From Insecure to Secure: How to Rewire Your Love Life with the Love Doc Dr. Sarah Hensley

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Welcome to the shit show.

Things are going to get weird.

It's your fae villain, Kale Lower.

And you're listening to Barely Famous.

Welcome back to Barely Famous Podcast.

Today I'm joined by Dr.

Sarah Hensley, a clinical psychologist known for breaking down attachment styles, toxic patterns, and what healing actually looks like.

I'm excited to break down attachment styles in this episode, so let's get into it.

All right, Dr.

Sarah Hensley, thank you for joining us on Barely Famous Podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Of course.

So you, your background is in psychology and you have a PhD in psychology.

What inspired you to go into psychology?

Well, I I just kind of picked a random major in undergrad.

I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I really loved my intro to psych course.

And I was already a sophomore undeclared and I was just like, okay, we'll do this.

I had no idea what I was doing.

So what

you don't have to get a PhD in psychology though, right, to be a

psychologist?

So there's psychology is actually like a really big discipline and a lot of people don't know about sort of the other side of psychology.

So we have about a third of the discipline is clinical.

So they diagnose and treat people with severe mental illness.

And then the other two-thirds were researchers.

So we have like cognitive psychologists, developmental psychologists, neuropsychologists, and then I'm a social psychologist.

So social psychology is really the study of human behavior.

And within that, romantic relationships is sort of my niche.

So I'm not a clinician.

I'm a researcher, a human behavior.

expert and a coach.

So it's a little bit of a different sort of avenue in psychology, but you can practice at the master's level as well.

You just need a little bit more oversight and a little bit more

training under someone.

So can you diagnose me?

I don't do diagnoses, but attachment style isn't a mental health disorder.

So I could assess your attachment style if you wanted to.

Can you?

Yeah, absolutely.

But for people who are listening, what is an attachment style?

What does that mean?

Yeah, so attachment theory was coined in 1958 by a guy named John Bowlby, and it has been extended and refined since 1958.

So we have literally tens of thousands of empirical studies on attachment style, where essentially we have been able to show that our earliest childhood experiences kind of give us these blueprints about what it means to be us and what it means to be close to someone.

And those blueprints live in our subconscious.

And then we carry them into adulthood and we play them out in our romantic relationships.

So we've been able to really model attachment style as a predictor of behavior in relationships.

And it does a very good job of predicting people's behavior.

So, when you say like early development, how old are we talking?

Like, are we talking like my toddler years are now shaping what I do in my romantic relationships?

Believe it or not, key attachment years are from zero to five years old.

So, that's kind of like the foundation.

So, if you can imagine like building a house, the foundation and the frame are going to be zero to five years old.

But then, of course, you know, the things that happen to us after that can shape us and mold us to some degree,

but the foundation is really sat there so the big predisposition to whatever your attachment style is gonna be is really from those early years when you're a toddler yeah when you're zero to five which is kind of crazy can you change your attachment style absolute well absolutely I would say it's not very common for someone to go from one insecure style to another insecure style, but it is very doable to go from an insecure style to secure because that's what we're all kind of striving for is a secure attachment where we essentially can you know show up well in our relationships we can solve conflict well we communicate non-critically we can meet people's needs we can show up respectful during conflict and really be able to navigate the difficulties of relationships well what are the main types of attachment styles yeah that's a good question so there's four types that have been identified in the literature so we have three insecure styles and then we have secure so just to start with secure attachment those folks usually had caregivers that were pretty emotionally attuned to their kids.

So they were able to recognize when their kid was upset or needed some emotional support and they were really good at giving that emotional support.

And then they also demonstrated that, you know, if there's a conflict or a disruption, we talk through it, we have repair, we don't just kind of sweep it under the rug.

Those parents were able to hold good boundaries with their kids.

And then the parents of that child usually had a very

quality romantic relationship themselves.

So the parents were really modeling healthy relationship behavior to the kids.

So then, of course, that becomes their imprint that relationships are respectful and reciprocal.

And, you know, we talk through conflict instead of ignoring it or getting really reactive, things like that.

And so they go out and they, you know, usually are pretty successful in romantic relationships.

And then we have sort of this insecure spectrum where on one side of the spectrum, we have what we call attachment anxiety.

So attachment anxiety makes you want to connect.

It makes you want to pull your partner in, be close to your partner, seek intimacy.

And then on the other side of the spectrum, we have attachment avoidance.

So this is where people sort of like to keep their distance.

They push their partner back.

They don't want connection.

They want more independence.

And they really are more self-directed, self-focused versus relationship focused.

And then we have fearful avoidance and fearful avoidance has the whole attachment spectrum.

So they have anxiety and avoidance.

So you can be over here just in the anxious space.

We call those people anxious preoccupieds.

You can be over here in the avoidance space.

We call those dismissive avoidance.

And then you can have both sides of the spectrum.

You can be all over the place.

And so we call those fearful avoidance.

And they each have a lot of unique qualities.

So how do I determine what I have?

Okay.

So we look at predictors of attachment.

They tend to be childhood experiences, obviously, is the most weighted factor.

Then we look at things like emotional intelligence, comfort with emotional vulnerability.

Like, so how comfortable are you being open, revealing your deepest thoughts, feelings, you know, fears with your partner.

We look at conflict-related behaviors.

This is another big weighted factor.

So how do you handle conflict?

Do you tend to get maybe reactive?

Do you get anxious and want to figure it out right away?

Do you need to step back and take space?

Do you kind of freak out and shut down and run away?

There's lots of different ways that people handle conflict, and the different attachment styles have their own unique way.

I think I'm the one with all of it.

All of it?

Fearful avoidance?

Fearful, what is it?

Fearful avoidance.

That was my attachment style as well.

Okay, so how can someone like me or someone else that has an insecure attachment style move towards a secure attachment style?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

So sort of the hallmark of an insecure style is a very dysregulated nervous system around intimacy.

So for example, the anxious preoccupied person, they had what we call intermittent reinforcement in childhood.

So they usually describe, I had a good childhood, my parents loved me, both of my parents stayed married.

I mean, this is just the norm.

But there is usually something that happened in childhood that made the emotional attunement.

kind of inconsistent for the child.

So maybe it could be like mom was very emotionally available, but dad was very emotionally cold.

So you got attunement from mom, but you didn't get it from dad.

It could be that there was like a major stressor in the parents' life that sort of pulled them away from being able to give proper attunement to their kids.

Like somebody lost a job or somebody got sick or grandma came to live with you, you know, and it kind of pulled the parents away from the kids.

So they had an overall pretty good experience, but it was inconsistent enough to cause anxiety.

Like, I don't know when my needs are going to be met, right?

And so that inconsistency causes anxiety.

So inside of relationships, they're very anxious and they really are like very clingy and they have a lot of needs and they really want to be with their partner all the time.

Like their blueprint for intimacy is once we're together, we should always be together and we should do everything together and we should

like, you know, kind of be attached to the hip.

And unfortunately, they tend to attract dismissive avoidant people.

So, dismissive avoidance, they grew up with no emotional attunement and they actually usually report a good childhood as well.

So, they're usually like, oh, my parents were stayed together, like, everybody got along, had a good childhood.

But then, when we dig deeper, I'm like, would you go to your parents for emotional support?

And they usually look at me kind of weird, like with deer and headlights like uh no I never would have talked to my parents about like my problems or you know hard things and I say well why is that and they're like I don't I don't know it's just not what we did in our family so usually the norm is for the dismissive avoidant that they had parents that were sort of instrumentally supportive like mom packed lunches dad you know took them to sports practice and all of that stuff but they were parents that just didn't do feelings so really like if the child the young child would express feelings it would be like oh quiet down you're fine you know, don't be upset.

So there was a lot of dismissing of their emotions.

Okay.

And that's where we get the term dismissive avoidant because they grow up to dismiss other people's emotions.

They are very uncomfortable with their own emotions and the emotions of other people.

So they really keep their distance in relationships.

Oftentimes their partner complains like, you don't give me enough attention.

You don't prioritize me.

You, you know, just care about yourself.

You, you know, don't share your intimate, you know, thoughts with me.

They just like to keep their distance.

I mean, they are very uncomfortable with close connection and intimacy.

And then, fearful avoidance, where you have sort of both sides, comes from childhood trauma.

So, we can have big T traumas like abuse, parent with a mental illness, parent with a substance abuse issue, parents that went through a really nasty divorce, and kind of all of them.

Okay,

I get that.

It was me too.

You know, I grew up with a bipolar father and a dismissive avoidant mother.

And my dad was very unpredictable, had some rage episodes, very

never knew what you were going to get from him, you know?

And so when you have childhood trauma, it makes you a very hypervigilant person.

So whether you know you're doing it or not, as a child with a dysfunctional parent, you learn to read people very quickly.

Like you learn to read expressions.

You learn to read the vibe of the room, right?

Because if, say, dad is going to rage out, you want to look at his face and try to see like, are there cues there, right?

That means that I'm safe or I'm not safe.

And so fearful avoidants grow up in their, and they're very hypervigilant.

Like if I've never met a fearful avoidant that can't read somebody's emotion in like 2.5 seconds.

Like if you just know what someone is kind of feeling, thinking, like, and you can read a vibe very well, that's sort of the hallmark trait of fearful avoidance.

But their hypervigilance isn't always a good thing because sometimes they can make assumptions that aren't.

you know, true, like thinking your partner's mad at you when they're not really mad at you or taking a little cue from your partner.

Like if they take a deep sigh and you're like, oh, what's wrong?

Why are you so frustrated?

And they're like, I'm okay.

You know, it's fine.

And, you know, so they can kind of poke and prod and on about these little cues and really, you know, frustrate their partner.

And then when it comes to getting intimacy, the fearful avoidant has a deep wound of betrayal because if you have childhood trauma, essentially what gets imprinted is, I can't trust other people.

Like being close to people means potentially being hurt, because that's what I saw growing up, right?

My parent hurt me or my parents' relationship was dysfunctional.

So I imprinted that intimacy is very dangerous.

It's unsafe.

It's, you know, not reliable.

And that's all subconscious.

We're not walking around like, oh, wow, yeah,

intimacy is so unsafe.

Yeah.

But we play that out in our relationships.

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So the fearful avoidant will often seek connection.

And then when they feel like they've been hurt or they can get kind of overwhelmed, they can push their partner away really hard and kind of shut down and sort of go inside of themselves, which is the norm for the dismissive avoidant.

But for the fearful, they can go either way.

They can be very anxious and clingy, or they can push back and shut down and sink into their own independence for self-protection.

So then how does what types of therapies can help people change their attachment style?

I'm glad you reminded me that that was your original question.

So, the hallmark is that dysregulated nervous system around intimacy.

And anxious people are dysregulated when there's any space.

Avoidant people are dysregulated when there's too much closeness.

Fearful avoidant is very dysregulated, kind of all the time.

And so, what I teach people to do is to build capacity for security.

So, what I have found a lot of other people's approaches really lack is that capacity building where they give you a lot of awareness.

Like, okay, here are your patterns.

This is what you do.

And so, people come to me and they're like, I know I tend to shut down during conflict.

I know I tend to get really reactive.

I know I tend to be too clingy.

I know I tend to be too distant, but I don't know how to change it.

You know, I know I need to do something different and I try.

And maybe I can do it for a little while, but then quickly I revert back to all of my old patterns.

Why does this happen?

And I say, because your nervous system has become wired to behave this way in those situations.

And that happened during your development because of the relationships with your caregivers.

And so we have to work with the client individually on their nervous system to be able to, you know, process their own emotions, be comfortable processing their emotions.

So if you're a dismissive avoidant, they suppress all their emotions.

They don't deal with their emotions at all.

And so if you can't deal with your own emotions, of course you're going to get triggered when someone else brings emotion to you.

It's like, it's like trying to say, here's a basketball.

This is your basketball.

And I'm like, well, I don't know how to shoot a basketball.

And they're like, okay, well, here's somebody else's basketball.

Go shoot that.

You know, it's like, if I can't shoot my own basketball, I'm not going to be able to shoot another basketball or somebody else's.

Same thing with emotions.

If you can't process your own emotions, you can't deal with the emotions of other people.

And anxious people, they don't suppress they band-aid.

So they bring other people in to soothe them.

They like, if they can't get their partner to come soothe them, then they call their mom.

They vent to their friend.

They shop.

They eat.

they do something else to try to soothe themselves when really what I need what I teach people to do and what they need to be able to do to be secure is really connect to the emotions in their body and be able to sit with the discomfort of whatever they're feeling breathe through it acknowledge it and just allow the emotional process to complete that's how the brain decides to let it go and to actually drop into safety and we also do a lot of mindset work with people so we you know get people to use what we call metacognitive skills, which is being able to sort of observe your own thoughts, challenge them.

Each attachment style has a lot of pretty ingrained core thought processes associated with their attachment.

Okay.

And so you have to be able to learn to recognize those and challenge those.

Like the dismissal avoidant, their thoughts are super predictable.

They're usually like, I can't give you what you need.

You need somebody else that's more emotional than me.

Or this is so overwhelming.

Why are you always starting drama?

I don't like to fight.

I just want things to be peaceful.

So that sort of justifies why they don't participate in conflict, right?

Like you're being dramatic, just get over it.

You're being too sensitive.

This isn't necessary.

So their thoughts, like, this is, you're bringing this unnecessarily to me makes them like, it's the domino that starts the avoidance, right?

So we have to learn about our thought processes and really challenge them and really be aware of when we're telling ourselves these negative stories about our capacity or about our partner that really aren't true.

So it's really mastering your mind and then mastering your nervous system with your emotions.

Have you heard of, what is it called?

EMDR?

EMDR.

Do you think that's helpful?

I do think it's helpful for people with trauma.

So it is one of those things where the basis of the therapy is about sort of disconnecting your trauma from the emotional impact.

So you can eventually be able to think about very traumatic things that happen to you without your nervous system responding in that dysregulation.

And so it's, it's, I'd say it works better for like shock traumas versus complex trauma, which attachment trauma is usually pretty complex trauma.

It's multiple traumas sort of over and over and over again.

Okay.

But it still can be successful.

So it's a really great adjunct therapy, I think, for anybody that's experienced trauma.

Okay.

I didn't know that there was, I have C PTSD,

but I didn't know there was like a complex

Yeah, so that's complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

And it's just a version of PTSD where you have experienced, you know, many complicated traumas over the course of your life or in your childhood.

It's not like you got in a car accident and that's a one-time sort of shock trauma.

This is, you know, many instances where your nervous system either had too much or not enough.

That's really what trauma is, when your nervous system says, this is too much or this is not enough.

So how can people parent their children in a way that would hopefully give their kids like a secure attachment style?

So, empathy and attunement plus boundaries plus consistency.

Okay.

So, you know, a lot of people don't really know what emotional attunement is.

I have to tell them because they just weren't parented with it.

So, they don't know what it looks like.

So, I kind of give this example of like, maybe you have a three-year-old, little boy.

I know you have a lot of boys.

I do have a lot of boys.

You have a lot of boys and one girl, right?

And so, you know, imagine you're a little toddler on the playground and little boy falls down, skins his knee.

He's crying, mommy, mommy, mommy, you know, and so you go over there, and you're like, a dismissive avoidant parent might be like, oh, you're fine, quit crying.

That's just a little scrape and brush you off.

Now get back out there and play.

They really focus on like achievement and responsibility, totally bypassed the kids' emotions, didn't acknowledge them, shut them down, said, you know, you're fine, get up, go.

An emotionally attuned mother would handle that very differently.

They would say, oh, buddy, you fell down.

Oh, I know that hurts, doesn't it?

You're bleeding.

You're safe.

It's okay.

Let's go clean that up.

You know, I understand.

It does hurt, doesn't it?

It stings, doesn't it?

So you're really like actually acknowledging the experience that the child is having and the emotions that they might be having.

Like, oh, did that scare you?

Right.

So you're acknowledging their own emotional experience.

And that makes them sort of imprint this idea that, wow, okay, part of being close to someone is sharing your emotions and trying to understand other people's emotions.

That's what attunement is.

And so, you know, if you have a parent that is inconsistent with that that will cause the child to grow up with attachment anxiety if you have a parent that is very dismissive and doesn't acknowledge those emotions you're going to have a child that grows up with dismissive avoidance and then dysfunctional parents or parents that created trauma there may have been some attunement mixed in there but also with really scary moments or really dysfunctional behavior that causes the child to just not trust intimacy in general.

So I always say it's empathy and attunement, which is trying to understand your child's perspective, trying to understand their emotions, but with good boundaries.

That doesn't mean your kid walks all over you.

It might be something like they're having a meltdown because they didn't get their, you didn't give them the right color cup.

I mean, you know how kids are, right?

It's like one little thing when they're toddlers and it's like, it's a total meltdown.

So you could be like, buddy, I understand you want the green cup.

I know that's disappointing.

It's in the dishwasher.

I hate that for you, but you're just going to have to use the blue cup and, you know,

here you go right right right and then you just kind of stop right but you acknowledge the emotion you said it you know i understand you're disappointed because a lot of times kids are just looking for their viewpoint to be acknowledged right and once their emotions are acknowledged then they calm down right yeah right because it's they're trying to communicate in the way that they know how which oftentimes are just big emotions because they don't have the words to put to to it like oh i'm so disappointed i'm so frustrated right no they're just gonna be like i don't want that cup right yeah yeah and so if you can just give attunement, empathy, plus boundaries, plus consistency and being consistent is really key for kids.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

It's really hard as a parent.

I mean, you know, it's exhausting.

You know, they don't sleep when they're babies or sometimes toddlers.

My kids didn't sleep till they were like four.

Yeah.

So, you know, I was exhausted.

And then if you have rough relationships, like my first marriage was a nightmare.

It was very abusive.

There was a lot of infidelity on his part.

And I couldn't be a very attuned parent because I was always in crisis mode.

I was always just trying to deal with the crisis that was on the table.

And my older daughter, my kids are six years apart.

She really suffered.

And then her dad was an addict and he died in 2020 when she was getting ready to turn 10.

So, of course, she has fearful avoidance, right?

And so does my youngest.

And so we've had to do a lot of therapy and work on attachment.

And it's been really beneficial because attachment is really shapeable.

And that's the good news.

So it is shapeable.

It is shapeable.

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What would you say the difference is between an impact that a parent has on a child and their attachment style versus trauma?

Yeah, so impact, I would say, is like just the inconsistency of like the anxious preoccupied, right?

So, anxious preoccupied almost always, I've never had one in my practice say, I didn't know I was loved, right?

I didn't know I was loved.

I knew I was loved.

My parents said, I love you.

My parents hugged me.

My parents showed up, right?

It was just there were moments where maybe I really needed my parent and they were stressed out, or they were too busy, or they had to work a lot.

And so, there were these times where I was kind of left to my own devices, but there was enough there that I still learned that intimacy and affection are part of relationships.

And it's just that sometimes they want a little too much of that because the inconsistency made them afraid that they, that it could leave, right?

So they kind of fear abandonment.

Dismissive avoidance, their trauma is neglect trauma, which depending upon the severity of it can be.

pretty impactful like if it's kind of minor where parents maybe try to be emotionally supportive but they just don't really know how so they listen and but maybe maybe they just give, you know, generic advice, like problem solving.

They still showed up.

They still said, I'm here.

I care.

They just didn't know how to really acknowledge emotion and focus more on the emotional experience than the problem solving aspect.

And then some dismissive avoidants have more severe emotional neglect.

So they were, you know, maybe even instrumentally neglected where their parents just were absent.

So they were doing things on their own that were too early for their development.

Like maybe they were four and like cooking eggs on the stove, right?

For themselves.

And then we have things, so it's definitely a spectrum where it can be maybe mild impact all the way up to something that the nervous system does consider traumatic.

And for fearful avoidance, the nervous system almost always has had traumatic experiences in childhood.

Okay.

I think I'm still feel, what am I?

Fearful avoidant.

Yeah, I think.

So

you might struggle to trust others, struggle to trust yourself,

Usually have a history of picking partners that maybe aren't the best, fearful avoidance are really attracted to drama and chaos, whether they know it or not.

It's a subconscious thing, right?

Like if you believe subconsciously that everybody's going to betray you, you're going to be attracted to people who give you subtle signs that they might betray you eventually.

Why is that?

It's because, you know, the subconscious seeks the familiar.

It views the familiar as safe.

It's sort of like the devil you know versus the devil you don't, right?

And so the subconscious is like, well, let me try to repeat the pattern and see if I get a different ending.

So we're insane.

Yeah.

I mean, it's

controlled chaos.

Killing the chaos.

Just another episode.

That's so funny.

Have you heard of breadcrumbing in relationships?

I have.

Is that associated with any type of attachment style?

Absolutely.

The dismissive avoidant absolutely will breadcrumb you.

They will breadcrumb you to death.

And breadcrumbing is intermittent reinforcement.

So it's getting your needs met just a little bit, bit enough for you to kind of hang on and have hope, but not enough for you to feel safe and happy inside of the relationship.

So dismissive avoidance are famous, notorious.

They always breadcrumb eventually.

In the dating phase, it's usually after the six month mark.

That's when they start pulling back.

That's when they start getting uncomfortable in the relationship with the intimacy, the closeness, any conflict.

So they start backing away, but then they'll throw out just enough little breadcrumbs for you to feel like, okay, maybe we're still connected.

We're together, but this doesn't feel like it did in the beginning.

And then in marriage, they definitely do that to their partners.

They're way too distant, but they do give just enough to just keep that partner hanging on, hoping that maybe they'll give more if they can, you know, say the right thing or do the right thing.

And sometimes fearful avoidants that are really shut down in their dismissive side, and they usually kind of react in opposition to partners.

So fearful avoidance, if they're with somebody that's very anxious, they'll kind of want to back up from that.

That doesn't feel good to them.

So they might breadcrumb in that scenario.

But if they're with somebody that's really really avoidant, like a dismissive avoidant, they'll be more anxious.

So they'll be the one receiving the breadcrumbs.

They can go either way.

What if I was breadcrumbed and then in my next relationship, then I breadcrumbed?

Yes.

So you were the, in the first relationship, you were the more anxious partner.

And in the second relationship, you were the more avoidant partner.

So why does that happen?

So fearful avoidance, again, they just have the whole spectrum.

It used to be called disorganized attachment because it is disorganized, right?

There's no consistent pattern of whether you will be anxious or avoidant.

Okay.

It's sort of like it just depends upon the usually what partner you're with and how they are behaving because fearful avoidance are always trying to access intimacy while avoid being hurt.

So whatever that looks like based on the relationship is the way that they're going to act.

So if their partner is more distant, they're going to get more anxious because they want the intimacy.

But in a relationship, if someone is too close or if someone is giving them signs that they might hurt them or they have hurt them, that'll oftentimes make the partner be more avoidant and back up into their avoidance for self-protection.

Okay, that sounds like me.

It's hard.

It was me too.

I totally get it.

And were you able to do like talk therapy to get through it and work on it?

I actually had like a little bit of a nervous breakdown in 2020.

And I'm, you know, I'm not afraid to talk about it because I think it's more common than we think.

It was more of a physical breakdown because of stress.

My body just gave up essentially.

So in 2020, well, I got divorced in 2018.

I was very trauma bonded to my first husband.

I actually legally divorced him and then got back together with him in 2019 because, you know, death gasp, I guess, right?

And that ended very, very badly.

It ended very violently with a protective order.

And then we went through a very nasty custody battle that was extremely stressful.

And then literally two weeks before we were supposed to have our final hearing, it got delayed.

We ended up going to mediation for me to get some protections from his drinking because he was drinking and driving the kids.

And

it was really bad.

So, got a few protections, but then he died two weeks later of Oxycontin and alcohol overdose in his truck.

And I had no idea he was using opiates at that time.

I knew that, you know, the alcohol was the big issue in our marriage.

But I think he had turned to opiates to try to come off of alcohol.

And it just ended up being a very lethal combination

and so and then at within that same time frame my mom who was like my biggest supporter and always there for me and always there for my kids she got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer um and she my dad was already had dementia and was in a wheelchair and was pretty immobilized so i became the caregiver to both my parents um during that time i had just lost the father of my kids so i was you know obviously really traumatized over that um and the stress leading up to that.

And then I was dating a dismissive avoidant partner for about a year and a half, off and on.

And he just pieced out.

You know, that's what dismissive avoidants often do in response to their partner's stress or illness or things.

They get very uncomfortable with that.

They don't want to be a caregiver.

They don't know how to handle people's emotions.

So they kind of usually piece out.

Like they're the partner that's going to leave you if you get cancer, right?

That's just that's part of their blueprint.

They're so uncomfortable with anything that looks like weakness or emotional dependence.

So I was sort of in a hole.

And then my dog of 16 years had to be put down.

So it was like this, it felt like everybody who was important to me was just being ripped away from me.

And I ended up waking up one day with vestibular migraine that was chronic for almost a year.

So vestibular migraine is very, it's a weird diagnosis.

It doesn't behave like regular migraines.

You're like dizzy 24-7 and like blurry vision 24-7.

So I basically couldn't function for like eight solid months and it didn't fully resolve for about a year.

So that was my sort of breakdown.

My nervous system just went, we've had enough.

We can't do any more of this.

We're going to give you this illness to put you in bed and make you slow down because you've exhausted every resource that you have.

And so that's when I met Jesus because I was so hopeless.

I had no hope.

I really did want to die.

But I had two kids who had just lost their other parent and I was not going to do that to my children.

So I was like, I have no choice.

I have to live.

But I don't know how I'm going to live if this never goes away.

Because sometimes people get vestibular migraine and it just never goes away.

And they have to live with it.

And they have to live with it forever.

And so it's sort of like a medication trial and error and just, you know, trying different therapies and stuff to try to help.

So God really met me where I was.

I would say that I called myself a Christian, but I didn't really have a lot of faith.

I just kind of like, yeah, yeah, Jesus, okay.

But when you have nothing, I mean, I was broke too.

I spent all my money on the custody battle, you know, lost half the support for my kids because my, they, you know, their parent died.

And I was in a really bad place financially as well.

And so I just had no, I had no hope, but God met me where I was and lifted my spirit enough for me to start doing some deeper work.

And I, yes, I was in therapy, but I also, I'm a scientist.

So I kind of started digging into the science.

Like, how do I heal my nervous system?

Because I have had so much relational trauma

that I have, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to have healthy relationships or healthy intimacy because I knew I was part of the problem too.

Even though I was in an abusive relationship, I kept coming back.

I kept picking partners that could not love me

properly.

And I wanted to be loved properly.

My parents had a very...

you know, dysfunctional relationship and I just didn't want to go to my deathbed, not,

you know, being able to find, you know, healthy love.

And also, I just needed needed to be able to function.

I was very traumatized, very anxiety-ridden, and it was definitely affecting my kids.

And so, I just started reading the literature.

You know, I stumbled upon Alan Gordon's podcast, Tell Me About Your Pain.

I stumbled upon Nicole Sachs' work

with her, her journaling methods.

And I just started looking at some of the people that they were citing and going to their research and digging into the science.

And I started working on my nervous system and doing a lot of exercises for true emotional processing and completion.

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What's really missing for people that they don't ever learn how to do, sometimes even in therapy, is really truly sit with their own emotional experience in the body because the language of the subconscious is in feeling of the body.

So the tight chest, the pit in your stomach, the shaky hands, you know, the tears in your eyes, that's all the language of your subconscious mind trying to tell you

what it's feeling.

Right.

And you can only take the message and then therefore release the emotion if you allow it to come fully through the body, feel it, accept it, not judge it.

And I started doing that and I started really working on my mindset.

I had a really bad victim mentality, like, oh, woe is me.

All these things keep happening to me.

I'm so oppressed.

I'm so, you know, I've just had such a bad deal in life, you know, and I was like, you know what?

I'm tired of that.

That's keeping me stuck.

I started viewing myself as someone that could overcome it, someone that could thrive, someone that could, you know, grow and learn from my experiences and come out the other side and overcomer.

And the shift in mindset, plus really working on my nervous system and emotional processing, it completely transformed who I was.

And I put myself back on the dating market like a year later and I met my second husband.

And he's the best thing that's honestly ever happened to me besides my kids and God.

So

he's actually the one that was like, you need to teach people how to do this.

Like you need, you have such a powerful story.

And I was like, I don't know how to start a business.

And he was like, well, I do.

So

he actually helped me start my business.

And

it's massively grown in the last three years.

So I've been.

What type of attachment style does he have, though?

He was a fearful avoidant as well.

So he grew up.

His dad was not in his life or was in his life extremely sporadically.

His dad was a Vietnam vet and alcoholic.

Their parents had a pretty dysfunctional marriage.

His parents got divorced when he was like two.

And then he just, his dad was just one of those, like, you sit on the porch and wait and they never show up type of dads.

And when he was with his dad, there was a lot of drinking, a lot of like one time his dad was arrested and put in jail, and he had to like go with his grandma.

And, you know, so there was lots of complex trauma.

And then he grew up in poverty.

So

he,

you know, a lot of times they like were squatting or they had

limited access to food um no heat you know things like that and then his mom was able to um go back to nursing school and so she's kind of an overcomer too she kind of got herself out of poverty and um was able to give him you know a pretty decent life and he did have you know a very a loving mother so that was sort of a saving grace but still it didn't take away from the impact that dad had and and some impact from poverty as well.

And he has actually been married twice.

I'm his third wife.

So give you hope for people who have maybe had two divorces or even three divorces.

He kind of did what I did.

His second marriage ended really badly.

He had two children, one from each marriage.

And he's just like, you know, I am part of the problem here.

Like, I know I'm not picking good people and I'm also part of the problem.

And so he spent a year, the same year that I did in this exact same time, really diving into God, really trying to dive into the self-help world, you know, what is going on with me, you know, how can I control my emotions?

How can I, you know, be a force of good in this world?

And we just met each other at kind of the same time in our healing journeys.

And because we're both fearful avoidance, we have both the same deep needs and the same wounds.

So we get each other.

And when two fearful avoidants get together, I call them the best friends, mortal enemies dynamic because they can be best friends because they share the same needs and they both crave deep intimacy and they're both deep feelers, but they're also toxic fighters.

So fearful avoidance can either like they can do a bunch of different toxic things stonewall silent treatment passive aggressive yell you know um temp temper tantrums or you know all sorts of like behaviors right

um

and so if you can work on how you show up in conflict and how your nervous system works in conflict we are able to navigate conflict very successfully and so i feel like we have the real best friendship and the intimacy and we can navigate conflict, which is something that I've never been able to have in any other relationship.

But to,

what is it called?

Careful avoidance.

They can have a healthy relationship.

They can.

If they learn, again, I think you have to move more towards security.

You have to be able to not be that toxic fighter.

You have to be able to

have enough safety in your nervous system where when you have safety in your nervous system, I guess I should say, you fire from your prefrontal cortex, which is this part of your brain, which is like the smart human part of your brain.

When you are in fight, flight, or freeze, you are in more of the emotional primitive part of your brain.

So you're sort of uninhibited and you're like shooting from the hip, right?

Whereas when you're firing from your prefrontal cortex, because you've gathering safety in your nervous system, you're very deliberate, you're mindful, you're able to keep calm, you're open, you're curious.

That's where your empathy lives.

So you want to be firing from that part of the brain.

So it's really learning to work with your nervous system to switch one part of your brain off and another part of your brain on with that matter.

So my therapist told me, like, if there's something that happens, you do like,

what are the two things you see, two things you smell,

something like that.

But you have to do it during calm times so that it becomes second nature for when there is a crisis.

If you don't have those tools on a regular Tuesday, you're not going to be able to use those when there is.

that trauma or whatever it is that you're going through.

That is absolutely correct.

And that is one of the things that I sort of pound into the ground in my coaching programs is that you have to use these skills throughout moving through life every day because you have to get muscle memory because the brain works, you know, just like a muscle.

It's based on repetition.

Anything you've ever learned is based on doing it over and over again.

And so if you want to be able to challenge your thoughts in a tense moment, when you want to be able to gather safety in your nervous system, you have to do those things.

outside of being triggered, outside of when it's difficult, just in your normal everyday life.

You're exactly right.

And so these skills take muscle memory and that is a good grounding tool.

That's kind of a bottom-up tool that can be really good because when you are feel safe, you are mindful and connected to the present, but the reverse is true as well.

If you connect to the present and you, and you, you know, use your, your intention to be mindful, you're creating safety because safety is being connected to the present.

Okay, that makes sense.

I would love to pick your brain about why someone like me would maybe have seven children

and four fathers.

Because you described looking for, you wanted to be loved correctly, but you also knew you were the problem, part of the problem.

So someone like me could say the same.

Yeah.

So we all have our own unique journeys, you know, and I think that for a lot of people that have had trauma, they find

love and safe connection through their children, which because children do provide a lot of safe connection.

They love you.

Even when you mess up, they love you, right?

They all, they're kind of, They love you unconditionally.

And if you don't have access to safe love, that can sometimes be something that you can really lean into and rely on and sort of delve into that parent role and feel safe and connected with your children.

And so that can be a beautiful thing.

But I think,

you know, when you've kind of gone through multiple partners, which, you know, I

I have had my history of bad decisions I have.

And of course, those were from my attachment blueprints.

But But it's because you just don't have the skills to navigate difficulty.

And you're usually with somebody that probably doesn't have those skills either.

And two very dysregulated people or two people who have trauma around intimacy are going to have a hard time navigating intimacy.

And so fearful avoidance are just notorious for picking people that will abandon them, that will abuse them, that will betray them.

And it just becomes, again, that self-fulfilling prophecy where the subconscious is driving the ship and you're not consciously trying to choose someone that maybe betrays you or abandons you,

but your subconscious tunes into those keys early on.

And it's like, oh, there it is.

That's the familiar.

But I can get a different ending this time.

And then I'll be fine.

Then I'll be healed if I get that different ending.

So your subconscious is just searching for the happiness and the different ending.

And so, you know, you can't blame yourself.

You don't know what you don't know.

You go into those relationships with good intentions and you've had beautiful children come out of them.

And I know, at least for me, you don't regret your children.

They are, you know,

you know, the beautiful thing that can come out of the ashes.

Right, right, right.

No, that makes sense.

I just wish it didn't take me four times to learn the lesson.

I get it.

I promise you.

I totally understand.

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What is some relationship advice that everyone could use?

Yeah, really go after your attachment security.

Like look into attachment science because it is just now sort of trending, whereas it's an old theory that has had a lot of science behind it.

But where mental health practitioners, therapists, they are being trained and triaged to really focus on the mental health epidemic that we we have in the U.S.

So we have so much anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, OCD, things like that.

Their training has to be sort of triaged to treat those things.

Whereas attachment theory is more of a luxury of theories to learn, right?

It's really focused on healing relationships when most people are getting very, very little training in that area because they have so many people that they're dealing with that are mentally ill and they are just trying to keep people alive alive and trying to keep people functioning.

So, in terms of clinical training, a lot of people aren't being trained in attachment because again, they're just trying to be trained in as short of time as possible.

A lot of these programs are now like one-year programs instead of two or three-year programs because we need, we have such a shortage of mental health providers, unfortunately, compared to the mental health crisis that we have in this country.

So,

go and research attachment and maybe find a provider or a coach that is an expert in attachment and can work from that lens because it's a really powerful lens.

It has great predictive power and really focus on you

because a lot of people that come to me are like, well, how do I get my partner to insert whatever here, whatever need, right?

And I always say, well, if you're in that mindset of how do I change my partner, you're going to fail because you can't change other people.

You can only work on yourself and change how you present yourself and how you behave in the relationship.

And sometimes that makes a positive difference when one person sort of works on their stuff and can show up more respectful, can meet the other person's needs, can work through conflict.

The other person is much less triggered and then they kind of move towards security.

But sometimes that doesn't happen.

Sometimes your partner needs to do their own work because, you know, they're very insecure.

They've had a lot of trauma.

So you have to focus on you.

That's all you can control in any relationship is you and how you show up and what your boundaries are and how you communicate.

So look into attachment, focus on doing the healing work yourself.

Do you think that your attachment style can impact the relationships you have with siblings or non, I guess, romantic relationships?

Yeah, to a lesser degree, because nobody is going to trigger you in the same way that your romantic partner and your kids and your parents do.

Your romantic partner probably being the person that can trigger you the most, especially if you have insecure attachment.

And so friendships, we see attachment style maybe have a little bit of an influence, depending upon how close that friendship is and how important to you that friendship is.

But people are usually able to show up a lot more secure in their friendships than they are in their romantic relationships.

Why is that?

Why can our partners trigger us so much differently?

Because they represent true intimacy and what it means to be close to someone.

And that mirrors the relationship of our earliest caregivers.

Like our caregivers were our window into what does it mean to be close to someone when we were little, right?

And so that plays out in adulthood when the person that we're with represents the most intimate relationship that we can have, our romantic partner.

And so that's always going to trigger the nervous system the most.

The subconscious is very concerned with the survival of the species, right?

It views romantic relationships as very necessary to keep us all alive as humans.

So when the subconscious goes, oh, this is disconnection or, oh, this is problem with your partner, it also simultaneously is sort of considering that that's a threat to the survival of your genetics.

So it gets very upset at that.

It doesn't, it wants to make sure, it makes you very aware that you need to make sure that this is okay so that we can continue our own genetics and the species in general, in general.

That's so interesting.

Going back to the whole situation about like multiple partners and seeking out, and I said I was insane.

Whenever I've had a child with someone, I don't want the dad anymore.

What is that called?

I think that that's like the ultimate intimate experience with someone to have a child with them.

Like there's no greater intimate experience than being going through pregnancy and childbirth and having a child with them.

And I think what might be happening to you is that's just too much closeness for your avoidance side.

It's too much intimacy.

It was like you did it.

And then there's like this rebound effect where your nervous system went, oh my gosh, that was so much.

That's this is just way too close.

This is just way too much.

And so you want to push back against that and create some distance.

That's not atypical for a fearful avoidant, honestly, because

they can get overwhelmed with intimacy as well.

I mean, usually they're, they're more overwhelmed by betrayal, but they can get overwhelmed with just the closeness too.

And so you go through something that vulnerable, that intimate, that important, it can make your nervous system kind of collapse and be like, no, this is too unsafe.

You got to, you got to go away.

But you also said betrayal, and they also did that simultaneously.

So it was like having a baby at the same time as a betrayal.

Oh, goodness.

Been there.

So interesting.

So yeah.

So of course, if there was a betrayal involved, your nervous system would go, oh, heck no, especially after you have that really close, you know, vulnerable experience with someone.

So you're in the most vulnerable state you can be in, which is pregnancy, postpartum, you know, early, you know.

child years, you know, as a parent, it's a very vulnerable state for the mother.

And then you have somebody that betrays you during that vulnerable state.

Of course, you would shut down and push away and say, no, I have to protect myself at all costs because I also have to protect this child.

Oh, so interesting.

What attachment styles do you think are the most compatible, if any?

Yes.

So obviously secure was secure.

That's what we're all sort of looking for.

And security tends to have like this magnetic force.

I always tell people.

If you're worried about not finding somebody, don't worry about that.

There's so many people in the world, right?

Like you think you won't find somebody, but you will.

But it's what energy do you put out there?

And what, and how do you behave in the dating phase?

And if you're secure, you're going to be repelled by by red flags.

You're going to be

really looking for the right things.

Like, does someone meet your needs?

Is someone able to handle conflict calmly and work through it with you?

And is someone consistent?

And is someone loyal?

And are they honest?

Secure people are very attracted to those things.

Whereas insecure people in the dating phase, they really, you know, kind of are attracted to the red flags.

Like their nervous system gets confused between fear and excitement.

So

they end up with somebody who then they're fundamentally very incompatible with.

Insecure attracts insecure, but usually of the opposite type.

So we have usually like an anxious preoccupied with a dismissive avoidant or a fearful avoidant who's more anxious with a dismissive avoidant or two fearful avoidants together.

I would say out of all of the attachment combinations of the insecure types, I would probably take two fearful avoidance just because at least they, if they can just learn to navigate conflict better,

the connection is there.

They don't have to work on meeting each other's needs or having connection most of the time.

It's just in conflict, it usually starts going awry.

And then if they have too many negative conflict cycles, then the relationship breaks down.

But at least the needs can be met for each other, you know, and they can create a really strong foundation at the beginning of the relationship because they're both very deep feelers, very open to intimacy.

They want that best friend relationship established.

And so that's my favorite insecure combination to work with because they need less work than usually like the highly anxious with the highly avoidant or the fearful with the dismissive is a really real train wreck combination too.

So anxious preoccupied with the dismissive avoidant, that can be really difficult.

Usually they don't fight very much because they're both very afraid of conflict, but their relationship just turns into like a roommate situation because the anxious is like not speaking up for their needs and not setting boundaries with the avoidant person because they're so afraid if I speak up and say what I need, then I'm going to be abandoned by this avoidant person.

So they just kind of keep to themselves and act like everything's okay, but they're dying on the inside.

And then the dismissive avoidants just checked out and they think everything's fine because there's no conflict.

So for them, their biggest need is peace.

So if they're getting peace and harmony, then they feel like everything's okay.

So the APDA usually isn't very conflictual, but it definitely fizzles out and people feel really disconnected and strained in their relationship.

The FA with the DA is a train wreck relationship.

So the fearful avoidant person, deepest need is to be understood, very deep feeler, fears betrayal, wants connection with trying to avoid betrayal.

So they essentially want people to like their partners to study them and to use that data to just meet their needs, right?

So they don't have to ask.

For the fearful avoidant, if you have to ask for a need to be met, like it's like it doesn't count, right?

So fearful avoidance, because they're hyper vigilant, they're hyper-attuned.

So they can pick up on people's needs really easily and meet people's needs.

Right.

and so they just expect that everybody can do that in return the dismissive avoidant has blinders on like they literally have these figurative blinders that they walk around with because if you're pushed into hyper independence at a very young age you your brain's attention system has to wire towards self-focus to keep you safe so they walk around like what do i need what is going on with me today how can i serve myself today and they just don't think about their partner very much and then their partner's like how could could you not consider me?

And then they feel shame.

And they're like, I don't, I don't know.

Like, I just didn't think about it.

And so they just, they're super disconnected.

They don't realize they're disconnected.

They don't realize they're selfish or self-focused.

So the fearful avoidant feels extremely betrayed by them.

You don't give me time.

You don't give me attention.

You don't want to deeply know me, which is what I need to trust you and to feel safe.

And then during conflict, the fearful avoidance reactivity and criticism and anger is the thing that triggers the dismissive avoidant the most.

They have a wound of defectiveness.

So they kind of feel like they're broken on the inside and not capable of giving people what they need.

And when you criticize them, it just their subconscious goes, see, you're super defective.

You're never going to get it right.

You're just not meant for this.

You're not built for relationships.

So they withdraw.

Or they get defensive and then withdraw.

One of two things.

Okay.

What was the one you said is with blinders on?

The dismissive avoidant.

Yeah.

So we have the fearful who's hyper-vigilant, who's like very attuned to their partner.

And then you have the DA or the dismissive avoidant who's very not attuned to their partner, very walking around with their own blinders on.

So that feels very like a betrayal to the FA.

Like you don't notice me, you don't share, you know, deep things with me, you don't prioritize me.

You know, I feel kind of invisible in this relationship.

So they come in with their reactivity, like, you're not meeting my needs.

You didn't even text me all day yesterday, or you don't even hug me when I walk in the door.

You know, they sort of have these complaints.

And then the dismissive avoidant, because their biggest need is peace and harmony and they have a wound of defectiveness, they get super triggered by the criticism.

They get defensive back, which is a way to protect them from their shame of their defectiveness wound, and then they withdraw and shut down.

And when they withdraw and shut down, the fearful avoidance is like, well, you must not even love me.

You don't even want to work this out.

You're just like stonewalling me.

And that's not, they're not trying to be hurtful, but they don't know their nervous system freezes up.

They don't know what to say.

They don't know what to do.

And they can't make themselves go back and try to repair it because they're wounding.

I feel like over the last few years, narcissism and narcissists has become almost like a buzzword and everybody is a narcissist do you think that it could be actually

um dismissive avoidant is that what it was a lot of people yes a lot of people um i get those comments all the time on my social media when i do videos about the fearful or the dismissive they'll be like that sounds like narcissism and what i will say is

Narcissism is at the trait level.

So it's ingrained into your personality.

So it's going to show up in all aspects of your life if you're a narcissist.

Attachment is just a pattern of behavior.

So it's very flexible.

And, And, you know, once you get the right tools, you can make very profound changes in your attachment.

And people who are insecurely attached aren't usually trying to be hurtful.

They're operating from their own trauma responses.

So a dismissive avoidant isn't trying to stonewall you because they want to have the power and they want to make you feel pain.

They're stonewalling you because their own nervous system is in a freeze response over their own shame and over, you know, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to handle conflict because conflict wasn't wasn't a norm in their house.

So they are just sort of like isolated and they're scared and they're sad and they, and then their emotional suppression kicks in where they kind of check out and associate.

So they're not trying to hurt you with their stonewalling.

They just can't, you know, make their nervous system

safe enough to where they feel like they can go back and reconnect.

They feel very frozen.

And you can't just like white knuckle through your trauma responses, right?

Whereas a narcissist, they're going to stonewall you because it's a way for them to take power.

They know they're doing it.

They know it hurts you.

They don't care.

It's all about.

Do I know that I have control over you, right?

Can I make sure that I am, you know, you are under my spell?

And that's what gives me feelings of validity and worth and fills the deep void inside of me.

And they're far, far more destructive and far, far more hurtful.

So I think we, you know, not everybody is a narcissist.

Most people just have insecure attachment, but inherently it can feel manipulative.

It can feel manipulative if somebody isn't speaking to you, right?

Even if it's because they're in a shame spiral and their nervous system has sort of dissociated, it feels the same way as a narcissist who's stonewalling you, right?

You're being stonewalled either way, but it's what's behind that.

Narcissism is intention,

right?

It's it, yeah, it is very much all about whatever validation they can get or supply they can get to fill the deep emptiness that always travels with them no matter where they go.

Insecurely attached people don't walk around feeling empty.

They walk around, you know, and having relatively normal lives.

They just have these sort of dysfunctional behaviors around intimacy.

Whereas narcissists, like their narcissism causes difficulty in other areas of their life.

How can one differentiate between the two?

Sometimes it's really, really hard because narcissists are very, very good at manipulating people.

So they can manipulate therapists, psychologists, etc.

And so if you're not seeing the behind the scenes, behind closed doors, intimate behavior as a professional, you might believe that they are healthy and functional.

And so

sometimes it's just really hard to tell.

Usually people with attachment trauma, if they're in long-term relationships or marriages, they have a lot more moments where there's some good.

Narcissists almost always eventually make things completely destructive all the way around.

Like the good times eventually are almost nil to none.

And then there's just this real strong overtone of, I want you under my control.

I'm the dictator.

I'm the powerful one and you are not.

And I'll do whatever it takes to keep this power.

Whereas insecurely attached people can often come back and feel very remorseful about their behavior, right?

When they've had a chance to sit with it and their nervous system calms down, they can often be like yes i shouldn't have said that or okay i shouldn't have done that with a narcissist they're never going to take accountability it's always going to be your fault always

and some very severe insecurely attached people can behave that way as well but they wouldn't have the other diagnostic criteria of like the grandiosity or you know needing to associate with powerful people special people you know

there's diagnostic criteria online you can google dsm criteria for narcissism and you can kind of look if you're ever, you just have to have five of the eight.

So like I said,

to be a narcissist.

So narcissism is on a spectrum.

So healthy narcissism is really like, if you think about from one to 10, healthy narcissism is like a six out of 10.

Oh.

Okay.

So you want to actually be tipped a little bit towards narcissism because that makes you successful.

You're, then you can advocate for yourself.

Then you're more likely to, you know, take opportunities, take chances.

Below five is actually what we call echoism.

And echoism is your boundaryless, you're a doormat.

You don't want to be seen.

You want to sort of be hidden.

You know, you don't feel like you have value and you have worth and you, you know, get walked all over.

So echoism isn't necessarily a good thing.

So you want to be like a six out of 10.

It's when we start to get to the eight, nine, ten, especially the nine and the ten, then we're looking at disordered behavior.

So people can have some narcissistic traits, but not be narcissists.

Okay, fair.

If that makes sense.

No, that makes complete sense.

How would having a parent as a narcissist or a sociopath or a psychopath impact someone's attachment style?

Yes, that's very great.

Because I think, correct me if I'm wrong, obviously, but narcissists can mimic or so, which one can mimic like empathy?

Psychopaths.

I mean, they both can.

They both can mimic empathy.

I would say, you know, psychopaths are more

cool.

You have to think about psychopaths as like cool, calculated, you know, they play the long game.

They can murder people and not care, right?

So that's a true psychopath.

Like I will do whatever it takes to get whatever I need from people and I could not care less how much someone hurts or suffers.

Sociopaths are more reactive to their environment.

So yes, they lack empathy and struggle with remorse, but they're more impulsive.

They're more likely to get in trouble because they act on anger or act on impulse, where a psychopath can have extreme control and play that long game in order to get what they want, right?

Sociopaths are more

like, think about like a Tony Soprano, okay?

Like his temper gets him every single time, right?

Like he gets in trouble because he has no impulse control.

That's more sociopathic.

Narcissists can be sociopaths, but not all narcissists are sociopaths or psychopaths.

So when we think about narcissism being sociopathic, we think about like the dark triad, which includes, you know, Machiavellianism, which is like exploitation

and things like that.

So they have other sort of dark personality traits,

which leads them to be what's called a malignant narcissist, which is sort of the overlap between

psychopathy or sociopathy and narcissism.

So not all narcissists are sociopaths, but they can be if they have those other overlapping traits.

And how does that relate to attachment styles then?

Yes.

So it's fundamentally just a different beast than attachment.

You have to think about like attachment as like the bottom layer, and then we can pile these other things on top of it that are distinct disorders.

Okay.

So, attachment style, again, is not a disorder.

It's just a pattern of behavior based on your experiences, you know, and that is very, very flexible.

Whereas personality disorders are ingrained into more trait-level characteristics.

So, they're more static or stable.

It's kind of like part of who you are as a person.

Okay.

So, but someone that has a psychopath or a narcissist as a parent could still have a normal secure attachment style?

Well, it's unlikely.

Okay, it's very unlikely.

So I believe that my dad was a covert narcissist.

I'm not sure completely if he was disordered because, again, he had bipolar disorder, which muddies the waters.

But my grandmother was definitely a narcissist and he had a lot of abuse as a child.

And he didn't know who his, well, he was told that his stepdad was his dad.

And then at 18, a family member revealed that wasn't actually his biological father.

And that stepfather was pretty abusive to him.

So he kind of had a lot of attachment and relational trauma as well.

And he had some more covert or vulnerable narcissistic characteristics.

So usually,

usually, not always, but usually children of narcissistic parents develop fearful avoidance or sometimes narcissism themselves.

Oh, interesting.

I wonder what Susie is.

What is one thing that people get totally wrong about love and attachment styles?

That awareness equals change.

Awareness of a problem does not mean that you can change it because these things are tied to how your nervous system functions and your nervous system is always going to override your intentions.

So until you fix your nervous system, just being aware that you have certain patterns or being aware of what the problems are in your relationship does not mean you're going to be able to fix it.

It's not enough.

Because it's not enough.

Because your trauma responses are going to override your intentions.

And so that's why you have to do capacity building.

You have to build your capacity inside of your mind and inside of your own nervous system to fundamentally show up differently in your relationships over time.

And that's a process.

It's not something where things can change overnight.

That's why if you have somebody who's treated you really poorly and they come crawling back and they say, I'm going to change, I'm going to change.

It's like, okay, well, just because you now know that you were wrong doesn't mean that person's going to change at all.

So be very, you know, mindful of that, right?

So be careful of the second chances.

Change requires a lot of effort and it requires time.

Because if someone is behaving in these ways because their nervous system is wired that way towards, you know, having these responses, you know, in difficult moments or related to intimacy in general, just because they know it doesn't mean that their nervous system is going to do something different.

So it takes, it takes work and it takes time to change.

So I have, actually, that brings me to another question I had about, so like someone that cheats in an, in a romantic relationship, if we have a serial cheater and now all of a sudden they realize, okay, I want to change, they might not be able to.

Correct, unless they get the right, the right tools and they are dedicated to using those tools.

What type of attachment style do cheaters have?

Serial cheaters.

Most of them are dismissive avoidant.

Okay.

Because dismissive avoidance gets very triggered by intimacy itself.

So I always say the three C's, closeness, commitment, and conflict.

Those are their three big triggers.

So closeness, commitment, and conflict are all going to pop up as the relationship goes on for longer, right?

And so at the beginning of a relationship, their subconscious mind views their partner as, quote, low stakes, meaning like, well, if this doesn't work out, it is what it is.

I haven't known this person very long.

I'm, you know, it's like, I'll move on.

I'll get over it.

But as they commit and as they get deeper into the relationship and there's more longevity and, you know, obviously then conflicts can start creeping up and there's more pressure for them to meet their partner's expectations consistently.

That's when they start to, what we call deactivate or pull back.

And so they're human and they do have a need for vulnerability, but they suppress it.

To them, it's shameful, okay, on a subconscious level.

And so they often cheat and bring a new partner into the situation because then that partner becomes the low stakes partner and they can repeat the honeymoon phase and they can be vulnerable and they can get the chemical rushes without a lot of expectation and without a lot of the conflict that they have with their long, long-term partner.

And so they don't realize that that's what's happening.

They just sort of feel like, oh, I'm falling out of love with long-term partner and then I meet this really great short-term partner and now they're the best thing that's ever happened to me.

But then what happens when they stay with a fair partner?

That becomes the high-stake partner eventually.

And then they start to back away and feel overwhelmed.

And I see this so much in dismissive avoidance that have been married a couple of times and most of their marriages have ended because of their infidelity.

They had such high hopes for the next partner because in the beginning, that new partner made them feel so different.

Well, it was only because it was a low-stakes relationship.

It wasn't anything to do with the actual characteristics of that new partner.

It was just that their wounds around being close and around handling conflict weren't yet activated.

So they're sort of confused by that.

They think it's the person when really it's the stakes of the relationship being low that makes them feel comfortable in that affair.

That's so interesting to me.

Do you believe that opposites attract?

So like the different attachment styles, opposites will...

Yes.

So the rule actually in psychology is that like attracts like, but it's nuanced.

So secure attracts secure and insecure attracts insecure.

So that's like attracts like.

But within terms of the type of insecurities that usually attract each other, those are of the opposite type.

Okay.

So anxious people attract avoidant people, vice versa.

Okay.

Do you believe soulmates exist?

I do.

You do?

I do.

So even being a scientist and a psychologist, you believe soulmates exist?

I do because I'm married to mine.

But I think

it's sort of like

you have to be ready for it.

And I do believe in the law of attraction.

I believe that's God's law.

I totally believe in the law of attraction.

What is the law of attraction against?

It's this idea that like what you think and what you feel, you vibrate or you like give off a certain energy.

Okay.

And then you attract that energy back to you.

So, secure people are confident in who they are.

They have high self-worth.

They have high standards, strong boundaries.

They're kind.

They're reciprocal.

They're giving.

They're sacrificial, but also they don't self-abandon.

They make sure that, you know, they, that their own needs are respected.

And so they have that energy, right?

When they're in a dating relationship and someone starts becoming inconsistent with their communication, let's say they start dropping off and, you know, fading away a secure person is going to go ew like I don't like that like what's up with him?

They don't go oh my gosh, what's wrong with me?

Where are they going?

Oh my gosh, what if they don't want to be with me anymore?

And then they get anxious and then they try to fix it.

Right.

And they try to attach more

to that red flag, right?

Like, oh, you're fading away.

Come back.

No, I want you.

They're yelling at me.

I get it, girl.

I get it.

I've been there.

A secure person is going to go, I don't really like that.

And, you know, I kind of need consistency.

So I don't think this is going to work out too well.

Right.

Right.

So they're going to walk away from that red flag.

Or if, you know, a partner starts talking really horrible about their ex.

they might like an anxious person might be like, oh, their ex treated them so bad and I can love them so much better.

You know, I feel so bad for them.

Yeah.

But a secure person is going to be like, hmm, what did you do?

What did you do?

And why, you know, is it, was it really this one-sided deal?

And it's really not nice to talk about somebody from your past in that kind of a light.

Like you secure people might be like, well, there were some problems and it wasn't a good fit.

And, you know, I had to work hard to move on from them.

And, but, you know, I wish them well.

You know, I don't want anything bad for them.

I have a combo.

Yeah.

Insecure people might be like, you know, they screwed me over and I hate them.

And, and then an anxious attacher might feel bad.

Like I said, feel bad for them and feel like, oh, I can, I can prove myself.

I can love you so much better.

Whereas a secure person is going to go, oh.

I don't really love how you spoke about them.

I don't really want to be on the other end of that someday.

I don't want to be in that seat where you're talking about me that way.

Right.

And that doesn't feel good to their nervous system.

So secure people are used to what safety feels like and they.

they are turned off by people that violate their safety in relationships where insecure people are sort of they mistake the fear for the excitement and attraction.

So fear responses actually make them attract more.

Where can people find you on social media and where can they sign up for you to coach them?

Yes, absolutely.

So I do have a website, thelovedoc.com.

And I have a podcast that I'm really proud of and we're growing it.

We're just started season two.

So it's called the Love Doc Podcast.

We're available on all major platforms.

And all of my social

handles are Dr.

Sarah Hensley Love Doc.

So you can find me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.

Perfect.

Thank you so much for being here on Daily Favorite.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Of course.

It's wonderful to meet you.

Same.

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