Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - "How To Raise A Securely Attached Child." - With Attachment Specialist Adam Lane Smith

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Avoidant attachment created the Girlboss movement, daycare fostered a radioactive culture, and over 50% of Americans have an unhealthy attachment style - but it doesn’t have to stay that way! Attachment Specialist Adam Lane Smith addresses how to heal a broken attachment style and his concerns for Gen Alpha’s lack of secure attachments. Learn why the four attachment styles develop and how they affect your personal, work, and romantic relationships.Sign up for the Attachment Bootcamp Course an...

Why are women so unhappy? It sort of seems like the advice we've been given our entire lives on what will make us happy is falling short. So what gives? This is one of many crucial topics we'll be exploring this year at Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit, June 7th through 9th in San Antonio, Texas. Don't let the name fool you either. All ages are welcome. Last year, we had more young moms than ever before, and this year we're going to have a mother's room for those with infants. If you are a teen or have a teen, are a college student needing help on life decisions, or a young professional or even new parent, there will be a speaker or four that majorly resonate with you.

Speakers will be announced soon, but in the meantime, it's a great idea to secure your spot before ticket prices rise at YWLS24.com. Use code Alex for 25% off general admission. That's YWLS24.com with code Alex. Did you know that every one of us has one of four attachment styles that are created when we're born? It's something that affects every relationship we have for the rest of our life. And the way our attachment style is activated depends on how our primary caregiver interacts with us as a baby and small child. So what are the four attachment styles? How do you know which one you have?

And if you have a less than ideal attachment style that is affecting your relationships in a negative way, what can you do about it? This week's guest is an attachment style. expert. He's been featured everywhere from the Today Show, Yahoo, the Daily Mail, and more. He left his therapy practice in 2021 to spread awareness about attachment styles online. And unlike traditional therapists who focus on discussing the feelings around our attachment styles, he focuses on addressing your root causes of broken attachment. He wrote the book Slaying Your Fear, a guide for people who grapple with insecurity, is a husband and a father of five, and is the host of the podcast I Wish You New, which is for

people who are tired of boring relationship advice. The spillover is produced by a nonprofit, which means listeners like you supporting the show financially, makes it possible to keep the show going, record with guests in person, and fund our set in production costs. You can make a tax-deductible donation to support the spillover by clicking the link in the description. If you love this show but you can't support us monetarily, please leave a five-star review, sharing something that you've learned from the spillover that helped improve your life.

Watch this episode by subscribing. to Real Alex Clark on YouTube, please welcome Attachment Specialist, Adam Lane Smith, to the spillover. What is it about attachment theory that first intrigued you as a therapist? I will give a warning to everybody at home, really quick on this.

So people always want to learn about attachment theory. Do not learn about attachment theory if you want to stay lonely in your life, be horribly insecure for your whole life, be afraid of rejection, and if you want to have three divorces, because attachment theory will help you fix all of those issues. So right off the bat, there we go. Attachment theory is the way that we connect

to other human beings. It's the way that we form successful, long-lasting, sustainable relationships. Sustainability is the absolute important piece there. And most people don't have this. The research shows that 50% of American adults now have attachment issues. 50%. This is a silent epidemic. Nobody's talking about. And there are four major styles. What are they in how are they created? Absolutely. So let me ask you. this. You growing up, how did you learn to get your needs met? Crying and my mom feeding me or or cuddling me. Exactly. And that's how most of us form attachment in those first six months of our life. I have a newborn at home four weeks old.

She cries. We feed her. We take care of her fairly quickly, hopefully. And they learn that if they cry and their needs are met fairly consistently and fairly quickly that people love them, that people are going to take their needs seriously, that people are going to take their needs seriously, that people won't be angry at them and be grudging, that people will be consistent with that love. And then when my wife is holding our child, she looks down at our child and talks to her, makes faces at her,

and our child learns that I can get reactions from mom, and mom cares for me, and I'm good enough, I'm interesting enough as who I am. That forms what we call secure attachment style. Again, 50% of people have this. Only half of people get this now. 50% of people get secure attachment. They learn they can get their needs met

just by asking that needs, needs will be taken care of and that other people will be consistent. Do you feel like a few decades ago that number was higher, more than 50% of people at secure attachment? So the research shows that back in roughly the 80s or 90s when they did the first initial tests on this, yes, it showed it was about 65% of adults likely had secure attachment. And the older generations have a bit of a higher rating for that. Now the research shows that it's at least 50% have insecure attachment.

And now in Generation Z that's coming up now, it actually could only be one-third have secure attachment. It's getting massively worse. What's causing that discrepancy with Generation Z? So there's been a hundred... Or wait, is it Gen Z or is it Gen A? Well, it's Gen Z that we're looking at right now that we have data on. Gen A is coming and we're sort of doing initial tests on them.

And it's looking... I don't want to say catastrophic, but it's looking worse than anything we've ever seen in Gen A. It's horrific. There's been a hundred years of breakdown in family structures in America. A hundred years of consistent destruction in the family systems. with multiple social events, with wars, with people learning trauma responses. So a lot of our parenting tactics that we have now and family tactics and family bonding

is based on trauma. It's not even based on how to love each other. So we are living in a trauma society for 100 years and it's showing up. So there's secure attachment. And if you're lucky and you are in a great family, you learn that your needs will be met and that you are good enough as you are. So you connect with other people who are the same. But if you don't learn that, if your parents grown and run,

roll their eyes when they have to take care of you. If they're just gone all the time and you raise yourself, we call them latchkey kids when I was growing up, if other people are wild and unpredictable, your parents are arguing, your parents are divorced, they're always bad-mouthing each other, you can break in three different ways. One is to blame yourself and believe that you are unlovable, that you're not worthy of that love and care. If your mom was inconsistent with her affection with you, or if she was always nervous and anxious and she was a mess and you'd look in her eyes and she'd be looking off. If she's always looking at her phone and not paying attention to you, so you have to fight to be interesting enough to get her attention, you might blame yourself and you develop what we call

anxious attachment style. I am unlovable. There's something wrong with me. Other people can see it, and I have to make people feel good or they will abandon me. Or we go the other direction and we blame other people and we say there is something wrong with everybody around me. When they get stressed out, they are not trustworthy. They will betray you. They will turn on you. At the very least, they just won't care. So I need to put up a wall, protect myself from everybody else. I'll do little things that make them happy, but I will keep them out. And emotional intimacy, absolute zero. And then you can get the blend of the two. So the research shows about two to five percent of people have the blend. It's been called many things. It's been called disorganized style, fearful avoidance style,

anxious dash avoidance style. The naming scheme is just as chaotic as the as the style itself. But you have an external behavior that you have, either approval seeking through anxious style or avoid keeping people out. But once people get in and you love them, you flip to the opposite way. And you either become more approval seeking, whereas you were pushing them out before or you destroy the relationship and drive them away. That's disorganized style. What sorts of things in your life are affected by an attachment style?

Everything. Everything. Our political divide that we have right now, I believe, is down to a lot of this piece because we can't even have a basic conversation about needs. It's interesting. I've never heard that theory. We can't even have a basic conversation about needs. Can you imagine? Imagine for a moment sitting down with somebody who's different from you. They have different ideas, different opinions, but they fundamentally disbelieve that anybody else on this planet will ever be fair with them

or will ever treat them kindly or will ever be honorable and have ethics. And now you're trying to have a conversation with them, regardless of what side of the aisle they're on. Can you imagine having a productive conversation if you don't believe there's any human common ground? No, and that's exactly what's happening, too. That's attachment as it seeped into our whole system right now, at least 50%, worse than younger generations. And so this can affect not only romantic relationships, but also platonic, your work relationships, how you interact with your boss, right? Absolutely. I have so many clients come into my coaching practice.

I have a lot of executives come in, and they are high performers in business. Their ability to make other people feel good, has helped them rise through the ranks. And they go all the way up into C-suite. and then they get stuck. And then they say, what am I supposed to do now? Because I can't rise anymore. Now I have to have relationships with my team. I have to have relationships with the other executives.

I have to run this business. It becomes almost unsustainable. And they are in an endless fear loop of what's going to happen next. So they drink. They don't have romantic relationships that are fulfilling at home. They are afraid of their next divorce. Sometimes they're on their third divorce. Or they just can't date.

They come home to an empty apartment. And it's gorgeous. and it's a million dollar apartment, but it's empty. And that's their life. What are the different attachment styles like in friendship? Do you have any friends who are always afraid that you're going to leave them? And they're constantly getting you to reassure them. And you have to pat them on the head continuously.

I'm probably that friend. Okay. Okay. And that's fair. That's fair. But you know that, do you know that feeling then when somebody doesn't text you back fast enough? And it's a friend. When somebody says a word that's just a little bit off and you wonder if it's your

fault that day. It's exhausting for people who are anxiously attached, and it's also exhausting for the other people to constantly try to nurture and care and secure people, they'll do that. But if you have avoidant people in your life, they will start off by reassuring you, and then they will expect you to give them something in compensation, usually dopamine. They're very dopamine-driven-driven because they don't have much oxytocin. They don't have much vasopress, and they don't have much gaba. They don't have much serotonin. We can talk about those if you want to. But their brain chemistry is vastly different than a securely attached person's brain chemistry. It functions different.

So they are dopamine-driven. Okay. And so all of those things, the brain chemistry things, that is totally dependent on the relationship you have with your mother as a baby. Oh, my goodness. It is so dependent on that. Do you want to go into the brain chemistry? Yes.

Does your audience love brain chemicals? Well, I mean, if they don't, they will. Okay, let's do this. So let's make this very simple and very understandable. So you have in you a hormone called oxytocin. This is the love hormone. It's something that you release when your mom hugs you when you're a child and she gives you a kiss. When she holds you and cares for you, breastfeeds you any of that, she also releases it.

Now, the more oxytocin you have, the more you release of this thing called GABA. Gabba, GABA, is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that actively shuts down anxiety and shuts down depression. It makes you stronger and more resilient against cortisol and stress. So the more loved that you feel, the more connected you feel and bonded, then your brain also says, I don't have to feel scared and stressed all the time because somebody loves me. And if you don't get that in childhood, if it's inconsistent, you don't get it at all. You're in daycare way too early or way too long. And your primary caregivers, they shift because you're firing caregivers all the time.

I've seen that plenty of times. Or you're competing with the other kids to get the care and the attention from that caregiver. You won't get much oxytocin at all in childhood. So your brain instead shift to a survival mechanism of nobody cares for me. And the research shows this. It's a survival adaptation. Nobody supports me. Nobody cares for me.

I live in an environment where I have to. survive lone wolf style, turn off oxytocin bonding, turn off all of these other pieces that we would normally do, low serotonin, low mood, very hardcore survival mentality, very dopamine-driven. Cortisol and dopamine, those are their two things that they do. Does that sound like our society? Yeah. That's where we're at. We're in that extreme survival mode. Have you seen people in relationships that are more dopamine-driven than love-driven?

Sure. More pleasure-driven, right? Guys with porn addictions, for example, right? And he's tearing his marriage apart and can't stop, but all he can do is look at the porn. Women who are overwhelmingly approval seeking in relationships, even for guys that treat them very poorly. And they keep blaming themselves. They're actually addicted to inconsistent oxytocin. They get oxytocin.

And when he approves of her in some way, she does get some of it, but she's only getting a little bit from him. There's a wonderful doctor. Her name is Dr. Sue Carter. And she's a leading expert in the world on oxytocin and vasopressin bonding. And she talks extensively in her research about when you only have one person at a time that your oxytocin bonded to. It doesn't calm you the way it's supposed to. It raises your anxiety levels more because now you're afraid of losing that one source. So what I have found is a lot of anxiously attached people focus on one person at a time in their life to get super close to.

Have you noticed that in your life? Yeah. Yes. One person at a time makes your anxiety worse because now you're afraid of losing that person. So when people come into my coaching practice, the first thing I ask, them is who are two or three people in your life that you've wanted to be close to, but you never had the guts to open up to them about. Stop. Right? Right? That is so relatable. See? So who discovered attachment theory at first? What is the story behind how we even know that this exists?

John Bulby back in the 1960s discussed attachment theory. And he discovered that if you look at how children get their needs met from their primary caregivers, they will develop those same pathways later on in their romantic lives throughout their entire life. That's how they get their needs met. And he didn't have the time understand that that's a survival switch being thrown with all the brain chemistry. He just said, look at this and look at this. And he laid out that theory. Now, Mary Ainsworth came along next and she talked about the strange scenario sort of situation. If a mom was in a room and the children would be there and then the mom would leave and then would come back, how to the child adapt to mom leaving, adapt to coming back. But it was all this fixation on childhood.

that just got buried. All of that just got buried. And we started focusing instead on pharmaceuticals and immediate right now make you feel better. And everybody's depressed. Everybody's anxious. We don't even know why. We're just going to talk to the depression and talk to the diagnoses. Everything became about the diagnoses in the book and treating those specifically. So most graduate programs, unfortunately, in the United States, they teach almost nothing about attachment theory. Here's what they teach. You don't need to know this because this is all about children. If it's an adult, it will always become a personality disorder. So don't worry about attachment theory.

Here's these other diagnoses and here's the medications that go with them. That's what we teach in America. That is so broken. It is. That is not a system to make people better. That's why I retired my license. So a licensing board couldn't tell me what to say anymore. We've seen that with Jordan Peterson.

Now you can't have a license if you want to work online. And I went out into the world become the attachment specialist because nobody wanted to talk about this from a professional standpoint. And John Bulby had to be a professional standpoint. an interesting childhood because, well, it was so messed up. But it was, um, his parents were both always gone. And he kind of grew up in that era where it was very much like children should be seen and not heard. And his mother just like hired people to take care of him. And he like rarely ever saw his parents. It was just this really messed up situation. And so he was like, I want to see if this is something what I experienced, other kids experience also. And then he went

into hospitals, right, to film children. Because at the time, children who were admitted to the hospital, they weren't allowed to see their parents for days, weeks. And they told parents, oh, it's not a good idea when you're a kids in the hospital. They shouldn't see you. And then after such a short period of time,

these kids started to become distant when their parents finally showed up. They didn't want anything to do with them. They just became detached. And then that's how he kind of came up with this, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's so true. So many of my clients come in and say,

Adam, I've had a one, I had a good childhood. My parents were good people. they never screamed at me. They never hit me. Yeah, they were, you know, a little more distant than normal, but we hugged and we talked to each other. And I'll say, were you in the NICU in the first three, four weeks of your life? Well, yeah, I was born a little premature. I said, okay, so you put you in this tank, right? And they do everything they can to take care of you, but you're crying. And you're not going to get the oxytocin unit because mom's not holding you. I've had five kids now. My wife is continuously just like they're, they're sealed onto your body. Constant oxytocin flow, constant. But

Instead, when you're in the hospital, they cry. Nobody comforts them, right? Not consistently. And they don't get that flood of oxytocin. So their brain says, I live somewhere where my mom can't hold me. Sierra Leone is known for, it has the highest infant mortality rate in the world. And they've done research and shown that the mother's there typically don't form an emotional bond with their child for the first year because they know the child's going to die. Wow.

The infant mortality rate is so high that the mothers have formed a trauma adaptation to, not bond with the child until their one year old. And parents all the time that are afraid of daycare, right? Daycare has become the fundamental evil in our society. And it is. Our society was already so sick. And now we have radiation poisoning, seeping in from endless daycare. Everybody's in daycare now. But it's not the end of the story. They talk a lot about your attachment being formed in the first three years and then you're doomed and you're stuck forever. And I hate that part of the discussion online. When non-professionals start trying to discuss attachment, they want to give you your, your different styles and it's like your astrology sign, you're a Virgo, you're an unavoidant,

and you will always be that forever. So here's what you need to do. Here's how to accommodate it. No, you can absolutely heal your attachment at any point. Here's what you need to know as a parent. You don't have to be perfect because you can't be. You need to form a self-correcting family system so that when a problem does arise, your child can come to you and talk with you, check in, reality test. Hey, I had this feeling. Is this true? Hey, this thing happened three years. years ago, can we talk about it? And you can reassure them and nurture them and then correct along the course. Even when they're 25 years old and they have a question for you, hey, you know, this thing happened when I was this old. How did this go? I am really sorry. I had no idea that

that has stuck with you for 30 years or for, you know, however long. Let's talk about that and fix it now. If you need gluten-free recipes, I am your girl. I've been deep looking for creative ideas online as someone who loves pasta and bread, R-I-B. I made this amazing meal. The other night, it was one pot, garlicky, creamy, lemony chicken in a pea-penny dish. Dude, it was so fire. And the best part is it was a 15-minute recipe. Now, sometimes when you cook with chicken breast, it can add time because you have to sit there, do all this extra work, trim in the nasty stuff off the chicken. Since I get my better-than-organic pasture-raised chicken from Good Ranchers, they triple trim them for me. I thaw them. They're perfect, ready to cook. It is so nice.

The majority of shoppers have no clue where their meat is coming from. You think, well, yes, I do, Alex. Whole Foods or Walmart. Um, no, the truth is over 85% of the meat that you get at the store in America, especially beef, is coming from other countries or farms that are not transparent about vaccines and their animals. Over 5 billion pounds of meat in America was imported last year. Good ranchers is committed to only using small farmers and ranchers in middle America

to raise their meat and their products are 0% MRNA vaccine. No mystery meat at Good Ranchers on Tinder. I can't necessarily guarantee. Right now, with each new subscription, you will get a free 10-pound Easter heritage ham worth $118. Are you listening to me? That is a free 10-pound Easter heritage ham worth $118 for an extremely limited time. If you order a Good Rangers box right now with Good Ranchers.com,

With code Clark, go to good ranchers.com. Use code Clark, good ranchers. American Meat delivered. What are the signs that you may have a messed up attachment style? And they're different for everybody. But if you anxiously attached, let's just go with that, if you find yourself endlessly afraid that other people are mad at you, if everything seems to come back to you,

if you don't get a response from a text message and it's somehow your fault, if you really don't believe that you have what it takes to go out into this word, and actually live with your own two feet because you believe something about you is fundamentally wrong and unacceptable if you are always seeking approval from other people and you hate it but you just can't stop doing it probably have anxious attachment avoid an attachment there's two different flavors so if you look this up online you will think that you are the scum of the earth and you will just never want to speak to anybody ever again because mostly anxiously people anxious attachment people then get angry and write about avoiding people and then it's all bad stuff but avoidantly attach people they

just keep people at arm's length. They keep people out. They don't trust other people to be fair with them. They don't trust other people to care about their hurts. They think it will be a burden to open up to other people. They don't understand emotional intimacy because they've never felt it. So they don't know why other people are so into all this talking about feelings because they've never had somebody really reassure them with their feelings. Can you have a mix of attachment styles? Oh, yes. So I had a client come in very recently. who appeared that she was so successful in every area of her life except her marriage. She kept connecting to these men who were very approval seeking and the marriage would

eventually fall apart because she had no respect for them. She loved them, but she just couldn't come to respect their character because they were just constantly, the word now is simp. They were constantly simping for her, but constantly weak of character and always craving approval and she was exhausted managing them. But then, after two divorces, she connected to somebody who was much more avoidant. And all of a sudden, she found herself very approval seeking in the same way. And she hated it.

And she stayed with this person who was very, very badly behaved over and over and over. I've actually had multiple female clients with that exact same pattern. Two anxious husbands and an avoidant boyfriend afterward. Because you're looking for the polar opposite? You are looking for somebody who is going to play the game with you. securely attached people do not play games. They are looking for sustainable, healthy, long-term relationships, right? So if you and I wanted to form a great friendship,

would you want me to just come to you and tell you the things I expect from you? Probably not. No? Well, I mean, I guess. Let's talk about that. Not in an awkward way, but I mean, I guess if something happens, then I can tell, like, a close friend that. Let's try this. What if I came to you and said, hey, Alex, just up front.

This is the thing that I expect in our friendship. If you can do this, I will be so happy. This is the one key thing that means the most of me. Can you do this? It would intimidate me and send me into a spiral, someone directly saying something like that to me. And that right there is exactly the point. That what I'm displaying would be secure attachment.

And that is insecure attachment. And that's why the two pools completely segregate out from each other. They don't speak. They don't interact because the secure person is intimidating to the other person. Because to me, I'm like, why are you telling me that? Because you think I'm not good enough. Why would you even need to tell me that? Right.

And layering those on to an avoiding person feels overwhelming as well. So instead, anxious and avoiding people go over there and don't talk about expectations at all. But now you're in a relationship where you have no idea. So you have to guess all the time, constantly guessing while the secure people over here wonder, I told you everything you need to know. I made this super easy. And I want you to tell me what you want to. Let's be super happy together. So they segregate out and they don't date.

They don't even work hardly together in business. The secure people, for anyone out there who's wondering, the secure people in your life are the ones who walked away and you have no idea why. They're the ones that you've thought were maybe a little boring, but everyone else loves them and you don't know why. They're the ones who are just off over here doing their own thing and they have happy little circles and you wonder what the heck they're doing in there. Those are the secure people. They live quiet, very happy, comfortable lives. Oh my gosh. And they can be very successful, but that's half the population.

Meanwhile, the other half is over here ripping each other apart, trying to figure out what do you want from me, but intimidated. if you talk about what you want from each other. Yeah, because of the refusal I have to talk about what I want from somebody or somebody else saying that to me, I just cut people out of my life. Yeah, oh yeah. Several relationships, no problem. I will just straight up never talk to you again. Yeah. Like a good friend, I could just never speak to you again.

Do you want me to fix that right now in about five minutes? Yes. Okay. So it's something I do with my clients. I'm going to have you close your eyes. Okay. I promise. I won't make any weird faces at you.

So let's walk through this exercise. I call it the good partner, bad partner exercise. this changes your mind in five minutes, okay? You will not be the same after this. I'm just going to let you know. I want you to imagine that you have the perfect partner. Okay? Now we're going to go through this slowly.

When they do want something from you, they come to you very gently, they don't stomp their foot, they don't yell, they don't demand. They just say, hey, Alex, this would mean a lot to me. Could you do this for me? Right? And maybe that scares you a little bit,

but they reassure you. You don't have to do it all the time. If it's ever hard, let me know. But this is the only thing I expect from you, right? when you do something that they don't like, they also come to you. And very gently, they say, hey, you had no idea.

I am not mad at all. But this is not something I love. Could you do this instead next time? This would be so great. Very simple, very easy. Yeah, those don't scare me. Yeah, cool. And the next time, when you do it,

if you do something they like, they praise you. And they say, yes, thank you. That was exactly what I'm looking for. And they're just grateful. They're just grateful for everything. Okay, very clear, very on the surface. Now open your eyes. I'm going to ask you three questions.

Okay. Do you feel like this person trusts you? Yes. Good answer. A lot of people actually will say no. They have a secret motive for being this open with me. And that suspicion, right? Number two, in this relationship, if you were getting that constant feedback,

hey, this is what I don't like, but this is what I like. Yeah, you did it right. Thank you so much. Not patronizing, but honest and sincere. Would you feel maybe like a good partner? Would your confidence maybe grow? Yes. Good.

Yeah, exactly. Now, third piece, in this relationship, would you feel secure like it was going to last a long time? Yes. Nice and relaxed, right? Your cortisol levels plummet through the floor because you feel so safe, you have every mechanism to build a great relationship. That's secure attachment. And that's why sharing your needs is important and talking about expectations. It's so clear.

Now, close your eyes again because we're going to go the other direction, okay? Let's imagine you have the worst partner in the world. If you're picturing someone specific, you don't say their name. but the worst partner, okay? When they want something from you, they don't ask. They drop hints. They do 10 nice things for you hoping you'll figure out what they want. And if you do figure it out, they might say, oh, no, no, that's not a big deal.

Don't worry about it. I don't need that. They are always hiding what they want because they're afraid to share it. And when you do something they don't like, they're nice. They don't tell you about it. They don't tell you that. Hey, I didn't like that. They say, oh, no, that's fine.

Don't worry about it. No, you know what? I like it. That's fine. I like that. That's great. Until three months later, they have a horrible day and they blow up and they tell you all of the things you have been secretly been doing wrong for the last three months. And they told you it was fine, but it was never really fine.

Yep. And they blow up every 90 days. So four times a year, roughly, or every so often you don't really know when the next explosion's coming. You're going to hear how awful you are. And when you do something they like, it's treated like a burden. you didn't have to do this for me that's way too much how am i supposed to pay you back let me pay you back right now they're never happy with what you do for them so you never know when the next explosion's coming you don't even really know what they want from you until it's too late and if you did it right you get

punished now open your eyes and tell me do you think that person trusts you no okay in this relationship do you think you'd become more confident or less confident oh less and that's why attachment actually it's worse during the course of our life. Okay, this makes so much sense. I don't think that it was totally my parents. I think it's been a course of relationships that I've had throughout my 20s. So when you segregate out

and you don't have interactions with secure people, this is the spiral you get into. And you just in this over and over and over. That's why so many of my clients come in and say, Adam, I want to find a husband or I want to find a wife, but I don't believe there's healthy people in this world because I've never met one. This is why you have to switch.

What's the deal with people who feel like, I don't know what attachment I am. I feel like I don't fit into any certain category. They're the ones we don't talk about. They're what I call ethical avoidant, where we don't talk about ethical avoidant people, but they just stay away from other people. They just leave other people mostly alone. They never manipulate anybody.

They'd be horrified at manipulating people. They're very calm. They're moral. And they do right. But deep inside, they have this belief that they, maybe they're the only one trying to do right. They don't understand other people. They don't really fully understand.

So they just stay alone to try to protect themselves from other people. They're so kind and they're so sweet. And they're just hurting. Can you talk about a successful transformation? A client of yours has had where they've gotten out of a disorganized, anxious or fearful, avoidant attachment style? So that good partner, bad partner exercise right there. What I do is I walk them through that.

And then I tell them this, by not sharing your needs, you are being the bad partner or the bad friend. by not being clear about what you want, you are the one inflicting hurt and fear on the other person. You're robbing them with a chance to feel loved, to feel trusted, to feel confident, to feel secure. But the only switch to go from a bad partner to a perfect partner is to be clear with your expectations and your needs and your desires. That's what made it perfect.

The first one you said, oh, it's not scary at all. It's wonderful. You can do that. You can do that for other people by sharing that with them. that's the first step is learning that because now you feel guilty anytime you're going to go backward and do the other behaviors. We have to ruin, ruin the insecure behaviors that are keeping you isolated from other people. So when I have clients come in and we do that and we ruin the behaviors, they start seeing it everywhere. I had a very successful model who came in. And she was

just gorgeous, gorgeous woman. She was in all these different publications. And she was dressed to the absolute nines in my office the first time we met. And we walked through some anxiety. And we walk through that exercise. And I said, I want you to go home and just think about, just mark down on a little, little piece of paper. Every time you have a negative self thought that something was your fault, or you have to hide a need, or you can't be who you are with other people. She went home for one week and she just put a little X on every day. And she came in the next week, sweatpants, hair a mess, eyes red from crying. And she had this notebook with hundreds of marks. That would be me. Hundreds of marks destroyed, right? And that's where we rebuilt from. And I said, who, who do you

want to be. Well, I want to be a loving person and I want to be loved. You will not feel loved until you get that brain chemistry. And the brain chemistry doesn't come from sitting and thinking about it. It doesn't come from reading books. It doesn't come from watching films or documentaries about attachment. It doesn't even come from listening to a podcast. This is step one, learning. But it comes from building the right experiences, the right skills to have the experiences correctly and then connecting to the right people and receiving that chemical cocktail of oxytocin, vasopressin, Gabba serotonin. When you have that, then you do transform. And those are the guys I have come in who have dated for 40 years off and on, never had a successful relationship past six months

and are wanting to settle down and have kids at 40 and they have no idea how. They've never formed a long-term relationship. We go through this process and they get a girlfriend and they actually bond to her for the first time in their life and she becomes their first love at 40 years old. Wow. And then they can build a successful family. And I get their wedding photos and I love them. The women who come in who have been divorced because they went through 20 years of a bad marriage with an avoidant husband who scoffed at emotional intimacy, thought it was stupid to try to talk about feelings. And she started off anxious, but she gradually grew more and more resentful. The kids fell apart. The kids were scared and sad. They felt like dad didn't love them.

She had to go to bat for the kids. She had to fight against dad. She's now adopted more avoidant behaviors on top of her anxious behaviors to try to control that behavior he was doing. She's had a bad divorce. Now she's looking for a real life partner who's going to love her. And they transform from wounded and miserable into finding the right person who can finally make them feel loved. That's the power of attachment. You said that the first lesson that a kid learns when they enter the world is, will people care about me? I've had experts on the show who have said that moms who choose to work full time when it is unnecessary while their child is zero to three years old are risking creating serious attachment issues with their kid. Is that accurate?

This is such a tricky topic, isn't it? Because so many women have to go through the daycare process and they hate it and they feel guilty. And I'm not saying they should because when you're backed into a corner like our society, many of us are backed into a corner. You have to do the best that you possibly can and then mitigate the damage. And there's ways to do that. But women who choose to go back into the workforce, and they don't have to at all, and it's not a financial decision, they are bored at home. What I have found, typically, is the vast majority of them are avoidantly attached to

themselves. They grew up with very little oxytocin, very little bonding, very little affection. They have learned that money keeps them safe. So they go back into a high stress environment to then control that environment and feel safe. So then to them, it doesn't make sense. why would it hurt my kids to put them in daycare? I will spend some time with them when I come home in the evenings. I'll spend some time on the weekends.

We will have some time together. They'll know that I love them. But they don't understand where that intimacy is supposed to come from because they didn't get it themselves. I keep seeing this pattern in a bunch of like mom groups on Facebook that I'm in because I just like to see. I mean, you know, I am somebody who's creating content and thinking of conversations and what is the age of my audience going through. So I'm in some mom groups just to see what's going on. And one thing I keep seeing are the mothers who have a three, four-year-old or less, they come home from work all day and they say, my kid never wants to go to bed or they get up multiple times throughout the night coming into my room. Why is this always happening? And I was like the only one to pop my head out and say, have you ever thought about the fact that your kid isn't seeing enough of you throughout the day? So the only time that they can see you or spend time with you is during the night. So that's why they're not sleeping. You know, and it's that attachment thing.

I mean, that's a sign that there's an attachment disorder developing, wouldn't you say? Mm-hmm. I will say this, because I've got five kids. Kids get up through the night. They have sleep disruptions. There's a natural rhythm to children being a little crazy sometimes. But the kids who cannot then be settled down, the kids who are that consistent with it, they are afraid.

If they're oxytocin's low and their gabas low, they are less resilient to stress than an average child is going to be. So your child is now. primed to be terrified. Imagine being a child who is primed to be always scared. And then your mom in the middle of the night can't sue with you when she's angry and frustrated and yelling at you to go back to bed. Not that these moms necessarily are yelling, but a lot of them do get frustrated. And it makes it worse. And the child's messaging more and more is consistent. I don't have time for you. Not during the day, not at night, and not even when you're afraid. That's what cements it.

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the fact that most women will want to stay home full time with their kids or go down to part-time and not work full-time once they have kids. Some of them, I think, ignore that intuition. They ignore that inner voice. And then there's other women who they can't hear it. They can't hear that inner voice over this loud girl boss culture that tells them, ignore your guilt. That's just mom guilt. Ignore it. Push through it. You'll forget about it. It'll get easier dropping your kid off at daycare the more that you do it. Talk about the study that said 65% of women ended up resenting their partner for not making enough money so that they could stay home with their kids. Oh, it's so true. Forbes ran an article that said 84% of women want to stay home and that 65% are that miserable and resentful.

Yes, women want to stay home, it turns out. Women want to stay home. I'll say this, the girl boss culture. It is built around avoidant attachment style. Girl boss is, I am avoidantly attached. I don't trust anybody else. I will be controlling and manage other people, which is why girl boss women are meanest to other women.

Wait, this is so true. I have never in the workplace, the meanest bosses I've ever had, the ones that treated me terribly, didn't want to give me raises. It was never the men. It was always the girl boss women. Yep. Every time. Avoid an attachment will tell you that nobody else has good intentions.

Nobody else cares. Nobody else is going to meet your needs. And the worse your avoidant attachment is, the more aggressive you're going to become against potential threats, such as other women in the workplace. Mind blowing. Yeah, I think that the girl boss thing, millennials, that was obviously driven so hard into us. Now we're the ones that are starting to have families. And we're starting to see that, wait a minute.

this feels like a lie that I was told. Gen Z is seeing us kind of go through this realization. They're like, okay, I don't want this. I think that's why you're seeing all these viral videos of newly graduated college girls that are working for the first time nine to five. Have you seen those viral videos where the girls are crying like this life sucks, working nine to five, an hour commute, two hour commute, get home, go to eat, go to bed, wake up, do it again.

Like, this is a miserable life. I went in debt for college to do this and they hate it. But we were told you will not be happy in your life if you don't do this. So your corporation is now your husband. Yeah, you just have to go sleep somewhere else. You have a husband who doesn't love you and you don't get to have children and you have to work even extra hours for no thanks. Now, the angry people that hear you talk about daycare and mothers really needing to try to make it a priority to be home zero to three years old for those first three years of your child's life is the most crucial. I would argue if you can do it longer, do it longer.

but for at least the first three years, try to be home. And the women will get mad and say, well, I don't hear you saying this about men. Why aren't you saying that men need to be staying home zero to three years old? But I've heard that a child's attachment is almost entirely created due to the relationship they have with their mother at first in those few years. So is that true? Men need to step up. They do. So those women are right.

They're not wrong. Here's what happened is over the last hundred years, men died. men died in World War I they died in the Dust Bowl they died in the Great Depression they died in World War II they died in wars and dead and dead and dead and women had to step in

so our great great grandmothers for multiple generations had to step in and become essentially masculine figures to hold everything together because the men were dead or the men were so broken that they checked out

there was a failure in masculinity and a failure and not even just that the death toll trauma masculinity almost died in America. And trauma and attachment issues got so bad that the baby boomers didn't understand what love and connection really was. All they knew was trauma, which is why about half of them went out and started destroying the family

system, right? They're currently tripling divorce rates in their 70s and 80s. Those are the ones who are getting divorced instead of just waiting each other out, seeing to who's going to die first. But you have an entire generation tripling the divorce rate or waiting for their partner to die. That's the boomers. Not all of them are broken, but a lot of them are.

and they started really ripping apart that family system. Then you have Gen X and Gen Y. You have the millennials. You have Gen Z. And it's got worse and worse through every system because nobody has seen a functioning system. So masculinity died. And then it was reborn in a child form where women were essentially trying to govern it. And then it reached a juvenile form.

And we see that a lot with red pill. We see it with the Tate brothers right now. We see it with, look at me, look at my muscles. I'm sleeping with 10 girls. Aren't I so cool? juvenile masculinity, there is a mature masculinity that's emerging now onto the world stage of being a father, being that present father, being that man who steps forward and takes ownership, not domineering, but leading, guiding, calling people to follow you when they are ready. Those men are so needed.

The world needs those. Well, and I think too, millennial men, millennial husbands have done a really good job of trying harder to have a work family balance, spending more time with their kids, being more present, helping their wives with their kids, which is great. But my question is, your attachment that is created as an infant, is it more based on, you know, how often your actual mother is changing your diapers and feeding you and stuff? Or is it equal mom and dad? If we look at the research and say that attachment style, your attachment whole approach is, is surviving. revival adaptation for the world that you are in, then yes, your mom plays a significant role for that in the first several years, right, the oxytocin bond, am I cared for, am I nurtured, am I loved?

But your father, in every situation on the planet, your father creates safety and stability, having a father, right? The research shows that having a father in a married couple and a father in your life shoves off most of the horrible experiences that we have. Even poverty, even mental illnesses, mass shootings, everything goes down when a present father is in the home. Because it signals to the child, I am safe. There is at least somebody in this world that will take care of me. But which parent then it's better option for them to be the one working outside the home, the mother or the father?

It depends. It really depends. Primarily women are biologically suited to respond to the child, right? when a child cries in the middle of the night and a mom is brand new with a brand newborn or in the first year, she'll experience a spike of oxytocin from that cry that actually creates a letdown process to make milk come out. So women who hear a baby cry will lactate at that point. It releases it. They're biologically designed to respond to a child's needs in a way that a father isn't. That said, fathers are so instrumental and so purposeful in that life.

All of my daughters, they come to me when they're about two and a half. half to three years old and suddenly they want to investigate this big, scary, hairy creature who's been a little intimidating all along. They look at you like you're going to eat them. But then at two and three, they want to hang on you. They want to play with you. They want to test and see if you'll share resources with them. They want to see if you'll protect them. They want to be close to you and bond with you. I just took my five-year-old daughter on our first trip together, just the two of us. We took an airplane, stayed in an Airbnb. We experienced the world together. And it transformed our relationship. And she stayed close to me for the first few days, but as she saw that I would watch over her and guard her,

she became so adventurous knowing that she had a father watching over her. She just took to the world. It was incredible experience just to watch her do that. That's the role that a father plays, right? The mother is there to nurture and care, but the father is a safety net. And without that safety net, a child will not jump high in this world. How soon do attachment issues typically show up in a child? Within the first six months. Within the first, it can. It can show up is your child overly crying. When you try to soothe them, do they refuse to be soothed? Right?

Mary Ainsworth did great research on this decades ago about a child who refuses to be soothed or a child who doesn't even care when you leave because they don't even have an attachment to you. You can start seeing it very early on. Kind of a hot take. Go for it. I think preschool hurts children, doesn't help children. What do you think?

Preschool is just an excuse to offload your kids into the system. There we go. There is no basis for real, real preschool. I'm very anti-pre-school. What are they teaching you that you can't teach them at home? That's what I think. We talked about this in my Erica Comazar episode, but this idea that a child that young needs socialization,

what's your thoughts on that? No, why? Why do they need to socialize with a bunch of random strangers? Why aren't you as a family building a connection with other families? Why aren't you taking them to church? Why aren't you taking them to social events? Why aren't you socializing them that way? Why do you have to send them to a facility where they socialize with key people that you have no idea what their values are?

And those kids are all broken. And now those kids are spreading broken behaviors to your children. Why would you do that? What are the top three lies? Feminism has told women that are creating attachment issues for women. Number one, that you don't need men, that men have no role in your life. Men are safety and security. They are supposed to be.

masculinity is about setting structures that create safety so that women can then thrive within them. That's what the man's role is. And feminism says, no, you be the man and the woman at the same time. And that's just not how it works. The next lie that feminism has told is that there are no ethical men in this world, that every man is just looking for an excuse to exploit women. If we look back through history, we don't see that every man on earth was a violent sociopath. When we look now, we don't see every man on earth as a violent sociopath. We see men who care about their daughters.

I see on Twitter men like, I'm a girl dad. I love my daughters, right? They brag about them. They care about them. But we are supposed to believe every man throughout history hated all of the women in his family and wanted to hurt them. The third lie that feminism has told women is that marriage has no value for women. It is purely for men. And the research shows that married men do live longer, right?

And that's fantastic. But with 84% of women wishing they could drop out of the workforce to stay at home and build a family. With 90% of women who are childless saying it's not that I wanted to be childless, it just never happened. And now I regret it. With the amount of childlessness happening and women who say, I am so alone. And what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I'm 60. What am I going to do with the next 30 years of my life?

Marriage has enormous purpose for men and women. And feminism has robbed that. We're told that mental health issues just kind of develop, but we don't really know why. that accurate? In my clinical experience, I was a licensed marriage and family therapist for many years. And yes, in schooling, they might try to theorize about why mental health issues happen. But right now we talk about brain imbalances. It just happens. It's just that a quarter of people are just geared to get depression. Just just, that's our species. We just get depressed and then want to kill ourselves. And that overwhelming crushing anxiety isn't. We just pretend that's normal. And we say, I don't know why

this happens. Here's a medication. That's been our answer for the last 40 or 50 years. I believe that attachment issues are the heart of all of that. And I've seen that in my clinical experience and also now as a coach is when you come in with mental health issues, there's always attachment issues underneath with all those brain chemical imbalances that we talked about, those hormone differences, the neurotransmitter differences that come from attachment issues that we're now trying frantically to medicate. Attachment issues are the problem. If a parent listening is thinking, I think I fell short during the first few years in my child's life and they wish that they could go back and change it, what are some steps that they can take to repair their relationship with their child and prevent any further attachment issues?

Instead of trying to push buttons with your child and make them healthier, and instead of trying to just guess and hope and play and be nice to them, have a relationship with them. Sit them down and say, there are things in your life, I wish I had done differently, that I'm worried you got the wrong messaging about. Did this hurt you? If so, can we fix it? What do you need for me to feel loved? Have a relationship with your child. I have spent my entire life chasing the high I got in elementary school when the scholastic book fair would come to town. The closest I've gotten to that feeling is opening a new box of Mimi Skin Care. Not only is NeNeum modern luxury skin care, they have timeless conservative values. Unlike the Scholastic Book Fair, sadly, which has become incredibly woke,

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Go to neemieskinkare.com. Use code Alex Clark for 10% off. That's neemiskincare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. Find the link in the show notes. How do you feel about the aneogram test out for curiosity? Most of the tests that are out there, eneagrams, a lot of them are out there. We're designed not for practical purposes, but for interesting theoretical purposes. a lot of people build their entire personality around it,

and instead of trying to change, they simply enable themselves by pretending that it's going to be fine. Here's what parents want to know. How do I not mess up my kid? You are always going to get something wrong. Always. You could be the best parent on earth, but you will never be a perfect parent.

So when you screw up, how do you handle it in a way that your child knows it's not their fault and that you actually care that you screwed up? If you can do those two things, you can build a relationship with a healthy, wonderful human being who cares about you and will bring problems to you. If you have to figure out if your child is messed up, you are doing something wrong. Your child should be telling you where you're messed up. What do you think about the theory that the cry-it-out method creates attachment issues?

My wife and I use the cry-out method after six months when the child has formed a personality, much more, and is being actively manipulative on purpose, and you know that that's happening. We've used it a bit, but we check in. We don't do it. We don't do it. within six months, then we check in and we're consistent and we teach them that it's going to be okay. And when you do that with your child and model it correctly, it can go great. It's very much similar to spanking. Most parents are terrified to spank. Other parents just do it without thinking about it. When you are very careful and very intentional and very practical, there are ways to use these tools differently. You have to understand how you're using it and why. That's going to be really

triggering for a lot of people listening. I know that. And the research that's against spanking is deeply flawed. I've gone against anti-spanking advocates. They're a cult. They're very interesting. I'm not for spanking, but I am for real truthful knowledge. And those studies are deeply flawed. So we need to be realistic about them. Is it actually possible to spoil a baby, you know, holding them too much, tending to them too much? Here's the thing about people who spoil. They usually have anxious attachments. So they are desperately craving approval from the child. And so they're fostering this avoidance in the child of get away from me. I don't want to take care of your emotional needs. And so you build avoid an attachment into your child by over smothering

them. It's not giving them love that's the problem. I heard recently that kids who grew up in a divorced family have more trauma than young kids whose parents died because the trauma of divorce is ongoing throughout their entire life, whereas death is final. Death teaches you that there are hard things that happen in life. Divorce teaches you that people can make a vow of love, and then completely throw it aside because they don't feel good enough. So this creates performance with other people where you have to make people like you or they'll abandon you. Death is nothing like divorce.

Should a parent be a friend or an authority figure? A parent needs to be an authority figure in a world that doesn't make sense and in a world that's scary. If you try to be your friend to your child, your child learns that they have to be the authority figure and create their own stability. So be a loving authority figure who, has their best interest at heart. Do different discipline methods affect attachment?

Discipline affects attachment if you are not intentional and if you're not clear with the child about why it's happening. If you just grab them and start whacking on them, it is horrible because it teaches them to run away from you and be avoidant and not do things in your presence. But if you walk them through warnings and you walk them through awareness and you help them understand, you help them develop was called their prefrontal cortex, and you develop that judgment center, and you help them understand cause and effect. When you build their brain like that on purpose and then discipline accordingly, you build incredible attachment with your child. Have you heard of gentle parenting? I have.

What are your thoughts on that? I bang heads a lot with gentle parenting groups, with peaceful parenting groups, with attachment parenting groups, because most of it is built on. I want to be nicer to my kids than my parents were to me so that I feel better as a parent. It's the same as people who say, I'm not going to eat meat because I feel bad for animals, right? There's reasons, perhaps, religiously, not to eat meat, but just doing it because of how you feel indicates huge attachment issues if your feeling is driven. If you are just parenting in a way that makes you feel good, you are not parenting responsibly. Should you try to marry somebody with the same attachment as you, or is it okay to have different attachment styles within spouses? You should try to marry somebody who has secure attachment, and to do that, you need to get secure attachment.

Otherwise, you're going to marry somebody who is incompatible because they'll have the opposite attachment from you, two attachments are the same almost never get together. And you're going to marry somebody that's going to not build emotional intimacy with you. And then both of you will have to try to fix it hopefully together, which means both of you have to believe it's possible. What advice would you give parents looking to rectify attachment issues and adopted children? Adoption is huge for attachment issues because the child's brain already says something went wrong. Either I was stolen or I was abandoned. something went really, really wrong here. Being open with the child about fear,

being open with the child about the boundaries, the expectations in the relationship, and what is expected out of them so that love will be endlessly given forever, right? Do this and everything will be okay. Reassuring the child of that love and telling them what love really means is absolutely crucial to make adoption work.

Do you think that iPads are affecting kids' attachment? So young teens, It's fascinating when I talk to young teens and Gen Z people. They actually refer to iPads as my babysitter. Gross. It was their babysitter growing up. The iPad raised you and your parents happened to be nearby. And that's creating a world where they're consuming endless content, which content creation.

I am a content creator. You are. We love that. But you can't filter what's coming in. I think iPads are a symptom of parents who are not as engaged as they need to be. And it's creating all of the worst problems as well. Why do kids often misbehave with mom, but then when dad gets home, all of a sudden they get it together? Because moms tend to be anxiously attached, whereas dads tend to be avoidantly attached.

So the kids will come in and mom will be trying to earn their approval and she'll be more gentle and more nurturing and have a harder time drawing that line, whereas dad is easily much more distant and draws a much harder line instantaneously. If you have a fearful or disorganized attachment style, but you really want to become a parent, how can you be sure to not repeat the pattern in your. own baby. The number one thing you have to do to raise a securely attached child is to have secure attachment yourself. Do not wait. Do not sit around saying I'm just going to be anxious, but I'm going to reassure my child. Fix your attachment. And then you will foster healthy attachment naturally. You won't even have to be thinking about it. So then what do you do? You have to go, you have to find a therapist that specializes in attachment? Very few of them specialize in attachment, which is exactly why I have to do the work that I do. You have to work on attachment itself. And

most therapists can't help you do that. I do have the attachment boot camp video course designed specifically for moms who are looking to build that relationship with themselves and then with their family and then with a partner as well. Everybody can take it. It's not just for moms. But when moms are that afraid, that course gives them a lot of comfort and helps them show exactly how they are going to build loving, happy family. Did you see that tweet from Elon Musk recently that said, put that I've never been to therapy on my gravestone? What did you think? Most therapy models today are built for women and specifically for anxious women to help them feel better. But most men are looking for solutions, which is why most men either won't go to therapy or go a couple

times and get discouraged and leave. Most therapy models do not work with men. Coaching is what works with men. Like life coaching? Life coaching, my specific type of attachment coaching, athletes get coaching all of the time. Mentorship has been around since the eight days of ancient Greece. Men need direct transmission of solutions. and how to apply them. And most therapy models don't do that. Okay. And so what are the different types of, you brought up the boot camp? What are all the different services that you offer? Yes. I offer direct one-to-one coaching for anybody who's looking for exact assistance on, this is my problem. What do I do about it? You come in, we assess your attachment style,

we assess your relationships, we find your asset people, the good people in your life you should open up to, and then we build you an exact step-by-step plan to resolve all of those issues and become fully secure. That's my coaching. I also have the attachment boot camp video course, which in seven hours shows you how to go from insecure and scared and nervous and fearful of rejection to secure and happy and ready for a fulfilling life with your friends, your family, and with yourself. Yes, I should be doing that. Oh, yeah. I have my mentorship program, the attachment circle, with a year of group calls in there, a hundred calls in a year with a mentorship program with me. I have so many services on Adam Lane Smith.com. And there's a

code for my listeners to Alex 50, which will give them 50% off the course, correct? Absolutely. If you want to take the attachment boot camp course and you want to be smart about the investment, use code Alex 50 for 50% off, you can fix your attachment in seven hours. Tell us about your podcast, I wish I knew. What do you cover on there? So I started the I Wish You New podcast because there's so much bad dating advice out there in the world and people just want to ramble about their opinions. So instead, I bring on experts from every industry in the world and say, what does your industry mean for relationship? What does it mean for us? Bring us the exact science. And we bring that in and just have these ruthless discussions about the realities of relationships today.

And how often do you put out new episodes? Every single week. Every week. And where can they subscribe? Just search, I wish you new on every platform where you can find podcasts and on YouTube. Where can people find you on social media? I am everywhere. I'm on Adamlainsmith.com with all my services, all the offers, all the help that you need to build secure attachment. on Twitter, I am at Adam Lane Smith. I am at Attachment Adam on Instagram and YouTube. I have so many guides and so much information out there for anybody who's ready. I'm so excited. And I'm going to go on your show, which I'm definitely not an expert, but you can grill me

or I can share what I've learned from working with my audience of 25 to 35-year-old women for the last few years. I'm excited for that conversation. Man, I have seen some crazy trends. So we can talk about all that kind of stuff on your show. Wonderful. Adam, thank you for coming on the spillover. Thank you for giving me the chance to talk. talk about attachment.

This is definitely one of those interviews. I'm going to have to re-listen to like three times because of the amount of information he shared. I love when that happens. Make sure you check out my episode on his podcast. I wish you knew. If you're looking for more information on child development, socialization, and education, I love reminding people of my interview with Hannah Frankman, founder of Rebel Educator. She agrees with me that preschool is not it.

That is season four, episode 14. It was recorded in March of 2023, if you want to go back and listen to it. Anytime, by the way, in any podcast app, you can search a guest name so you can put Hannah Frankman, the spillover. The episode will pop right up. Speaking of kids' education, next week I'm interviewing a second generation homeschool mom who believes children are not learning in school. They are not getting ideal socialization in school and believes that a true education goes beyond

memorization. It's another really encouraging homeschool episode that will make even single parents feel confident that they can pull their kids out of public school. Do you know how we're able to film these countercultural interviews that are inspiring life and behavior changes every week with financial support from cute servatives like you? Make a tax-deductible donation to fund our interviews, travel, set, and equipment needs with the link in the bio. New episodes of The Spillover dropped Thursdays at 9 p.m. Pacific and midnight eastern, anywhere

you listen to podcasts and Real Alex Clark on YouTube. I'm Alex Clark, and this is The Spillover. Love you. Mean it. Bye. Father's... Hold on, there's a fly. There's a knack. He's going for you. Don't keep that, Simon, in the edit.