The Dr. Josh Axe Show - How to Stop People-Pleasing, Set Boundaries, and Heal Emotionally

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Did you know that your attachment style could be shaping your health, relationships, and overall well-being in ways you don’t even realize? Research shows that early life experiences deeply influenc...e how we connect with others and even how we respond to stress—impacting our mental, emotional, and even physical health. In this powerful episode of The Dr. Josh Axe Show, Dr. Axe sits down with Thais Gibson, PhD, founder of The Personal Development School, who specializes in attachment theory and subconscious reprogramming. With over 13 certifications in counseling, Thais helps people break free from emotional barriers, rewire their subconscious mind, and build deeper, more fulfilling relationships. What you’ll learn in this episode: The 4 attachment styles and how they impact your relationships, self-esteem, and stress levels Why codependency and people-pleasing may be signs of unresolved trauma—and how to heal from them The link between emotional health and physical illness (and how trauma can manifest in disease) How to rewire your subconscious mind to break negative thought loops and limiting beliefs The science behind neuroplasticity and how to recondition your brain for emotional freedom Why loneliness is as harmful as smoking and how true connection can add years to your life If you've ever felt trapped in unhealthy relationship patterns, struggled with self-worth, or wondered why certain emotional wounds keep resurfacing—this episode is for you. Dr. Axe and Thais provide real, actionable steps to help you heal from the inside out, so you can thrive in body, mind, and spirit. Tune in now to start your journey toward emotional healing, healthier relationships, and a more fulfilling life. #attachmenttheory #emotionalhealing #neuroplasticity Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. ------  00:00 Intro with Thais Gibson 00:59 Counseling Through a Biblical Lens 06:18 Effects of Trauma on Mind & Body 11:50 Childhood Wounds & Attachment Styles 22:27 Importance of Emotional Health  39:50 How to Communicate Needs ------  Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Website Follow Thais Gibson Instagram Facebook TikTok YouTube Website ------  Links:  Check out Thais’ List of Tertiary Needs → http://thehealthinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/List-of-Tertiary-Needs-_-Thais-Gibson.pdf  ------  Ads:  Even if your bloodwork looks "normal," your symptoms could point to Cell Danger Response (CDR). Discover how to break free from CDR and unlock your full potential at https://beyondbloodwork.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I've had a lot of friends go to different counseling. I also feel like there's sort of this counseling culture today. I've heard that psychologists talk about this, that oftentimes if people talk about their problems too much, it actually can be a negative thing. Real significance should be found through connecting to a higher power or something greater than ourselves or contributing to other people's lives. Like those are things that should bring a real sense of purpose and meaning.
Starting point is 00:00:22 Being in relationship to a higher power helps you also get outside of yourself, get outside of that egoic identity and realize, Like, that's just conditioning. Addressing those issues that you had and addressing those neurological patterns when you were a kid, it makes a big difference psychologically, your emotional health, but it makes a big difference in your physical health. I completely believe the mind and body are intertwined and so deeply connected. Every single action for A that we take is based on our emotional state. One of the things that keeps a lot of people sick is they become so obsessed about.
Starting point is 00:00:57 Hey guys, Dr. Axi here. I am so excited for this conversation today. We have Tyus Gibson. She is a PhD with over 13 certifications, and she is an expert in counseling. She's also the founder of the Personal Development School and helps them rediscover their love and purpose in life. Now, today we're going to get into attachment styles. Now, this is big.
Starting point is 00:01:20 If you're a person that's a people-pleaser, if you are codependent, if you have any emotional or mental or spiritual blocks in life, she's going to walk us through how you're a person. you break free of those things, the power of neuroplasticity, how to rewire your brain, and really how to get emotionally healthy. One of the things that I've discovered over the past years of taking care of just thousands of patients is that this, most people that have a health issue have some sort of mental or emotional component that is making them ill. And so we're going to get into how to get to the root cause today on the show by covering the four attachment styles, going through how to better understand the different attachment styles and the one that you have
Starting point is 00:02:00 and the exact action steps to overcome those issues. Tais, welcome the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be here. Well, excited for you to be here. One of the things we talk about so often in the show is not just physical health, but also mental health, spiritual health, relational health. I know you've got a PhD in counseling. I know you're an expert in pastoral counseling. And that's one of the things I love as well because having a biblical Christian person, perspective in terms of how to help people heal and build relationships and build strong mental health and emotional health. It's really important. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. When I look at, I mean, I've had a lot of friends go to different counseling. I also feel like there's sort of this counseling culture today. It's interesting. And I've heard that some psychologists talk about this, that oftentimes if people talk about their problems too much, it actually can be a negative thing, this idea of sort of ruminating on their negative issues over and over and over again actually makes them worse. What are your thoughts about
Starting point is 00:03:01 that? It's such an interesting topic of conversation to start off with. So I do believe this. And the reason for this is that when we look at the brain from a neuroplasticity perspective, whatever we are constantly focusing our attention on, we are firing and wiring. So that's how neural pathways are literally built. So a lot of what I bring into the work that I do is also sort of this coaching lens as well, because it helps us focus on, okay, here's the issue. But if we constantly go back through the same types of issues without going towards, hey, what are the solutions to this issue and focusing our energy and attention there, then we'll just get stuck reinforcing the problem to begin with. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things I see with a lot of counseling and psychology and psychiatrist today is that you'll go in there, you'll talk about your problems and you'll just talk about it over and over and over again versus, yeah, they're not being a solution.
Starting point is 00:03:50 And so that's one of the things that I really see the difference in terms of doing this more virtue, Christian. these sort of counseling sessions where it's like there is a solution there. And that solution is God. It's Jesus. It's focusing on serving others. It's sort of taking the lens outside of yourself. And I even think about the whole self-help category today. It's all about you, how you can be successful, make your dreams come true. That seems kind of anti-biblical to me. What do you think? I think there's parts of this that are like good for empowerment purposes. I think it's beautiful to have goals and intentions for things. And I think there's so much value in doing that for
Starting point is 00:04:26 sure. But I also think that sometimes there can be a little bit of selfishness to the culture we have today from a self-help perspective. And I think that when we do get outside of ourselves and actually connect to things something greater than ourselves and focus our process of relationship also about service to others and contribution to other people's lives, I mean, honestly, it's so rewarding in doing that. And I find that we find a lot more significance and meaning. And, you know, you probably have heard of like Tony Robbins and he talks about the six basic human needs that come from Abraham Moslow originally. You know, in that, one of the basic human needs we have is significance.
Starting point is 00:05:02 And it's so interesting to me because when we look at the breakdown of how we can achieve our need for significance, it kind of shows up in different forms. A lot of, you know, social media today, it's like how many likes you have on social media gives people this sense of significance. But we can find our needs through healthy and adaptive forms or unhealthy and maladaptive forms. And if you actually break down the need for significance beyond likes on social media or the pictures you post and who engages with them, you know, real significance should be found through connecting to a higher power or something greater than ourselves or contributing to other
Starting point is 00:05:35 people's lives. Like those are things that should bring a real sense of purpose and meaning. Well, it's so easy to get in a ditch one way or the other. It's sort of like a lot of people feel like they're the center of the universe. Everything's about them. And then there's another level of sort of, you know, life is meaningless and I'm meaningless. And so you want to find that healthy balance. And this is something I find so beautiful about the.
Starting point is 00:05:55 Bible is really that message is listen you are significant but you're not the most significant right and so and so really being able to I think realize that and brace that sort of ideas that you do matter you are meaningful but there's something even more meaningful than you that you can devote your life to and be part of wow that's you know that's that that can be super empowering for people so there's this really interesting sort of crossing of paths that I notice and it's that we all have when we we go through trauma we go through conditioning in our upbringing, right? And the way that trauma imprints the subconscious mind
Starting point is 00:06:30 means that we'll carry those things forth with us. So let's just say, for example, somebody experienced being abandoned as a child. Maybe they were adopted or maybe they went through a parent leaving at a young age. What then happens is this forms part of the ego mind and our egoic identity. And what that means is we will identify, okay, I am the person who may be abandoned. Whatever imprints the subconscious mind basically becomes this lens that we see and interact with the world through. And then what takes place is from that space of trauma, we become engulfed in the fear of that. And I often give the analogy, if somebody goes into the woods and they see a bear,
Starting point is 00:07:05 you know, what happens? Let's say you run away from the bear and you're safe, but just say for whatever reason, you have to go back through the woods the very next day. Well, you go into the forest and you go, where's the bear? Oh, my God, is the bear coming this layer that way? And we constantly reproject the likelihood of the bear coming back. And so what happens when we go through trauma and conditioning, which we all go through forms of, whether big T trauma or small T trauma, it imprints a subconscious
Starting point is 00:07:27 mind and then that forms our sense of self and identity. That forms our ego. And then we tend to bring that with us everywhere into all of our future relationships. And so what I love about sort of the space that I've found in this work is that being in relationship to a higher power helps you also get outside of yourself, get outside of that egoic identity and realize like that's just conditioning. That's just this small me. And it helps us see, wait, maybe there was a purpose in the things that I went through. Maybe God was bringing something to my life. Maybe there was a lesson or meaning.
Starting point is 00:07:59 And when we can look at it that way, we can actually take away lessons and healing. And then what I tend to overlap this with a lot is actual reconditioning. So sort of this cross between connecting to a higher power and being outside of your ego mind and being able to witness some of those things and find the lessons, but also recognizing that just because we went through those traumas in childhood doesn't mean we have to carry those with us over and over. again, we can actually recondition by leveraging neuroplasticity, those subconscious belief systems that we've acquired. I mean, this is such an important topic, and this is something over the past few years I've really dug into, because as I've taken care of tens of thousands of patients over the years, one of the things that I realized pretty early on is that, okay, there's a component of this person's health that's very much related to their diet, their exercise, environmental toxins that we really need to address.
Starting point is 00:08:48 but that's only half of the equation and maybe not even quite half. I mean, there's a picture that's just as big or bigger in terms of somebody's mental, spiritual, emotional health. And if we don't address these things, they stay sick. I mean, I'll share with you. A big part of my background was more natural but Western. And then also when I realized that that wasn't going to address all the issues, I started studying a lot more of the Eastern medicine,
Starting point is 00:09:15 everything from biblical medicine to Ierva to Chinese medicine. and realizing that, you know, they actually do a lot more in the, you know, again, even the, and again, the Bible was birthed out of this, the Middle East, as you look at, they looked a lot more at the person as a whole, their body, their mind, their spirit. And so one of the things I've really seen with patients is that so often there are certain conditions that are very much linked to emotional experiences. In Chinese medicine, they tend to have, like, for instance, if you have an issue with your mom, okay, your mother was controlling, you know, very controlling mother.
Starting point is 00:09:48 that tends to affect something in Chinese medicine called the Earth element, which is really your digestive system. And so those kids tend to have digestive issues. They have digestive issues later on in life. And then if it was a father issue, it tends to be they call that metal element. That's really tied to the immune system. So if you have a really bad relationship with your dad growing up or an abusive father, that tends to trigger things more like fibromyalgia or autoimmune disease or some of those issues. And so I just wanted to point out that, you know, addressing those issues that you had and addressing those neurological patterns when you were a kid,
Starting point is 00:10:23 it makes a big difference psychologically, your emotional health, but it makes a big difference in your physical health. 100%. And I completely believe the mind and body are intertwined and so deeply connected. And when you actually look at the breakdown of why this is happening, let's say somebody, for example, going back to somebody who has abandonment wounds growing up, if somebody is constantly reprojecting like the bear in the woods, the fear of being abandoned when they get into a relationship, they're dysregulated on a regular basis. If they're fearing, oh my goodness, is the person, why aren't they texting me back? Why aren't they getting back to me?
Starting point is 00:10:53 Do they like me? Are they going to stick around? Well, then you enter into sympathetic nervous system state. You're in fireclimate more often. You have more cortisol, more noraphyran. And so all of those things, of course, are going to have an impact on your immune system, your well-being as a whole. And so everything is so interconnected.
Starting point is 00:11:09 And when we learn, and I'd love to go into for a minute, too, some of the how we can rewire these things. Because just because we have them, to your point at the beginning, like identifying them is such an important first step. But if we stay there and just talk about them all the time, it's honestly just reinforcing those same neural networks over and over again, meaning that we're actually going to keep ourselves in a triggered and more hypervigilant state, which is going to wreak havoc on our body and mind over time. So when we recognize we have these fears or wounds and we're able to step outside of the egoic self and witness and notice these patterns, that's wonderful. but then we can also plug them into specific tools to rewire these things so we're not constantly reprojecting them on a daily basis.
Starting point is 00:11:49 What are some of the most common wounds that people carry with them? So you talk about abandonment. I'm sure another one is, I know a lot of people that are people pleasers. They want to, you know, they feel like they have to constantly be validated by other people would be another thing. But what are some of the most common that you see these wounds that people carry from childhood? So I tend to break them down by sort of archetype of attachment style. So at a very high level, you'll see our anxiously attached individuals, the people who are needy in relationships.
Starting point is 00:12:19 Their big core wounds are around things like being abandoned, being seen as a bad person, which is often why people go into people pleasing to be like that. Being seen as not good enough, being rejected, disliked, and excluded, and of course unloved. So those are those big fears and wounds. And what you'll see, which is really interesting, I give people this acronym B-T-E-A, which means that our belief, lead to thoughts. Okay, so if I believe, for example, I'm not good enough. And let's say I go into a networking event to meet new people, I will start thinking thoughts like here. Oh, I'm not good enough to be here. I'm not qualified enough to be here. People aren't going to like me enough. I'll start thinking thoughts in alignment with that belief that I'm carrying all the way back from the conditioning in probably my childhood. Then how do I feel or how do I start emoting when I am thinking these thoughts? Well, I start feeling nervous or insecure or anxious. So B-T-E beliefs to thoughts to emotions and the neuroscience is actually proven conclusively. Every single action for A that we take is based on our emotional state. So even people who think they're very logical rational thinkers are actually making emotionally based
Starting point is 00:13:23 decisions at the tipping point and then just quick to then rationalize or justify their decisions. Wow. That's interesting. So even people who are carrying these ideas about themselves, if we're not in control of our belief systems and we're not able to witness and rewire the condition patterns we've acquired from our own childhood or previous life events, then we're not really in charge of how we're thinking, feeling, and how we're acting on a daily basis. And so a lot of those core wounds for the anxious attachment individual, where they feel afraid of abandonment or being seen as a bad
Starting point is 00:13:52 person, you can actually watch those things, almost like threaded through BTEA. They start thinking, oh my gosh, what if this person thinks I'm a bad person or not good enough? They feel insecure, and then their action to follow would be to people, please. Now, what's really interesting is a lot of people try to control their actions or even you can probably see this from a health perspective. People are like stop binge eating food or stop doing these things. But what's actually happening is if we're not targeting the root cause, it's very difficult to just control our behaviors. If we're not in charge first of the beliefs, thoughts, and emotions that are behind when we
Starting point is 00:14:26 take that action to go to the fridge and binge eat or to escape through drinking or substances or whatever it might be, then we can't really control our actions very much. So there's a huge, really cool body of work about how to rewire the subconscious mind. But to go back to your original question, then we also have a different type of attachment individual. So individuals who are a little more cold, slow to warm up, sometimes fear commitment in relationships. They're often dismissive avoidant. And they usually grow up having to be hyper-independent in their childhood.
Starting point is 00:14:56 So they get a lot of what we call childhood emotional neglect. They're kind of on their own from an early age. And a lot of their fears as adults are that their wounds are around. being trapped, being helpless, being powerless, being seen as weak if they're too vulnerable or open up too much. And usually it goes back to they had either hyper-controlling parents who made them feel engulfed or they grew up in a household where they just literally nobody was ever there and around. And what's interesting is when somebody's engulfing you as a parent, they're still neglecting you because what you are is the extension of them, right? The parent is going,
Starting point is 00:15:31 you should be the character of my story, you should be exactly how I want you to be. There's no attunement to that child. And so that child doesn't get to develop this individual sense of self. So as an adult, they grow up and they're terrified of too much closeness. And you'll see threaded through their BTEA if they believe they're going to be trapped or helpless or powerless or weak if they open up. They start thinking, this person's getting too close. I don't like this. This feels uncomfortable. They start feeling insecure. And then their action or coping mechanism will be to push somebody away. Well, and I want everyone to be thinking about, like, which one of these is You all of us fall into one of these buckets and have some of these that happen.
Starting point is 00:16:06 And then we're going to go through. Tice is going to share how to start healing from these. What are a couple others that might be in terms of these styles that you're talking about these attachment styles? Yeah. So there's four in total. So those are sort of like the most common ones you'll see in terms of our insecure attachments. We have four attachment styles.
Starting point is 00:16:22 So one is anxious attachment, which is the one we talked about the abandonment, the disliked, all be seen as a bad person. One is a dismissive avoidant, the usually childhood emotional neglect, the engulfed one or trapped one. And then we have the secure attachment, which roughly makes up about 50% of the population. And securely attached individuals as children get what we call a lot of approach-oriented behaviors. It seems like a small thing. But what it means is that when a child, when they're young and they're growing up and going throughout their whole childhood, when they cry or they are distressed or frustrated, the parent is attuned enough to them to notice. And then they approach them to try to
Starting point is 00:17:01 soothe them. And what that does is it actually creates this huge foundation of a few different things. A child learns to believe. They get conditioned and wired to believe, I am worthy of love and attention, even in my hard moments. They feel a sense of being confident in who they are, because they feel loved and accepted wholly. And they end up feeling like I can trust people, I can rely on people, and I can regulate through people. So securely attached children, grow into securely attached adults who statistically have the highest level of longevity in relationships, but also report being the most fulfilled in their adult relationships. And then last but not least, we have a fearful avoidant attachment style. And fearful avoidant attachment styles basically
Starting point is 00:17:43 share in the anxious and dismissive side in a way. But really, they grew up in a household where the overarching theme isn't, you know, the need for closeness or the need for a distance. It's that they grew up in a lot of chaos. So this could be for a household where the overarching theme isn't, you know, the need for a For example, mom or dad has a narcissist, has narcissistic personality disorder and there's complex trauma in the home. Or a parent is an alcoholic or has substance use issues or, you know, a lot of chaos, a lot of fighting between parents, a terrible divorce, a child's in the middle at a young age. And basically what this child learns is that their way to attach and survive their childhood is to constantly see two or three steps into the future. because if, for example, mom's an alcoholic, one day mom comes home and she's drinking just a little bit
Starting point is 00:18:30 and she's in a good mood and she's sweet. Another day, mom's drinking a lot and she's cruel and she's scary. Another day, mom's sobering up and she's kind because she feels badly about her behavior. Another day mom's going through withdrawals when she's sobering up and she's a mess. And it's like you never know what you're going to get. So the way this person learns to survive their environment is
Starting point is 00:18:51 I'm going to read between the lines. I'm going to become really, really attuned to people and be able to predict their behavior, notice micro expressions and body language and the moment something's off. But this person usually is extremely hypervigilant as an adult. And what I've actually seen in my practice back when I was working with clients for a long time is those individuals, there was definitely a strong correlation between those individuals having the most autoimmunity type issues longer term.
Starting point is 00:19:16 And I believe that's because they're always in sympathetic nervous system, always always always. And would there be an element of those people, too? They're always trying to control the situation. Totally. Because again, it's chaos. It's like, hey, things are out of control. And I need to try and bring them into control.
Starting point is 00:19:29 Absolutely. And it's either controlling their external environment or this is actually what attachment style I had. And I did the work to become secure. And what I noticed is I was pretty good at not controlling others as an example because I knew what it felt like to be controlled. And I didn't want to be that. But I was always trying to control myself. Always trying to control everything in my environment or body or everything. Well, and I see this with a lot of autoimmune.
Starting point is 00:19:53 disease, I'll give an example. Like, oftentimes, one of the things that keeps a lot of people sick is they become so obsessed about this condition that they have that it's all they think about every single second of the day. And so, like, I have a lot of patients now that I'll work with, and what will happen is, for instance, I have one woman I'm thinking about, and she has autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and all she thinks about every second of the day is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And she is always researching, she's always reading. And listen, I'm not saying, you shouldn't do that some, but you shouldn't do it 24 hours a day and try and control every last thing of every single moment in life around this one condition.
Starting point is 00:20:35 Absolutely. Okay, so here's something really interesting. So the subconscious mind at the end of the day is very survival wired. So it wants to maintain its comfort zone. So when we get imprinted with trauma, let's say you're in an environment where you feel really out of control and your coping mechanism is to try to predict everything so you can control it, that actually forms like your condition. as a person, a big part of your identity without necessarily your conscious mind's awareness.
Starting point is 00:20:58 And so what happens is even when we leave our childhood environment of something like that, funnily enough, the subconscious mind doesn't care about how good you feel emotionally. It just cares that, hey, if we survived our environment, all of our patterning must be working because we're still living. And so what ends up happening is we end up reenacting our same types of patterns over and over again to maintain that subconscious comfort zone because what's in our comfort zone is familiar and thus safe and thus we're more likely to survive. So if you watch the thread and how it follows, what ends up happening is if in childhood to survive, you had to control everything.
Starting point is 00:21:32 As an adult, even if you're out of that environment, you'll easily fall into that same pattern of hyper researching, hyper focusing on things, being hypervigilant about every little thing in your diet, every little thing all day, every day about Hashimoto's thyroiditis because it's actually your conditioning. And so it's just, it went from, I had to be this way as a child to, okay, I'm still as way as an adult. It's not about my parents any longer or the instability in my household. It's not about the instability in my body and what I'm going through. And so a big part of healing, honestly, in my opinion, is we absolutely have to tackle the
Starting point is 00:22:06 physiological components of things, of course. But if we don't take care of that mindset piece and recondition those patterns, then we're just doing the same thing over and over again. It's just in a different form. Yeah. And when I look at a lot of conditions, we obviously had an autoimmune disease. I think cancer is predominantly an emotional, spiritual disease and in this very same way. In Chinese medicine, it's really believed that different emotions you experience affect different organ systems.
Starting point is 00:22:32 So worries affecting the digestive system, not letting go of things from the past. That's really connected to the immune system, the lungs and colon. Anger, frustration, those sort of things, resentment. That's all liver, gallbladder issues. And so, and then fear, of course, we talked with that's adrenal. That's a big part of your. endocrine and hormonal system. And so we know that, hey, we need to go and address those things in order for you to heal. You know, it's even interesting. I'll just share this. You know, and when you
Starting point is 00:23:01 look at Chinese medicine, they really believe that like breast cancer is connected to one side versus it's like, why would you get breast cancer on the left versus on the right? Well, the breasts and generally are seen as being an organ for nourishing a child and also for sexual arousal. And so it's really dependent. So if you are over-nourishing people, you never nourish yourself, you over-nourish others, that's breast cancer on one side versus if you aren't in touch with your feminine side, that's, you'll develop it on the other. And so it's really interesting how different, I mean, just how just having very specific emotions,
Starting point is 00:23:38 how that creates disease in very specific places within your body. So it's so important we start to deal with these things as early as possible and completely as possible. And I think, you know, I remember when I used to see patients full time, now I have a virtual practice and I have people come and practitioners from all over the world called the Health Institute. And we help people work through some of the stuff and a lot of the dietary, of course, and supplements and that sort of thing. But, you know, every single person has an element of emotional health, their emotional health that's contributing to their emotional health. condition. And I remember when I was in full-time practice, people would come in and they would say, my doctor told me I need to reduce stress. And I would say, okay, it's great. What did they tell you to do? Well, they didn't tell me what to do. They just told me I need to reduce stress.
Starting point is 00:24:26 And so this is one of the most common issue. This is why I wanted to have you on the show is that so often people go to doctors, we read online, we hear, we need to reduce stress. But almost nobody knows how to practically do. And it's not just stress. Listen, stress isn't all bad. It's when you're stress 24 hours a day and it's a very negative stress that is you get in this neurological pattern with. It's how you said, and I know what you're talking about. So let's start to go through. I'd love for you to share how do we start to break these attachment styles and these neurological patterns? Yeah, I love this topic. So there are five major pillars overall. And the first pillar starts with actually being able to rewire these core wounds and these core ideas. Because
Starting point is 00:25:05 unless we're in charge of these core beliefs, then like we talked about it, creates thought patterns, emotional patterns, and then behavioral patterns or actions that follow that cycle, that we just feel like we're caught in this loop up and don't even realize it's happening. Like almost to your patient's point of view where you said she was hyper fixated and hyper-focused on Hashimoto's thyroiditis all day, every day. And it's like, well, that's probably just your old BTEA pattern from childhood appearing in a different form. So we have to get to the root.
Starting point is 00:25:32 I really believe in getting to the root. And one of the biggest routes is our core beliefs. And so when we look at these things, what's really interesting is, we're not born with these core beliefs. We don't come into the world thinking, I'm trapped, I'm going to be involved or helping. So they get conditioned into us through repetition and emotion. Now, what's really interesting is I often give individuals this kind of starter kit tool for how to rewire your subconscious mind. There's lots of different ways, but this is a really easy one that your listeners can start even today if they see themselves in some of these patterns.
Starting point is 00:26:00 And it's that first and foremost, I'm not a big believer in affirmations because affirmations are just your conscious mind speaking to your conscious mind. the conscious mind speaks language, the subconscious mind speaks in emotions and images. So if I say to you, okay, whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant. You probably flash an image of a pink elephant. And it's because your conscious mind here is do not, but your subconscious mind just speaks in emotions and images. And it's really instantaneous that way. So what we have to be able to do is feed to our own subconscious mind for a long enough period of time, a new idea. that opposes this old one. So let's just say for simplicity's sake, we're going to work on the
Starting point is 00:26:42 core belief, I am not good enough. But people can fill in anything here. I'm abandoned, I'm trapped, I'm helpless and powerless, all these core beliefs. First step, there's three steps to the tool, is we find the core belief that's affecting us and it's opposite. So I am not good enough. I am good enough. Second step, we have to speak to our subconscious mind. So what we do here is we actually need emotions and images. And what's really interesting is every memory we ever have is just a container for emotions and images. So if I were to say to you, okay, tell me your favorite childhood memory and let's pretend it was you at the beach with your parents, and maybe you see the images of the beach and the waves and the sandcastle and your parents, and we've all seen
Starting point is 00:27:23 people when they tell an old story. They laugh or they smile, but the emotions are there. So what we do is we need a repetition of emotion and imagery. That means repetition of speaking to our subconscious, because that's firing and wiring new neural pathways. So in step two, after we, We find the opposite of the core belief, I am good enough. Then we come up with 10 for repetition, memories for emotion and imagery of times we actually felt good enough. Now, they can be small things. They don't have to be huge accolades or accomplishments.
Starting point is 00:27:53 They can be things like, I got out of bed at my first alarm this morning, and I didn't hit the snooze button. And we want to speak in the positive framing. So 10 things that we feel good about, because what we're doing is we're retrieving images and emotion for a subconscious mind. Then research into neuroplasticity tells us that it takes 21 days of firing and wiring neural pathways for them to really solidify and be very likely to stick. So step three, after we come up with our 10 memories for how we actually were good enough, then we record them into our phone and we listen back for 21 days focusing on the images and emotions. This tool works exceptionally well.
Starting point is 00:28:31 And it's very simple. It takes two, three minutes a day. and that truly will help us drop these painful old ideas that create all these thought patterns and emotional patterns and unhealthy behaviors that follow, it will really help us drop all these ideas from childhood or previous conditioned experiences that we may have been carrying for a very long time. If you've been doing everything right, eating clean, exercising, but somehow you're still not feeling your best, your energy's dragging, your memory is slipping, and it's frustrating because
Starting point is 00:29:00 you know there's more to your potential. Well, what if the issue isn't just in your routine, but it's deep down inside your cells? You know, you're investing in the best supplements working out regularly and sticking to a clean diet, but if your cells are stuck in what's called cell danger response, all the hard work might not be paying off as it should. Think of your cells like a house under renovation. You can bring in the highest quality materials like the best supplements in clean foods, but if the workers inside the house or are on lockdown because of a storm, nothing gets done. The material is just pile up unused.
Starting point is 00:29:40 That's what happens when your cells are in CDR. They can't fully use the good stuff you're giving them. Getting out of CDR, the cell danger response, is the key to unlocking your body's full potential. When your cells are no longer in protective mode, they can finally use the nutrients, hormones and energy you're working so hard to provide. That's when everything starts to click. Your energy improves. Your workouts become more efficient and you start to feel like yourself again.
Starting point is 00:30:12 Go to beyondbloodwork.com to learn how to break free from cell danger response and make the effort pay off. So one of the things you're talking about here is, so one thing we need to do is we need to identify. What is this thing we're feeling, right? being aware of, hey, do I feel like I've been abandoned? Do I feel like I feel trapped? Or you're saying, you don't need to address that as much. You just need to do the opposite of when have you felt that somebody was there for you? Or one of you felt like you were enough or good enough? You know, one of the things I tend to do, I think I've seen in, as I've looked at sort of the, you know, psychology journals and is that oftentimes things are tied to memories. And so that's one
Starting point is 00:30:57 thing I know we're totally aligned on in terms of like, you know, what, if you, you I'll share for myself, growing up, I had a teacher tell me essentially I wasn't smart. And then I was diagnosed with ADHD by a couple medical doctors and I thought, well, I'm not smart. And so I had this thing repetitively playing in my head. When I got to college, I had a teacher telling me, Josh, you're a great writer. And like, it was like for myself, I call it a memory transplant in a book I wrote. And basically it's like I took that old memory. I said, that wasn't true.
Starting point is 00:31:28 This new memory was true. And I replayed that in my head constantly over and over and over again. Is there an element of people needing to go back and say, hey, this is where it started or this is the memory that's negative? Or is that not even necessary? And you just need to go and embrace that positive memory and put that on, or those 10 memories or whatever it is, and put those on replay. Yeah, it's a great question.
Starting point is 00:31:51 So something that's really interesting to your point is if, so repetition and emotion fires and wires, but if we have an emotional experience that's strong enough, it can actually create an instant imprint. It's very rare, so I often don't tell people that too much, but it can happen. And you see it in the negative side all the time.
Starting point is 00:32:07 If somebody, God forbid, is in an earthquake tomorrow, they could leave that earthquake and literally feel unsafe in the world, having an immediate belief system, I am unsafe because of going through a really acute trauma. It happens on the positive side, but it's so much less common. That's such a cool story to hear.
Starting point is 00:32:23 Well, you know, and here's the thing. I wouldn't say that that one story, it fixed everything immediately, but I would say it was like a 50% bump, 70% bump. I mean, it was enough that it made an impact on me. I think it probably also makes a difference in terms of, you know, there's a J.R.R. Tolkien quote, I love, and it's the praise of the praiseworthy is above our awards. And maybe the more praiseworthy you see a person or the more important they are in your eyes, if they are telling you, you're good enough.
Starting point is 00:32:49 You did a great job. That's maybe more meaningful than a random person that really, or maybe someone you don't think that much of. Anyone we put on a pedestal, yeah. And this is what's powerful about God in reading the Bible is that you have the most powerful, amazing, loving, virtuous being that's beyond anything we can imagine telling you, you're my child, you're an heir, you're a king, you're a priest, you're a queen, you know, you were created with a purpose.
Starting point is 00:33:15 You know, there's nothing like that. Absolutely. And that's something that's so healing and so profound, especially the exposure to the repetition and emotion of those experiences, right, of being able to step outside of those old conditioned patterns. I love that you said that. But to go back to your question, it's that repetition and emotion, just like you said, right? It's that you repeated it. And so that's what gave you that new imprint and that new belief system, the memory transplant.
Starting point is 00:33:39 You almost like accidentally did auto suggestion on yourself. So that's like a really beautiful place to start for people. And the more emotion you get from it, the more you can see like I'm worthy of connection or love. And that can be through people in your life, people you care. about people you look up to, but it can also be from your relationship to God. All of those things can bring healing to your subconscious mind and painful condition pattern. So that's the first major pillar. The second pillar of healing is learning to meet our own needs.
Starting point is 00:34:09 I think that so many people go through life and they have no idea what their needs are, and we are so unique. And almost going back to your point again, you know, when we can meet our own needs, it's actually how we develop a strong sense of self, right? Because if you look at somebody, let's say, who's anxiously attached, and they have no idea how to meet their needs for validation, for encouragement, for soothing. Well, they need to outsource all the time. So it's almost like they go through life going to every gas station with their tank fully on empty. And we've all experienced if your gas tank's on empty and you pull into a gas station, you're a little anxious.
Starting point is 00:34:43 You're a little nervous. You're like, it better be open this gas station. And these are these people that are codependent. Yes. Right? It's like they go from, and I'm thinking about person. It's like person to person to person like sitting there saying, please tell me that I'm good enough. Yes, definitely.
Starting point is 00:34:58 And interestingly enough, to your point of that this is the codependence side, we have the counterdependent side. So the individual is afraid of closeness. And what's interesting about them is that people think they're good self-soothers. They're actually not. They're constantly self-numbing. So they will find their soothing through alcohol or food or video games or binge watching television. They're always still avoiding themselves, which means that they know. never work through their problems because our emotions are our guidance mechanisms. They're always
Starting point is 00:35:24 giving us feedback. So, you know, for example, if I feel, you know, upset about something, I'm going to take that emotion. And I've learned this over the years. I didn't start out this way. But I'm going to take that emotion. I'm going to go, okay, I feel hurt or angry or frustrated about the situation with Bob. And I'm going to be like, okay, so what are my emotions telling me? Maybe I need a boundary. Maybe I need to speak up here. Maybe I need to get clearer in this conversation or ask for context about something that I don't understand. So I'm going to use my emotions as feedback to discover what need I have
Starting point is 00:35:55 and then I'm going to action out that need. And what that does is it allows me as a human being to constantly solve my problems instead of the problems to either build up or be swept under the rug. And so our emotions, you know, some people get scared of their emotions and they numb them out.
Starting point is 00:36:08 Some people try to constantly suit through everybody else, but our emotions are there for us. They're perfect feedback mechanisms always telling us when something is out of alignment. And I think society and our culture and our conditioning has been, oh, emotions are bad, don't express them, or emotions are something you'd give to other people to fix for you. But the reality is our emotions are telling us about our
Starting point is 00:36:28 needs. And if we learn to listen and actually pay attention to the emotional feedback we get, we can actually no need solve all the problems in our lives. And we keep a clear mind and an open heart that way. And so that's that next really big pillar of healing is we have to learn to say, okay, if something's making me uncomfortable, this is feedback for me. And I can listen to it and unpack what that is, action out a solution, and then I'm soothing myself and I'm constantly moving through life in a relationship to myself and in a relationship to growing. Well, and this is, of course, this might be another pillar, but if not, maybe it's encompassed
Starting point is 00:37:04 in this. But this is key to relationships. If you ever want to have a good relationship with somebody, whether it's a spouse, someone you're dating, your kids, your parents, friends, coworkers, anyone, you've got to be able to have a level of self-awareness in this emotional. intelligence to be able to say, what am I feeling right now? Why am I feeling this? What can I do about it? And then, and then what that allows you to do then is also be able to step and say, what is that person thinking? Are they hurting right now? Okay, that hurt person said something hurtful to me, but, but, but I have enough
Starting point is 00:37:33 self-esteem and enough wisdom to know, okay, I am who I am. And I can now reach out to this person and love them and care for them and see how I can meet their need. And so that's one of the powerful things that happens, as you're talking about, when somebody's able to build that level of self-awareness, emotional intelligence of saying, hey, what is this emotion telling me? What do I do about it? It's also key for good communication, right? I mean, it's so, so important. 100%.
Starting point is 00:37:57 So you touched on it. That's the next pillar. So it's actually about communication. And so I think you touched on a couple of things indirectly, which is the first is that when we have less core wounds, we personalize things significantly less. So when we have less poor wounds, we have the room to say, oh, I can see that person's hurt. If I have core wounds that say I'm not good enough, I'm unlovable, I'm a bad person and somebody speaks to me in a negative way, my mind goes there. Let me give you the biggest telltale
Starting point is 00:38:27 of somebody is in this phase you're talking about is when they're offended all the time. Yes. I mean, we're living in a world today where everyone is always offended about everything or at least a lot of people. And those people, I mean, that is a major character flaw. If somebody is constantly offended about something, it is a weak form of character. It's very, very weak. I look at it as they have a lot of core wounds. They have a lot of trauma. And it is weak in that sense for sure.
Starting point is 00:38:57 But I find that the approach to it, like if they then think, oh, my gosh, I'm weak. If they hear that, then it just adds more core wounding, right? They think, well, I'm weak on top of all over time. I think it's important to be able to say, hey, you probably would happen. And I can actually speak to this, you know, being in practice with the way. people for so many years, what would happen is those people could be really strong, incredible people, but if they had a lot of complex trauma growing up over and over again, then there's meaning behind everything.
Starting point is 00:39:25 You know, somebody leaves the laundry on the floor and it means I'm disrespected. Somebody, you know, speaks with a sharp tone. It means I'm unlovable. You know, everybody jumps to the same conclusions of their old core wounds, and that's why it's so important to recondition that. Yeah. So recondition those core wounds gives us a room to not personalize things so much, gives us a room to see outside of ourselves and that little selfish space.
Starting point is 00:39:44 we can get into in the ego mind. And then when we learn our needs, we can start self-soothing. And then what we do next in that third pillar of five is we then learn to communicate those needs in our relationships. And, you know, I'll speak to the communication piece from a personal perspective. I was somebody who was fearful avoided. So I was somebody who would meet everybody else's needs, almost codependently, never share my own because I felt like I can't rely on people or open up or share too much.
Starting point is 00:40:10 So I was really, you know, I would hold back the things that were vulnerable to me. And I spend a lot of life feeling like I was alone, which was another core wound. Like I had to do everything on my own and then do everything for other people. But there was a very big lack of reciprocity in my relationships. And when I did a lot of poor wound work and healing and then learned to meet my own needs, I started feeling like I had a really strong, stable sense of self. But then the next step was, okay, I have to learn to communicate to other people. And something really beautiful happened.
Starting point is 00:40:38 I saw that like, oh, people do love me. People really do care about me. And they will put in an effort. when I share what I need. But because I was so quiet about that and so unwilling to be vulnerable, I always felt like nobody really cared that much about what I was experiencing.
Starting point is 00:40:55 And everybody always thought I was good because I always seemed good and fine. Oh, she's got it together. She's strong. But it was really beautiful to practice vulnerability. Practice also receiving from people and learning to open up and say, hey, I'm having a bad day.
Starting point is 00:41:07 I could use a hug or I could use some encouragement right now or I could use. And so being able to share that and allow myself to receive co-regulation was a really beautiful thing. I mean, how many people, I'm thinking about marriages here as an example. I mean, how many people are in marriages right now where they feel like, well, my spouse isn't validating me enough, isn't supporting me enough, isn't. But a lot of it has to take to us personal responsibility not communicating our needs.
Starting point is 00:41:33 You know, it's just. This is like the biggest truth ever. I used to joke with people. The first year I was in private practice with clients. I used to see people come in and I would get nervous. you know, because it was my first year, and people would say, Taise, I've been communicating with my husband for years. He never listens to me.
Starting point is 00:41:49 He never hears anything that I say. I'm just here as like a Hail Mary, like last resort. It's not going to work anyways. My relationship's probably over. And I'd be like, oh, no, this is going to be a tough case. And then I would start asking them about how they communicated. And there's three important pillars of communication, if you want to communicate properly in a foundational sense.
Starting point is 00:42:08 The first one is something called positive framing. Okay? There is a big difference if you want to get seen and heard and your need to actually be listened to by somebody you love. There is a huge difference between saying, you don't care about me, you never spent enough time with me versus saying, hey, I'm feeling disconnected. I'd love to spend some time together this weekend. Let's plan a fun date. Right? Yeah, so different.
Starting point is 00:42:29 Yeah, so different. Part of this is because we all got conditioned in a system of punishment reward and in classical conditioning. So basically what happens is when we negatively frame all of us, even if we grew up in a problem. pretty secure childhood, have this tendency to become defensive. We don't hear, oh, my partner wants me to spend more time and misses me and wants to connect. We hear my partner's criticizing me. We go into defense shutdown mode. And we start reacting from our own perspective. So positive framing goes a very long way. I used to have clients, I'd be like, okay, how do you communicate to your partner? And they say, I tell my partner, he doesn't listen to me. He's not making any effort.
Starting point is 00:43:04 It's just to work. Yeah. Real communication. It almost honest, doesn't count for anything. Like, I actually think that does more harm. It's almost better to be quiet and say nothing at all. Yeah. Which I don't obviously encourage because people need to communicate. But so positive framing goes a lot more. Another big thing I would see in my practice is people, I always say to people,
Starting point is 00:43:25 you have to paint a picture for what your need looks like because you could say to your wife, for example, I need support. And your wife might all week long take out the garbage and do the chores and do all these things thinking she's supporting you, but maybe for you support meant validating. Words of affirmation, encouragement. And so we have to paint a picture because we all come from separate backgrounds of conditioning, meaning we all
Starting point is 00:43:49 see needs in certain ways. We all have to make the joke that, like, if you have in a different attachment style than somebody else, it's almost like you have a different subconscious set of rules for what love and connection is supposed to look like. And it would be like you and I are becoming friends, and we want to sit down and play a board game.
Starting point is 00:44:08 And, you know, you have the rules for Monopoly and I have the rules for Scrabble. Like, there's just going to be friction and confusion sometimes. So communicating by positive framing, by painting a picture of what the need looks like, hey, instead of saying, you don't care about me, you don't spend enough time with me, hey, I miss you, I want to spend time with you, then paint a picture. Let's plan a fun date night on the weekend, right? You say that to your spouse instead.
Starting point is 00:44:30 So that goes a long way. And then the third thing is for people who are a little less vulnerable or more avoidant, to people in the attachment style spectrum. So the fearful avoidance or dismissive avoidance, if you're learning to communicate, real communication isn't. I told you once and I'll never have to tell you again and you should never forget.
Starting point is 00:44:53 Real communication, true embodied communication so that you can receive and connect with people in your life means you can remind people. You can say, hey. You know, because, and I fell into this trap when I started communicating, I used to think, I told this person six months ago if they care, they'll never forget.
Starting point is 00:45:09 But it's like, no, we all have decades of our own conditioning of how we think we're supposed to relate to people. So don't be afraid to see your needs through and say, hey, we're really doing a good job of being present or of, you know, spending time on weekends. And I noticed we trailed off. Can we go back to that? Don't be afraid to see our needs. That's good.
Starting point is 00:45:25 Can I tell you one other thing that Chelsea does a good job with me on my wife? So she does a good job of. And you know what? When I first saw her doing this, part of me thought like, okay, she's like conditioning me. she's training, it's interesting. But like, if I do something around the house that is not typically within my, like, what I spend a lot of time doing because I work, I travel quite a bit, like, in terms of just doing those things.
Starting point is 00:45:51 But like, if I'll do something like regularly, like, I don't know, do the dishes a lot, okay, or clean the whole kitchen, she'll say, thank you so much, honey. You know, or, you know, if I'm bringing Arwen out on, like, for a day, bring her to a jump park or a playground or we're gone a few hours and she has a ball, like, oh, you're such a good dad, you know. So I think that maybe that's one other thing, I think, too, that, I mean, men really appreciate, I'm sure women do as well. But that sort of, and some of it might have to do, hey, what's your love language?
Starting point is 00:46:16 But, you know, for me, part of mine is words of affirmation. And so I think that that is something that, you know, could be a powerful follow-up for some people, too. Well, I think that you hit the nail in the head with that, which is for sure, like, there's a love language component to that. But I just think when we get into relationships and you're thinking of being in a marriage with somebody for decades, how do you want to give feedback? Do you want to get feedback and say, oh, you didn't do this? Or do you want to get feedback by saying thank you and positively reinforcing?
Starting point is 00:46:45 And honestly, it does have a conditioning perspective because it's a reward path. Right? Like there's actually a truth there. But on top of that, it builds a relationship on terms where that's how you communicate. And when I first was with my husband, I told him, you know, early into dating, I said, like, when we have things that we want to go through, first of all, We're not going to just keep the peace and shove things under the rug because that doesn't actually keep the peace, right? That just causes resentment.
Starting point is 00:47:11 We're going to talk about things directly. But we're going to do it in a healthy way. And we're going to do it where when we see the actions, we're going to validate each other for them. We're going to be like, hey, thank you. I notice you're making an effort because it does. It makes somebody feel like, okay, I'm doing it right. I'm on the right path and the right track. And then we end up building a foundation in a relationship where that's how we communicate needs to each other.
Starting point is 00:47:32 And that's how we follow up. So I love that you said that. Well, and you alluded to this as one. just want people to understand this too is that you know I remember when and I think I've talked about this recently too when Chelsea and I first got married I um her her love language is quality time yeah and I thought well quality time is hey we're sitting on the couch we're watching a show together like that counts and then and then a few weeks in I started realizing like just with certain interactions I thought okay this doesn't count right now this is not
Starting point is 00:48:03 counting. And so I told her to, and so we started using these, these terminologies like, I'm like, where's your love tank? Is it half full? Is it three fours full? Where is it at? And at certain times she'd like, well, it's like a quarterful. And I'm like, golly, man, I got to keep filling this thing. And I realize with my wife, like, so my wife, she has a chiropractic degree. She is, I mean, spends a lot of time in the book. She's very, very deep. And so she really likes very deep, intimate conversations. Look in the eyes, talking for two hours about everything from, you know, to physiology. And so it's like, like for her, like that really fills her up. And so I had to really
Starting point is 00:48:38 learn that over time of like, so for her, if I'm going to reward her in some way, you know, in the way that I should, it's for me, it's doing things to where it's rewarding her with quality time or being conscious of, hey, here's how I serve her and love my wife with quality time. I also made me think about this too, you know, in the Bible when it talks about love your neighbor as yourself, there's an element there as well of, it is of yourself. But I think part of that meaning is as well as like put your put yourself in that person choose how do they like to be loved and that's really how you get to truly there's a word in the bible in terms of getting to know somebody that's even related to sexual intercourse but it's also knowing somebody it's what are
Starting point is 00:49:15 their needs what is their love language what really fills them up and um yeah getting to know your spouse in that way is you know obviously a big thing so you touch on the the love language and i i uh this is such an interesting top of conversation so dr. Gary Chapman talks with the five love language is. And for anybody who doesn't know what they are, their quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service and gifts.
Starting point is 00:49:41 And I used that framework for a long time with clients. And then what I actually learned is that our needs land more deeply than our love languages because they're more specific. I can see that, yeah. So for myself, I actually, you know, similar to your wife, I like deep conversation and I'm very present
Starting point is 00:49:59 and things like this. And I realized with my, my husband. I realized that, okay, you know, I would always say quality time, but just I had such a laugh when you said that, like, sitting on the couch watching a television show doesn't count. It just doesn't land. And I realized, okay, yes, it's quality time is like the umbrella, but what I actually need is emotional connection and depth and the ability to be present with each other and share vulnerably. And those are needs. And so I realized, oh, I'm not going to communicate through love languages anymore. I'm just going to go to needs because it just helps us feel more connected. And maybe what I'll do is share
Starting point is 00:50:31 a little PDF of all the most common needs and relationships that you can post on the show. Well, even getting in with my wife, Chelsea, and listen, we'll have Chelsea on. Chelsea's finding me sharing all this, too, in terms of, and she's happy to share mine here too. But for her, like, I think it would be very much be, we're on the same page. We're talking about something theologically. We're on the same page. We're talking about this thing together that is, you know, anyway. So, but, yeah, I mean, it can get obviously more specific.
Starting point is 00:50:54 And so, yeah, we'll leave this in the show notes here. What Taiz shared here on this PDF in terms of how do you. really deeply connect with and serving the person you love. And listen, this is with your spouse, but it's with everybody. Like, I'm thinking about, like, one of my best friends, Dan, and then Jordan, you know, it's like, okay, for those guys, there are very specific things that, you know, I can do to serve them and love them and help fulfill their dreams, you know, and the same thing with my two daughters, you know, everybody's unique.
Starting point is 00:51:22 Absolutely, friends, family members, co-workers, everything. Do you think it's an element of pretty hard today, though? I mean, one of the things I think that most relationships today, there's a lot of superficial stuff going on. People are so busy today that I think that there's probably like I saw a study recently where they asked a group of large, very large group of people, how many of you feel like you have a best friend or a group of very close friends? And it's not very high. I mean, there's a lot of people who feel like, oh, I know a lot of people. I have a lot of friends, but do I have any really deep, like that are there for me when I need them. I can call them anytime. I can have a really deep
Starting point is 00:51:57 conversation with it, me that fills me up. I don't know that there's a lot of. I don't know that there's a lot of people that can say that. There was a study that was done by Julian Holt in 2010, I believe, and I think it had 280,000 participants, and they studied loneliness and the impact of loneliness on our physical health, and they actually equated to basically smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, like, so crazy. And then somebody actually did a study on that study and said, well, what is loneliness and what constitutes as loneliness?
Starting point is 00:52:28 And to your point, a lot of people. reported having a social group or a community or people around them, but feeling extremely lonely. And what they found was the meaningful difference was the level of vulnerability people shared in their relationships. I love that. That's so good. Well, on the other end, there's a Harvard study. It's almost 90 years old that showed the number one factor for longevity is having close,
Starting point is 00:52:51 meaningful, supportive relationships. So, I mean, one can take years off your life, like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The other one is that, you know, having connections is that the greatest predictor of, you know, lifespan. Wow. And that vulnerability comes through depth that comes through presence, it comes through sharing. It comes through being able to talk about our needs with each other. I wonder if this is why women live longer than men. I mean, there's probably some other things, but I just want to share. I think that vulnerability tends to be something I think generally, you know, women tend to be better at than men, you know, in terms of, and women tend to live a couple years, you know, live longer than men.
Starting point is 00:53:25 And in our society, it's been conditioned that way for a long time, right? You know, you get a lot of men growing up, it's like, don't show your emotions. Don't be a cry, baby, toughen up, be a man. And it's a lot of that messaging that you get. And I think there's a place in the world, absolutely, for grit and toughness. It's being able to persevere. And I think that's really important, but they don't have to be mutually exclusive things. It doesn't have to be grit and tough we can be somebody who knows how to be tough and grind and push through hard moments and be strong, but also have that attitude of vulnerability in our relationships and how we carry ourselves. Walk me through sort of last thing here.
Starting point is 00:54:00 if somebody's saying here right now, they listen to this podcast, they're saying, wow, this is really powerful. Because by the way, this has been a really amazing show. Like,
Starting point is 00:54:08 you've brought so much wisdom, so much great advice here. What are some things people can start to do today? If somebody's saying, you know what, I do have a little bit of all of this, and I want to get emotionally healthy. I want to be able to break through these barriers.
Starting point is 00:54:22 What are the things that, I know you've already given a lot of practical advice, but what are the, you know, step one, two, three, or what are the things they need to do? Before I summarize, rise a couple steps, can I tell you the other two pillars really quick?
Starting point is 00:54:31 Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. We only did three of five. The other two will be really brief, but number four of five is regulating your nervous system. And you probably have a lot to say about that as well, but it's so important if we come from a background or a set of traumatic experiences where we're spending way more time in sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight mode. And fight or flight is really fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, chronic people pleasing. And so if we're constantly coming from that space, we're.
Starting point is 00:54:59 I mean, that has a huge impact on our physical health and well-being, but it has such an impact. There's a lot of research that also shows when we're in sympathetic nervous system too much. We even misread people's facial expressions. We assume the worst. We tend to misread their micro-expressions, their body language, their tone of voice. And what we want to be able to do is to get into paris sympathetic nervous system. And this is where I really think a relationship to God has a powerful impact as well, because this can be through things like meditation and mindfulness and prayer.
Starting point is 00:55:29 or even through service and contribution, research shows that we're more likely to be operating from a parasympathetic state. When we're contributing, we're often co-regulating more effectively. And so that's a huge pillar of our actual healing and growth as well. That's so good. It's so good. There are a lot of things you can do in nutrition. But I do, I do believe that prayer meditation, those practices serving others, is the best
Starting point is 00:55:50 way to get in that parasympathetic state. Yeah, absolutely. And if we can train our body to be there for 21 days or more. So if we can have, you know, there's this window when we wake up, the morning where we're producing more alpha and theta brain waves. And so first hour that we wake up and last hour that we go to sleep, we're more suggestible, meaning that our subconscious mind is more open to being reconditioned. And so if we can have like a daily practice during those windows of time, we're actually
Starting point is 00:56:15 training our body and mind to connect better in that way and more likely to build neural pathways that stick and have that become our new subconscious comfort zone. That's so good. Yeah. And then the last pillar is healthy boundary setting in our lives. And, you know, I used to think of as somebody who was kind of codependent in the past. And, you know, I used to think that boundaries were the separation. But a boundary is adjoining because a boundary isn't just, oh, I'm just going to show myself when it's a yes.
Starting point is 00:56:41 And I'm just going to say yes to everybody. No, a boundary is being able to let people truly know you in your totality. Let people know your good days and your bad days. Your yeses and your no, the things that make you feel comfortable and uncomfortable. And that's really, you know, going back to that topic of vulnerability. vulnerability. It's vulnerable to set boundaries because we're sharing, you know, hey, this is not comfortable for me or this is my domain or this is where I have to draw the line and we're letting ourselves be seen and heard and known in that. And so that's not just something that's
Starting point is 00:57:11 really important for healing and for our physical well-being and, you know, actual physical health, but it's something that's so important for our relationship so we can be truly known and connected for a personal well-being, the relationship we have to ourselves. And I also think that that's such an important part of our relationship to God, because if we can have boundaries around who we are. We have time and space to do things that truly nurture us. Well, you know, we read in the Bible that Jesus woke up early and he went to pray. You know, it's just modeling what he did. I know for myself, I started noticing this in college. When I woke up in the morning and I spent about anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, even if it's five minutes,
Starting point is 00:57:45 but I spent time doing my spiritual triathlon. It's where I really spent time just being grateful. I read my Bible and I'd spend some time in prayer slash meditation. And I would do that in the mornings. And I thought, I mean, the way that it impacted the rest of my of me having this sort of, you know, filled with the Holy Spirit, this present time, this consciousness of this emotional, you know, this spiritual intelligence of myself and others and what I was called to do that day. I mean, it just literally transformed my entire day. So I truly believe one of the most powerful things you can do to transform yourself as Taisus is talking about is block off, even if it's just 10 minutes in the morning, and spend time, you know, read a few Bible verses, pray,
Starting point is 00:58:21 meditate on what God is telling you, and then go on with your day. but it really is such a powerful, powerful practice. Ties, I want to say, thanks so much for coming on. I mean, I love this conversation. You've done such an amazing job of sharing how we can break through these emotional, mental, spiritual boundaries and really create true connection with people. And I love your teachings on attachment theory. It's really, I think, good at getting to the root of the issue.
Starting point is 00:58:48 One of the things I always try and do via being a practitioner is getting to the root of the problems via health. And I love how you do the very same thing as a counselor, helping people get to the root of these emotional issues and have a real practical way for them to be set free and to love their best life. So thanks so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and your work and what you're up to? Thank you so much. So I will share, but I just want to say really briefly, I told you this before the podcast, but you were my first health teacher. So, you know, I found your work online and what I actually loved about it is that you got to the root of things as well. so I always appreciated that about your work
Starting point is 00:59:26 and so honored to be here with you. And then where they can learn about myself is I put daily videos on YouTube. It's Personal Development School dash Taise Gibson. I'm on Instagram, which is at Personal Development underscore school, and I have a free attachment quiz
Starting point is 00:59:39 at personal development school.com. Awesome. I want to encourage you guys check out Taise's YouTube page, her Instagram page, also her website. Again, she's putting out incredible content information.
Starting point is 00:59:50 Thank you so much for coming on today. And I just want to say, hey, thanks everybody for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Shackshire. Remember each and every week I'm coming to you with content information on how to grow in body, mind, and spirit and take your health and your life's next level. Also, I just want to say thank you to all of you who are on mission with me, with Taise, with all of us, to help people heal, to help people transform. So thank you for sharing this. Thank you for commenting and liking. And thank you all of you who are subscribed here. That allows us to bring
Starting point is 01:00:18 on amazing guests like Taise here and like we've had Kerry Underwood and Dave Ramsey and Mark Hyman and so many others. So I just want to say, hey, thank you so much here for being part of the show. And I'll see you on the next episode.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.