How to Improve Any Relationship: The 4 Attachment Styles You Need to Know & Tools to Become More Secure

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Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to another incredible episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm so excited that you're joining me today because you are going to finally get some answers to questions that I am sure have been on your mind for a long time. These are questions that I know I have been grappling with. Questions like, why do I always feel left out in my friend group? Why does my spouse just brush me off whenever I am trying to connect? Why do I always date the same losers over and over and over again? The answer is attachment theory. Now, attachment theory is something you've probably seen online. You may have read about it. It sounds intellectual, doesn't it? But it's not. It is a simple framework backed by decades of research that is going to help you better understand how you and the other people in your life show up in a relationship. And that's exactly what I wanna help you do today. I want you to have better relationships. Why? Because you deserve better relationships. I mean, wouldn't it be amazing to have a whole group of friends where you could just text them whatever you're thinking or feeling? You don't have to rewrite it 55,000 times. You don't have to worry about whether or not they're mad at you. Wouldn't it be wonderful to show up in your married life or your dating life and not feel insecure or not feel like you can't trust people? Wouldn't it be awesome to feel so secure, so deserved that you are such an awesome person that you know exactly how you wanna be treated? Wouldn't it be amazing to let love and compliments into your life? You better believe it would be amazing. And the way that you do that is you learn how to improve your relationships, not only your relationship with yourself, but your relationship with absolutely everybody you interact with. And that's where attachment theory comes in. When you understand your attachment style and you understand how to become more securely attached, you will have a better and happier life, full stop. You're going to feel safer, more secure. And this is the part I love the most. You'll be able to show up absolutely anywhere with anybody and be your full self. How frickin' awesome does that sound? Everybody is invited to this conversation because we are going to get every one of you up to speed so that you understand yourself, you understand your attachment style, you understand attachment styles in other people, and more importantly, you can use absolutely everything that you learned today to improve your relationship to yourself and others. So how are we going to do that? Well, I have tracked down one of the world's leading experts on attachment theory. Her name is Dr. Marissa Franco. She's a psychologist, a professor at the University of Maryland. She's also the New York Times bestselling author of the book on attachment styles and how they impact your friendships. That book, it is called Platonic. And it's not just your romantic relationships. You're about to learn that attachment style impacts every relationship, your friendships, your work colleagues, your family, yourself, because attachment style is all about you and how you show up in relationships. And that's why it impacts everything. So let's get you feeling secure and get Dr. Marissa Franco on the line, people. Dr. Franco, I am so excited that you're joining us. Thank you.

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

So in your research, you discuss 4 attachment styles. Let's go through them and start with attachment style number 1, which is secure.

Yeah, secure. You are comfortable giving and receiving love. You trust that other people love you. You can bring up conflict very level-headedly. Your skill is really perspective-taking. When something happens in your relationships, you are thinking about the other person's needs and your own and how to balance both of your needs.

So at the basis of somebody with a secure attachment style, you have an assumption that you are lovable and that you deserve to be loved.

Yeah, it's kind of like you're on your own side.

Is there anybody on the planet like that? I'm just, you know, can you introduce me to them? I, I, I'm not kidding.

Um, because it feels like that's a very whole and, uh, safe and healthy human being.

Yeah. And attachment is a spectrum, right? So nobody's fully secure, just like nobody's fully anxious or nobody's fully avoidant.

So the second one is anxious. So can you tell us what an anxious attachment style might be?

So your core fear is that everybody's abandoning you. You tend to see rejection even when it's not occurring. You just take everything personally. At the neurological level, Research finds that your amygdala, which is the part of your brain associated with stress, is more sensitive. It lights up more than people of other attachment styles. Anxiously attached people, they're like kind of avoidant towards themselves. Their internal dialogue is like, I'm too much. You know, these feelings aren't okay, right? They very much invalidate their own feelings and emotions, which is part of the reason why they really need other people to validate themselves.

You basically just described me. I don't know if you knew that this was a therapy session for Mel Robbins, but Dr. Franco, we just have a diagnosis now. Let's talk about the third attachment style, avoidant.

Yeah, so avoidant people, they fundamentally don't trust others. They think, if I get close to you, you are going to harm me. So they don't get close to others. They don't initiate as much. They're more likely to end friendships, more likely to ghost on others, not as emotional. They don't put a lot of effort into their relationships, and they also feel very disconnected from other people.

And then there's the fourth one. I think it's called disorganized. Can you explain that one?

Yeah, so this disorganized, it's people that have really grown up in more extreme situations like abuse, and so they have to sort of pull out the whole toolbox of strategies to try to find safety. So it's sort of like they kind of flip between anxious and avoidant depending on how you're interacting with them. You know, once you get closer to them, they all of a sudden might become avoidant and feel a sudden need to very much withdraw. It's like they feel this duality, like, I really want to connect with people, but I'm also so petrified of connection. And it puts them in a bit of a freeze state. Like, there's this feeling that I'm kind of like paralyzed. I don't know what to do in this relationship. I don't know whether to come close or to pull away because I have both of these needs that feel so strong within me.

That makes a lot of sense when you explain it that way. So, Dr. Franco, why do these 4 attachment styles matter so much?

So our attachment style really impacts how we give and receive love, and thus our ability to build healthy relationships with other people.

Wow.

Does everybody have an attachment style?

Yeah, we all have an attachment style. It's basically like, um, We all come into new relationships with a set of assumptions, and those assumptions define our attachment style.

So the 4 attachment styles we've already talked about— secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized.

Disorganized, yeah.

Can you give me signs of each attachment style?

Sure, yeah. So let's think about this practically in our relationships. If you're with someone securely attached, you set a boundary with them, they accept the boundary. They don't try to push it, change it. They don't suddenly pull away because you set that boundary. They're comfortable being vulnerable. They can address you directly but not confrontationally. So let's say this is in a friendship context, right, where, you know, it feels like the friendship has been one-sided. The securely attached friend will say, I love you, I want to be close to you, and I've noticed I've been the one reaching out and that's been hurting me, and I want our friendship to continue, so I figured I'd bring this up. Um, so those are some signs of securely attached people.

So the North Star here, everybody, is to become securely attached, not only because of the mental health but the physical health and just the fact that it's going to impact the quality of the life that you're living and how you feel as you live that life. And you deserve that. So can you tell us what an anxious attachment style might be?

So you can tell what someone's anxiously attached— they're like hyper-accommodating often until it It really blows up and then, and then they become the opposite. They're not necessarily good at setting boundaries, so they might agree to things and then it seems like they're resentful about it. They're generous oftentimes to get people to like them. They're attracted to relationships with people that don't seem to like them very much because they've learned that they had to earn love. So you'll see an anxiously attached person having these friendships with people or these relationships with people that kind of mistreat them because that makes them motivated to earn love. And that's what they learned about love, that it's something that's earned, not freely given. And then avoidantly attached people, you'll know they're avoidant because they're never vulnerable. You don't feel like you really know them. When you maybe do have a moment of intimacy and closeness, they suddenly pull away and you're like, what the heck is going on? They really struggle with things like apologizing, whereas Anxiously attached person is going to over-apologize. Avoidantly attached person is going to say, "No, this is not my fault. This is kind of your fault." They just don't tend to put much effort into their relationship. So if you feel like, "Man, this person, I'm trying to connect with them. They're not really meeting me there." Whereas anxiously attached people, their memory, they tend to misremember things and remember things as more negative than they actually were. Um, so that's really interesting quirk attachment theory and memory.

What about somebody who's disorganized? What are some of the signs that you're in a relationship or a friendship with somebody who has a disorganized attachment style?

Yeah, so the disorganized attachment style is it's not organized, right? So it feels like chaos. Sometimes they want you to get really close. Sometimes they're pushing you away. Um, sudden withdrawal. They have trouble regulating their emotions because their relationships have not helped them do that in the past. You know, people have not validated their feelings. So you might get more escalation, more anger. And so it'll kind of feel chaotic. Like you kind of will be like, what is going on? Like I thought we were just connecting and they have a kind of very different interpretation of the situation. And usually with a disorganized attachment style, there's a history of a pretty brutal background, like a history of some sort of abuse in childhood.

Is it easier to spot someone's attachment style in yourself or in somebody else?

Honestly, I think anxiously attached people tend to be so hungry for information as to how to improve. So when I talk, anxiously attached people are ready, you know, they follow up with me and they're like, that's me. Like, I'm anxiously attached. I cling. I'm so afraid everyone's gonna abandon me. I think everybody's judging me. So I think often anxiously attached people, they hear, you know, the basics of attachment theory, and they kind of, you know, quickly see themselves in it. That's not happened to me as much with avoidantly attached people. Again, they struggle with vulnerability. So I imagine it would be harder to say I'm avoidantly attached, and I've had these struggles in the past.

I have a question about that, because that's fascinating.

Sure.

If you are avoidantly attached, and you're listening, to somebody talk about attachment theory, given that somebody that has an anxious attachment style might immediately self-diagnose, might immediately see themselves. What is an— what is an avoidant attachment style person likely to experience as they're learning about attachment styles and considering themselves as they're listening to you, Dr. Franco?

Yeah, discomfort. You know, when, when you get deep with avoidantly attached people or you try to get them to acknowledge some of their wounds, they feel very uncomfortable with that and will kind of— maybe they'll stop listening. Honestly, I mean, some of this obviously depends. And honestly, there's some research that finds that if you're in a relationship with someone who's avoidant but has humility, there's a lot better outcomes, whereas if the avoidant person is like everything's your fault and I'm fine and you're being sensitive and right, then that's, it's gonna be really hard to connect with that specific form of avoidant attachment. But so there has to be, you know, with an avoidant attachment, a willingness to look at yourself and to be conscious of your patterns, which I think anxiously attached people tend to be more willing to do. You know, if you're having conflict with an avoidant person, often they are ghosting or they're minimizing or they're saying like, we're not going to talk about this. Like basically anything related to relationships and intimacy really scares and overwhelms avoidantly attached people. Like, you know, sometimes we think of anxiously attached people as more sensitive in that they get really overwhelmed when a relationship's not going well, but so do avoidantly attached people. They just express it they express that sensitivity through removal. Like it's, it's, they can't, they can't, they're so overwhelmed emotionally by relationships, by intimacy. And so they're stonewalling, which is a sign of being emotionally overwhelmed. They're being closed off, they're being dismissive because it's too emotionally overwhelming to look at some of their own patterns because fundamentally avoidantly attached people have a lot of shame. If you tell them they've made a mistake, they have this core belief that I am a failure, that I am deficient. They probably won't admit that to you, right? But anytime you try to offer a critique to an avoidantly attached person, that you might trigger that core wound of I'm a failure, I'm deficient, which is why it feels, it can feel so hard for an avoidantly attached person to hear some of their patterns and hear some of their dynamics.

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What I love about what you're teaching us is I think that we've gotten to this point, especially when you look at content on social media, where there's so much of a push to cut people outta your life, to label that sort of stonewalling is the word that you just used. But you know, if you think about it from the standpoint of somebody that has trauma in their past, or they have just an avoidant attachment style because of what they experienced as a child, and that it's just overwhelming to feel those emotions. Like, if you can come at it from a sense of compassion, I love what you're teaching us, because through understanding, you might be able to keep somebody in your life instead of just being like, that's it, you're out. You don't talk, you don't go deep, you're stonewalling me, you're ghosting me, when really there's another side to this coin. Which is, no, this is a person who through their childhood gets very overwhelmed by these emotions, by intimacy, and they protect themselves by removing. This isn't about hurting you, it's about them protecting themselves. Am I kind of processing this the right way, Dr. Franco?

You are, certainly, certainly. And, you know, I think if you want to be in a relationship with someone who's avoidant, It's important that you try to get your needs met in another relationship, right? Like not trying to depend on this one avoidant person to meet all of your needs. The more that your needs are met elsewhere, the more you can be flexible with the person that's more avoidant, right? So the more that I feel like in another relationship makes me feel secure, another relationship I can be very vulnerable and deep, another relationship I feel really loved and valued, right? Then you kind of have your cup full enough to be able to be more flexible with that avoidantly attached person who's like, you know, we had some intimacy, now I need a breather and I need to kind of pull away for a while. But I do think that we should challenge avoidantly attached people to say that it's okay that you need boundaries around intimacy and it's okay that intimacy scares you. But you also need to fill people in. Like, you have to just say— be able to say, like, hey, I'm a little overwhelmed right now. Like, I need, like, about a week, and then I'll come back and we can talk about this, right? Instead of not communicating anything and just sort of, um, of ghosting on people, because that, that hurts people a lot.

Does it hurt the person who's avoidant when they ghost? Does that contribute to shame?

So what we see the pattern being like is anxiously attached people think too much about other people and not enough about themselves. And avoidantly attached people think a lot about themselves and their own needs and not as much about their impact on other people. So, um, you know, the anxious person being willing to completely sacrifice their sense of self and do whatever their partner needs, and they're not actually happy, but they still feel like they're in a relationship with another person, which is not actually the goal, right? The goal isn't to be in a relationship at all costs. It's to like be You need a relationship that elevates you and helps you express who you are and makes you feel happier. But the avoidantly attached person, they're very— it's like when you're negotiating with someone and they have all the resources and all the power. Like it just tends to be the anxiously attached person who's adjusting to the avoidantly attached person. 'Cause the avoidantly attached person is like, well, I'm okay alone. I'm okay independent. I don't really need these relationships with other people. You will find that avoidantly attached people, they tend to have like a phantom ex where while they're in a relationship, they don't appreciate it. But then when it's over, they have that space, that deactivating side moves away and they tend to look back on these relationships and miss them and feel lonely and realize that they do also really need connection. So it's the avoidantly attached person is kind of in this very stuck place where it's like, One side of me really needs connection and another side of me is so afraid of it, afraid of it because I think if you get too close, you're not actually gonna like who I am. You're gonna see me as less than and deficient and a failure. So once that piece of threat takes over and they ghost and they might actually feel relieved from being separated from the relationship at first, but then as that deactivating part sort of melts away a little bit, they start to grieve. They'll have a more sort of delayed grief process around the relationship.

Hmm.

Can you have, uh, more than one attachment style?

Yeah, yeah, you can. Um, like I said, in each different relationship you can have a different attachment style, and it makes sense, right? Because if someone is very anxious and is like, I need all your time and attention, and you need to be showing me that you love me all the time, right? You're gonna be like, I need some space, I need some me time, I'm losing myself to try to reassure you in all these ways. And if someone's super avoidant and they're very distant and you're like trying to connect with them and they're always pulling away, you're gonna feel pretty anxious, right? Where it's like, oh my gosh, like I feel insecure. Do they actually like me? So it is a dynamic and in different relationships we can see different parts of our attachment style coming out. Like I do believe all of us have a piece of us that is securely attached. The more we can access that self, the more we'll feel secure in our relationships.

Well, that sounds like good news. So it sounds like, uh, within each one of us is a person or a self that is capable of secure attachment. So are you saying that if you can start to identify your default attachment style and see it as a lens and an opportunity for growth and improvement, that it is possible to change your default attachment style and become more secure?

Yes. So like, I guess it's called like internalized secure attachment where you have to start treating and talking to yourself like that secure attachment figure that you maybe didn't have. So, you know, when you're feeling a strong emotion, being able to tell yourself it's okay that you feel this way, like I'm right here with you. And you know, what are you feeling and what do you need right now? Like being on your own side and being really, really loving toward yourself is like, that's part of the ways that we heal. Part of the ways that we find secure attachment is like different things I've done to find more security is like, Singing love songs to yourself. And you know, when you're activated and triggered, realizing that that's not all of you and that there's a piece of you that is still grounded. And what does that grounded part of you wanna say to the triggered part of you? What love does it have to give in this moment? It also takes like, what's happening with the insecure attachment styles is they're reactive, they're getting really emotionally overwhelmed and they're acting based on that sense of emotional overwhelm, right? So the anxiously attached person is like clinging, clinging, clinging, right? And it's almost like reflexive. They're not acting with intention anymore. They feel like they're almost kind of hijacked. And the avoidantly attached person's also very hijacked, but instead it's to pull away, pull away, pull away, right? But if we can just like pause and like feel those uncomfortable emotions, like, oh my gosh, I feel I feel so rejected right now. I feel so abandoned right now. Like, where do you feel that emotion in your body? How can you lean into feeling it more deeply? Allow yourself to feel it, right? Because fundamentally, this acting out behavior is a way to try to cope with a very difficult underlying emotion. And you could, instead of using this acting out behavior, like the anxiously attached person demanding things of the other person or clinging to the other person or the avoidantly attached person suddenly pulling away, you can develop your own tolerance for that feeling or emotion that's very uncomfortable so that you don't have to act out in your relationships to protect yourself from it.

I wanna focus on avoidant or disorganized right now because I really identify personally with anxious attachment. And since you already said that somebody with an anxious attachment style is kind of prone to self diagnose and wanna fix it and always be thinking, da, da da da, da, da da da. I'm thinking about avoidant now. And I'm thinking about disorganized because as you go sing a love song to yourself, I personally am like, oh, that sounds beautiful. But Dr. Franco, can we talk to the person who's listening right now who just had a visceral, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. No, I'm serious, because I, I, I think that for people who are already like, yeah, I, I'm sick of being hijacked by my emotions. I am married to somebody who is avoidant. I realized in researching this show, Dr. Franco, and getting ready for this interview, I didn't understand attachment style, and yet I have been talking about it in couple's therapy for 2 years because I'm anxious and my husband is avoidant. And the shame piece that he feels and puts onto himself is something I was unaware of. Like, I've been griping that, oh, you know, I'm married to this guy that's really quiet and he doesn't— and trying to draw him out. Could you explain why it is so important important for happiness and confidence and success, these things that we all deserve, to learn how to change and grow toward a more secure attachment, particularly for somebody who's avoidant or disorganized?

Yeah. Here's the thing about avoidantly attached people. They think they're super independent and don't really need anyone. But that's a defense mechanism against an underlying need for connection that they don't think they can actually fulfill. And I think if you're being really honest with yourself, no matter what your attachment style is, you'll see that you— a part of you really does crave connection. And if you felt like you could find it and feel comfortable and safe with it, that would— it would feel a lot safer for you to admit it to yourself. And I'll also say that you will not know how beautiful connection, deep profound sustaining connection is until you find it. Um, that's the only way that you'll be able to judge whether you need connection in your life or not, right? Because you're thinking you don't need connection, but fundamentally you don't even know what connection is because avoidantly attached people, when they're in relationships, they're not actually vulnerable. They're not sharing anything about themselves. They're not very like authentic to be real. And so that is they're connecting in a very shallow way. And they're saying, when they're saying, I don't need connection, it's like, I don't need that, which is arguably not true and deep connection, right? Because it's not revealing and you're not actually being known by other people and they're not knowing you and you're not, you know, there's not this giving and receiving of love that's happening. It's kind of just like we're two people that are, you know, in each other's presence, right? And so what I'm saying is that there's this disjuncture between what the avoidant person doesn't think that they need and what connection actually is and what connection actually can be and how connection can make you feel alive and seen and centered and grounded and supported and lighter, right? Like, those are all the things that true connection will give you that you will miss out on if you're very avoidant.

Dr. Franco, if you've never experienced that, And here you are, and you're decades into your life, and you've always had this experience of being on the outside, right? And keeping your distance and not trusting people because both your childhood taught you that you shouldn't and can't trust people, right? And that your own behavior of opting out because of your attachment style has only reinforced that because you're never stepping toward people. How on earth do you begin to change this if you've never experienced this?

Yeah, you have to reconnect with your own emotions. You can't connect with people if you're always suppressing your emotions, which is what avoidant people do. And it starts, I mean, obviously therapy, you know, I think therapy really, there's, there's therapists that focus on attachment style specifically. I think a lot of male therapists who see a lot of men tend to do a lot of avoidant attachment work because this is part of how we socialize men. And there is a gender difference when it comes to attachment style where women are at least slightly more likely to be anxious, men are slightly more likely to be avoidant, right?

So let's just say for somebody listening right now who literally Dr. Franco is about to go, okay, I'm turning this off. Um, we're talking to you, and for everybody who has somebody in their life like this, and I'm glad you said the, the piece about the research showing that women tend to be more anxious and men tend to be more avoidant. And the only reason why I'm saying this is because, as you're very well aware and you wrote about in your book, when it comes to friendship, women are way better at naturally forming communities. And men, every year that you get older, you actually get further and further and further away from those connections of sports teams and fraternities and work friends. And men become more and more and more isolated. And, you know, we tend to be better as women connecting and staying with in friendships where we're airing emotions, and men typically do not. And so I want to speak directly to somebody who may be hearing and learning about attachment theory for the very first time. They are considering, holy cow, I think I'm avoidant. Yeah, I don't like to talk about my feelings. I don't have a lot of friends. Other than the person I'm dating or family connection, I don't have this kind of intimacy in terms of emotional support. What is an exercise, and can you and I roleplay it for somebody that's listening right now to, to just dip your toe into the water of trying to experience this connection to your own emotions that you're talking about?

Yeah, yeah, we can, we can definitely do that. One thing that I also just wanted to share briefly for avoidant buy-in, because it's hard to get avoidant people to buy into this, is the physical health implications of your attachment style. That insecurely attached people, both anxious and avoidant, more likely than secure people to suffer from mental health issues. Anxiously attached people have the highest rates of mental health issues. Avoidant attachment, avoidantly attached, somewhere between secure and anxious, and insecure people have the best mental health. Physical health, right? Because avoidant people don't access their emotion, it manifests physically. So if you're avoidantly attached and you're experiencing migraines, headaches, you don't know where they came from, gastrointestinal issues, stomach ulcers, and there's like really no you have no idea where this is coming from and you're like, what is happening to my body? Like, why am I in chronic pain, right? Like that's connected to emotional suppression and not releasing your emotions. So that is my last plug for finding secure attachment is your health, really, like your physical health and how long you live. That's in part predicted by your ability to reconnect to human connection.

One other thing I would love to add, um, in my own experience, and then you can talk about it, Dr. Franco, clinically, is just seeing that my husband is now very clear that he was not only suppressing his emotions, he was numbing them with a daily weed and alcohol habit.

Yep. Yeah, you will definitely see that.

What I'd love to do next is really dig into some tools for people who are starting to realize that they have an avoidant attachment style. Let's do that. That next.

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So what's the first thing that somebody that is just realizing, I think I might have an avoidant attachment style, should do today?

Yeah, so the avoidant attached person, we— our goal is to help them reconnect with their feelings, reconnect with self-expression, basically find their most authentic self instead of pushing that away all the time. So, you know, clinically, that might start very simply with being like, what sensations do you feel in your body? Is there a tingling sensation anywhere? Is there pressure on your chest? Is there a lump in your throat? Are you feeling like a headache? Asking them, you know, what sensations are you feeling in their body? And then you present them— you can kind of Google the feelings wheel or put it in the show notes or something— with this, this wheel of feelings where they can choose from all of these different feelings that they might, they might feel comfortable labeling the sensation that's going on in their body with a certain feeling that's on this feelings wheel. So what feeling would you choose here that represents the sensation that's happening in your body. So it's sort of like a language. Like it's kind of like learning a new language and it's a practice of being able to throughout the day reflect and ask yourself, okay, like what is it that I'm feeling right now? Here's a list of feelings. Which of them when I go through this list feel like they might resonate with me? Which of them stir something in me. And then I think we can encourage like avoidantly attached people to literally do anything self-expressive, anything self-expressive. So would you journal? Do you want to make art? Do you want to sing? And I'm saying this and I'm like, I don't know if an avoidantly attached person is going to buy in, but anything that in your mind is self-expressive to you, it could be origami. What does this origami piece mean about your own experience that you're going through right now. I think that is also really, really important for that reconnecting with the feelings process. I also think if you're avoidantly attached, there might be one person in your life where you're less avoidant with them because of how safe they make you feel.

Is there another word for safe, Dr. Franco? So You know, if somebody is kind of new to clinical or therapeutic language and you're avoidant or disorganized, but there is that one person that in our world we're talking safe, but if you're avoidant or disorganized, how would an avoidant or disorganized person kind of describe how that person makes them feel? Like themselves?

Yeah.

Are they more fun? Do I— feel like I can be myself around that, you know what I mean? Like, how might they describe that feeling?

So what is going to make an avoidant person feel very safe is if you don't take their actions personally. If when they pull away, um, you— they can come back and you'll kind of accept them. If you respect their boundaries, like they say, you know, I can't hang out right now, I can't, you know, do this right now. And you're sort of like, okay, when you're free, when you're comfortable, you're willing to kind of move at the speed of avoidance. Like, you can't move too fast with an avoidantly attached person. They need time. They move slower in intimacy. Like, avoidantly attached person, you'll hear them say, it takes longer for me to build trust. And the anxiously attached person is like, I'm gonna drag you along on this journey at my speed, because if you're not moving at my speed, I feel like you're gonna abandon me. So the avoidant person wants someone that's going to be able to work on their timeline. So that person that feels to them will usually be someone they've known for a very long time. It's someone where they feel like they could express boundaries with, or, or there's need for separation or autonomy with, and that person can be okay with that and accepting of that. It's someone who they feel like is nonjudgmental. You know, if they do share, this person isn't trying to change the way that they feel. They're just willing to kind of listen and accept the avoidance for where it is. We have to make them feel safe enough to be willing to pull down these defense mechanisms a little bit. And yeah, I think the avoidant person will also feel more— I think of safety as like, how do you feel after hanging out with people? And the avoidant person might, when hanging out with other people, because they never feel really authentic around people, they may feel really drained by social interaction. But with the person that feels safe, they might feel— and this is hard because avoidant people aren't always in touch with their feelings— but not as exhausted, instead more recharged after someone's company.

This is so fascinating. I want to go through a couple quick questions to further help people reflect on what their own attachment style might be. So how does each attachment style deal with anger?

So John Bowlby, father of attachment theory, he talks about two types of anger. Anger of hope, which means I use my anger as a signal that I need to heal something in this relationship. So his example is this child that, you know, she was sick when she was really young and her mother left her alone at the hospital because of the hospital restrictions. And they're watching a video of her being alone at the hospital and she's angry. So she turns to her mom and says, mommy, where was you? Where was you? You know, it's a vulnerable anger. It's, I'm angry, so I'm gonna be vulnerable and admit that I'm hurt. Whereas anger of despair, Bowlby argues, is what insecurely attached people express. And it's this, he describes this child Reggie, and Reggie had different caretakers growing up and one of them was a nurse. She left to get married. She comes back. Reggie is like, I hate her. So Reggie's angry and his anger manifests as let me destroy you. Let me get revenge on you so that I don't have to deal with this strong emotion. I have to coddle this strong emotion by destroying this relationship and getting revenge. And it's fundamentally because the insecurely attached person is not aware that it's possible to express yourself vulnerably and get your needs met. Really, they think, you know, either I'm not talking about this at all or I'm going to have to attack you and put you down because there's no middle ground of me sharing vulnerably that I'm hurt and you listening to me. That's impossible in the eyes of the insecurely attached person. So what we see, you know, in anxiously attached adults is they don't express their needs. They get completely overwhelmed because they haven't created that space for them to feel safe until they blow up. And they kind of make these demands and they'll put you down and they'll call you incompetent. They might try to psychoanalyze you, tell you about yourself and all of your problems, right? It is just, you know, they're going to character assassinate you a little bit. If you bring up a problem with the anxiously attached person, they're going to go into super self-blame. Like, I'm horrible, I'm awful, I've done everything wrong. And in some ways they make it all about them in that sort of response, right? Like, it's like, hey, you hurt me and now I'm stuck trying to reassure you because all of a sudden you feel like I've— I'm like attacking the very core of your being by telling you there's an issue in this relationship, right? So you'll see those sort of poles with the anxiously attached person, but the avoidantly attached person, they're angry. Honestly, they're probably not telling you and then they leave. and they just withdraw and you're like, what the heck happened? I have no idea. I thought everything was fine. But again, the avoidantly attached person feels like if I express a need, you will reject me and maybe even shame me. So they do not express the need and then they kind of withdraw or pull away. And when you try to approach them with the need, they might tell you you're too sensitive or you want too much or you're too fragile or you need to learn to be more independent, right? Like this very natural and normal giving and exchanging of needs that happens in any intimate relationship, in their eyes, to need is to be weak, right? So they apply that to themselves and they apply that to anyone else around them. So they just kind of get angry by pulling away. But then if you get them to engage, they'll also kind of blame it all on you. So sometimes you'll see the avoidant person being like, you know, it's your fault I'm not attracted to you, or you need too much, or you're being too sensitive. Right? Avoidantly attached people, again, have a lot of trouble admitting fault because of that core fear of being a failure and being deficient. And so when you try to address anything, that core fear gets sort of rubbed that I'm a failure to you. So they need a lot of softness, honestly, like avoidantly attached people. If you need to address something with them, making sure you're acknowledging everything they did well. I love that you did this. I love that you cooked for me. I loved and appreciated that you responded to my text message this morning. And I would just add that if this additional thing could happen, it's gonna make me really happy. Like they can't, if you try to bring them too much emotion, they're getting very overwhelmed. So if you wanna try to approach the avoidantly attached person about an issue, trying to remain calm, trying to remain grounded, admitting all the things that they're doing right, and then just saying, and I would like to add, what would make our relationship even better is if you did this additional thing for me. And that's important. I think sometimes the anxiously attached person is like, the avoidantly attached person is not meeting my needs. They're not necessarily at where you want them to be, but if you want them to keep growing, you have to make sure you're recognizing those improvements. 'Cause if you leave them in that place where they feel like they're a failure, they're gonna be paralyzed. They're gonna feel like, no matter what I do, I can't meet this person's expectations. And then they're just gonna sort of withdraw.

One of the things that I love about learning about attachment styles is it feels like it's another lens or framework through which you can view your relationships and not make them so personal. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like we tend to look at the way that other people behave is a direct reflection of us. And as I listen and try to absorb everything that you're saying, Dr. Franco, I'm learning more and more that a lot of times the way somebody reacts, particularly in stressful situations or situations where they feel triggered, has nothing to do with you and everything to do with their own internal wiring.

Exactly. Because what's happening in our body is more compelling to us than what's happening in the world, which means that if you're telling me even very kindly and politely that like, hey, you know, you hurt me and my body's suddenly on fire and I'm feeling like I'm a failure and I'm feeling so overwhelmed, right? Like, it doesn't matter that you would approach me very kindly and sensitively. What I'm going to respond to is the fire that's happening in my body. Right? Like that. And that's even what I'm going to remember about the experience more so than, you know, how you approach me and the realities of the external circumstance. And that's why attachment style is so tricky, right? Because there's all these signs for all of us that people are loving us on any given day. People are smiling at you, people are holding the door for you, cars are stopping when you want to cross the street, people are texting you to check in, people are liking your Instagram page, right? But, you know, if your attachment style says people don't love you, you're not going to read and take in any of that. It's not just about what's actually happening, and it's so much about how we're interpreting what's happening. And that interpretation process is our attachment style. It's our interpretation of what's happening, what the— what's happening in the objective world refracted through our lens of our attachment style. And so that is why it can get so tricky to get out of your attachment style because you see in the world all the things that match your reality, right? Like the avoidantly attached people think people are untrustworthy and you're trying to show up for them so much and be reliable. One time something else happens and you're not able to be reliable to them, right? And all of a sudden they're like, oh, it's true, you can't trust people, they're all going to betray you, right? And it's like that person's just being human. You have to let people be human. Um, so that's why like there's just this huge confirmation bias when it comes to attachment style that can make it very hard to, to get out of and why it's so helpful for me personally. And I think for everybody to learn about and understand our attachment style, to understand our lens, to understand that it is a lens and it's not just the objective reality of the situation because through that understanding we can we can change.

I am curious, do attachment styles attract opposites or the same types? I mean, how does that work? Because I often hear people going, I just keep dating the same loser over and over, you know what I'm saying? Like, why do I always get people that are emotionally unavailable?

Yeah, so let's think about it, right? You're, you're dating someone and they're hot and cold, and all of a sudden they pull away and they don't answer your text when they say that they will. And if you're secure, right, you're like, "Bye." Like, "I feel happy about myself. If you're not gonna treat me in a way that reflects that, I'm gonna find someone else who does," right? Like, they're not willing to endure pain for the sake of being in a relationship. So who is gonna end up with a more avoidantly attached person is the person that's like, "I am enthralled by your inconsistency and I have to get you to like me now. And that's my purpose and my journey." And in some ways, the highs and the lows really excite me, right? Like, the anxiously attached person is going to be more likely to put up with some of the intimacy quirks of the avoidantly attached person, right? Because again, the anxiously attached person is kind of willing to sacrifice their own sense of self to be in a relationship. The securely attached person is not. Avoidantly attached people often need anxiously attached people as the glue that will kind of keep them in relationship to each other. So that's why we see a lot of anxiously and avoidantly attached pairings. And you hear a lot of anxiously attached people that are like, I need to earn their love. If they give it freely, I, you know, I'm not attracted to that. Or if someone's totally secure and available, they're like, just not feeling it, right? Because they, they confuse them being triggered with them being in love.

Oh, let— can we talk about that? Confusing being triggered with being in love. Dr. Franco, let's unpack this.

Yeah, so, so if you're anxiously attached and you're triggered, someone's triggering your wounds of abandonment, and you're feeling high arousal because of that, you're feeling very strong emotions because you're feeling triggered and wounded. It's like hurt. Hurt is like a high arousal emotion, and so is excitement, and so is thrill, right? And so it can be easy to feel like, I like this person because they're making me feel high arousal, which is high arousal is present in pain, high arousal is present in excitement. And so you're being pulled in. You know, it's funny, when I was like more anxiously attached to people, I'd be like, I would wanna be with this person until they'd wanna be with me. And then I'd feel like, oh, and now I'm less excited for some reason, right? And that's a sign that, oh, I was being pulled in by this wound of abandonment that they were triggering that made me want to find my sense of self again through getting them to like me. It was like I was trying to get my sense of self through being in the relationship with this avoidant person. But, you know, in finding more security, it's more like I don't like feeling triggered. I don't like feeling like someone's going to abandon me and they're not going to show up for me. I no longer feel like that's sexy or enthralling because I have a more positive sense of myself and I look for relationships that reflect my own positive sense of myself. And I'm— insecure person is like on their own side and they're wanting to take care of themselves and make themselves feel safe, right? And so they're attracted to places that make them feel grounded and make them feel safe in that way.

Let's put the, uh, shoe on the other foot and talk about that same trigger versus love from an avoidant attachment person? What would they be feeling in terms of how they collapse, you know, a situation that's triggering with love?

So here's the confusing thing about attachment. When you're falling in love, it can sometimes replace your attachment style a bit. So you may— it may take you a year to kind of figure out what someone's attachment Like everything can be going great and you're connecting and there's a lot of intimacy building. And then a year in, once you start living together, you're just like, who is this person? Like all of a sudden they're so closed off. All of a sudden they're so demanding of me. Like what the heck happened? It's because like all of the like chemicals that are released, this cocktail of chemicals when you're falling in love can be so powerful that they might replace some of your underlying wounds and triggers and make you feel pulled into this relationship. Even when you're afraid of intimacy. So you can carry both of those things at the same time. So sometimes you'll see like people feeling secure with each other for a year when there's all of this cocktail of emotions, avoidantly attached people feeling comfortable with connection and intimacy, right? And then after a year, after some time, all of a sudden those avoidant feelings come up and all of a sudden they're like, I wanna get out of this. All of a sudden they're like, I need to pull away. All of a sudden they're like, I feel really suffocated. You know, all of a sudden they're like, my partner expects too much out of me. And so that, that is the really confusing thing. That's why it's so like hard. I don't know, pat on the back to all of us who are just able to sustain healthy relationships because it's so, it's so, so, so hard. So I think that's, you know, what, what we can kind of tend to see. And I think the avoidant person, their template for intimacy is that people aren't going to respect their boundaries is that, you know, they can't necessarily trust people. So when the anxiously attached person is like pushing too much or not respecting their boundaries and demanding a lot from them, again, they— that's part of their template for intimacy. It's not that someone's going to be loving and, you know, hear them out and take their perspective into consideration. So the insecure attachment, it kind of fine-tunes our expectations in relationships so that insecurely attached people, because their expectations of others are that other people will relate to them in an insecurely attached way, they're more willing to accept when someone does so in their life.

It's, uh, interesting because as you're talking, I'm also thinking, boy, you see this play out in friendships too all the time, which is of course, you know, what your book is about, that, you know, people collect best friends, best friends, and then all of a sudden, within a year, now they're collecting a new best friend and the other ones sort of faded away. So what are some other tools that people can use starting today to, to begin the process of building a secure attachment with themselves?

Find securely attached people.

Okay.

Build relationships.

Where the hell are they hiding, Dr. Frankel? And your schedule is very busy, so I know you don't have time to hang out with us.

Um, how do you know?

How do you know a securely attached person? Like, let's just scan a room. What am I looking for?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's gonna, I think, take a little while for it to reveal itself, but like, is this person being vulnerable with you but not oversharing? Which is a nuance that's kind of hard to interpret or to understand, right? Like, I don't know, are they sharing your life stories with you, their whole life story and their deep-seated trauma on the first day? Or are they sharing why the day was hard? They had a struggle today, right? That's the sort of appropriate vulnerability that we see in the securely attached person. The securely attached person is more loving towards you. They're affectionate towards you. They tell you how great that you are. If you bring up an issue with them and you're like, yeah, I'd love to hear from you more. Our friendship's so important to me. They're like, yeah, I'm going to try to make you feel more loved, right? They're responsive. To your needs. They don't try to shut your needs down or tell you that you're wrong. The securely attached people has a positive view on others, right? If you hear things like nobody can be trusted or everybody's gonna abandon you, that's a sign of more insecurely attached people. But the secure person is, I don't know, they see the best in people. If you hear them talk about some of their past relationships that didn't work, again, there's that nuance that, yeah, this part was good, but this part I really struggled with. They just have more empathy for people, to be honest. That is something that's linked to secure attachment, empathy, authenticity. I'm not going to talk about how I'm so much better than everyone because that person made me feel inferior. The secure person will just say that person made me feel inferior instead of being like, and I don't even care about them. These are all the reasons why I'm so much better than them anyway. Right? There's a sense that you're hanging out with someone that's kind of more authentic. I don't know. They also just make your nervous system feel calmer. So you're just going to feel a little bit more calm in their company. So Those are some signs that you've found a secure person. And the secure person, whether in friendship or in romantic relationship, what's going to happen is they're going to keep treating you in a way that's counter to this internalized set of assumptions that you have, this internalized template. And over time, your template is going to start to mold and change because they're giving you evidence that your template isn't necessarily correct. So that's awesome.

I love that. And is there anything that in the meantime you could add as a habit or something to do every day that would help you to start to reconnect and build that connection with yourself while you're scanning the world for more secure people to bring in your life?

Yeah. I want you to savor a moment of acceptance that you experience every day. Because insecurely attached people, what they struggle with is feeling safe in relationships, no matter what that relationship is. They're coming to the game, they're coming into the game with the baggage of this is not safe in different ways, right? So if you're insecurely attached and something happened for you today that made you feel accepted, I want you to write it down. I want you to focus on it. I want you to think about it until you feel some emotion, you feel the acceptance, you feel, you know, the love within your body. Um, you have to be able to savor and receive those experiences of safety and acceptance that as an insecurely attached person, you'd usually just ignore and usually not even register.

So can I see if some of these are examples? So like when a friend comes over for dinner and they bring cinnamon rolls.

Yeah.

Knowing that they brought you something, a small gesture like that, acknowledging that that is a moment, that's something like that?

Absolutely. But it can even be so small as like, oh, my friend sent me a voice note today. They care about me. Or my friend commented on my picture that they like it. Like, like practice. Make it a practice to receive love. Like, that's really what I'm getting at here. Receiving love is not easy. It's something that we need to practice.

I hate that it's not easy.

I know, right?

And is that the bottom line when it comes to attachment theory, that the importance of attachment theory is that when you understand your attachment style, you now have a lens through which to really look at yourself and your inability to receive love, and now you can go to work on learning how to become secure so you can let love in? Is that what this is truly about at the bottom line?

Oh, that's so beautiful. No. Yes. I love that. I love it. Yes. I think secure people can receive the depths of love.

Mm. This is a recent breakthrough for me. Like, it's only— it makes me really sad, Dr. Franco, to know that I'm 54 and that I would say it's only in the last 2 months that I've noticed how much I stonewall love. That I'll pour it out, but I block actually receiving it. And so I've started visualizing galley doors in a kitchen, you know, that swing back and forth.

Yeah.

As a tool to help me catch myself when I'm the one putting up the wall and not receiving those gestures that are in your life every day, as a stranger smiling, uh, you know, a leaf falling from a tree in the shape of a heart and it's beautiful, or your pet greeting you, just these moments where love can blow into your life, and how much I was not even receiving them until recently.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Uh, yeah, it's, it's wild to me how hard it is to receive love, how threatening it is. I think it's so It's so threatening if you're avoidantly attached because to receive love means to admit that you need it in the first place. So it feels like such a vulnerable act. And for the anxious person, it's like receiving love implies that you're valuable, you're valuable as a person. And if you struggle with anxious attachment, you have this unconscious struggle with having low self-esteem, which means that like if people try to treat you like you're valuable, it doesn't match up with how you kind of feel about yourself internally. And that's why it feels threatening. It questions calls into question your sense of predictability about how the world perceives you and how you perceive yourself. And it can feel like pressure, like, oh, this person values me in this way and I can't actually live up to that. It's like you have imposter syndrome in all of your relationships if you're anxiously attached. So for both attachment styles, it's really, really hard to receive love. It is a trigger, I think, in its own right when people try to love us. And so being able to work on the practice of receiving love, I think, is really important. For finding more security.

Well, Dr. Franco, thank you. Your work is an act of love for all of us. And I will tell you that I love you for spending the time with us and pouring into us. And thank you so much, because I feel like this is a really important and hard thing to wrap your, your mind and your heart around. But it's truly life-changing if you can lean into this. And see this as a way to let more love into your life, both from yourself, from people like you that are sharing your wisdom, and from just the unbelievable amount of people that are out there in your life just waiting for you to let them in.

Thank you so much, Mel. That is so beautifully put. It's been a fascinating, amazing, revolutionary conversation.

Well, I can't wait to have you back.

Thank you. Wow.

When I started this interview, I did not expect attachment style and attachment theory to lead us to the topic of your ability to let love in. And at the end of the day, that's what I want for you, because that's what I want for me.

That's what life is all about. Life is about love.

And the purpose of your life is to express and receive love. So for those of you listening, in case no one else tells you today, let me be the one to say I love you. I do. And I believe in you and your ability to create a better life. That's why I'm here. I am securely attached when it comes to you, my friend. And what did she say about securely attached people? They are secure in themselves, and they can love themselves and love others. And that's why I can say that and truly mean it. So you now know a little bit more about yourself. And I want you to use that to go improve your relationships and Create a better life because you deserve it. And so do I.

All right.

I'll see you in a few days.

Stitcher.

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