Relationship Expert Thais Gibson: Do You Keep Attracting The Same Emotionally Unavailable Partner? (Use THIS Attachment Reset To Break The Cycle And Choose Better Partners)

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Today my guest is Thais Gibson, the founder of the Personal Development School and the creator of the new attachment theory, Integrated Attachment Theory. Being a leading expert in the space, she helps people understand their relationship patterns, heal core wounds and build secure, lasting love. In Thais' book, The New Attachment Theory, heal every relationship by rewiring your brain and nervous system. She shares practical tools to change the patterns that shape how we connect. Thais Gibson, welcome to On Purpose. Thank you so much for having me. You're lovely and I'm just, I'm really excited to chat with you. I'm so grateful to have you here. Thais, I feel like the world got addicted to attachment styles and got fascinated with the language. And I think what so often happens is we find language to support how we feel, how we think. but then you're encouraging us with the new attachment theory to actually encourage us to heal to transform to grow and I feel this is a conversation that every single person needs to hear because whether it's their love life whether it's their workplace whether it's their personal image of who they are this conversation will make a difference in their life could you start by telling me if someone listens to our conversation today what will change for them I think the biggest thing. And to your point, like, I love that everybody, I've been studying this work for a long time and in this field for a long time. And when attachment styles started becoming more mainstream, I was so excited. And then over time, I started thinking like, wait, it's almost becoming to the point where people are just identifying with it almost as a label going, oh, I just am this attachment style rather than being in a position of going, wait, I have to heal this. Like, let me understand this. This temporary label gives me context into the things within me that may need a little bit more love or healing or support, but the actual work is being able to say, okay, here are my patterns, where do they come from? And then actually rewiring them at the subconscious level. And that's what I definitely hope the key takeaway is for today. If someone has no idea what attachment styles are, and this is their first time even hearing that term, how would you break it down for them and define it for them? Yeah. So the first thing is everybody has an attachment style and there are four of them. And this is one of the biggest studied bodies of work originally. And it originally came from John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth of Cambridge University. And they said, hey, there are four attachment styles. The first one is securely attached style. So they represent about 50% of the population data shows us. I always have a hard time with that. I'm like, wait, it seems like it may not be quite so high. But basically, securely attached individuals are people who grew up in childhood with what we call a lot of approach-oriented behaviors from their parents. And it sounds like such a small thing, but it goes such a long way. So approach-oriented behaviors really means that when a child is young, if they cry or they get distressed, the parent is attuned, they're very present, and they notice it, and they approach the child to be like, what's wrong? And they attempt to soothe them and make the child feel better. And what that conditions a child to believe at a very young age is my emotions are worthy of being seen and heard. It's safe to rely on other people. I can trust that people are going to be there for me. And also, I can communicate. And almost most importantly, I am worthy of love as I am on my good days, on my bad days, in my good moments and in my hard moments. And so there's a lot of really healthy conditioning that that child adopts. And so, of course, that's the type of patterning they bring into their relationships as adults. And what's really interesting to me is that securely attached people, they report not just having the longest lasting relationships, but they report the most satisfaction in their relationships. And that's a very meaningful thing. And I'm just a big believer in relationships. I love people. I care about people. And I really think that relationships determine the quality of our life in so many ways. And so that's very meaningful. in terms of the staff on that. And then we have three insecure attachment styles. This makes up the other 50% or so of the population. I can't believe 50% of people are secure. That's huge. That's what I think all the time. I feel like all my girlfriends are struggling to find that kind of person. All my friends who are dating are definitely struggling to find that 50%. I always think that myself. And to be honest, first of all, it's conditioning. And we'll get into a lot of this, I'm sure. But conditioning changes. So somebody could be secure at a young age when a lot of these experiments are originally done. and then they can go through relationship struggles and become insecure later. And secondly, I'm always like, oh, maybe it's my sample size of people, you know, because I always see people who are insecurely attached become secure. So I'm going, okay, maybe that's why. But securely attached people often end up in relationships pretty early with other securely attached people. And we can get into why that happens at a subconscious level, because you usually pair up with people of a specific attachment cell for specific reasons. But to your point, I wonder the same thing. I'm like, come on, I don't know. But the other 50% of the insecure attachment cell. Exactly. So then we have three, and I like to think of the other three as being along a continuum in a way. So at one end of the continuum, you have the anxious attachment cell. Anxiously attached individuals, they grow up with either real or perceived abandonment. Real abandonment is the obvious. You know, a parent passes away at a young age, God forbid, or a parent is, you know, they leave at a young age for a child. And all of a sudden, that child grows up feeling like, oh, my gosh, am I going to be left or abandoned again? Perceived abandonment is really interesting because the neuroscience of trauma tells us that small T trauma repeatedly enough over time has a quite similar impact to a singular big T trauma. So perceived abandonment consistently in a child's upbringing causes them to have real, real abandonment wounds as an adult, similar to if there was a real abandonment that took place. And perceived abandonment is things like you have very loving parents, but they're really busy. They're always working. They're always traveling for work. And so children grow up in this environment going, okay, love is here and then love is taken away and love is here and it's taken away. And that inconsistency there causes this child to really brace and deeply fear love being taken away. And so as adults, these individuals, they adapt in their life to be like, let me really be charming and charismatic and well-liked. So I win people over and they end up having superpowers in that way in many forms. but also anxiously attached adults, they people-please so much to the point where they can burn themselves out or they people-please to the point of self-silencing and they're big wounds. So we took this original body of attachment theory and they, you know, it says, here are your four attachment cells, good luck. And it was sort of like, wait, but you can recondition pretty much anything. Like you can rewire these things. And I originally started in this work for that reason. And so what we found is that anxious attachment cells, they have big core wounds specifically around the fear of abandonment, the fear of being alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, not good enough. These are like these huge wounds and triggers in their relationships. And they need very specific things in relationships. They need more validation, approval. They really like certainty. If somebody cancels plans with them, they really want to know, okay, you're canceling plans, but tell me when I'm going to see you next. And then they can sort of rest and feel comfortable and safe. And so they end up in situations where they sometimes struggle with their boundaries growing up. they often end up in situations as well where because they're so busy making sure that everybody else is good they kind of forget about themselves and they put themselves on the back burner so anxious attachment styles as adults they often also are very much invested in and attracted to emotionally unavailable people and that becomes really problematic yeah yeah so they become attracted to emotionally unavailable people because and and i guess maybe i'll give a little bit more of a backstory to this. For me, I originally got into this work because I had a turbulent childhood and actually got addicted to painkillers after an e-surgery at 15. And I really struggled with about a six-year daily use of opioids and tried inpatient rehab and outpatient rehab and had all of these things come up. And what was really interesting is I felt like life was really hard and I felt like relationships were really hard at that point. and I tried a lot of things that weren't really working. And I was in school for psychology and like maybe on the outside, my life looked like you're doing well, you're okay. But on the inside, I was like a mess, like I was really hurting. And I was in a psych class and I was seriously thinking like, I think I need to leave school. Like, I don't think I can take this, handle this. And somebody said to me in a class, they were like, it wasn't even the professor, it was a student. And he said, oh, your conscious mind can't outwell or overpower your subconscious mind. And for me, that was like so powerful because I was sitting there going, oh, so you're telling me that like all the times I say, I'm going to get clean. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to, you know, stop all these, these really painful things that I'm doing. I'm going to delete people's numbers from my phone. I'm going to change. And then I don't. It's not that I'm weak or powerless or not capable. It's that like, this is actually what's going on. It's my subconscious mind. So I originally started this work by getting sober and then being obsessed with learning about the subconscious mind and the ego and how all this works from sort of this like spiritual perspective to how do we sort of transcend those patterns and those conditions. So I was originally working for the first few years of my practice, not with attachment cells, but actually with people in their core wounds. So like, what are these big triggers that we carry from our past into our present? And, you know, how is it showing up in our life? And so what was really interesting about that is I was working with people on rewiring their triggers, learning their own needs and how to meet them in healthy ways, learning to regulate their nervous system, learning to communicate and set boundaries. And then I came to attachment cells actually because I met my now husband and we both had our own little things we hadn't worked out in relationships yet. And I started revisiting attachment theory, which I'd learned at a very high level in university. And I was like, wait, like, first of all, if I know somebody's attachment cell, I now know exactly what their core wounds are going to be, exactly what their needs are going to be, exactly what these emotional patterns are going to be in relationships and what their nervous system is going to be functioning like. And I know what types of boundary issues they're going to have and how they tend to communicate in relationships. And it was so interesting because like original attachment theory didn't cover any of that. It was more about like temperament and some of your behaviors. And so I was like, oh my gosh, tell me somebody's attachment style and I can help them rewire all these different patterns and themes. And so what was really exciting to me is like attachment styles became mainstream, but then it was like, okay, here's your attachment style. And that's when people started to identify instead of like, hey, let me do that underlying work. So going back to, I detoured there, but going back to this, that's the anxious attachment style in a nutshell. Those are their themes and their patterns. They fear the abandonment, feeling not good enough, feeling excluded, disliked, rejected. Those are those big triggers that they're bringing from their past because their subconscious mind was imprinted with that. And then we always project that into the present. And I often give people this analogy of a bear in the woods. If you go into the woods tomorrow and you see a bear and you run from it and you're safe, thank goodness. But then the very next day you go back into the woods. Well, what does your mind do? You're like bracing for the bear. You're like, the bear is coming. The trees blow in the wind and you're like, oh my God, the bear. And so what's really interesting is that we all do that, right? We all have, oh, I felt abandoned as a child. Okay. I project that as an adult. Oh, I felt not good enough as a child. That's what I bring into my relationships as an adult. And that's honestly what our relationship baggage is. And those are all things that interfere the most in our relationships, but those are solvable problems. So that's sort of the anxious attachment and do you want me to go into the other two? Yes, please. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we have our secure, we have our anxious. At the other end of the continuum is our dismissive avoidant. So the dismissive avoidant attachment style, they grow up with their overarching theme being childhood emotional neglect. And sometimes you hear that and you kind of imagine that, okay, this person is going through their childhood and they have this really intense dynamic where they're alone at three years old and they're trying to find food. Of course, it can be these really extreme scenarios, but most often childhood emotional neglect is very much that you have these kids who, food's on the table, so there's structure and order, they're at school on time, but their parents are not emotionally available and not attuned. And it's usually not the inconsistency, like one's attuned and one's not, it's usually both are not really attuned and they're much more uninvolved. And because children are literally wired for attunement, they are wired for connection, we need as children to feel safe and to feel seen and to feel special, children come into this environment and they're like, okay, well, I guess this part of me that needs this is defective and wrong. And so what they end up doing to adapt to an environment like that is repressing their attachment needs and minimizing their need for emotional connection. And so they feel better and they have a sense of control when they're able to do that. But then as adults, that really causes destruction to their relationships because they've learned, okay, this part of me, my emotional, vulnerable self is defective or shameful. If I express it too much, I'll be weak. These are their big triggers, they end up feeling very afraid of relying on other people and being helpless or trapped in a situation or engulfed. And they very much internalize a lot of shame from childhood because as a child, if you yearn for connection and it keeps getting rejected and nobody's paying attention, well, then, of course, as an adult, you're like, oh, deep down, if people really see me, they're going to reject me like that too. And I must be shameful. Something deep down must be defective or broken within me. And so it's so interesting because they're very stoic. Dismissable ones are very stoic. You often don't see it. but that tends to be what they bring into their relationships. Those are their biggest core triggers and fears from this like new attachment theory perspective. And so then we have these adults who go into their relationships and they're the types of individuals as adults who are like, oh, they're great at the beginning when everything's easy and light. And then after you date them for four or five, six months, when things get a little more real and serious, they jet or they pull away or they retreat. And then they end up in situations where, you know, even if they make it through that period of time and keep dating somebody and keep investing, they really retreat emotionally and they shut down. And so then you have these individuals as adults who are like, okay, you know, I feel like I'm trying to connect with you and my partner's not really available or present. And they really cope by trying to always minimize their attachment needs and create space. And so they become quite distant in relationships. And then the very last one is the fearful avoidant attachment style. Fearful avoidance are basically characterized by more big T trauma growing up, some more emotional chaos. It can be anything from having a parent with narcissistic personality disorder to having a parent who was an alcoholic or parents in active addiction, a really intense divorce growing up. You have more extreme kind of scenarios that children are exposed to. But their wiring is such that while an anxious attachment style is like, they always want more closeness and to win people over and dismissive avoidance always want more space and to keep distance, fearful avoidance will learn that love is both a really good thing and a really hard thing. Interesting. So they grow up essentially going, well, love is a good thing because let's say, for example, that mom is an alcoholic. Well, maybe one day mom comes home and she's had a few drinks, but she's in a good mood and she's loving and she embraces you. And you're like, oh, love is safe. Love is good. I want more of this. And then other days, maybe mom's an alcoholic and she's drinking more heavily and now she's angry drunk and she's cruel and she's mean and she's unpredictable. And a child is like, well, love is a really good thing, but it can also really hurt me. It will be really harsh and critical and cruel sometimes to me. And so they end up having very competing associations about the same thing. They're like, love is both really good and really bad. And then as adults, what ends up happening is they're the very hot and cold partner. A lot of their core wounds from their childhood, their version of the bear in the woods, is they fear abandonment because they feel that abandonment when that love isn't there. They fear being trapped and helpless if they rely on people because they've had times where they rely on somebody who's really unpredictable and scary. And they have a huge core wound around feeling betrayed. That's the biggest wound we found from the new attachment theory perspective. It's like always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always waiting to be on high alert. Like, is somebody going to hurt me? And what happens to fearful avoidance is they get into relationships and love feels like a very bittersweet experience. And I'll speak for myself because I was a fearful avoidant. And I remember before doing a lot of deep inner work, my early serious relationships when I was much younger, feeling like I would fall in love and feeling like I loved the feeling of being in love and connecting and really wanted that depth and connection. But it was also very bittersweet because the more I loved, the more I was like, oh, you're for sure going to hurt me that much more. Like, this is going to be a really bad ending. And there was this sort of belief that everything was going to inevitably be really bad and really painful. So love feels so good, but it also feels like a threat and it's scary. And it causes you in a relationship to be like, come get close, come get close. Somebody gets closer, like get back. I changed my mind. And so you see this and you see it like clockwork. I've seen this with tens of thousands of clients. I've worked with the same themes, the same patterns. And I remember having one woman and she said to me, I could tell by the way my mom got home from work. I would be upstairs in my room and I could tell by the way my mom closed the door on her way in if I should close my door quickly or not. And it's like fearful of women learn to be very hypervigilant. They learn to read between the lines. They read like every little micro expression and body language and change in a tone of voice because that's how they've learned to attach. So anxious people are like, let me get close to you. And people, please dismissive avoidance are like, let me keep space. Fearful avoidance are like, let me notice every little thing about you so I can predict your future and I can know how to respond. And it gives them that superpower in a way. But often then when you have these wounds and then you jump to conclusions like, oh, something changed, something's off. You're going to abandon or betray me or you're trying to control me. And you sort of jump to those conclusions. It makes for a really turbulent set of relationships and lifestyle. I think what you just explained, I think everyone listening is like, that's who I am. that's who I've dated that's who my parents are right like when you break it down that way I feel it gives people so much clarity to actually recognize all the mistakes they're repeating all the things they're carrying why we walk into relationships where we can sense something doesn't quite make sense or why we get attracted to familiar patterns that we saw in our parents it feels like this can help people actually give them a map of how to make sense of their emotions and even the people they meet what would you encourage someone to do differently if someone's listening right now and they're dating how can they use what you've just shared to date differently yeah so really good question so you touched on something earlier and i sidetracked and forgot to come back to but it's actually this it's that we you were like what causes that sort of attraction piece and this plays right into this, which is we are attracted to people. So your conscious mind is responsible for three to 5% of all of your beliefs, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions. Your subconscious and unconscious collectively are 95 to 97%. And so what's really interesting is consciously our conscious minds are logical, analytical minds and our subconscious is our habituated self, our programming, our conditioning. And our conscious mind will say, I want the emotionally available partner. I want the person who is ready to be in a relationship. We'll say all the things in the world, but secure people feel that consciously and subconsciously. Insecure people don't. Insecurely attached people don't really have that same experience. So for example, our subconscious mind equates familiarity to safety and thus survival, and ultimately we're survival wired. And so what ends up happening is people who are, let's say, anxiously attached, for example, they'll often say consciously that they want the emotionally available partner, but they will feel most attracted to and be most likely to invest in, because your subconscious mind runs the show, people who are most familiar. What is most familiar to each of us is actually the way we treat ourselves. And so if you look at the anxious person, how does the anxious person treat themselves? Well, because they're so externally focused on everybody else's feelings and needs, they often dismiss and avoid their own feelings, their needs, their boundaries. And so what happens as a result of that is they're very much often attracted to people who will mirror that back to them. And even if you flip that around to the dismissive avoidant, dismissive avoidants end up in situations where they're like preoccupied with their own time to themselves. They're going, do I have enough time to myself to regulate? Do I have enough space? And so what's really interesting is consciously they'll say, oh, I want somebody who gets my freedom and respects it. But subconsciously, they'll often go and invest in people who are very preoccupied with them. And so that's why you often pair up with people of different attachment cells. And that's often why you see secure people be with secure people. And so when it comes to dating, the most important thing, and I will say this forever, and nobody likes to hear it, but it's the truth, is that the most important thing you're ever going to do is learn to have a secure relationship with yourself first. And that's going to be through rewiring these insecure patterns. And I'm sure we can get into all the ways how, but rewiring those insecure patterns because you can say that you want the healthiest relationship. You can have your checklist. You can know your needs. You can try to ask all the right questions on the dates and go to the right places and find the right people. But ultimately, you often will find that you're in relationships with people who might have all those things on the checklist. And you're like, I just don't feel attracted to them. Oh, this person. And I've heard this all the time. I actually used to do this when I was much younger before doing the work. I had people where I'd date them or start to get to know them. And they were very secure. And I would be like, this is kind of boring. Like, where's the roller coaster? Because that's what was most familiar. And this is a conversation I've had with thousands of people at this point. we are not going to be attracted to the right people according to our conscious mind's evaluation of it until we do that in our workforce to heal to become secure to self and then that's what we'll be attracted to and want to invest in with other people that makes so much sense it's why making the list of everything you want in your ideal person doesn't just make sense because that's your conscious mind or this idea of oh if you vision them and dream them and vision board them it doesn't make sense because that's your conscious mind and while everything meanwhile everything's happening in your subconscious mind which isn't ready isn't prepared is rejecting someone that's actually good for you as boring and accepting someone who's terrible for you because it's familiar and so the chaos and the ups and downs and so that may now make sense listening to that why we're attracted to the people that make us feel insecure or people that are not emotionally available because we've had that before so we know what behaviors to play into which is i'll be hyper vigilant if i'm a fearful avoidant i'll be super distant if i'm one you know it's it's fascinating to me that yeah just listening to that just makes it make sense and as you said the advice you just gave is becoming secure in your relationship with yourself you're not just saying hey you have to love yourself first you have to You're saying you can actually technically develop a subconscious relationship with yourself that is based on security and safety. Yes. So earlier when I was saying there was the original attachment theory, it was like these are the attachment cells. I kind of just talked about their temperaments and some of the themes in their childhood and how they behave. I had already been doing this work with like the core wounds and the needs and the nervous system frameworks with people and how people communicate and how they behave. And I was specifically in the body of work for the first few years. I was working with people just helping people like rewire their painful patterns. And a lot of it was from their childhood conditioning, but I hadn't ever put it into the theme of like attachment styles. And then when I met my husband and we started getting more serious and I was like, oh, I still have a little like relationship work to do. I've done a lot of work to be really peaceful within myself, but really I had a little relationship work to do with him. And I kind of felt like he also had some work to do with me. And I revisited more about learning about relationships. And the first thing I went back to was like, oh, attachment cells. And I was like, oh, my goodness. Once I know somebody's attachment cell, every attachment cell has these core wounds and these patterns with their needs and these patterns with their nervous system, communication and behaviors. And so what we ended up creating is this whole body of work that you can actually rewire each of those things at the subconscious level because your subconscious mind is literally driving your life. And so it's like all of the conditioning that we've picked up from past experiences in our own personal warehouse. How do we start to recondition? And we really boil it into those five pillars. So the first pillar, and this is like, I love that you said, it's not just about self-love because sometimes, I don't know, sometimes you hear stuff and people say, just forgive people. And you're like, that would be nice if I felt like that. How do I emotionally arrive there and how do I actually feel that deeply? And so a lot of the work is how do we actually get to our subconscious mind? Because that's how things unfold this way. And same with self-love. It's a subconscious process because if you didn't get love mirrored to unhealthy ways growing up, you're going to mirror that back in the relationship to yourself and as adult. and then you're going to be attracted to unhealthy forms of love as an adult with other people. So first pillar of really healing is to learn to rewire your core wounds. And we can go through an actual exercise here. So first step, there's three steps to doing this. Let's just say for ease sake that the core wound is not good enough. And we talked about each of them for the different attachment styles earlier. So people can kind of hold that core wound in their mind. It stood out to them. And you ideally want to work on one at a time. So not good enough. What is the opposite? I am good enough. That part's really easy. The second piece when it comes to actually rewiring these things is I'm not a big believer in affirmations. The reason being that affirmations are of the conscious mind. Your conscious mind speaks language, okay? Your subconscious mind does not speak language. It doesn't really understand language much at all. What does a subconscious mind speak? It speaks in emotions and images. So if I say to you, okay, whatever you do, Jay, do not think of a pink elephant. Like you probably flashed an image of a pink elephant. elephant, even though you heard do not, your conscious mind heard do not, and then after you flash the image and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have thought of the elephant. And that's because our subconscious also reacts a little bit more quickly than our conscious mind in many ways. So we have to actually use our conscious mind to rewire our subconscious mind because we can do that, but we actually, our conscious mind cannot outwill or overpower our subconscious mind. I can only rewire it. Part of why you hear people be like, oh, I said I was going to quit eating chocolate for my New Year's resolution, and then they go back to eating chocolate three days later Because unless things are built into your subconscious, we really have a hard time changing behaviors. So first step, I am not good enough. I am good enough. The opposite of your core wound. I'll be abandoned. I'm worthy of connection. I'll be unloved. I'm lovable, right? So we pick the opposite. Step two is we need repetition of emotions and imagery because repetition fires and wires neural pathways. Emotions and images do it at the subconscious level. So you're like, how do we find emotions and images? Well, interestingly, every memory we ever have is a container of emotions and imagery. Yeah, absolutely. So if you say, okay, what was your favorite childhood memory? And you were playing at the beach or the ocean and you see the red bucket and you see the waves and your family's faces, like you see the images. And we've all seen when people have an exciting experience or a happy memory, they smile or they laugh or their body language changes. And so what we do is we're going to come up with 10 memories to support the new idea that we're trying to drive to the subconscious mind. So for example, I am good enough. 10 times I actually felt good enough. And they do not have to be big. It can be things like I was a good friend last week. I had a hard conversation with my spouse two weeks ago, whatever it is. It can be small things, but we need to just elicit a little bit of emotion, that imagery of the memory, and we need 10 of them. Step three, we record ourselves saying it out loud. So ideally, we write them down. and we record ourselves saying it into our phone. And then our subconscious mind actually sponges up a lot of information more effectively when we are in a suggestible state, meaning our brain is producing more alpha brainwaves. And so what we get people to do is to sit down. They record themselves saying this out loud It takes two minutes to listen back And your brain produces a lot more alpha brainwaves after a good meditation the first hour that you wake up before drinking coffee the last hour before you go to sleep after intense exercise breath work these types of things You're in more alpha brainwave mode when your mind is more relaxed, more still. And then what we're doing is we're listening back to those things during that time. In your own voice. In your own voice, exactly. saying it out loud, you're listening back and you're very much focusing on the images and the emotion as you feel back in that suggestible state. And neuroscience research tells us if we are in a suggestible state, doing that for 21 days builds new neural networks that are very strong that they are highly likely to set. And what's really interesting is we surveyed people who did this. We're like, okay, let's actually track how people are doing this. People said they stuck to it every day for 21 days. We had like tens of 60,000 people who we did the survey on. And people said they did not miss a day for 21 days, reported a 99.7% score in actually rewiring the wound. So it's highly effective. It's very simple. And it's something like anybody can do right now. And if you really look, like those wounds, those are the things that wreak havoc on people's lives and relationships. Those are the really painful things. Those are a relationship baggage that we're really carrying. And those are why we keep choosing the wrong scenarios over and over again or that same unavailable partner. So really simple starter tool for rewiring. and that's the one I like to share to begin with. And it's something people can just do at home from listening. Yeah, and this is something you help people do in your school, right? Exactly. So this is the transition that you're helping people build these skills and abilities. Exactly. So we really focus and we do these 90-day programs that help people go through these five pillars and rewire each of these pillars at the subconscious level. That's just the first pillar of core wounds. And I'm happy to go through each of the pillars and share about them, but that's a really good exercise we start people off with because it's highly effective. It's super simple. There's other cool tools that you can use as well, but it's a really good one to start. As people went through our programs, people reported a 200% increase in relationship satisfaction, feeling more connected, more happy, more fulfilled, 50% less conflict because people were more regulated, didn't have all these triggers coming up, and obviously less fighting as a result, feeling more connected from that perspective. And then people who are out of a relationship doing this work on themselves and just preparing to go into dating reported 300% more confidence in their dating life because they felt like they knew what they wanted but also they weren't always triggered going into dating and panicking and having all these things come up which is really important if you're going into relationships that way yeah and i and i assume that unless you've done this work even what you want may not be right or good for you even consciously or subconsciously right to be honest like i don't like to fearmonger people from saying it but i've just seen a lot of people over the years who they you know you build a relationship from insecure attachment first and you go in and you're in this power struggle stage of your relationship and you're fighting and you're going back and forth and it's really difficult and then people end up sometimes doing the healing work and being like my partner's not willing to do any work with me or communicate differently or do anything and like maybe i'm in the wrong relationship so there is a risk if you're not with the right person um to do that now sometimes people do the work in relationships and that's beautiful and it's a really powerful potent place to be doing the work but i always tell people to like if that's the case each person in a relationship is 100% responsible for their 50% of their relationship. So it can't be one person doing all the emotional load for both people. And work looks different for different people. It's not always both people sitting down doing the reprogramming and doing the work in that way. But one person has to be willing to practice hashing out conflict, learning, you know, if one person's following our communication frameworks, the other person has to be willing to like listen and jump in and move through conflict that way because otherwise we don't really get resolution. Yeah. Black History lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. What is one thing about love you've had to unlearn, that it's earned? That it needs to be forever for it to count. February is the month of love. Whether you're in a relationship, casually dating, or proudly single, it's a great time to reflect on yourself and what you want. I'm Hope Woodard, host of the Boy Sober podcast, and each week this month, we're looking at love from every angle. I don't know how to tell my partner what I want in bed. The thing about romantic fiction, I would say more than any other genre of culture, is that it's always put women first. My marriage stopped making sense. The connection started to feel off. the behavior started to feel different. This February, get in touch with yourself by listening to Voice Over. That's B-O-Y-S-O-B-E-R. I'm like, I would love to not hate the man I'm sleeping with. I don't know what that's about. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. if you could summarize for us the second to the fifth so that we have a process of what it looks like to build that relationship with ourself because as you're saying that's the most important starting point and i'm thinking for all of our audience before we get into certain relationship dynamics it might be useful for them to have a step-by-step process yeah so the first wound the first pillar is rewiring your core wounds that gives people so much relief and honestly just as somebody who's done a lot of this work on myself first. I was my own first guinea pig, you know, 14, 15 years ago before really getting into working with people. The biggest change I noticed is that I used to always be in this like internal emotional drama. Like this person is going to abandon me. This person is going to, can I really trust? Is this person trying to control me? Like all of these, my mind was so busy. And when I really did a lot of this rewiring out of all those painful patterns, it felt like I had so much space back in my mind. Like I had space to think of how I wanted to design my life and create things and just like room to be present in things. And that was just such a beautiful piece. So that's pillar number one. Pillar number two is people have to learn their own needs and how to meet them in the relationship to themselves. We'll get into how to communicate them after, but in the relationship to self first. And the reason for this is it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Gabber Mate. And he says, trauma are the things that happened that shouldn't have happened. That's the obvious, like the abuse, things like that in childhood. But trauma is also the things that happened or that, sorry, that didn't happen that should have happened. And that's like the neglect, you know, or that's that maybe you didn't feel safe as a child or seen or protected or you didn't feel like your parents were present enough with you growing up. So that's also trauma because in a perfect world, we actually would have had our needs met in a healthy and consistent way where we felt like we could really rely on people. And so that's our second pillar is I get people to go in and audit what are your biggest unmet needs from childhood. And you'll see people for some people, it's like, I didn't feel like my parents were present enough with me or I didn't feel protected or I didn't feel like I had that ability to really learn from a parent or be deeply seen or known or attuned to. I mean, there's a lot of needs in there, but we give a big list of needs. And it's OK. If these are your deepest unmet needs, what's really interesting is we internalize all of that conditioning. And so whatever we didn't get met, we're often not meeting in the relationship to self. If somebody wasn't present enough with you growing up, that's actually a huge part of healing is, okay, well, I'm probably not very present with myself. Or if people said, I really need validation, I didn't feel validated growing up. Unfortunately, usually you're playing at that programming and you're the one struggling to validate yourself the most and you're sort of validating everybody else before you. And so what's really beautiful is it's deeply healing for people to go in, audit where they're missing these deep needs. And then for 21 days through that repetition and emotion to really fire and wire those neural networks, we get people to go through, care of my deepest unmet needs, and actual actions and practices to meet them within relationship to self. And once we do it for 21 days very repeatedly, and it elicits this emotional impact, and we're doing it physiologically, so we have that like imagery that we're reaching our subconscious mind, that becomes our new baseline. It becomes our new step point, and we just become good at doing those things. And as an example, as somebody who did all this work on myself first 14 years ago, 15 years ago, one of the biggest things I really wanted was emotional depth. Like I always cared about that with other people and liking to go deep into things. And I realized, oh my gosh, I'm trying to, and we always do this, we try to resource from other people the most the things we struggle to self-source. Yes. Yeah. Well said. Yeah. We try to resource the most from other people, the things that we struggle to self-source the most with itself. And so what ends up taking place is that we also put all that pressure on our relationships. You know, anxious attachment cells, for example, they really struggle to self-soothe. So they're like, my partner always needs to be available to soothe me. Or fearful avoidance end up being like, I don't know if I can trust people. I feel like they're going to betray me. So that person better always be 100% congruent. They better never tell a white lie, nothing, or I might have to leave the relationship. Or dismissive avoidance. They end up in situations where they're going, okay, well, I don't know that that people understand me. And, you know, I really need them to understand me without me having to communicate because they really struggle to communicate vulnerably. So we all accidentally pressure our external relationships because we don't know how to self-source. And so self-sourcing is obviously profoundly healing for our relationships in life. But also it's profoundly healing in the relationship to self first. Where does self-sourcing come from when you've never had it and never felt it? Like, I think people struggle to like, where do you find it? Because I'll often talk to my friends about this idea of self-validation and I'll talk about how self-validation is the most powerful form of validation I've ever given myself more than any form of external validation but often something they come up against is like where do you even find that where do you discover that because if no one's ever validated you if you've never experienced it where does it appear from okay so really beautiful question so there's the analogy I get to people all the time for this. It's not the prettiest analogy, but it's the cold, hard truth. If you remember the first time you ever started to drive a car, I remember the first time I tried to drive a car. I was so excited to drive a car. And then I got in the highway and I was like, oh my God, keep the wheel, keep between the lines and look in your rear view mirror and your side mirrors and put your signal. I just felt like, oh my gosh, it's very mechanical to learn to drive a car. And then you do it for a while. And then you end up in a situation where you're, you know, a year later or in a pretty short time later, you know, 30 days later, you're listening to a podcast while you're driving or listening to your favorite radio station or putting on music or talking on the phone to your friend, whatever it might be. And it's because what we're actually doing is doing something that at first feels mechanical. We're giving to ourselves what we didn't get. And over time through repetition and emotion, it actually seeps into our subconscious mind. And that's when it feels normal and natural. So what we get people to do is we actually have a list of every major need that people reported over collecting all this data. And then we have people, we have like three or four, hey, you can do these three or four things that are usually the healthiest, most direct ways of getting those needs met. And then we get them to actively practice it across that 21 days. So for example, self-validation is usually things like it can be as small as just writing out three of your wins each day and just taking the time to really pause and be like, hey, I did this today. I'm proud of these things today, big or small. It can be like, I made it to work early. It can be anything, but just having that ability to start training your subconscious mind to practice recognizing those things in your life. And of course, there's a slightly different one for each need. But when people start giving those needs to themselves, this sounds very cliche, but I really believe that if we had attachment wounds growing up, healing really happens when we become our own parents. And instead of trying to externalize, our parents would have done it for us or perfectly, like our parents are human beings too. And so when we give to ourselves what we felt like we couldn't access through them and we do it through that repetition, that's that second big pillar. Understood. Got it. Very clear. Yeah, no, I'm glad that you clarified that piece about validation. And I assume what I'm hearing from you is it is practice. It is going to feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable. But there isn't another magic pill there or any piece of advice that solves it. It's like we're going to have to build that muscle over time of learning to validate ourselves, which we just haven't developed. Exactly. Oh, this is the last thing that you can look in the seven areas of life for if some people are just really stuck. They sit at the sheet and they're like, OK, three wins. I have no idea. You can look through career, financial, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical relationships. You can break relationships down into friends, family, romantic. And sometimes that helps. Like those prompts can get the wheels turning. And it starts as something that you're sitting there doing, but it becomes something that usually by day seven or so, people are like, oh, yeah, this is this. Oh, three. Like that took me two seconds. Oh, and then what's really beautiful is we have this mechanism in our brain called the reticular activating system. And it's our filtering system of information. People always talk about this in the personal. Oh, if you see a car and you're trying to buy a white Jeep, you're going to see a white Jeep everywhere. It is. It's your filtering system in that way. But it also filters information according to what we already believe. And so if your core beliefs are working against you, then that becomes problematic. But if you rewire them in Pillar 1, that helps a lot. But also, according to the information you're really giving and taking in repeatedly, you start noticing more and more. It sort of opens up that filtering system to notice those things. And so what's really beautiful is when people start doing that work, they often end up in a situation where they're going, oh, yeah, I did have this one. Oh, and they notice it in real time throughout the day and they feel it. And so it really gives that ability to start noticing that in a more natural way across time. Absolutely. And step three? So a third pillar is nervous system work. So we always hear things like people are in sympathetic mode, you know, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode or parasympathetic mode. It's actually particularly relevant to attachment cells because all three insecure attachment cells spend far too much time in fight or flight. Interesting. Yes. And it's because if you grow up in an environment where you don't feel fully safe because your needs are not met consistently enough and if you have more bears in the woods, aka core wounds or triggers, then you spend more time on high alert in various ways. So anxious attachment cells are very alert about when people are going to abandon them. Dismissive avoidance are very much on high alert about are they going to feel rejected and seem like they're defective or shamed? And do they need to create space and not be a burden to anybody? And fearful avoidance are hypervigilance about everything, about all of the above. And so what ends up happening is your nervous system is in overdrive. And a big part of healing is learning to get back into your body. I've actually found deeply that each of the three insecure attachment cells struggles at the beginning to identify their emotions in real time, which is a form of dissociation. Like people often think of dissociation as being this really traumatic catatonic thing, but it's not. People can spend a lot of time in mild dissociation. So we do a couple of things. We take people through a process of retraining their nervous system to do things like completion cycle work and a lot of that sort of polyvagal theory work to actually practice getting into parasympathetic nervous system over time so it becomes your new baseline. But we also, one of my favorite practices, and I was saying this to you before we recorded, is when I started really diving deep into a lot of this work, I did 13 different certifications in everything from like CB to cognitive behavioral therapy to neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis and just all this stuff. But I was actually like really rooted in a lot of studying all different religions. Like I was really obsessed with spirituality and on sort of a spiritual journey. And I've always loved where those two things intersect. And I remember actually reading years ago, one of Eckhart Tolle's books, and it was all about the pain body. And at the time I was reading these case studies on these individuals and they go into the researchers were taking individuals and putting them in fMRI scanners, and they were getting them in these fMRI scanners to recall triggering experiences where they felt upset. And then they were watching their brain activity. And what they found is that participants' brain activity, when they would feel triggered, would drain out of the neocortex regions, like the prefrontal cortex region of the brain, and into the reptilian brain. And all this activity would come there, and we've all seen people, and they're triggered. They become kind of the reptilian animalistic version of themselves. And so all of a sudden, people would be sitting there in this sort of panicked state. And what they would find is that people would start being dysregulated. Like they would be in sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight. They would see their heart rate increase, their hair in the back of their neck often stand up. And then what they had participants do is they had them practice just witnessing their emotions in their body and labeling the sensations, which is a form of somatic processing. And they had them say, okay, you know, in this experience, instead of being so stuck in the story in their mind, they had them go, oh, I feel, you know, anger and anger feels like heat across my chest and down my arms, or I feel anxiety and that feels like butterflies in my stomach and a ball in my throat and a clenching in my jaw. And when they actually had people go through this, they found that all this brain activity came back online in the neocortex regions of the brain. And it was so interesting because Eckhart Tolle has this thing, oh, the pain body, witness your emotion or, you know, be in witnessing consciousness. And it's so beautiful to see people practice that because in real time when they are triggered, before they're doing a lot of wound rewiring and meeting their needs, a really powerful practice is to do that form of somatic processing work, which is, yes, do things to train your nervous system through breath work or meditation daily. all of those things are amazing. But in those moments throughout the day where you feel those emotions arise, practicing witnessing the sensations, being with the sensations, noticing what those sensations feel like in your body, it actually takes the emotional charge down quite strongly. And it gives people the opportunity to feel re-regulated and back to more of their conscious mind self again. And so, you know, we get people to practice that on a regular basis, and it's powerful for emotional regulation. But my favorite part of it is that it gives you the gift of self-attunement. Because rather than being in a position where we feel emotion, let's like hide it through scrolling on social media or turning on the TV or drinking a beer or whatever it might be. It's actually the practice of learning in hard moments to come back and return to being fully present within oneself. Yes, absolutely. I mean, just listening to you say that, it's almost like we're getting to a place not only of self-security or self-soothing, it's self-regulation. and we're gaining the ability to not expect our partner to regulate our emotions, regulate our nervous system, which is contagious. And we are going to, you know, blend and bond in energy. But I feel so many of us, our nervous system is completely dependent on everyone else around us. And therefore, we can feel really good when we're with someone, feel really bad when we're with someone else. And we have no control anymore. So, Thais, tell us about Pillar 4. So, Pillar 4, so you actually said this a moment ago, and I thought this was, you were like on the money. You knew it was coming. So you mentioned regulation. So people are regulating through other people. And what I actually found over and over again for people is that people can't co-regulate very effectively in relationships if they have no ability to self-regulate on their own. Because it goes back to that kind of concept where they over-pressure the person to kind of do it for them. And that may work in specific cases for periods of time. Like, oh, you have a friend there and they really help you and they make you feel better. But like, let's take an anxious attachment. So somebody who's very anxiously attached, for example, they would usually end up in these themes or patterns over time where they would always be relying on their friends to do that. And then eventually their friends say, well, they always come to me for stuff, but then they don't change their patterns or behaviors. And then the friend starts kind of drifting back or pulling away or not being as present. And then the anxious person gets frustrated or stressed. And then the other friend is becoming more resentful. And it just, what may work in the short term isn't really working in the long term unless we learn to self-regulate. So in those five pillars, the first three are all about self. They're all about how do I heal my own internal conditioning? Rewire the wounds, meet my own needs, regulate my own nervous system. The next two are actually about regulating with, so with people together. So the next two pillars are about communication and boundaries. So what we do for the communication pillar number four is now that we know our needs, we can go communicate about them. And what often happens is people go through life and they don't even know what they need in a relationship. And then we're left saying things It's like, oh, you hurt me and you did this. And I've seen this all the time with communication. Even if people are so well-meaning when they say, hey, even if they're trying to be vulnerable and they're saying, hey, you hurt me last week when X, Y, Z happened. The other partner is like, okay, I don't want to hurt you, but I don't know how to solve for it. Yes, yes. And unless we're actually empowered to know what we need, then we can't say those things properly. So the communication pillar is about us taking our learning and understanding of self now. We know our triggers. We know our needs. Now we are equipped to do the work with other people. And so what I get people to do, and it depends, like we have a couple of frameworks, but one is whenever we are in a conflict, like if that's ever coming up for us, people feel very resolved in conflict when they do basically three things. Both parties have to communicate what came up for them in the conflict and then validate each other's emotions. Step one. Okay. So validate each other's emotions. Step two, then we have to say what we actually need. And step three, we have to paint a picture of what that looks like. Yes. Because I ran far too many times into situations with couples who I remember working with a couple once years ago. And it was a husband and a wife. And they had this conversation. The wife said, I need to feel more supported in this relationship. I was like a year into working with couples. And they seemed to have a really constructive conversation about it. And they left and they came back the next week. And literally before they sat on the couch, like they didn't even finish sitting down. And the wife said, my husband didn't even support me this week. We talked about it and he didn't even try. and the husband like looked shocked and he was like, what do you mean? I took out the trash, I did the dishes, I tried to help out around the house and she was like, oh, but support for me is somebody actually like giving me encouragement and words of affirmation and telling me like they love me, they appreciate me, noticing my hard work, that's support. And so we have to paint the picture of what the need looks like so it's clear. So for example, let's say two people are in a conflict and let's say it's an anxious and a dismissive avoidant and the anxious person's saying, hey, like you're not calling me enough often what happens when people try to communicate is they do what we call negative framing. So, you know, and I always say to people behind every criticism is just a need. And we say, you don't care about me. You didn't call me enough. You didn't make an effort. And all that people hear when that happens is that you're criticizing them. And all people are going to do is shut down. Because as a child, when you were criticized, what happened? You then got punished. So now you're bracing for punishment, not trying to figure out and decide for what somebody's needs are. So we would get people to say, okay, let's reframe. behind that actual experience. What is the need? Convert your criticism into a need. And it's like, okay, well, if you said you didn't call me enough, obviously the need is for more consistency in calling or communication. Good. Paint the picture. What does that actually look like? Oh, that looks like a call every evening for 15 minutes before bed. Or once a week, whatever it is, we've got to get really specific because otherwise it gets lost in translation like 90% of the time. So what we do is we get people to say, hey, this is what came up for me. So for example, hey, I felt a little bit hurt this week because I didn't hear from you as much as I hoped to. And can we do a call every evening before bed for 15 minutes? And when they're able to say that, now we actually have constructive communication and then we flip it back around because if there was a conflict, usually there's two sides. And then maybe the person on the other side, if it originally wasn't done well, they say, oh, like if somebody was a little bit critical, they might say, okay, I hear your need. I can see why you felt like that. So they validate the person's feelings and then they turn around and they get to say, okay, and for me, I'm a little sensitive. if communication is harsh or a little critical. And not that that example was harsh, but oftentimes that's how it starts. And so they might say, can you just be a little bit more mindful with your delivery next time? And then I'll be more mindful in terms of communicating and calling more consistently. I think we can make that work. And that's how we really resolve. So each person expresses their feeling and gets it validated, shares their need, paints a picture of what it looks like. And it's something you can actually train yourself to do naturally. And we get people to get into the mindset of going feeling need, feeling need. Like just know your feelings and needs. And if it's top of mind and if each person feels like they're able to communicate it that way, that's where we get real resolution. And then that's where we get actual breakthroughs. And I truly believe that doing the work together in a relationship to become secure, you have to become good at having those conversations. I feel like a lot of people struggle to do that for two reasons. One is when they're saying their need, their need is based on their attachment style. and if it's one of the anxious attachment styles often their need can feel like a burden to the other person because it's such a intense demand where the other person just goes and so with so a lot of people know that their need is intense therefore they won't verbalize it because they actually think it will push the other person away so if they don't say it it brews up and then one day it pops up and you break up anyway or they say it it's a burden to the other person and the other person goes well i can't do that and then they walk away so how do we know our need is valid or is realistic and how do we know if if our partner is even should be capable of doing that need because i think a lot of people will be like well my need is every day i need someone to tell me i'm beautiful and amazing or every day i need you know it's like well maybe someone else doesn't have the capacity to do that. Okay, so I love this question. And this is why we do 90 day frameworks for people in the first 30 days are rewiring your core wounds first, because then you don't have these things that are causing a lot of that negative internal dialogue that will then overpressure you to source from somebody else. So if somebody feels not good enough, they're going to be like, you better tell me I'm good enough all day, every day. But if we learn to do the rewiring first is pillar number one. And then pillar number two is that we learn to self source because now we're filling our cup halfway. And what's really powerful as soon as we start self-sourcing we we ingrain that in that first 30 days well now all of a sudden there's not this crazy amount of pressure and now it's really clear to say this is what i mean by the time you get to this stage exactly your request is actually already more reasonable and thoughtful but the problem is if you jump to this stage too quick yes you could end up asking for something you should be self sourcing exactly and that makes a lot of sense yeah and that's where it's really important i love that you asked that because what ends up happening far too often and this is a really crazy part of this is because our subconscious mind wants to maintain its comfort zone because it equates familiarity to safety and survival. So frequently, people think that they want somebody to give them their need and that's the solution. And let's take like typical example. Let's say somebody has, they're anxiously attached. They believe they're not good enough. So now just by that, they have more negative internal dialogue. They're criticizing themselves, sort of magnifying their mistakes, minimizing their wins in their own natural set point of their conditioning. Then they are often not meeting their own need to feel, you know, good enough or validated or reassured. So now they have what we, what I call like a hole in your bucket. Like you're going to go and because the subconscious mind will only receive well, what's familiar because it equates it to safety. Then you go and you say, Oh, Hey, tell me I'm good enough. Tell me all these things. But then it's like, there's a hole in the bucket. It feels really good when that, that water is going into the bucket. You get that initial hit of dopamine. Oh my God, my partner said I'm good enough. And then it just leaked right out. And then that's why you you see anxious attachment cells needing so much of that because they first struggle with those two pillars so profoundly and that where we get you know confused in relationships because then we like you need to do this you need to do that And then when it becomes unreasonable because it coming from lack and imbalance first, then it puts too much pressure on relationships and becomes problematic. That completely makes sense now. And I'm thinking about a lot of people that I know who sadly feel a lot of shame and guilt for their needs from their attachment style, but without doing this work in this order as the pillars are being developed, you'll never actually request something in a healthy way that naturally, and you're scared it will push someone away because it probably will because it's coming from an anxious attachment style. Yeah, 100%. Taze, please tell us about pillar five. Okay, so the last pillar is learning healthy boundaries. So healthy boundaries, when people hear them, I think some people think, especially more anxious attachment styles think that boundaries mean a separation. But truly, every boundary is adjoining because a boundary is an authentic expression of your true yeses and your nos, which is an authentic expression of you as a whole human being. And so, you know, when we look at boundaries per attachment style, there's unique patterns. This is when I was like, whoa, each attachment style, they each have these themes of boundaries. Anxious attachment styles are kind of boundaryless. Like, if they're really anxiously attached, they struggle with boundaries altogether. And so, they're going to end up people pleasing into oblivion. They get scared to set boundaries because they believe that boundaries are going to get them abandoned or disliked or rejected, part of also why we do the core wound work first in that order. And so they end up just struggling with boundaries at all. Dismissive avoidance, they set too strong of boundaries. They're scared to make compromises because they equate that to vulnerability. And so they end up keeping distance and saying, you know, they're the types that instead of saying, hey, I've had a long week, it's Friday, I'm tired. Instead of going out, can we just stay in and watch a movie? Instead of setting small boundaries and requesting those needs within that framework, they'll instead go canceling, not coming over. Sorry, not going to be there. And it's because they have these huge boundaries because they don't know how to co-regulate and communicate in that way. And so then we have fearful avoidance and fearful avoidance are very interesting with their boundaries. I call it the fearful avoidance boundary cycle where they are boundaryless at first because they start to people please usually. Then they get frustrated because they're very generous. They tend to overgive and kind of under receive. So they set no boundaries. They're super generous. And then they're, you know, they eventually are like, oh, I feel taken advantage of. And then they get really triggered because they've got a lot of big core wounds. And then they get angry and they set boundaries from anger or frustration. And they say things harshly or critically. And sometimes they're a little bit, you know, too harsh or critical. And then they feel terribly guilty about it. And they go back to having no boundaries. So they're like, no boundaries, get frustrated, express anger, feel guilty, go back to no boundaries. And they kind of just go around in a loop. And so what we get people to do is first, and it actually has to be done in order. And I'll speak from personal examples, but this is what I'd see replicated with like thousands of people. When I was first doing boundary work, I knew I had to do boundary work. I was like, I really struggle with boundaries. So I read all these boundary books and I learned about boundaries and I read, you know, publications on boundaries and all these things. And yet I would get into situations and I would be sitting in a situation being like, I know this is where I should set the boundary, but I would clam up and I wouldn't do it. because I didn't realize that I still had core wounds around my boundaries. So consciously, I'm like, set a boundary. And too many people intellectualize boundaries as this concept. But you're not actually going to do it in real time until you first read. Because if your conscious mind says set the boundary, your subconscious mind says, no, I'm going to be unsafe. And as a child, I had some kind of heavy-handed punishments at times for setting a boundary or saying no. So my subconscious mind said boundaries equals unsafety rather than safety and a healthy dynamic. That's what your brain would think. And so then I would, in real time, clam up, not say it, and then be like, walk away going, why didn't I set the boundary? So what we get people to do is step one, know your boundaries. We get people to audit their boundaries in the seven areas of life, go through career, where are you locking boundaries, financial area of life, et cetera, through the seven areas. Then we get people to say, okay, if I set a boundary, what am I afraid will happen or what do I make it mean? It's a good way to surface some of your subconscious stuff that may be there. Oh, if I set a boundary, then I'm going to be abandoned. If I set a boundary, people are going to reject me or think that I'm a burden. You can really see what comes up. And then we get people to rewire using some rewiring techniques, that fear of setting boundaries and then practice doing exposure work, which means you don't go set your first boundary with your boss who you think has narcissistic personality disorder because your brain's not going to take that very well. we set boundaries with you know small boundaries with trusted people like ask your co-worker you love hey can you bring back my stapler when you borrow it like the small things first so your brain we try to set one boundary a day so your brain gets the repetition and emotion i've seen that incrementalism work and you rewired the core fear that was stopping you from setting boundaries in real time and what i found in my own life and what i've seen with thousands of people is that unless you're actually doing boundary work at the subconscious level you can know it you can intellectualize it, but it's not actually going to change things. That makes so much sense. What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable? Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prince's Music is Therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question. Who do you want to be? And what's the song that can take you there? Music changes what you feel. And what you feel changes what you do, right? That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts. This year, I'm talking to experts across every area of life. Like personal finance icon Gene Chatsky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage, human connection teacher Mark Groves, and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone, Questlove. They'll bring the strategies. I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach you how to use the music to make change stick. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire year. Listen to DJ Hesterprin's Music is Therapy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, a.k.a. Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in your program because you have so many daily tasks yeah how how are people interacting with you your team or with these tasks on a daily basis how does it work yeah so what we do is we get people they go through 90 days they do like one pillar at a time and we get them to start with a reprogramming pillar um we actually have you know people come in they take their actual program It's a course for each pillar so they can go through, take the course. And then we have two events per day. So I'm in there three days a week with our students. We have colleagues in there so that they actually have two events every day, just a different time zone, things like that. So people can get in there. We have events that help people actually practice the tools and model out, especially for communication or boundary setting. Like they actually get to practice it. They get feedback. It's relayed back to them. And then we teach classes about the tools in more depth. You ask questions in the chat. Then we have live questions at the end. And so people kind of really get in there and like form those skills across time as they go through each of those pillars. Yeah, it's a real commitment. People are really doing the work. Absolutely. And we set it up so that it's really only like two to three minutes a day that people need. They don't have to come into those events to get the results, but they have the support there if they need it. And what's really beautiful, too, is that people end up making all these friends. And they're like people make friends from all sort of parts of the world. And they can stay after the events and chat with each other in the breakout rooms. but we set it up so that we try to keep it as simple as possible. Here's your course. The course is only like two hours long or so. They can go, they can take the course, get the follow-up support, but the course will have, hey, here's your daily exercise for the next 21 days. Then you finish that one. Okay, here's your next daily pillar for 21 days. And it takes, you know, they're very small. That's brilliant. It's so well-structured. Thank you. Just hearing about it makes it feel so, it feels like such a seamless process because you're getting to exclusively focus on one thing at a time as opposed to like a million habits that we're all trying to develop. Thais, we wanted to ask you about real life scenarios. Okay, I love it. Because we feel that, you know, when you look at all of these attachment styles, really the way we experience them is in a relationship or when we start dating. So here are some real life scenarios. One partner is anxious and the other is avoidant. The anxious partner clings, the avoidant pulls away. How do they break that cycle instead of repeating it? Okay, so really good question. So first thing is we do do that work. Like the actual way is not going to be to will yourself through it, which unfortunately, sadly, so many people are like, oh, we're just going to try to, you know, self silence and not say what we need. And then it comes out in a negative way. So first thing is you do the rewiring work. Then we actually start to read. What if they don't want to do that work? that. Okay, great question. So here's what we do in that case. So this is actually, I would see this sometimes when working with couples, where somebody's like, I'm not going to be doing the self-work. We're not really going to be moving from that perspective. Well, people tend to think that because people have different needs, that different needs mean mutually exclusive needs, okay, which is not the case. So people think like typical scenario, anxious attachment style, in exactly that scenario, you said, what do they want? What's their need? More time together. What's the dismissal avoidance need? More space, more freedom, more autonomy. So what we do, in that case is just because somebody wants more time and somebody wants more space doesn't mean that that can't work. What we get people to do is talk it out from that feeling need framework enough where you have pockets of time to meet both each other's needs. So you'll probably see this, but whenever we have a trigger, we always think of the worst case scenario, right? We jump to the worst case conclusion. So dismissive avoidance when somebody's like, oh, I want more time. They're like, you're going to take over my life. Like they think, oh, you want like seven hours every evening together. Or they're thinking, well, I just gave you time this weekend. Like we were just hanging out. Like how much more can I give you? Exactly. And then when dismissive wouldn't say I need more space or time to myself, anxious to have themselves are like, you're leaving me, you're abandoning me. Yeah, and it's because of me. It's like, you want to get away from me. A hundred percent. And instead it's because they struggle to co-regulate. So what we get people to do is the feeling need framework. They each say what they feel. Hey, this comes up for me. Then it's a beautiful opportunity to say, I need space because that's how I recharge. I need time because that's when I feel connected. So now they actually understand what's going on. And then, okay, what do we need? Paint the picture. And when people paint the picture, they realize it's actually very reasonable from both ends. Usually an anxious attachment style will say, okay, you know, what can I actually do as a baseline in terms of how much time I need together? I think two nights a week would be, you know, acceptable for me. And then maybe a 15-minute phone call a couple other nights a week. I could do that. And if I know that we're going to do that and commit to that, I can feel good about that. And then dismissive avoidance. They're not going, oh, you want to spend every night with me all day, every day. You know, you want to take up my whole life. They're like, oh, two evenings a week. And then I can do my own thing on Sunday afternoon. I can do my own thing on Monday, Tuesday evenings. And I have, you know, all this other time to see friends, whatever it might be. Okay, that's actually feasible. So what I find is even if people don't want to do the work, if they can communicate very clearly and specifically use that ingredient of painting a picture for what that looks like, we resolve a lot of those projected fears that cause those miscommunications to begin with. And now things can really work together. Do you think it's possible to be in a relationship with someone who's not willing to have these conversations? It's a great question. I'll be really honest. What I believe is that, you know, and I'll see this a lot. One person can lead the way. Okay. So I see a lot of time one person starts doing the work. They learn to communicate. They become really good at it. And the other person, like once they see their partner communicating so healthily and they're regulated and they're not so triggered from their wounds and they're so clear about their needs, the vast majority of time it gives the other person permission to do the same and they follow their lead. But I will say in roughly 10% of cases, somebody is in a position where they're like, I'm not doing any of this stuff. I don't want to communicate. I don't want to have these conversations about your needs. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do that at all. It's usually from their own woundedness that their unwillingness is there. But I say to people like, hey, if that's the case, I tell people set a deadline, try your living heart out, do everything you can in this deadline. So deadline might be 90 days. It might be six months if you're in a longer term relationship. Or if you're in a marriage with children, it might be a year or a year and a half. Do everything you can as that one person in that period of time to show up the best that you can. You know, without your wounds, know your needs, regulate your nervous system, communicate beautifully, set healthy boundaries. If it doesn't work and the person's literally unwilling at the end of that period of time, your only choice if you want to be in a healthy relationship is probably to walk away. And that's because you're going to, if you're not happy in that situation, You cannot have one person doing the emotional labor for both people. And then usually what happens is you're positioned for a win-win because you have healed so much and you're going to be in a place where you feel stable and emotionally well enough to walk away from something that may actually not be a fit for you. And so you're okay. And you also know, I can walk away guilt and regret-free. I tried everything. Or your best case scenario is 90% of the time the other person jumps on board and the relationship evolves because you led the way. Yeah. How does attachment theory explain love bombing? Great question. So love bombing, I think, is existing along a continuum. Love bombing in extreme cases is usually because of narcissistic personality disorder. And that's somebody love bombing with the premeditated intention to win you over as a means of control. But what actually happens if we look way further down the continuum, love bombing can be more from a place. Usually we're going to see anxious or fearful avoidance do love bombing. And it's because, in a much lesser degree, and their relationship to it is not because, let me win you over so that then you're addicted to me and I can control you. It's from a place that they usually, because of having so many core wounds and people-pleasing behaviors as their adaptation to those core wounds, they have people on a pedestal. And so you're going to love bomb somebody that you admire and you look up to and you want to win over and people-please. And so that's often what will happen is you get a lot more of those compliments and trying to win somebody over and charm them and all those things because of their own insecurity compared to how high they see other people that they're in relationships with. if someone comes on quite strongly to you, sometimes it can be quite infatuating because you're like, wow, I finally found someone who likes me, who loves me, but I've noticed as people are getting wiser and I'm sure as they do the work, they're like, well, that's a bit strong. It's too early. That feels unnatural for you to have such intense feelings. We just met two weeks ago. What would you do in that scenario where you kind of see positives in this person, but their feelings are too strong and you don't want to get love-bombed but you still want to continue seeing them? How would you navigate that? That's a beautiful question. So a couple of things. The first answer is that in that early stage, you can have that conversation. You can say to somebody, hey, I really like you. I really like spending time with you. I'm super interested in you and getting to know you. And I feel like we're moving a little bit quickly. Here's the pace I like to go at. I want to manage your expectations. And that forces somebody to kind of check in with themselves and be able to do that work. I also tell people all the time, if you're concerned a little bit, you think somebody's amazing, they're very charming, they're very charismatic, and you're concerned a little bit that their love bombing and their charisma could be a sign of a narcissist instead of just an insecure attachment cell because they're vastly different, then one of the best ways to just vet them is to set a boundary with them because narcissists do not like your boundary, whereas insecure attachment cells, they'll like really honor your boundary. They'll usually be like, oh, I'm so sorry. And they'll be accountable and apologize and acknowledge. And so that's a really good way to separate out the two. Interesting. Yeah, because I find that that's what I feel so many of my friends are struggling with, where it's like they do set a boundary. The person won't respect the boundary, but there's still so many good things about them. Is that dangerous to keep? Do you have to tread carefully? It's a great question. And from that particular scenario, if somebody is not respecting your boundary early on, that's a big red flag. You know, if somebody doesn't know how to honor boundaries, then I would say in those types of cases, that's a vetting situation. Like vetting in a relationship when we first start dating should be for the first three, four months of a relationship. You should be asking the hard questions, having those early conversations, talking about your needs. I always say to people when you're going into dating, know your needs and know your non-negotiables. and then go in and ask one or two really meaningful questions a date. You don't want the dating situation to be like a job interview. Here's my 17 needs. Are you going to meet them? You know, it needs to be something where like each date you say, you know, for example, I know for me, you know, I've been in a marriage and with my husband for 11 years. And, but if I were dating again, I would, one of my non-negotiables early on would be, you need to be able to hash things out. Like we got to talk through things because it's so important to prevent any kind of resentment in relationship. So I might, you know, have the first date, see if there's a connection, chemistry, have fun. And then by the second date, that might be a question I bring up pretty early. Hey, like, how do you handle conflict? And then that way I can see if they say, oh, I would never, you know, I don't like to talk about things. I don't go there. I don't like conflict. I don't believe in like having conflict. I would be like, whoa, red flag. And so then we bet. And what we want to do is if we see those things and we're not sure, red flags, if you're interested in somebody otherwise, people think red flags you should bolt. No, red flags you should go to words and figure out. Because sometimes somebody might accidentally disrespect a boundary that you said, hey, I want to move slower. But sometimes that red flag is, well, you weren't clear enough at what slower means to you. You didn't paint the picture. So that should be a conversation you move towards to really get to the bottom of, like kind of a detective. Like, hey, I mentioned last week wanting to move slower. I felt like we still moved at a really quick pace this week. for me, moving slower looks like seeing each other a little bit less, you know, spending a little more time getting to know each other before traveling together, whatever it might be. And then we really get to the bottom of it. And that's part of the betting that should be taking place in that early stage. And then if we see red flags and we see, oh, no, no, that's just the red flag. They're going to keep going without those boundaries. Now we know the answer. And now we're really clear. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Another scenario here. I love these with you. These are great. A secure partner feels steady, but their anxious partner keeps searching for signs something is wrong. How can they help without becoming the emotional regulator? Really good question. So this happens fairly frequently. But what's very interesting about this is that I have yet to see it be any kind of frequent occurrence. It's somebody who's deeply anxious and deeply secure. Stay in a long term relationship together. because their subconscious comfort zones are going to reject each other. Securely attached people, if there's too much emotional burden over time and that person's not self-regulating at all or the needle's not moving, they usually do eventually because they're really good at being mindful of their own boundaries. They will pull away from that person or move in a different direction. Attachment styles are always a continuum. If somebody's a little bit anxious, we'll see some movement there, right? But if somebody, sometimes you hear things like, oh, just date a secure person. It doesn't usually work out that way. Just like, you know, people who are deeply insecure often are like, where's the spice? where the excitement is that the stability seems boring or they can reject the secure person as well. So, you know, that really brings back to the work of like, you got to do the work in healing yourself first if you really want that to happen. But if that were to be the case where you have somebody who's a little less anxious and then somebody who's really secure, then you're going to have the secure person say, hey, I need you to be able to make sure that you're self-soothing sometimes or I need you in maybe less clinical terms. They might say something like, hey, you know, I'm going to be here for you and I'm gonna do my best to be here for you. And there's gonna be some times where I'm stuck late at work, I'm going through my own human things and I need you to see me too. And I need you to practice being okay and on your own. And so they'll set those boundaries, they'll communicate their needs. And in doing that, it actually provides this beautiful opportunity for somebody to be like, oh, maybe I should practice that. Maybe I should sort of train myself to do that. And that's often where we can see those good outcomes. Yeah, no, it's interesting you say that because I couldn't agree more that one person is usually rises to be the fixer in the beginning because they feel valuable through it as well and then afterwards they start to feel less and less valuable because their fixing doesn't work and they feel like all of their efforts are in vain because naturally that person still needs to learn self-regulation and you end up pushing them right 100 okay so there's so there's this um thing we we created that we that i talk about sometimes and it's the six stages of relationship It's based off of some of Dr. Susan Johnson's work. And there's the dating stage, which is usually the first, like, you know, zero to six months. You're dating. You're bedding. Then there's the honeymoon stage, which usually lasts for another year, two year and a half. Rose-colored glasses. That's a long time. Yeah. And then we enter into the power struggle stage. And to your exact point, and I kind of laugh at this with endearment. It's not fun when you're going through it. Then people have to do the power struggle. There's the rhythm stage. You get into your rhythm. Then you get into the commitment stage long-term. And then the bliss stage, like things are really good long-term. Highly likely to break up in that stage. But what's so interesting is that in the dating stage of relationships, usually we are very attracted to people who express our repressed traits. So the thing that we'll invest in longest term are people who mirror back to us how we treat ourselves. But one of the other things that does drive attraction early on psychologically is somebody who expresses your repressed traits. Okay, so it's that opposite of attraction. So let's say, for example, that you're somebody who struggles with boundaries. If you meet somebody really assertive, you're going to be like, wow, like, ooh, let me get close to them. Or if you're somebody... And that's not a bad thing. Not a bad thing. Or if you're somebody who's very type A, organized, intense, when somebody's really easygoing, you're going to be like, oh, wow, like, look at them. And so we're very drawn because the mind likes to attach. And when we attach to something, we have an allostatic or homeostatic impulse at the subconscious level. So when we attach, we feel more whole through that person. But what's so crazy is over time, we are still going to invest in the most people who mirror our subconscious comfort zone. So in the early stages, we're often attracted. And then in the power struggle stage, it's the very thing that has one of the greatest likelihoods of driving the relationship apart. And it looks like this. They were so assertive. I love that early on. And now in the power struggle stage, you're like, they never compromise. Or early on, you're like, oh, my God, I love that they go with the flow. They're so flexible when he's going. And then you're like, hello, like we have plans. Get here on time. And you're really stressed. And it happens like clockwork in every relationship. And what I believe to be both a psychological and even spiritual lesson is to integrate those traits collectively. Explain that to me. Yeah. So, for example, let's say, let's pretend it's me and my husband. And actually, we were kind of like this. I met my husband. I still had a little boundary work to do. And he was so good at setting boundaries, just like so direct, so straight up, so to the point. And I remember really admiring it. And then sure enough, I knew we got in the power struggle station. I was like, hello. And so I went to him and I said, hey, and I knew this already. I was equipped. Thank goodness. and I knew that like I was going to start feeling frustrated unless I took on some of the trait of assertiveness better and if he took on some of my flexibility a little bit more. So I went to him, I had the conversation, said, hey, I need you to make compromises with me sometimes and this is really important to me and it's going to be important for you to be more flexible and more mindful of me at times as well and I gave some examples and sort of painted a picture and what was really beautiful about that is I knew I had to communicate my needs more consistently and say my boundaries and do it better in real time. And I did. It was profoundly healing for me and helped me in so many relationships going forward, especially in things like work. And for him, he became so much more flexible and I saw it really strengthen his relationships with his friends, his family members. Like it was really beautiful to see him evolve in that way. And that's everybody. That's if you're the type A person, you got to learn that easygoingness sometimes and surrender. If you're the easygoing person, having some discipline is really valuable. So I really believe that relationships are not just here for love, although that's a beautiful thing. They're also here for growth. And a lot of it's that we're attracted to people that way because that's our subconscious mind calling us to take on some of those things internally. And that's how we become more whole together in that power struggle stage. And now instead of having these two different people that are attracted, we're now two whole people collectively. And that strengthens us individually and collectively long-term. I couldn't agree more. Whenever people ask me and Radhi, it's our 10-year wedding anniversary this year. Congratulations. And when I think about what's worked, because there have been tough conversations, there's been growth, there's been both of us taking responsibility and accountability. And I'm like, the best thing that's happened is the best parts of us have rubbed off onto the other person. And the worst parts haven't. Oh, I love that. That is the only thing I can come down to. So me and Radhi, similarly, Radhi's spontaneous. I'm super hyper focused and I've become more spontaneous and more casual in our relationship with our timing and things like that and she's become more organized in her work and focused and driven in her profession and then Radhi's super healthy and you know really health conscious and exercise diet everything that's really rubbed off on me and so she's taught me that and I'm like that's what's worked and it's but you both gotta have the humility to be able to learn from the other person and i think you have to have the humility to not want to teach the other person so i don't think in what you said in the way you're talking about these conversations i never went up to rathi and said i think you need to be more organized and she never came up to me goes i think you need to be more healthy like if it's almost like the humility to not teach and the humility to learn and that's fascinating because most of us think oh yeah i wish my partner was a bit more like me and i'm gonna go tell them how they can be like me and it's like well no no no it's you live the quality so well that it becomes attractive like I know Radhi like really values going to the gym really values eating well she sees how alert it makes and when you see that change in someone you feel inspired that I want to do it too and so it's so fascinating how yeah I'd say successful relationships are when the good things you both have rub off on each other and the bad things don't. And that simple principle allows you to have the humility to learn from your partner and not have the ego to want to teach them. And those two things seem to make sense. I thought that was so beautiful the way you said that. That actually really touched my heart. You said the best things rubbed off on one another, but the harder things didn't. And I just think that's such a beautiful example of a truly healthy, harmonious relationship. And that's that. For people who are like, how do I have the humility? How do I communicate? that's that feelings need framework when you communicate hey i need this hey i need a little flexibility sometimes from you or hey i need you to sometimes be mindful of me when you say it with like this this humbleness you come to the table of like i care about you and sometimes i need to lean on you in this way and vice versa that is a big part of what what opens those dialogues those conversations to be more mindful and then of course like you said when somebody's living in their best version of themselves they step into that truth and that's inspiring to be around a 100%. Yes, contagious. Okay, one more scenario before we do a couple of segments. So this one is one partner is ready to commit the other becomes uncertain as things deepen How do you tell fear from a real mismatch Beautiful question So I always find it going to boil back down to these same types of themes and pillars So first thing is you have to have a real conversation Like if we sort of have these trajectories that relationships follow that I found, which is that if you don't do anything really direct, if you don't have a really vulnerable conversation, instead what happens is one person's like, oh, they don't want to commit. They make it mean things about themselves, especially if they have a lot of core wounds. They're like, oh, am I not good enough? Am I unlovable? Am I unworthy? And then they project those onto situations. Or the person keeps dragging their feet and the other person self-silences and they just feel resentful in the relationship. Then that comes out in different ways and it's more arguments or disagreements. So the only actual reasonable solution is to truly hash it out. And so we go and we say, hey, you know, here's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a commitment. Here's why. And here's like what, you know, paint that picture? What does that time frame look like? And be really honest and transparent. And then the other person has to say what's holding them back. And oftentimes what I found, because I've done a lot of these specific conversations with people in relationships, and usually what's actually happening is that that conversation will be the catalyst for some deeply unresolved needs and relationships. More often than not, the person who's dragging their feet in commitment the most is deeply, directly running in parallel to the person who's also not communicating their needs and relationships. And so they're afraid to commit. And a lot of times people's commitment fears are, yes, coming from core wounds of being trapped or helpless or powerless in that pillar. But a lot more of the time commitment fears are rooted in somebody not knowing how to communicate their needs. So they're more scared to get trapped because they're like, well, what if I commit to this and then I don't feel fully fulfilled or have my needs met? But once they learn to communicate their needs, a lot of those conversations usually end up being things like, hey, yeah, I guess like one of the reasons I'm afraid to commit is I'm scared that I'm going to lose, you know, my time with my friends sometimes. And I need to be able to have that in the long term and go off and hang out with the boys sometimes or go have a girls weekend or whatever it might be. And then the person's like, oh, I can honor that. I can make that a part of our marriage. I can, you know, and it's this catalyst to a huge breakthrough. Or sometimes it's things like, hey, I guess what's holding me back is sometimes I feel like I get criticized more than I feel good about. And it makes me want to pull away. And I'm not sure if I see that being, you know, something I'm really happy in long term. And then the person hears that and they're able to say, oh my gosh, it's time for me to clean up the way I communicate. And then there's this breakthrough and they both feel safer. So I would love to tell people, hey, there's some manipulative easy fix where you tell them this thing and you say, I'll do it. If you don't, you know, commit, I'll leave and give an ultimatum. You're selling yourself short and the relationship short by not saying, hey this is what I'm really looking for here's why tell me what's coming up for you I want to understand and when we do that and have that same humility to really go there with an open heart and open mind usually there's big breakthroughs yeah hi I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally and I'm Hari Kondabolu it's a new year and on the podcast health stuff we're resetting the way we talk about our health which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived and choosing how you want to grow. It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships, and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down. We listen. We learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the air with clarity, compassion, and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRoccia on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike DeLaRoccia and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. What happens when, we've talked a lot about dating, we've talked about being in a relationship, what happens when you set your boundary, you've done some of the self-work, maybe they have too, and then they decide to leave you? Beautiful question. And someone breaks up with you and you've done the work, you've been trying to figure it out, but the subconscious and the conditioning was so strong that it was overriding everything. And for both of you, it's just too difficult. That person breaks up with you. How does an anxious attachment style and an avoidant attachment style, how can they correctly deal with a breakup? I love this question too. So one of my favorite topics is actually grief. And a breakup is grief. And when we actually look at grief, I think grief is one of the most misunderstood things in our society. because we think time heals all wounds or we think these things, and honestly, it's just not the case. Wounds can last for a very long time. But when we go through a breakup, it's grief because what happens when we get into relationship is the mind attaches to another person. And when we attach to another person deeply, that's when our attachment behaviors exhibit themselves the most. But when we attach, what we're actually attaching to is very much the non-physical. So this is kind of a morbid example. but if somebody passes away, it's not their physical body that you miss. If their physical body was around in your house or something, you're not going to be like, oh, I feel better. It's all the non-physical that we miss. And so we have to then ask the question, well, what is the non-physical? Well, it really boils down to a couple of really major things. Number one, the needs somebody met in your life that we were used to them meeting. Maybe that person made you feel seen or heard or loved or validated and maybe they weren't even doing a good job because it led to the breakup But if they met your need a three out of 10 and you were meeting your need one out of 10 to feel validated, you're going to keep going back for those breadcrumbs because you're starving. So the first part is that grief is the detachment. We were used to having these needs met in our life. Suddenly the person's gone. They took our needs with them. And there's a void left behind. And that void is a big part of what we experience as grief. Step one. Number two, grief. And this is a very sacred thing, I believe. But grief is also who we became around that person. the part of ourselves that we got to express. And I had times back in my practice when I was running my client practice before our online programs where I'd work with people on loss. And I remember one time I worked with somebody on the loss of a child and it was a very tragic situation. And her really big breakthrough that led her to really start healing is she realized what she was grieving the most years later when she came to me. She'd been grieving for years and wasn't really getting anywhere. She realized that what she missed the most was that she felt like she was a nurturer and a protector and a caretaker and a contributor. And these really beautiful, sacred expressions of herself that she, because she was going through that grief and then hadn't had another child again, she didn't feel like she had anywhere to express that or become that. And so, you know, what she ultimately did is then started this beautiful charity that helped kids in a similar situation and that deeply healed her heart. And so grief is also when we lose somebody, we lose the aspects of ourselves that we got to express in their company. And so, you know, those are two big pillars of grief. And then third is we have all these stories. We say, it was all my fault. I'm not good enough. You know, the back to the poor wound. So that's a big part of rewiring it. But what I actually get people to do if they go through a breakup, and usually when people go through a breakup like that, it's because they tried to start doing the work when they already had too many resentments and they were already, you know, half checked out. But if you go through that breakup, one of the fastest ways to truly heal grief from a breakup is to write out what were all of those needs this person met. I now have to start meeting those needs in myself. And I have to start resourcing them in healthy ways with healthy people in my life. And as we do, we fill up that void that was left behind from that person. And it heals our heart. It heals us deeply. And part of why people say time heals all wounds is because human beings are naturally adaptable. And in time, they start to learn to resource their needs in other ways. It's not time doing that. It's our natural adaptiveness that's doing that for us. But we can fast track that process by being more conscious and intentional about it. The secondary part of it is, who were you? Who did you become when you had this loss? And a lot of times it's these beautiful things. Like I was a protector, I was a caretaker, I was a contributor. And when we look at who we became and we work to keep expressing those aspects of self, that is deeply healing for us as well. And that's a really good way to kickstart moving through the breakup much more quickly. Do you ever truly get over someone? I very much believe that you do. And I think that there's times where, you know, people, when we look at grief too, which is really interesting, is one of the ways that it's actually another step that we have for how to heal grief. It's funny because I actually forgot about this one, is sometimes when we feel like we lost somebody, there's this old saying that there is no such thing as gain or loss. It's only ever changing forms. And when I think of in more extreme forms of grief, even like the death of somebody, oftentimes, yes, they're not here in the physical form, but they're here and we can meet those needs and we can become that expression of ourselves. But a lot of times they're still within you in their conditioning that they imprinted or impressed upon you. In other words, if it's a loss of a parent, sometimes it gets people to sit down around losses like that and they say, okay, what was your father? Oh, my father was a protector. He was strong. He was assertive. He thought five steps ahead. Where did you become that? And what's really beautiful is when people sit down and they do that, a lot of times you hear people say things like, oh my God, my father's like here as a part of me. And so I think that we can truly move to a point where we get over the grief in terms of the suffering. And there's this whole thing that grief is love with nowhere to go. And I think that when we don't know where to put the love, because we don't know how to express that part of ourselves, or we don't know how to get the needs met, or we don't recognize that that person, they're with us in all of these non-physical ways, then it feels like it's very hard to get over somebody. But I think when we start to actually move through those steps in terms of how we process grief, we kind of feel this connection to somebody in our heart and we get over the deep mourning, the deep grieving, and sometimes we'll miss the person still, or sometimes we'll feel that care for people we love so deeply, but it doesn't have to be this painful relationship that we have to that person. Yeah. Should you feel 100% sure about your partner? Ooh, good question. These are good questions. I love these. Okay, so the answer is I would say 100% it's a little bit of a fallacy. I would say that we should feel highly certain, but it's almost like when people say, and I hear this all the time, are you 100% ready to have kids? You're like, nobody's ever 100% ready for anything. Are you 100% ready to take that new job, to move across the country? You're never going to feel 100% ready, but there should be a high enough degree of certainty where you feel like, hey, this is me following my heart or taking that leap of faith. And that bridge in that leap of faith shouldn't be like a bridge is like something you can't surmount or jump over. It should feel like, okay, I'm going to take that small leap of faith. And there's a smaller gap there. That's a good answer. Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think there's 100% surety. If anything, that surety gets stronger the more time you spend with someone. and I think that's partly the challenge that a lot of these things are only tried and tested and proven over time because there is no substitute for time in a relationship because people change people grow people evolve you change you grow you evolve and it's really crazy to think when you say on your wedding day like you know till death do us apart the idea that you don't really even know what life's going to look like. And so there is a big risk in that commitment because you don't even know the version of the person that you're going to have to be with in like 5, 10, 15, 20 years. That used to be my biggest fear in relationships. And this is something that really is true, like runs deep to my heart. I always used to be like, how can you ever know that you trust them now, you love them now, how can you know you won't change your mind or they won't change their mind. And it was always this big fear. And earlier I mentioned those cycles of relationships, dating, honeymoon, power, struggle stage. Then we have the rhythm stage, commitment, bliss stage. And what I actually found over and over again, and I experienced this so deeply firsthand, and this is actually something I want people so deeply to know and understand, because I know there's gonna be a lot of people like me who really struggled at points in relationships early on. And I had only ever done relationships in dating, honeymoon, power, struggle, breakup. Date again. Dating, honeymoon, power struggle, breakups. So you think that relationships are just infatuation or pain. Yeah. And what I learned exactly to your point is that real love is built in the power struggle stage the most because we drop the mask. We're not in our best behavior. And you learn to work through things. And the power struggle is this opportunity. It's this crisis, but it's also this opportunity to start saying, hey, this is what's come up for me. This is what I need in these situations. This is what I'm feeling. hey, this is sensitive for me. That's a pain point for me. Can you be more mindful? And I believe that we really move the needle from more conditionally based love to more unconditionally based love through having those deeper conversations, through doing that work. And then we deepen. It's almost like in the early stages, you have this really pretty sapling, like this really nice little tree, but a windstorm can take it out because it's so fragile. But when we have those meaningful conversations again and again, and we build and we grow, and then all of a sudden, you know your partner's biggest pain points and you're mindful of them and you know when somebody else hit them and you're there to show up for them and caretake for them and be sensitive to them and that, and they're that for you too. Now you deepen roots in love in such a different way where those ideas of like, oh, what if somebody else came along and one of us changed our mind? You know, that is such a silly thing. And I could never conceive of that at one point in my life because I had so many wounds around relationships and so many fears. And it's only through that beauty of like having those conversations and doing the work and deepening that connection in such a real way that then like some silly, frivolous thing that, oh, something attractive could come along and you could change it. But like, it seems so almost like, you know, like silly, like you can laugh at it after a while. But that's because I think the real work isn't that you're going to be 100% sure, it's that you build that 100 or close to 100% certainty through all of those meaningful conversations that you're building over time. And I really believe love isn't just given. I think love has really grown. And I think that's part of what allows us to foster that with people. I agree with you. I was having this conversation with someone that life would be, in what you just explained, life would be somewhat more entertaining if you went from dating to honeymoon and then broke at the power struggle and just kept doing that circle again, because you'd keep getting this honeymoon period. But the honeymoon period requires no growth. And the growth over time is what allows you to realize the value of any relationship. And when I wrote my second book, Eight Rules of Love, it was all based on the Eastern teachings, which is every stage of life is called an ashram. And an ashram, by definition, is a place of growth. And so being on your own is an ashram. And then being with a partner is an ashram. And the ashram is a place of growth, a place of evolution. And so I think our views of love have been so warped by just happiness or pleasure that you forget that the greatest joy a human can feel is the challenge. And ultimately, you're choosing someone that you like to be challenged by, that likes to be challenged by you, and where the challenge becomes enjoyable and joyful, as opposed to the challenge being exhausting and tiring and painful. Absolutely. Right? It's like, that's at least what's resonated with me. That's so beautiful. I love that. I love that idea, too, that the relationship is the ashram and sort of like we were talking about. Like, really, that one of my favorite quotes that reminds me of this is from Rumi. And Rumi says, if I am irritated by every rub, how will I ever be polished? And it's this idea that like everything, I think we still were so quick to jump to the conclusion that the hard things or the painful things are things that, oh, no, like this shouldn't be happening. Why is this happening to me? But I actually believe that. And this is actually, again, I went through a lot of this work on myself first. But I remember being so scared to see people in pain. I couldn't handle it. I was a little codependent. And somebody would be in pain and I wanted to like fix it for them right now. And when I really started to reflect, I did this exercise once and I went and looked at the hardest times in my life. I wrote them all on paper, like the big ones, the really hard ones individually. And I went through and I looked at, okay, what did this give me? What was the hidden gift? And how did this serve me? How did this grow me? What did I learn? and oh my goodness, by the end of that, I was like tears of like relief and gratitude because I noticed that in every really hard time, there was this like invaluable lesson that I learned and I really believe that God puts on our path for a reason and I was able to go, oh my gosh, like there was a time where I was going through and trying to get sober and I tried to reach out to people and I really didn't get the support that I needed at that time and also because I was difficult at that time of my life too, I understand why. and it was so painful for me at the time and I felt like I'll never get over it and it was so healing for me to realize because I didn't go looking outside of myself for something in those moments, that brought me into relationship to myself, into relationship to God. I felt like I really found a relationship to God in those moments and through those times and it was like, how could you ever want something other than that? Thank God that I went through that and it was like this really big relief and so I think sometimes we're so quick to think pain shouldn't be happening, bad things shouldn't be happening things in relationships should just be easy all the time but it's like sometimes pain is the greatest teacher and actually presents to us if we are willing to look and find those things the greatest gifts and what's going to grow us in that next season of our lives well said uh taste we want to play this game with you called this or that relationship edition so we're going to ask you this or that and then you choose so taste slow things down to match their pace, even if you want more, or move on to honor your timeline, even if it means losing them. I'm scared all my answers are going to be like, communicate and find the middle ground. But I would say for sure, be honest, be upfront, tell somebody what your timeline is, stand in your truth, be really authentic. And if somebody is unwilling to move and meet you partway, then you have to honor yourself and keep it moving. And I often found, I know these are probably supposed to be quick questions, but I have often found that people who are anxious think, oh, I'll just slow down to win them over. It doesn't work like that. It never works like that. What you do is you honor your truth. You speak your needs. You stand in it. And you let that person either grow and move towards or you don't. And usually if you're into people pleasing, it's the self-betrayal. And then that feeds back into the subconscious comfort zone. It just never works that way. Absolutely. Okay, cool. Next one, stay with someone who feels safe but doesn't excite you or choose someone who excites you but keeps you on edge. I would say stay with the person who feels safe because there are more green flags, but then build things that create mutual excitement into your relationship. So it's actually one of the ways it's the rite of passage to get out of the rhythm stage and into the future stages of relationship. is if you feel like there's a sense of safety, but not enough excitement, then you have to build novelty into the relationship, spontaneity, things that make you feel that sense of chemistry and connection. So safety is really healthy and good, but then build those things in that keep that spark alive. It's easier to add excitement to a safe relationship than it is to build safety in an exciting relationship. It's beautifully said. We think that, oh, if something's exciting, oh, I can make this feel more safe. I can make this feel more secure, but that's a much harder thing to develop from that foundation than the other way around. 100%. And like caveat being that you have to actually feel attracted to the person. I can see some people being like, oh, so I should stay with the person I'm not interested in. No way. But like the reality is exactly what you said. And sometimes the constantly on edge is for really painful reasons, especially if the other person's not going to be willing to do the work with you. Yeah. Okay. Next one. Build stability slowly with someone dependable or follow instant chemistry and risk the uncertainty? Oh, build. You know, I'd actually almost go in reverse on that one. I would say follow the chemistry as long as you're going to do the work on it. Chemistry tells us a lot about ourselves. Those times we get those really exciting like connections and that like, oh, my gosh, that is always we have a limerence or intense infatuation for three reasons. Number one, somebody is expressing your repressed traits like we talked about. Do that integration work. Number two, somebody's meeting your deeply unmet needs from childhood. That'll be the spark early. And then it'll be the thing that pressures the relationship later because you're trying to just source from them. So do that work to really build those. It's sort of this key that unlocks all this awareness into yourself. And then the third thing is how somebody's treating you. If it's how you treat yourself, we've got to work that out. So I would say follow the excitement, but vet that somebody's going to do the work with you non-negotiably. Yes. getting closure from yourself or closure from your ex after a breakup? From self. Through and through. Because what you're looking for is needs from that person who often can't supply them anyways. And closure, when people break down closure, closure, they're actually looking for certainty. Okay. Best way to get certainty is to question all of your stories that you're telling after the breakup. So people want the certainty of their ex saying, oh, it wasn't all your fault. It was this and this and it was me. They want to hear all those details, you know what you're going to do is you're going to sit down and write all your stories on paper. It was all my fault. I wasn't good enough. I'm unlovable. You're going to put all those things and you're going to sit there and you're going to question them. And you say, really, I wasn't good enough. How was I good enough? How did I show up? I'm not lovable. How am I lovable? And you're going to honor those things. And that's those things we're trying to get from your ex. Your ex is never going to give them to you the way that you need, but you can give them to yourself in that way. And that's healing and it's growth. And you have a sense of control over it in a healthy way. it's been incredible talking to you today i feel like i've learned so much i truly believe you've given me the book the podcast and the program to recommend to all of my friends that are struggling in love and dating and relationships right now because i don't think i've heard a stronger foundational way that people can actually engage and interact with each other the framework carries so much gravitas, but the way you've built the program to be so simple and specific feels so practical and tactical and easy to do for people. It's truly remarkable. Congratulations. It's really fulfilling hearing that I have something to give to people that I want to help. We end every On Purpose episode with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum. So, Terrence Gibson, these are your final five. The first question is, what is the best love advice you've ever heard or received? To learn to be compassionate towards yourself and gentle towards yourself. Second question, what is the worst love advice you've ever heard or received? To try to change other people if they're not willing to do the work. Can you ever change someone? No. People can choose to change themselves, but you can only show up and lead by example and vet how somebody else responds. Question number three. I had a couple here, actually, that I really wanted to get to. So question number three. What does the spark really mean in dating? The spark really means that somebody is the expression of your repressed traits, meeting your deeply unmet needs or mirroring back to how you treat yourself. When people have extreme sparks, it's always that. Good answer. Question number four. How do people unintentionally push away the love they want most? because people end up trying to make somebody the person who's going to fill it all for them, complete them, do it all for them when really we're supposed to do half that job for ourselves too. Otherwise, we can't receive it properly from anybody and we put too much pressure. And fifth and final question, we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? It would be for people to learn about their own subconscious conditioning and how to rewire it Because unless we deal with things at the subconscious level, we'll always set intentions or say we're going to do things. And then we'll often feel so defeated. It was a big part of what I went through trying to get sober originally. Like, what the heck is going on? And I just I think that's the key that unlocks so much for people in a deep way. The book is called The New Attachment Theory. Heal every relationship by rewiring your brain and nervous system. Tase Gibson, if anyone wants to learn more about you, follow you, connect with your work, commit to the program, And where should they go so that they don't miss out on doing this work? So they can go to personaldevelopmentschool.com. We have these really in-depth reports people can get on their attachment cell and take our free quiz. And it goes through all of your pillars and your whole profile. And then I am also, all of our programs are through there. And I'm also on YouTube, which is Thais Gibson-PersonalDevelopmentSchool or at the Personal Development School on Instagram. And I just want to say thank you so much for having me. You're a phenomenal host. I just honestly felt so connected to you and chatting. And thank you for bringing all this out of me and letting me share. No, I said this earlier. Thank you for being a resource that I can direct people to. I really feel this is such a foundational thing for having a successful life, like relationships, dating, work. It's everything. So Thais, thank you so much. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you. And I'm excited to have you back on soon. Thank you. Thank you. If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll love my episode with the world's leading relationship therapist, Esther Perel, where we talk about why your ego is ruining your relationships and how to date more effectively. I think we need to differentiate. Are you looking for chemistry for a love story or are you looking for chemistry for a life story? This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. it invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike De La Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect and heal. This year we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Game, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.