Thais Gibson

Anxiously attached individuals, their biggest fears and relationships are the fear of being not good enough, abandoned, alone, disliked, and every time those fears are triggered, they're like, "I gotta get closer to you." Well, one day love is a good thing and I can trust it. Another day, it's really scary and unpredictable, and I'm walking on anxious. Fearful avoidance, how they cope or adapt to that, is it's like, "I am going to become a human lie detector." I am going to notice every change in micro expression body language tone of voice narcissism. Love bomb you at the beginning. They make you feel like the most special worthy person on the planet, fast-forward three months on the devaluation and discarding phase starts. And so it's like an addiction where you consciously know you should leave and know they're destroying you, but subconsciously you can't stop yourself from going back and trying to get back to the beginning, just like chasing the dragon in an addictive pattern. Yeah. What's the difference, nuanced difference, between like narcissists and dismissive avoidance? It's a great question. There's huge differences. They're literally so different. You asked how I was doing and first thing that comes to mind is like, "I'm doing pretty good. I barely need to watch any of your videos on YouTube lately." Did you, are you insecurely attached or that was your body? Oh my, am I insecurely attached? Well, maybe we'll just dive into that. I actually, would definitely say I was much more anxious. And then, but I would say that I've observed a little bit of a flip-flopping quality. I would honestly, okay, so like one of the, I watched your videos. I love your content. I would have one of the biggest things is fearful of wins or intense people. And I would have, and most people who are fearful of when I was fearful of white-end before doing the work, love to go deep, love to go into like the asotira kind of things are very hyper-vigilant and often originally think they're anxious because your anxious side is louder. But you have the flip-flopping, like the pushing away, the sabotaging, the end, and that's a little more quiet because you usually feel like it's justified. Like, well, I'm pushing some way because they're hurting me, but like most securely attached people approach people and try to sort it out. And so if there's a part of you and like, we, we'll unpack it. Like we can do something about it. Yeah, I love it. I'm here for it. Love wins are just known for being intense and I just, I was literally thinking about it just as I was joining and I was like, "You're hot, you got just called pretty intense." You probably at some point were the fearful of win and then did a whole bunch of work, I imagine. I would say psychologists are probably one of the most common people I interview. And I was feel like it's like we get really into what we need. So I feel like I've needed it. But a quality that I guess I would say that maybe plays into that because I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have identified myself that way. Although I learned a lot about fearful of boynate because I felt like I was dating a fearful, you know, had had dated in that sort of realm. And definitely if things start to go wrong, I have like a, you know, the acronym for fear, like fuck everything and run. Yeah, yeah. I get that. It's like then, just leave. What are we doing? You know, like, I get that very like flip it sort of just like throw in the towel. I don't know if that's a, is that a quality of it? And just like attached people do not do that at all. Oh, yeah, they want to be like, no cost. Yeah. I feel like my attachment style is very much, I think it's evolved a little bit, but maybe you're right. Maybe there is a bit of that. There's no way we're going to, okay, we're going to go it. I'll actually break it apart for a second, but I just think there is no way. So anxiously attached individuals, their biggest fears and relationships are the fear of being not good enough abandoned alone, disliked, excluded, rejected biggest fears and they get obsessed with those things. And every time those fears are triggered, they're like, I got to get closer to you. I got to maintain proximity. I will people please. I will bend over, do cartwheel, backflips. I will do everything to win you over, including abandoning myself, my dreams, anything that's meaningful to me because their number one priority is to maintain proximity. And they'll say a lot of yeses when it's a no for them. They won't often share their truth. And when people push them away, they'll just try to cling tighter. Fearful avoidance, have a really strong anxious side, but a really strong avoidance side. Though they end up, and we'll go into like maybe the childhood of all of them and all the things that you really see. It's good because this is how I learn too, it's just like hearing stories and going like, identifying with certain patterns or stories from childhood. So yeah, go all the way. Any direction. And so if we go deeper, the anxiously attached individuals' childhood is usually inconsistency. So inconsistency can be that one parent was really warm and available and the other parent was kind of cold and standoffish and then juxtaposition of being what the warm parent and then the colder parent felt like love was there and then love was gone. What about what about like is the pattern that I saw that would have made me think that is that because I think I was more this way earlier, but is that my dad like growing up it's the inconsistency, but the the kid doesn't understand what that inconsistency really is. And so my dad, I really didn't see when I was a kid and he would go to work before we got up and he would come home after we went to bed. And so we didn't really like see my dad growing up. And the first time that we started spending more time together was when I started go-kart racing, when I started racing, when I was 10. And so I actually don't even really have that many memories before I was 10. I have some like pictures in my mind, but I don't really remember being a kid. And so I, but when we started racing and he was really hard on me and I would like, I wanted to keep my dad around. So I would do anything to sort of like make him happy. And so I felt like that was what like that's what made me think that I was more towards that anxious was that I had inconsistency with dad. And dad always seemed like the problem, right? But then I ended up realizing that it was acting like mom that attracted that kind of thing. But I was thought that dad was the reason like needed to apologize for most of the things, you know? Yeah, yeah, I hear you 100%. I like the way where you went with that too, that it was that you were acting like mom that was attracting characters like dad, which basically like overlooking myself, which is basically not speaking up, not sort of standing my ground, just sort of bending till you break kind of thing. And when dad was hard on you, was dad like really, really harsh, really mean, cruel. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, dad was tough. Like, you know, if I didn't tune the carburetor right, he'd be like, are you fucking fingers broken? Like, like things that a kid that when they're 10, 11 and 12 wouldn't. And now I love my dad and I love it at dearly. And we get along extremely well. We have a great relationship now. And I we can talk about how that evolution happened. But, but he was he was tough. He was real. Yeah. And and did you feel a sense of around him always walking the night shells, always been kind of emotionally unsafe? I know that's such a like funny term nowadays, but just like high alert hypervigilance. Like, did you feel a sense of that? Um, yeah, I think that there was a volatility to him. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I was never too scared of it, but like, and actually, I usually like, sometime matched it when I was a kid. So you'd see it like at the track, it would be like, he would yell at me and then I'd yell back at him. And so, but it was there. Like the the pressure and the volatility was present. Like he was, yeah, he definitely was the volatile one. And extreme pressure. Like a lot. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. I'm okay. I'm gonna still peg you as a fearful of wind, but we'll get to it. So so, so, anxiously attached individuals. Their number one thing is they usually have, there's somebody who could be avoidant and then very warm and loving, or parents can both be really loving, but they work a lot. But in both cases, the the wiring somebody has about loving connection is that it's a safe thing and a good thing. And really consistently a safe and good thing. And yet there's a void of it. So I can't get enough of it. So I'm going to go into overdrive and I'm going to make up for that. And I'm going to people please, there's not really a sense of volatility extreme pressure, fear, hypervigilance, walking on eggshells. Like that's just not the same thing. Now all attachment cells are arranged. So it's like on a continuum. So you can be fearful of when leaning very anxious. And you'll really feel that anxious side more fearful of avoidance by juxtaposition. They grow up with more chaos. And we can have chaos like big tea trauma and more extreme cases. It would be the more extreme fearful avoidance. That can be things that are like a parents and alcoholic or a parent has narcissistic personality disorder, for example. And if you look at those, this is what makes a fearful avoidance. They get wired with opposing views about the same thing. So on one hand, let's say moms the alcoholic mom one day is drinking and she's in a good mood. She's nice and love feels good. Another day mom's drinking and she's mean and cruel and love feels really unpredictable and scary. Dad has narcissistic personality disorder. Okay, one day dad's love bombing. He's happy. He's proud. He's he's present. Yeah, exactly. And on the flip side, dad is when somebody's not pleasing him and I'm not saying this is your dad, but just as an analogy. Yeah. Somebody's not pleasing him. And all of a sudden there's this volatility, this anger, this taking out the anger on somebody that walk and a child's like, oh my god, I have to I'm scared of that. I have to protect myself from dad. And when there's and it doesn't those are extreme cases, right? For avoidance can have less extreme cases of that. And in any one of those forms, you end up getting, okay, well, one day love is a good thing and I can trust it. And it's warm and fuzzy. And another day, it's really scary and unpredictable. And I'm walking on anxious. And so fearful avoidance get these competing associations about the same thing being love and connection is a good thing and a scary thing. And I just don't know what version I'm getting. And so fearful avoidance, how they cope or adapt to that is it's like, I am going to become a human lie detector. I am going to notice every change in micro expression body language tone of voice. And I'm going to read into it. I'm going to know three steps ahead. What I have to do and how I have to move so that I can predict and then show up in a different way. And I had somebody say to me once I think it's a good analogy. She said, I could tell by the way my mom closed the door when she would come home from work, whether or not I needed to jump up and close the door in my room or not. So you're-- I definitely have a trend of being able to be able to be-- closing the door is close to home because then found mad that door gets slammed. Yeah. So there you go. And fearful avoidance because there's so under pressure in childhood, and they are still having to be hypervigilant. It just regulates their nervous system and they spend a lot of time in fight flight, freeze or fawn. And so they usually become really good at fighting back. And so when you said, oh, I would just war back with my dad, you could see that, the in playing out. And there's a sense of like, I'll have to protect myself. I have to do it for myself in the world, whereas anxiously attached people are like, everybody's going to protect me. I'm going to people please them. They're going to love me. They're much more dependent people. Careful avoidance are much more independent. But yeah, really anxious in relationships and they still people please a lot. Because they're like, I don't want to be abandoned. But then they do this thing too, where I say it's like the fearful avoidance cycle. They people please until they feel taken advantage of. And they get mad. Then they push someone away really hard because they feel taken advantage of. And then they feel guilty about it. And then they're like, come back. Let me people please do again. And then they go back through the same loop. Just have to have really been some times if I didn't mean it. So there you go. So and fearful avoidance in their relationships. And you can lean really anxious. I was for the one lean anxious. You will fear abandonment a lot. And you'll people please and put yourself into overdrive. But there will definitely be a lot of seasons in life where you push people away, shut down like when you said I would cut everything in run. That's a really good sign. Like a really good sign of that. So if you dated fearful avoidance and you really noticed it or you dated dismissive avoidance or more avoidance, we can get into that too. Yeah, I want to clarify the difference. Yeah, you might have dated people who made you feel like you were more on your anxious side because they might have leaned more avoidant and you leaned more anxious to you notice that differently. But then-- The dismissive will probably pull more of the avoidance out of you or the anxious out of you. Yeah. And the core was exactly. That's exactly right. And we'll get into that in just a second too. But the biggest wounds, like the biggest triggers that come up for fearful avoidance are yes, the fear of abandonment. And the fear of being unlovable and unworthy are really big ones. Fearful avoidance more than anybody. I feel like they have to overachieve and overperformed just to feel like a baseline acceptable. Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, that probably is some of my work in life too of like performing on a hot public stage and all that. But yeah, I mean, look at Dad being tough on me, you know, when I was young and go-carding. It's like, I definitely have felt plenty of times like in a relationship, the concept of not, of concept of just being. Yeah. And not doing in a relationship is quite foreign. Like I'm like, well, like, I think to myself, like if you're a woman, you don't cook, are you serious? Like, what, what, are you kidding me? Like what do you, what will you do? Like, or like you don't do this or that or the other plan this thing or schedule or help or like make a breakfast or, you know, like there's a lot of performative nature that I think is like part of why someone loves you is because they're like, oh, well, like I love being with them 'cause they, 'cause they do amazing things. Yeah. And there's this idea that you have to be worthy of love for how you show up and perform and achieve rather than who you are. Like you're not just a logistics, like you're compassionate, you're thoughtful, you're like instead of seeing like this is who I am, it's like, no, this is what I have to be and I have to show up and behave in the world and I earn love all the time. And that's a really painful conditioning to have. Like that's a really painful condition pattern to have. And those are soluble problems. You re-rewire these things, but there's a sense of background pressure that always comes with that. And the leaving life that way also often makes you choose people that you have to show up that way for because it's what feels so clear. Yeah. Right, right. So fearful of wins have that side. They have the anxious side where they fear abandonment and they fear being unlovable and they have their own worthiness wound, but they also fear betrayal a little bit. And it's in an interesting way. It's not just like you're gonna lie or cheat. That can be there for sure, it can be really strong, but it's this kind of haunting side where it's more like, I trust you now, 'cause things are good today. But how could I possibly know that you won't change in 10 years and that you won't hurt me that or betray me then? And there's almost like impossibility of seeing that that would even be a potential that things don't need to be good for the long run. Yeah, like, or what if we're not doing well and we're a fight and you're like, you know, like then you go and cheat or do something like, you know, if it's not good, like it's so temperamental, you'll just, you know what I mean? It seems like, what if we're not perfect all the time? Exactly. Are you still gonna love me if we have a bad bout of, you know, a couple days or a couple of months or, you know, like, yeah, exactly. And fearful of what it's part of that is also the fear of what it's shadow really deeply because fearful of what it's betray themselves very frequently. They say, yes, when they mean no, they're, they have permeable boundaries, they go outside of their comfort zone, they burn themselves out, trying to be there for other people. And so because we do that to self, we project that likelihood onto others. And the second part of how it's your shadow is also that fearful of what it's are very quick, more than any other attachment style to also change how they feel about somebody. Mm. And, and one day they feel really in love and they'll do anything another day they're doubting everything and flip-flopping because they don't trust or they feel hurt and pardon them shutting down. And fearful of what it's confused emotionals, like emotions with love. So love is beneath all those emotions, whereas if I'm feeling hot one day and cold the other, I think that that's how much I love somebody, but it's actually just my triggers or lack thereof. And when you conflate the two, you then conflate the two and you think, geez, it feels like my emotions change on a dime, my feelings change on a dime. So you project and assume that everybody else's would too. Yeah. But if you, but if you, we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. So as quick as we can flip it, that we think they can too. And not only do all of their attachments, all three out of four other attachments, I'll not do that the same way. But because for the ones who are operating these extremes, these polarities, but even if you think you don't want somebody one day 'cause you're mad, or like who cares, I should run, I should leave. The moment you're not triggered, that love is still there. You come out, you so proud of the trigger, and you're like, oh, but I love this person, and I actually do want them. And so you project your emotions onto somebody and think that's their representation of love. But it's actually just your representation of your triggers that you're projecting and confusing with love. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, it's a different layer, right? Exactly. Like you're blinded by, you know, the trigger. Exactly. And so fearful of wins of this really interesting, they're more complex, but they have this anxious side where the things we covered, then they have these fears of being betrayed, unwirly, fearful of wins of like, when I say it, but they have an unsafety core wound. And if you tell a fearful of win, they're like, I feel safe, I'm fine. But if you look at how their nervousness is functioning, they spend an inordinate amount of time and fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode. I'm glad you said all of them because I get 'em. Yeah, I mean, like there's definitely plenty of times in like maybe a less charged, volatile sort of state of like arguing where it's like talking and a little bit more calm state, but still not sort of like harmonized, where I freeze. Like there's two, like I don't, I don't, I almost don't know, I just freeze. Like I don't have words to fix it. Like I don't know what to say, I don't know. They don't even know how I'm feeling. Yeah, exactly. And that's very freeze mode. And that's very unlikely or a lot less likely for anxious attachment styles. They're mostly just in fawn, like almost always fawn. And so then the other side of the fearful avoidance, they're avoidance side. And there are big triggers on that side or they have big triggers and they get very frustrated when they feel trapped, helpless, powerless. Like these are really big things if somebody's taking away your control and making you feel powerless or somebody's trying to trap you in some kind of way or take away your freedom. Usually fearful avoidance of a little bit of like a caged animal side where they feel like they need to really lash out. And I'm saying all this with also just so you know, for our conversation, I don't think you're here now. Like you know, I don't know much about your life. But these things are on the continuum like you say. And you grow, you do the homework, you do the deep, you do the inner work, you do the inner child work, you do, you know, you, there's plenty of things that can shift this stuff for sure, which I have. And just starting from like your channel and like you're obviously like having to lose conversations with people and doing the work, like I'm sure you're not here at this point in your life. You may have like little echoes of this stuff right or like themes of these things. But at a point these might have been a little bit more strong. And so because fearful avoidance of this anxious and avoidance side, they flip so much. So like should I say or should I go? And one day they're all in and another day they're having complete doubts. And there can be a lot of those things like you said where they're like, I'm gonna cut everything and run or whatever, what was it? Fuck everything and run. - Fear, fuck everything around. - Fear, fear, fear. And not. That's a lot of the fear of avoidance patterns. And fear of avoidance usually have a strong sense of self outside of relationship or is anxiously attached individuals do not. There are sense of identities through, to their friends like them, what's their community like, are they in a relationship? How's that going? Fear of avoidance usually find a really strong sense of identity in a career, in the financial area of life in their hobbies and interests. Like they have that independence. And they're more hyper independent people with an anxious side in their relationship. - That'd be so true. Like I definitely feel so secure. here and all those things, but then, and so, autonomous. And, but yet, there's the anxious side to be like, I definitely can, like, the way that you feel is how I feel inside of the intimate relationship when you're together a little bit. Like, if you're not happy, I'm like, oh, what's wrong? And, you know, you can kind of, I feel like I want to fix things, I guess. That would be my private name. - Yes, for sure. And I've got to be a good girl in real life. I'd be a good girl or like, I would think would be like, more of the feminine sort of way of being in a relationship, which is, you know, usually you, you're like, a woman would want to like do a bunch of talking and you just want someone to listen. And I do the fixing. Like, I play, I'm like a guy role in that. I'm like, you know, I have to be like, and sometimes like, boyfriend will be just like, just love me. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, I love you. (laughs) You're right, I don't have to fix that. I don't have to suggest anything. And can I ask you, was there a point in your childhood where you had to fix a lot? It was fixing bad emotions when he wasn't seeing you show up enough or was there like, where does that come from? Was fearful ones are often, I joke, that fearful ones are like the human lie detectors because they notice everything. And they also the wounded bird people. Like, they're always, they fall in love with people that they have to nurture and they confuse love with nurturing a lot of the time. - Yeah, yeah. I would say that, I don't know if I had to like, be in charge of the emotional sort of state or fixing of things so much. I mean, I had to tolerate it for sure. I had to bear it for sure. But I moved to England when I was 16 and lived on my own starting then. And so I think that began the sadness inside or the narrative that I was on my own. Like, no one's got my back. And I think some of that trickled down into childhood of like, I had to defend myself against dad. And like, mom didn't have my back. - Yes. - Yep. And that'll be 100% that can make for fear of avoidant conditioning. And it won't be like, you were probably whenever a huge fear of avoidant and extreme but you probably were a fear of avoidant. And that was probably your prominent attachment style. - Yeah. - And another thing I actually didn't mention this one, but fear of avoidance also have a huge ruin of being alone. And it's not alone and like, oh, I'm going to be alone forever. That can happen. That's more the anxious expression of it. But this sense that it's always going to all fall on me. Like, the weight of the world, all the pressures on me, I'm going to have to go at a loan. I'm going to be the one left holding the bag at the end of the day or fixing it for everybody. - We're doing everything in the relationship or-- - Exactly. Exactly. - Yeah, that's true. - Yeah. Okay. So anxious versus fearful avoidant, which one resonates with you more? - Well, it's clarifying. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of that fearful that resonates for sure. I mean, I've been the anxious much more, like I've slid more-- - More pressure. - You're able to add more. - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that sometimes certain relationships pulled that more. Like when I was in a narcissistic relationship, I was way more anxious. - Interesting. Okay, so if you're in a narcissistic relationship too, you could actually have been anxious. I don't know when that relationship wasn't your life and I got it, I don't want to put you in the spot. But if you were, sometimes people are anxious coming out of childhood. But dad being really tough, really extreme with his, like, how you talked to you, would make for a good fearful avoidant case. But you could be some more, like, along that continuum. And then if you get into a relationship with a narcissist, highly likely you leave that relationship fearful avoidant 'cause your conditioning doesn't just come from time. - Yeah, that's how it felt. Like, 'cause in it, it was like, I remember doing like practices of like at towards the end, we're thinking it's like, 'cause I was doing therapy and working on all kinds of things. And with a narcissist, you can't ever solve the problem because the problem is their solution. Like they make the problem to feed off your energy and it's crazy making, 'cause you can't, it feels like you're going crazy 'cause there is no solution. You just need to create chaos. And so like trying to find a way to fix that and get back to the love bombing beginning, thinking it's your fault that you're not there. I remember doing this practice of like waking up and writing things down. One of the things I wrote down was like, three or five things that I wanted to do for myself that day. And I remember how hard that was. - Yeah. - Like, I don't know what, I don't, like, I don't know, make you dinner. Nope, that's not it. I'm like, welcome on the beach, yeah, that one. I couldn't even think of a few things that I wanted to do for myself. So I think I was really anxious, much more anxious until that relationship, which was demoralizing. And 'cause it was two and a half years long. And then that was like a whole alchemization and to probably more of the fearful. - Yeah, and then coming up with that, there's a fear sometimes of going into the next relationship. What if I lose myself like that again or get hurt like that again, it can be so painful? - Oh yeah. - And narcissists are so interesting and we'll get into the dismissive of avoidant to differentiate it. - Yeah, I couldn't forget that you asked me that. - No, no, you're good, you're a poor girl. - Thank you, but I know. - Your videos are so good. - Thank you so much. But it's so interesting 'cause narcissists, they impact the brain like addiction. Because if you look at like, I had a client years ago and I think it's a good analogy. And he came to me because his wife was like, please see him, I'd worked with his wife, they were separated. And he was just coming out of like sober living for 30 days and he was an alcoholic. He had three DUIs, he really, really struggled. And he had tried all these things in patient outpatient, he'd always go back to drinking. And so she's like, can you just try seeing him? 'Cause I really focus on like rewiring or subconscious patterns. That's like a big part of my work. And he came in and I said, okay, like what are, first thing you're looking for is your program to associations to something that causes to keep going back. And I said, okay, well, what was your first experience of alcohol? And he said, well, as a kid, I was really insecure. I had no friends. Went to a party in high school, drank, felt confident, made all these friends. I was like a rock star. I was the life of the party and started having a social life. So conditioning wise, alcohol, and it equaled approval, connection, love, acceptance, support, like all these things that he was just deeply yearning for. And so sure enough over the course of his life, every time he would drink was when he felt the most lonely, least accepted, least validated because his subconscious mind had wired in those associations. And so consciously, our conscious mind is responsible for three to five percent of our choices in life. His subconscious is 95 to 97%. So conscious mind has stopped drinking, stopped drinking, subconscious running the show says, oh my God, but this is your solution to all these painful feelings you're feeling so go back to alcohol. And it was so interesting. - So is there, is there like a connection then between someone thinking like, oh, that was the solution, but also subconsciously knowing that the problem was that you weren't cool, you weren't social, you weren't front like, so that you, it kind of is like embedded into like what you think the solution is, is that the underlying problem is essentially why you're doing it. - Exactly, exactly. And so what happens is like the way out of those things, like especially really addictive patterns is not to keep using the alcohol. The actual path forward is to look at all the cost of alcohol and all the benefits of getting sober through repetition and emotion across time 'cause it fires and wires and all pathways and we rebalance, we recalibrate those sort of emotional associations and then beneath that, what were the wounds that caused you to drink? Oh, I'm not good enough, I'm unlovable. I'm, you know, that don't belong and then rewiring those core wounds. So you don't believe that about yourself at a subconscious level. And now you dealt with root cause 'cause the alcohol's not the problem, it's the symptom. And then you recalibrated your sort of emotional association to alcohol and now your conditioning has broken free of the addiction. And where that comes full circle, which is so interesting is narcissism. Narcissism, you said this. So you obviously know love bomb you at the beginning. They wire your sort of emotional associations to be like, oh my God, everything is perfect. They meet your deepest unmet needs from childhood. They help you see outside of your wounds about yourself. They make you feel like the most special worthy person on the planet. And if you had an unworthiness wound from childhood or from any point in life and then somebody helps you see the opposite, they become the solution to the pain. And then the top of that, they meet all these needs. And now you've been wired with all these positive emotional associations fast forward three months on the devaluation and discarding phase starts. And they start breaking you down and hammering out you all the time and being cruel. Well, your subconscious mind has already been programmed with them and who they are and what they give to you. And so it's like an addiction where you consciously know you should leave and know they're destroying you, but subconsciously you can't stop yourself from going back and trying to get back to the beginning, just like chasing the dragon and an addictive pattern. - Yeah. - That's so true. I just remember the crazy making was just like, there's always a problem. And there's problems when there isn't a problem. It's the wildest thing. Like it's just literally just for, like they're just feeding off of your energy, no matter what kind it is. - Exactly. - And you know this already too. And so we'll go back to the dismissal of what it is. But just the last thing is that narcissists, they get something if they love bombing you and they get your attention and approval and if you're showing up for them, but they get something when they make you feel terrible because they think, "Oh, I have power over you and your emotions." And that props them up. So it's like a win-win for them. And then of course, as you know, the only way is like gray rocking your way out of those relationships and getting distance. - Yeah. - Yeah, we'll stop giving them, what's the word I'm blanking on right now? - Emotional juice on either side. - Yeah, there's a word that's always used for it though and it's a supply. And you cut off the supply and you don't have reaction, which is essentially what I feel kind of happened at the end. It was like, I remember there was like a scenario of like, you know, him saying like, "Well, why are you even responding like that?" I'm like, "Because if I don't, you'll just push further." Like you're always gonna look for a response. So, you know, it was like when the response became sort of turned down, that was the end. whether that was the reason or not. I don't know, that's one of the stories I tell myself. - No, but 100% and then they go look for it elsewhere. They're like, "I have to go to the bathroom." They leave you alone a little bit, which is a good thing. - Yeah. (laughing) - I've never had to talk to him again, so. - Thank God. So then the last attachment style is, well, we can talk about the security, but the dismissive avoidance, their theme is that, and fearful avoidance can lean dismissive and they can lean anxious. But dismissive avoidance, they're over-arching theme and childhood is childhood emotional neglect. So usually this is, usually it's very covert. A lot of people think that neglect is like, kids are left home alone for hours on end and parents arrive home at 11 p.m. and of course it can be those things. But more often than not, it's actually that, children are in a dynamic in the family where food's on the table. Structure in order, they're at school on time, after school sports, everything's good and the status quo that way. But the parents are emotionally unavailable and not attuned. And so when children express emotion growing up, it's constantly deflected or dismissed or even shamed. Like, what'll be a crybaby, grow up, figure it out. And so much of just society was like that for a long time. And I think the balance is necessary. Like I think overgiving into emotions is not good and snowflake culture is kind of painful, but the flip side of it where there's no emotional attunement is also very painful for people. And so then children grow up and they think this part of me, this vulnerable part of me is literally not where the acceptance or laugh. I have to repress this part of me, cut it off in order to get any kind of connection to anyone. And when they do that, they then become emotionally unavailable to self and then obviously become emotionally unavailable to other people. And as adults, they really fear being shamed because they felt really shamed for their emotions growing up so they're very private. They want space and peace. They don't want to be seen because you might see that I'm shameful. They also have a very hard time with criticism as a result because they take it as like, you're not criticizing my behavior, you're criticizing me at my core. You're saying, I'm not consistent enough in my communication. It's not a communication issue. It's a me issue. I am fundamentally broken. It's a lot shameful. And then underneath that, they have huge fears of being trapped or helpless or powerless, similar to that fearful avoidant in the wrong relationship where they can't get their needs met because that's a reflection of their childhood. And then they also end up feeling very emotionally unsafe and conflict. And they shut down. They've never really had healthy modeling for a conflict so they're individuals who have a conflict happens. They're like, I don't know what to do with this. They often go into freeze mode frequently as well. Shut people out, push people away, stone wall. A lot of people think that dismissive avoidance or stone walling from a place of trying to exert power. Like, you know, exactly. But dismissive avoidance, that's more narcissism. Dismissive avoidance are usually more like, I'm still willing because I don't know what to do here. I am panicked. I don't know how to approach this. And so I just retreat like a turtle going into my shell because I don't know how to cope with this. And so that's more the dismissive avoidance. And they need a lot of freedom and autonomy as adults and independence will often get into a relationship with somebody and be really okay at the beginning as with every insecure attachment cell. Everybody's really good at attaching until they actually feel attached. So first three, four months with people, they're great. And then when things get real, all the stuff comes up. And then people are left feeling like, wait, this person showed up the first few months now they're pulling away. What the heck happens? But a lot of times it's that person's own stuff coming to the surface that we'll see. What's the difference? Because a lot of the ways that you were describing a dismissive avoidance to me sound a lot like narcissistic traits as well. So what's the difference nuanced difference between like narcissists and a dismissive avoidance and like how they get there or how they end up in each one of those? - It's a great question. And people really can flate them. Number one thing that you're gonna see is that narcissists, they need to be the center of attention. They're grandiose. They need constant admiration, attention. If you give it a dismissive avoidance, too much attention or admiration, they're like, get away from me. I need space. I don't want this. So they also don't, but they don't like to be criticized, but they also don't like to be like praised and put on a pedestal either. - They don't like that. Yeah, they'll shirk away from it. They don't like it. - Because narcissists hate being criticized too. - Yes, they do. They absolutely do. But they also hunger for supply all the time. Dismissive avoidance do not. Dismissive avoidance just like want their autonomy and their space. And if you tell a dismissive avoidance that you're dating, you're the center of my universe. Like I've seen this so many times with couples. I love you more than anything. You give these grandiose compliments to a narcissist. They're like, tell me more. You give these grandiose compliments to an avoidant. They're like, get away from me. Yeah, make it complicated. So that's a big first one. And now they're one and people can flate these. This is more nuance, but this is a really important one. Dismissive avoidance of no concept of what we call covert contracts. So covert contracts. I spent a lot of time operating like this. I'm gonna guess you probably did too. Covert contracts are when you're like, I'm gonna buy my way into receiving. So I am going to do 19 things for you because I need to ask for a favor from you next week. And it's so scary for me to ask for my name. That it sounds subconscious too. Very subconscious. Yeah, I would call these unspoken agreements. Exactly, exactly. And so a lot of people anxiously attach people to it too. Fearful avoidance to it. Secure people are pretty good about not doing it much at all. Dismissive avoidance do not operate this at all. Whatsoever. They are like, if you need something, you're gonna tell me and we speak literally. They take everything very literally. So what's really interesting is that narcissists are entitled. It's a factor in the DSM. They're entitled. And that type of entitlement from a narcissist is like, narcissist sits down at a restaurant. They don't care that it's busy. They should be served first anyways. They meet somebody and that person has resources that they need. They deserve those resources. They're gonna go actively take them. They believe that they are actively entitled to other people's stuff. Lifetime financial resources, anything. Dismissive avoidance end up seeming entitled, but it's more that they are just not operating by covert contracts. So people will give to them to earn their worth from them and dismissive avoidance will just receive. Oh, you're a very giving person. You wanna give to me? That's lovely. I'm just gonna receive it. They don't think, oh, I should then owe you back. I should also pour into you like you are to me. They just think, oh, you're doing that 'cause you choose that because they only do things that they would choose. And so they end up often taking more than they give, but it's not like they believe that they are entitled to people's stuff or time or energy. They just see people giving and they're like, why not? I'll receive. So entitlement, like I believe that I should take from you versus I just receive when you give is a very different type of entitlements and that's another big differentiating factor. And then just, I mean, there's a whole bunch. I could go and do it for a long time but just I'll give one last one. Narcissists, they will actively manipulate and exploit and they very much believe that they should only associate with other powerful status oriented people. Like they see people as how much power status you have and like let me extract that from them. - Their pawns, their pawns in the game. - Exactly. And dismissable avoidance, they will never hang out with people because the power and status, they just don't care that much. They're like, power and status is silly. I'm gonna hang out with people I like to hang out with. I'm gonna spend time with people actually get along with and who are accepting of me and that are kind. They really like harmony in their relationships and peace whereas narcissists are not harmonious or peaceful and they will actively put you down and dismiss the wounds are very careful with their words and narcissists see relationships as a power structure like a ladder that I can climb. Dismissable avoidance couldn't care less. So there's a lot of really stark differences. Those are just a few. But there's a lot of very stark differences but people see the dismissable avoidance receiving a lot and not giving back and then not really being super warm and available and taking criticism poorly and they can flake that with like all of narcissists like narcissistic personality disorder but really there's a lot of really profound differences between the two. - Do you think that there are too many people calling their exes narcissists these days? (laughs) - Not only do I think there's too many people calling their exes narcissists but I think that as attachment there you became more mainstream. The biggest problem that happened is that people just use their attachment cell as a label to excuse their behavior if I'm being really honest. And people should only learn their attachment style as a step in like healing their underlying patterns. Okay, if I have this attachment cell these are the core wounds I need to rewire 'cause you're not born with these core wounds and fears they get wired into you from a neuroplasticity standpoint you can change them. These are my needs and relationships I should speak them. These are my communication patterns I should go fix them. These are my boundary issues I should solve them. This is my nervous system function I should work on it. The only point I'm knowing your attachment cell that gives you this whole web of information to say, "Here are the things you can work on very specifically for you to make you into a better person and heal and grow." And instead people got into this space in the attachment theory world of going, "This is my ex, they're avoided, they're a narcissist, they're whatever they are." Instead of going, "Hey, why am I attracting people like this? Why am I investing people?" - Right, right, that's like what I say about my mom. It's like, "Oh, when you act like this you get that." - Exactly. - So what are those actions that attract an anxious and attract a dismissive avoidant, attract an narcissist, attract a fearful avoidant? Like how can you self-identify? - Okay, so here's an exercise, it's fun. So first thing-- - Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna be fun. (laughing) Okay, so we're just kidding, we're just kidding. - We're just kidding, we're just kidding. - This is how we get out of the maze. Is we understand this, we fix it, And then we can-- have much more harmonious relationships. Exactly. So there's five pillars appealing. You're a touch-and-sale. We can get into those, but this is a really good identifying exercise first. And if you're open to doing it, we can just do it together. Yeah. Think of a period of time where you're in really painful relationships. Okay. So kind of peak. It could be that narcissist time, maybe the narcissist is a good example. And I want you to tell me the three biggest judgments you had about that person. So they were advantageous. They were manipulative. They were harsh or critical or cruel. The three traits that would come to mind the most, what would you say? It's hard for me to get out of the way of the things that I judge most in people and think about what I judged the most harshly within the hardest relationship, let's say. Yeah. You've been done. Like a lack of availability, emotional availability. Good, unavailable. Felt like consistency. Inconsistent. Okay, really good. Like a lack of commitment. Okay. Lack of all in. Like the all in element. Okay, I love that. Okay. So the first one. So when you look back at that period of time when you were with that person, where were you emotionally? Where are how were you emotionally unavailable to yourself? I mean, I probably put up with more than I needed to. I didn't leave when I showed up. Right? Like, I mean, just sort of knowing when to call it, right? Knowing when to call it quits. Like that's always been a pattern that's hard. It's like, you know, I have no idea. I have a keep going kind of attitude. And like, you know, when you when I've decided I'm all in, it's like, all right, whatever. This is what we're doing, even in my moments of the fear of everything and run. An emotional unavailability can also be that when I was spending time with that person, I forgot to tune to how I felt. Like it was all about them. It was all my focus was on their emotions. How they were feeling. I never came back to myself. Yeah. Like, how's this person making me feel? How do I feel about the relationship? Like, what do I need or what are my boundaries here? And so if you were to give yourself a score, one to 10 of how emotionally unavailable you were to yourself at the time that you were with that person, where would you give yourself 10 being high, one being low? Yeah, like three, three emotionally unavailable or available? Well, I was emotionally available to myself. Okay. So you're like a seven emotionally unavailable sort of thing. Yeah. Okay. So I was wondering it was being mirrored. Yes, what you're I get what you're doing. And if you look at the next one, right? And what was your next one? It was you said, all consistency, but inconsistent was the second one. Yeah. Well, there I go. There's my fearful avoidant peeking through, right? And where you were inconsistent specifically, not just to the person, but to yourself, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right? Having these thoughts of like, yeah, exactly. And so your identifier is why we attract these people. We always attract consciously. We'll say all the things under the sun. We'll say I want the available person, the committed person, the this, that that your conscience, mind's three to five percent of all your choices. Your subconscious mind wants what's familiar because it equates it to safety and thus survival. And what's most familiar to us is the way we treat ourselves. So it's not about like that this is a good flip because it's not about, you know, be the person in the relationship that you want from them, right? Like it's like, be like, you know, really caring and emotionally, but it's like not to them to yourself. Yeah. Right? Because you can be like, tell me, I want to hear all that talk to you. But it's like, but at what point in time did I get real with myself? Exactly. And then follow through on that, right? Even if there were moments of honesty in my head, it's like, but you didn't do anything about it. Exactly. And it has to be a consistent behavior. Otherwise, it's on a pattern. It's just a thought or a fleeting emotion. And consistent was a complaint. Yeah. Exactly. And so if there's an identifying exercise, it's to look at it's called your relationship shadow. I put this exercise together based on Carl Young's shadow work, but it's to look at what we're so triggered by in relationships. You can do this in any aspect of life or what you judge in other people and what you judge the most in other people is usually what you're doing the most to yourself and not recognizing. And it's totally. Yeah. It was aware of that one. I was aware of like the judgments overall. Like like one of them for me has always been lazy people. Like I just really can't wrap my head around it because when I was a kid, I was never allowed to be lazy. Like with my sister and I were growing up and we were on summer break. My my dad or my mom, I feel like I remember it being my dad a lot, but my mom or my dad would call the house at 8 a.m. in the summer until we answered the phone. And they do get up. Don't waste the day. So like there was just from a from childhood, there was no and we'd get in trouble if we didn't have the cooler pack to go, you know, on the race weekend trip because dad's been working all day. Why didn't you have everything ready? So like there was never an opportunity to be lazy. Okay. So where are you lazy to yourself? Where am I lazy to myself? There's a really big one. Probably get lazy to myself. Yeah. Well, obviously like being honest with myself, right? Showing up for myself. Attunement to myself. And that probably leads into it's a great one. That was a great answer. Um, leads to I'm lazy at giving myself rest. I'm lazy for sure. Normal being able to block and rest and recharge. And I think that there's rest. It's very superficial rest. Like nobody feels arrested. People have like creature comforts. People can rest when they just binge watch like six hours of television. You don't watch six hours of TV and feel recharged. You feel stale and gross. But there's recharging, which is like you spend time in silence or you spend time with God or you spend time in meditation or whatever it is. It's actually recharging you. And sometimes it's like the people have the repressed rate of laziness and see that it's bad. I struggled with this too. This is a very fearful avoidant thing, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. It's super fearful of what because your nervous system's so-and-over drive. So yeah, rest is this really confusing thing. Oh, yeah. Rest is very uncomfortable. When it's supposed to be really cozy. Yes. And fearful avoidance, they're nervous system. We have the kind of three nervous system states. We have sympathetic, which is that fight, fight, freezer, fun. Then we have ventral vagal, which is actually that social bull nervous system state when we feel arrested and grounded and rooted in ourselves. And then we have dorsal vagal, which is sometimes terms like dorsal vagal shutdown. And fearful avoidance, then all of a sudden, sympathetic. And then they crash into dorsal vagal. And they like, when they do finally rest, it's like they can't get up. And it's like, oh my God, everything's too hard. I mean, this door and sometimes it's like at the end of a 15 hour day. And then you get on the couch and then moving from the couch to the bed when it's bedtime is like impossible. And it's often your nervous system not getting regulated in that center place. Oh, one of the kinds of that does that happen in your journey? Yeah, I mean, if I fall asleep on the couch, like I am, I need a name for this person that emerges after waking up on the couch to go to bed. It is scary. It's like, like my middle name Sue. So I've said that I think it needs to be scary Sue. Like it needs to be, it's like literally, like I am a monster when I would. And I like, and it's sometimes I feel like I've been drugged. Like I like, I'll wait. And I'll be like, I can't even, I can't even open my eyes. Like I feel drugged right now. Yeah. And that's dorsal vagal shutdown. And that's actually a sign that you spend too much time in some kind of bed. I got to look that up. I have a new disease dorsal vagal shutdown. It's not a disease. It's just, it's just that you're nervous in operating in extremes. And yeah, it's operating in extremes. And because fearful of widens are extreme. They're usually all in or all out. They're all hot or all cold or there are all sympathetic or all dorsal vagal. And maybe like when I cleaned the entire house, topped a bottom to the furthest extent that I possibly could, and I reorganized my closet. And then I crashed. Exactly. And sometimes when you're in and we're weighed on a rabbit hole, but this is one of the five pillars of heal your attachment. So it's the regulation. Sometimes when you spend so much time in sympathetic, that also that also affects the HP access or the gut brain access. And it leads to like chronic and systemic inflammation over time. And it leads to all of it. Sometimes you can have like brain fog that happens in periods of life. There can be dynamics where I don't know if you've ever felt like inflammation in your hands or you're like, oh man, I had a wild amount of problems after that narcissistic relationship and being sick. And some of it I do attribute to having breast implants, but also I think that which I ended up having removed and that helped very much. But you know, it's not the whole matrix to it, but usually anything health related tends to be a little bit of a viral load sort of thing. Like no one thing's going to take you out, but like, okay, you've got that going on and then your con it you're always stressed. You have a breakup or you're eating poorly or you're eating not enough or you're working out too much or something like that or sitting around too much, whatever the thing is. Like usually it's usually it's a constellation of things. And so I had that and I was wildly, wildly unwell. I mean, it didn't really appear to the people on the outside so much, but because trust me, I pushed through. You learn how to, yeah, you're probably an expert at managing. Yeah. But yeah, that was a journey, big journey. Yeah. And so one of the big pillars and I imagine you probably don't have a bunch of this stuff anyways, but like a lot of people end up doing these things indirectly, but there's five really big pillars of healing your attachments. All the fur, this is actually the third one, is regulating your nervous system. And it's such a, it almost, when you tell if you're full of wind this, they almost feel like a little bit of panic at first. It's like learning to operate at 80% of your capacity. It's learning to like not always be thinking that you have to achieve at 100. percent because human beings can't like sprint through life 100% of the time at 100% capacity just not possible. And it's like you need to know when you're, hey, I'm at 80% capacity. And I think fearful of winds of this deep intense like push to the 100% because you've probably done it and spent a lot of time there. But then the relationship of fearful of wind has to life get slightly skewed because it's seeing through the lens of everything that peak capacity. How hard can I push how far can I go how can and that's great to do in like small segments. But our nervous system isn't designed to be spending 40 hours a week there or 116 hours of your day. Yeah. So I'm curious like just on that note, have you done any work in that area so far? As far as with the nervous system regulation. Well, the thing that started popping up a couple times while you were talking was how much of the nervous system is related to gut health and your sort of biological function, your endocrine system, your hormones. And it's all a mate. You know, it's all sort of like a, you know, all the wheels connect in different ways. But but I wonder that because that was that was definitely part of it. So nervous system regulation feels much easier now in a sense that I rest much more, which means I judge lazy people less because I've learned how to do it myself. So you know, you go, oh, well, maybe they're just tired or maybe they're, you know, it's that time of the month or maybe it's, you know, God knows what. But but I would say sure, I mean, I meditation yoga, spiritual practices, spiritual journeys and trips and going to places around the world. Reading books, um, yeah, being present in nature. Yeah, those are great ones. Those are going to all of them. So you're hitting like really high on that. Yeah, really. Yeah. And so so that's the the third pillar is like regulating your nervous system. A lot of people struggle with that. A lot of people are like, they just are always everything's a task. And the one thing you want to be mindful of a little bit and I'm like, I'm always aware of this and myself too is sometimes it's like, it's 8 p.m. Meditate from eight till nine, then practice mindfulness from nine till nine 30 and that it can be this like, it's a new problem and enough itself. Oh, and that, that is so true. And that is interesting. You say that because I'm very regimented and very disciplined, I should say. Regimented isn't fair because I don't think I have the same schedule all the time for everything. But like, I'm very disciplined in whatever it is that I want to do. But one of the things that I've always given myself a lot of like, laxity with or freedom is the emotional spiritual practices because it always feels like there's a modality for everything. So sometimes I might do more meditating, sometimes I might do more reading, sometimes I might do more walking in nature. Like it always seems like there's something that can help me breath work. And it doesn't always have to be the one thing. It could be breath work. Exactly. It could be some more somatic work with sort of movements. And but I never felt like I was super, super, super regimented and disciplined to do like the one thing all the time. So maybe that's why I was able to heal because that's like a space that I just gave myself some freedom. Probably gave yourself a little bit. It sounds like you're showing up really well in that pillar. So that probably helped a lot coming out of the relationship with the narcissist. So that's that's the third pillar. There's two really important pillars before. And they affect the third pillar too, which is interesting. So so a lot of people, this is like another bone. I have to pick a tiny bit with the world right now. People, people, nervous system regulation became a big thing on the internet, which I love. I'm like, that's great. It's going mainstream, just like a tap from theory, great. But people don't realize that your nervous system is also responding to your conditioning first. So I'll tell you the story. I had we have these people who come in and they they have a family member and they're in our sales team. And they said they had that a person came in and they were going to do our we have a certification program and people get certain tried to be an attachment relationship coach. And this family member said that she met with somebody and they came into the call. And they were constantly saying like, oh, I've done so much nervous system work, but they kept talking about how they were chronically triggered by everything in life. And they were regulating their nervous system. And that's great that you have the tools to regulate your nervous system. That's really important. But you have to ask yourself, well, like, I can't just go through life getting triggered by things all the time and then regulating my nervous system. Then everything has to be perfect for nervous system regulation conditions all the time, which isn't how life works. And what often happens is when we look at our attachment styles, the biggest part of what affects us more than than anything in my opinion are these first three pillars. But the first one is your courtrooms. So I always give people the analogy of a bear in the woods. If you go into the woods tomorrow and you see a bear and you run away from the bear and then goodness, you're safe, but you have to go back into the woods the next day. Well, your mind has done two things. Number one, it's stored the threat of the bear. And we go back into the woods the next day, the friggin trees move and you're like the bear and you're bracing for the bear. So we store the threat and we project it back out. And number two, we have a negativity bias where wired this way biologically. So so you know, if you got chased by the bear, you don't go home and tell your loved ones, oh my god, I saw these beautiful flowers when this bear was chasing you. Yeah, right. That's a win. That doesn't win the story. You're like the bear's teeth and it's claws. So that's great and that's working for us if it's the bear in the woods. But if as a child, you felt abandoned and were the alone betrayed helpless trapped, then what's happening is you've stored these these perceptions. Your subconscious mind is like the lens you see the world through. People say genetic loads of gun environment pulls the trigger and it's incorrect. Genetic loads the gun and your stored perception of the environment pulls the trigger. It's why you can have somebody who's anxious and somebody doesn't call them back and they're caught, they're panicked and somebody who's dismissive avoidance, somebody just can call it hot, right? The same environment is a different experience for different people according to our conditioned perceptions. So so we have this stored perception and until you're rewiring it until you're actually learning to rewire those wounds and it's really easy to do and I'm can share a tool but until you rewire those stored ideas and I'm unworthy or I'm not good enough or whatever it is according to our attachment style, then you project it onto everything. When you believe that you're unworthy or you will like let's just use unworthiness, you believe you're unworthy, that's like the tree trunk. You have all these thoughts that are like tree branches coming off of that. Oh, I have to do more. I have to try harder. I have to show up better. I have to push push further. You have all these thoughts. How do you feel when you believe those thoughts will now you feel pressure because you put all these pressure pressure on yourself through those core beliefs and all those thoughts and you feel under stress and overwhelmed and then neuroscience is proven every action we take is based on our emotional state. So then our actions are going to be to try harder or push or work longer hours or whatever it might be which in some cases could be good to have some grit but in a lot of cases if you overwork it's problematic and then what's really interesting is it's actually those beliefs and thoughts creating those emotional outputs. Emotions are made up of neurochemical reactions like cortisol which is now causing your body to move and distribute that agnurvisants. Sure, it's a cocktail. Exactly. So people is good for you. It's just that it's familiar. Exactly. And so people are like regular nervous system, regular nervous system. Really good, really important. But if you don't rewire your core wounds that are then causing you to do all those things that are dysregulating your nervous system, you're always having all these core wounds and all this pressure or stress and then you turn around and you regularly your nervous system and you're always putting this bandaid on a deeper root problem. Yeah. And it's going to take for someone to figure out their core wounds. So they're by attachment style. Like people can have core wounds outside of this but like I'll just say what they are. So anxiously attached biggest core wounds will be abandoned alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, unloved, not good enough, unsafe emotionally if somebody pulls away from me or bandits me dismissive avoidance. I will be shamed or defective. I'll be trapped, helpless, powerless. I don't belong. I'm not good enough. They share that with the anxious and I'm emotionally unsafe. They all have an emotional unsafe one all in secure attachment styles feel and they feel more emotional and safe. Not when somebody pulls away but if they're in a conflict, they just panic and shut down. Fearful avoidance of a little bit of both. So the biggest ones are usually I'll be abandoned. I'll be unworthy. I'll be unloved or unlovable or alone. Like it's all on me like we talked about. I'll be betrayed is a huge one. And then the fear of being trapped, helpless, powerless are really big ones too. And disrespected is a really big one for fearful avoidance. Like if they feel disrespected, they can get really frustrated. So then we find our core wounds and then you go into rewiring them because they're not born with these wounds. They get conditioned into you through repeated experiences that made you feel that way. Like you're bare in the woods, you store it. It happens enough that now it's a part of your identity. It's fired and wired these neural networks. And then we see the world through these wounds and we get triggered all the time and our nervous system response to that or the rest of our nervous system response to that essentially. I would like you to go through the nuance differences or obvious on how projection, manipulation and gaslighting shows up because I think people get the words wrong. You know, it's like it's like I'm not gaslighting you. I'm definitely projecting right now. You know, like what can so how would it show how do each of those show up in relationships? I can ask a long question. So let's start with manipulation. So manipulation is a continuum and most people manipulate even though they don't want to pretend to themselves that they do. Manipulation. So we all manipulate - Yeah, in different forms. And sometimes there's like, healthier and less healthy forms of manipulation. Not that we wanna do any of them, but let's look at an anxious attachment style. An anxious attachment style in all of their innocence when they feel really unloved or scared that somebody doesn't like them. And they need reassurance, but don't know how to communicate and don't know how to ask for it. And they don't know how to take up too much space and they don't wanna be a burden by asking or be needy or uncool. They manipulation is simply a subconscious strategy to get our needs met in roundabout ways. So the less we know what we need and the less we know how to communicate directly, the more manipulative we are likely to become. So let's take the anxious attachment style. They may in that situation say, okay, well, I don't know if my partner likes me or if they're really into me, as much as I'm into them, we're at the bar. I'm gonna flirt with this person here and see if my provokes a response in my partner and then maybe I'll know that they like me. And what is it? It's just some person dying for reassurance. - Yeah. - You know wanting to be loved, but they don't know how to ask for their needs so they go roundabout. And now the more distant we come from direct communication, the more manipulative we often become as a result. - Yeah, there you go. That's a good way to describe it right there. - And so that's manipulation. Now, manipulation in extremes, we take really unhealthy people with lots of triggers, let the wounds, somebody who's a narcissist, lots of shame, lack of empathy, huge entitlement, they're gonna be extremely manipulative, right? They're gonna do all sorts of things. Extreme manipulation can lead to the second one that you said, which is gaslighting. So gaslighting is when somebody actually tries to destroy your reality and tell you that your reality is different than what it actually is. And sometimes people, to your really valid, really good question and point, sometimes people can flate misunderstanding with gaslighting. Again, that's where people leverage pops ecology in unhealthy ways. They're like, the person didn't understand what I'm feeling. They told, they, they, they, they, they, they had a different viewpoint than me. They're gaslighting me. - So our gaslighting's conscious. Gaslighting is very much conscious. The person who really got to think of it. - That's a good differentiation between, because manipulating is trying to meet a need. So that's a subconscious programming, like running. - On the continuum. - Right. - And gaslighting is like going like, you know, you know, your graded examples, but, but just. - The guy in purple. - Coming up with a lie like, you know, I love the color red and, you know, you lie about the, you know, that's not, that's, that's blue. I told you I wanted red, you know. - Exactly. And a lot of times in relationships, or just in any interpersonal context, gaslighting will be like, hey, you said last week that you didn't care about X, Y, Z. And you're like, no, I told you I really care about X, Y, Z. Like I said, that was meaningful to me. No, you literally told me you didn't care. That's why I didn't do it. And it's telling somebody, and that person knows who's gaslighting. They know that they're doing it. And the person's receiving end knows, but then they're being told still be humanly by the other person in such a strong, like, conducted manner. - Yeah. - That it's the reality is different than it is, that the actual more sane person in the situation is gonna doubt themselves, because they're gonna go, well, the person was the capacity to question themselves. - And they would never do it. - The sane person would never do it. They can't imagine, 'cause we can only sort of imagine what we have experienced, for our self for the most part, or met at that level. Like, you've never been at that level. I've never consciously, completely made up a lie to get something that I wanted or make you feel bad, or gain emotional superiority over you, or a balance in a relationship. Yeah, okay, so it's totally conscious. - Yes. - Gaslighting the movie was fascinating. I watched it a long time ago. - I've always wanted to see it. I've heard of it before. - Oh, you've never seen it? - No, I love it. I shouldn't watch it. - Oh, it's gaslighting, because in the house, there's the lights or gas. They're gas lit fires. So the husband would turn the gas down, and like, I think it was something that he was doing. That it was a wildlife I saw it. But he would, she would say, "What happened with the light?" And he's like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "You turned the lights." And he would just lie that he didn't change him. - Yeah. - Or like the moment when he was like, he put, he had a pocket watch, and he put it in her purse, and then he found it in there, and he's like, "Why did you take my pocket watch?" She's like, "I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't take it. I didn't take it." He's like, "Obviously, you did. It's in your purse." And she's like, "Oh my God." And she's like, "It's crazy." - And the intent is to make somebody crazy. The intent is to get some sort of one-up or powered dynamic over the other person, and the person doing the gaslighting is almost always looking to control. Control the narrative, control the person, control the outcome, right? And I mean, control still in need. But that's what you're seeing. So manipulation, the vast majority of the time, is not conscious. It kinda extremes along the continuum B conscious, right? But usually when we're seeing very extreme forms of manipulation, we bleed into gaslighting at the end of that continuum. And that becomes conscious, premeditated, thought out. Somebody like being conniving purposefully, like that's what you're generally seeing. And then what was the other one you asked for? - Projection. - Projection. - Okay, so projection comes in multiple forms. But projection is a lot of the time we project onto other people. So we see in other people things that we're unable to recognize in ourselves. It's part of the shadow from a young, in perspective. - Part of being in human. - Part of being a human, exactly. And a lot of times we'll see in somebody, something that we are not, like honoring that we have. So we might say all that person is so judgmental. And the hilarious part about that is the moment you call somebody judgmental, you're judging them. And so, you know, like, well, normally whatever we're judging in somebody, we are being in that moment, which is interesting. So we're like, oh, that person's so critical and like you're criticizing the person in your mind. Or that person is so mean, you're essentially, you know, whatever it is that we're projecting, I call it a reactive shadow. We're like, I remember doing this work on myself and I was really judging somebody for being dismissed. If I was so triggered by it, it was like I was starting doing a lot of this work. This is years and years ago and I saw, I had this coworker and I was like, hey, how was your weekend? And he was like, it was fine. And I was like, this friggin' guy, like, it was fine. Okay, like thank you for asking about my weekend. - Thanks for asking. - Yeah. - I'm doing fine too. - Yeah, thanks for asking. And so I turned and I went to myself like, I won't talk to you all day either. But it's so funny because in the moment that I'm judging and for being dismissed, I dismiss him, right? And so we all do that in our judgment and I think it's hilarious. So that's a form of projection, right? We're projecting onto somebody, something that we are being. But we also do it in more positive attempts. So we can, we all project onto others that they would need what we need. So I had this, this client years. And where we get so lost in translation. So I had this client years ago and she was really anxious and she was dating somebody really avoidant and she said, he said he needed space. She came to me like a Monday. It was like our second session together. She said, I, our meeting was on a Monday and she said, oh my gosh, she said he needed space on Sunday. We got into an argument and he said he needed space. And so I cooked him a nice meal and wrote him a note and surprised him. And she didn't go well exactly and she's like, it didn't go well and she was so hurt that he wouldn't receive such a sweet gesture. But it's like when he, when the avoidance has any space, they usually actually need time for their autonomy and to sort through their feelings and to process what they're feeling and going through and they actually need space. And so he feels like his needs are being essentially the boundaries being stomped on. And so of course he doesn't receive it, but we also project onto other people. You would need to be loved this way 'cause I would need to be loved this way. And it's a huge cause for dissatisfaction and relationship because we put in the positive attempts of giving not just the negative, but it's also where we feel the most disconnected sometimes. - Yeah. They got me thinking about each stuff. Like it's hard to do this maybe, but let's just take it from if you wanted to get someone back in a relationship and they were anxious or they were, well you probably never need to get an anxious back. Let's just cross them off. They aren't going anywhere. Forget them. But if you wanted to get each of the styles back, even a secure, maybe this is the first time we could talk about secure. Like how would you get them back based on their attachment style? - Yeah, it's a really good-- - And I know it's a little bit of a matrix 'cause you've got the other style that has something to do with it, but there's usually a need, right, from each one of them. So what is the strongest need that would reattract someone back into your life? - Great question. So I always say to people first that if you're going to go back to somebody, you also need to be vetting as you're trying to reconnect that they're doing work too. 'Cause if you're doing the work, you're trying different things and then you're just back with a person who it didn't work with. They're going to bring you right back to the work one. So you've got to look for, are they doing the work? Are they showing up differently in different ways as well? That has to be an important part of the equation. But when we're looking at different attachment styles, securely attached people, they respond the best when somebody's literally going to them and is owning their part, being accountable, communicating openly and transparently, asking what they need and actually showing up to make amends. They want like healthy forms of reparation. And so a lot of reasons they pull away from people is when they see unhealthy patterns. Security people, it's securely attached people leave, people who treat them differently than how they treat themselves. So if somebody's really unhealthy, it's so funny to a lot of people in the attachment theory world will say, you want to be secure data secure person, but it doesn't work like that. Like, that's great. Also, we don't always want the secure person. It was outweighed. They were mentioned one of our styles. We're like, I'm sorry, they're not fun enough for me. I need a little more drama. Exactly. I remember dating somebody's secure when I was really fearful of when and I was like their boy. So bored. So bored. So vanilla can't take it. So that was that's what happens. And then people like date the secure person. Usually you're not attracted to secure person when you're really insecure. And the secure person, they don't stick around along with people who are really chaotic. So it just it doesn't really work like that. So the first thing you want to get a secure person back, own your part, show up, communicate, actually do the work, be accountable, take responsibility, validate their feelings. Like, those are the things that really work for them. Dismiss avoidance is really interesting. So dismissal avoidance when you're trying to get back with them. They go through what I call for lack of better, better words. It's like an almost like a narcissism term where they use all these funny terms like flying monkeys, but it's kind of like a break up boomerang. Dismissable avoidance, they're always operating in their relationships from their feelings minus all their fears, their triggers. So they're constantly like, okay, like you or I love you, but I feel trapped. I feel shamed. I feel that I don't have enough freedom and autonomy. So when they leave a relationship, suddenly all those fears are gone. And most dismissive avoidance initial response, leaving a relationship is like, I have freedom. This feels great. And happy to be out of this. And then because all those fears are gone, they get released. But then they start usually from about the sixth week to the three month mark. They start being like, well, kind of miss the person. I kind of know that the fears aren't there. I start to feel my feelings. Yeah. Now they leave me alone. Exactly. You just have to expect things out of me. Exactly. And they start to second gas a lot of the time, not in short term relationships much, not in like these three, four months, six month kind of things, but like the longer term relationships. There's this sort of right period between six weeks and three months that they're like, oh, how are they doing? Are they out? Why I miss them? Are they thinking of me? And they'll often kind of throw a fishing line out to see where you're at. They don't want to be vulnerable because it's not their specialty. But they will usually like like your social media posts or send a meme or these very indirect forms of trying to connect without having to deal with their vulnerability fears. And so they'll do that. And honestly, as somebody who's had a lot of conversations with a lot of avoidance or people on our programs, they actually think at the time that them sending the thing or liking the photo or whatever it is, they think that they're being available. They think that that's I'm saying, look, I'm still here. I'm thinking of you. And they actually a lot of times think that they're being obvious. I've heard them actually describe it as like, I think it's pretty obvious. I like a lot of their stories. I like, and it's like, and but you could call me or you can say you could say you could say you care. You could say that you have remorse or regret. You could be accountable. And a lot of people, unfortunately, they take the bait, right? And like I'll be the first person I married, a dismissive avoidant who did the work. And I like adore him and we have a great relationship. And so I'm not here to like bash avoidance at all. I was a fearful avoidant. He was dismissive, but we did the work. But the number one thing if you're thinking of getting back together with somebody is you quite a look if they're doing the work. So in a lot of cases, likes on social media do not indicate that somebody's ready to like do the work and have the tough conversations and do things that are going to cause a different outcome the second time around. And so I always say like you got to see way more green flags and red flags. They should be in therapy, in counseling, taking courses, reading books, doing something where they're. Exactly. And if that doesn't happen, then like what are you thinking of going what, why would you want? What happens is in that six weeks or three months, they throw a line, you should actually be waiting to see if they're going to communicate more directly and show a change in their own patterns. If they do dismissive avoidance, their biggest needs in relationships, and this is what makes them like want to come back and show up. And they've always hesitant to tell people these things because they can manipulate with these things too a little bit. Oh, sure. No, we're it all ends up the way it's supposed to, but it's sometimes it create, it could create a hiccup for, you know, a little bit of time, but everybody's got their own path, ties, you know, this is very true. And so the things that they love and respond to and feel the most loved by are acceptance and appreciation and not in grandiose forms, since you're small things. So things like, hey, thanks for taking out the trash. Or hey, notice you're really showing up and I appreciate you trying to have more heard conversations with me or like actually noticing what they're doing seeing them in that and acknowledging or appreciating it goes such a long way with dismissive avoidance. Acceptance is like non-shaming. So yeah, your acceptance and they think that like, oh, I just have to roll over and accept everything you're doing. That's not what it is. It is acceptance. Like if I have a need, I'm going to tell you, but I'm going to tell you in a nice way. I'm going to say, hey, I really appreciate her showing up here in here and sometimes I need a little more of XYZ. It's communicating from an accepting place. I'm not here to communicate and judge you at the same time. I'm here to just share my inner world with your inner world and we'll talk about it. Sure. Well, acceptance is like the medicine for what they for what their childhood was like about not being accepted, right? So that's the medicine is acceptance. And I love the way you said that. And it's what dismissive avoidance often falls into limits over. If somebody's really accepting, they can like fantasize about somebody. They can obsessively infatuate with somebody because it's this deep, deep childhood on that need. And when we fall into limmerons, it's usually over things that we didn't get access to that we're yearning for deeply. So you nail that. And so acceptance, appreciation, support, a lot of like acts of service type of things. And then also they do very well. They want to feel understood and seen because they didn't get that growing up either. These kind of like safe ways. So slowly but surely if you see them too much, they feel confronted. But if you understand things about them or you empathize with what they're their side of things or you try to get to know them and understand them, they really, really like that. And what's really interesting on the flip side is that while these things are great for getting, you know, a relationship to work really effectively knowing somebody's kind of blueprint for how they best feel loved and what they are really drawn in by. And so, interestingly, every person who has deeply I've met needs from childhood, puts the most pressure on other people to do it for them in a way that often devastates the relationship. So example, dismissive voices get harder than until we do this work. And this is actually the second pillar which is knowing our needs and being able to communicate them. The second pillar of healing or attachment self. And being able to also meet them ourselves honestly. But if you look at a dismissive avoidant, they don't know how to understand their own feelings. So they end up being like, I shouldn't have to explain myself. I shouldn't have to communicate. They should know. And that devastates a relationship because that's how it works. If you look at an anxious attachment style who never learned to suit themselves, they're like, people should always be available. They should suit me 24/7. They should do it for me. If you look at a fearful avoidant, they have a little bit of both of those things sometimes. But they are often like, nobody should ever tell a white lie. And not that we think lying is good. But to a fearful avoidant, like when I was fearful avoidant, if I had caught somebody telling me a tiny white lie, I'd be like, it's over. You said you liked to address a week ago and you didn't, you changed your story today? How could I ever be with you? And we're doomed. This just means we're doomed. We're doomed. Definitely have a chance. Definitely see that pattern to myself. If this exists, then this exists. Exactly. And it's because we don't know how to trust until we do the work on it because we are so good at violating our own trust and breaking our own boundaries and overgiving it under receiving all those things that come with it. And so what's interesting is these needs are so important. Like if we're trying to get back together with somebody, these are huge. Like, you know, meeting these needs, that's the avoidance. And I'll talk about what to meet for the fearful avoidant and the anxious. The anxious is the easy one. We can stick exactly called just literally just like just blow the air in their direction. Give them a lot of valid information. Give them a lot of reassurance, support. Tell them you care about them. Encourage them. Build them up. Like these are huge things. They really love all the big compliments and it makes them feel safe. Give them certainty is huge. Like that's those are the big AP ones. The fear of the one and I am never going anywhere. Yes. That's the magic words for an anxious. Yes, 100%. But until the anxious learns to give those things to themselves too, there's always a hole in their bucket. So it's great. And then it leaks out and then they need more of it. And that's for every attachment style too, is we've to learn to fill our own bucket halfway and fill the hole. But the last one, fearful wins are very interesting. So fearful avoidance, they really want to feel wanted. They want to feel like they're a priority and they're important and they're wanted. And so they do do well with like validation. But it's not what they're like looking for the most. They want to feel like somebody is present is really important to them. They want depth. They do not like surface anything. They want novelty, which is very interesting. And they also want like, to feel like their freedom and their autonomy is there. So they want this like depth of connection to be a priority and to be wanted. But on the flip side, they want novelty and freedom and independent and they want all these things that seem opposite, but they're not mutually exclusive. Those can be all things held within the container of a relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what do we have to do to get the fearful fearful back then? You have to. So one of the one of the first things, those are really big needs to season in there in the relationship. Like those are big needs to bring to the table if you're trying to reconnect. But fearful of when's when they pull away, it's almost always because they feel so disappointed, let down hurt and they usually have a really big wall up when they decide that they're done. They've put their walls really, really high. And so breaking down their walls is not easy. They go through a period kind of like the dismissive of a one where they usually leave a relationship and feel initial relief, but it's for shorter. So the dismissive when six weeks to three months is there they feel relief for the first six weeks. They're like good on the early side of things. Sometimes the little way to three months before they start second guessing the relationship. Fearful avoidance usually have a pattern where they also feel relief for the first two to four weeks. They're like, oh, okay, I just get a break. And they kind of go numb a little bit after a breakup and they distract themselves very well and keep themselves super busy. And then it's usually like two to four weeks after the breakups happen that they actually feel their feelings and are like, oh, wait, I miss this person. I care about them and some of those feelings creep back in that they were trying to keep at bay. So in that period of time, you want to meet a lot of those needs. But also you need to be so accountable. If a fearful wind's going to let you back in, they want to hear that their feelings are validated. They want to hear that you're like, I see why you felt XYZ. I see what I did. Here's they also need to feel like not only do you see me and understand me and validate my feelings, but there is an action plan of how we're going to do it differently the next time around. And if those two things are there, it might be able to trust you. And without those things, there's pretty much no hope, quite honestly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the one that what's which is the least likely to come back after a breakup and which which which is the most likely to come back? Well, I think it's likely the anxious least likely is interesting least likely is is sometimes a dismissive avoidance, but sometimes a fearful avoidance. Disadmitted avoidance pull away more pervasively. So they're always kind of you can think of them almost like as a turtle in their shell. They like to retreat a lot and they spend a lot of time in their shell. They're kind of like pulled in words. Fearful of winds will push people away. So they'll like actively push people away. And they tend to when they deactivate or pull away, they pull away more intensely. So fearful winds are just more intense. They're just intense people. They're like all in or all out. They're like trying so hard or they're pushing away really abruptly and or like actually pushing you out of their life kind of intensely at times. And so, you know, dismissal winter like a little more calm. They're a little more like I'm just kind of retreated. And so the least likely to come back kind of depends on the way the relationship ended. If there was just, you know, sort of growing apart and then circumstances change or dismissal avoidance actually might come back. If you really hurt a fearful avoidance and the fearful avoidance feels like their trust has been profoundly broken. It is highly unlikely that a fearful avoidance will ever come back. When they like put up those walls because there's often so intense about them, it's like those walls are not coming down and that's it. And that's a much more common theme for the fearful avoidance. So it would probably make the argument if they had to say one, I would say if you're full of windscorned, they're very unlikely that they're going to come back. Yeah. I love that we've reached this part of culture where we are aware of these styles. It's thanks to people like you who are explaining them and giving people this help. Like so thank you so much for all the coaching that you do. All the coaching you've done for me. I'm deeply appreciative. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. And I love the work you're doing in the world. I love like the podcast you haven't had deep you go into everything and I appreciate that and really appreciate you having me. Excited to have had a conversation with you. Oh that's great. And where can people go to get into your courses and because you know you do the deeper work in the core core pattern reprogramming, which is just like everything. Like it's you know God love the three-day weekend with so and so to get motivated about changing your life, but it's really comes with it's deeper work than that. Yeah, the neuroscience stuff for sure. So I'm at personaldevelopmentschool.com people can take it attachment quiz find out their attachments all all their five pillars like what that looks like in those five pillars and how to heal. And then obviously all of our courses and 90 day programs are in there and then on YouTube, which is tais Gibson Dash Personal Development School and Instagram at the personal development school. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody for listening to the Pritian Tense Podcast today. I hope you enjoyed it. If you like what you heard today and you want to hear more, please click on the subscribe button.