'Anxious attachment' is popular. But is it real?

- What is your read on attachment theory? - People are seeking out something that does have clinical research that does have some basis in psychology, but it's sort of being manipulated and used, I think, for a lot of bad actors to gain something. What I wanna know is how much of this is real, how much of this is somebody trying to get you to buy into their pyramid scheme. And what can we actually learn from attachment theory to help us understand relationships better? - Hello, hello, I'm Brittany Loose, and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Attachment theory is having a moment online. It's the concept that the relationship we have with our parents directly impacts how we relate to and interact with others, especially people we're in relationships with. Are we anxious? Are we avoided? Can this be the reason that we keep getting our hearts broken? To get some insight into what's happening, we're joined by friend of the podcast and our guide to the modern dating world, NPR producer, Manuela Lopez Restrepo. Then, we're joined by Dr. Marissichi Franco, author of Worth, the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment, and Tatum Hunter, journalist and content creator to understand the science behind attachment theory and what everybody keeps getting wrong. Manuela, welcome back to it's been a minute. Yeah, I'm really excited to be on camera. It's time to step it up a little bit, you know? Now people can see you after three or four days baby. Yeah, so I want to just jump right in. Manuela, you told one of our producers that you wanted to talk about attachment theory. Tell us what's on your mind. Listen, Brittany, I have a very set of themes that I've talked about on the show. And one of the first episodes I did with you guys was talking about the fact that I'm a young woman dating around in New York City. And that comes with its trials and tribulations, a lot of failures, some small victories. And I have noticed that when the failures start piling up in my life, my algorithm seems to know. And so lately I and anybody who is either in a relationship, seeking a relationship or here's about relationships has been getting content related to attachment theory. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I'm familiar with attachment theory, but for people who aren't, do you have like a brief little overview, at least of how you see it come up online. Like what do you say? It's interesting because it's one of those things that I think this episode is going to get into that it started out maybe sort of an innocuous psychological term and has sort of morphed into something that can kind of be used to assign value to any behavior that you don't like that someone else is doing. One of those, yeah. I think it's fallen into the same pit as narcissists perhaps. Unfortunately, it's sort of lost meaning. And my understanding of it is it's sort of this adaptation of childhood psychology into adult psychology. And it basically says that the way you are given care as an infant determines how you approach care and intimacy as an adult. Okay. A lot of things that we'll say have do just so we can be on the same page. A lot of things happen between infancy and adult. (laughs) Totally. But I'm just thinking about the example they give of the child playing with the toys. Are you familiar with this? No, no, it's okay. The experiment was that they had children playing with toys in a room with their mother nearby. And then they asked the mother to leave the room and they documented the child's reaction to their mother leaving the room. So a child with a secure attachment style, both notices that their mother has left the room and continues to play because they trust that she will come back, come back her care is consistent and reliable. A child who is anxiously attached will both notice that their mother is gone and also kind of like heart rate will go up freak out over at worry that she's not going to come back because they don't have a sort of consistent understanding of she is a reliable person who's gonna come back. And then a child with avoidant tendencies will pretend to not notice that their mother is gone so they continue to play with the toys. But when they document things like heart rate or stress, the child is panicking internally, they're just choosing not to show it externally. Okay. Okay, okay. So that's a very good primer. I feel like for attachment theory. And in adulthood, it seems to be mostly about like, it seems to be mostly applied to like how people attach or don't attach to romantic partners. Like, you know, are you anxiously attached or are you securely attached or you avoid it? Like what's going on here? What is your read on attachment theory? Like what about it gets your go? I think in my, you know, my pursuit for truth as a journalist and as someone who loves the internet, I feel like I have stumbled upon this like, really kind of sticky and dark world where there's a lot of this sort of self-help coaching, attachment theory, guidebook, Instagram Real, TikTok Slop out there. And then I think we're in that weird era, weird gray area with misinformation where people are seeking out something that does have clinical research that does have some basis in psychology. But it's sort of being manipulated and used I think for a lot of bad actors to gain something. I think people are selling programs and selling classes and telling you to subscribe to their sub-stack. And what I want to know is how much of this is real, how much of this is somebody trying to get you to buy into their pyramid scheme. I feel like when we sort of seek this internet era of identification kind of through algorithm, like your videos are telling you who you are instead of you interacting with the content and kind of deciding, I think it can, as we've seen, really influence how people see themselves, how they see each other. And I ultimately think it can be really damaging to a lot of people. - Interesting. I mean, one thing I will say is like pretty much everybody that I thought that I was anxiously attached to was trying to cheat behind my back. (laughs) So I'm like, was I anxiously attached? - Or was it intuition just telling you so much? - I don't know, I don't know, that's the thing. I don't know, I probably definitely had anxiety around all those sorts of things. The attachment theory stuff, I get it, but it seems like what you have described seeing and like especially in sort of like post breakup scenarios is just like on another level. Like describe to me like an average sort of post that you might see that's about attachment theory. - So it will be somebody coming on and being like, the reason that this person wasn't able to engage with you emotionally in the way that you wanted them to was because avoidance don't like it when they're wearing green socks on a Tuesday at 9.30 p.m. (laughs) And if you know the three keys to not triggering them and you wear purple socks instead, there is a way that you can keep them in your life. Please subscribe to my page for more. If you orient over to Reddit, which I think is a lot more as we know now, community-based, just regular people talking to each other. - Yeah, yeah. - The number one gospel on every subreddit is do not try to get your ex back. This is not going to work. You are diametrically incompatible, drop it. So let's work on healing instead, mama. - Yeah, that is kind of the crux of why I wanted you to explore this in this episode is because I think there has to be a halfway point between the truth and the usefulness of this information and the harm of people are seeing a big, deep and wound in a large part of the population and their eyes are turning into dollar signs. And I kind of want to be able to distinguish where the line is. - I'm gonna get these answers for you. - Thank you. - We're gonna get to the bottom of this. - Don't you worry. - Thank you. - This is what journalism's all about. - Exactly. - Don't go anywhere. - I don't even advocate for people to be secure. I advocate for them to be secure-ish. So there's always room for you to acknowledge the parts of you that are insecure, show them care, show them compassion because you can only heal parts of yourself that you're willing to acknowledge. And it's okay for you to be just as insecure as you are because that's part of being a human being. It's being a little bit messy. We've got more coming up after the break. (upbeat music) - So now that we understand how attachment theory is finding a niche online, let's shift gears and talk to our experts about the phenomenon. Okay, so we are here to talk about attachment theory, which I'll admit, I don't know a ton of out. But I mean, other than I've learned over the course of preparing for this conversation, but it's still not something I would say I'm an expert [BLANK_AUDIO] you are. In layman's terms, Marissa, can you explain what attachment theory is? Yeah, absolutely. So attachment theory is the idea that our relationships with our parents lead us to develop an internal template for how people treat us throughout our lives. And so you can have technically four different types of attachment styles, but three tend to be the focus of the research. One is anxious. Your parents were sort of inconsistent. You learned you need to fight to get love. You tend to see rejection when it's not there. You tend to be very preoccupied with your relationships. You tend to put a lot of effort into your relationships, but it's not necessarily playing out well because you assume you're rejected a whole lot and you fear being abandoned. Then you have people that are avoidantly attached and they had parents who sort of it was sort of like seen but not heard. Shut you down emotionally. And so you feel uncomfortable getting close to people. You feel uncomfortable with intimacy that it'll be associated with threat, harm. People will shame you. You're not as vulnerable. You don't share it much affection. You keep people at a distance. When people try to get too close to you, you might pull away. You need relationships to move very slowly. If at all, you don't put a lot of effort into your connections. And you have people that are securely attached who had sort of good enough parents that tried to meet their needs and show them care when they needed it. And these people, they're better at initiating relationships. Relationships tend to be more stable, more emotionally regulated, just more secure in themselves and more tend to be more caring towards other people too. And then the last is disorganized attachment, which is people that had more extreme situations, maybe abusive situations who flip flop between anxious and avoidant in more extreme ways. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So I wonder like in what ways can attachment theory be helpful? Yeah. So if you understand that someone is anxious, you know what they need to feel secure in a relationship. They need a lot more reassurance. They need consistency. They need predictability. You need to show them that you're there for them and that you like them. Otherwise, they tend to assume that you don't like them. And then if you're avoidant, you need people to move slowly with you. You need people to give you time. You need people that will give you space and allow you to come back to the relationship without holding it against you, right? And that is really the best way to use attachment theory is now we know how to care for each other better. That's kind of different. I feel like then how I've seen it applied across the various social media platforms with a lot of laypeople, non-professionals talking about how they see attachment theory. It makes me curious, how have each of you seen attachment theory like out in the culture? And is that guys outside of the therapist's office? Tate, let's start with you. I would say that attachment theory right now is in this larger bucket of topics, labels that have really caught people's interest in the last few years. I think that we're at a moment where people get a lot of utility on kind of having names for their experiences, whether that's part of their identity, part of their day-to-day behavior and relationship styles. And so I see attachment theory getting talked about alongside other facets of mental and neurological health, so that people feel like they have a bigger, more particular picture of who they are. And how have you seen it, Versa? Yeah, I love what Tatum has said. It's a great tool to understand ourselves and others. I think I love attachment theory. There's a lot of research behind it, but there have been some ways that it's been applied that have been concerning to me in that in the sort of influencer space. It's this idea that like you should be secure and secure people do this. And if you don't do this, you're insecure. And you need to heal yourself and get better. And so there's this way that I've seen that secure attachment has become a status symbol. And instead of us looking at the insecure attachment styles and saying, "Oh, what do you need? What sort of care do you need? Instead, it's like you need to heal yourself and you need to get it together." And then it's just adding shame. And shame is what brought you to feeling insecure in the first place. So ironically, I think we are reenacting the very thing that made us insecure in the sort of like guys right now. Oh, that's a lot. Oh, seeing secure attachment as a status symbol. That is definitely a part of some content that I've seen on social media. Like it's a status to be achieved. Whether or not it's possible to achieve that's up to the individual creator. We will touch on that later. I wonder why did each of you think it's caught on so much? For me, I think again, I think we're kind of right now at the tail end of this of this era in our culture where we were really preoccupied with this kind of internal taxonomy of who we are. Whether that's the identity markers that explain how other people see us and who we hang out with in the world and where we came from. Or also things that are unique to our personalities. I'm avoidantly attached. I'm anxiously attached. I'm this, I'm that. And so I think the reason that it speaks so strongly to people is that coming out of the worst days of the COVID pandemic and years of political turmoil and what people call their quotes late-stage capitalism of feeling like you're purchasing power is going down and you're you're not sure where it's all headed. And AI, people feel really insecure about their place in the world, in their communities, in their relationships. And I think through all of this, it's very important to remember the platforms and the creators who benefit the more people engage with their content on this topic. So I love what Dr. Franco said about about it being a status symbol to be securely attached. I would I would add and even go further that it's something that creators are selling to people because when you're a creator speaking about this, helping people through this moment, helping them to understand and label themselves, the idea is that you have it figured out somehow. You know something that's of value to them. And if everyone was, you know, air quotes cured, if everyone was securely attached, what would we start talking about then? So I do think that on social media, everybody's on a journey to self-discovery. And if everyone arrived, creators wouldn't really have anything to sell to us or talk about anymore. What do you think about that Marissa? Yeah, it is an intersection between capitalism and attachment theory happening right now, right? That there's this optimization and you have to be the best and you have to achieve. And your mental health and well-being is about getting to the you know, the pinnacle of getting to secure, getting to like full security. So I agree with like Tatum in that way. I'll just also add that, you know, I think what attachment theory really benefits people is often things are going wrong in your relationships and you really don't understand why. But then you learn I'm anxiously attached. And there's things that I am doing that are making my relationships fall apart instead of relationships are inherently threadbare and fragile. And you feel empowered. You feel like, okay, maybe I won't come on so strong. Maybe I won't text them three times. Maybe I won't pursue people that aren't showing interest in me instead turn my attention to people that do show interest in me. And so there is this way or for if willingly attached people, similarly, why are my triggering people? Just I just want my space, right? Learning that you have to communicate instead of ghost people. So it does give people a kind of cheat code and a way forward. And that's one of the reasons I respect and I value it at the same time when we're using it again to understand ourselves and other people rather than to make judgments and to hyper optimize. You know, Tatum, you've reported in the past that videos about, you know, mental health or therapy speak topics like have found a lot of popularity, specifically on TikTok. And an MPR producer that we talked to for this episode, you know, she described the feeling of being caught in something of a doom loop when watching videos about attachment theory. Like having relationships stress or drama or break up and then watching these videos and feeling like you're kind of like getting deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole. Why? Why is this kind of content create this kind of like doom loop like rabbit hole kind of all-consuming feeling? So we were lucky enough for this story at the Washington Post to get TikTok data from a large number, almost a thousand users. And by that, I mean, a full download every single video you've ever watched, what you engaged with it, whether you skipped past it, how long you watched, which enabled the data reporter that I worked with to start finding patterns and making inferences about what's going on here. And what we ended up finding was fascinating. We found that mental health content on TikTok is stickier than other types of content. And what that means is that engaging with a mental health video, it's going to take more actions afterward to get it out of your feed than engaging with a difference video. So here's an example. If I watched one video about cats to the end, we found that it would take 1.3 skips of cat videos after that to get me back to where I started, same number of cats as before, and undo that effect on my algorithm of watching all the way through. But if I watch a mental health video to the end, it takes 2.2 skips to get it out, which is There's twice the amount of work to get it back out of my algorithm. Interesting. So there's a real effect going on when people say something like I feel like I'm in a mental health rabbit hole, I feel like I'm in a doom loop because it really is harder to get it back out of our feeds once it's in. And what I was especially kind of sad and disappointed to learn was that whether people found it super helpful in the beginning, whether they didn't like it from the jump, they often hit a point where they're like, I would like to hear less of this. This is getting less helpful for me. And they're not able to back, back out. Wow, that's, that's kind of freaky. Yeah. Yeah, I think especially for people with some sort of, you know, maybe, maybe a compulsion, maybe a, you know, an intrusive thought, something that they feel quite depressed about all of those symptoms and conditions, I think can get kind of irritated by the constant drinking from a fire hose, constant drinking from a fire hose, that is a really good way to put it. I mean, I want to say after this report was published in the Washington Post, a TikTok spokesperson criticized the post methodology as incomplete and said it doesn't, quote, reflect the reality of how our recommendation system works. However, I like to get into what you heard from sources and you're reporting. How did they describe the rabbit hole of the recommendation system? Like, and how does the pop psychology, you know, idea, the pop psychology idea of attachment theory fit in with that? Yeah. So what's interesting is that the stories that I heard from users tended to follow the same shape, which was they had either a diagnosed, you know, neurological type or mental health struggle that they encountered content that they found to be helpful or informative. So in the beginning, it's like, wow, I'm learning about myself. But over time, as their algorithm, as their for you page, got more and more saturated with mental health content about that topic, the effect started to change where they started to see content that was less and less informative, less and less helpful. And oftentimes taking some liberties that were really unhelpful, right? You know, I have to be honest, okay, because of the way that attachment theory is presented on social media, I, I didn't really think it was like applicable to adult relationships until we were researching for this episode because TikTok was the first time I had heard anyone talk about, like attachment style since I was an ap psychology in high school, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't something that people were talking about, like everyday parlance, okay? And then I started seeing it pop up on TikTok and I thought, maybe like, you know, to your point, Tatum, this was just like a misappropriation of like a real term. Maybe that was used for children that people are trying to like apply to adults. And then as we're researching for this story and I'm like, oh, this is like, this is real. Marissa, what are we getting wrong in our social media shorthand about attachment theory? And how might that be harming us? Yeah, I think that when I think about like anxiously attached people, they tend to struggle with their own sense of reality and invalidate their own sense of reality and think that everyone's right. And I'm the one at fault and I'm going to blame myself for being wrong. And you could see how influencers could really capitalize on that tendency, like it's sort of like, even just you saying that I'm sitting here feeling like is she spying? Have I read someone for a film? But yeah, so the intersection of a type of people who tends to be like, let me outsource what reality is, let me outsource what is acceptable to feel. Let me outsource a way that's acceptable to be rather than being able to actually tune into and turn to myself. And the sort of influencer world doing exactly that. And you know, I don't have dad on this, but I imagine that anxiously attached people are driving a lot of this attachment content because avoidantly attached people tend to be like, I don't want to think about it, like I'm just going to sort of push this away. But the other thing that we're really getting wrong is, I think when you watch so many videos on attachment style, it's about what you're doing wrong. And it's about how you should be ashamed of yourself because you're going for this person that's giving you mixed signals. And this is the issue that you have to heal in yourself, right? But what I found writing a book on self-worth is that the problem is not your insecurities are there. The problem are that you shame yourself for those insecurities. And that if you could accept those tendencies in yourself and have compassion for that part of you that is maybe, you know, being triggered or pulled towards a relationship that doesn't ultimately feel good for you, that's how you actually sued the trigger. And so one of the things I say and worth is that I don't even advocate for people to be secure. And it's okay for you to be just as insecure as you are because that's part of being a human being, is being a little bit messy. Can we ever change our attachment styles or are we doomed? Like, is there room for growth or is it like we get the label and we're done? I don't know. You think? Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. So this took me years to figure out this question because just like Tatum said, the mental of the videos are sticky, attachment styles are complex. You can have different attachment styles and different relationships. You can think of it like any characteristic about yourself. Like, I'm funny, but I'm more funny around certain people, less funny around other people. I'm anxious. I'm more anxious around some people, less anxious around other people, right? So there's this complexity to it, but sometimes you see themes across your relationships. And the reason why attachment styles can be sticky or hard to change unless you're sort of finding someone that just makes you feel so more secure, but hard to change in yourself is because attachment styles are a byproduct of your memories. You have learned that when you try to look for love and acceptance and care, you're going to get a particular reaction. That's what you learn from your parents. Anxiously attached kids learn that my parent is sometimes going to be there sometimes not. Their attention maybe eventually I'll get it, avoidantly attached kids have learned that there's no hope and I can't openly ask for affection. And so now I'm just going to shame that part of myself and pretend I don't need it. And the things about memories is they don't just record the past, they predict the future. And so a part of you thinks that's going to happen again. And that is why you go into a new relationship. You don't even know what the dynamic is. And you're already sort of reacting the same way as if you do know, right? Because that's your memories at play. What I learned from writing worth is that because memories aren't made to just record the past, but predict the future, we can actually update them. When we go back to a negative memory where someone didn't show up for us, it didn't show care for us. And we intervene as our adult self and say to ourselves, you know, I'm here, I care about you, I'm not going anywhere, show ourselves the love and care that we need. It's called like, "reparenting techniques in the psychology field." Yeah, it's actually been found to improve self-esteem, decrease symptoms of trauma. And you even see changes in the part of your brain that records memories, which is the hippocampus. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Wow. I mean, that is so beautiful, like that, like visual of reparenting. It reminds me of this video, this M&M music video where he, I think, was stopping people before they did something terrible for some reason. I got what's showing up in my mind. I'm like, I haven't seen it since I was in middle school. It's like, that's how it's coming to mind. What you're talking about though, it's like, these are things I have there before a long time. And these are the sorts of things that have come up over the course of, like, my journey and therapy and all that sort of stuff like that. These are real techniques and, like, real principles. There's a lot more here than just sort of what we're seeing on the surface with how people are talking about attachment theory. I wonder if we can change our attachment style, like, why does it seem like social content about attachment theory or attachment styles paint them as so permanent? Why do you think that is? What's in that for possibly the creator? Well, you know, platforms create the incentives for creators. And as it stands right now, the incentive for most creators is to have a really engaged audience who is watching your videos all the way through, who is clicking like, who's commenting, and who is going to your bio to your, you know, link in bio and buying your course or buying, you know, engaging with you maybe in some extra way financially. So like, imagine two videos about attachment style. The first one is like, you know, if you spend a lot of time worrying about whether he's going to text you back, you're probably anxiously attached. So this is why your relationships aren't working. This is why you're lonely and unhappy. I can help you, you know, go to my pinned video, go to the link in my bio. Watch this video, you know, watch this video to the end. So that's video one or video two being like, you know, if you spend a lot of time being anxious about him texting you back, you might be insecurely attached. You know, this is a complicated set of set of conditions working with a professional might help you and nothing is forever. It's like the second one's kind of boring, right? And what researchers have found is that audiences are more likely to engage with content that's activating in some way. So that could be, it's some kind of like, boost of our, of our chemicals. It could be something great, something, you know, like the baby video that's so cute that it kind of brightens our mood. But most of the time, it's something that activates us by making us anxious or angry. And we're all familiar with the angry thing, right? Like we see the Sydney Sweeney ad and where we feel angry and then we're talking about it and we're sharing it and we're engaging with it. And then the other one is anxious. We see something in our anxiety spike. Is that me? Am I going to be kind of broken forever? Do I need, do I need to be watching the rest of this creator's videos to figure out if I can, so you can kind of see how the platform incentives trickle down to people's real experience. Don't go anywhere. If you found some online community where you're like, hey, this sounds like my symptoms or hey, this sounds like my experience. I would encourage people to do everything in their power to, for that not to be the end point. It kind of reminds me of like how women's magazines or even how beauty, I guess creators now sometimes can beauty or style creators, not all of them. But this is definitely a can't be a part of them. Like, oh, if you have strawberry legs, if you have this kind of armpits, if you have whatever, or if you want, like, if you're worried about, like, it'll be something where you're like, I need to think about that. They're like, if you have hanging earlobes, this is how we can mask them. And you're like, oh, my God. And then there's like another video and she's like, I'm going to fix your, you know, your life way with thumbs. And you're like, ah, it's just something else. I have to follow this woman so she can help me fix it. What are, what are some of the concerns that you've seen or heard about some creators earnestly trying to tell their story or filling gaps for people who may not be able to afford talk therapy or a diagnosis? Because there are some people who, you know, as you mentioned, that are like making content that is kind of like, oh, this is my experience. This is my perspective. But also like, there's a lot of, there's also a lot of people who are making like kind of quack or junk sort of pop psychology content. What, what are some of the concerns that kind of are inherent in that? So if, if you've worked in marketing and content marketing in the last 10, 15 years, you're familiar with this idea that there's this winning formula for content, which is, you know, naming a problem that the user or consumer has. And then offering them something that's useful and helpful. And so this formula doesn't work without the first part, the problem. And I think that that leads creators to sometimes pathologize everyday experiences to focus a lot on symptoms of diagnosis and very little on the arguably more complex process of healing and self-understanding. So when I've talked to clinicians as I report on this, one woman said something so interesting, which is that she sometimes has people show up, TikTok video in hand and say, Hey, I resonated with this. And it made me feel like I might need treatment. I might need professional help. And in those moments, she's so grateful for that content. In other moments, she'll have someone show up TikTok video in hand and really, really, really want a diagnosis, kind of misunderstanding what she described as like the diagnostic process of symptoms, you know, somebody has this cluster of symptoms. And the diagnosis is like your best way to organize or describe them. Okay, I'm looking at this collection of symptoms. I'm going to give a label to or a diagnosis for this because that's the best way to describe this. But that's like the beginning of treatment. If it even happens at all. And so that person in their in their interest in diagnosis might be missing out on like all that good stuff that comes afterward. And to her, that was a function of social media because these creators don't have the capacity to do the second, you know, treatment part. They only have the capacity to talk again and again and again about that first moment of labeling labeling a disorder, labeling, you know, a type labeling a symptom. And so it's so true that so many Americans don't have access to mental health care because of geography. There's no one around them because of money and insurance, because of stigma. There's still communities where showing up to a therapist could feel, you know, really scary. And I would push back and say that people deserve better. You know, if people don't have access and if there is a gap, the lowest common denominator is not good enough. Or this fire hose of low quality content is not good enough. Hmm, Marissa, what do you think about this? How have you seen this show up in your work? Yeah, so there's this interesting thing that I learned about low self-worth, which is that when people with low self-worth give themselves affirmations, I am loved. They end up feeling worse because that affirmation reveals how deeply rooted their negative sense of self is. That's what comes up for them. Like there's resistance to I am loved. I'm pushing this away. And you can almost think about worth as a theory of self. If I feel unworthy, I think that people reject me and harm will come. Now, when people like me and accept me, that doesn't change my theory. Instead, I feel suspended, anxious, waiting for you to figure out who I really am. And it feels really uncomfortable for you to offer me love beyond the ways in which I see myself. And so what that research really tells me is that we need to calibrate our mental health interventions to our sense of self. That if somebody tries to give me advice that is beyond what my sense of self can tolerate beyond what my theory of self can tolerate, I don't actually internalize it. Instead, it reveals to me just how badly I feel about myself. And so just adding to Tatum's point, I think one of the issues with using influencers and replacement of therapists is that it's a one-size-fits-all approach. And all of us need an approach that's very specific to our sense of who I am. Yeah. Dang. It's, you know, whenever we get into any of these topics that have to do with health, mental health, physical health, especially at the intersection of technology, especially at the intersection of health technology and social media, we always kind of come back to this place of just these conversations are they just so reveal how so many people are not being served by the current way that this country is doing health care. Moving away from sort of like therapist jargon, moving away from from these kinds of this sort of social media doom loop, what do you have to say right now to people who are managing big relationship feelings with the help of Instagram or TikTok or, you know, insert social media platform of your choice? Where so what do you have to say to them? I have to say don't let anyone make you feel like you have something to be ashamed of. You can feel as weak. You can struggle as much as you do. You can feel as scared as you do. And that's okay. And that's part of the human experience. And this is not a problem. It's actually an adaptation, right? That we're preparing for a past that we think will happen again. And so our insecurities are there to protect us. So it's not about you making yourself feel bad because you're not living up to the things that people say. It's about you accepting exactly where you are. It's about you embracing emotional honesty, rather than feeling like you need to perform some sort of kindness or some sort of secure attachment. I'm telling you that you are worthy exactly as you are. Worthy exact me as you are. Oh my gosh. It's hard to remember that sometimes. It's hard to remember that sometimes, but I think we all could use their mind or Tatum. What do you think about all this about like what thoughts might you have for people who are using these sorts of social media platforms and videos to kind of help them with their big feelings, if they're feeling super heartbroken or kind of, you know, just emotionally alone and trying to connect with other people. I would start by saying that there's nothing, there's nothing embarrassing about having sought out that community and that information on TikTok. That's where the information is. And there's a very low chance that it's being presented to you in some real world forum, right? But then what I would add is that these are advertising apps. And I don't think we spend enough time acknowledging how wild it is that our social lives and our internal lives are now playing out on these apps that are essentially a digital mall, a digital billboard. And your mental health should not be commoditized and sold back to you, to keep you on app, to buy the webinar, to watch the ads in between your mental health videos. So I think that I would encourage anybody who, if you find yourself on TikTok feeling overwhelmed by the amount of mental health content that you're seeing, reset your algorithm, there is a way to hard reset. You'll see a bunch of viral videos. And as you scroll, it'll get closer to your own interests, try to be really careful about not watching videos that grab your attention because they're upsetting or threatening to the end. And if you, if you found some online community where you're like, hey, this sounds like my symptoms or hey, this sounds like my experience. I would encourage people to do everything in their power to, for that not to be the end point of getting kind of sucked into this community and staying there. You know, talk to your real-world friends and family. If you have, if you have any sort of professional care that you can access, do it because I think see a piece of content and saying, "Oh, I see myself in that." That's the very beginning of a journey to maybe feeling better. Oh my gosh. Listen, I got to say, for somebody like myself who really was not up to date on any sort of attachment theory, anything, and had kind of only been inundated with these sometimes really bad videos, I have deeply, deeply appreciated this conversation. Marissa Tatum, thank you both so much. My pleasure. Thank you. That was NPR producer Manuela Lopez Restrepo of all things considered, as well as Dr. Marissa G. Franco, author of Worth, the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment, and Tatum Hunter, journalist and content creator. And to all of you watching, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Make sure to come back to this feed every Tuesday for a fresh video episode. [BLANK_AUDIO]