The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Learning Love: Build the Best Relationships of Your Life Using Integrated Attachment Theory by Thais Gibson, Sjorland Gibson

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

Learning Love: Build the Best Relationships of Your Life Using Integrated Attachment Theory by Thais Gibson, Sjorland Gibson https://amzn.to/3V9jV10 Have you ever been in a relationship with someone and felt like you’re not on the same page? You say one thing, but your partner hears another? Or, after a big fight, you yearn for closeness but they want to withdraw? Or maybe it’s the other way around? These disconnects can be attributed to a difference in what are called “attachment styles.” Attachment styles refer to how childhood experiences shape our adult relationships and how these early bonds impact future connections. In the past, a person’s attachment style was considered unchangeable, but this is not the case. You don’t have to feel as though relationships are impossible, with so many things left unsaid and misunderstood. You can heal your attachment style for good, changing the way you relate to everyone around you. In this revolutionary book, relationship expert Thais Gibson will help you discover how to build secure relationships in less than 90 days and transform your life from the inside out. In Learning Love, you will learn the process of building fulfilling and fail-proof relationships that have you on the same page with the people you care most about. There is a better way to love―and be loved. And it all starts with you. About the author Thais Gibson is a relationship expert that has been recognized by Bloomberg News, Psychology Today, and various other outlets for her revolutionary work in integrated attachment theory. Throughout her career, she has worked with thousands of clients and helped them to positively transform their lives, relationships and goals. She has over 30 million views across her social platforms and is certified in over 13 different areas of therapy, including cognitive behavioral therapy, neurolinguistic programming and transpersonal psychology. By combining traditional psychological methods with the research findings from her practice, she has created cutting-edge techniques that help people realize true and significant change in their lives.

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and you can indulge in their knowledge and internalize it and then go poop it out. Yeah, that's probably the wrong metaphor that I should have used on going down this road. So we have another amazing author on the show today. And we're going to learn about love, damn it, or else. I don't know what that means. Today we are interviewing the author of the newest book that came out December 8, 2023, Learning Love, Build the Best Relationships of Your Life Using Integrated Attachment Theory. We have Thais Gibson on the show with us today.

We're going to be talking to her about her amazing book, her insights, and all the stuff that she can teach us as well. She is a relationship expert that has been recognized by Bloomberg News, Psychology Today, and various other outlets for her revolutionary work in integrated attachment theory. Throughout her career, she's worked with thousands of clients and helped them to positively transform their lives, relationship goals, and she has over 30 million views across her social platforms and is certified in 13 different areas of therapy including cognitive behavioral therapy neuro-linguistic programming and trans personal psychology i'm just having words a problem pronouncing things today my brain's clearly clearly melting at this point by combining trans transitional psychology methods with a research

finding for practice she has created cutting-edge techniques to help people realize true and significant changes in their life. Welcome to the show, Ms. Gibson. How are you? I'm wonderful. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here with you. Thanks for coming. I'm just, I don't know, just flubbing the whole front end of the show at this point. I'm just befuddled, I think is the right word. So give us your.com. Where can people find you on the interwebs? So people can find me at personaldevelopmentschool.com.

There you go. And then you have a huge YouTube channel. You're popular on the Insta, as the kids call it. Yeah. So I'm at personaldevelopmentschool-taisegibson on YouTube and at personaldevelopment underscore school on Instagram. There you go. And so give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, Learning Love. So basically, Learning Love is about how we can change our attachment style.

So our attachment style is something that basically is the subconscious set of rules we have about love. It's actually one of the most research and scientifically backed concepts in psychology. It was originally developed by John Bowlby out of Cambridge University. And it talks a lot about how we basically form our understanding of how to give and receive love through our caregivers as children. And a lot of the research that I built upon was, okay, everybody has an attachment style. There's four main attachment styles. One of those attachment styles is secure and healthy, and three of them are insecurely

attached. So they're the anxious, the fearful avoidant, the dismissive avoidant. And basically, if we grew up with an unhealthy attachment style, because we saw dysfunctional dynamics in our upbringing or childhood, what do we do about that? How do we actually change it? So the body of work that I've developed, and we've actually worked with more than 40,000 people through our programs is how can we become securely attached in the shortest period of time possible, because statistically secure people report the most long lasting relationships, but also the most thriving relationships where they report actually being happy. So the entire book is about how to first recognize your attachment style, but then how to move the needle from being insecurely attached to securely attached.

There you go. You want to be that securely attached person. Exactly. That sounds important. I took your quiz and it basically said I was unlovable and unlikable, and then I should move to an island and just die alone, basically. The quiz does not say that. and unlikable and then i should move to an island and just die alone basically just just leave the rest of humanity alone and die alone no it actually it actually said i was securely attached so clearly i cheated the shout out to yourself yeah you know i've been dating whatever i've been single for all my life and i've been dating in relationships all my life i'm kind of a pro

dater. You can almost call it. I have my playboy years. And so I've done a lot of dating and I, I have a really healthy mindset to it in spite of it all. You would think that I would, I would be really jaded by now, but you know, approaching with a healthy mindset works. But so if you're in one of the other three levels, there is a way to save yourself and go through these levels evidently. Exactly. And I'd love if you're open to it for me to just start by going through the four attachment styles and what they mean. So listeners can actually hear, oh, that one's for sure me or that's my spouse or that's my child or my parent or whatever it might be. Please do.

Okay, perfect. There's the secure attachment style, which historically was about 50% of the population. It looks like that's sort of downtrending the past couple of decades. And securely attached individuals, as I mentioned, report the most longevity in relationships, but also actually being fulfilled in their relationships. And then securely attached children, when their attachment style first develops, receive a lot of what we call approach-oriented behaviors in childhood. So when their caregivers are, you know, around them, they're very approach-oriented. If the child cries, they go towards them. They are attuned.

They are present. They're trying to actually understand the child's needs and how they can soothe them. And it sounds like a small thing, but it has a really big impact because if a child receives that kind of consistent approach-oriented behaviors, they learn it's safe to express my emotions to others. It's okay that I'm vulnerable. I can rely on people. I can trust them. And my needs and emotions are worthy of being seen and met. So they learn these really healthy patterns that as adults cause them to have healthy modeling for how they're supposed to interact with other people. And also they feel worthy and confident to receive healthy love from others as a result. That's a secure attachment style. Then we have the three insecures. You can sort of imagine them as being on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is the anxious attachment style. Anxious attachers,

they basically grow up in a childhood where there's a lot of love and care, but a lot of inconsistency is this overarching theme. So an example could be that parents are loving, but they do separate. And one parent is inconsistently there. Or a better and more common example is parents are very loving, but they work a lot. So parents are there and then they're gone. Love is there. Love is gone. Love is there.

Love is gone. Love is there. Love is gone. And all the ways that we're wired and we have attachment trauma, it doesn't have to be big T trauma. It doesn't have to be like extreme. It can be small T trauma because repetition and emotion is actually what fires and wires our brain, our neural networks and neural pathways. And so if we have consistent small T trauma of feeling like, oh my gosh, I can't get that consistency around love, it will cause somebody to have these big fears of abandonment as an adult. Anxious attachment styles go from, you know, this childhood of inconsistency to as an adult, constantly being on the lookout because they keep feeling like they're going to be abandoned. So their big wounds and fears in relationships are,

I will be abandoned, I'm going to be unloved, rejected, disliked, excluded. And they cope with this as adults by trying to constantly maintain proximity and keep getting closer. So I'm not sure if you've seen somebody like this, but you'll see that anxious attachment styles, they constantly, they may call a lot. They may text a ton. They may get very slighted if there isn't a lot of

calling and texting and they mean so well, but they often accidentally push people away because of coming on so strong and so fast. Have you had an experience with anybody like this? I've definitely had the person who texted too much and was wondering what I was doing all the time. I think twice I had someone break into my home because they thought I was someone else. This is after a breakup, too. But yeah, if guys do it, it's seen as really needy, which really turns women off, too. Yeah, and I think it's hard for anybody, right? I think that when men do it or women do it, I think that it accidentally pushes people away.

And unfortunately, all of our attachment styles usually become self-fulfilling prophecies until we work to change them. Because exactly what we are afraid of happening will be the same thing that we're attracted to. So I'll come back to the other two attachment styles, but just quick caveat here. If we go down the rabbit hole, our subconscious mind works very hard to maintain its comfort zone because it's survival wired at the end of the day. None of these patterns are conscious. Nobody's I'm going to call many times and I'm going to fear abandonment all day. Like they're not conscious choices. They're subconscious preexisting programs. You're subconscious as much as your conscious mind can observe that and be like, Oh, I probably call too many times. I shouldn't do that. Your conscious mind can't outwill your subconscious. So for anybody who's anxious

listening, if they've had the experience of being like, I'm going to put my phone in the other room, I'm not going to keep texting or calling the the person but then they keep going back and giving in it's because you have these subconscious programs so what happens is is even though consciously we're like this isn't healthy this isn't working anxious people often are most attracted to people who are likely to abandon them they're attracted to dismissive people. Why? Because they are self-abandoning all the time. And so that's their biggest comfort zone of familiarity. We are most attracted to people over time who mirror back to us the subconscious comfort zone we have in the relationship to self. So as an example, if somebody's anxious, they're constantly dismissing

and avoiding themselves, focus so much externally on other people. And so they're also dismissing and avoiding themselves focus so much externally on other people and so they're also going to be attracted to people who don't focus on them and who are dismissing and avoiding their feelings needs and boundaries because that's how they show up to self there you go yeah it isn't interesting how these things are self-fulfilling prophecies like you see people you know i've lived long enough now and I've dated enough where I'll meet women. I only date women. So whoever's dating guys, you can figure out what that is all about. But when I meet women, you'll see a pattern through their exes where they've, you know, they've dated maybe somebody who is always dismissive of them or whatever. It's the same.

I'll see that in the chad chasing sort of things that are going on right now where we you know women are chasing these chads and they're you know i think about i don't know my estimate is and it it's not scientific about 95 of women complaining right now on social media about dating and men not giving them emotional commitment is really just chad chasing and chad's not not giving their commitment because they're not. And anyway, that's a whole different thing. But you see the patterns. Exactly. So this is something we call,

and I want to go back to the other two attached with sales in a moment, but this is something we call our relationship shadow. So often the things that we are most triggered by in other people, especially when we see a pattern in our history of these things, are the things we are always doing

to ourselves first so you'll and this is a really important example for people i so i worked a lot with clients in practice for about 10 years and and what i saw when i was running my practice was if somebody came out of a relationship with a narcissist for example like a true not the throwaway term pop psychology or everyone's a narcissist but like true narcissistic personality disordered person when you look and this is me not i'm not victim blaming because this person has this pre-existing patterning from somewhere else so it's not their fault but i would always i never saw no exception somebody who was in a relationship with a narcissist they were first people who are extremely cruel in their internal dialogue to self constantly violated their own

boundaries to please others manipulated themselves to be what people wanted from them and didn't empathize with their own feelings hyper fixated on other people so their subconscious mind is already doing this and thus they are a match to somebody like that because when somebody comes along who's a narcissist and they violate your boundaries and they manipulate and they are not empathizing with you and they're mean or cruel the conscious mind says this is unhealthy but the subconscious mind is the one making all the decisions and it says no this is familiar this is how we treat ourselves so this is really comfortable so we're actually going to invest in this and it's so important for people to become aware of these concepts because until we do we're often having these pre-existing

traumas from childhood or attachment trauma that lead us to be this way in the relationship to self that then lead us to enter into relationships with these types of individuals that just re-traumatize. And so doing the work on our subconscious mind and healing these patterns is really important. Does that play into the thing I've heard, you know, women where women will get into bad relationships that are toxic and they'll stay there because even though it, for like for the rest of us, we're looking and going, that's, that's really an ugly situation. You got there. They even, and maybe they feel that way too. This is horrible. It's comfortable to them. Exactly. Nailed it. Exactly. So I want to

go back really quickly and just do the other two attachment styles. So we did secure, we did anxious, just so people can hear themselves in this too. The other end of the continuum from anxious is our dismissive avoidance. So dismissive avoidance attachment styles, they grow up with this overarching theme of childhood emotional neglect. And as a result of this, it's not always over either. It's not, oh, parents are never there. Children are alone in the house at three years of age. It's oftentimes parents are there. There's structure, there's stability, food's on the table at specific times, to school on time every morning. But if you express emotions, go into the other room, come back when you've got it together,

or children should be seen and not heard, or don be a cry baby that's embarrassing like a lot of the messaging is such that it's like this part of myself as a human being is wrong and so what happens is a dismissive avoidant adapts to that environment by basically divorcing the emotional part of themselves from how they ever really express themselves and they work very hard to repress their emotions. And so as adults, they basically become the individuals who are afraid to feel too much. And they're very afraid of being trapped in too much emotion because as children, they felt trapped in a household a lot of the time, or because we're biologically wired for attunement. If we couldn't get it and we're wired for it, it feels trapping and engulfing. So dismissive avoidant children develop wounds around feeling trapped, helpless, powerless, seen as defective or shameful if they express emotion, seen as weak if they're too vulnerable, and fear of being disrespected. And those will be the big triggers they have as adults. And they'll be individuals that we enter into relationships with. And then when we get too close, push, they get back. They jet, they leave

early, they pull away as soon as feelings get too real. And often they end up in relationships with more anxious leaning individuals. So before I go into fearful avoidant, the last attachment style, have you seen people like this before? Yeah. I mean, the patterns of people doing that. I mean, I, I, I, you know, I may i i don't know if i did that in my relationship sometimes i don't think so i had pretty good relationships when i had them but yeah i mean i i've seen it all in dating i wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of that in there maybe there might be might be in my past i mean i didn't really get my trauma healed up till about 50 age 50 so. So I'm 56 now.

Yeah, there's a lot of, I was pulling a wrecking ball around for a while. So maybe in the past, there was a little bit of dismissive avoidance. Because you said you were always dating, but not in serious relationships. Was this a little more consistent with DA? Even if you did the work now. So I was a fearful avoidant, which is our last one. Which is actually probably the most difficult attachment style for people to date. So I was the fearful avoidant.

Fearful avoidance grew up in a childhood with the overarching theme is chaos. It can be, for example, that there's a really bad divorce, tons of fighting, but it can also be like a parent's an alcoholic or an addict or has a personality disorder. And so generally what happens is as a child, you never know what you're going to get. Will it be a good day? Will it be a bad day? Will it be a scary day? Will there be like all this animosity or will it be peaceful? And fearful avoidance get these really polarized associations about love. They have some really good positive experiences, but they also have some really scary or terrifying ones. So they basically share in both sides of the attachment

styles. They have an anxious side where they're afraid of people leaving, but they have an avoidance side where they like need to keep people at bay, but they basically hyper flip-flop back and forth. So like before I did my work and became securely attached, I was constantly like flip-flopping in relationships. I would get close to somebody. I would really want that closeness. Then they would get close and I would be like, get back, stay away. And I would sabotage a lot. And it's, you're very hot and cold, often very confusing to other individuals. But it's because if you grew up with these fears of, you know, love is a great thing, but it's always going to end in shambles or there's always going to be chaos.

It's like the more you love or the more you care for somebody, the more it scares you. And so the more you have to push it back. And so that's our last attachment style, which is fearful avoidance. The four attachment styles now it seems to me that like the attachment style is kind of an umbrella thing for various amounts of trauma that have gone on below is it is it really important to not only you know know let's say you're evaluating somebody or dating somebody or maybe you're already in a relationship with somebody is it important to not just know the attachment styles but know what those exact traumas are because like sexual trauma from childhood especially for women is very different

than you know your dad didn't hug you enough you know what i mean and and understanding the difference between those two and how you're going to have to approach or deal with that person or whether they've seen a psychiatrist is a really big deal. So how do you equate those two or manage those two? Yeah. So I try to speak to the individual first. So I would say the first step is to understand your attachment style. If you're not securely attached and to do the work, we can talk about like how to become secure. But there's basically some overarching themes.

We have to recondition our limiting beliefs. So the fear of being abandoned or defective or weak or these fears that we have. We have to learn our needs. And because each person has very unique needs, anxious attachments have a lot of like need to be reassured, certainty, validation, encouragement, deep connection, dismissive avoidance, need freedom, autonomy, independence. needs anxious attachments have a lot of like need to be reassured certainty validation encouragement deep connection dismissive avoidance need freedom autonomy independence they also need appreciation

and acknowledgement they also need empathy support acceptance fearful avoidance need depth and novelty and intensity and growth and exploration and discovery and freedom and you know each and each attachment has different needs and we have to learn what ours what ours are because we get into relationships with somebody of a different attachment style we tend to all love the way we would need love and so we're usually giving people needs that aren't necessarily landing with them and i would make a very strong argument for anybody who's familiar with the five love languages it's like like Dr. Gary Chapman's work, that we have different ways we give and receive love, physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation,

acts of service and gifts. And people give and receive love. I would actually make an argument that no, our needs supersede the love languages because I have a quality time love language. But if I'm sitting watching Netflix with somebody versus having a real conversation with them, that emotional connection need is much more important than just the quality time love language. So

needs are a huge part of like how we actually feel fulfilled in relationships and fulfill in relationship with one another. So healing your core wounds, moving through your needs, nervous system regulation, boundaries, communication, we can break those all down. But those are like the five overarching themes to heal. And what I would say is we need to do our own work first, make sure we're primed to be in a healthy relationship. We can also do the work in a relationship with somebody else and that's fine. But the other part of it is I don't think it matters too much how much trauma somebody has. I care about, is the person willing to do the work on the trauma? When I was in private practice with clients,

I would have people come in with all different backgrounds, some people with exceptional big T trauma, tons of it. But if both people are willing to do the work, we can really heal from those things. It's really about are people working on it. If somebody is not willing to do the work and adapt and they're constantly bringing up their old trauma into their

present relationship that's where we really have those deal breakers that can make it really difficult huh even sexual trauma it's it's pretty i mean there there's extenuations to that i mean but it i don't know it's it's something people need to work on then yes and i i really want to talk if we want to stop there for a moment i'd love to talk about that for a second on like kind of a detour. You know, I worked with a lot of people with sexual trauma and, and there's a huge growing body of research on something called post-traumatic growth that is extremely powerful and that really, really works. And it's where I did a lot of my training originally and really helped people work through these painful experiences. And we don't have to go relive trauma all the time to work through it. We don't have to go back into the traumatic event and talk about it and feel about it and relive it. In fact, you could make a strong argument that that actually, because the subconscious gets programmed through repetition and emotion, that actually wires the traumatic event and feelings further into our body and nervous system.

Instead, how we heal from post-traumatic growth, like how we actually get into post-traumatic growth, is we change the ideas we have about ourselves because of trauma. So usually in sexual abuse trauma, people develop core wounds of, I am trapped, I am helpless, I am shameful or defective, I am bad, and I am unsafe. And these core wounds, because we get imprinted by that experience so strongly, we project them out into all of our relationships. We constantly feel like, oh, I'm going to be unsafe or I'm going to be helpless or, you know, and we can rewire these ideas that there, and I can give a tool for that and everything, but these are changeable concepts. The other big part of post-traumatic growth is

learning to meet the needs as adults that we couldn't get met in the traumatic experience. With sexual abuse trauma, we often didn't feel like we had the need met for safety, for certainty, for help or support, and for validation and acknowledgement of our feelings. And so when we can get really good at meeting those needs in relationship to self as an adult, and also get really good at rewiring those painful stories that we have about ourselves because of that traumatic event, it's tremendously healing and it doesn't have to be something that takes decades to do. And the third major piece is if we can do some nervous system regulation work to get out of constant fight or flight, we're really building a tremendous amount of momentum and it doesn't have to be something that entraps people for their whole life or affects their

relationships for their whole life either. There you go. That's what we want. So let me ask you this. What about, you know, we've talked about emotions and part of this is part of the four things. Do men, you know, men don't live in their emotion, or at least they shouldn't be. They should live in their logic and reason and masculinity. Do men have trouble dealing with the four aspects and how do those apply? Because, you know, showing our emotions isn't the most popular thing to do in our society. Sometimes in relationships, if you show your emotion to your woman, she's going to use it against you. It's going to be turned against you. How do you see that playing out with men and how do men kind of, I guess, with masculinity bridge this?

Okay. Can we have a debate? You ready to debate? I mean, I want to debate, but I'm just asking. A friendly, loving, respectful debate. So I have done a lot of research into this for a long period of time. So there's a lot of talk in the world right now about like men always need to exclusively be in their masculine energy. Women exclusively need to be in their feminine energy.

These concepts of polarity are true for points of attraction. So there's three major things that create attraction at the subconscious level. And again, our subconscious mind is responsible for 95 to 97% of all of our beliefs, thoughts, emotions, decisions. So like our subconscious is running our lives in the show. In the concept of polarity it hits on the first really the first thing so the the two things that will be attracted to early on out of all three are number one somebody who expresses your repressed traits for example if somebody's really

assertive because our mind seeks wholeness and equilibrium it will attach to somebody and it feels like we're attaching to that trait as a byproduct so if somebody's is really assertive, when I first met my husband, for example, he was very assertive. I still had a lot of boundary work to do. So I was super attracted to that. I was like, oh wow, he's so like assertive. He speaks up in real time. He's so good at this. So I was really attracted to that. What will happen with this? Okay. Polarity is not going to be the thing that sustains a long-term relationship ever. It will actually be the thing that ruins it. So polarity is really important for attraction in the dating stage of relationships. Relationships have six, six stages, dating, honeymoon, power

struggle, which we'll come back to stability, commitment, and bliss in the dating and honeymoon stage. Polarity is working in our favor. We're like, wow, they're so this, they're so that. In the power struggle stage, if we don't integrate those traits and form a sense of wholeness, exactly the things that we were attracted to in terms of trait variety, we will resent the most. So what would happen, and this was my example, but I knew this, so it was easy for me to work on, is in the power struggle stage, the assertiveness that was so attractive in the dating stage is now he never makes compromises why doesn't he care about my needs this happens to everybody all the time people will be like oh they're so easy going it's so attractive power struggle stage hits and now what do we have they never make an effort they

never plan anything they're so lazy so yes polarity is important for attraction, but that's not how relationships last. That will be the thing that sabotages relationships. What we need to do is actually integrate traits so that we have a sense of wholeness. Men are supposed to have this wholeness. They're supposed to have emotions and emote and have a healthy relationship to it. They will still lean more into their masculine energy, but they're supposed to be the sense of wholeness. Same with women. Women are okay to have times where they take masculine energy, but they're supposed to be the sense of wholeness. Same with women. Women are okay to have times where they take charge of things or they're in their masculine energy.

Yes. They may lean into their feminine energy biologically. That's a greater likelihood of occurrence, but wholeness and ability to interact with both sides of our whole persona as a human being is actually what allows us to move into secure connections and relationships. So that's a really important thing. And if we don't do that,

exactly what we are polarized around will trigger us the most and be the thing in the power struggle stage that causes the most arguments, the most friction and the biggest downfall of our relationship. That's why I leave before the power struggle stage when I see it coming. No, I'm just kidding. So what is the power struggle stage? When does

that usually take place and how does it? Yeah. So it's a fantastic question. The power struggle stage. So generally the dating will be zero to six months. It's the vetting stage. It's, we get to know somebody before we make a commitment. If we make a commitment, it moves us into the honeymoon stage, which generally lasts about a year to a year and a half afterwards. Generally after that. So we a year to a year and a half afterwards. Generally after that, so we're sitting at a year and a half to two years into the relationship, we hit the power struggle stage. For some people, it can be a bit earlier if they live together quickly or they're spending an extra, you know, lots of time together really fast. But around that time period, it's the power struggle.

The power struggle has a really powerful purpose. It's not just supposed to be like anger and fighting. The intention of the power struggle is we are supposed to learn each other's fears and flaws and learn to be vulnerable and have acceptance. And this is part of why being able to emote from both sides is really important because we're supposed to learn. I learned in the power struggle stage, for example, that my husband is more sensitive to criticism than I realized. He's very stoic. So I didn't notice. But if I don't communicate more gently or kindly, he doesn't like that. So what did I learn? I learned, well, I love my husband, I'm going to be kind and courteous and thoughtful about the way I communicate instead of saying, hey, you didn't do this, I might say, hey, I would love if we can do this.

And just those little tiny things. And there were things that he knew that were important to me, you know, like when he plans things or is more intentional about things. And so I communicate that to him in the power struggle stage. If we don't communicate vulnerably and let somebody truly in the relationship won't last. The rite of passage of the power struggle stage is to let somebody see us more deeply, more vulnerably, our fears and our flaws. flaws and to when we understand those things about each other and we're willing to make little compromises to be mindful and considerate of each other this is how we get out of the power struggle stage and move into future phases and what it does is it deepens

the relationship from like the mask is on in the dating and honeymoon stage to the mask is off in the power struggle. And it moves us from more conditionally based love to more unconditionally based love because I'm now showing myself with less conditions. Yeah. Is it like arm wrestling during the stage? Do I need to hire an attorney for the power struggle thing? No, if done correctly,

it's actually a really beautiful stage. There's more friction and there's a little more arguments and disagreements, but if we're willing to be vulnerable about stuff, it can be something that's really, really rewarding. Is there MMA cage matches for this? Basically, you set up in the living room and we're going to have the battles, honey. Only if you don't heal your attachment style. Do that first, folks.

So let me ask you this, because I took your quiz and people should take your quiz. It's online. Do you want to give a plug to the.com real quick for that? Yeah, absolutely. So it's at personaldevelopmentschool.com and there's a big button on the first page that says attachment style quiz, and it comes with a full report of all the different parts of your attachment style. There you go. And what was that joke I told yesterday. I basically took the quiz and it explained why my mother abandoned me before conception. I wrote that yesterday. I'm going to use that in standup, I think.

So basically, so I watched, I watched your show on YouTube and you've got, you've got so much content and it's, it's detailed and like how to and basically every YouTube video is how to fix the stupid people you decided to be with no I'm just kidding it's not really that that's just I'm being funny people but you know it's like how to how to deal with somebody who's in the love language or enough love language but one of the four aspects and and and what you know how to interact with them and the different attributes of that. And I was watching a lot of videos and like the first thing that came to my head is someone who's securely attached and healed is like, why are they putting up with

that person in the first place? Just dump them and go find somebody healthy. So what's wrong with that thought process that I had? That's a great question. So I will tell you as somebody who was fearful avoidant, okay? So fearful avoidance has that avoidance side. Avoidance are known for kind of like jumping out of relationships. A big transformation I went through in my understanding when I became secure was I would be fearful avoidant. I would invest into people, get feelings, be attracted or infatuated, see something I didn't like, panic because I had all these fears around, oh, I'm going to be betrayed or abandoned anyways. I'm going to be unsafe or trapped. And I would just leave relationships. So I have no staying power. In retrospect, when I did a lot of work on myself and a lot of reflection,

a lot of those relationships and everything for a reason, because I'm happy with where I'm at now, but just an interesting insight for me was like, oh, so many things I would leave relationships over were actually very solvable problems if I just communicated. If I just said to somebody, hey, that's a sensitivity for me. I don't like when you do that. Or hey, this is a boundary for me. Can you be mindful? If I just communicated vulnerably and actually shared my needs with somebody, all of those things would have been course corrected. So when I met my now husband, who I've been with for about 10 years, we actually worked on this stuff. I worked on communicating needs. So when there were things that otherwise I would have ran away from because I didn't know how to address conflict or have

healthy communication or be vulnerable, I realized, wow, 99% of the things I would leave relationships over in the past were actually opportunities to bring us closer together if I just shared my truth with somebody authentically. And so I think there's a difference between not putting up with things that are unhealthy. Like we have our non-negotiables. I think if somebody is like speaking disrespectfully in relationships or they're constantly canceling dates or, you know, there's things that like, no, you shouldn't keep pursuing the relationship. But did you talk about it first? Did you address it in a healthy way? Because a lot of things are really solvable problems. And if we have something that's important and we do the communication work around it and we solve the problem, it actually grows the relationship and deepens the connection.

If we communicate and somebody's, no, I'm never changing that. I don't care about you and your needs. I'm not willing to make an effort. And there's no work done and there's no moving of the needle. Yes. And it's an important time to say, this isn't a good relationship for me. This isn't healthy. It's not what I'm looking for. And we have to honor that. But I think that like really important part in between makes a night and day of difference. There you go. I like that. So communicate people. Maybe don't go so much. Although it seems to have been going on since the 90s.

I love how everyone thinks ghosting is like a new thing. My dating experience has been going on since the 80s or 90s. It's not. People always ghosted. It's just trending. People talk about it now. It's amazing to me. People are all worried about it. Like, why did they ghost?

They didn't like you. It didn't work out. Go find your shut up leave it alone the so we i asked you this before the show so i i i think i'm pretty healed on trauma my childhood trauma i i seem to i i came i cheated your quiz somehow and beat it and i gamed it or something and came out securely attached one of my challenges in dating and i'm very particular i i've lived my life as a playboy i've dated models i've i've you know i've dated beautiful women that you know you think okay they're beautiful women so everything's gonna be fine but you know sometimes there's a lot of internal damage there and i i've been really good

at reading people's trauma i've had psychologists on the show and I've been like, you grew up with a single mother, didn't you? They're like, yeah. I'm like, how do you know? Because you just told me in about 10 minutes all the choices you made with your relationships. I've nailed it. You know, I can talk to people and be like, you had sexual trauma as a child, huh? And so I can pick up on a lot of that stuff. I'm really good at after dating as many years as I have.

So my challenge is when I meet people that have these, these three other types of relationship things, and if they have trauma, if they have whatever, I'm, I'm at the point where, you know, I, I live the, I live the trauma relationships where you're like, Hey, I got a bag of broken glass. Hey, I got a bag of razor blades. Let's get together and see if this shit works. And they had their trauma and I had mine. And now I just, I'm kind of like, I don't really want it in my life.

And I was joking with you earlier before the show, it seems like there's 10 people who are healed in the dating market. So how do I find somebody? Am I going to have to basically try and find somebody who has these other issues and see if I can help work them through it or something? Great question.

It's such a good question. I think there's some really important parts here. The first part is that we have to be really clear and intentional about dating. So I do think that when people have a lot of trauma that's unresolved, I actually think it's best for them as an individual to take some time and work through it on their own. Because usually when there's a lot of big trauma, you know, we then get afraid of being abandoned or betrayed or whatever it might be. And then that shows up and we get so distracted by the relationship that we don't have time for ourselves. I personally, I had a lot of big T trauma as a child, or like a decent amount. And, and I took a big time out for three years, worked on myself, worked through things, a lot of deep work, that

was like the most sacred, beautiful time of my life. I'm so grateful to myself for doing that. So you know, like, if anybody's hearing this, and they have big T trauma, or a lot of stuff, first of all, have that self compassion, like it's not your fault. But it is still your responsibility, even though it wasn't your fault but it is still your responsibility even though it wasn't your fault and so there's this really interesting caveat where it's like we want to honor that and I think that it's important to like take some time dig into that if there's a lot of trauma the second sort of branch of this conversation becomes well you're probably not going to find anybody with nothing going on you know some people are going to have

a little bit of boundary issues to work on, or they could communicate that, or even if they're securely attached, like we may just have some stuff. And I think that there's this difference between kind of like we talked about earlier, like there can be like flaw finding, which is I'm looking for perfection all the time because this is a common

thing for avoidance, dismissive and fearful. And I'm not saying this is you at all, but just for anybody listening, like it's sometimes what you'll see is people get afraid to have any issues so they'll flaw fine and like nitpick and and that's an actual protection mechanism because what's actually happening at a deeper level is if we feel disempowered to work through conflict then we're like i'm just going to avoid anybody with any imperfections as my means to avoid any conflict and so i think that's like an important differentiating factor so what we're looking more like I'm just going to avoid anybody with any imperfections as my means to avoid any conflict.

And so I think that's like an important differentiating factor. So what we're looking for in healthy dating is number one, we need to know our non-negotiables. These are different for everybody. You know, for one person, I had a client once and she had lung cancer. And so her non-negotiable was I'll never date a smoker, but that's not everybody. Somebody will be like, I'll only date someone else who smokes. Right. So we have to get really clear about ours personally. That's number one. Number two is we want to know our standards. So we want to know the things that matter to us. Somebody, for example, who travels a lot or is ambitious or things that like are personal that are, they're not non-negotiables, but they're things that we value and we care about and we'd like to have as a part of the relationship. Then our dating stage

is meant for vetting people. You know, so many people are like, they go into dating and they're like, this person was attractive. I like them enough after the first date, I'm going to go all in and try to make sure I win them over and they like me. And it's a hold on a second here. Like you need to be looking like, does this person know how to work through conflict with you? Does this person speak to you respectfully? Do you the same things you have similar morals and values like we have to be checking in with these things and the framework i often get for people when dating is know your non-negotiables know this the standards and things that are important to you and then go into dates where one or two questions every day that relate to these important things

you'll intend to ask. It shouldn't be like you said earlier, like the FBI guy with the job interview on the first date because everyone will get, you know, those just feels pressuring and it will turn people off. But we also don't want to just go into dating people, policing and abandoning what our important factors are for what we're looking for. So the healthy balance is I'm going to know the things that I'm absolutely not okay with. I am going to know my standards and I'm going to vet for quite a few months, three, four months, I recommend,

of just getting to know somebody, having these discussions, seeing are these things, you know, actual part of somebody else's personality that you're looking for. And also we want to make sure that we're not just running from a red flag. Obviously, if it's a non-negotiable,

hands clean, go in the other direction. But if it's a red flag, it goes back to this thing where it's like, if somebody just isn't texting you enough, for example, sometimes that's solved for just having a conversation. Hey, consistency is important to me in communication and the person will show up or not. But that's the purpose of the dating stage

is you get to find out by having those honest conversations, betting and not abandoning your standards and needs in the process. So you can get to the bottom of, are you actually a good fit with somebody else? There you go. Somebody told me a long time ago, and I don't know if it's true, so I want to run it by you, but they said, find someone whose highest value is integrity. My dad's highest value is freedom. It didn't work out for him having a family because he really wanted to be free. But find someone who has integrity. And if you find somebody who's really high on integrity as their value, a lot of stuff will fall into place because

they'll do what you said. They'll work to, they'll be like, okay, so we're missing something here. What can I do? How can we work together? I care about you and I'm willing to make the effort. Whereas, is that true or do you think more so it's more about these four aspects? I absolutely think that that matters, like finding somebody with integrity for sure. But I think that like integrity isn't the only thing. I think compatibility matters.

And I think like our ability to work through things, somebody can be of high integrity and mean, but if they've got a lot of unresolved attachment trauma and they have all these wounds and fears, they can be in integrity very well when they're not triggered. But if they have huge triggers from a lot of unresolved stuff they have to work on, then that can still cloud it and get in the way. And so I think it's really a bridge of both of those things. You know, I say this a lot in our programs, but like, I never cared when I was running private practice, how much trauma somebody had, I really didn't. I would care, is the person willing to do the work? Because if they were, and maybe you could call that integrity, like willing to show up and do the hard things

and show up for those reasons, they may not be perfect along the way. But if somebody's willing to do that work, then that takes us a really long way. Did you really want to, I mean, if you were on Healed and they were beginning that journey, I mean, that sounds like a tough journey to be on for an investment. You know what I mean? Yeah. And a lot of times, and sorry to interrupt you, a lot of times when this happens, people would come in to see me or come into our programs now. And they're coming in because they're in a marriage of already 20 years. Wow. And they've just found out about attachment theory and it now explains a lot.

And they're like, how do we go about that? Or people are dating somebody and they're in love and they're just entering into the power struggle stage. But they've made a commitment to live together. They love each other. It's a year and a half. But now things are getting really difficult. And so there's a line, right? If you're just on a first date and you see all this stuff coming up and you can see that that person's not really working on it or trying to work through it and you've done all that work,

you may want to vet for that. That might be a non-negotiable for you perhaps. And that's an individual decision. You might say, you know what, I'm wanting somebody who's also done the work and I'm going to vet for that during the dating stage because I want to have this streamlined experience. And, and I don't want to feel like I'm in the role of a therapist at some point in the relationship, but a lot of people don't start relationships that way. Our attachment style also doesn't really show up a ton until we've actually attached. So often what you'll see too is like people are all great in the dating stage. That's why we have to truly vet and ask tough questions. And then all of a sudden a year in the power struggle stage comes up or we've really finally attached to somebody and connected

and now the things come online. And so it becomes a very individual decision for people based on where they're at, the level of investment that they already have and like how big and how challenging those difficulties are. Yeah. I think they're I mean, there, there, everyone has got little red flags and ticks. I mean, I think when I look at people and evaluate them, I, I evaluate them on, you know, how can I live with this? And can we work through this? You know, there are some, you know, there was somebody I took out recently and, you know, they told me they had PSTD from, from losing their husband. And I think there was some violence that took place in Mexico.

And I just, and I went, yeah, I can't do that. You know, have you been, have you been to therapy? And they flipped out when I asked if they've been to therapy for it. And I was like, okay, well, there you have it. And, you know, so that's, you know, there's certain things that I've kind of learned. You know, it's kind of funny. Over the years, I didn't know about any of this sort of stuff. And I, I worked off a blueprint thing, which it sounds like, you know, from what you've described, a lot of this stuff is childhood blueprinting. So I would look for

women that they had a healthy father in the home relationship who'd raised them. He set a good example for manhood and being a man, he was tuned into her needs and, you know, he was there. You know, I've also seen the converse of that where, you know, daddy isn't hungry enough and she ends up at Spirit Rhino. But, you know, I would look for women that had that sort of healthy things. In fact, if I could find a woman that had her parents were still together and still loved each other, like that was usually gold. And so that was kind of what I always used.

But this stuff makes a lot more sense because it seems to explain a lot more things and make it so you can work. So for someone who's a secure attachment, I'm actually trying to search this on your website here and I put it in. Do I need to search their secure attachment videos on how to get along with everybody else?

There's some courses around that, like key pillars of a secure relationship. There's how to be with other, there's like secure's some courses around that like key pillars of a secure relationship there's how to be with other there's like secure and dismissive secure and like secure with different attachment styles but i think to your point you know you're talking about this woman with ptsd who hasn't done the work and god bless her because obviously she went through a hard time but you know that's a point where somebody probably has to honor themselves and take a time out and do that work and focus on themselves and give themselves permission to be the center of their own universe for a moment to be able to work through it. And I think it's a healthy choice that if you just bring up the topic or conversation because she brought it up and you're just inquisitive and then she gets angry, she's probably not ready for a healthy relationship at that moment.

And that would be a secure vetting thing to say, look, I have compassion for this person and this isn't what I'm looking for at this time. And she, you know, would hopefully have the opportunity to honor herself. So those are good decisions, right? And I think that when we're looking for securely, if you're secure and you're looking for other securely attached individuals, you can definitely look for two parents being together. But I think that that can even be limiting because sometimes we have two parents together, but they're both emotionally unavailable and we have a really dismissive avoidant person, or we have two parents who are together, but they're still fighting all the time. And I think that it's important to highlight that a thriving relationship doesn't just mean

that it lasted. If it lasted, both people are miserable. I would call that an unsuccessful relationship because you're trapped in unhappiness. We're looking for, you know, was there thriving or their healthy skills modeled? And generally, you'll see with securely attached people a few core things if you want to bet for them. They are vulnerable, but not too vulnerable all at once. They'll happily share things, but they don't like overshare their deepest, darkest secrets the first date or two. They tend to be consistent. They tend to be very pro-communication. If there's a conflict or problem, they will not shove it under the rug

or avoid it. They will be approach-oriented. They will tend to honor and validate people's emotions. They actually have a healthy relationship to their own emotions. They're not necessarily overly emotional all the time, but they have no problem saying, I feel this way or this didn't land well with me when you said that comment. I didn't feel very great about that. Can we work on it this way? So they'll be vulnerable and emotionally available. And so those are some really important pillars when we're vetting to look for if we're trying to vet for a secure attacher.

There you go. I put in your YouTube channel search, secure attachment style. So I'm looking for the videos. Are you securely attached? And how can you put up with all these broken people? Darn it. They won't drive you crazy. I'm just kidding, folks.

Those are jokes. All insecure attachment people have like their own superpowers too. I will say that. They have some highlights in there. And it's just, I want to say too, like your attachment style isn't this,'t this oh my gosh this diagnosis it's just like a subconscious set of rules that you have and so you can just modify some of the the ideas you have and behaviors to become secure it's not like a personality disorder that it's so hard to heal from so let me ask you this is my final question i i joked we had a psychiatrist on yesterday about relationships and i and i joked

about my old joke about how if i ever get in a relationship again i'll probably do like oil change pre-work in psychology where we'll have a we'll go to couples therapy i don't know every three months for the first while just to just to keep you know everyone waits until everything's a car crash and there's a junkyard of garbage and then you know 10 years later and then they're like hey let's try and fix this in couples therapy and i'm just like i think maybe i'll just start going to therapy early on is what do you recommend maybe a way to sit down with each other once you kind of reach that stage of dating where you go you know i think we're kind of exclusive and i think we're kind of gonna do or see how this rides out is it good to sit down and talk about some of these

attachment styles and try and understand where each other are at and i don't know absolutely it's such a great question i love what you said it's so funny i would see clients who would come into my practice back in the day and they would come in and they would be like resentment up to here so full of resentment and anger that like as soon as you try to talk through one thing they bring up like nine other things from 17 years ago and 14 years ago and 11 years ago this happened and it was like and i would this visual would always come into my mind like this big tangled ball of yarn that you have to unravel each piece so slowly and so i do actually love the idea that like people proactively take action into these things in regards to therapy.

It doesn't have to be therapy. It can be we know our needs and we check in with each other on a weekly basis. Are your needs being met? How are we doing? I really believe this. And I know this sounds like a pipe dream for people when they're newer to this work, but I believe this with all of my heart and soul. If you resent your partner and you're bickering because there's all this little bit of resentment, you have work to do. There's something unresolved. We shouldn't feel like relationships are like this build up slowly of resentment over the years. The idea is that we

don't feel like that because we actually work through every conflict. When people are bringing up things from the past, the other thing too is it's because they feel unseen and unheard and unresolved. And to resolve conflict, we really need a few key things. And they're quite simple. We need each person to express what they feel and have the feelings validated. It doesn't have to be like, I feel so sad. It can be like, I felt uncomfortable when ABC happened. Yeah, I see why you would feel uncomfortable. That makes sense to me. So if both people can feel like their feelings are validated, and both people can express what they need to feel relief from the situation and conflict, and if they can positively frame it, we can really work through any issue like in real time, right? So if somebody's, you

know, there's this conflict, you're out with your partner and something happens. And each person gets to say, you know, this made me feel uncomfortable. Here's what I need in the future. And the other person can say, yeah, I get that you felt uncomfortable. I can respect that. And I will work on that in the future. That makes sense to me. People drop the conflict. They leave it.

They leave it in the past. Obviously, we can have these big, you know, conflicts like somebody cheated and things like that that require a little bit more. There's a process for that, too, honestly. But there's other ways of, you know, things like that. But those daily conflicts or bickering situations or arguments that you have, if we can really hit those key points,

it can go a very long way. But people often get the communication part wrong. People will say things like, you never spent enough time with me instead of, hey, I feel like I miss you this week. We haven't spent a lot of time together. Can we plan something fun to do on the weekend? So people won't communicate healthily or they won't hit those key points and they'll stay

trapped in this cycle of resentment wow i think what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna get a girlfriend in each of the four categories just for the fucking fun and drama of it all just just for the entertainment i'm gonna have one gal who's anxious, preoccupied, dismissive avoidant, and fearful avoidant, disorganized. If you're married, just get three mistresses. And I'm just going to, I don't know. I'm just going to keep doing that until one of them stabs me. So that's pretty much how I used to date. And then in your eulogy, it'll be like Chris Voss chose to date four different attachment styles. Four different attachment styles.

He lived dangerously with adventure and he died with a knife. So there you go. But there you go. So this has been really insightful. And of course, the best ways people can learn all about this is to pick up your book. And then I think you do some coaching and stuff too as well. Do you want to pitch that out? Yeah.

So I actually, I was in private practice for about 10 years and then started, I had a wait list for two years. So we do all online programs. So that's at personaldevelopmentschool.com. People can go to personaldevelopmentschool.com forward slash free trial if they just want to go in and check it out for free and just see in there. But basically we have these, these bootcamps, they're like 90 day cycles for how to become securely attached.

So that is at the website. And then also, yeah, I don't do coaching anymore one-to-one, but my book is on Amazon and it's called Learning Love and people can find it on there. And then you have a previous book too, I think, don't you? Yes. The Attachment Theory Guide. It's like the introduction. I recommend the second one a little more because it kind of covers all the four attachment styles and how to find out what you are, what your partner is, but then it really puts a focus on how to heal. There you go.

I always joke about how I'm going to start going on first dates with a psychiatrist cards to hand out, but I think I'm just going to tell people to check your channel. I'm like, have you watched her channel? So you should probably watch it between now and the next date. And then tell me what you are. Tell me what your attachment style is. Tell me what your attachment style is, you know, then I'll just sit there with your book and I'll sit there in front of them on the first date going, so how do you feel about your mother?

It's been fun to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on the show. Give us your.com so we go out so people can check out everything. Personaldevelopmentschool.com There you go. And order the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores

you might get stabbed that's where I got stabbed actually it wasn't from the three gals in the attachment style

got stabbed robbed and I don't know it was fun but so go on to the best bookstores learning love

build the best relationships of your life using integrated attachment theory out December 8th, 2023. Thanks to you for coming on the show. Thanks to my audience for tuning in.

Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, the TikTok, any all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. Learn your issues that you have and go get therapy for hell's sakes already. Thanks for tuning in.