Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - The New Rules of Attachment with Dr. Judy Ho

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Did you know that your self-talk could be the sneaky culprit affecting your relationships more than you think? Maybe you've found yourself stuck in a relationship rut, scratching your head, wondering why things just aren't clicking with your partner. What if the secret to unlocking those mysteries might just lie within you and your partner's attachment style?  In this Language of Love Conversation, I’m joined by the amazing Dr. Judy Ho, a triple board-certified neuropsychologist and author of “The New Rules of Attachment.” Her book is full of insights into how our attachment styles shape, well, pretty much everything we do. Attachment styles are essentially the blueprints that guide how we connect with others, pursue our dreams, and see ourselves. They influence everything from our love lives to our careers and even our self-perception. Dr. Judy breaks down the four main attachment styles and we chat about how they often have their roots in our childhood experiences. We discuss: Why it is important to know your attachment style How negative self-talk is everywhere these days and what it's doing to our mental well-being The connection between always expecting the worst and your attachment style The influence of childhood experiences on attachment styles Strategies for healing and re-parenting oneself to develop a secure attachment The magic of self-compassion and why validating your feelings is key The impact of cultural expectations on women and the need for self-permission to prioritize their own needs The practice of embracing mistakes with humor and self-compassion Remember to check out Dr. Judy's book, “The New Rules of Attachment!” Also, follow Dr. Judy on Instagram for insights and find free resources on her website. And as always, you can check out my books and courses that can help level-up your love life on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of life dr judy ho is a triple board certified and licensed clinical and forensic neuropsychologist she's also a tenured associate professor at pepperdine university and a television and podcast host, as well as a published author of now two books. Her latest book is New Rules of Attachment, How to Heal Your Relationships, Reparent Your Inner Child, and Serve Your Life

Vision. We're getting into attachment styles in this conversation on the language of love. Dr. Judy, thank you so much for joining us on the language of love. Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Berman. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today. Me too. We're going to get into attachment styles, which is the fundamental teaching that you're getting into in great detail in your new book, The New Rules of Attachment, How to Heal Your Relationships, Reparent Your Inner Child, and Serve Your Life Vision. And everybody feels like it's really moved into the common lexicon now, this idea of what's your attachment style. And everybody's talking about attachment, attachment disorder and attachment style and attachment dysfunction.

But, you know, I love this sort of this was an extremely comprehensive guide to what it looks like in general and relationships at work, the positives of each type, which was a good thing. because, you know, we can't just talk about problems. We've got to talk about the gifts and then a lot, a lot, a lot about how to heal, how to get clear on the impact it's having on your life, how to shift, how it's going to rear its head. So depending on what your type is, and I know you helped the reader kind of figure that out. They have a tremendous resource. I also think it's probably great to kind of figure out your partners or your kids. Yeah. Maybe if we could figure it out early enough, maybe we could parent them or reparent them before they need to be, but let's just get into it and talk about like in general, before we get into the specific types,

what is an attachment style? Where does it come from? Yeah. So attachment styles come from our earliest bonds with our primary caregivers. So for most people, primary caregivers are their parents, but it could also be extended family members, other important adults as you're growing up in the first years, especially the years between zero to six. That's when we know from research attachment bonds have the most profound impact on shaping your attachment style. But of course, you know, as you grow older, when you're a teenager, even when you're an adult, when you have really significant experiences that can also have an influence on your attachment style. Let's just start here. I know the answer, but why is it important to know your attachment style?

Yeah, it's really important to know your attachment style because, and I would say that in a lot of online periodicals and social media, it seems like the most important reason to know your attachment style is as it applies to romantic relationships. That's of course an important component, but actually attachment applies to everything in your life. It applies to how you get along with friends, your relationships with family, how you attack goals in your job and your career, how you feel about your own physical and mental health and your ability to change it for the better. And most of all, attachment has a huge influence on what you think about yourself.

So your self-concept, your self-esteem, your self-image, and whether or not generally you deserve good outcomes in life. That's really what attachment is all about. Yeah, that's a good question to ask yourself. Do you feel that you really deserve a good outcome? Because I think most people would say off the cuff, yes. But I watched your recent TED Talk.

I know, I think it's up on YouTube now and on your website. And you talked in the beginning of that about sort of these thought forms and the research on how much of our mental energy seems to be spent on this. And I definitely don't think people are aware of how much negative self-talk. For years, I didn't know, and we'll talk about it in a second, but I certainly know that negative self-talk impacts people significantly. And so even for myself, I would call it a thought cleanse. And it wasn't so much that I was trying to cleanse something, but I was wanting to become aware. So I would just pay

really close attention, what I was saying to myself and my, you know, just for a day or sometimes even if I couldn't focus that long, just for like four hours, just this morning, like, what am I saying to myself when I'm not talking out loud and how much of that is mean and bitchy and critical, you know? So talk about that for a minute, how much of our thoughts, how these thought forms kind of work and that whole thing. Yeah, definitely. I love that you talk about having this thought cleanse, but you know, so many of us don't even recognize how much inner chatter there really is because our brains start to essentially filter out what it believes is mundane. So unfortunately, if you've had this

negative self-talk for a long time, and there's a lot of the same repeated messages in there, your brain's like, oh, this is nothing new. So you're not consciously recognizing what's going on, but it is affecting how you feel. It is affecting also how you behave. And I think that a lot of times what people don't also realize is that negative self-talk actually comes from an adaptive place. There is an evolutionary place for it, which is that you're trying to ward off any particular threats that you might perceive because you want to survive. But it's just kind of like everything else. It's like everything out of balance. It's great. When it's extreme, it's not. And the reason why it is extreme for many of us is because when you think back to

our ancestors and the people who have survived, the people who survived, their brains were not the ones who thought that it would be a good idea to do mindfulness in the middle of the wilderness when they could be eaten by a bear, right? Because then they would be eaten by a bear and they're not our ancestors. The ones that survived are the nervous Nellies. They're the ones who were hypervigilant. They're like, wait, what was that sound?

What was that noise? Well, those are our ancestors. And so our brains are kind of, you know, like built in this way. It's built to kind of think about threats a lot more than it does sometimes think about the rewards and the potential achievements and good relationships and all the positive things.

It thinks about what could go wrong instead. I'm preparing to be gobsmacked, you know? and I think that's especially true if you've had any kind of trauma, but even all things being equal, but certainly if you've had trauma, then you, you know, or you're struggling with post-traumatic stress, then of course, like everything, you know, you're hyper, hyper vigilant. But one of the things that I heard you say, I don't remember the exact statistic, but I think it was either 91 or 95% of the time they did this study where they had people really We document and report on their negative self-talk, their self-protective thing, their worry,

sort of the ways in which we unconsciously, maybe even consciously, are preparing for the worst-case scenario because that's the modern-day thing. We're not going to be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, but we're going to worry about being fired or being left or being ridiculed or something else, right? And sometimes, if we've been in really dangerous or war-like settings, we're going to worry about our safety. But I think that translates in today's modern world of worrying about humiliation, shame, abandonment, or scarcity.

Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes people will say, well, how come we're such an advanced species? Why haven't we evolved to distinguish between physical and emotional threat versus psychological threat, et cetera? And I would say that the answer is we didn't evolve past that because they're equally important. emotional and psychological safety is necessary for our survival. And, you know, now there's so much studies that shows us that, right? Like, okay, if you have social isolation, if you're

not really in relationship with at least a couple important people, you have earlier mortality, you have chronic illnesses. So it's all related. It's still related to your survival as a being in general. And so, like you said, you know, the fears of today are less so about saber two tigers for most people. It's more about what if I get rejected? What if I apply for this job and people laugh at me? What if I actually go for it and then I fail? What am I going to tell everybody in my life? And most of all, what am I going to tell myself? I kind of cut myself off and I didn't get to it. But in that study, what was the percentage of people who were reporting these negative and fearful thoughts? And then they looked at like what percentage for them did the

worry, the thing they were worrying about incessantly come true? And what was the statistic on that? Yeah, this is a study out of Penn State University. So they had these people who were chronic worriers write down all their worries every single day for 10 days. And then they made them review this list of worries for a whole other month. And it turns out that 91.4% of what they worried about never came to fruition in part or in whole. So it just shows you how much mental space we give to these negative thoughts and these worries. And you spend all this time trying to make contingency plans for things that will never happen. Right. So let's bridge that to attachment style, right? So if we have a tendency to be ruminating consciously or unconsciously on

the worst case scenario, and that's kind of how our brains are wired and what we tend to do, how does that link to our attachment style? Yeah. So when people have insecure attachment, they're more likely to have certain forms of negative self-talk that aren't going to serve them. So again, we've already established everybody has negative self-talk, but the insecurely attached individuals, their negative self-talk tends to be more dysfunctional in terms of how it impacts the way they feel about themselves, the way that they are in relationships with others, and also the way that they attack their goals. And so when we look at the different types of attachment styles, they were developed out of trying to cope with certain types of

childhood experiences and situations. And so as adults, they're still carrying these lessons. They're still using the same rules of thumb, even if they don't necessarily apply anymore. And that's why each attachment style kind of has its own type of themes of negative self-talk. They're all each different from one another, but the relationship, it is correlated with something that happened to them in their childhood. And that's how they started to make sense of the world and their place in it. And they develop certain types of self-talk in response to that. So there are four kinds of attachment styles. One of the forms is secure attachment, which I'm assuming is in the huge minority, but we'll get to that in a second. And then for the insecure attachment, I'm assuming you're putting the three other categories, which would be the avoidant attachment style, the anxious attachment style, and the disorganized attachment style. So let's dive into them and start at probably the minority, secure attachment style.

Yeah, secure attachment style, according to most studies, is probably somewhere between 20% to 25% of individuals. And I would say it's likely less because not everybody is honest about these kinds of responses on questionnaires. Everybody has a little bit of rosy colored glasses when it comes to talking about themselves. We know that from all the psychological research, people tend to report more positive and pro social behaviors and traits rather than ones that are truly negative. But anyway, you know, nevertheless, it's maybe about a quarter of people at best, I would say. And these are individuals

who when they were younger, they generally had parents who were pretty attentive almost all of the time. Most of the time they showed up when the child expressed certain needs, when the child expressed negative feelings. They were accepting of those feelings. And whenever you felt stressed, you felt like you could go to your parent as like a secure base, as a safe place, as a safe haven. So if you grew up with these kinds of childhood experiences, people who are securely attached adults are more likely to hold themselves in higher esteem. They tend to have more satisfactory and lasting relationships. They feel comfortable pursuing individual goals and agendas while also still staying connected to people important to them. And generally they believe that they

have worth and they believe that they deserve good things in life. And they probably are willing to take risks, right? That's emotional and otherwise with the, I think it's a lot less than 20%. Maybe I'm skewed, but you call these secure attachment style, the connected explorer, which is kind of describing. Okay. So then we have the avoidant attachment style who you describe as the fiercely independent. So let's talk about what the avoidant one looks like. Yeah. So the avoidantly attached person is the quintessential lone wolf in general. They are very, very self-actualizing. They tend to be workaholics or just be really focused on goals and achievements in general, they tend to discount relationships with others. It's kind of a

secondary importance to them. They don't really like having to rely on other people. They don't really like talking about deep emotions. And when things get really stressful, they kind of disappear. So they don't really reach out to anybody. They kind of just go into an isolated place. And so you can always know when an avoidantly attached person isn't doing super well because they stop calling, they stop calling, they stop talking to you because they're just trying to deal with their own dysregulation completely by themselves instead of co-regulating with people that they trust. And a lot of these types of behaviors developed out of a childhood where perhaps they were asked to be the parentified child very early on,

given big responsibilities. Maybe the whole family always gathered around their achievements. And so they felt like, well, this is one of the ways in which people value me. And so then they become more and more invested in achievements in general. Also, a lot of times people will develop avoidant attachment. If their parents seemed overwhelmed whenever they did talk about their emotions, like, or maybe they just shut it down. Like, why are you talking about that? You know, your life is great. Don't talk about how you're sad. Nobody wants to see that when you get those messages as a child, as an adult, you're going to also discount those emotions yourself. You're going to see it as a sign of weakness and you're going to, in general, not trust other people to

take care of your feelings. Yeah. I've seen that also when the parents emotion was flooding, Like the parents weren't at all self-regulated and all up to the place. And it was like too, too, too, too much. And the child almost had to like disengage from the energy and shut it down and also adopt the opposite, right? Just become super stoic. Yep, exactly. That was a survival mechanism.

Yeah. So what that looks like, you alluded to some of it, that you tend to isolate when things rather than seek out support or community. What does it look like in love? I assume you're avoiding too deep of an attachment. So what does that look like in action? Yeah, I think a lot of it is keeping people at arm's length. It's only to your comfortability. So sometimes with avoidantly attached people, they are happy to talk about emotions, but only if they're in control of it. And then once they get asked too many questions, no, they don't want

to talk about it anymore. And they don't understand why you're giving them the third degree, you know, so they want to be in control at all times. And that's what it looks like in relationships. So I think avoidantly attached people, oftentimes they like it when they're in relationship with somebody who doesn't ask too much of them. And one of the ways that they don't have to bear so much emotional responsibility for another person is to really lean into their work. And it can be hard to argue with them sometimes because in our culture, you know, people who are overachievers are heralded, right? It's like, you're amazing. So then there's an ego syntonic aspect of that, where it's like, yeah, you know, I'm being an overachiever. So don't ask too much of me because

I'm too tired. You know, I've been at work all day. And then when you complain that you're not getting enough quality time with them, if you're the partner, then the avoidantly attached person always has that fallback of, but I'm financially supporting this family. So what do you want me to do? Yeah. So it's easy for them to disengage and still be respected by people in some ways. And that makes it hard to break that cycle. Yeah. And almost rewarded. So if someone wants to break that cycle, I know you get into an each attachment style, you die, you know, you take a deep dive into what it looks like and where it comes from, but then you're also giving specific strategies and techniques or tools or exercises to kind of start shifting. And with all of these attachment

styles, they may be sort of mild until a stress period or a trigger or something else, right? Like tend to rear their head more in a state of unrest than ease and flow. And so an avoidant person. And that may happen when their partner threatens to leave them or when they're fired for being cold and callous or whatever. So what kinds of things can someone do if they choose, if they are, they identify as avoidant attachment, what would you recommend? Yeah. So someone with avoidant attachment, I think it's really a gradual process of balancing out their self-concept with things that are not achievement-based because so much of their self-esteem comes from how many things that they're achieving. And of course, that's great when it's all going well, but the minute

that it doesn't, and it's going to happen to every single person, no matter what, no matter how great you are, you're going to have a disappointment and you're going to have a setback. It really destroys them because they don't have these other aspects of their self-concept to lean into, right? So it's really about getting them to gradually invest in other aspects to round out who they believe they are and what their self-worth is dependent on. So it's taking actual intentioned behaviors towards investing in hobbies where there isn't a competitive streak, investing in one or two people who maybe you're still keeping them at arm's length, but you're like, these are relatively safe people that I can let my guard down a little bit more with.

It's about practicing letting go of control in all aspects of your life. It's about asking for help, even in small ways in the beginning, but learning to co-regulate with somebody else and not doing everything on your own. That's really hard. It takes time to do that. In my book, I talk about a few specific exercises, behavioral experiments, basically that you can start doing with people in your life to start learning. There are people who are healing people who you can trust. I think the problem is when you have insecure attachment of any kind, whether it's avoidant, anxious, or disorganized, you oftentimes will attract relationships with people who also are not healed

and they're in the middle of their insecure attachments. And then you start triggering each other, you know? So it's also just about having the discernment of, you know, is this a person that I can have a healthy attachment to? And it really starts with trusting yourself and your gut. And that takes time when somebody has insecure attachment.

It takes time to work out that skill. Because we outsourced our gut. It either was not mirrored back to us or we got gobsmacked or we just shifted into using our minds to control everything and let go of the intuition. So that's beautiful. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood

grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone. All right. So let's move on to anxious attachment style, which you call the worried

warrior. That's my default, the anxious. Yes. Yes, exactly. Anxious attachment is, I think probably that or avoidant, depending on the study, is one of the most common of the insecure attachments types. And the person who is anxiously attached, they tend to be a rescuer in much of their life. They tend to be somebody who puts others' needs before them. They're kind of a martyr in many ways. And they worry a lot about everybody. They worry about themselves, but they worry about everybody else around them too. And also they worry about potential rejection and abandonment from people who are really important to them. And so they tend to crave closeness and reassurance from supportive people in their lives. But if they're not getting

the reinforcement they need, it can also be harder for them to separate and say, okay, well, I'm just going to do this on my own. And anxiously attached people, they oftentimes had childhoods where parents were inconsistent. Sometimes they were available, sometimes they weren't. It didn't seem predictable. But as a child, the only thing that you can think of is, well, it must have something to do with me. And that's a very common childlike idea in our minds. It's very concrete, right? When we're kids. It's like when something happens, you're like, oh, that must be me, you know, as opposed to somebody else. Yeah. Kids are narcissistic that way. Everything is them. The good stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's so funny that you describe it that way. I say that too.

And I say, well, it's not like narcissism in the negative sense at all. Right. It's more just like, well, yeah, like I. Things about them. Yeah. What am I? Yeah, exactly. And so I think that mom, it must be because of me. Exactly. Mom's in a bad mood. I guess it's my fault. Right. And so I think that that can happen a lot. If they find that their own parents are anxiously attached, that also kind of serves as a model for them. Like, okay, yeah, this is how I'm supposed to behave as well. The world is not a safe place. And I think that anxiously attached people oftentimes develop this need for closeness and reassurance because maybe there was a part of their childhood where they didn't feel like they were able to get that kind of emotional connection

from the people in their lives. And so they're constantly feeling they have to fight for it. They have to earn somebody's love as opposed to just, oh, I'm a worthy individual and I deserve to be loved by the right people. Yeah, absolutely. And so how do they go about shifting

and healing that dynamic? Yeah, so people who are anxiously attached, a lot of their self-esteem and self-worth is dependent on others' reactions towards them. And so it's really about balancing your self-concept so that there are things that are uniquely your own and they don't have to be inherently tied to anybody else. Learning to validate yourself,

learning to reinforce yourself and knowing that that is at least the same or better than how it should feel when it comes from somebody else. You know, so having those self-affirmation strategies when nobody else is around to affirm you, being able to start practicing, being on your own and actually liking that. You know, a lot of people with anxious attachment

have told me, well, I don't really like to be alone for too long because then my thoughts take over and I really don't want to have to think about all of that. And so it's really learning step-by-step to do things on your own and to not be preoccupied with negative self-talk or to be worried about how that might impact you when you are by yourself. And so some of the experiments I've done with my patients who are anxiously attached, it's like, first thing is just go to a coffee shop for 30 minutes and don't take your phone out though. You know, just sit there and And like, just be okay with just watching people and like trying to sit there with those possible negative thoughts of, oh my God, everyone's looking at me.

Why are you by yourself, et cetera, you know, and we'll graduate all the way up to, you know, take yourself out for a three course dinner and you're just sitting by yourself and you don't have your phone out, no barriers. And like, just interact with the people that are at the restaurant, interact with your waitstaff, interact with the table next to you if they're friendly, you know, but essentially it's about being able to be on your own and trusting yourself so much more than maybe trusting other people to validate you. Yeah, that's so important. I remember realizing, I mean, I think my healing, so the way that I see these, you can disagree with me,

you're the expert, but avoidant attachment for me, if we're talking about I'm generalizing and I'm putting labels on things here, so bear with me. But the people who are avoidant attachment typically will manifest with on the continuum. I'm not talking about toxicity per se, but on the continuum of narcissism and anxious attachment will be on the continuum of codependency. Yeah. And, and my codependent recovery really started, I think in earnest when my mom died, probably, what is it now? 14 years ago or 13 years ago, I was so anxiously attached to her externally directed with her, even in my 30s and 40s, not consciously and not in the way a child would be, but anyone who's that way knows what I'm talking about. And so when she died, which was

the worst thing that had happened to me up until that point, it really launched me. It was this immense feeling of being alone in the world. And that was really where I started healing that fear of being alone, which led me on a crazy wild ride, but in a million beautiful ways. But yeah, I think that's so powerful. The fear of abandonment and the fear of being alone for the anxious attachment. Okay. And then disorganized attachment, which you call surveillance specialists that I love that. I feel like that's on the borderline personality disorder continuum. Yeah. And I thought we come close, go away. Right. Yes. That one. Yes, Exactly. And I think that obviously the disorganized attached individuals get a huge

bad rap, right? It's like, oh my gosh, you've definitely been traumatized. You have personality disorder, blah, blah, blah. But the whole point is you can still heal that. Some of it is true in that, yes, most people who have disorganized attachment have been through trauma in their childhood years. That's why they're always in fight or flight. That's why I call them surveillance specialists because they're constantly hypervigilant. I mean, it's like they're just like a private investigator all the time. You know, it's like, well, who, no, don't get too close to me. Like, why are you saying hi to me? You're like, everything is like out of suspicion, but it's because when they were younger and when you were trying to grow and thrive in some level

of consistency and safety, they didn't have that. So somehow the most amazing thing is that they still survive, right? Like that's amazing, but this is how they developed. It's like, oh, well, maybe I only survived because I did this. Right. And so I think that that's why they still as adults find themselves in a state of fight or flight. They have trouble regulating their emotions more than any of the other types. And oftentimes they unconsciously replicate the chaos they experience as children. A lot of the people I've worked with who have disorganized types, they will tell me when things feel too calm, that scares them. It's like, okay, well, when's the other shoe going to drop? So I might as well just drop it myself because then at least I know what

to do in that situation. Right. Sabotage their relationship. Yes. Yes, I do. Yeah. And I think a lot of times this can happen if you had parents who, this is a very small minority, parents who are just outrightly and on purpose being abusive. I mean, they're just horrible people. That's probably less than 2% of parents. I think that unfortunately, a lot of parents, they just passed on their own trauma. You know, they pass on their traumatic childhoods to their children, or sometimes it's not even the parent's fault, but maybe one parent got very, very sick in the childhood years of

this person. And so they just never felt that safety because their mom or dad were in and out of the hospital. It's like, well, when am I going to see them again? Are they going to live? So sometimes the trauma is not directly imposed to them by the parent. Parents were in a state of chaos and homelessness and financial stuff. Right. I didn't have the bandwidth.

A lot of parents who are in that situation, not a lot, because I think it's the minority because you're in survival mode when things get bad enough. But I have met families and many adult children of families like that who are like, no matter what happened. My parents always made us feel safe. They made it into a game. They, you know, we connected, you know, but I think there's a lot of families because of their own trauma and their own attachment styles and their own stress levels are just in survival mode. And the last thing on their mind is worrying about the mental, you know, they're trying to like keep find a place to sleep for the night, much less, you know, worry about their child's mental wellbeing. So I find that

a lot in people who have had just like a consistently traumatic childhood, but I also have relatives and people close to me who I know they didn't have like crazy horrific, like lock you in the basement and chain you to the wall kind of abuse, but they were pretty emotionally abused or pretty physically abused or early sexual abuse, right? Like in those cases, I feel not always, I, you know, it's not a direct correlation, but I do meet a lot of people with, which makes sense. Like anyone would have a disorganized attachment, but that kind of, so what do you recommend? I mean, I'm sure this isn't just about doing a few exercises and you need a lot of support

to kind of heal the original trauma and move through that. But what kinds of things do you advise people with organized attachment style? Yeah. So with disorganized attachment, I think it's really about learning tools for emotional regulation, because when you're that dysregulated, you can't make good decisions. And then it just kind of feeds back on itself. You self-sabotage and you blame yourself for the self-sabotage and you tell yourself you're never going to have a good life. Right. It just keeps going. So I think that the emotional regulation piece is really huge. And then also various forms of trauma based work that people can safely do on their own. I mean, a lot of trauma-based work, they really have to do it with an expert, with a professional, because it can get really, really difficult to regulate the emotions once they come out. And also you can feel very unsafe. But I do think that there are certain forms of trauma work that are safer to do on your own. And those are things like being able to regulate your physiological responses to stress, right? So grounding strategies, really learning how to use those at home, even some forms of narrative therapy, like taking one stressful event and, you know, rewriting your narrative and writing it in a way that puts you in a position of agency, because so many people who have been through trauma, they feel out of control a lot. And so the kinds of trauma-focused work where you can put yourself back in the driver's seat and empower yourself to healing, because I think that so many people with disorganized attachment, they feel more hopeless about their situation. So it's really about instilling hope back into their lives and creating meaning in their lives and letting them know that that can happen at any age. I've had people heal from really profound traumas in their sixties. That's the first

time they even really came face to face with it because up until then, their go-to coping strategy was suppression. It's like, nope, not going to talk about it. Didn't happen to me. Yeah. I have seen that sustain into your sixties, but it can be hard. Eventually it rears its head. Okay. So one of the things you talk about in the book, I think it's even referred to in the title, you know, one of the keys to healing is, and healing your attachment style in any of the insecure ones is around reparenting yourself, right? Because we talk about how these styles developed from, you know, for lack of a better term, inadequate or incomplete or dysfunctional or dysregulated or whatever word you want to talk about parenting, right? That

you received parenting that wasn't, let's just say, wasn't optimal to be generous. Right. So part of the healing comes from learning to reparent yourself, which we can do. So I was wondering if you can talk about just the concept of reparenting and then what that might look like in action. Yeah, definitely. So this idea of insecure attachment and how to heal, especially when you feel like your parents, the primary caregivers who might've been responsible for partially creating these attachment styles are not available. It's like, well, what's the hope for me, how can I do the work? Well, the work really starts with yourself. I mean, you can develop a secure attachment model with your adult self and that's where it all starts. And

reparenting is the core of that. So reparenting is the conscious act of providing yourself with the consistent care and understanding that you might've missed out on as children. It's about becoming this nurturing inner parent that we needed, but might not have had. And again, as we talked about, this is not about blaming your parents, but it is about working to connect with and meeting the needs of your inner child. We all have our inner child. It's the metaphorical little you whose memories and aspirations, they still live with us today, but maybe you've like pushed it down. Maybe you've told your inner child, that's not important. Nobody wants to hear that from you. You know, this is not what adults talk about, or this is not how adults

express their feelings. And reparenting really works because your adult self has way more resources, way more capacity, way more agency than your child's self, because your child's really was dependent on people around them to survive. But now you have this unique lived experience of being in your mind and your body. Interparent is absolutely the most vital tool to creating secure attachment in your life, because now this adult version of you can take care of the inner child and you don't have to worry or rely on someone else to do that for you. Yeah. And what's happening when you're manifesting these insecure attachment styles, when they bubble up is because that inner child, that one in you who didn't have good enough parenting

has the wheel, basically. But what we're doing when we're reparenting ourselves is attending to that one in us who's dysregulated. So give us some examples of what that might look like in action. Yeah, definitely. And reparenting is something that, you know, I think a lot of people when they look at reparenting, they think, okay, well, is this like some kind of new age idea that's not evidence-based and actually it's very evidence-based. It's just that people have a different idea about what reparenting should look like. And I think some people think that it's not something that can be concrete. And I actually found that it's very concrete. You can reparent yourself through really small intentional acts that you can actually track every day and some

ideas for reparenting. Even when you learn what healthy boundaries really are and then set them in and enforce them. So many people think that they know what boundaries are, but they never really gave it a second thought. They're like, oh, that's a boundary. Well, is it? Did you really think about it? And so in my book, I talk about that there's these different forms of boundaries too. There's emotional boundaries, time boundaries, physical boundaries, spiritual boundaries. I mean, there's a lot of different types of boundaries. And I think most people have not given all of those boundaries thought. You only connect with the fact that your boundaries have been violated when you start to feel burnt out or resentful or emotionally dysregulated. So it's much better to

know your boundaries ahead of time and then enforce them with the people in your life. That's one form of reparenting, right? Each time you prioritize your own needs and validate the fact that you have your own goals and desires without guilt, that's reparenting. I find that that is especially difficult for women because culturally women are still expected to be more codependent, to prioritize other people's needs. It's like that whole nurturing aspect of what we expect females to be still in today's society. And so what I often hear from female colleagues and friends of mine is they'll express a need and they'll apologize for it before or after or both. It's like, oh my gosh, just stop saying sorry. It's okay that that's how you feel, right? It's

okay that that's what you need. But I feel like- You don't need a reason to need what you need. Right. Yeah. But people are always justifying, right? Or they're bargaining like, well, okay, I want to do this, but like, if you do this for me, then yeah. Yeah. It's like, it doesn't have to be. Yeah. That's a reparent yourself to give yourself that permission and need what you need without needing explanation or a justification. Yeah. I mean, yes. And I think that even comes out in terms of how females accept or process compliments. I was just with a good friend of mine this morning. I mean, when I complimented her on what she was doing, she immediately went to, but that's not enough. Or I haven't done enough. Yeah. And then I remember someone had

told me a long time ago that when you don't accept someone's compliment as is, or you try to diminish it in some way or bat it away, like it also actually hurts the person who's trying to give it to you because they're trying to genuinely give you something, a gift. And it's kind of like you throwing the gift back in their face. I had to learn that too. I will just like, I'll catch myself doing that and be like, nope, I received that open-heartedly. Thank you. Yeah. Just say compliment. Right. And you don't have to also compliment back. That's the other thing is in the moment I have to compliment you at the same time. It's like, you know what? Just wait for the next time. You don't have to do it right now. Yeah. So that's, that's a big part of

it. And then I think, you know, another type of reparenting is just self-compassion. So many of us lack that. And I think, you know, if you lack this, if you're actually sometimes very judgmental of other people. It's kind of like it gets turned on its head, right? Like that's something that I had to learn about myself that sometimes when I was the harshest and criticizing someone else's behavior, I was like, oh, there's a part of me that really doesn't like that about myself. It's a hidden part of myself that I try to hide away from the world because it's part of my inner child. And I'm just like, nobody wants that from you. But my reaction to somebody when they do something, it was such an overreaction that I finally had to just say, you know what? You being

so judgmental of this person, that's actually an act of the opposite of self-compassion. It's self-derision, right? It's self-derogation. And so you have to forgive your past mistakes. You have to forgive and release your expectations for yourself to always be perfect because nobody is. But so many of us got this message when we were children that if we didn't do things a certain way, we wouldn't be supported. And that's where it comes from. Yeah, for sure. And approval and of get so tangled up for kids and in so many families. I mean, it certainly was in mine. So, and then what do you need to do to be approved of AKA loved and protected and positive reinforcement? And that was the only time you got it. And then that becomes your operating system.

So I love that. Anything else? Yeah. You know, another thing I think that's important is just validating your emotions for what they are. I think that's so much of, again, being an adult, you think, oh, I'm not supposed to feel this way. How could I be jealous of my sister? How could I be jealous of my best friend? You know what? Those are emotions that are valid, and they're still trying to tell you something. And there's nothing wrong that you're having those emotions, but so much of us tries to push that away. So much of us tries to rationalize that, right? It is just important to allow your inner child to express whatever emotions are in there, because part of why you have insecure attachment now is because as a child, you thought that it wasn't okay

to express those emotions. So guess what? It's just going to keep coming up. Like until you deal with it, it's going to keep knocking at your door. And that's the thing about emotions, you know? Yeah, for sure. And so embracing when you're reparenting yourself, one of the keys I think is to always come back to what would I say to a six-year-old or five-year-old little girl or little boy or whoever, you know, standing next to me, if they were expressing this thought or these words, how would I respond to them? So we would respond very, very differently to them than we would to ourselves, you know? And so that's a great litmus to know if the way you're handling yourself is in the spirit of

reparenting yourself or continuing to, on a certain level, I guess, re-traumatize or at least re-cement, you know, the continued, the continued insecure attachment. Yeah. I love that exercise because everybody can really viscerally understand that. Like, would you ever, like if this little child was standing next to you saying that this is how they felt, like, would you really chastise them or tell them to shut up or stop thinking about it? You wouldn't. You're selfish or you're horrible or you're yeah. Yeah. And then you know what? It's like, it's like you wouldn't. And then for people who argue and say, yeah, okay, fine, but I'm not a six-year-old child. It's like, yeah, but you know what?

That part of you is still here. It still lives on. It's part of your memories and it's part of your experiences. And it's how you made up these rules of life in the first place that aren't working for you anymore. And so you have to embrace all of those different aspects of yourself. You know, it's like this, it is still part of you today and you should still be able to be loving towards that part of yourself.

And emotions are adaptive. You know, if you have negative emotions, it's trying to tell you something to get you to learn a lesson that's going to be in the service of your survival. So even if you can just think about it that way, like, well, what an interesting emotion I'm having. Why am I jealous of my best friend that, you know, I know I love my best friend. So let me figure out what this is. Even if you just took an attitude of curiosity, that could be an important first step. Yeah. That's a great first step. One of the things, you know, like in my family system, you weren't allowed to make mistakes. I still couldn't tell you what the criteria were for mistakes or okay mistakes

that weren't okay. So there was a real gobsmacking energy. Sometimes you can make a mistake and they be like, that's okay. And then other times, you know, Oh no. Yeah. You can't make anything up. You know, I can't really know what's consistent. Right. And so, so mistakes, obviously not being able to make a mistake will screw you immobilize. You make you scared of taking risks, fear of failure, all of those, the fear of expressing your opinion, a million different things. So I worked through most of it, but there was this like piece that left where I would judge the crap out of myself when I did something stupid. And quite frankly, I do a lot of stupid things. Brain is all over the place. I don't like labels, but I, you know, I think I do have an ADD

brain, especially post chemo that I had like 10 years ago. And I forget things. My executive functioning isn't great. And I also can be verbally impulsive. So I'll just say what I think without necessarily filtering it. And they'll be like, fuck, why did I say that? I didn't mean it as bad as it sounded or whatever. So I started this practice that I call whoopsie poopsie in the spirit of what I would say to that little girl. And so whenever I make a mistake, I just go, whoops, whoopsie. Like when the kid would spill milk, he'd say, whoopsie whoopsie, let's clean that up. Whoopsie, whoopsie. So I say constantly, it's become a joke with my friends and family. And now they say it like, whoopsie, whoopsie, you know, I missed the flight.

Whoopsie, whoopsie. So that's one of the ways that I reparent myself. You can borrow that if you want. I love it. And also, again, when you do that, you're not taking yourself so seriously, right? I mean, I think so much is, you know, oh my God, like I ruined everything or you ruined everything and everything just feels so catastrophic. And when you say whoopsie-poopsie, like it just reminds you, hey, you know what? Don't take it so seriously.

Yeah, none of this, nothing. It's just life. Todo tiene una solución menos la muerte. Everything has a solution except death. So you just gotta whoopsie-poopsie it. I love it. That's awesome. Yeah, and I think most of all,

as we've already been kind of, you know, driving towards, it's just about knowing that you have unconditional worth. Just like just by being you, not because you did something right, not because you didn't make a mistake, not because you offered a service to someone else. We're all inherently worthy without additional action, you know, and that I think is the hardest thing for people to really understand. And so I really like just starting by practicing loving kindness meditation, you know, just as a way to try to access a small part of that. You know, most people, when they do this meditation, because it involves first, you know, sending loving kindness to someone you care about, then sending loving kindness to somebody that maybe you're in disagreement with, that you're in a conflict with. And then finally sending loving kindness to yourself. People always have the hardest time with the last step. They're like, I'd rather send loving kindness to my enemy. Yeah, that's easy. Like that makes me feel good about myself. Like, ah, I'm being the bigger person. But the minute that I have to actually send that to myself, I mean, people sometimes

have really emotional reactions to it doing the first time, like they'll cry. I mean, they're just like, I'm not doing it. I mean, people have really strong reactions, you know? I would add two things, two strategies, I guess, or two ideas that I have found really, really cultivate that sense of being able to understand how worthy of love you are simply by existing just because you're here without having to do or achieve anything. The first is in which, you know, I didn't start doing until my forties, but to start really cultivating some form of spiritual practice in whatever version that is to any higher power of your understanding or even just going into the energetic field of the universe, whatever it is from meditation to

prayer, to spiritual pursuits. Because as soon as you start tapping in and tuning in to, for me, it's holy oneness. That's what I call it. This energy, this quantum soup of what we're all made. And you start to feel the unique thread that is you. And it's almost impossible. Once you understand that you're an aspect of that, it's hard not to recognize that you are as worthy of love as every single other aspect, no more, no less. We're all worthy of that love without having to create or do or be anything. And the other that helps, I think, and it's helped me is once I really thought about what an insanely freakazoid miracle it is that I'm here. I mean, the fact that That sperm and that egg came together, grew, like gestated, survived, grew into a human that was me as a baby in my mother's body and survived its birth and survived all the shit storms that happened after my birth.

The age and stage I'm at, like, it is an insane, impossible miracle that any one of us even exists in this gift of having a life. and that alone is worthy of all the love in the world that miracle I love the way that you put that and it's so true you know we're all here for a purpose we were all here through like this crazy set of fortuitous circumstances and if you can tap into that and if you have love for the world the universe like how beautiful nature is and you find that and you know that you're an integral part of all of that it's hard not to love yourself right because you're like well I'm just a continuation of that. Yeah. So I love that sentiment. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, we had a very robust and comprehensive conversation. I know. I feel like you kind

of just like drop the mic there. I'm not even sure. Like, I don't want to add to that because I feel like that's such a great final message to walk away with, which is like, you are inherently worthy. You are inherently good. You're just part of a bigger network of things that is good. And you're just playing your part and make the most of the time that you have now. Yeah. And we come here to this earth school to have these crazy ass experiences and to evolve and to grow and to remember who we are. And this is part of it, like really working through those wounds and not letting them run your life anymore. That's what this is about as far as I'm concerned. So where can people find you? Obviously the book, the new rules of attachment, your website,

What is your website? DrJudyHo.com. Super easy. And I'm on all social platforms at DrJudyHo. Instagram is my primary platform and I'm doing free resources and giveaways all the time. So definitely follow me or check back on my website. Join my newsletter there. Beautiful. Wonderful. Thank you so much for the work you're doing in the world and for joining. But there is no cure for a crush