The Sabrina Zohar Show - 213: Why Do I Take Things So Personally? W/ Dr. Jacob Ambrose

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

If you have ever asked yourself what is wrong with me, or wondered why you take everything so personally, this episode is for you. Sabrina sits down with licensed psychologist Dr. Jacob Ambrose to unpack rejection sensitivity, why one comment can send you into a spiral, and where that deep fear of not being enough actually comes from. They get into the childhood core beliefs that convince you the problem is you, and how anxious attachment keeps you chasing outside validation just to feel okay on the inside. From limerence and obsessive thinking to the anxious avoidant dynamic, holding onto hope after a breakup, and the myth of being discarded, this conversation reframes the traits you were taught to hate about yourself as the exact things that make you powerful. If you are ready to stop the self-attack, understand your patterns, and choose yourself instead of shrinking to keep everyone comfortable, press play, babe. You are not too much, and you are not broken. Work with Dr. Jacob Pre-order Sabrina's book coming out October 2026,⁠ "Why Am I Like This?"⁠ Get your free workbook and access to the companion course after pre-ordering 'Why Am I Like This?' by filling out the form at the bottom of the page at http://sabrinazohar.com/book Take the new and improved dating quiz! sabrinazohar.com/quiz If you’re ready to slow down, trust your instincts, and break your old dating patterns, the Healthy Relationship Foundations Course walks you through it step-by-step  ⁠HERE!⁠ If you’re serious about changing your dating patterns instead of repeating them, the Art of Going Slow course helps you unlearn urgency, regulate your nervous system, and build real connection without rushing, chasing, or abandoning yourself ⁠HERE!⁠ Get Ad free ⁠HERE!⁠  Watch on Spotify. Spotify subscribers get fewer ads on my video. Want to work with Sabrina? ⁠HERE!⁠  Get merch for The Sabrina Zohar Show ⁠HERE!⁠  Don't forget to follow ⁠Sabrina⁠ and ⁠The Sabrina Zohar Show⁠ on Instagram and ⁠Sabrina ⁠on TikTok! Video now available on ⁠YOUTUBE!⁠ Chapters: 0:00 Why Do I Take Things So Personally 4:25 ADHD In Women vs Men 9:21 Stop Watering Yourself Down 14:23 Anxious Or Avoidant Attachment 18:09 Is It Always The Avoidant's Fault 23:12 Dopamine And Chasing Love 27:53 Rejection Sensitivity And RSD 32:41 Why Criticism Feels So Personal 36:33 The Myth Of Being Discarded 41:29 When Is Hope Healthy Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formerly known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A.Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

hear that it's your money calling it wants a promotion elevate your savings with the scotia high interest savings account always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest conditions apply visit scotia bank.com slash hisa to learn more scotia bank you're richer than you think rejection sucks it doesn't matter who's doing it the one being rejected or you are being rejected and sometimes we feel like, man, is it just me or does anybody else feel like that? Having ADHD, neurodivergence, anxious attachment style, sometimes you can think the world is stacked against you. But what if I told you that's actually your superpower? What if I told you that's actually what makes you so special and unique?

I'll be here to remind you of that again. Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to another episode of the Sabrina Zohar Show. My name is Sabrina Zohar and I am your host. Babes, I'm so excited. We have Dr. J. Ambrose here. We're talking about all the things. You guys have written in an ass so many fucking times about neurodivergence, ADHD, rejection sensitivity, shadow work, anxious attachment in a different conversation.

And what if I told you that all the things that we've been conditioned to believe about ourselves are actually not really true? And instead, we can find the strength and the power in all of these aspects and not think of them as like a mark against us. Well, that's what we're going to go over today. And I'm so excited. Guys, as always, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being part of the family. please don't forget right and review the show, share it with a friend. If you guys want, we have the free quiz right now on the website.

What kind of lover are you quiz? You could join one of the courses, work one-on-one, ask a question, or just be here as always. Please note the disclosure, as I always like to give, I have ADHD, I speak fast, I curse a lot. And that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with either of us if that doesn't work for you. But I don't tailor who I am to keep people in the show. In the same way, I would hope that you don't tailor who you are to keep people dating you. So I just want to give that preface. The show is marked as explicit for that reason

so that we can give you the choice to make if that doesn't work for you and that is okay. We just ask for kindness because we are building a community here and I want you guys to feel supported if this is the home you feel supported in. So as always, thank you, thank you. And without further ado, let's get right on into it, shall we? Dr. Jay.

Hey. I'm so excited to have you. This has been, what, two years of the making. Yeah. Welcome to the Sabrina Zohar show. It's good to be here. It's good to be here in the flesh. It's wild seeing you outside of a phone box.

I mean, I feel like everybody feels that way, though, once they probably see you in person. I think the internet friend thing, like anybody we've had on, when you see each other, you're like, I feel so close to you and you're like, wait, we've never actually met. It's the weirdest thing. But I'm so glad and grateful to have you here. Before we dive into a lot of amazing stuff that we're going to talk about, could you please tell us a little bit more about you, how you got into this and just who you are? Yeah, of course. Well, for those who don't know, my name's Dr. Jacob Ambrose. I'm a licensed psychologist, love psychology.

I'm currently the owner of a private practice called Restore Psychology, right? I have a really cool, strong clinical team. My specialty really revolves around helping people become unstuck from old patterns. They have tons of awareness. Like, okay, I know I have anxious attachment. I know I have this attraction to toxic people, but I'm still stuck in old patterns. So I help those people sort of who already know the bars sort of of their mental cages break free through more practical steps, more explosive energy through like emotional

brain stuff we'll talk about. And I also specialize in neurodivergents, working with ADHD, stuff like that. And I also co-lead a podcast with a Dr. Vincent Barbieri called Two Doos Talking Therapy. So if you ever want to see fire and ice, you know, collide, that's a good place to go. And if you want to check it out,

you can check out my Instagram, I guess. Dr. Jacob Ambrose is where you can find me and tune in, yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll link everything in the show notes that people can find you because I'm a big fan, longer table, not higher friends. Like, I am a big fan of being like, yeah, go check out their show.

it's a different dichotomy. It's two different people having different conversations and you get to learn something from it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so it's funny. When we were thinking about

because now you're talking about feeling stuck and I'm like, I'm just going to put my notes aside and be like, ooh, I like this. But I think I hear so often, right? We're on the same side of the internet. My audience hears me say that all the fucking time, but we are, right?

We see the same videos. We know what people are saying. And I think we see a villainization of either of attachment styles or just, you're so insecure and that's bad and you should not do this. But what I love about the work that you also do is the way you talk about ADHD, the way you talk about anxiety, the way you talk about all these things is how it's like,

it doesn't have to be a negative, right? But I wanted to really kind of jump off with ADHD because hi, it's me. And I think a lot of the people that tune in, we have a similar brain. And I wanted to even just maybe understand, like, how do you even recognize ADHD? Like, what does that look like? And then the difference between men and women, because I know that there is a difference. Oh, yeah. Wonderful question. I love that. When I think about ADHD, I mean, I think about a kid who just has this hyperactivity. And I think what's often missed with ADHD is that it's not just this hyperactivity of the body. It's also this hyperactivity of the mind.

So if you see a kid like grabbing blankets and trying to create like a fort like out of nothing and their imagination, they in a sense abandoned reality to sort of create something. Like that's a telltale sound like, wow, this is hyperactivity happening. So yeah, in a lot of my work, I think people can sort of look. towards inattention, they might look at impulsivity for the bad, but there's also this hyperactivity for good. So I see that a whole lot. And whenever I notice, I'm like, okay, wow, this person might have some ADHD. And that's kind of fun, right? Yeah. Well, it's funny because my brother is the clinical, traditional ADHD. Like, he had his son Ritalin as a kid because, you know,

it was the 90s. My mom's like, the doctors told me to put it on. And it started because when he was like four, somebody bet him that he wasn't Spider-Man. And he said, yes, he was. We started climbing the walls in the bathroom. So then it started to start to to everybody started to see like, okay, there's something going on with him that's different. And as the girls, right, me and my sister and my mom didn't understand that like disassociation or just being in your head being a little flighty at times, brainy fog, all these different variables that happened. I just thought maybe there's something wrong with me, right? My brain works differently. I speak really fast. Like I think of it as like a funnel. Right. My brain's trying to get everything out and it can

only do one thing at a time. And so I'm like a bird and a pigeon. But I was curious, like what do you normally see the difference between men and women. Like, is there something palpable or is there something noticeable that people listening can be like, holy smokes, maybe that actually is something I can resonate with because I have noticed that there is two different ways that they come out. Yeah. I mean, one thing that I appreciate the word you use, the funnel, because it really does feel like there's a mountain of information in your head and you're trying to get it out and you're trying to like word vomit in a way that might scare someone away. And you're trying to get an way that's organized enough for them to understand like the glory that's like happening up here. I think that honestly,

the difference between men and women with ADHD looks a lot like a coping response to society. Like I think women with ADHD especially, they are the most punished for their gifts because, you know, you think about what society expects of women to be small, don't take up space, don't be too confident, don't be too expressive. And that's just not the ADHD woman. You know, the ADHD woman is hyperactivity in the mind, hyperactivity of the body, expression. You know, there's so much happening there. And I think men with ADHD present very differently because they don't have a lot of those consequences.

There still are different consequences. You might get kind of like laughed at like, hey, why are you impulsively doing X, Y, and Z? But you won't get a firm slap on a wrist. And so I think a lot of women with ADHD can feel it because they go from zero to 100 so quickly. And so if society is reprimanding it, you know, for being your true authentic self, and you have this zero to 100 kind of neurochemistry,

there's no in the middle. So you either go towards extreme rebellion of, hey, I'm going to fight to be who I am. I actually, I like that energy a little more. Or you go to the extreme route of inhibition, which I think is extremely sad to see. Because you see ADHD looks like this excited, explosive energy all the way back in childhood.

But then you go into adulthood and you have a hard time. I always talk about the 30-year-old that can't get out of executive dysfunction. You know, there's so much low energy with ADHD, depression, and in women, you could ask yourself, did I lose touch with the explosive energy that I had because society tried to push out the spark?

You know, that's a really big question. I ask a lot of my clients with ADHD that are women because it shows up so often. Oh, I love that, especially as you're talking, I'm like, I feel so seen because it's true, right? I used to try to water myself down and just like, you're too much. And nobody likes this, especially like, I mean, we're both on the internet.

You know that people have no problem leaving a comment of like, I was on a live the other day. And she's like, you know, you speak fast, right? And I was like, oh, no, I didn't fucking know. No one's ever told me that in my 35 goddamn years of existence. Thank you so much for pointing that out. For a long time, I really was attacking myself for having ADHD. If like, do there's something wrong with you? People don't like you.

You need to fit in and conform. And now as a business owner, I've actually tried to find a superpower of it. of like, wait a minute, I get work done really quick that takes people forever to do. My brain could be in 20 different places. I could be recording and listening to you and doing this and doing that because I think for me, I've had to look at it as like I could either hide and try to prevent myself from being myself, which is a moot point and we know how that's going to end or you can embrace it. But I'm curious because if we're trying to embrace it, like how do you normally help people?

Because I think a lot of the people listening are like, oh boy, that might be me or dating somebody with ADHD. So I want to get into that after. But how do you even help people learn to embrace it if they don't even know where to start? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. You really have to start with understanding what's happening inside of your brain. Because in a sense, a lot of people with ADHD, you are neurodivergent, which is basically you are away from the norm. So, of course, your environment, in a sense, is not going to be competent enough to understand what's happening with you.

So you're going to get negative evaluations from your environment quite often. So if you start at baseline in a room with someone doing therapy, and you let them know like, hey, this is what's happening. And here's all sort of the negative judgment she's got since childhood. That's going to open up a lot of doors to realizing, like, hey, I internalize a lot of negative messages that might not have been very true. And that, I think, because I know we're going to step into the world of attachment. I love talking about anxious attachment because it shows up so often with ADHD.

That opens the door to a lot of attachment work. So I see a lot of people with ADHD and anxious attachment really struggle with finding out who they are. They have this gift of managing through chaos. And they're just ready to move because they have such a powerful relationship with dopamine, which we'll get into as well. So anyways, all that to say, though, it's you can go through so much with society because they don't understand what's happening. And when you first make that shift between, okay, this is something wrong with me to, okay, wait a minute, there was some incompetent. in society that led to a lot of pain for itself. That can be the first start.

Oh, I love that reframe. Yeah. I know sometimes I think about that often, like, when I really try to resume out and say, like, if I saw a seven-year-old me, right, bouncing off the walls, it's interesting that you talked about the fantasy component. I used to lose myself in fantasy. I would, I had Barbie's, like, nobody's business. I would build little forts in my hats.

I would just put, I would put myself into other places, which then as an adult didn't work out because, hello, limerence, right? Like next thing you meet a guy, for me, heterosexual norm, but or somebody, you meet somebody, a partner and all of a sudden you're like, they're perfect. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, baby. That's just that's an emotionally unavailable salmon with a six pack. Like, do not let that trick you. But what is the correlation between that limerence, that obsession, ADHD. I feel like we're starting to tie some things together. Yes, yes, spot on. You know, with ADHD, you can be hyperfocused. You can experience, you know, an obsession almost with something that's right in front of you because your stimulation needs can be very context specific. So a lot of times, you know, dating can be extremely traumatic if you have ADHD because you are, you know, hyperfocused on another human being. You experience impulsivity to act on that sort of hyperfocus with someone else.

And you're zero to 100. So if you're not interested in someone and they're not your cup of teeth, you can. sort of even look avoid it. You know, like I don't see you as anything related to attraction, but you can go all the way to the side of 100. That's where you experience land of limerence. That's where you start to grow in emotion and then impulsivity, which makes you think less about consequences, starts to activate and then you start to lose touch of reality

just a bit. But that sort of connects with the gift of ADHD because losing touch of reality allows you to create new realities, right? But when limerance is active and you're dating, and this person is giving you breadcrumbs, that's where dating can start to become traumatic because the other person starts to feel like this God that can give you both heaven and hell.

So it's like, what do you do with that when this person feels like they have so much power of you? You don't have this internal source of regulation and you're trying to navigate that. Well, I think that's when you really have to start to develop new systems, new approaches. But that's what I see a lot with ADHD in dating. You get really caught up in the limerence aspect of things.

And some people just give up. They say, I don't want to date ever again. I want to be hyper-focused on my bed. And that's just my cards. And I don't think that's the answer either. But that's just the- The pendulum swinging too severely to the other side. Yes, yes, yes.

And then when people with ADHD and start to suppress, they start to look like a robot. They're like, I don't care about anything. And then they look like they're rejecting the world, right? That's another place you don't want to go. Can we go more into the anxious avoid, that they sometimes can look avoidant?

I hear this all the time, right? because I think there's different schools of thought, right? When I hear it, somebody say, with some people, I'm anxious, but then with other people, I'm avoided. So I'm both. And I'm like, no, no, no. That doesn't mean, that's not disorganized. Like, that's not what we're talking about.

I could see it as like maybe dorsal shut down, right, depending on the context. But I'd love to hear from you. When somebody comes and says, I'm both anxious and avoidant, what do you hear on that, right, in that context? Yeah, I hear that they don't know their inner sort of nervous system. Because when you look at attachment styles, you can really just look at the nervous system. And it does shift and change depending on who you're around. But there is usually a more common sort of attachment style that you'll fall into.

So when I hear that, I'm like, okay, we got to figure it out. You're not both. Let's figure out what's going on. Usually when I want to introduce attachment, what I'll do is I'll talk about my favorite research study, Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation. Have you heard of that study? No, Mary, yes, but no, tell me more. It's a fantastic study where she took, before they started to develop the names of Attempt, She had these kids show up with their mom.

No, no, the mom showed up with the kids. You know, kids drove. Kids were like, you know, badass, you know. But it's six years old. They're like, let's go check out my brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to do the study. No, they would, they were like zero to, they were like one to two years old. And they would sit in this room and they had this two-way mirror.

And what the experimenters wanted to see was, how do these kids respond when mom would leave the room and then when mom would come back? And the anxious kids in the experiment, they would become so disrequited. when mom would leave. It was brutal. They left twice as well, honestly. They wanted to make sure they got the full. They did the study in Japan. They had to stop the study because the anxious kids were so disregulated. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so when mom would come back, they did not calm down. They were still hitting and almost as if they said, I need more reassurance from you. So when I work with clients, I'm like, well, how does that show up for you? You know, as an adult. And then avoiding kids, I thought were even more interesting because they're, they're They seemed to be the most fine in the study. Of course. They were like playing with blocks or whatever, doing their own thing. But they looked at heart rate data later. They looked at allostatic stress.

And they saw that the avoiding kids were just as stress as the anxious kids. And in fact, when mom would pick them up, the avoiding kids would lean back as if they'd say, I don't want you. But they saw that they became more regulated when mom picked them up. So with adults, it's sort of like you don't realize with avoiding attachment that you need people, but you actually do. And then finally, the disorganized kids were the most difficult to study, which was disorganized attachment, you get that name. They seemed that they didn't have the luxury of either strategy. They would sort of feel too much pain by taking the anxious route of screaming and wanting affection.

But they also could not suppress an atomic bomb of energy like the avoiding kid. They both needed people and couldn't do without them. You see a lot of people with ADHD struggle, similar things like that. But anyways, I go into that study just to say that, if you are trying to figure, out your attachment style, a good question to ask yourself is, how do you regulate? Because the avoiding kids, they find that they lean too far into internal sources of regulation. But then the anxious kids, it was all external. Where did you go? Are you coming back? And then they would get a cortisol decrease when mom would come back. And they would also get like a dopamine

hit sometimes. Oh, yeah, here you are. Right. So that's one way that I'll look at it with clients. I want to ask you. What is your least favorite, like, myth that you know about attachment styles that you see. What annoys the shit out of you? I think it's sort of the it can be the demonization of avoidant attachment. That gets me because here's the thing. You

can't heal your anxious attachment until you start to appreciate one side of avoiding attachment. Because avoidance have one foot in the door of secure attachment. Just like anxious people have one foot out the door of secure attachment. It's like both are doing

something halfway healthy. So if you are harping on avoidantly attached people, then there's something you're missing. And usually the thing that most anxious people are missing is the avoidance ability to regulate through only internal sources. So if you're unable to do that, then you think a lot less about impact. One of the cool things avoiding people is they think about impact a whole lot. They think about how they can look towards self-protection before entering a space. So they don't put themselves in too many compromising positions. The anxious thing that's really beautiful, though, is that that you have a hope for humanity.

You can be almost addicted to hope, right? You can connect. You long for people. So there's just, that's one misconception I think I'd start with. It drives me insane. It does. And don't get me wrong. I used to be her, right?

Like, when I dated, I used to think, I'm avoiding avoidance. I remember I had a screenshot. One of the episodes I read texts that I had sent to my friend and to my mom, like, in my heyday. You read your text? I read my text. Oh, wow. Vulnerable. Oh, yeah.

I get that. I get deep. I was the poster child of that ADHD. anxious girl without knowing any of it, right? I remember the first time I read attached, you know, like 10 plus years ago, and it hit me and I, because my ex at the time, I was like, oh, he's avoided and I'm anxious. Like it did, it made me feel less crazy. And I was like, oh my God.

But then the problem is you hold on to that as the Bible, right? Like, so everything fits in that lens, right? And what I try to explain for people of the high anxious attachment, which we've all seen and we've all met them is don't get me wrong. Both sides of the corner are really tough to deal with, right? Like when somebody shuts like, Ryan has more avoidant, I'm more the anxious, but we were both quite secure and we've really done a lot of work. Had we not, right?

Had him just been let's whole, like, leave the room, constantly not in wanting to have conversations. Like, that wouldn't have worked because the same side of the coin would have been me being like a Tasmanian devil, right? Everything being manic and intense. And I don't think, I think that for a lot of the people like are trying to poo poo the avoidant, they don't realize that they also are avoidant because you're avoiding dealing with your shit and your feelings.

what's coming up for you. And I don't think a lot of people are seeing that side of the coin because it's funny. I'm curious your thoughts. I had somebody write him and Ryan specifically left the email for me and he was like, I want you to read this one. And the guy said, I'm secure and I had my anxiety and he's like, but it's my partner. He's avoided and it's him and it's him and he goes, so maybe I could be feisty but still. And I said, uh-uh, bitch.

I said, first of all, if you're going to say it's all someone else, then we have lost the plot. Right now for a limited time. Everyone's part of the Buick team, even you. Buick's Employee Pricing for You event is on now. Get a purchase credit of up to $3,168 on a 2026 Buick Envision. Surround yourself with signature Buick refinement from an available massaging driver's seat to an expansive panoramic moonroof

and a stunning ultra-wide 30-inch diagonal screen. Don't miss Buick's employee pricing for you event. Visit buick.combe for more details. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. But for me, like, what do you hear when you hear a lot of these things of the like? It's the avoidant and then that they're worse and at least the anxious person's communicating and at least I'm speaking.

What are you here? I hear a lot of, I'm in pain, I'm hurting. and I need sort of this redemption, you know. It goes too far into the world of this person is the root of all evil. And there's no accountability. And it's tough. It's tough because with Ancius attachment, you take too much accountability, right? So what happens when you're with an avoidant person and you start to look at them?

You say, well, finally I'm not going to take full responsibility for all that's happening. But then you also go too far in that direction. Like I think there's something else happening, and I think it's very nuanced. And it looks a lot to do with like what's happening with your nervous system. So, so honestly, if I'm working with anybody, I talk with them about their nervous system.

So there's sort of like three big areas of your nervous system I like to hit on. A lot of people focus on two, but I like to focus on three because, you know, I'm different. Yeah, let's hear it. Gotta be unique.

You know, there's the sympathetic nervous system. Think about sympathetic activity is sort of what moves your body, what makes your heart raise. And then there is parasympathetic activity. And that's like, how do I just rest, digest. You don't want to be in paris sympathetic mode if you're being chased by a bear.

You won't be there. You won't be there. You'll be lunch, breakfast, whatever, right? And you don't want to be in sympathetic mode if you are on a date with someone. Hopefully you can be able to regulate to a point. Now, I divide the sympathetic into two. There's sort of the part of us that responds based on cartisol. So your heart might raise to avoid pain. And then there's the part of us that responds more so through dopamine. That's the motivation. system that drives us. Anxious attaches are only using half of their nervous system. They are vacillating between avoid pain and pursue pleasure. So they don't have a lot of rest and digest happening. So they wonder why they're satisfied with breadcrums sometimes because they don't have

their own ability to rest and digest and then there's so much power happening on the other side. But to circle all the way back to what we're talking about here, I think that when it comes to the difficulty in relationships, the avoidant partner or the person on the other side is having a hard time adjusting to the back and forth between avoid pain and pursue pleasure. There's no rest and digest happening. And then the avoiding partner feels like you are too much. You are experiencing so much cortisol. And cortisol all the time isn't sexy, you know, and so they're like trying to figure that out. And the avoiding person is not respecting your wants and needs. So it's sort of this chemical reaction happening, but this black and white response pops up that says,

you're all bad or you're all bad. But the answer is more nuanced and you sort of have to figure that out together. Let's go dopamine because we talk about that all the time. I love the neural stuff. I love it. The dopamine addiction loops, right, and like the prefrontal cortex and the end made all the things, right, all the buzzies. I'm going to give you all the names. But I'd love to understand the impact because I think for a lot of the people listening either, and I wanted, this will be my next question for you of like dating. somebody with ADHD or dating as somebody with it, how we can kind of figure this out. But talk to me about dopamine, whether it be ADHD or not.

Sure. Yeah. Dopamine is wrapped up in everything when it comes to relationships, dating, and all of that. Because dopamine is both the neurotransmitter that's responsible for our movement and motivation. It's the neurotransmitter that was never meant to be satisfied. It's all about how can I get more and it's meant to be that way. but what you see is a lot of people struggle with being addicted to only dopamine. And if you only focus on dopamine, then you never access the other part of your nervous system,

which is more about rest, digest, bonding, oxytocin, all the stuff that says things are good enough the way they are. Dopamine is about bridging the gap. So the more you're in a dopamine deficit, ADHD, you're in dopamine deficit very often, the more you are ready to take on a giant mountain of a task. A test that a lot of people with anxious attachment like to take on is emotional unavailability. How do I bridge the gap between me and someone else? The other part about the nervous system that's extremely important is that it can be trained. So if you sort of getting a car accident, for example, right, you now have a new core belief that driving can be dangerous.

You didn't have that one before. statistics about driving beforehand, but now that you're getting in the car after the accident, your hands are shaking. You know, you're like, this is dangerous. You know it to your core. Your nervous system has been trained by something very external and it now has potential energy to respond to something new. So in the same way, dopamine and your response to it and how much you use it can also be trained. So if you're constantly seeking dopamine, you're going to need more and more and more of it as you start to try to connect with other people. But if you train your nervous system to use the other half, like the avoidance, then you might actually start

to feel more satisfied. And then you also will be a little bit less on edge, you know, a little bit less, you know, vacillity. That's not a word, but yeah. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, train me. I just made that up. But even, I would like say, I would suggest anybody with ADHD and dopamine, like, don't ever become a crater, like, because it's, it's a slot machine, right? And you're constantly waiting for more and more. I couldn't believe we talked about this briefly off camera, but getting my oat test. And my, because my doctor and I have a functional medicine doctor and she was like, there's got to be

something else here, right? Like, not to the point where not everything can be trauma, right? Like, not everything can be my dad's fault or what I taught. There is a physiological, like, wait, something's happening internally. So finding out that my dopamine and my serotonin are low, no shit, right? That's not

a surprise that I struggle with motivation. And like, for me, I'm curious, too, like, because it's not common, but some people, like, I might have really low dopamine, really low serotonin, but I motivate. Like, I have to, I know I have to get work done. Maybe it's more survival for me of, like, I kill what I eat. So, like, I'm not eating today then.

If I don't go out and put myself out there, I have figured this out, but people ask me all the time how? How do you figure this out? Like, if you're a very low motivation and you hear it all the time of like, I don't want to date anymore and I'm done and I can't handle this and it's too much for me, what do we do? It's so, like, nuanced to go into that world. But you have to figure out what's happening on. underneath. You have to figure out what patterns in my creating through my core beliefs,

through my behaviors, and if you can figure that out. Like one example might be a lot of people with, you know, avoid an attachment. They experience so much shame. So they're, they're completely adverse to making any mistakes in front of other people. And they don't want to be sloppy at the start of things. They want to be polished. What happens when you have ADHD? Well, you are someone who learns through trial and error most effectively because you start off sloppy. You build up skills and then you know you're incredible after you do tons of trial and error that's why a lot of people with ADHD like to get really good at something in private show the world look at all my glory x y and z but the problem with that is that if you are operating so much so that you can only

perform when you're polished then you get to the point where you don't want to try anything you don't ever want to put yourself out there when it comes to dating and now your automatic response to potential rejection looks like aggression even though you might have this soft person that wants connection, right? So I see there's so many different pathways. Like, there's another one for anxious, you know, there's another one for fearful, disorganize. If you can find out someone, and that's what I help a lot

of people with. I try to figure out what's your unique battle? What's your unique story? You know, how did you get here? I'm first engineer it that way. Exactly. I'm curious with the rejection, right? Because I've heard you talk about rejection sensitivity. A lot of people I know I've been sending me in your videos being like, oh, what's this? I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's a thing.

Is rejection sensitivity? Is it Are rejection sensitive disorder? Is it a drug disorder? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They call it RSD, rejection sensitivity, dysphoria. And it's all. Yeah, and it's all. Yeah, it's just a word that's kind of tossed around,

but there's a lot of research on it. So that's the RSD and all that. But it really shows up a lot with ADHD because you think about ADHD. It's, you know, you hyperfocus, you have impulsivity. You have impulses to act on the emotions you're feeling on the inside. So we all sort of have a fear of rejection from time to time and some more than others, of course. So if you have ADHD, though,

and you experience a rejection and you have core beliefs of being misunderstood from childhood, that's going to lead to sort of this difficulty getting out of that emotion because now you're hyper-focused on it, now you're impulsively acting on it, now you're impulsively physiologically responding to it,

and now you're looking at your physiological responses and thinking, oh my gosh, like now everybody knows I'm responding to this. You don't have your parasympathetic nervous system developed all the way, so you can't restore in the moment. So you can go a very long way in a bad direction with ADHD. And that's sort of where rejection sensitivity comes in.

You spiral. And then you realize that you're someone who spirals, and then you're aware of that in different context. So you're looking for rejection at that point because you don't want it to happen again. It's hypervigilant in a totally different way. 100%. Do we see rejection sensitivity outside of ADHD? Or is it really like those come hand in hand?

Because I think rejection is really tough for a lot of people. people handle it differently, but like, what's your take on that? I think it's everywhere. I think the difference with ADHD is that you sort of have a different vehicle, sort of for like how you experience things on the inside. You respond more so based on core beliefs. You're a little bit offline, a bit more. Your prefrontal cortex is less activated from time to time, which isn't a bad thing, right?

But for all people, you can have core beliefs that lead to rejection. And I think it's very common to have extreme fears of rejection with anxious attachment, especially because you are more focused on external sources of regulation. So if I'm ever, if I'm ever working with someone with anxious attachment, the first thing I asked them, I'm like, well,

well, whose fault was it that you were abandoned? And they think, well, what do you mean? Like, if we go back in childhood and see what happened, you know,

what happened there? And they're like, well, I was abandoned as a child. Most anxious attaches might not even remember exactly what happened, but they try to bridge the gap between themselves and other people through effort, through crying, through kicking and screaming. And so now they have this or belief that I need to work hard to get people to stay with me.

I need to be a perfect communicator. I need to send the perfect text. I need to make sure that I am on top of everything. Otherwise, this relationship will break. So if there's a very reptilian side of ourselves that's keeping track of reality, then that learns based on experience, there's never going to be any evidence that anyone's there for you outside of what you do. And the glue that maintains your relationship starts to feel like effort. And you start to lose the plot that you are a human being, not a human doing.

You never get any evidence that people are coming towards you because of who you are. And if you start practicing things like sending one word text, you know, when it's fine enough to do so, not in all cases, but I try to work with people through things like that. Oh, my journey was, I was palpable to think about, like the talk about texting paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs, There, dissertations. And I kind of, to your point, I remember when I started to shift and just, like, I remember even being like, I'm not answering that. I got only, right, there wasn't, there was no response necessary from this. It's not like I was playing a game, but I remember then for me personally, and I'm curious if this is something you see, the pendulum completely swung to the other side for me to where then I, like, never text anybody. And then I completely removed myself. And it was definitely an armor, right? Like, I remember even, I stopped being friends with the girl. It just wasn't a healthy friendship. And she texts me the next day going, I know. if I don't text you, I'm never going to hear from you again. And so it was quite the opposite. Like my 20s, it was that I didn't stop.

It was, I sent a 173 text, Jay, to a guy after he tried to end it with me after a month. Wow. Yeah, that was real. But then, 173, if not more, to be honest. No, no, it's fine, please. I'm judging myself enough. But it was manic because I just couldn't sit. And I remember feeling it in my body, like I'll do anything to make this go away,

that avoidance of any type of pain. That's why my anxious folk are also affidant. But we'll get back. Then it's the pendulum, the pendulum, completely swung. And I was like, okay, so then I'm just not going to do any of it. Right. And then that, like, it went impulsively into like, let's go to the other side. And so finding a balance truly is what changed my life because now I take a moment to be like, wait a minute, what is it I want to say? How do I want to say it? Do I feel in my body regulated? Because you know, like that

heat wave comes over and you want to write a hundred things or like, I'll get a mean comment. I'll sit on it. And I'm like, hey, okay, this really impacted you. Like, what impacted you about it? What is, what about this? What did that hit within you? And then either is there facts to it or is this like an emotion, right? I had somebody because she said that somebody said, I hate the way you talk. Online. Yeah, online to me. Oh, my gosh. And what I realized is what it hit with me and like, I don't like the way you talk and you need to change. And it reminded me my dad, right? Of like, oh, I'm not enough in the way that I am. So you need me to change. And if you need me to change, then that must be

I'm the wrong one. But then what I started to realize was for a lot of people, thanks to attachment, they need the external to change around them for their internal to feel more comfortable, right? You change and you change and you do what I want you to do and you start acting like this because if you do that, then I'll be more comfortable instead of realizing I have a choice and I could just walk away from this. Yes. I love your vulnerability, by the way. Always. Oh, God. This is so fun. But also, that's really tough, right? Insert therapist. I was just like, there's the therapist being like, thank you for sharing. There's like the content creator and then there's also the therapist. I'm like, Let's see who I should be on camera in front of everybody.

Who knows what? I'm authentic. Okay. But I see that a whole lot, you know, like, you know, trying to figure out that balance. That's the toughest part because so many people with ADHD, for example, can take it to one extreme or the other, more or less, right? So this is fun. But I think a really important question, I ask a lot of people this question. Who were you before your trauma?

Or I might ask, who is the inner child that you're trying to protect? Because, you know, especially anxious detachers usually take this route of development, but it looks like you were a wonderful child that had this nervous system that was right in tackle reality. We all started off with a healthy nervous system. Whatever happens, trauma, you know, something happens that throws that off and now you become addicted to dopamine, the chase of connection. now other people become your source of regulation to avoid cortisol releases.

And as a result, you are so expressive. You chase people and you can send so many messages to try to connect with the people around you. And that's a lot of energy. And there's some unhealth to that, but it's also this hope for connection that's very beautiful. And then you get hurt. And that just hurts so much because you had so much emotional investment in another human being and then you're let down, you know. And so after that, just like you described,

you feel this need to protect that child. You're like, this child got hurt, and I'm never letting that happen again. And that is a very healthy response in a very dangerous situation. The problem I see a lot of people run into is that that becomes the default response. And so they might be on the date

and hopefully you can engage in the parismpathetic nervous system at that point, where you're in a mode of rest and digest and it's light and fluffy, but instead now you're on guard. You're protecting that inner child that got stumped on before with the last guy that you dated

that stood you up like 20 times, you know. And now people start to see this put off energy. And so when I work with people, I let them know like, hey, if we can access that inner child, we want to keep that protector there, but we also want to know who that inner child is because we want to be able to release that child in safe places again.

And if you can find that balance, That's where you see secure attachment thrive. So I want to talk about hope because I get almost every single fucking day of like they broke up with the, God, don't even start with me on like the avoidant discard. I hear that all the time. And I'm like, you're not a tomogatchy. You're a human. Like no one got, no one threw you in a trash. But you know what?

We're going to go on that. Avoidant discard. Can we please talk about what you hear when you say that? What the fuck is that? Like, what is this avoidant discard that people keep using and like what do you see it clinically as? people with anxious and avoidant attachment are experiencing two opposite things in relationships. Aren't they? That's what I see there.

And it's this, because I've talked to both of them, right? The anxious person comes to therapy and they say, I was discarded by this avoidant person. I told them everything that they needed to hear. I said, I'm always going to be here for you. I know that you were hurt as a child. And I'm never going to abandon you. I'm here for you. I'm not leaving.

I'm emotionally invested in you. And then I hear from the avoidant person who actually has. as an innocent sort of intention at times. Not all. There's some avoiding people that are hurting people. There's some anxious people that are hurting people. But the avoidant side is, I don't ever want to hurt anybody ever again. And you think about what happened to a lot of avoidant children. And a lot of avoiding children, they were in a home where their parents were hyper attuned to what's happening inside of their internal state or what's happening on their face. So if the avoiding kid is unhappy one day, mom is sort of all over the place.

If the avoiding kid is angry one day, the whole structure of the household changes. So a lot of times avoidant, and that's not always the case, but a lot of times the avoiding kid, they have too much power over the household. Everything changes, and they were only five years old. So they've seen what happens when someone's emotionally invested in them. So the moment the anxious person says, hey, I'm here for you. I'm never going to leave you. They feel like you're tossing gasoline on a fire. Oh my gosh, well, I'd rather you reject me. Let me do crappy stuff. You know, let me show you that I'm not who you think I am. Because the last time someone thought I was more than I was, it destroyed my family, you know. So avoiding people who are scared or

hurting people. And part of their work is realizing that when people are emotionally invested in you, it's okay if they get hurt. And part of the reason you keep hurting people is because you're not allowing yourself to feel and connect the way that you were supposed to. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow.

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Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going. When I hear the discard, it makes me sad. Like, I want to hug everybody that says that because I'm like, no one discarded you. I know that's how it feels, right? I'm not going to dismay. and I'm not going to say anything against the feeling that you have. Because sure, right, it's valid. It doesn't make it factual.

And whenever I hear that, I'm like, okay, we have to reframe that. No one discarded you. You're not a T-shirt that they threw in the trash. You are a human being that the other person said, that doesn't work for them. Right. In whatever capacity and fashion that they did, I'm not going to hold that. They can be an asshole, right? Like, we're not going to say that these people can't be hurtful or not doing things.

But very rarely do I think is out of malice that they're like, I want to hurt them. And I'm going to make sure they hurt because it's like then we start to go into the narcissists. And you're like, maybe that's for a different conversation. But when I hear the discard, because you know what comes after, hope? I'm going to say it. We're going to go looping it. All right. We made it.

We made it. We, I hear that the avoidant discarded me. And then the second question is, will they come back? And what if I, but if I let go of hope, then what do I have? And I'm like, oh, talk to me about hope. Because hope, I used to say that to my mom. She would say, it's going to like something will happen. I go, I hope.

And she goes, no, I know. And she was like, I don't want you to just hope. I want you to know. I want you to know, when is hope healthy? I guess, especially in the dating breakup kind of world. And when is it just like an avoidance of actually facing reality? Yeah. Oh, that's such a good question.

I have to digest that one. That's one of my favorite thing about anxious attaches is that, and that's the one thing that makes me the most sad about avoiding attaches, is that the avoidant attaches lose hope. But the anxious detachers are willing to move heaven and earth to try to reach something that's really important or to make themselves helpful to someone else. I think that's a beautiful thing.

That even connects to like my faith, that we were meant to be able to connect fully as human being. You know, I'm biased towards anxious people, and I'm anxious. Anyways, I do think, though, that people with anxious attachment can be addicted to hope. Because you sort of live since childhood to sort of connect with people despite consequence. So hope is all about reaching for something, not knowing if you'll be able to obtain it. But that also connects a bit with impulsivity, right? impulsivity, the closer you get to something you want, the less you start to think about consequences.

Tying it a little bit of ADHD, you know, you're sort of dopamine-driven. And the closer you get to something you want, the more you start to lose touch with reality because you're willing to forsake the consequences. The closer you get, the less you think about them. And so as a result, you can sort of feel like you don't want to leave a casino in your relationships because you're so close and then it starts to get more dangerous, but you don't see it until four years later, once the dopamine wears off. So when I think about hope and anxious attachment,

I think about pursuit and dopamine, because that's the thing that gives you the most possible hope. So in order to regulate and to step outside of that, you have to do two things. One, you have to realize that, you know, this pursuit is something that you have to, you have to use the avoidant strategy of minimizing the goal. This is not what I think it is.

this person's breath stinks and, you know, they don't have all these awesome things that I'm imagining in my head. My ADHD brain is so good at imagination and it's building narratives and I'm impossibly pursuing these narratives because now my ADHD is amping up my emotions and now the more emotions I have all that stuff. So if you can minimize that, that's a good start. I think the second thing is, is how can you start to build your own sources of regulation so that when you don't get that outside thing, you nourish what you already have? because the gift of hope is that you can reach, but the gift of, you know, self-regulation

is that you nourish what you already have. The hope, I love that. Because I think hope, listen, I understand that when somebody breaks up with you, right? Like, that's why I hate right person wrong time. It's like, no, no, they're not in your life. Like, we've got, because it holds on hope. It gives you hope. Maybe they'll come back.

And it's like, no, baby, they're gone. And if we accept that and we face it, what are the secondary gains, right? If I focus on them, I don't have to figure out what's coming up for me. but I find oftentimes that after breakups, especially with like that avoidant, anxious dynamic, that's where I see the hope. And that's where I see that like maybe if I just wait

and maybe they'll realize and maybe they'll come and I'm like, that's a fantasy. Right? That's a rom-com. They're like, oh, they're going to wake up and they're going to realize this. Like, rarely do they. And I'm just curious, have you ever seen that happen?

Have you ever seen it successfully happen? No. Thank you. No. Thank you. I've worked with lots of people. I can't say for a fact that it, even if, even when someone,

I guess has gotten back with someone. The relationship oftentimes does not work. No. That's another piece there. But I think that the problem is that if you constantly are seeking hope and reaching outward, the problem isn't really external. It's more internal. You're sort of the filter for your own secure attachment.

So if there's people that you're hoping for outside of yourself and you can't regulate alone, we're not meant to regulate alone. We're, you know, codependent creatures. But if there's nothing you're nourishing on the inside, not only are you going to be kind of hung up on this person, but how are you ever going to be, you know, fully yourself? If you're constantly checking the guest list to see who's at the party and you're not in the house with the guests that are already there,

you're not finishing setting up the decorations, you're not, the people you already have are going to leave too. And I see that happens so often an anxious attachment where you're constantly chasing. But the great paradox is that dopamine is all about pursuing things and making things better. But if you constantly only use dopamine and you're never returning to yourself, resting and digesting, going to sleep, then you're actually going to be much less appealing to other

people and yourself because you're not nourishing yourself. So that's a really tough thing. Hope is good inherently. And yet if you excessively keep reaching, then you're missing out on what you already grabbed and you are in yourself, you know? 100%. It's like anything, right? everything is great in moderation, right?

Dopamine is great, but not too much of it, right? Not off the Richter scale where you're like, oh, God, are they going to be okay? Everything. I think hope is a beautiful thing when you have hope for things that are also tangible, right? Because as a kid, I hoped that my dad would change. Well, that didn't work out, right? Still the same. Maybe if we hope that this person will change, right?

Like, that's where you're like, no, no, no, no. You want this person to become a different version because at the end of the day, I always have to ask them like, but what does that mean about you? Like, what do you get? What do you benefit? Oh, well, they'll show up for me. and they'll be there. It's like, so that's not about them.

It's about what you get from them if they change. And that's where your hope can become dangerous. You're hoping that they will change so you feel better, not because you genuinely want that person necessarily to go off and have a better life, maybe without you. Wow. Perfectly said. That's deep.

I don't know. That's, yeah. Sometimes. Ugh, Jay. Just on that. Digest that people. Digest on that. I, we have to have you back.

We've got to have you back on. We have, I can't believe the time. I can't believe that we have been sitting and chatting for an hour already. It's been an hour already. Oh, wow. I know. And as much, my ADHD years, we don't listen to long, very long shows. I would love to be back.

I will. We're going to have, we will, you know what? Here's what I want. I want the audience to tell us what we're going to talk about next. What are you guys craving? What do we need to hit again? Where do we need to continue the conversation on? Because I think I'd be curious to see what we didn't help them with and what can we also

talk about because we're going to have you back. Yeah. I love that. Direct our ADHD brains. Yeah. Tell us what you want. Jay, thank you so much for being here. Plug it again.

Where can they find you, work with you? you taking patients, clients, like, please give us a little bit more information on how they can find you. Yes, of course. We are open, restore psychology. If you want to search for us, we're San Diego based, and we have a team of people that are neurodiversion informed, trauma informed, and I'm currently working with people with coaching as well. So you don't have to necessarily be in California, do my coaching services. But yeah, I love to work with people, people who feel stuck that know why they're stuck, but still feel like they're stuck in old pattern. So, when you can reach me at, um, doctor.jacob.ambrose on Instagram as well. You want more content, hear me talk about little things around attachment, ADHD, you know, CBT stuff,

shadow work. I love shadow work. That's a cool one too. You know what? Maybe that's what we'll do next time shadow work and stuck. I like why feeling stuck? There it is. All right. Thanks guys. You can tell us what you want, but I think we have it. Yeah. All right, babes. Thank you so much. Until next time, don't forget to like, rate review, share it with a friend, comment. Let us know what you guys are feeling. Don't forget to follow Jay. His content's amazing. You'll learn more. And guys, as always, thank you so much for being here and showing up as you so we could What Possess? Until next time, Babes. This episode is brought to you by Activia.

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