us. And this is where it gets nuanced, but really important. When we look at how the mind is conditioned, right? We’re conditioned through repetition and emotion. It’s what fires and wires neural pathways. Now neural pathways in our brain also sort of act like muscles. So they atrophy over time in that sense. That’s sort of their connection.

If neural pathways have not been fired or wired because we’re not using them, they atrophy. And so what you’ll see is it is very true. You know, a lot of the work that I do is how we can actually rewire our maladaptive attachment patterns because of neuroplasticity, because of our understanding of how the subconscious mind works. And you can see in different studies that somebody can have an attachment style. Let’s say they’re securely attached until the age of eight and then a parent passes away. They may then become anxiously attached and this is because of neuroplasticity. You may also see, and I see, I saw this a lot in my practice. I’ll tell one example. So I had a client who was an Olympic gymnast and she had an incredibly secure family, but she would go to school and after school and before school, she would spend hours in the gym with a coach who was most likely a narcissist and had very unhealthy patterns. Well, because of the repetition and emotion of the proximity to that individual, she actually as an adult had disorganized attachment patterns because she spent more active time all through her childhood and upbringing with this very unhealthy person as a figure of attachment.

So really we have to look at, you know, it’s not just our early adult relationships. There’s a huge connection there, but who do we spend the most time around? And the reason attachment theory tends to hold up so strongly is because for most people, they spend the most time around their caregivers as children. And because the way the subconscious mind works is that we tend to form our early expectations through individuals. And we’re more likely as adults as a result of that to keep seeing things through that lens. So for example, if you’re an anxiously attached style at a very young age and then you go to mix and mingle with children at school, you’re more likely to fear abandonment with them. You’re more likely to fear being excluded or rejected. And so you may cling and oftentimes that clinging actually pushes people away and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we sort of have to look at like multiple factors, right? We have to look at, there’s been clear research that shows there is in fact this huge connection between our attachment style as children all the way through to adults. But there can be exceptions to that at the same time because of who the different attachment figures we have are. And when there are parents and that’s who we spend the most time around, that’s going to be who has the most impact on our conditioning over what fires and wires those neural pathways. But of course, our peer and societal and genetic factors can still play a role if we have a lot of proximity to those things more than we do in our home. That’s really fascinating. And it makes me think as you’re talking from zero to two, this is when they’re potentially laying the foundation, right? That individual who was the Olympic gymnast started out secure. Then interfaced with a coach who was narcissistic and created this chaotic environment.

 My question is, would someone then be able to default back to say the secure attachment? So if one were to remove the stress, would they be able to then re-regulate back to what say potentially their foundation is? So this is the entire body of work that we do. So a lot of the work I spent a lot of time in private practice doing was the study of actually taking our attachment styles, looking at the different factors that played a role in what created it, and then studying securely attached individuals and figuring out what the differences were and how we could recondition our subconscious patterns, leveraging our understanding of neuroplasticity to actually change our attachment style to become secure. So we found these different pillars. So I experienced that if somebody had an insecure attachment style, they had what we call more core wounds, which comes from the body of work and cognitive behavioral therapy. So you’ll see, for example, that the anxious attachment style, their core wounds are around abandonment, not good enough, excluded, disliked, rejected, all related to trying to connect with people.

 Fearful avoidance, they fear the abandonment and not being good enough because they have those competing associations. But they also fear being trapped or helpless or powerless or betrayed because they have a lot of that chaos growing up. That would be, for example, if there was an alcoholic parent. The dismissive avoidance, their fears are engulfment, people getting too close, being trapped, being unsafe emotionally, or being seen as weak if they’re too open or emotional. Now, we’re not born with core wounds. They get conditioned into us because of the proximity to the people we have. And it’s repetition and emotion that fires and wires the neural pathways and creates those core wounds and fears in each person. And so what we actually can do is leverage our understanding from a hypnotherapy perspective of how we can recondition those core wounds. And I’ll definitely, in a little bit, get into sharing maybe a tool or two for how we can recondition our subconscious mind in that way.

 Definitely. And basically, the overarching theme, which is one reason why I was very excited to have you on the podcast, is that change is possible. Absolutely. And that doesn’t matter where someone is on the spectrum. And it sounds like these attachment styles change somewhat, right? Or do they? Well, yes and no. So it takes a lot of repetition and emotion to change an attachment style. And it has to be very intentional. So when you look at how the subconscious mind works, it takes about 21 days to create new neural networks that are strong enough that they’re unlikely to shift or change. And at the same time, we actually have to sort of digress from the old patterns we would repeat. So let’s just say, for example, that somebody is anxiously attached. In a romantic relationship. Exactly, in a romantic relationship. And so they end up in a situation where they’re constantly fearing abandonment. And now they’re dating this person and they keep fearing abandonment. Well, they’re thinking about abandonment.

How does that play out? Are they constantly texting, waiting for a return? If someone was thinking, OK, they haven’t taken a quiz that you have and they don’t know if they are secure, if they are anxious, dismissive or disorganized attachment, they don’t they don’t know what would be some of the signs. How would those behaviors play out? Absolutely. Great question. So anxiously attached individuals, they will text all the time, call all the time. They’ll fear people pulling away. They’ll be very preoccupied with do people like me or people interested in me? Does my partner like me? How am I getting along with them? Are their feelings changing? Are they about to abandon me? And they will experience a lot of panic and distress in their nervous system as a result. And so we’ll see them actually operate a lot more often from a place of fight or flight or sympathetic nervous system on when they are in that state of distress. And so you’ll see a lot of those behaviors that then follow and dismissive avoidance. What you’ll see with them is they tend to shut down a lot more. They stonewall, they ice out. They really avoid conflict. They leave relationships. They have a much stronger flight response.

 And fearful avoidance tend to have more volatility, more of a fight response, freeze response. I mean, they can really experience all of the fight, flight, freeze and fawn. They can people please too until they feel frustrated and then go into that volatile set of behaviors. But it takes a lot when somebody has a specific attachment cell to change it. So what you have to see for that to happen is a lot of proximity to somebody who’s a close attachment figure. So when you look at… Who’s healthy? Or… Exactly. So you could have somebody who grows up in a secure household.

 You could have them enter into a relationship with somebody who’s a little bit unhealthy, stay in that relationship for a long period of time. Maybe that person’s inconsistent and maybe across 10 years, for example, that is actually going to rewire that person. That healthy person. The healthy may become more anxious after the fact, right? If there’s a lot of inconsistency and you’re more likely to see somebody move from healthy to unhealthy because the mind is also wired to hang on to negative things more than positive things. Really? You’re more likely to move from healthy to unhealthy. If you are around unhealthy attachment influences. Again, it’s not so cut and dry.

 Of course. Our team, we know this for sure, not black and white. We always appreciate that. And you can see it, right? Like if you, if somebody walks into the analogy, often give to people as if somebody walks into a forest and you see a bear and you run away and you escape, when you think of the bear later on, you don’t remember like, oh, the beautiful flower next to the bear. You remember the bear in its teeth. So we’re wired to hang on to negative things more than positive from a place of self preservation. But when it comes to the perspective of how we get conditioned, we’ll generally see that if somebody ends up in a relationship with a really unhealthy person, they’re likely to take on those attributes. I mean, I often say to people, trauma is contagious, not in a germ theory way, but by proximity, because it’s that repetition and emotion of our experiences that is actually firing and wiring those neural pathways and can cause us to adopt different core fears or wounds or maladaptive patterns as a way of coping. So, you know, there’s this, we can sort of be on autopilot our whole lives and realize, oh, I am just this attachment style.

I’m just always going to feel this way in relationships or just hope that we’re exposed to enough positive influences throughout our lives so that we can get into a place where we eventually become secure or we try to date people who are more healthy or secure and hope that that has a positive influence. But like what we study in our body of work is really about, you know, what are those specific pillars that securely attached individuals have that insecure attachment styles do not have? And how can we dive into what those pillars are? And they’re an absence of core wounds. And the core wounds, tell me about, you know, as I was reading your book, your most recent book, and it has this list of core wounds. And I was thinking, you know, we have core wounds, but what would be the opposite from a positive standpoint? Great question. I don’t know what would be. Healthy self-belief. So if somebody has this belief that I am not good enough as an example and that’s what they believe and that’s what they think about themselves and that’s what gets triggered or catalyzed when they go into a job interview or, you know, challenging situations, it instead would be, no, no, no, it’s possible for me to be good enough, you know? And so it doesn’t have to be this one-sided belief that I am always the best, but it would be, you know, the absence of the core belief, but a healthy sense of self-adability to believe that we can do things and we can evolve and we can grow even through challenging experiences.

The pillars, is it divided into two? These are the things that are apparent for healthy individuals and these are the things that are apparent for unhealthy individuals or is it really based on their attachment style, whether it’s anxious, dismissive? Great question. So we have five pillars in total.

 Five things that securely attached styles have or don’t have. There are five healthy pillars are number one, an absence of core wounds. They don’t have no core wounds, but significantly less. So they have less ideas that in relationships will be betrayed or abandoned or trapped. You know, they tend to have positive self-belief when it comes to relationships. The second pillar is they have a more regulated nervous system. So there is a whole bunch of research done, I’m sure you’ve heard of this, around ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences and how they actually impact our physiological health and well-being and also the ways that we cope. And you’ll generally see individuals who go through more attachment trauma tend to spend more time in sympathetic nervous system.

They have more fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses. And so in the case of a secure attachment style, there’s a lot of work around somatic experiencing, the work of Dr. Stephen Porges, that teaches us how to actually recondition our own nervous system function to spend more time in parasympathetic. So that’s the second pillar that we focus on. I definitely want to come back to that after we go through all five pillars. Yes, definitely. The third major pillar is securely attached individuals. They have an understanding of their own needs and they know how to self-soothe by meeting those needs. So you’ll see, for example, that if somebody has a need for encouragement or to be seen or heard or understood, those are things that actually securely attach individuals are good at doing within themselves. They self-encourage more, they tend to actually self-attune more, they understand, this is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m experiencing, they’re not repressing or rejecting or denying their feelings. So they self-soothe more effectively because they know their own needs. And pillar number four, which goes hand in hand, is they communicate their needs to others.

So they have the ability to access healthy vulnerability and actually open up and share what they’re needing in a relationship. So they have healthy conflict resolution strategies as a result. And pillar number five is they have healthy boundaries in relationships. They don’t go into chronic people pleasing and they don’t find themselves in a position where they are just constantly self-abandoning through being boundaryless and not knowing who they are. And so what we do is we take those five pillars and we look at each insecure attachment style and we help them through repetition and emotion of practicing new behaviors or I can share different tools about how to reprogram core wounds. We actually practice understanding how neuroplasticity works and the reconditioning experience. And we reverse engineer essentially those five core pillars in insecure attachment style so they can adopt those behaviors and essentially condition them in until they actually become what we call insecure. Why do you think some people experience more core wounds? Are core wounds something that are happening when individuals are young or could they happen, I don’t know, in adulthood? Great question. So core wounds would happen at any point in time, absolutely. You know, somebody could, you know, be securely attached and have a pretty good absence of core wounds and then be in a car accident and have an I am unsafe core wound that’s born from that after because strong emotion has the capacity to immediately imprint the subconscious mind, which is very… Wow. Say that again. Because by the way, you blew my mind. We were up chatting. I was having kombucha. You were having water. And we were chatting about talk therapy.

I said, why do you think that your personal development school has done so well? Why do you think people are so interested? And you’d mentioned to me that we’ll talk therapy and addressing the conscious mind only goes so far because 95 percent of our behaviors are subconscious. Yes, exactly. I had no idea. Yeah. And to me, that’s a huge limitation. So in the personal development school, every single course we have is actually designed for the subconscious mind. So we have the understanding from a conscious mind perspective of what’s happening and why we do what we do. And then we actually go into the reconditioning experience in each course. So how we can actually modify and shape our behaviors if we see that we have maladaptive patterns that we no longer want to carry. And so, you know, when we look at it, there’s two important facts when it comes to the conscious and subconscious mind. The conscious mind is responsible for roughly three to five percent of all of our beliefs, thoughts, emotions and actions. And the subconscious mind… Am we sure that’s true? Yes. I mean, so if Matt was really on it, he’d be looking it up.

He’s over there not. And the subconscious mind is 95 to 97 percent. And the conscious mind cannot out will or overpower the subconscious mind. I had a really hard time just comprehending that. Can I give an example? So if you’ve ever seen this in people, right? And everybody’s had this experience where we say maybe it’s a New Year’s resolution experience. We say, I am going to quit eating chocolate and we decide we’re going to do it. And we think that we’re so dedicated. And that’s our conscious mind, our logical, rational thinking self. And our subconscious mind is our habituated self, our patterned, programmed self. And so we intend something. I’m going to quit eating chocolate. And then maybe three, four days later, we’re back to eating chocolate again. That’s an example of our conscious mind intending something in our subconscious mind, having different motives. Now, that’s also a form of cognitive dissonance. And we experience that around eating chocolate, around trying to lose weight and have healthier patterns.

We experience that in the form of saying, I’m going to stop being angry in relationships and raising my voice at my partner. And yet the next argument comes around and somebody goes ahead and does that. Or how many times have you seen experiences where people say, I’m not going to call them, they’re my ex, they’re not good for me. And then they go ahead and call the person. Or even experiences where somebody says, you know, I’m going to quit drinking. Drinking’s been not good for me. And maybe they’re struggling with active addiction and they say they’re going to stop doing something. But then they go back over and over and over again. And it’s because the subconscious mind in those cases actually has conditioned patterns for how they’ve learned how it’s learned to cope. And so we go back through and we repeat those patterns because that’s what we know. I want to ask your opinion on something that I use with patients. You guys don’t cringe, but it’s been very effective.

 I had one patient in particular who she had a really bad habit. And, you know, for her, she would binge eat. And it was just destroying her internally. And I said, OK, you and I, we’re going to make a deal. The next time you do that, you are going to send and please understand, just listen, friends with this was early on in my career. Just listen with a little bit of a softer ear. I said, OK, if you take that action, there’s going to be a consequence of that action. And that consequence is you are going to send a mass email. She worked with the military, a mass email out to your superiors about what she did.

 How many times do you think that she went back and binge ate? Because the narrative association was exactly it was zero times. Yeah. In an instant. Yeah. And it was so crazy to see, you know, and I always thought and, you know, potentially incorrectly that if the why is strong enough, if the consequence to the action is so impactful, if the person is willing to actually do the thing that they agree to. I mean, and that’s just one example, but that’s the I mean, she never did it again. Yeah, because the negative emotional associations are so intense. Right. So a lot of so there’s a neuroscientist named Antonio DeMazio. I think it was in 2004. And he actually conclusively proved that every single decision we make is based on our emotional state. So even people who think they’re very logical or rational thinker is they’re still making emotionally based decisions at the tipping point. And then they’re quick to then rationalize or justify their logic. That one. And interestingly enough, when you look at the patterns of people who binge eat, a lot of the if we look at our first subconsciously associated subconsciously conditioned associations around food, it’s more being breastfed.

And what’s happening when we’re being breastfed? There’s a tremendous amount of oxytocin being produced, which is the bonding neurochemical. And so we have this experience of being held and cradled and breastfed. So we feel very connected, safe, comfortable. And what I found in very, you know, with very little exception is a lot of people who actually struggle with binge eating disorder also happen to struggle with deeply unmet needs for comfort and safety because they’re operating far too much from a dysregulated nervous system, causing them to feel chronically uncomfortable and unsafe. And they’re starving for connection and they don’t know how to get connection met in healthy forms. And so I often would say to people sort of as an analogy sort of tongue in cheek, like, oh, you think you’re starving for food, but you’re starving for safety and comfort and connection a lot of the time. And do you find that the acknowledgment of understanding some of these subconscious actions and behaviors, if they are acknowledged consciously, do you think that there’s a way that they become more dismantled?

 I think that that’s only the first step. It’s only the first step. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when we just look at how things get patterned in, right, we need that repetition and emotion of actually firing and wiring and building new neural networks in the brain for long enough that they’re going to stick. And so we can have all of this awareness. I mean, I’ve seen this far too many times where we have all this awareness, right? We look at like traditional attachment style research and a lot of it’s, you know, here’s your attachment style. And unfortunately, one of the caveats to that or downsides is that people can too easily say, I’m just anxiously attached. I’m just so I’m just so You know, we know that there’s such a thing as neurogenesis. We know how neuroplasticity works in the field of hypnotherapy. We very much understand that things can be rewired. Why are we not leveraging that to better actually make changes to the patterns that we’re not seeing?

 when they have a specific attachment style has fallen to the trap of going, I’m just this attachment style, I’m stuck like this. And from a personal perspective, I was a fearful avoidant, I was a disorganized attachment style. It was a very chaotic one, the one that they say is impossible to change. It’s so hard. So what does that mean? That would mean that someone wouldn’t know what to expect or how, yeah, how does that play out? So my entire early adult relationships, I mean, this is like late teenage years sort of dynamics, early on into my own relationship development. I was an absolute mess.

 I was– You used to be an athlete. Yes. Very athletic. Yeah. And I was just the roller coaster person in a relationship. I never trusted anybody. I was constantly hypervigilant, reading between the lines on everything. I would make mountains out of molehills. I would get really angry. I really struggled with anger, honestly, in relationships. I would get close to people and then absolutely shut them out and push them away. And I was just very hot and cold. And I was just taught personally a tremendous amount of maladaptive patterns. And so this really was a part of why I was self-evaluating at a point in my life going, am I gonna be like this my whole life? Am I gonna struggle like this forever? There has to be a better way. And that was actually when in a psychology class, I had somebody say to me, “Your conscious mind can’t out-will your subconscious mind.” And I was like, I need to learn everything I can about how the subconscious mind works because that’s gonna be the secret to actually creating transformation within me. And that was so profound for me and like literally revolutionized the way I saw relationships and changed so many of my maladaptive coping mechanisms.

That was sort of the way I landed in this career, for sure. Which is incredible. And the world is absolutely lucky to have you. As you sit here talking, I think that it’s very meaningful for people to be able to have tools and ways forward. Do you think that the maladaptive behaviors, the maladaptive attachments are always trained? Or for example, would you perceive,

 let me say this simply, if there were two parents that were secure, could two secure parents have a child that has a chaotic attachment style? And that would bring back to the original question of I believe Harrison Fields, which is that it would be based on proximity. So the reason that our attachment style is shaped so much by our caregivers is because we generally have the most proximity to them, which means that they are going to be, when you look at how we get conditioned, they’re gonna be firing and wiring the vast majority of our behaviors. So be unlikely, mostly unlikely. But if they were in a dynamic where like the Olympic athlete I was mentioning, if they were in a dynamic where they had a coach or a mentor that they spent a fair bit of time with on a daily basis, then they’re going to experience the conditioning from that person more than you would experience the conditioning from just the home environment. And so even if their attachment style develops between ages zero to two, that’s their primary attachment style, but then they’re put in a really unhealthy environment, then you are absolutely going to see the likelihood of that childhood attachment style shift and change. And I’ve seen people as well, who in very unfortunate circumstances grew up with healthy, loving, secure parents, had both parents passed away in an accident, had to go to foster care or with other unhealthy family members, and that shifted their attachment style in profound ways. Let’s talk about your muscle.

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You’ll get your money back. No questions asked. I love this stuff. You will too. Back to the show. You know, I look at both my kids. I have a three and a five year old. And I would say that we parent both of them the same. And maybe we don’t, but I feel like we do. And they are very different in their own attachment styles. And I’m wondering as I think about these five things that you said, you said those that are secure have less core wounds. They can regulate their nervous system. They have an understanding of their own needs. They are very communicative and they have boundaries.

 Is there a way that we can as people, as friends, as partners set a standard? Are there things that we can always do? So as when my kids come home today, are there ways in which I could probably respond to them that they seem to again, have very different personalities and different ways of connecting? But do you think there are fundamental things that I could do or the parents listening or just people can do to foster secure attachment relationships? Absolutely. And I’m happy to share. Maybe we’ll go into detail about that. But I wanna mention one thing first, just to your point, which I think was really interesting. So you said you have two children. How far apart are they in years? Less than two years. Yeah, okay, so interesting. So generally– Yeah, that was a really tough time.

That would be weird. If I’m pregnant at 10 months. That would be very intense. And so what you’ll see is there tends to be an actual implication in our attachment cells due to birth order. And part of this is because– So it’s a true thing. So you’ll see– Potentially. Yeah, it can be one of many influential factors. So what you’ll see is because we have two children closer in age, they’re both vying for attention. And so for both children, if there’s one focus, let’s say you have your first child, they get all the attention. And then very soon after that, in those early developmental years, you have a second child, you’re likely to see an actual difference in attachments because of that experience of having to sort of have that shift and change in the way the person’s used to obtaining attention. So you’ll see things like that around attention. You can see things like that in terms of other experiences. If a parent is more dysregulated because there’s a tremendous amount of responsibility and maybe a little bit more stress, that can shift an attachment style in various ways.

So there’s a lot of those different factors that will play a role in the conditioned experience. And is there a continuum? Do people, it sounds like people shift during their life depending on the intensity of their relationship? Yes, depending on the intensity of who and what they’re exposed to over time. And that’s why, of course, our adult relationships with our parents is gonna play such a big role, but our peer and societal and genetic influences are also playing a role the entire time because that’s how we get conditioned. Do you think that there is truth to then keep your circle close and just really well vetted?

 Absolutely. (Laughs) I truly believe in that. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience or maybe seeing either with patients you worked with or different scenarios where somebody had an unhealthy influence come into a person’s life. And if they were really close, sometimes it’s even having an unhealthy parent that you have to go back and live with and take care of as they get older. Or we can have these different experiences and people will influence us. We are getting conditioned by our experiences all the time.

 You know, when we go through these five things, is there one that seems to be much more challenging for people? Core wounds. Really? Yeah. Core wounds. And why is that? Because if you look at how core wounds work, so I often give people this acronym, right? So I call it BTEA. So it’s beliefs, thoughts, emotions, actions. Now, I wanna be clear, this is not the only way that this functions, but it is one of the three major ways. And in this acronym, when we have different belief patterns, so let’s say somebody just for argument’s sake has a belief that says, I am not good enough. Okay, very common. Maybe we’ll see it the most in anxious attachment styles, fearful avoidance may have this too.

 And so we’ll have this belief, I am not good enough. Well, when that belief is activated, let’s say that person is on their way to like a social event, a networking event, where they’re a little out of their comfort zone. They’re gonna believe that about themselves, go in. Subconsciously. Yes. It’s all subconscious. Yes, and it can come to our conscious mind’s awareness. So one of the major differences between the conscious and subconscious is that from our subconscious mind, we can retrieve information. We can realize like, oh, I did feel not good enough 10 minutes ago if somebody asks us, right? So you can retrieve that information. But if you look at that person going into that networking event, that belief may have been pretty dormant.

They go in, maybe they have one negative interaction with the first person. And what does the mind do? The conscious mind goes to the subconscious mind. And as an analogy, opens the filing cabinet of the subconscious because the subconscious mind actually stores almost all memory over time. Memories do get consolidated and we can misremember things, but they’re often stored by emotional association. So the conscious goes to– What does that mean? Did you say by modal? Emotional association. By emotional association. So as an example of what that means, the conscious mind may go to the subconscious and say, oh, what are my experiences of feeling like this before? And it opens the filing cabinet. And how core wounds really are obtained is through repetition and emotion. The more emotional experiences we have of feeling not good enough, the more triggering the event is. Because a trigger is us experiencing the objective situation in front of us that is seen through the subjectivity of our preexisting subconscious ideas and beliefs about ourselves. You have to say that again. Did you get all that? Okay, so say that again. So our conscious mind, you can think of your subconscious as being the lens you see and interact with the world through. So if I believe I’m not good enough already because I had preexisting childhood experiences where people were constantly critical or putting me down, I’m gonna likely acquire that core belief I’m not good enough. And then as an adult, when I have an experience of feeling like that again, my conscious mind goes to my subconscious and says, what are my preexisting experiences of feeling this way? And if I have tons and tons of experiences, that’s what a trigger is.

A trigger is our subconscious emotions flooding forward and we’re not just in a sense experiencing the objective situation in front of us. We’re also experiencing the way we subjectively interpret it, which is gonna happen based on our preexisting conditioning about ourselves. And so if you take somebody who’s secure and they didn’t really feel not good enough growing up and then somebody says, you’re not good enough as an adult, it’ll affect them. That doesn’t feel great to anybody. That can be an unmet need. But if you take somebody who felt not good enough their entire childhood and you come to them because they have more stored emotional associations of that from the past and the subconscious literally keeps those things and that’s what forms our core beliefs. And so when we look at that, when we look at those core beliefs, going back to that acronym, B-T-E-A, beliefs create patterns of thought. So let’s pretend it’s me and I go into a networking event and I believe I’m not good enough and I go in there and then I have one kind of negative experience. My subconscious is gonna go, what do I make this negative experience mean? Oh, I’m not good enough. And we’re likely to jump to those conclusions based on our preexisting conditioned ideas we carry about ourselves. And then I start having all these thoughts like, I’m not interesting enough, I’m not attractive enough, smart enough, whatever fill in the blanks, enough we would start thinking. And then how do we feel when we start thinking those things? Well, we feel insecure or sad or upset. So beliefs lead to thoughts which then lead to emotions which are actually made up of neurochemical reactions. We’re gonna have more cortisol when we’re feeling stress, more norepinephrine or adrenaline. And then neuroscience has proven that every single decision we make is based on our emotional state, like we talked about.

So that neuroscientist Antonio DeMazio. So BTEA stands for beliefs lead to thoughts, lead to emotions, lead to actions. And so you could make a pretty good argument for the fact that if you’re not in charge of your conditioning, your core beliefs, you’re not that in charge of how you think, feel and act on a daily basis. And we see this when people are triggered. You think of somebody who gets really angry and they act in a way that’s volatile or crazy. And then you look back and you go, why did I act like that? Why did I do that thing? That was embarrassing. Because all of that pre-existing dynamic is happening at the subconscious level of mind. Now beliefs can also just trigger emotions and actions more directly, unmet needs can also trigger emotions and actions. Yep, so it’s not the only acronym for human behavior but it’s one of three very important ones. Are there one of three? Okay, are there a handful, the attachment, the four attachment styles are laid out. Are there a handful of known core wounds that one would come to expect, watch out for or is it variable for everybody? Absolutely, they’re directly correlated. So for anxious attachment styles, their biggest core wounds are I will be abandoned, I’ll be alone, I am not good enough.

 I will be unsafe if people pull away from me.

 I will be excluded, disliked and rejected. Those tend to be their big core wounds. For a dismissive avoidant, their big core wounds tend to be I am unsafe if I’m in a conflict. So they tend to feel emotionally unsafe and shut down. I am weak if I am vulnerable. I could be trapped, helpless or powerless in the wrong relationship. And I am defective if I am criticized. One of the outputs of going through childhood emotional neglect as a child usually makes it mean something’s wrong with me that I’m not able to get my needs met. And so believe it or not, even though dismissive avoidance are very stoic, as adults, they take criticism very poorly. They really take it to heart. Secure people probably do the best in terms of criticism. Exactly. And then what about the, and Matt, so Matt’s my producer, you guys know this, did you finish your test? I did a big one. Oh, well, okay. Because you do have a test, there’s ways in which we can determine this. What about chaos? The ones that, is it called chaotic or is it disorganized? Yep. So the disorganized attachment style, they tend to share in the wounds of the anxious that are, I will be abandoned, we’re alone or not good enough.

 They share in some of the wounds of the dismissive avoidant because they also have the avoidance side to them, right? So they also fear being trapped or helpless, but they, their biggest individual core wounds are, I will be betrayed. They constantly think that betrayal is coming or I can’t trust or have to read between the lines. And they also fear feeling unworthy or being seen as bad.

 So they’re often punished more extremely in childhood, not always, but a lot of the time.

 And so there’s this need to like over explain themselves to people or you’ll see a lot of those patterns and tendencies. Do these, are there certain patterns that seem to come together? For example, would an anxious, more likely pair with a secure, do two secure people seem to pair together? It’s a great question. You’re smiling if you thought lots about this.

 I’ve actually done a lot of research into this. So what you’ll see is that securely attached people are more likely to end up in relationships with other securely attached individuals. And part of this is actually because our subconscious mind is really seeking familiarity. And it sees familiarity as safety and the survival and ultimately we’re survival wired. Now, when you take a securely attached individual, I’m never looking for, you know, what are they seeking externally? What our subconscious comfort zone is about is actually the way we treat ourselves. So what’s really interesting is that if somebody acts securely towards themselves, they’re more likely to be attracted to other people who are also securely attached because they model similar behaviors back. Anxious, that’s interesting. Before you go on, what would be an example? So would this be someone who securely attached is a security example. This is the one that I could think of.

They like to take care of themselves. They like to exercise. Is that kind of what we’re talking about or? Absolutely, it could be that. But you would see, for example, that it would be more along the lines of a securely attached person respects their own boundaries. So if they come across somebody who they’re dating, who disrespects their boundaries, they’re gonna be like, “Mm-mm, I don’t like that.” They’re more likely to be around people who also respect their boundaries because that’s what’s familiar and thus safe. If they are quite self-validating or not too critical on themselves, then if they come across somebody really critical, they won’t like it and they’ll feel good.

 Be a lot of friction. Exactly, and so it’s unfamiliar and they can clearly see the red flags. The alarm bells go off. This is unhealthy behavior. They’re wired to know that. I spent a lot of time in my practice doing work with women and men, but mostly women who left relationships with individuals with narcissistic personality disorder. So that’s the narcissistic borderline coupling, right? Absolutely. Which, by the way, if you guys have never heard of that, look it up. The war of the river. I’ve read a lot about it. Super. Just because it’s so fascinating. So interesting. And what is really interesting when you look at that, and that’s not the only pattern there, but a prominent one is a lot of women who ended up in relationships with narcissists first have these kind of preexisting patterns in their own subconscious comfort zone, usually because of early attachment trauma themselves. And they are things like being extremely self-critical, manipulating themselves to please others, not respecting their own boundaries and not empathizing with themselves, chronically prioritizing empathizing with others.

And so somebody comes along who’s unhealthy, like a narcissist, and what does the subconscious mind do? Conscious mind says, “Ooh, this is unhealthy. This is not good.” But our subconscious mind is largely running the show. And our subconscious mind says, “Oh, but this feels familiar and thus safe.” And so even though sometimes we look back and we say, “We knew better. We saw the red flags,” well, the narcissist model mirrors back to them exactly how they treat themselves, doesn’t empathize effectively, ends up in situations where they are critical, they’re betraying their boundaries, they’re manipulating them. And so that feels familiar for that person. And that tends to be a common theme for why you’ll see that relationship dynamic come to light. What are the things that people can do? What are some of the tools in place? And is one of these more difficult to rewire?

 So to be perfectly honest, it depends how you measure difficulty, I suppose, because there’s various parts. So anxious attachment styles, they are generally less trauma, less intensity of core wounds, than, for example, the fearful avoidant attachment seller, disorganized attachment style. And so you’ll see with the anxious attachment style, you could make the argument it’s a little bit less work. And I would see that a lot in client practice. But what I would also see a lot is that anxious attachment styles don’t love doing the work on their own as much. So they want to do the work with somebody else. So that can create a barrier or a sense of difficulty. Maybe you need a therapist or someone else. Somebody more, yeah. Or a wing man. Yeah, exactly.

 Dismissive avoidant attachment styles, they tend to be in a situation where they are less likely to want to do the work because it involves looking at their own vulnerabilities, which can be more uncomfortable. Fearful avoidance or disorganized, you could make the argument have the most work to do. But as a general rule, they tend to hunger for the work. They tend to really want to go into it. That’s what happened to you. You were, you were, I didn’t. Yeah, exactly. So you’ll see that there’s difficulties in different ways, I would say. And do men or women lean towards one or the other?

 Statistically, you’ll see dismissive avoidance tend to be a little bit more men. The split is generally 60-40.

 And if you date back 20 years ago, it was closer to 70-30. 70-30. Men to women. Oh, interesting. And you can sort of see that societally, right? The impact of how men are more likely to have caregivers that are also influenced. Because you can, you know, when we look at how our attachment style is formed, it’s societal influences, as well as our caregiver influences, also because society influences how the caregivers are more likely to raise the children, right? So men are taught, hey, you know, you should be strong and never express emotion. You would see it more likely to trend that way. Anxious attachment styles tend to be the exact opposite in their split. So you’re gonna see roughly 60-40 women to men. More women. Yeah. And fearful avoidance tend to go either way. Okay. With these pillars, you’ve got the five pillars, yeah? Yep. How do we start working through some of these? Okay, so let’s start with core wounds.

So core wounds, when we look at how we obtain a core wound, it’s through the themes of how the mind gets conditioned. So our subconscious gets its programs through repetition and emotion. And so when you take that information and you say, okay, well, I wasn’t born with these core wounds, how do we recondition them? A lot of hypnotherapy and research by people like Richard Bandler talks about how we can actually recondition these patterns. So when we take a look, one of the first tools that I like to use is called auto suggestion. There are a few key pieces that we need. So there’s sort of three steps overall, but I’ll explain a little bit of the backstory of each one. So the first step is we need our brains to be in a suggestible state, ideally producing more alpha brain waves or even theta brain waves, because at that point, we’re more open to suggestion. Our subconscious mind can receive imprinting more effectively.

Alpha and theta brain waves are produced more often when we first wake up, the first hour that we wake up, especially before we drink coffee or have any caffeinated beverages, and the last hour before we go to sleep. We can also sort of induce an alpha brain wave state by meditating after intense exercise, that feeling of like, whoa, your brain’s very still. A lot of that is when you’re in more alpha or theta brain wave, specifically more alpha brain wave production. So we wanna get into a suggestible state. So I just recommend to people do this first thing when you wake up, when you’re not fully awake yet. And then we need three key principles. So the first one is we need to know the core wound and its opposite, because we’re essentially trying to equilibrate it out. So let’s say you take the idea, I’m not good enough, I am good enough, or it is possible to be good enough. So we’re looking for a more healthy version of that self-belief. And then what’s really interesting is I am not a believer in affirmations because affirmations are the conscious mind speaking to itself. So these are not affirmations, what we’re talking about right now. Not affirmations.

 And the conscious mind isn’t the one with the core wound. Nobody’s waking up and consciously choosing and deciding to tell themselves 48 times that they’re not good enough. These are subconscious pre-existing programs. So we need our conscious mind to instead speak to our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind speaks emotion and imagery. So if-Emotions and imagery. Yes. So if I were to say to you, for example, whatever you do, do not think of the pink elephant.

 You probably flashed an image of a pink elephant, right? Like it’s- No, I was thinking of a brown, orange bear or something. I was thinking, okay, well, how can I not do that? Good for you, you’ve got some good conscious control. So the vast majority of people will sort of flash the image of the pink elephant or like, don’t think of a chocolate chip cookie, you know, the chocolate chip cookie. So your conscious mind hears, do not. But your subconscious just sees the imagery, right? So we need to speak in the language of the subconscious. So step one, we find the core belief in its opposite, not good enough, I am good enough. Step two is we need 10 for repetition, memories of how we did actually feel good enough in specific instances. The reason we use memories is memories are essentially a container for imagery and emotion.

If I were to say, okay, tell me your favorite childhood memory and let’s pretend it was you playing on the playground as a kid, you would see the images of the slide in the playground and you’ll see all the time when people recall old memories, they laugh or they smile. And so it actually brings forth imagery and emotion. So we need 10 memories of times that we actually felt good enough. They can be teeny tiny for people who are like, I don’t have any, they can be like, I got out of bed with my first alarm this morning, or I showed up as a good parent, or I really made an effort to put myself out there at work and set a boundary with my boss. Whatever it is, little small things that elicit an emotional response and you can see the images of in the memory, that’s perfect for your 10. And then step three, we record it somewhere we can listen back like on our phone. And we listen back for 21 days because research shows that we need at least 21 days to hardwire those new neural networks in enough that they’re unlikely to disappear. And what are they listening back? Just a statement that says, I’m good enough or? Oh no, the memories. The memories. Yes, because then they’re getting the images and emotion.

So if it was like, yesterday I showed up really well with my boss and I set a healthy boundary, or three days ago I was a really good friend to somebody who needed me. And the more specific you can get in the memory, like three or four sentences, the more it will actually elicit both images and more emotions. You have to take time. This can’t just be where you, you know, I’m immediately thinking about how can I get this done quickly? So have I read that that’s like not, I’m not talking about efficiency here.

 I would think about something new every day, or is it the same? Same recording. Okay. It’s something to really think about it, as opposed to just put on your pods or whatever and go to something else. Yes, exactly. It has to be something that you’re trying to focus on the images and the emotions. Now it may take 15 or 20 minutes to come up with those 10 pieces of memory first, where you did feel good enough and to write them out, but it only takes two to three minutes in the morning in that suggestible state when you first wake up to listen back and to just keep your eyes focused and seeing the images, feeling the emotion. And what that’s doing is it’s really firing and wiring those. That’s cool. Yeah. I really think that’s cool. I’m gonna try it. So that’s one of many. And it brings up the question that you asked earlier, which was if you’re a parent, how do you, if you see different core wounds, for example, in your child, what do you do? Well, if you see that your child has a core wound or if you’re being not good enough, or if you’re being alone or abandoned. Yeah, you know, I don’t even know where my daughter gets that. She’s really interesting. She is physically very gifted. She’s able to do things, you know, she’s in jujitsu. She taught herself gymnastics. I mean, she’s really good at being able to do something, just for whatever reason. The second she cannot, for example, we put her in tennis lessons.

 She’s not supposed to be able to hit a ball, right? It’s her first day.

 Completely, it’s so extreme, her experience, her emotion around it. And I don’t even know where that came from, but to me, it looks like a core wound. Yes, absolutely. Where my son is, he can’t do something. That kid will try and try and try again, and he loves trying to get it done. That’s, yep. And so it’s really interesting because core wounds don’t have to be like big T trauma. They can be experiences where there was a few times repeatedly that they were trying to get access to something and couldn’t. But what you would do in that particular case is you could ask her, like, what are you, how old is she? She just turned five. And the reason I bring this up is because here’s what she says. I’m not good enough. Okay, there you go. So I was– And I’m like,

okay, well, it takes, it’s important to practice.

 I’m not an expert parent. I’ve only been doing this for five years. And these words will come out of her mouth where I’ve never said that. My husband doesn’t say that. And my son responds completely different to adversity. Yeah, but it can be like, again, it can be repetition and emotion of any painful experience. So it could be something as small as like her trying to do something really hard that mattered to her for some period of time when she was younger and her trying and trying and just not feeling like she could complete it. And then she forms that belief system. And so through that conditioned experience, she’s going, and that’s where it’s like so important to go back to the point that like, yes, our attachment cells developed largely and influenced the most by our caregivers, but we have all these other influences. It could have been something that happened at daycare or school, it’s really both, right? And so when you look at that dynamic, what you can do, which is really beautiful, is you can actually go to her and you can on a daily basis, try to come up with five reasons she’s good enough that are physical, like very obvious memories. Remember you were good enough because you did this and you did that. And what you’re doing is you’re actually firing and wiring those new neural pathways of emotion, repetition and imagery to create that new system and belief in her. And that takes about 21 days. Yes. It’s interesting because again, as a parent, you gotta catch these things really early. Yes. I mean, I’m assuming so that, you know, she doesn’t have a lifetime of not feeling good enough. Absolutely.

 I couldn’t agree more with that. Like it’s, you’re being an amazing parent by being able to look for those things and show up and really create some of the evidence that we’re memory of the opposite. And I, that’s power to you. But I also think that sometimes pain is a powerful teacher. I think that sometimes, and the truth of the matter is sometimes when you feel not good enough and a lot of people that pushes them to do more or be more. That’s exactly why we put her in tennis.

 That’s exactly why we did that. And we’re hoping that her experience of not being able to do something, which obviously she’s going to have to work hard to be good at, will allow her to re-regulate that you don’t, number one, have to be good at everything. And number two, it takes practice. I love that. And it’s beautiful. She can’t say that it’s working.

 She’s not going to the Olympics and is very upset about it. She’s only on her third lesson.

 But I’m gonna work on that because I guess the biggest thing is, as I think about what you’re talking about with these core wounds is, is there a way to upgrade our operating system of being able to interpret that? And maybe that comes from some of the other tools like regulating her nervous system. That if her nervous system was more balanced, that she wouldn’t interpret this experience that ultimately leads her down the pathway to a core wound. Absolutely. So I like to think of the core wound as being more of the cause because it’s this preexisting idea. And then when we’re triggered, if you think of the BTEA acronym, she believes I’m not good enough. She starts thinking all these thoughts in her head, I can’t do this, I am not good enough. And she thinks those thoughts, then she feels negative emotions. And then it’s actually a lot of times the neurochemistry of those emotions is part of what sparks us to go into sympathetic nervous system mode. So what will happen is if we have a very regulated nervous system, it doesn’t mean that we won’t think or believe that we’re not good enough.

It means that it will lessen the intensity of those feelings and emotions when they come up because we’re not in fight or flight. And so you can think of it as being, it’s not one way, it’s like bi-directional, but absolutely nervous system regulation work is a huge part of being able to regulate more effectively. But I would definitely pair that with core wound reprogramming. I would definitely do the opposing evidence as well. And it’s not enough, or would it be enough? So we have five things to do here. Would it be enough to work out really hard and or do these 10 memory reframes in the morning? Or it’s really most effective to pair it with the other four, which is regulate your nervous system, understanding your own needs, communicate in boundaries. I would say that always do one or two at a time. So I think it can be like overload to do, everything at once. I think in her case, because you’re so aware and knowledgeable, it’s not like she probably has all this attachment trauma and all these core wounds. So you can do a little bit of belief reprogramming. Every child’s gonna have some degree of core wounds as they grow up and how they acquire them.

So you wanna do some reprogramming wherever you see those things being evident is amazing. And some nervous system regulations set somebody up for the future. Tell me about the nervous system regulation. Yeah, so– So this is the somatic work. I was just with my friend, Diana Coolian, and she is getting her PhD. And this is one of the things that she’s studying. Yes, it’s such a powerful– She was just saying it’s, and I’m assuming it’s the same thing where you feel an emotion, where it’s not talk therapy, but it’s where you actually feel things in your body. So absolutely, so somatic– Probably butchering that and she’s being kind about it. No, no, no. So somatic actually represents our body, right? It’s like what we experience in the body. And so we can sort of leverage our understanding of somatic work and pair it with some nervous system regulation work at the same time. And so it really goes much deeper than I’ll explain right now, but I’ll sort of give like a high level version. So essentially you can look at it as being the overarching modes that our nervous system is in are parasympathetic, which is rest and digest mode, or sympathetic, which is fight, flight, freeze, or fun when we think about it sort of from like that psychological perspective. And when we look at the somatic part of that, a lot of times is when we have a really strong emotion, it’s so easy for us to immediately up-regulate, especially if that emotion is more negative.

And so if we feel fear or panic or anger, we’re more likely to move into this sympathetic nervous system space. And so, you know, part of our healing is getting our body used to, when you look at if we went through trauma growing up in significant ways, if we were constantly in an environment where there was a lot of distress and trauma, we’re gonna spend much more time in sympathetic nervous system mode, and research actually on trauma and post-traumatic growth specifically shows that the more time we were in sympathetic nervous system mode as children, the more quickly we’re going to enter into that mode of being as an adult, even around smaller triggering events. So, you know, somebody being trapped in traffic could really cause somebody to be extremely dysregulated, but if we had a lot less trauma, we might just feel a little annoyed that we’re in traffic. So what we can do is we can train our body to spend more time in parasympathetic nervous system mode. And so that can just be in a really simple way, like having healthy habits, especially when we’re in that suggestible state because we’re producing more alpha brainwaves.

So again, we wanna target these things like, first thing in the morning, last hour before we go to bed, and do things like meditation, mindfulness, breath work, yoga, anything that’s actually getting us into a state of being present with our body, even body scans, and also practicing down regulating, more practicing in that sense, being able to enter into parasympathetic mode. And it doesn’t sound like these are very hard. Very easy. These are easy. Very simple. And then the third pillar is understanding your own needs. Yes.

 I would say that, you know, looking at this list for me, that’s probably the hardest one. Interesting. Sounds kind of silly, but you know, you, I think also as caretakers, just in general in life, and really feeling like taking care of other people, probably less aware of what is it that we need ourselves because we’re like, I got it, it’s okay. Yeah, absolutely. How would someone understand what their own needs are beyond sleeping, eating, I guess exercise clean sheets, also part of it, but other– It’s a great question. So there is some really easy sort of questionnaires and ways to dive into these things. I generally bring up people like a list of needs, but what you can look at, at sort of a high level, and I’ll share some needs that tend to correlate with each attachment style first, but, and then we can go into like how to maybe ask yourself questions if you’re not sure. Yeah, I love it, yeah.

So generally, securely attached individuals need healthy boundaries to be respected, they want respect, they want harmony, they want communication, they don’t like shoving things under the rug, they want to feel like they’re around people who empower them, encourage them, are consistent, reliable, predictable, and again, that’s a lot because that’s how conditioning was modeled to them. Yeah, that would make a lot of sense. Yep, and then when you look at the insecure attachment styles, what’s interesting is you’ll often see these things are sort of related to the way that they were conditioned or raised. So anxious attachment styles, they tend to need a lot of encouragement, a lot of validation, they need a lot of certainty, so they’ll often be like, that’s why they will call or text, so often are they still there, are they coming back, what are our plans for the weekend, they really need that sense of certainty in a lot of ways. They tend to need to be wanted, to feel acknowledged, to feel seen and heard and understood by people around them, and to feel a sense of importance in their personal relationships.

 Dismissive avoidance, they tend to need freedom, independence, autonomy, but some of the really hidden needs they’ll have in relationships that are often very surprising to people is they really want to be accepted.

 If they feel criticized or judged, they really tend to sabotage those types of relationship dynamics. They also very much need empathy and understanding and support, as well as appreciation and acknowledgement.

 So the thing that I’m thinking here is, so that’s what they need, but what if a partner is unable or unwilling to give that to them? Is that something that they can do for themselves? Yes, it’s a beautiful question, and that’s something that I started to ask myself when I was early into digging into some of these things, and what actually is most important is that if we’re expecting these things from other people, I truly believe that our attachment patterns are first the relationship to ourselves, and what I found to be so interesting is that unless we were actively giving these things to ourselves, it’s almost like a hole would be in people’s bucket. Like I would see as an example in anxious attachment style, somebody would come, and if they need these things deeply, they’re hungering for them, they’re looking for these things in a relationship, somebody comes and gives them to them, and the anxious attachment cells elated for a brief period of time, and then they’re like, “Did they really mean it? “Are they going away? “What’s happening?” Yeah, sounds so stressful. And part of it is because it’s not in their own subconscious comfort zone yet. It’s not a space of familiarity, and we actually struggle to receive from others what we have difficulty giving to ourselves. Wow, wait, say that again. We have difficulty receiving from others what we cannot give to ourselves. Exactly, yeah. That’s beautiful. Thanks.

 It’s beautiful. So what I would always encourage people to do in this pillar is if these are things you’re needing from others, and these are things you’re seeking, you actually, as uncomfortable and mechanical as it feels for the first 21 days, you have to practice picking two or three needs at a time to give to yourself on a daily basis. If you’re needing encouragement or validation, write out three wins a day for yourself. Do things repetitively so you get the repetition and emotion across that 21 day or so period so that you’re actually learning to give to yourself. Now you’re forming a new subconscious comfort zone, and now when somebody gives those things back to you, you believe them about yourself. They land, you receive them, they feel good, instead of being like, “Oh my gosh, this feels great,” and then going back to what’s familiar and deflecting or wondering or being like, “Do they have an ulterior motive? Are they really feeling that way about me?” and questioning it so much. It’s really making the positive, healthy things become familiar. Yes. What about the disorganized attachment style? What do they experience? In terms of their needs? Yeah.

Yes, so they tend to need, interestingly enough, they tend to need a lot of novelty. They tend to need a lot of growth, which is interesting. They often, even though they may struggle to grow when they’re still in more of a traumatized space, like before doing deeper work, they tend to really need growth. They tend to always sort of measure their relationships by are they growing, are we progressing, are things working?

 And so they need that progress, that growth, that novelty. They need a lot of exploration and discovery. I believe this to be because usually when you grow up in a household like that, there’s chaos, and it’s almost like the healthy version of chaos to be outside of your comfort zone, right? And so it’s funny, because it’s like their comfort zone is to be outside of their comfort zone, right? So they tend to seek that. And then they also need to feel wanted, to feel important to their loved ones, to feel seen and heard, to feel safe emotionally, and to feel like they can trust. And trust is really built on consistency, consideration. If somebody considers your feelings and checks in with you, you know that they’re looking out for you, you build trust.

 Context, if somebody cancels plans, if they just say, I’m not gonna be there, sorry, too bad. Or they say, hey, I’m not gonna be there, and here’s why. You know, that context for things that really helps somebody to understand and build trust. And then congruency, what people say and what they do, lining up, not seeing any like sort of shifts and changes. So those are big things that they tend to need in relationships. And that makes a lot of sense. Is it most difficult for a disorganized person or that has that attachment style to give to themselves?

 Yes, for sure. Because they tend to kind of oscillate between two patterns. So they tend to oscillate between people pleasing at first, and then they will people please until they get sick of it or triggered by it, and then they will become angry and shut down very strongly. And that’s when they’ll move into their version of self soothing, which people will call self soothing, but it’s self numbing.

 And so we look at, it’s funny, because you’ll hear in like the, some of the original attachment theory work, dismissive avoidance and fearful avoidance, they self soothe through creature comforts, through food, through alcohol, through substances, through gambling, things like this. But the reality is that that’s self numbing. And so self soothing would be going inward, feeling what’s wrong, what emotions am I feeling? What are they telling me? Oh, that I need a boundary with Bob, or oh, that I actually need to express my need to my husband. And so that’s self soothing, but you’ll generally see them go people please or self num, and there’s not too much of an in between. And this is good for everyone listening again. The reason we’re talking about this is because we can talk about science all day, but if we don’t talk about science of the mind, then if individuals are operating in a unconscious way, which again, you said that most people do, that I could see where people would sabotage themselves or never quite, you know, I think from a health and wellness standpoint, if someone doesn’t feel worthy, they’re never gonna get healthy.

 It’s never gonna happen.

 And frankly, you know, I’m not a therapist, so I don’t necessarily know how to move them forward, but you do. And that’s why being able to understand the framework, it gives us a way of verbalizing it, and then ultimately moving the needle. Absolutely. Which is amazing. And you made such an incredible point. You said two things that just like really stood out to me. One is that if you feel unworthy, that’s your subconscious comfort zone. So interestingly enough, our conscious mind will say, I want more, more money, more abundance, more health, more loving relationships, but your subconscious comfort zone is to not feel worthy and to have people around you who will mirror that back to you. So those are generally the people that we’ll invest in. And when we look at, when we first meet people, our conscious mind takes in about 40 to 60 bits per second of data, and our subconscious and unconscious collectively take up to a billion bits per second of data.

And so we end up investing in and connecting with people based on, if they are mirroring back to us, how we tend to treat ourselves. Like that’s a huge theme of how we’ll really build relationships. And that’s quite obvious when you look at sort of society. And the second thing you said that was so interesting is self-sabotage. I often say to people, there’s no actual such thing as self-sabotage in the sense of like, I wake up today and I’m gonna choose to sabotage myself. What we experience is self-sabotage, which is a very real thing for people with their health and fitness goals, with their relationships, everything, is that our conscious mind will intend something, and our subconscious mind has different patterning, different programming or conditioning. And so our conscious mind says, let’s do this thing. Our subconscious says, ah, nope, that’s not comfortable or familiar or safe to us. We’re gonna go back to doing what you’re used to. And so unless we learn to really recondition those patterns, we’re very limited. And again, it’s possible, and it’s probably the biggest needle mover in health and wellness. Yes. Because it doesn’t matter if I give you the perfect program. If you are going to fall back to something that is familiar and you don’t recognize, or one doesn’t recognize that they’re being driven by something subconscious, we can’t change. Absolutely, that’s so beautifully said.

 And ways in which, so for the third pillar is understanding someone’s own needs. We understand what the limitation would be for the anxious, whether they feel unsafe, or they need to feel safe, they need to, or the secure need harmony, all of these things. And it’s simply just asking, would the tool be just understanding what they need and then giving that to themselves? Yes, exactly. And it’s really simple that way because we need the repetition and emotion of it. We absolutely need it to be like a patterned in thing. And to be perfectly honest, one of the biggest objections I see from people is that they’ll be like, this doesn’t feel good. I’d rather my partner gives this to me, or my parent or child, I don’t wanna give this to myself. And the analogy I often give to people is like, driving a car doesn’t feel fun at first. Like driving a car– Yes, it does.

 Driving a car is, because what’s happening is at first it’s conscious. So nothing feels good when it’s just conscious at first. Like you’re like, where do I hold the steering wheel? When do I turn on my signals? Stay between the lanes. You’re consciously trying to think of all these things at once, and it feels mechanical. Or riding a bike does the same thing, or starting a new habit, or playing a new sport, or trying tennis, or you know. But over time, when we have the repetition and emotion of actually building and conditioning in those habits, then we actually feel like we’re self-receiving. And so that’s when we’ll feel like when we do meet our own needs, it actually feels good for us. And that’s how we become good at self-soothing. And would there be an example, for example, for example, that’s redundant, a secure individual needs harmony.

What would be an example? Is that individual of what would provide harmony for a person? Or are there specific things that people can begin to do? Such a great question. So what you would do is you would sit down and be like, well, what are things that actually bring me a sense of harmony in my life? And that could be things like having a healthy evening routine, setting boundaries on how long I’ll work at the end of the day, so I actually have time or space to myself, making sure that I take myself into consideration more before agreeing to things, saying yes or no to things. So it would be what patterns or behaviors would bring more harmony into my life? That’s where we consciously think about it. And then what we do is we practice it until it becomes a subconscious pattern, just like we repeat in when we’re trying to learn how to dance or when we’re trying to learn to ride a bike or play a sport as we rinse and repeat enough, that becomes our new normal. I love it. These are really, really great tools. I am so happy to hear that you guys have been getting your blood work done, most likely, because arguably we know that nothing is more important than staying on top of your health responsibilities.

Right now, there is more talk than ever on hormones, and you know where you are at, and the only way to do that is to get your blood work. And I’m so grateful to our sponsor, Inside Tracker, whose service I use myself to test my own hormones. They offer 10% off Inside Tracker subscription and any plan, just head over to insidetracker.com slash Dr. Lion. Let’s face it, to live your healthiest, longest life possible, you have to get your blood work done, most people put that off, but that is not a champion mindset, and you are here to get it done. And by the way, let’s say you’ve got an Ore Ring or an Apple Watch, and we all know you’ve got DNA, Inside Tracker looks at all that and gives you meaningful recommendations, things like food, supplements, workouts, lifestyle choices, and even ways to optimize sleep and stress. Yes, sign me up. Whatever it takes, whatever it is that you want, you are going to do it better with your blood work and knowing what is going on. Go to insidetracker.com slash Dr. Lion for 10% off all their stuff.

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 Communication is next. That’s the next pillar.

 (Laughs) Is that simply saying what you mean? Saying what you mean or saying what you feel? Such a great question. So communication is us being able to truly authentically convey what our needs are and our boundaries are to other people. And it may sound like a small thing, but it’s actually really terrifying for some people. Like some people, I actually personally can remember the first time something didn’t feel good for me in a relationship after doing this work and knowing consciously this is my time to be vulnerable and say, hey, this is hurting me, this is affecting me. And noticing all of this programming that was like, just shut him out, just this is actually with my husband, this is like 10 years ago and I had done a lot of work prior to meeting him. And I remember what I was wearing, it was such a scary experience for me because I grew up in a household where if you were vulnerable, that didn’t get you anywhere. And if you shared your need, that also didn’t really get you anywhere.

And so I was so scared to open up and say something. And so really the first ingredient to communication is knowing our truth, right? It’s knowing what a need is when something’s hurting us and it requires us to be in tune with our emotions, which will come from first regulating our nervous system more which is why it’s an earlier pillar. So when we start to know what our needs are, our yeses and nos are, and we’re attuned to ourself in that way, we then have to practice saying, hey, I need more support in this situation or hey, I feel like I’m the one doing all the duties at home, I need you to also take turns or contribute, like things like that, it’s us being able to share our needs. So when we know our needs and we’re in touch with our own feelings, we can now communicate.

But there’s a lot of places where communication goes wrong. So I often give people sort of like, I call them the stops on a train, like these are things to be mindful about because the vast majority of people learn forms of unhealthy communication growing up. So what we’ll see is the first stop on the train is are we positively framing things? So there’s a– Oh, that’s a big one. Man, have you thought about that? I haven’t thought about that. So this is maybe nonviolent communication? In a sense, yes. A lot of it’s built from principles around it. And so positive framing would be, are we saying things like, you don’t care about me, you never spend enough time with me? Or are we saying things like, hey, I miss you and I’m feeling disconnected, I would love for us to plan something fun to do together, what about Sunday? And one is going to get you seen and heard. I love that. And the other is gonna get you having the other person on the defense because they’re feeling criticized. And when they’re criticized and they shut down, they’re not listening.

 So that’s the first stop. The second one is we also want to make sure that we are painting a picture of what the need looks like. So sometimes we’ll say to people, I would see this all the time in client practice, I would see people say, I need more support. And I learned this the hard way in my first year of working with people. And what would happen is the couple would go home and let’s pretend it was a husband and wife and the wife said, I need more support. And they would come back the next week and before their butt hit the chair, the wife would be like, my husband didn’t support me this week. And he would, I saw this in variations tons of times. And let’s say the husband will go, what do you mean? I took out the garbage every day this week. I rubbed your feet and did all of these things. And she might say, well, I needed you to be more physically affectionate. I need more cuddling, I needed more connection or I need you to be more encouraging, right? So I always say, because we have such different conditioned experiences of what these things look like to us, we always have to paint a picture of what it looks like.

 Third thing, I truly believe that to be in true communication, embodied communication, and this is a trap a lot of people fall into, is we have to make sure that when we’re communicating, we see our needs through. Because you have to imagine, somebody has different wiring than you, their whole entire childhood and upbringing. And you may have a need that’s so important to you, but they may not realize how important that is. So let’s say for example, I need more support with chores around the house. And let’s say you tell your husband that and he shows up because you communicate it. And he does a good job for a week or two weeks. And then we all go back to our old conditioned patterns of what we expect about relationships and how they look and how we’re supposed to operate. And so now all of a sudden your husband’s back to forgetting. Well, a lot of times, and I was guilty of this myself at first, we go into, oh, they don’t care. If they care, they would remember always. But that’s not how it works. And so we’re essentially conditioning each other in a relationship with how to treat each other, what’s important to us, what our needs are. And we only do that through repetition and emotion. And so what we have to do is see our needs through, remind the person if it drops off until it becomes a normalized pattern in the relationship. And in a healthy relationship, both people will be willing to communicate and negotiate around needs. And in a healthy relationship, somebody may never show up, but then that’s giving you a lot of information about what to do next.

Right, because you’re not gonna be able to change them. Exactly, and then you decide, is this worth it for me? And the relationship would be lonely if it was only one person doing all of the things.

 (Laughing) And then the last pillar is boundaries. Yes, boundaries.

 And boundaries can be such a difficult topic for people at first, because a lot of times, especially for insecure attachment styles, boundaries weren’t just not taught. It wasn’t just an absence of boundaries, but oftentimes boundaries were even negatively reinforced. What do you mean by that? So if you grow up in a household, let’s just say as an example, that somebody grows up in a household with a very unhealthy caregiver, let’s say narcissistic personality disorder. Well, for that individual who’s likely to become perhaps disorganized attachment style, what you’ll see is that if you set a boundary as a child with somebody who’s a narcissist, you often get severely punished, or the narcissist takes it very personally, how dare you say no to me, because they’re that larger than life character with that entitlement and that sort of exploitative behavior. So then a lot of times, it’s very common for people to think that boundaries are gonna make me unsafe, which we essentially have a core wound, I am unsafe, that blocks us from actually being able to set a boundary, because our conscious mind says, set a boundary, you need boundaries, you learned what boundaries are, you can see that a lack of boundaries is causing all this chaos in your life, but the subconscious says no, when we would set boundaries in childhood, well, we got conditioned to believe it will be followed by punishment.

For anxious attachment style, sometimes it’s followed by a feeling of abandonment if they set a boundary, or for a dismissive avoidance, sometimes it’s followed by a feeling of nobody’s really listening to me anyway, so why bother communicating, I’m being neglected. And so a lot of times we actually have a core wound around setting a boundary, so I would often sit with people in practice and say, hey, I need you to tell me if you know that you wanna set boundaries, you know it’s the right thing and your life needs it right now because you’re in chaos,

 well, what is your actual fear? If I set a boundary, what am I afraid will happen, or what do I make it mean? And that’s one way of accessing what our core wound is. And for a lot of people, it’d be, well, I’m gonna be unsafe or punished by the people around me, or I’m gonna be abandoned or disliked or rejected or ignored. And so we do core wound reprogramming around that first. And then we- Yeah, that seems like the big one. Yes. You have to dismantle that. Absolutely. And then we go into practicing exposure work in its own form with boundaries. So we set small boundaries with- Give me an example, what is the most common boundary you think people struggle with setting? Or maybe there isn’t one. Great question. I mean, there’s definitely a lot, but you could see things like never asking for their needs in a relationship, never saying no if somebody’s pushing for something. That could be emotional time with somebody, that could be physical or sexual connection, and somebody is not setting a boundary when they feel uncomfortable around that.

It could be saying yes to taking on so many tasks in the household. It could be saying yes to taking on so many tasks with the kids. You’ve probably seen countless individuals who they’re married, but then one person is doing all the chores around the house, the main caretaker for kids. Both people are working full time. And so there’s this boundary around what’s happening there in terms of exchanging support. Other obvious boundaries could be things like in the workplace, just saying yes to your boss all the time when you actually need to set a boundary and go home on time, maybe you’re not getting paid for your overtime hours. So there’s so many different sort of variations, but I’m sure people will relate to those. Yeah, totally. And so what we do is we practice, we reprogram the fear of the boundary, recondition that idea, all be unsafe or a burden or disliked. And then we practice very small increments of setting boundaries. And then we try to, when we do it, create positive emotional association.

So an example could be if somebody sees that they’re boundaryless in their life, they’re taking on way too much with their friends, their family, their community, and their relationships, then they would work through that fear first, that core wound. And then they would start with the really safe people. So like their closest friend and they would set small boundaries, like, hey, you borrowed my clothes last week, can you please return them? Or their coworker that they trust, hey, you took my stapler, I need it back. And when we do it, what we wanna do is then we want to try to elicit positive emotion. So we wanna be able to say, that was good, that was strong, I was able to do that, I’m courageous, I did it. Oh yeah. And so we’re getting that little repetition and emotion and we’re trying to do that in sort of incremental parts across 21 days until it’s conditioned in as being a new normal. And eventually we go to the harder boundaries with more difficult people, maybe our boss who intimidates us a little bit, or if there’s a particularly touchy topic at home with your spouse, you set boundaries once you’ve worked up to doing it for that first, maybe seven or 14 days, but the goal is to actively practice it across that period of time. And through repetition and emotion, building new habits. And do these ultimately become subconscious?

Yes. Okay. Because I think people listening are saying to themselves, this is amazing, I can totally do this for 21 days. And then after 21 days, they probably have a bit of a honeymoon phase maybe, or is this something that they have to continue to reinforce? That’s a great question. So it goes down a rabbit hole for a second, but research shows that if we have more severe, so research into post-traumatic growth, which is like a really incredible body of research, shows that when we have more severe trauma, we actually have to spend up to 63 days really reconditioning patterns, because we may have a lot more resistance or aversion to things. But if it’s sort of, hey, we had some uncomfortable experiences, they were a part of our conditioning and upbringing, 21 days is making it subconscious. So I always like to go back to those simple analogies for people. So if you think of driving a car, like at first it’s conscious, or tying your shoes. Exactly, and you have to think about it and practice and do it, and it’s mechanical and it’s not that comfortable. But as we practice and we repeat, eventually it becomes a part of our conditioned experience and what we know and how we naturally operate.

And then we get into the car and we’re like, choosing the radio station, talking to our friend on the phone or our spouse. And we’re in a position where we don’t have to consciously work at it, it’s on its hard, and then it gets streamlined into our lives. And so what I always say to people is the goal is 21 days you’re like, I’ve got this, it’s done, this is just natural and normal for me, but let’s self evaluate it 21 days. And if we’re like, you know what, I’ve come a long way, but I could still be better, let’s do another 21 day cycle and then self evaluate again. And you will absolutely ultimately get to a point where you’re like, this has become second nature, but you’ll wanna check in with yourself along the way. Tyse Gibson, you are making us all more secure,

 better attached, I’m so grateful. And you have a whole host of things that you offer people, we’re gonna link as to where to find you. Is there anything else that you’d like to say?

 No, I think that that covers all of the sort of body of work here. I guess the last thing I’ll just say is if anybody is insecurely attached and they’re listening, like I always say to people, it’s not your fault, because you didn’t ask for these patterns and it is still your responsibility because it’s really only you that can choose to really go in and create change. It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. Yes.

 That’s incredible and it really fits in line with what we’re trying to do here, which is build a stronger future. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me, I love this conversation.

 The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon podcast and YouTube are for general information purposes only and do not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. And no patient-doctor relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast, YouTube, or materials linked from a podcast or YouTube is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition. They may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professional for any such conditions. This is purely for entertainment and educational purposes only.