The 6 Stages of Every Relationship & Why Most Fail at Stage 3 - Thais Gibson

How does our attachment influence who we select as a partner? It's what your triggers are. It's what your needs are. It's how your nervous system regulates. It's your communication patterns, your boundaries, right? So it's a relationship to self-first. If you're not conscious, be more hard on yourself and giving up. We want to know that healing is not linear. You know, if you've had decades of being conditioned a certain way and playing out patterns, won't you recommend they learn how to vet better or they do the inner work before they go out? So if you want somebody who's validating to you, become self-aliterate. What would you want someone to walk away from this conversation, understanding so that they can have an easier or more successful time in their next relationship or maybe in their current relationship? Here is a statistic that stopped me, roughly 70% of new relationships and within the first year. And about 46% of marriages and in divorce. We tend to blame those numbers on choosing the wrong person in compatibility, bad timing, or just love running its course. But what if the problem isn't who we chose? It's maybe something that nobody ever told us that each relationship goes through different stages and this stage is important for you to survive and grow. My guest today has spent years answering that exact question. Tais Gibson is a counselor, PhD, certified in over 13 modalities including CBT, NLP, somatic processing, and trauma work, and is the founder of the Personal Development School, one of the world's leading platforms for attachment theory, relationship, education. She's the creator of the Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory and has built a community of over 400,000 people, learning to build more secure fulfilling connections. Hairwork centers on a framework that is both simple and genuinely transformative. Every relationship moves through six predictable stages and most don't fail because the love runs out. They fail because people have never learned the specific skills at each stage. Tias, welcome to the resilient mind. Taisa, but thank you so much for having me here. So you focus on how childhood experiences shape us as adults, particularly the relationships we have with ourselves before we even have a relationship with others. What is actually being formed in childhood that follows us into our adult relationships without us even known? Absolutely, such a great place to start. So generally what happens is we all have an attachment style, in other words a relationship style. And a lot of this work came out of Cambridge University with John Bolby and later Mary Ainsworth, but really your attachment style is the subconscious set of rules that you've learned about love. And so what I did is built upon the original traditional attachment theory work to really go a little bit deeper into number one, your attachment style or relationship style. It really shapes the wounds and triggers that you have. So for example, some people go into relationships and if they felt abandoned growing up or if they felt trapped growing up, then those are going to be the fears they carry into relationships as adults and I'm happy to break it down by attachment style. Number two, it's not just the triggers or fears we have, it's the need we expect to be met in relationships. So based on somebody's relationship style, they have totally different needs. Some individuals in relationships, they want a lot of closeness and validation and they want to be constantly be together. And different relationship styles want space and freedom and autonomy and novelty. And of course, everybody tries to love the other person they're in a relationship with through their own needs because we tend to project and assume people are the same as us. And it leads to so many miscommunications and pain points in relationships. And then of course, beyond that, our relationship style also shapes how we communicate the types of boundaries we have and it also shapes the types of behaviors we'll bring into relationships. So some individuals will really pull away and shut down. Other individuals, they want to solve an argument immediately. And so we don't understand our individual conditioning in relationships and then how that's going to interact with other people's relationship or attachment styles. Then we have a lot of unnecessary conflicts and confusion. So really our attachment styles is a roadmap for how we love and how we connect with other people. And if you'd like me to, I can definitely break it down by the four attachment styles and sort of share those individual roadmaps if that's a helpful place to start. Perfect. Yeah, I think that will be a perfect place to start in terms of yeah, framing those attachment styles so that we all have the same starting point. Okay, beautiful. So there are four attachment styles every single person has one. And the very first attachment styles, the one that we're trying to be or recondition to become if we're not starting here. And for many people like myself at one point, I was not this attachment style either. So the first attachment is the secure attachment style. Securely attached people in relationships, they report having not just the longest lasting relationships, but they actually report having the most satisfaction in relationships, which is really important. They're not just in relationships, trying to figure it out and stick in there because of pressure in society or from family, they truly enjoy the relationships that last for them. And they make up roughly 50% of the population statistically. Securely attached people often form in childhood from these conditioned patterns where they get a lot of what we call approach oriented behaviors. And in psychology, that sounds like a sort of small thing, but it has a huge impact. An approach oriented behavior means that we have parents who are present with us and attuned to us. And when they notice the child is distressed, they approach the child and try to suit them and connect with them. And so that conditions a child to say, well, I'm worthy of love on both my good days and my hard moments. I'd say to communicate my emotions and to be open and to be vulnerable. I can rely on other people. I can communicate openly with them. And I trust that people will be there for me. And so because they learn that and that's also modeled to them, they also become not. And so they go into relationships with a very adaptive coping mechanisms or good communicators. And they have healthy boundaries and they feel worthy and confident and they trust more easily. And so that's 50% of the population. But then we have the other 50% that are between the next three attachment styles and they all have a lot more challenging patterns and relationships. But I'll just pause there before I go into the next three in case you wanted to call that. Oh, my question will frame after you've explained them because I am curious how the attachment style we have impacts the partner we chose. Wait, we choose. Yeah. It's a great question. So the next three then, a sort of an innocence exists the longer continuum. At one end of the continuum, we would be anxious, preoccupied attachment style. And the anxious attachment style, they tend to and childhood have a lot more real or perceived abandon. So real abandonment would be something like growing up in a fatherless or motherless home. Real abandonment would be God forbid a parent passes away during a child's upbringing. Or of course abandonment that's more perceived would be something along the words of having one or two very loving parents, but they're always traveling for work. You're always at the babysitter or the grand parents or you're at those after school programs forever. And the parents are just inconsistent because they have too much on their plate. And what that teaches a child is to fear and laugh being taken away. They feel like parents are laughing when they're there, but then love is taken away. They're with the grandparents again or the nanny or, you know, and so they're always bracing for love to be taken away. And so this causes this individual to deeply acquire when we talked about what happens. They acquire that one of the big triggers is the fear of abandonment that they carry into their adult relationships. But they also have other big trigger points, which are the fears of not being good enough. The fears of being unloved alone, they really struggle to spend time with themselves alone. And they're very sensitive and get easily triggered by being excluded, disliked and rejected. These are like their big triggers. And they learn to cope with these triggers by people pleasing. They basically go, "I'm just going to people please my way into being loved." And so they try so hard and they pour into people and they're very sweet and they're usually very thoughtful people. And I'm sure you probably know one of them or a few of them. And they're lovely people, but they burn themselves out in relationships. And they struggle with having any boundaries. They struggle to actually have a strong sense of self-identity. Like they often don't really know who they are very well outside of relationships until they start doing some healing work or working on that. And a lot of their self-esteem is very dependent on, "I'm getting approval. Do people around me like me? Am I being validated? Am I doing a good job according to everybody else?" And so they tend to sort of see themselves through other people's eyes instead of really finding out who they are intrinsically. And their big needs and relationships are for a lot of closeness and validation and consistency. And they want people to be around all the time and they want to be made a priority. And so you can see right there in that archetype, how that person may interact with the other ones that we're going to get into because it's quite vastly different. Okay. So at the other end of the continuum, we have the dismissive avoided attachment staff. And this individual, they grow up with a lot more childhood emotional neglect. And when we hear that, I think we think it's this very intense thing. Like nobody's ever there, children are left, you know, home alone until midnight. Of course, it can be that. But a lot of times it's a little bit more covert, where there's structure, there's stability in the home, everything's okay. It's safe, but parents are not emotionally attuned to the child at all. And so what ends up happening is children grow up in this household, feeling this emotional disconnect. And they may even. get their emotions shamed, diminished, deflected, or they may even be punished for having too many emotions. And so this child learns, okay, connection, vulnerable connection is not really that great of a thing. I feel let down, I feel rejected by it. And so this child basically copes with that experience by saying, the only thing that gives me relief if I'm not getting my needs met is to become hyper independent. So basically the opposite of being anxious. They're like, I need all the space, I need lots of time to myself. They don't really know how to co-regulate with other people, like lean on people for advice or share their inner world with people if they're going through a hard time. And they tend to when they do go through a difficult time, shut down, isolate, retreat with draw. And because they didn't get their needs met very much in childhood, they basically assume people won't really meet their needs as adults. And so when they start to feel attached to somebody, like they start dating them, it's a few months in, they start to feel attached. Part of them becomes really afraid and often will sabotage relationships. They'll push away all of a sudden and they'll close down or at least they will emotionally retreat. A lot of their big triggers and relationships become the fear of being seen as shameful, as they're too emotional or vulnerable. They have a lot of deep internalized shame. The fear of being weak, the fear of being not good enough, the fear of being trapped or helpless if they do try to rely on somebody and they often feel very emotionally unsafe and a conflict. Like they will just stonewall and they freeze and they don't really know what to do. And all of their behaviors of coping are to constantly create more distance, more space, and that's what makes them feel in control. So our last attachment style is the most rare type. They make up roughly 5% of the population that data shows. And this is the fearful avoidance, sometimes referred to as the disorganized attachment style. This individual grows up with what we think of as more big T trauma, like more chaos. And this can be things like somebody going through any type of abuse fairly consistently or acutely growing up. It can be through things like having parents in active addiction, where a parent is sober one day or at least relatively okay one day and then absolutely not there and not available another day. Sometimes if we look at things like having a parent who's a narcissist with actual and there's a personality disorder, they love bomb one day and their mean and cruel the next or a parent who's an alcoholic who one day they drink a little bit and they're sweet another day they drink a lot and they're mean. And in all of these types of situations, the overarching conditioning for this child is that you never know what you're going to get. So anxious attachment styles. They're like love is good, but it's not there. So let me try to get more of it all the time. This missable avoidance are like love doesn't feel that good because my needs don't get met. So let me create space from too much vulnerability. The fearful avoidance attachment style, they get really conflicting programming. They get love is good sometimes and it's scary sometimes and I just don't know how to do with this. So while the anxious person's always trying to get more close and the dismissable avoidance always trying to get more distance, the fearful avoidance attachment strategy is to become hyper vigilant. They are going to read between the lines. They are going to think three steps ahead. They're always on high alert. They're walking on egg shells and they are amazing at predicting human behavior. They're really good because they got conditioned for a very long time. They're extremely hyper vigilant. I often tease. Fearful avoidance that they're like human lie detectors. They notice the moment something's off. They notice every little make-rogued expression and body language tone of voice shift everything. They are like pattern recognizers. And so they become really adept at that, which is wonderful. But relationships are often a place of complication and complexity for them because they want love and they feel threatened by it when it gets close. So they tend to sort of go back and forth, almost between an anxious and an avoidance side. Some days they feel really anxious and they fear abandonment and they want closeness and they come on strong. But then as soon as they actually feel like closeness is really there, they often push away. And they'll push back and they'll feel scared of being trapped or controlled or they can also fear commitment. But by far and away, their biggest wounds, their biggest fears are the fears of being betrayed. They're always sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fear of being unworthy, they always think that they have to earn worth and earn love. And they tend to feel unsafe, but not, you know, if you ask the fearful avoidance, you feel unsafe. I say, no, I take care of myself. I'm wrong. They're like, I've got this, but they're almost always their nervous system is spending so much time in fight, flight, freeze or fond mode. And so they're always in a dysregulated nervous system state, which tells you that their subconscious mind feels unsafe. And so we have this individual who they're sort of like in a relationship, they're like, come get close, come get close and you get close, they're like, get back. And then you move away and they're like, wait, come back again, you're too far. And they just can't like settle in or rest or regulate. And obviously they can become a little bit confusing as a partner on the other end. But it's because they're scared of love and yet they want it. And so they've usually been through a lot of challenges that way. And even their needs and relationships are sort of counterintuitive. Like on one side, they want depth and passion and deep connection and meaning and to feel like, you know, there are priority. But on the other hand, they really like novelty and they like, they're freedom and they're like, they're independent. So they sort of have both parts to them. But they tend to also be the roller coaster partner sometimes in relationships because they're hot and cold and and back and forth. So those are for relationships styles. Is it possible to have more than one attachment style? So you usually, if somebody asks that, a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time, they may be a fearful of avoid an attachment style. So we can, we have a, we definitely are all rooted in one style specifically, but you can have small, because conditioning is never like black and white. We don't drop into one place of conditioning in this rigid, you know, boundary way. You know, but a lot of times, I'll see people who are secure, but sometimes they feel a little bit extra anxious or somebody who's, you know, anxious, but they have a little bit of a fearful of avoidance side of her. They push a little bit back. But if somebody's like, oh, I really relate to all three insecure attachment styles very strongly. Chances are they're fearful of avoidance because they have a little bit of the anxious side and a little bit of the dismissive avoidance side. Gaba Mate in listening to his work talks about two psychological needs. We have his children, the need for attachment, which is what you're talking about. And that need for authenticity. And dimensions that a lot of us, we have learned to suppress that need for authenticity, because we want to maintain that attachment relationship we have with our caregivers. With what you just mentioned with attachment styles and knowing that a lot of us might have suppressed that need for authenticity, how does that all play along when now we are doubts, we want to figure out who we are, we want to be able to express ourselves authentically, but maybe we're kind of still stuck in that a need that we want to be that need for attachment, and then maybe having a attachment style that might not be adaptive. Yes, such an excellent question. So when you look at a secure attachment style, that's what they do phenomenally well. So they're what we call interdependent. And it's being a master at both. Security attachments, visuals, they're excellent at going in and attaching to people. They communicate openly. They're good at being vulnerable. They're good at sharing their inner world. They're good at really asking meaningful questions to get to know somebody else. So their ability to attach is very healthy. And yet, securely attached people do not give up their authenticity. They know who they are. They have healthy boundaries. They stand for their needs. They don't people please too much. And that's what we call interdependency. They're good at attaching and they're good at maintaining relationship to self. And I always say to people when we're trying to achieve secure attachment, you really want to look at the relationship to yourself as being largely the relationship to your needs. And securely attached people, they're excellent at knowing their needs and meeting their own needs. For example, if I have a big need for emotional connection, I'm not just getting that from other people. I journal. I meditate. I do work on myself and I take courses and I read books. So I emotionally connect to who I am. And I ask meaningful questions. I connect deeply to other people. I want to know them deeply as well. So think it, but it's being a master at both meeting your own needs and also allowing yourself to meet other people's needs and receive your needs being met from other people. And that's where we're able to maintain both attachment and authenticity and they don't become mutually exclusive. But when we look at the three insecure attachment styles, they all struggle with that. Disadmissible avoidance, they're very much, okay, I'm going to be authentic. I'm going to have my need for authenticity there. But I'm less worried about attachment. Introus attachment styles are like, I just want the attachment who cares about the authenticity and fearful avoidance tend to oscillate back and forth between those needs, unable to contain them simultaneously. So a lot of times what we see from fearful avoidance is they try so hard to attach and they'll people please. And then they get sick of people pleasing. And they've had a knock on they feel taken advantage of or like they lost themselves and they suddenly push away really strongly to go back to their need for authenticity. And when we compare all of those outputs to a secure person, secure people are able to hold the container for both of those things at the same time where the insecure attachment styles struggle. And how does our attachment influence who we select as a partner? So all familiar attachment style first is the relationship you have to yourself. So it's a relationship to self first. And what's really interesting is we are all attracted to. in the long run in relationships. What feels most familiar? At the end of the day, it's not our conscious mind choosing much or conscious mind's responsible for roughly three to five percent of all of our beliefs and thoughts and emotions and choices whereas our subconscious and unconscious collectively are 95 to 97 percent. So our conscious mind can say, I want the emotionally available partner. I want the secure one, I want the healthy one. But our subconscious says, if it had a voice, it would say, I want what's most familiar because familiarity equals safety equals survival. So what makes us feel the most familiar is the relationship we have to ourselves. So take a look at this. You have an anxious attachment style. They're always people pleasing. They're always trying to, you know, attach, you know, instead of be authentic. So they're people pleasing. They're putting themselves last 'cause they're putting everybody else first. That's what feels most familiar. So they usually choose people who mirror that back to them. So anxious people don't often choose anxious people and anxious people often choose avoidant people because that actually, 'cause what, you know, anxious people are dismissing and avoiding their own needs. So they often choose dismissive avoidant individuals. Dismissive avoidant individuals who are very much preoccupied by authenticity need to self-sue, then self-regulate, and create space. They're very preoccupied in the relationship to themselves. And thus what feels most familiar and safe to them is people who are preoccupied with them too. So they often choose the warm, anxious partner and relationships who comes on strong and moves too fast. And consciously we say, I need space. I need freedom. Where the anxious person says, I want the emotionally available partner and yet subconsciously we always choose from our comfort zone. And that is ultimately the relationship we have to solve. And how does social media now play into this? 'Cause I'm thinking if less have got a specific attachment style and now in addition to that, like I've got my social media and it's telling me that, well, people are just unavailable or men are not available or women are this. So how does that all, either just maybe reinforce kind of us already going on inside? - Yeah, it's a great question. And this is why a huge part of my work is just focus on how we rewire our attachment patterns because just 'cause we're born with these things is not mean you're stuck with them. And they're actually pretty easy to rewire and change. But social media, there's two answers to this question. The first part is that we have a particular activating system, which I'm sure you know about. It's a filtering system of our brain. And so according to what we believe, that's what we'll really take in and we'll land. For example, if we believe the people are unavailable, we'll notice the unavailability on social media and it will reinforce that pattern. And honestly, the more painful dating stories we have, the more painful relationship narratives we're carrying at a subconscious level, the more difficult are dating or relationship journey will be. So if somebody's like, "Look, all men are unavailable, "we're all women are manipulative," or whenever these really painful stories are, you know, a telework through those things. Not only will we see those things and notice those things and it reinforces the narrative. And then of course you're gonna go in with your guard up or under stress when you enter into relationship. Of course, it's gonna be harder to be vulnerable and communicate and be open with somebody when you believe they're gonna be these negative things towards you. But on top of that, it goes back to the subconscious comfort zone again, which is we actually tend to invest in what we believe in. So at a conscious level of mind, our conscious mind picks up per second, roughly 40 to 60 bits per second of data. Our subconscious and unconscious collectively pick up up to a billion bits per second of information. And so we meet somebody and everything that we meet and like notice about somebody, let's say somebody goes on a first date, you may think you came away with certain takeaways, like, oh, they said this and they told me that they wanted this thing in a relationship. Those are your conscious takeaways. Subconsciously, we're building this really big intricate web of information about who somebody is based on how long they maintain eye contact, how quickly they respond, how their body language is on a date. And ultimately we're always choosing from what's most familiar and that includes what we believe. So if we believe that people aren't available or they're gonna be betray, you know, they're gonna betray us, often times you always see, you know, and you see this all the time, people are repeating their relationship patterns. It's the same thing, the person just changes. The character and the story changes, but that pattern stays the same. And it's because we keep having these ideas, having these beliefs and then it feels familiar so they'll be investing people who are those things and then we wonder why the pattern repeats and that's why it's so meaningful to understand our individual conditioning and really plug into the rewiring work. - Is it possible for a person who is secure to go through, let's say a breakup or a betrayal in a relationship and that changes their attachment style? - Absolutely. So conditioning is always happening. Whatever we're exposed to through repetition and emotion over time, fires and wires, neural pathways in our brain. So somebody, for example, could be, and we talk about childhood 'cause it's where our deepest conditioning is, but it's not where the only conditioning is. So, you know, somebody could be securely attached until eight years old and then glad for bed so who is a parent and become anxiously attached, right? Somebody as a by comparison could be securely attached to their whole life, end up in a relationship or something really traumatic happens and leave that relationship a fearful avoided or anxiously attached. So it's not fixed. We, it's not easy to change or conditioning can run pretty deeply, but if we're exposed to either really intensely emotional experiences, 'cause emotion rewires the brain much more quickly or repeated challenging experiences, or repetition and emotion is firing and wiring those neural networks and so that can change our conditioning and thus our attachment style over time as well. - And I love that you said, we're not stuck with the attachment style we have and you're talking about rewiring our mind. How can we do that? For someone who's listening, who might have recognized themselves in one of the maladaptive attachment styles and they're like, I want to change. How will they go about starting that process? - Yeah, great question. So I take people through five pillars of change. So each of these pillars matters. All listen at a high level and then maybe look at some more tangible things. So the first one is we have to rewire these triggers, all these painful beliefs that everybody's gonna advance in New York, betraying me, or trap and control me. Like those beliefs are creating your reality and your experiences, 'cause they're determining who you invest in. They're that subconscious comforts only you have. So we have to rewire those beliefs. You're not born with those beliefs. They get wired into you to your past experiences. We can reconsider them. And I'm happy to share a tool in a little bit for how to do that. There's a fun one. Number two, we have to learn what our needs are in a relationship. And before we even go to our next pillar, which is learning how to communicate properly because a lot of people have really maladaptive ways of communicating, we have to shift to meet our needs ourselves. If we do not know how to meet our own needs halfway, then to your point earlier with what Gabba Matty talks about, attachment and authenticity, we kind of don't have a relationship to our own authenticity. You can imagine that if your needs are, you never know how to meet your own needs, you're kind of going to every person as if you're trying to hit the gas station and your gas tank is on empty. You're like going to people, needing them to meet your needs. And there's a certain degree of lack and fear and anxiety and desperation there. And the more we have that, the more quickly we are to compromise our standards. Right? If you're like, I need validation, I have no idea where to get it from, then you're willing to get the person validates you a little bit with all these big red flags attached to them 'cause you're starving for your needs. Whereas when we learn to self validate and be less critical to ourselves and meet some of our own needs halfway, we can actually maintain better standards and that's much healthier. So pillow number one, rewire your beliefs, pillow number two, learn your needs and start mean them yourself so that you're not running on empty all the time. Number three, we then go to communicate those needs. So many people, and we can get into each pillar in detail, but so many people, they have such a difficult time communicating and they don't even know it. This was me. I was the fearful avoidant attachment style. I used to do this in communication. I would hold everything in and not say anything. And then eventually it would have enough. And then I would say, you did this seven weeks ago and this four weeks ago and only tell it all at once. And if we hold things in, we don't wanna communicate. It's actually called negative framing. And there is a massive difference between going to somebody and saying something like, you don't care about me, you're not making it up for you don't spend time versus saying, hey, I feel a little disconnected. Can we plan a fun date night on Saturday and just hang out and be present with each other? Like one version of that somebody hears you and you're positively framing what you do need. And the other version was just criticizing. And whenever we criticize people shut down. So behind every criticism there's a need that is waiting to be articulated. And when we know our needs and meet them ourselves, we can also then communicate them in healthy ways in relationship to others. And then we're kind of going back to interdependency or getting the attachment piece and the authenticity piece, right? See how there's the both sides. And then the last two pillars, just at a high level are regulating your nervous system and developing healthy boundaries. And I'm happy to dig into, pill each pillar with a tool if that's helpful. - Oh, that'll be amazing. I think I had two for each one. That way it leads, we can get started. - Okay, I love it. - It would be a tool, yes. (laughs) - I love it, okay, perfect. So first tool, this is my favorite tool because this is so meaningful for me in my own journey and we've taken so many people through this tool and it really moves the needle in a short period of time. So this is called belief rewiring. So as I mentioned, each of the attachments also sees really painful beliefs from childhood. being just. is like I'll be abandoned alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, the dismissive of a win there, like I'll be trapped or helpless or I'll be seen as shameful or weak if I'm too open. And the fearful avoidance, got me abandoned and the trapped, but also the fear of being betraying and unworthy. So each attachment saw as these big core beliefs, core wounds, from past experiences. Now, when we have these wounds, they're not conscious, right? Nobody's consciously choosing to tell these stories to themselves. These are subconscious beliefs, they're preconditioned. So step one, when we want to change a belief, is we have to find the original belief and it's opposite. So this part's really easy. If it's I'm not good enough, I am good enough. I'll be abandoned, I'll have connection, I'll be betrayed, I can trust, right? So we just find the first, the belief in its opposite. Step two, I do not believe in affirmations. And here's why neuroscience tells us that the conscious mind speaks language. Okay, so as we're speaking now, we're speaking in English, the conscious mind understands that. The subconscious mind doesn't speak language. It speaks in emotions and imagery. So if I say to you whatever, you know, Symba, whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant. Like you think of a pink elephant. Your conscious mind here is do not, but your subconscious flashes the image of the pink elephant because your subconscious speaks in imagery and emotion. And so a lot of people do affirmations and they're just the conscious mind is speaking to the conscious mind. They're saying, I am good enough, I am good enough, but your subconscious mind is the one with the problem, right? Your conscious mind would never choose to wake up and say, today I'm going to tell myself all day long that I'm not good enough. Like that doesn't happen, right? So step one, we find the belief in its opposite. I am not good enough. I am good enough. Step two, we have to speak to our subconscious mind through emotion and imagery. How we do that is through memory. All memory is just a container of emotions and images. If you think of your favorite childhood memory, and let's say you're playing at the beach, you know, you would see the images of the sand and the ocean, and we've all seen people when they tell an old story that they laugh or they smile or if it's a sad one, they cry. And so what we do is we come up with 10 memories to support the new idea. For example, I am good enough, 10 things I did recently that made me feel good enough. I was a good friend three days ago. I showed up and took on that challenge the day before that. You know, we find these really specific memories because each memory in our mind leverages emotion and leverages imagery. Then our third step is we record ourselves saying these things out loud. And then we want to get into a suggestible state, which is when our brain is producing alpha brain waves. And we want to listen back to these memories in a relaxed state of mind and really focus on visualizing the images in the memory and feeling about them in our body. And then it anchors it into our nervous system. And so what we're doing is we have to repeat this for 21 days. Neuroscience tells us that in a suggestible state with a lot of emotion over 21 days, we actually fire and wire new neural networks that are strong enough to stick. And as we do that, that's actually creating these neural pathways in our brain to believe these new things about ourselves and to overcome those painful original ideas that were imprinted. So it takes two to five minutes a day in the end. Like people can sit there and see the images and feel the emotion. And it can be the first hour that they wake up or the last hour before they go to sleep. Is when our brains are producing more alpha brain waves to were more suggestible or subconscious mind soaks it in more. And it's a very simple habit people can start with that has a huge impact very quickly. Something you said reminded me of something I've heard like around setting boundaries and who we end up allowing in our lives. And so I've noticed that we turn to tolerate boundary violations from others only up to the level that we are violating our own boundaries. And the second someone violates it more than we violate our own boundaries then we hold it. So I think that part that you're saying that again, how we treat ourselves as being mirrored in other relationships also plays a role, especially with someone who's listening to this who struggles with setting boundaries. And might have learned how to say boundaries, but still is unable to do it. Do you also like what is your take on that? So that's our fifth pillar. And you know what's so interesting. I spent a lot of time with this with people. And I found a couple things. So the first thing is exactly to what you just said, which is we we put up with one degree less than the way we treat ourselves. So you know, unfortunately, and you know, not to give a dramatic example, but if somebody's in an abusive relationship, they're always abusing themselves one degree more, right? By staying, by going back, over and over again. And so exactly like you said, we are our relationship to self and our own conditioning determines our standards with others. But what's really interesting is that in the fifth pillar of boundaries, we are bringing our patterns from past relationships or childhood, depending on where we got the maladaptive ones. We are bringing them into our current experience. And this means, for example, that if you tried to set boundaries as a child and you got punished for it because you weren't allowed to say no as a child and maybe you had a heavy-handed punishment, well, then your conscious mind can come later on and read books and say, "Set boundaries, boundaries are good, but your subconscious mind might have said, 'Well, no, boundaries equal unsafety because I would get heavy-handed punishment.' So then we can go into relationships as adults and say, 'Okay, time to set boundaries,' or you can consciously intellectualize information and research it, and you're like, 'I know I should set a boundary.' You could even know what all your boundaries are consciously. But in real time, the moment it's time to set one, if we have a limiting belief around the boundary, things like boundaries will make me punished and then unsafe. Boundaries will make me a bad person. I am selfish as a big core wound that people have. Boundaries will get me abandoned, right? If we have these limiting beliefs around the boundaries, then we will absolutely get stuck. And then our conscious mind will say, 'Do it, set the boundary and our subconscious mind will say, 'No, stay safe. Don't do it.' And so what ends up happening is we have to rewire the core wound, the painful belief we have about boundaries first, and then we pair it with something called exposure work on boundaries. And what exposure work is, is we have to warm up our brain, okay? So we have to start setting really small boundaries with really easy people. If you had a, you know, decades of not setting boundaries and you try to go set boundaries with your really, your friend who was a really bad temper, you know, it may not go well. So you pick like the good trusted friend, you set a small boundary like, 'Oh, can you please bring my laptop charger back after you borrowed it?' You know, you pick these small things first and then we're really titrating the experience. And each time that we practice it, ideally we're practicing one boundary a day. So it's actually building new neural networks in our brain. And as we're doing this, we want to make sure we try to lace it with a positive feeling so that we're re-associating what we believe about boundaries. So we've got the wound out of the way. We no longer, we did the rewire, we don't believe that the boundary will make us bad or unsafe. But now we've got to get used to it. So every time we set a boundary, we want to think of something positive about it. Like, oh, it was courageous. I did that. That wasn't that hard. Or, oh, look, I showed my true self to my friend. I didn't just pretend and people please all the time, like wearing a mask. I actually let them know what's okay with me and not. And so each time after we set a small boundary, when we then associate it with a positive feeling, it also allows us to have boundaries that I can become more easy. And that way we're tackling our ability to set boundaries at the subconscious level because too many people are doing it just at the conscious level of mind. And they're intellectualizing. They're saying, oh, I should have a boundary here. But then in real time, we shut down or clam up for whatever else happens. Instead, so we have to target the subconscious mind. And there's almost, I don't know if dichotomies the right word. But in terms of learning a lot of this material. So talking about reading the books, knowing what you need to do, but they're not doing it almost creates the cycle of now we're like, oh, I didn't do this. Of shame and guilt. And you end up, if you're not conscious, being more hard on yourself and giving up. So, and a lover, you said in terms of starting small, if someone decides that they want to start improving themselves and working on these small boundaries, but they do have situations that maybe they are not successfully that they're successful in sitting them up. How, what can they tell themselves when they're not successful in those moments? Yeah, it's a great question. Well, there's sort of three points to that. So the first one is that we want to know that healing is not linear. You know, if you've had decades of being conditioned a certain way and playing out patterns, if you try to set a small boundary every day and you get it three times a week, that's an improvement, right? We're making moves. This is good. And I find that healing is most efficient for people when they don't have a relationship to their healing journey through the lens of judgment, right? We should sort of treat ourselves like we would treat a wounded child in pain because that's where our patterns come from. And you're not going to, you know, have a child that you're trying to teach a boundary to and the moment they don't set it, you're going to yell at them or diminish them or shame them. So we want to keep our relationship to our own healing journey as open-minded, as compassionate as possible. And that's actually where we're most efficient. The second part is that the reason we have judgment and shame is first because we have these core beliefs. So the core beliefs most associated with judgment and shame are I am unworthy, I'm not good enough, I am bad. And so if we have these or I'm defective, like I am shameful and broken. And those are the core beliefs that if we have them because of childhood experiences, those are the things that get triggered when we make a mistake. So that's why I always put it like in the order of those five pillars. The first thing is to rewire your beliefs because your beliefs shape your diet. your dialogue shapes your emotions and your emotions are shaping what nervous system mode you're in. So for example, if I believe I'm not good enough and then I go try to try to meet about you people at a networking event. I might think I'm not interesting enough. I'm not funny enough. I'm not cool enough. Whatever it might be. And then how will I feel when I think those things stressed and anxious and then stress and anxiety are made up of neurochemical reactions like cortisol and norepinephrine and now my body is coursing with all this cortisol and norepinephrine and then I move a dystopic that at nervous system. And then we take unhealthy actions when we're in fight or flight mode. Right. No accidents from fight flight freeze or fawn mode are the most productive. So, so you know, we want to be mindful that you know if we are judging and changing ourselves. Of course, we want to keep self compassionate and open and we want to intend that and we don't want to put all this pressure on it. But if we're finding that to be a big part of our journey, it's actually at the root usually because you've got limiting beliefs and so we can go back to that tool that three step tool to rewire the belief and getting those core beliefs out of the way actually really stills your mind and changes your relationship in your internal dialogue all day long. Amazing. You've mapped out six predictable stages of every relationship. Could you share them with us? Absolutely. So this is a really powerful topic and it's the life cycle of a relationship and every single relationship has one so the first stage of a relationship is the dating stage. And the dating stage is that and this actually applies to friendships as well, by the way. It's the stage that we're getting to know some might we're betting them we're kind of and we're not dating somebody in a friendship way in a traditional sense, but we are we're getting to know them we're spending time with them we're see if we like them we're trying to figure it out. And so the dating stage of all relationships generally last from zero to six months. Interestingly, six months the people who take longer to decide where they stand with somebody are usually the more avoidant people they like to take their time. Like their space and the people who are quicker moving who are like, oh, you know, in that yoga class, let's be best friends right away or oh, we've been on two dates and I want to be in a relationship. Those are usually the more anxious people right so dating stages that range and what moves us from the dating stage to the honeymoon stage is the moment we make a commitment. So the moment that we, you know, especially romantic relationships, we say we're going to be in a monogamous relationship where we're going to focus on each other or in a friendship. It's those moments that we start calling this person our dear friend and we you know invite them around with other people until it's a really up the ante into establishing this person into our lives. And that honeymoon stage of relationship usually lasts about a year after that to a year and a half. And it's only of the rose colored glasses on we're like this person can do no wrong and everything's great and we're you know we've got all those good neurochemicals and flowing. And so that stage is really nice. But we're often kind of connecting with somebody still with a little bit of a mask on. We're not necessarily sharing our triggers or our fears. We're not necessarily having our full attachment style come out yet often our attachments all shows most after honeymoon stage. And eventually when we do start to adapt and get used to somebody after the honeymoon stage as we get more and more comfortable because human beings are very adaptable and the mask comes down. And then we go oh this is who I truly am and this is who you truly are and that is what we enter into the power struggle stage. Now the power struggle stages both the crisis and an opportunity because in the power struggle stage. We are truly showing our inner world for the first time in a lot of ways and sometimes that's alarming to somebody else. You know I used to see couples when I worked in private practice and they would say I married my wife and then I year and a half later she became a monster. And I would say, but don't know she didn't make a monster. You just didn't know where in the power struggle stage yet you guys didn't get there yet. And so sometimes somebody feels confronted by it because somebody else changes and they're changing. And but the opportunity is that it's moving the needle in the life cycle of the relationship from more conditionally based love or in fact the nation based love into more unconditionally based love. Because for the first time we're saying, hey, these are my fears. These are my needs. These are my boundaries. This is what I'm okay with and not. And so if we navigate the power struggle stage effectively and I'm happy to get into how to do that. We can move the needle into a much deeper form of connection that's lasting. That we understand each other better. All of those things. And so if we get out of the power struggle stage, which there's not as much of a timeline there like there is in the dating. You know zero to six months honeymoon another year to year and a half. Power struggle can people can spend their whole marriage there. I've seen people who they've been in the power struggle for 25 years and they never left. So so that can happen. But it's you know statistically we're most relationships and. But also where we get the deepest opportunity for for real real connection. If we move out of it healthily and successfully, then we eventually move into the stability stage where we feel more stable and connected. And then we move into the devotion stage with somebody where we actually make you know a long term commitment towards building a future together and all the things that come with that. And eventually the bliss or everlasting stage, which is very much the stage of relationship if you make it there. It's like being in the honeymoon stage, but you actually deeply know each other. It's not just with the mask going on your best behavior. And then you're really knowing somebody and statistically relationships when they end there when they end up there are highly unlikely to break up. And how do you navigate the power struggle knowing that that's where most relationships fail. Yeah, it's a really good good question. So there's a few really important tools. And I'll start with the first one. The first one's the most complicated. The next ones are quite easy. So something that's really interesting that is often not talked about that I think is a really important impact or in relationships is we tend to a long run. You know, be in relationship with people who treat us the way we treat ourselves like we were talking about. But in the short term, we're often initially attracted to people who express our repressed traits. So for example, you might have somebody who's very easy going and they're very attracted to that type of planning person who's a little bit more intense and, you know, we could it at organizing everything. Or we may have somebody who's very assertive and their attract is somebody who's more passive or vice versa, right. I remember meeting my husband, okay, and the first six months I'll use myself as the example. The first couple months of it was so assertive he would just tell people how it is he would say, nope, not doing that. No, thank you. Just rate didn't even explain himself ever. And I remember thinking that was so attractive. Okay. And in a dating and honeymoon stage that alert states, right. But then the power struggle stage it becomes he never makes compromises. He's off right or you take the type A person who is a big planner and they're like, oh my gosh, that person's so easy going and they like that and it feels so attractive and a learning. And then in the power struggle stage, it's they they never make plans. They're lazy. They don't do enough. And so the things we are initially attracted to in the early stages, and so the things we come to resent the most in the power struggle stage, unless we learn trade integration. And so trade integration is the fact that subconsciously and maybe even spiritually and universally, we're always trying to become more whole. And so we're often attracted to people who are opposite, but us because together when we bind together attached together, it creates the sense of homeostasis. And you see this mirrored in like all sorts of experiences in parts of the universe, right. How do you know how this is happening everywhere. And so when we attach to somebody, if we learn to take on some of their traits and vice versa. So for example, if that easy going person learns to plan a little bit more and be more disciplined. And that very type A person learns to be more flexible. Then together, we're actually rubbing off on each other and it creates a better output for both people or for me, for the example, when I met my husband, like 12 years ago, I really said I had a lot of work still to do on my own boundaries. And I realized, well, because I knew about this at the time, thank goodness, I realized, well, I was certain to get frustrated with the lack of compromise and I realized I had to communicate where my boundaries were and I had to stand on that. And he had to practice, you know, coming to meet me and compromising more. And we both learn to do that. And we were both so much better off. And it impacted my relationships in all other areas in a positive way as I learned to be healthily more assertive. And we have to have to his relationships where he learned to be more compromising and take other people's, you know, needs into consideration more. So trade integration is a really important part of the power struggle stage, the very things that we are most triggered by, we often actually have to integrate into ourselves instead. And do you have ever seen that in your own life or relationships or with friends? Some of the things I was saying I felt so cold out. That's what we threatened for sure. And I think like two things, like I think also knowing about that trade integration is very important because I've seen it in my own life and in some of my friends' life, the things that we find very attractive in a person, turning into the very thing that a person doesn't like. And I did not know up until now that it was because of that power struggle stage. And with someone who's like, I want a person who's physically attractive and then a few years later. They are high maintenance and I'm like that kind of wild noise. You fell in love with them, wasn't it? But I never thought of it that way. And you use the word compromise. And I know sometimes when people that are single hear the word compromise, they're like, "I do not want to compromise on anything." But I loved how you frame it. So how would you define, I guess, compromise in the structure that you just shared? Yeah, such a beautiful question. And it's interesting because it actually brings to the next parts of moving through the power struggle stage, which is that very next piece of moving through after the trade integration is we have to learn to communicate our needs. And what I find all the time, and that's how we make the compromise. What I find all the time is every person, and I don't really think I've ever seen an exception to this, the people who are absolutely unwilling to compromise, just don't know how to communicate properly. And they assume that compromise means sacrifice. So they think it's either your needs or my needs, right? And sometimes it seems like that face value. So for example, where I've seen people be the most rigid about not compromising because they're unwilling is usually when it's an anxious and a dismissive. An anxious person says, "I need more time with my partner." And dismissive says, "I need more space from my partner. I need more freedom." And time to myself. And at face value, it sounds like those are completely an opposition. And so one person's compromising or sacrificing, there's a winner and a loser. But that just means we're not communicating effectively, because truly when you take a really harsh example like that, where it seems like they're so opposite, we learn to both openly and vulnerably communicate our needs, and vulnerability is a right of passage in the power of a struggle stage. And if the anxious person says, "Hey, I need, as a baseline, more time together for me would look like three evenings a week together, we're present, maybe one night we go for a date, and two nights we have a family dinner, or if we don't have kids yet, then we go for a walk, or we go see a movie, or something like that." And a dismissive avoidant, they might say, "Well, I need bare minimum three nights and evenings to three evenings a week to myself." And when we learn to just flush it out, okay, so we're going to have three evenings together and three evenings apart, or maybe we do two evenings together and a FaceTime phone call. And when we can actually flush out the nuances, needs are not black and white, it's not like, "Oh, you only have time to yourself, or you only have time together." When we say, "No, no, we'll do these two things together a week, and you're going to have these things." And I'm going to make sure that on Tuesdays and Sunday afternoon, I leave you to do your thing, and I respect your independence, then all of a sudden, when we communicate in more nuance, then all of a sudden, needs are not actually an opposition, we can simultaneously meet both people's needs and a relationship dining. So, compromise to me means that both people are vulnerable enough to truly put their needs on the table, which is where most people go wrong. They won't even communicate clearly enough, and now we can't get anywhere. And then when we vulnerable, we put our needs on the table when we make space for both. Like, when you have an anxious person saying, "Yeah, I'm going to let you do your thing all day Sunday, and Tuesday evening, I'm going to let you do your thing too. We'll say, "Hi, in the morning, over text message, and I'm just going to let you do your thing to yourself." And, "Hey, on Saturdays, I want to have a date night, and on Mondays, let's have a FaceTime call, or let's go for a walk." When we have it really nuance, we realize that, "Oh, we can actually meet both of each other's needs, and that's what compromise is about." The intention is to fully consider one another's needs in a relationship, understand that they're probably different, and realize that it's not a zero-sum game. There's room for both of us to exist in a relationship container. For someone who's single right now, and thinking about going back to date, but they might have become aware that they've got certain attachment styles, or certain things that have happened in the past, that makes them not feel as secure in that attachment style. Would you recommend they learn how to vet better, or they do the inner work before they go out? It's a very important question. I will be honest, vetting, when you're trying really hard to vet, unless you've done some inner work first, it's going to be a little bit useless, and I'll tell you why. It's the subconscious comfort zone again, and I have had people come to me and said, "Tice for three years." I meet them for the first time as they tease for three years. I have been trying to vet, and I've been looking for the emotionally available person, and I've been trying to go to the right places, and I've been trying to do the right things, and I just end up with people who seem emotionally available the first few weeks, and then I attach to them, and it turns out they're not. It's because you won't really invest in the emotionally available person until you become emotionally available to yourself. Everything we are looking for, it's so funny, some people hear people on the internet say, "If you want these five things in a relationship, become those things first." You want somebody attractive work on your appearance. You want somebody who's a good communicator, be a good communicator. Sure, that has some merit. That's reasonable. Your expectation should match how you're showing up. But ultimately, it should be that what you're wanting and other people you work on in the relationship to yourself first. If you want somebody who's validating to you, become self-alidating. If you want somebody who's going to prioritize you, you need to make your needs and boundaries a priority too. If you want somebody who's going to empathize with your feelings, you need to learn to sit with yourself and self-atune to your own emotions. When we give to ourselves these things, especially repeatedly over time, it's actually determining and framing what we become attracted to and what we invest in with other people. And that, more than anything, is going to supersede any kind of vetting we do because vetting is of the conscious mind and our subconscious mind runs the show. Beautiful. Never heard it framed that way. One of the things that I was also thinking about is emotional safety. And how important is that for us to be able to connect with another person and how attachment style might impact our need for emotional safety, but also our ability to actually create that emotional safety? Excellent question. I love that you asked it in that way because you hit the nail on the head. It's not, you know, some people say, "Okay, I'm going to look for emotional safety." And of course, I mean, we should, there should be non-negotiables in a perfect world. Like, if somebody is constantly raising their voice or calling names or has a history of, you know, abusive or really unhealthy patterns in relationship, like we want to be looking out to avoid those situations and those things. But beyond that, what's really interesting is that I've also seen people, for example, who are dismissive avoidant. And because of their own conditioning, they can have the most emotionally safe partner and they're still not going to feel emotionally safe because they are assuming at a subconscious level their needs will never be met. And so what happens is we have to learn to build emotional safety interdependently. And what that means is that we want to first learn to feel safe in our own bodies. And that's actually one of our pillars of healing your attachment style is nervous system regulation. And if we are chronically having the most disregulated nervous system, if we are always in fight or flight or freeze or fall in mode, then you can go and have the most emotionally safe partner. And I've actually been there. I was the hot and cold back and forth, the really tricky one. And I would date people who, you know, this is way long ago now, but I would date people who were, I remember one person in who comes to mind who was a very good partner, very stable, very healthy. And because my nervous system was so used to chaos from my own childhood, I said to myself at the time, I said, God, this person is so boring. What's it? And that would happen. And they were, they were healthy. And my nervous system didn't know how to mingle with that yet. And so until I learned how to regulate my own nervous system, and feel safe in my own body, no matter how safe someone is, you can't connect with them there. So nervousness and regulation within yourself is so massively important first. And you can retrain that through doing practices to open your window of tolerance. You can do that through meditation, breath work, you know, all sorts of things. Mindfulness training. Those things are actually helping yourself at two and get in your body, be in parasympathetic nervous system mode. And once we've done that first with ourselves, now we can bring that into relationship with others. And that looks like emotional safety with other people, be rooted very largely in two regulated nervous systems, and emotional vulnerability. And what's really interesting is that a lot of safety is not built in how we first connect with somebody. A lot of safety is built in repair after rupture. So for example, if two people are regulated and have regulated nervous systems, they can connect and they can feel quite emotionally safe. But deep safety and trust is actually built in the times where maybe somebody forget something important to you. And maybe they forget to call you on a day you had a job interview. And you called them and you say, hey, you know, I hope that you would have checked in with me today. And it sort of hurt me that you forgot. And we work on that next time. And the other person says, yes, I see that would be hurtful. And sorry, yes, I will definitely be more mindful. And you see them practicing more mindfulness. That's where the roots of emotional safety and trust are fostered that are not just at a superficial level. That's how we nourish and build deep roots in the relationship. And so regulating our nervous systems first is massive because then we can't get anywhere. But then the second part is vulnerability and communication. And that's what's actually building the roots of emotional safety in a longer term and more unconditional way. You have built the personal development school, making this kind of emotional education accessible and affordable because most people cannot access therapy. What would you want someone to walk away from this conversation understanding so that they can have an easy way? easier or more successful time in their next relationship or maybe in their current relationship. Yeah, beautiful question. I am so passionate about this work because I was a fearful avoidant and I had all the hard patterns and relationships and I want people to first know that it's absolutely possible and it's not that hard. And I think there's a lot of times that in the Western world we are not given tools as much for the subconscious level of mind. It's a lot about conscious and intellectualization and not wonderful, but awareness is the first step in reconditioning is where transformation actually happens. And I want people to really understand that. And so reconditioning takes place through repetition and emotion over time through some, you know, a good starting tool is the one that we shared for rewiring your beliefs. But self-compassion is necessity on the journey and repetition over time of diving into those root causes is what actually moves the needle and helps us truly change our patterns longer. For the listeners who want to connect with you, follow your work where can they find you. Yeah, so I'm at personaldevelopmentschool.com and people are always welcome to go there. We've a free attachment assessment so you can see what attachment style you are and it spits out what your core wounds are and what your needs will be and your nervous system patterns is sort of an in-depth report on you. And then if people want to follow along for more information, they can always join in there and take our 90 day attachment healing programs. But I'm also putting daily content on YouTube, which is tiny skips in - personal development school or at the personal development school on Instagram. And we are going to add all those links in the show notes. If there's one key takeaway you're hoping a listener leaves this conversation with what is that? Yeah, one of the big things that I would say that I haven't said is that when we grow up in the system of conditioning, we get punishment reward. We get punished for doing things wrong and rewarded for doing things right. And so that conditions us to think that when we're trying to grow and heal, that we punish ourselves into healing. And it's one of the most counterproductive things we ever do because when we start punishing ourselves or beating ourselves up for gilding ourselves, we go into sympathetic nervous system and we're not in a mode for healing. We're not in our awareness. We can't get to the root cause of why we made mistakes and try to dig into them with an attitude of curiosity. And so as anybody is going through their healing journey, I think it's important to recognize it just because we were conditioned that way. Doesn't mean that that's how we grow or heal. And to really practice the state of curiosity when we do things in correct weed or when we make a mistake because through curiosity we can understand ourselves better, get to the root cause of why we do things. And that can be where transformation and awareness really grows. So definitely say that as a big takeaway. Taris, thank you so much for your message, your perspective, your expertise. Really appreciate you spending your time with us. Simba, thank you so much. I had such a wonderful time and you asked such thoughtful and insightful questions and you're a really fantastic host. So thank you for having me.