Why Anxious & Avoidants Attract (and How to Fix it) with Thais Gibson

All right, Thais, welcome to the ManTalks show. How you doing today?

I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here with you and appreciate you having me.

Yeah, likewise. I think we'll, we're going to do a wonderful deep dive into attachment, which I think my audience is very used to and loves this topic. And I think you've got some good angles on this. So it's gonna be great. Where I kind of wanted to start was, what is happening to attachment at a social level, at a cultural level? What do you see happening? Because we can talk about the individual and we don't need to get into politics or anything like that, but it seems like attachment in a collective sense is getting wildly disrupted. So, I'd love for you to talk to that if you're open to that to begin with.

Yeah, I think there's sort of two things happening. I think number one, there's this sort of phenomenon as people sort of learned about their attachment style a little bit more, where they were like, oh, now I just am this attachment style. And they sort of came to identify with that as a label rather than understanding that your attachment style really is sort of the subconscious set of rules that you've learned about how to give and receive love. And we can rewire those, we can change those, we can become more adaptive if we have a whole bunch of maladaptive patterns. But then I think second to that is that we're seeing because of social media and Instagram and dating apps and all of these things, it's disrupting the way that we are used to attaching. There's this lack of us really working through things in relationships culturally. There's a lot more short-term gratification. And I think that's disrupting our ability to really work through things in relationships and become more secure together.

What would you say is the most disruptive element of social media or dating apps? To our attachment? And like, what do people need to be aware of? Because I, I do think that social media and dating apps have actually interrupted our abilities to form healthy, secure attachments. And so I'm curious to get your take on like, what should people be mindful of when they're interacting with these platforms?

Yeah, I love that question. I think the first thing is that there really is a short-term gratification component where, when we're trying to do the work with somebody and be in relationship for the long run, it requires that we learn to communicate through problems, that we learn to solve things together. And I think when there's this element of going, well, we can just find somebody else on the dating app, we can just move on, there's just, you know, endless options at somebody's disposal, it actually puts less emphasis on the importance of working through things in relationships. And if you actually look at the lifecycle of relationships, every relationship has 6 stages. So we start in the dating stage, we get to know somebody, then we move into the honeymoon stage, we make this more exclusive commitment. And then we have a power struggle stage. And the whole point of the power struggle stage is to learn to drop the mask, let somebody in more deeply, let somebody know your fears and your flaws and your needs, and vice versa, and to love somebody through and beyond that. And it's a beautiful— it's sort of a crisis because people fight more in the power struggle stage. But it's also this opportunity, because when we actually do that work, we bond and connect so much more deeply as a result. And then we move into the following stages of stability, the devotion, the bliss stages of relationship. And so it becomes this beautiful life cycle. But when we have dating apps at our disposal, it basically de-incentivizes people to do the work and to have those hard conversations. And it gives somebody this ability to just go, okay, there's other options, I can move on. And the more that that happens, I think it actually robs us of this really sacred component of human connection and what it means to learn to love somebody more deeply and to move through hard things with somebody in a relationship. And so the fact that that's sort of on the decline right now for people, I think is a little bit tragic, quite honestly.

It does seem like, I think my issue with them, or what I agree with what you're saying, I think all of that is true. I think it's also interrupted our ability to go through hardship in relationship, to disagree with one another in relationship, which is such an integral part of developing secure attachment. It's like, can I just disagree with you or go through a hard time with you? And can we actually be okay? And that has become, you know, it's like, I think people are afraid to post online now for fear of getting attacked if they don't say exactly the right thing or in the right way or about the thing. And I think that it has really diminished our capacity to reconcile from disagreement. And I think that's— I see that really bleeding into relationships, that relationships seem to be more fragile than ever before. And like, there's a a lowered quality of tolerance and robustness to be able to hold dissonance. And so I think like you're saying is that as soon as couples start to go through conflict, it's like, oh no, we're in conflict and this must mean that there's something horribly wrong with the relationship. And it's like, well, actually, conflict's an integral part of maintaining, you know, secure attachment and not that you want to pick a fight or anything like that, but it's a, you know, it is a pretty important aspect.

Yeah, conflict's a crisis and an opportunity. Like, conflict itself is not good or bad. It's how we handle it that becomes healthy or unhealthy. So we can have a conflict, and I always say to people, before we actually have a conflict externally between two parties, we're first having an internal conflict. So somebody has an unmet need, or somebody feels like a boundary is violated, or somebody feels misunderstood or unseen. And if we don't externalize that internal conflict we're feeling first and actually solve for it and move through it together, then you just build an invisible wall between yourself and somebody else, and it ends resentment long term. And so it's actually really important for us to learn to externalize conflicts. And to your point, I think that one of the things that I— it's sort of, you know, something if, if I could think of one thing that I think would change in the world and make it a much better place, not to be too philosophical, but like, Matt, remember when we could go back to 2018, 2019, and people could have different viewpoints politically, emotionally? Maybe this is like 2015 era, and that was okay. And we could talk about those things openly and say, oh, you think this interesting? Here's why I think otherwise. And we could actually work through things and have actual discussions, and it was okay. And we could hold that space and tension for people to disagree and have different viewpoints on things. I think that is a fundamental and integral part of a healthy society. And I think when that went away, because things got so polarized, and then everybody had to sort of bash each other for a difference of opinion or viewpoints— if we can't discuss things, like if you take two people and they're willing to discuss things in a respectful, kind manner, you're each going to learn from each other, you're each going to walk away with something, and that actually strengthens good ideas. And when that went out the window, our ability to navigate those things, both in relationships, but also as a culture, I think was very disrupted as well.

I agree. I agree. Well, let's, let's dig more into attachment itself. Would you say that part of how you view attachment part of your sort of thesis and framework around attachment is that attachment is programmable?

Yes, absolutely. Definitely. I think we have a genetic predisposition to things for sure. But, you know, then there's the whole field of epigenetics that really tells us, well, it's much more about how our perception triggers the expression of our genetic predisposition that has a much stronger impact. But also, I mean, there's this really powerful component of when we look at neuroplasticity, and we look at how the brain changes, we can reshape our experience. Is through reshaping our perception. So I'm a big proponent of if you have an insecure attachment style, that is not the endgame. If you got dealt a difficult hand of cards growing up where maybe you had more neglect in childhood or more enmeshment and you became more avoidant, or if you had more inconsistency or abandonment, you became more anxious. That is not the be-all and end-all. You are not stuck that way for the rest of your life. In fact, we can really change our attachment style. And that's something that I really focus on in my body of work. And I've seen tens of thousands of people people at this point heal, change their attachment style. It's actually the, the body of work that I started in because I was a fearful avoidant attachment style, AKA disorganized, and have been in a really, really stable, healthy relationship for a long time, which I would have never thought possible circa 15 years ago. Um, and, you know, I really believe that, like, we can reshape things. And so I go through 5 main pillars of how you change your attachment style, and I'm happy to dive into some of those things.

Yeah, I think from digging into your work, you— maybe let's just frame, like, what is or what creates an attachment style? Because I think I've heard you talk about them as like a cluster of beliefs, a nervous system response, emotional coping strategies, behavioral habits, perception filters. Maybe just kind of play around with defining what actually forms our attachment style for the listener so that they're like, oh, yeah, here are the memories of what built mine. And then we can get into what does it look like to rewire it? And I think we can probably spend the majority on that part of the conversation.

Okay, cool. So, so first things first, and I can go through like for each attachment style, but when we look at how an attachment style forms, at the end of the day, I find it to be much more nurture, much more conditioning based. And it's part of why you see people who talk about attachment styles say, but your attachment style can change. So it must be incorrect. The research must be wrong. And it's like, no, conditioning is happening to us all the time. So we are always being reconditioned. It's part of how we change and shift as human beings over the years and decades as individuals, because whatever we are exposed to through repetition and emotion over time is actually creating new neural networks in our brain. And when we look at our attachment cell and how it forms at its roots, it is number one, the subconscious set of rules that we've learned about love and connection, primarily through the stored wounds or perceptions we have, through the needs that are met or unmet in our lives. There's a wonderful Dr. Gabor Mate quote, and he says, trauma are the things that happened that shouldn't have happened. Okay, those are going to be things that create wounds. So the fear of abandonment, the fear of not being good enough, or unloved, or betrayed, or trapped— those are the things that happen that shouldn't have happened, and those are forming these deep core perceptions. And then trauma is also the things that didn't happen that should have happened. So these are things like our deeply unmet needs from our childhood. If a child grew up in a household where they never had a caregiver who was present with them, or who was available to them, or attuned to them, that's its own form of trauma, just in a more subtle way. And it leaves this deep imprint of things that we are yearning for, but can't really understand or put our fingers on consciously. And I think it's really important we have these sort of 5 pillars of what forms our attachment style. It's important to recognize that our conscious mind is responsible for roughly 3 to 5% of all of our beliefs, thoughts, emotions, actions, and our subconscious and unconscious minds collectively are 95 to 97%. And that's our habituated self. That's why we have these ideas that we're going to set a New Year's resolution and, and exercise every day or quit eating chocolate. And we intend that consciously through our logical analytical mind. But then 88% of people fail their New Year's resolutions within a week. It's because our subconscious— unless we find a way to link it down there or essentially wire that in, then we're going to find ourselves in a lot of resistance. So we have core wounds or stored perceptions. We have the, the needs that have been met or unmet in our lives. The next part is our nervous system. One of the things that I've honestly seen that drives me a little bit nuts sometimes is people come into to the work sometimes, and they say, well, I've learned to rewire my nervous system. I've learned to, you know, change how my nervous system is responding to things by doing things exclusively like somatic work. Somatic work is extremely powerful. Completion cycles, polyvagal theory, amazing work. But if we are only doing the somatic work, then we get really stuck because what's actually happening, if you pay close attention— and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this in a minute before I go into the other two pillars at a high level— is If you have a stored perception, okay, so let's say as an analogy, there's a bear in the woods, it chases you, you run away, thank goodness you're safe. You go back into the woods the next day. Well, your mind has been imprinted by that threatening experience of the bear in the woods. We have a negativity bias, we're wired to hang on to negative things more than positive and project them onto the world so that we can prepare ourselves and keep ourselves safe. So if you go back into the woods the next day, the trees move and you're like, the bear, right? Our body braces. So what's happened is we have that subconsciously stored perception, we project it back out onto the world. And when we believe and think that the bear might come, we then experience a cortisol response, we experience stressful emotions, norepinephrine or adrenaline, we have all of these responses happening, which then triggers our body to go into sympathetic nervous system mode. So if then all we do through life is we say, let's do nervous system regulation work to get back into parasympathetic, but we never work on rewiring those stored perceptions from childhood, then it's it's a lost cause in a lot of ways. We just— we're always doing the effect work, not the root cause work, and they actually have to go together. So that's our third pillar, is yes, rewiring your nervous system, regulating your nervous system through somatic experiences, but not until we've done the core wound work, the needs work. Now we can do that, and now they are— they start going together. And then just the last two pillars at a high level are learning to communicate effectively and learning to rewire at a subconscious level our relationship to our boundaries.

Mm, awesome. Um, we'll go through more of that in depth in a moment, but my mind immediately went was like the man-bear in the woods, you know, it's like, would like, why, why is it that women's nervous systems and brains are more interested in being alone in the woods with a bear than a man?

I'm sorry, I disagree with that.

Cause I was like, every, every dude would way rather be in the woods with another dude than a bear. Uh, but anyway, we don't have, we don't have to open up that can of worms, I feel like that's just gonna, you know, unless you have some strong statement on that, because you said you disagree. I actually am curious, like, why is that? My wife and I talked about this because I was like, what is the belief there? Like, have you just never been around a bear?

Like, if I can be really honest, I think that unfortunately, like, there's two sides to this, right? When we store a negative perception about something because something was harmful or painful, we project onto everything. So we're very unbiased about that projection. So I think a lot of times, like, it's very common for people to have mother wounds or father wounds. And if you had a father wound, for example, and I'll just— I'll actually speak for myself, like, I was somebody who had a lot of challenges with my father growing up, did a lot of work on that relationship. It was one of the most healing things I ever did, was really work through every little nook and cranny of that relationship and challenges and have a great relationship with my father today. But if you asked me circa like 16 years ago, I would have said like, oh, I don't trust any man because I had trust issues with my father. And that's my own version of the subconscious mind storing something and projecting it out. And then I think we are then inclined as people to overdramatize things when we have pain. So then it's like, see men in the woods and all these things. And, and I actually feel when I saw that sort of trend on social media, it actually, it broke my heart a little bit because I realized there's a lot of women, in my opinion, when I see I see two things. I see, number one, somebody who at some point in time did have a painful relationship with a man. Maybe it was their father, maybe it was their first love, maybe it was something that went wrong. But number two, I saw an absence of having worked through that. And rather than taking that and saying, hey, this was an experience I had, this is a painful experience, I'm going to honor my pain and then work through those stored perceptions so I don't project them onto everything. Instead, it was like, okay, now I'm going to blame all men in the outside world. And honestly, as somebody who did that at a point in my life before realizing that was not serving me and working through that has been one of the most important things I ever did for myself. As somebody who sees that, I know that when I did that, I hurt. I hurt the most. I suffered from my own fears and projections and things I hadn't worked through. And that was mine that I was carrying, my burden that I was carrying. So when I saw that trend, you know, at a high level, kind of laughed at it, like, okay, you know, it's a bear, like, come on. But at a deeper level, I recognize that, okay, this, you know, these women who are jumping on that sort of trend, they have had some kind of hard relationship, which men also have hard experiences with women too. And that's not a one-way street. But second to that, I saw every person kind of posting about that and diving into that as somebody who just hadn't had the opportunity to work through their stuff yet.

Yeah, I thought it was— I mean, you know, I didn't comment on what was happening because it's like, as a dude, you're just going to get slammed, you know? And but it was funny because all the— you know, I heard a lot of men talking about it. And it's, I think, where a lot of guys go. It's just like, well, that's the most irrational and illogical choice. You know, it's like the statistical probability that you're encountering a man in the woods that is actually a danger and a threat to you is quite low. The statistical probability that you are going to encounter a bear that is threatening and dangerous to you is extremely high. And so I think we can oftentimes overanalyze and overrationalize things. And I had somebody on the other day and he was talking about how— I can't remember, he was referencing somebody that jokingly said that the vast majority of men are slightly autistic, that we have maybe just like a little bit more of a predilection towards being overly analytical and rational. But anyway, we can, we can move on from man versus bear.

There's a really healthy balance. I also think that's part of why women, men and women need each other to some degree. You know, like I think that, that there's a balancing act that happens there and like there's so many layers to that. Like you could argue that, okay, your MBTI, if you're a T instead of an F and you're 16 personalities, male or female, you're going to be predisposed to one way of thinking over another. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, what you said about the, the bear in the woods. You're highly unlikely to survive that compared to a man in the woods. But I think that the underlying relationship people had to that trend, if they became a part of it, was honestly their own pain.

Well, and I think it is— I think the, the thing that is so heartbreaking that, that I see is that the, the social and cultural narrative about men is, is And I think that's part of the toxic toxicity that is out there. You know, I think that, yes, there are men that do bad things. And this isn't like a not all men type of thing. It's more that, again, when you look at the data, it is disproportionately men, a certain group of men that continue to, you know, do things that are against, you know, sort of against the law, whether it's abuse or sexual harassment or whatever. And it's generally those men repeatedly doing that, you know, and there's a misperception that it's like this massive amount of men. So I think what, what's become, I think, challenging is that the social narrative about men is so unhealthy and so dark that I think it's— I really think it started to negatively affect the male psyche as a collective because so many young men are growing up in a culture that is saying you are fundamentally wrong, broken, bad, unhealthy. You're fundamentally toxic. Masculinity is fundamentally toxic. You have to— I've talked about this before, that it's like it's the repackaging of original sin from Christianity, right? That like you're born with original sin. Well, that's been projected onto men and masculinity. Like you're born with this patriarchal toxicity that you have to extract out of yourself and sort of castigate yourself against in front of the new priests of modern culture and society. And so I think it's sad, and I get that women have— there are many women that have had very negative experiences with men. And I also see a lot of the men that have had extremely negative experiences with women. Women that are abusive, women that are sexually harassing, women that take advantage of them. I mean, it's really gnarly. So anyway, I know that kind of took us off.

No, I love that. Can I comment on a couple of things there too? I was saying this to somebody the other day. So before I worked in the online space, I worked in private practice for quite a few years. And to be honest, like I was somebody who, again, like years and years ago, you know, like coming up on 2 decades ago, would have had a lot of wounds around men. And one of the things that was so meaningful for me as somebody who worked through a lot of that but then went into private practice was to see— like, I felt like I had this huge blessing of seeing men in like a very raw and vulnerable way because they would come in to share things. And just seeing like the innocence, like the true fundamental innocence, and like men who even when they would make a mistake would, you know, they were grappling with something or they were confused or they didn't have all the answers. And I think that as a culture, when you actually look at the way that human beings get conditioned, we never get anywhere more productive or better off by painting one specific group of people as the victimized group of people. Even if people are victimized in a group of people, getting people to believe and buy into the fact that they are the victims actually hurts that group of people the most, number one. So this idea, and it's a really touchy subject, but I'm going to be really clear about, you know, me on it, is that is there— are there women victimized by men? 100%, of course. But to your point, it's also usually a very small percent of men that are reoffenders in specific situations. It's not all men. And when women carry that perception fundamentally in the world, that actually hurts women the most who are carrying that. Second to that, do not make a better group of men in society by telling men that they are bad, broken, fundamentally flawed. Whatever people believe about themselves, they're significantly more likely to act out. So on both sides of the narrative, I think this idea that we should project or portray men to be bad guys, and this whole bear in the woods thing, it's actually fundamentally flawed and dysfunctional for both groups of people. And I found that to be really unfortunate. And you can see that in the culture, like, you can see when a lot of this started to shift and change, and a lot of this messaging came up, it didn't make for better relationships between people. It didn't make for stronger or healthier, more rooted, grounded women, unfortunately. And it sure didn't help men. And I think we know— my heart really goes out to men in today's world because I think that we have a lot of men who are like trying to do their best or even maybe want to like approach a woman or get to know somebody or ask somebody on a date. And there's this, this emotional element of it being like, well, what can I say or do? Do? You know, what can I even— if I make a pass or if I, you know, ask somebody for their phone number, like, am I being bad or wrong for doing so? And the fact that people have to feel that way about everyday human interactions, I think, is, is tragic. And I think that when people are going to post things online, they should ask what their personal relationship is to it. If you're going to post something bashing a group of people, is your relationship to it— like, is this coming from my own wounds? Should be a really great question that we ask ourselves. And if the answer is us before posting something, we should work through whatever that is. And then we can decide what our opinion should be. And I think that that would make for a better situation for all individuals.

Completely agree. Yeah, it's like 45— I think, I think the data was like 45% of men between 18 and 29 haven't approached a woman or talked to a woman in the last year. Right. And then there's like a a large percentage of young men that just never approached a woman because, you know, and a lot of the fears that I hear from those guys is like, I don't want to be MeToo'd. I don't want to be misinterpreted as like sexually harassing somebody, or, you know, all of a sudden she's recording me and putting it online and like I'm just trying to have a conversation with. So I think, you know, I, and I, and I get like, I got both sides of it. I think it's— I just did a piece that I think is going be interesting called, is, are, are women more radicalized than men? Because there's all of this, there's all this talk that like men have become so radicalized. And, you know, in the UK they're doing anti-misogyny classes now for young men and teaching men, you know, here's how you need to treat women and here's how you need to interact. But when you look at the data, women have disproportionately moved further left than men have moved moved to the right. And so there's a misconception that men have become more radicalized politically, which, you know, I think there are some cases and examples of men that are loud, that are online, that say crazy shit, you know. And, and of course, it— you can take those people and then you can extrapolate it and say like, oh, all men are like— like, look at this, is exactly what I'm talking about. It's like, keep it— that's one dude. And I think the problem is that radicalized men and radicalized women look very different. What radicalizes them looks very different. How radicalized men and women behave looks very different. And I think that we just have a, you know, we have a social tolerance for radicalized women and a social intolerance for radicalized men. And I think that we should have an intolerance for both. But we, we live in this extremely extremely polarized, extremely, yeah, extremist time. And I think it's just, I think it's another way to divide the sexes, you know, to divide men and women and push them apart. And I, like, I think it's garbage. I think it's absolute nonsense. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm so curious. So I very much agree with you that there's this intent to divide, unfortunately, and a lot of it's being pushed through the media and we could make endless arguments and ideas about why. But, but, you know, at the end of the day, a very fundamental, easy argument to make is that that is because that sells, you know, that, that kind of, you know, perspective sells and it gets people engaged and, you know, their opinions engaged. And that's a very easy first fundamental argument to make. But I'm curious, like, I think about this a lot and I think about, well, what is the way forward? And the two things that come back to are exactly what you said. I do believe that the loudest voices on the extreme end then get the most trending on social media and the most engagement. And then obviously that conditions us through repetition over time to view opposite ends of the spectrum as being extreme. I also read a study recently that said that 67% of people are the silent majority and will see themselves as being in the center and having, you know, these, these healthy ideas. And I think that the only way that I can think of forward through a situation like this is open dialogue and honest conversation. And I think that that takes courage nowadays in today's society. But I find myself being somebody who I don't agree with either extreme of any polarity, like I really don't. And, and I, and so I find myself like I'm in an Uber and I'm like, hey, what are your thoughts or beliefs? And I'm talking about these things because even if I disagree with somebody, I'm going to hold space and I'm going to ask and be curious and try to learn why they arrived there. I'm very curious about people. So I think that's part of it. And I'm going to share why I may have a different opinion, but in a very respectful manner. And I think that if we could fundamentally bring that back into society, that would be that first foundational pillar of how we start to have progress again, out of this like muck that we are in societally and culturally. And I think without open dialogue and honest conversation and transparency in a respectful manner, which people have to be able to regulate themselves enough to be able to have that conversation, I think that we just go down this trajectory of more extremes, more polarization, more division. And I don't think that that ends well. So I'm curious what you see as a way forward as well.

Yeah, I mean, I think that people— I mean, this is why I, you know, on my show, I try and have opposing views. And so I think that people need to actively expose themselves to opinions that they don't agree with. Yes. And they need to do that consistently and repetitively and to try and understand, like, well, what is that person saying that maybe has merit and to really challenge some of those things, to challenge your own core beliefs and perceptions. So I think that's one. It's like exposure therapy to opposing beliefs. Beliefs and belief systems, which is scary because I think the ego and the identity wants to stay rigid and rooted in its own indoctrination. It does not want to change. And so that is deemed as a threat, anything that's unknown. But that's part of the game. And then I do think that I kind of broached this in the video. Like, I do think that we as individuals and as a society, we have to do two things. Number one, we have to be able to recognize our own bias against the opposing sex. You know, like, you have to be able to see how you're blaming women for whatever, or how you're blaming men for whatever, and, you know, begin to roll that back a little bit, because that has become so commonplace in our culture and society. And it's like, yeah, if you have a fundamental hate or mistrust or experience of like, I'm not safe around any man, that's going to make having a relationship with a man almost impossible. You know, it's almost going to be impossible. And same with you as a man. It's like if you are a man that's going into a relationship with a woman and you're carrying the belief that that woman is out to get you, out to take your money, that she's out to screw you over, she's going to emotionally manipulate you, or she's going to go and cheat with, you know, with somebody else, blah, blah, blah, you are setting yourself up for relational suicide. Like, it's just not going to work. And so I think that every individual really needs to look at their own personal wounding around the opposing sex and begin to confront that. And I think it's conversations like this where, you know, hopefully people have a little bit of— it's why I've been— I kind of— my audience probably feels like I've been harping on some of this a little bit lately because I keep being like, get into conversations that you disagree with. And it's interesting as a creator because I've had to start to risk losing audience because sometimes audience is like, I only want to hear a repetition of my belief. And that's tough because it's like, well, if I deviate at all, sometimes that's necessary in order to counter a part of your ego or identity or whatever. So anyway, I think the North Star is always is like, what are you—

what is your purpose? Why did you become a creator? And if the intent is to help people and to know that that's like the, the North Star to follow— because I have grappled with this too over certain things recently— and, and I think it's like, well, the intent is to help people. So being able to push outside of what feels comfortable and have more authentic conversations, I think, is such an important thing. So I think it's beautiful that you're doing that and harping on it. And I don't know, not to derail the conversation too much, but is it okay share something that might be an exercise. So, so one of the things that I found to be really helpful, we do this in, in our program, one of the things we do, it's more about, we call it like your toxic dating stories. And I get people to write out all of their, their toxic dating stories. And a lot of things that come up for people are, all men are this, all women are that. And as soon as we have an all, one group of people are something, you know that it's a cognitive distortion. And you know that it's fundamentally mentally flawed. And so what we get people to do is— and, and it's a part of how we rewire the, the subconscious mind— is to actually work to counter that, to return to fair and balanced perception. It's a cognitive behavioral therapy technique, but we bring it to the subconscious level. So for example, if somebody says, okay, all women can't be trusted, or all men are going to betray you, or all women are out for your money, all men are, are unsafe, or, you know, the, the bear in the woods thing that people are talking about, so So if we start there, one of the first things is we're like, okay, well, you've— we have to honor that if you have that perception, it's because you've been through a hard experience around it. So if somebody says all women are out for your money, probably that was a man at some point who we can honor the fact that maybe he was taken advantage of, maybe his boundaries were violated. And that's going to tell him something a little bit about his next move in his healing journey, maybe to be better with boundaries, maybe to vet women more extensively. Like there's a golden nugget of what we can do there to meet a need to prevent that painful experience from recurring. So we honor the need first. Then what we do is we get into, well, how do we rewire this? Because the last thing anybody needs to do is have somebody who hurt them in their past determine their whole present and future dating and relationship experience. It's an injustice. That person already hurt you once. Why are you letting them run your brain on autopilot for decades to come? So if we're ready to confront that injustice, justice and actually rewire so that we can then have fundamentally healthier relationships. The next thing that we do is we sit here and we say, okay, do I have evidence of the opposite? So, you know, women who maybe don't just want your money, maybe women who want an emotional connection, care to have healthy conversations, want a partner in life— do we have evidence of that? Do you have friends that are like that? Family members? What do you see out in the world? And we try to come up with 10 pieces of And what's really interesting is the conscious mind is not the one that hosts these painful ideas. It's our subconscious mind. Nobody wakes up every morning and says, today I'm going to tell myself all day that all women are going to take advantage of me. Nobody's choosing that consciously. So this is an idea embedded and imprinted at the subconscious level, and we can actually change that. So step 1 is we find that belief and its opposite. Step 2 is we come up with 10 pieces of evidence to support with a new idea. Okay, and the idea here isn't that we're like, every woman can be trusted, because then we're just back in polarity, we're back in, in cognitive distortion. It's to see that there may be some untrustworthy women, but also it is possible to find trustworthy, healthy women as well. And so we come up with those 10 to 15 pieces of evidence. So we get repetition. And the reason we need like specific examples is because specific examples or memories evoke emotion and imagery. Which are actually the language of the subconscious mind. So the subconscious mind does not speak in language. Like, I don't believe in affirmations for that reason. An example is if I say, okay, Connor, whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant. Like, you hear do not, but you probably flash an image of a pink elephant. So your conscious mind understands do not, but it's too late. Your subconscious flashed an image. So we have to speak to our subconscious mind. So step 1, how is it possible that there are trustworthy women? Step 2, come up with 10 specific examples. And step 3, we actually record this down, like ourselves saying this out loud, and we listen back in a suggestible state, which means when your brain is producing more alpha and theta brainwaves, for 21 days. And when we listen back, we feel about it and we visualize about it, because imagery and emotion is the language of the subconscious mind. And now this idea that somebody in your past imprinted you with, that women can't be trusted because somebody hurt you, and we don't want them running your brain any longer. Now what we're going to do is we're actually going to sit in this, rewire this idea so we return to fair and balanced thinking. We build new neural pathways over 21 days, which are a lot deeper when we actually do it from a suggestible state. And now we're actually changing our wiring around this painful idea, which allows us to be free from that person who hurt us, but yet still honor that need that we talked about earlier, which is if somebody did take advantage, I have to vet women better in the future. I have to have better boundaries, but I'm not going to allow this person and how they affected me to determine my relationship future. So, it's a good exercise people can do from home.

Love that. Love that. And then, just push against the shitty social narratives. You know, I feel like every man and woman just needs to push against the really shitty social narratives of like, you know, anyway, we can just, we can move past that. But tell me a little bit, just shifting back on the attachment style, because we've been talking about this from a social level and an individual level, you know, some of the biases that individuals carry and some of the attachment wounds that they carry, you know, with regards to like the opposing sex. What are some of the individual wounds, unmet needs from the different attachment styles? Because each attachment style is going to have its own its own unmet needs, going to have its own core wounds, going to have its own core fears. It's going to have its own subconscious beliefs like we were talking about and kind of behaviors. Can you just outline that in a general sense for anxious avoidant? And again, this isn't to pathologize people or have them entrenched, but it's to be able to see what's showing up. Absolutely.

So on one end of the continuum, in a way, you have your anxious wounding. So you're anxious attachment style, their big wounds from childhood because they go through real or perceived abandonment are number one, the fear of being abandoned. Number two, the fear of being alone. And this is the body of work we built, is like integrated attachment theory, really diving deep into like what are these deep core perceptions people carry and gathering all this data and information over years on it. So abandoned, alone, excluded is actually a really big pain point. Like if you have a partner and they go off with their friends for the weekend and don't invite you, it's often a pain point or fear that will trigger an anxious attachment style. Disliked, rejected, unloved, unsafe if somebody pulls away from them or if something bad happens to that person, and not good enough. And so what we have is this dynamic where somebody ends up— and it's so interesting, like I give people this acronym BTEA, which is that your beliefs will create patterns of thought. If you believe you're not good enough, you may think thoughts thoughts like, oh, I'm not interesting enough, or I'm not smart enough, or I'm not attractive enough. So all of these thoughts will essentially, almost like a tree trunk with tree branches, spring off of this core belief. Then how do you feel or emote when you are thinking those thoughts? Will you feel stressed and sad, which then triggers, you know, cortisol or norepinephrine or less optimal neurochemicals to affect how you're feeling and also what nervous system function you're in? So BTE, beliefs, thoughts, emotions. And the neuroscience is actually proven. A neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio in 2004 conclusively proved that every action we take is based on our emotional state. So people who think they're very logical, rational thinkers are actually making emotionally based decisions at the tipping point, but then quick to just back-rationalize through logic. So if we're not in control of those core beliefs that have imprinted our subconscious mind, we're not really that in control of how we're thinking. People have seen that when they ruminate constantly and they can't let something go, how they feel according accordingly, and the actions they take. And we can all see, like, how do you act when you feel abandoned? Oh, maybe you cling too tightly, or maybe you panic and you call a lot, or you text a lot. So at its root, we have to get back to those core wounds first. So that's the, the anxious attachment style. On the flip side, your dismissive avoidant attachment style, a lot of their wounds from usually childhood emotional neglect and enmeshment growing up, um, are the fear of being trapped The fear of being helpless or powerless if they rely on somebody who can't meet their needs. It's part of why you see this individual become very hyper-independent as an adult and struggle to co-regulate with other people. You'll also see they have this huge I am defective core wound, this fear of being seen as shameful or defective, because at very early stages of childhood development, you see that if a child doesn't have a parent who can attune to them them and co-regulate with them, a child who's wired to feel safe and feel seen and feel special, when they don't get those fundamental needs met, they end up thinking, oh, this part of me that wants that is defective or flawed. So I need to repress this part down, I need to stuff it away. And they end up feeling very afraid of being seen as shameful, aka defective, or weak, or even disrespected if they are too vulnerable. And it's part of why they often keep a lot of space space and distance, and they work to reduce proximity and maintain their independence as a way of getting control. And then the very last pillar is we'll look at our fearful avoidant attachment style, who's kind of somewhere in the middle. But fearful avoidants, their overarching theme in childhood is bigger T trauma. So they usually have a lot more— and sometimes you'll hear this referred to as the disorganized attachment style, but they'll have a lot more chaos in childhood. So they will have a lot of, you know, whether it's a parent who's an alcoholic, or parents in active addiction, or a really bad divorce where kids are put in the middle, or a parent with narcissistic personality disorder, or, you know, more extreme mental health issues, the overarching theme is that you have a child who grows up never knowing what version of a parent they're going to get. And so they may have, like, if mom's an alcoholic, for example, they may have some really nice moments with mom where mom's just had a few drinks and she's in a good mood and she's loving. And so you're wired to think, okay, well then love is a good thing. But then you have these more extreme experiences with mom where maybe she's angry drunk and she's a little bit cruel and you're like, wow, love is a terrifying thing that scares me. And so fearful avoidants end up having the anxious wounds, the fear of abandonment, the fear of rejection, the fear of being not good enough. They also carry some of the avoidant wounds, the fear of being trapped, helpless, powerless, or weak if they're too vulnerable. But they also have their own really big wounds is the fear of betrayal, the fear of being bad, because if you're punished for all things unnecessarily that aren't even worthy of punishment, like you spill something, it's a human mistake, and you're really punished, and you think, oh my gosh, I'm bad all the time, and I have to constantly prove my innocence. And then this deep fear of being unworthy, because a lot of fearful avoidants grow up where they only get love if they're earning their worth. So maybe they get love when they tuck mom into bed and give her water when she's drank too much. And so they have this perception, I have to constantly earn my worth in the world. So a lot of these core wounds create a lot of dysfunction. But they're very changeable things. We're not born with these wounds, they get imprinted and wired into our subconscious through repetition and emotion over time. And we can change those things quite easily. Love that.

Yeah, I mean, I've talked, I've talked a good amount about being the dismissive avoidant and like having to undo that. That was like teens and 20s. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was just a wrecking ball of like, get away from me. Come closer, get away. Yeah, yeah. But okay, so, so step 1 in your framework is, from my understanding, is really about identifying the subconscious beliefs, or is there a different pillar that, that you would want to start No, that's exactly the first pillar.

So, so it's actually being able to say, yes, I resonate with those wounds and notice which ones are the strongest for you. Those are the groupings that I've tended to see with very high amounts of accuracy and replicated across attachment styles over time. And we've gathered data on about 60,000 people who've come through our programs and people I've worked with, and we see it really fall into these categories. So the first part is going, okay, yeah, like, I'm afraid of abandonment, or, oh my gosh, I'm afraid of being trapped and people being able to recognize that in their experiences. And you'll see a lot of it in the actions that follow. Like, you'll see a lot of— if somebody's dismissive, when they fear being trapped, they're pushing away, right? They're like, okay, I need space, I need to honor my freedom at all costs. And so you'll see these behavioral expressions that tend to follow. And so the first step is, once we know our core wounds, we have to rewire them. And that's actually very similar to what I talked about earlier with the exercise, of rewiring your toxic dating stories are really easy. There's multiple tools for how you can actually recondition these subconscious wounds. But one of the first things is just find the wound and its opposite, come up with 10 pieces of evidence to support the new idea. So if it's I'm not good enough, I am good enough. 10 times you actually felt good enough as a person, 10 things you did where you're like, I actually did feel good enough. The reason we pick specific times is because they're real. We're not trying to, like, come up with fake things. There. So that makes it believable. But more importantly, when we have evidence of old memories, all memories are a container of emotions and images. So if you were to recall your favorite childhood memory, and you're playing on the playground with your friends, you might see the images of the slide and the images of your friends' faces. And we've all seen people when they recall old memories, they laugh, or they smile, or if it's a sad memory, they become sad. So what we're actually doing is we're eliciting emotion and imagery, which engages the subconscious mind in the process. And so now we're basically using our conscious mind to speak to our subconscious, which is again the host of the core wounds. Nobody's waking up being like, let me tell myself all day I'm not good enough. Those are not conscious choices. So we go, okay, I'm not good enough 10 times. I did feel good enough, record myself saying this out loud. And then my goal is to get into a suggestible state. So when my brain's producing more alpha or theta brainwaves, because my subconscious mind sponges up information a lot better then. That's the first hour that I wake up or that last hour before I go to sleep. And then what I do is I listen back to myself saying these times that I did feel good enough, and I really focus on feeling the emotions and seeing the images. And this is actually firing and wiring new neural pathways at the subconscious level of mind. And that in time really changes the experience of us carrying these wounds. And we've gotten a lot of people to go through this exercise. And when people really stick to it for 21 days and don't miss a day and focus through it, there's an extremely high success rate of actually getting rid of these core wounds so they're not a part of your conditioning on a daily basis.

Is it possible for a couple who both have insecure attachment to build secure attachment together? Because I think this is a question I see from a lot of people of like, I'm anxious and he's avoidant, or, you know, we're both anxious and like, what do we do? So, is that possible? And how might that work differ than a couple who, you know, one person is secure and one person is maybe insecure?

Yeah, it's a great question. So, 100%, first of all, 100%, you can do the work together. And it's actually really beautiful and quite rewarding. And we go through— that's one of 5 pillars. So, then we get each other to know our own needs, meet our needs ourselves. There's these other 5 pillars. We can get into that in a second. But there's— that's the first pillar is rewiring your core wounds. When people do the work together, it's actually really, really beautiful because you see people growing together and there's a lot more depth and intimacy and understanding in the relationship, both for what each other's needs are, but each other's wounds and fears. And we can support each other through and around those things. So, for example, if somebody knows their partner's dismissive avoidant and they know that, hey, this person's doing the work, but they're a little more sensitive to criticism, for example, because they take it to heart about them. It's not just, oh, you made a mistake as a behavior. No, you made a mistake. You are dysfunctional at your core. You're fundamentally broken. If we know that somebody is feeling like that, and we're doing the work openly in a relationship, you can be a lot more mindful of how you communicate, you can show up a lot differently, and support each other. So it can be a really beautiful thing to see. The one caveat I would say is that Well, two caveats. Both people don't necessarily need to be doing the work in the exact same way. So one person can be doing the core wound reprogramming, the meeting of the needs, the regulating their nervous system, the communication, the boundaries, like these, these pillars with these tools. We can actually do that work with one person doing the work. The other person doesn't have to be sitting down doing the rewiring, but they have to be doing the work with you in in some capacity. So work won't always look the same. You don't need both partners sitting down taking courses or both partners going to therapy. But what we do need is— I always say to people, each person in a relationship is 100% accountable for their 50%. So if you have one person who's healing and growing and communicating differently and speaking up for their needs in really healthy ways and trying to understand your needs, and they're in the work, and the other partner's like, nope, I refuse to communicate, Nope, I'm not interested in having these conversations. No, I want to keep blaming you for everything but not sharing or working through my stuff. Well, then that's just simply going to be unfair to the other person. So we want to be mindful of that and vetting for that. But also, if one person's doing the really deep work and they lead by example, the vast majority of the time you will see the other person jump on board and follow suit. So that person might be introducing, okay, we're going to communicate more, we're going to open open up about our needs. These are my needs. What are yours? And talk through those things. That person doesn't necessarily need to be in courses or therapy, but they do have to be able to say, okay, yeah, I will try to meet those needs. Okay, here are my needs too. They have to be participating in the dynamic.

How can somebody who has more of a freeze or shutdown response navigate that? Because I think that's one of the big things in real time where somebody, you know, they have that freeze response they want to engage in maybe a conflict or disagreement, or just like, oh, I have something that I need, and then they freeze, or they shut down entirely. How can somebody begin to work with that? Great question.

So that brings us to sort of pillar 1 and 3. So the first is the core wounds. The reason somebody has a shutdown response at its deepest level is because they first have a belief that like conflict is unsafe, for example. And so they shut down because they're having a freeze response because that stored subconscious perception gets projected out. And if you follow BTEA, if I deeply believe conflict is unsafe, and a conflict happens, I start thinking like, I don't know what to do. And then that creates this emotional output, neurochemical output signals us to go into sympathetic nervous system. And now we're actually having this freeze response, because we're usually in dorsal vagal shutdown, okay, which is actually going to sometimes be in more parasympathetic. But you're having this action or response because of those wounds first, which is part of why when you start rewiring those wounds, it really opens up possibility for people. The second thing is, if we have that on a regular basis, we then have to practice nervous system regulation so that we know how to be a little bit more regulated and actually train our nervous system to be able to stay in, in dorsal vagal or in a parasympathetic nervous system mode, or ventral vagal more specifically, which is the part of your nervous system that is able to stay open and sociable and interact and engage with people in a healthy way even when triggered. So there's sort of those two pillars of that. We can do that healing work first. But the other thing is, if you're working with somebody who's not doing that work, like you're in a relationship with somebody, you're doing the work, they're not, then one of the things we can do is we can start making conflict. We can make conflict small and healthy. We can dose it sort of. So it's sort of like exposure therapy, where maybe instead of having a conflict and then saying, okay, right now we have to talk about our needs, and one person's in shutdown mode, maybe we say, hey, you know what, I know that, that you need a little bit of space right now. You know, maybe your partner's dismissive avoidant, and you're saying, hey, I know that you need a minute, you need a little bit of space. I can totally honor and respect that. It's really important to me that we do hash things out and talk this through. Take some space, process what you need. I'm going to think about what I need. Let's come back in 15, 20 minutes and just talk about what we need to feel resolved. And so then what we're doing is we're allowing for that person to have the room to process, but we're still honoring the fact that we have to do the work to move through the conflict. And if we do that where it doesn't feel as unsafe, and then the person starts to think, okay, yeah, conflict isn't so scary. I don't have to go into the shutdown mode out of self-protection. Now we can start moving the needle to go forward.

Are there, you know, I think, I think what's interesting is that there's sort of these strategies that people can deploy depending on whether they're anxious or fearful avoidant, dismissive avoidant. Can you maybe just speak a little bit more to some of the strategies that each one can deploy outside of some of the reprogramming and more some of the strategies of, like, okay, the anxious person in the moment, they catch themselves. It's like they know they're overtexting. They know that they're grasping on. It's like, how do you— what strategy to deploy in that moment? Or the dismissive is like pushing away, shutting down, disconnecting. What can they do in that type of moment?

Yeah, so there's sort of, if I can reference for a moment, the 5 pillars, because they kind of go in this order. So core wound reprogramming helps a lot because you're texting as if you're abandonment, those types of things. The next pillar is learning to meet your own own unmet needs. And what this allows is we will always, as individuals, we will try to put too much pressure on our relationships to externally source the things that we cannot properly and effectively self-source. In other words, let's pretend I'm anxiously attached and you're my best friend and you're dismissive avoidant and you haven't been really showing up in our friendship. Well, if I don't know how to I can't properly self-soothe, then I'm gonna go, my friend needs to be there to soothe for me at all times, right? So I'm going to try to externally resource something that I can't properly self-source. And so our second pillar of healing is actually for people to make a note of their deepest unmet needs from childhood. And then to become across a 21-day cycle through repetition and emotion, to become masterful at meeting that need in the relationship to yourself. So for example, if somebody says, okay, I really need somebody to be present with me or to validate me, okay, good, you're going to actually practice being present with yourself through meditation or mindfulness for 21 days, or you're going to validate yourself by acknowledging your wins and writing them out for 21 days. And at first, it does feel a little bit mechanical, kind of like when you drive a car for the first time, you have to track everything and steer the wheel and put the signals on and you're trying to kind of do it. But what ends up happening is after around day 7 or so, people are like, oh, I actually feel like I'm kind of receiving from myself. Writing out my wins actually feels good. Or being present with myself actually feels quite soothing. And so when people start practicing this, they learn to fill this, this what I call a hole in your bucket, that you're like, oh my gosh, I have to fix it from outside of me. Well, actually, it will never work. Because when somebody pours in from outside of you, if there's a hole in your bucket, it comes right back out. So people will end up in every attachment style does this, by the by the way. Anxious attachment styles are like, everybody needs to be there to soothe me because I don't know how to soothe myself. Dismissive avoidants are like, everybody should understand my need for space because I don't know how to communicate it. And I struggle to get understood because I'm not communicating much through words. Fearful avoidants are like, everybody should be completely trustworthy 100% of the time, never have an incongruency or change in behavior because I don't know how to trust people. And so until we do that work and intrinsically to learn to trust ourselves by setting healthy boundaries and communicating our needs and vetting people, or as a dismissive avoidant, explaining ourselves and communicating and co-regulating better, then we'll always put this external pressure on somebody to do it for us. And it will always feel incomplete. So we, we start with those pillars in that way, because then it prevents these things you're talking about proactively in these first 3 pillars. Pillars, if we get really good at rewiring our core wounds, we get really good at filling our deeply unmet needs from childhood, and we get really good at regulating our nervous system through practicing breathwork or meditation or things to move us into parasympathetic nervous system mode on a regular basis, now we're much more equipped to go into a relationship and not be pouring from an empty cup or putting all this pressure. But then our next two pillars, to your point, are about boundaries and communication. So we can talk about boundaries after, but your question was around communication. So we do the pre-work, okay, it's like your warm-up, then you can go in. And then let's say you have these experiences where, where an anxious attachment style is, they're in the middle of trying to text a whole bunch of times in a row. And they feel like they can't, you know, help themselves. Well, then you probably kind of missed out on some of the first 3 pillars and have to revisit them and do them properly. But one of the things that happens when it comes to those types of scenarios is that people really struggle because they're not communicating properly to begin with. So we, we overcommunicate, or we push away, or these typical scenarios you see, because nobody's taught us how to communicate in healthy forms. So anxious attachment cells, when they don't communicate their needs proactively, they hold it in, hold it in, they're scared to be a burden, then it comes out all at was. And now they're like, you don't do this, you don't care about me, I need to see you tonight, this needs to happen right now. Or dismissive avoidance, on the other hand, they're like, they feel like their needs are not met because they're not communicating, and they go, oh, okay, it's not really working for me, and they create distance. So one of the things that I really get people to do is to go through important patterns of communication. So one of the first things is we far too often tend to what I call negatively frame. It's the difference between saying something like, you don't care about me, you never spend any time with me, versus saying, hey, I'm feeling a little disconnected, let's plan a fun date night this weekend and be present with each other. And when we negatively frame, unfortunately nobody hears you. And I tell people, like, quite honestly, if you're going to negatively frame, you might as well not bother communicating because it doesn't work. People just hear that criticizing. So we actually get people to retrain their brains for 21 days where like every time that you're going to criticize, behind every criticism is a need. If you're going to criticize, you need to, before you communicate at all, reframe it as a need. So if you're like, oh, you don't care, you're not doing this, no, no, don't say that. Say, here's what I would love for us to work on together. Here's what I would love for, for you to do. So first thing is negatively or positively frame. Second thing is paint a picture for what that looks like, because too often I would see when I was working with couples that people would say things like, I need more support. And then the husband would go home and like do all the dishes and take out the trash. And then the wife would be like, oh, I needed you to like affirm me and give me compliments. And so we have to paint a picture of what the need actually looks like. Sometimes you'll see anxious attachment styles say, I need more time together. And their dismissive avoidant partner will be like, oh, okay, I'll sit with you for 10 minutes. And they were like, they were like, no, I needed you to hang out with me 3 nights a week, or, you know, it's so much more specific. So that's a part of communication. And actually, when we communicate properly, then we end up in situations where we don't have to overcommunicate or push away because we learn, okay, we can actually work things out because we communicate in healthy ways where we can truly get seen and heard by the people that we love.

Yeah, it's— there's some good nuggets in there, I think, that are very important. It's— I think each insecure attachment style needs to face and begin to tolerate and soothe through their own individual threat response. You know, it's like each one has like this intense threat response that comes up. And then they need to learn how to tolerate and soothe through that in their own way, which I think you did a great job of sort of like outlining what that can look like. Last question before we maybe wrap up. Why is it, that, that avoidance, specifically dismissive avoidance and anxious, are so drawn to each other. Why is that?

Okay, so really good question. So I find in every single relationship, two things are happening. So, well, okay, there's three things. At a high level, there's three things that drive attraction, psychologically. So not biologically, not like attractive features and things that people biologically have viewed as attractive. Purely psychologically, 3 things. Number 1, um, people who express your repressed traits is a very interesting one. Um, so for example, if somebody's really assertive and you're very passive, or vice versa, you're likely to be attracted to each other because the mind has an allostatic impulse at a subconscious level. And so when we pair together or attach, it feels like we become more whole through another person, um, and return to this sort of space of homeostasis, which we're very much wired before. So there's that, number one. It's part of where you hear opposites attract. That is true, um, but it's not exclusively true. The second thing that meets our needs is— or the second thing that we're attracted to is people who meet our deeply unmet needs from childhood. So if somebody— if you felt unseen as a child and you meet your wife and she makes you feel super seen, it's like fireworks that go off in your brain. So we're attracted to get these deeply unmet needs met. And the third thing, and the most important thing that we invest in long term is people who feel familiar, because the subconscious mind equates familiarity to safety and thus survival. And so we want to pair up with what feels familiar because we're like, okay, we've been surviving, so that's working. Now, what is most familiar to you? Well, it's the way you treat yourself. And that means if you're dismissive avoidant, for example, how do you treat yourself? Well, you're constantly externally in this anxious preoccupied relationship to yourself. You're like, do I have enough time? Do I have enough time to myself? How long am I going to commit to that? Can I go away? Can I do this? Because if dismissive avoidants never learn to co-regulate, they need to regulate on their own. So they need to be really preoccupied about their time to be able to do that. On the flip side, anxious attachment styles, what do they do? They almost exclusively try to regulate with and through other people externally. And so they're in a very dismissive and avoidant relationship to themselves. They dismiss their own needs, they avoid their own feelings, they avoid spending time alone. And so your conscious mind, which is responsible for 3 to 5% of all of your beliefs and thoughts and emotions and actions, the anxious preoccupied all the time will say, I want that emotionally available partner. And they're like, that's what I want. That's on my checklist, I figured it out. And then, then they go into dating, and they're not attracted to that. And it's part of one of the, the bones I have to pick is that people in society will say, oh, if you're insecurely attached, just date a secure person. And it's like, that can work if you are like already partially secure yourself. But if you're not, you're going to be very much attracted to how you treat yourself. And that's going to land you as an insecurely attached person with another insecurely attached style who's mirroring to you the ways in which you behave inwardly. And so then we end up in those dynamics over and over again, because we're like, our subconscious mind is going this is familiar and thus safe. And so that's also why we have to do the work, healing your attachment styles, doing the work in the relationship to yourself first, so that you have a secure foundational relationship to self. And then we can move out into the world and connect with other people in much healthier ways. Love it.

Well said. Well said. Where can people learn more about you and your work and follow along or dive in deeper?

Yeah, so I am at personaldevelopmentschool.com. People can dive in there, they can get a report on their 5 pillars of healing with a free quiz that comes with this in-depth report. And then I'm on YouTube, which is Tyese Gibson Personal Development School, and on Instagram @thepersonaldevelopmentschool.

Beauty, beauty. Well, we'll have the links to all that in the show notes. You're very welcome. This is a great conversation.

Yeah, I really—

Yeah, of course. Yeah, this was a blast. And for everybody everybody that's listening, don't forget to man it forward. Maybe this is one that you should listen to with your significant other or with a friend to have a good conversation and discourse about. But as always, don't forget to check out Thais's work, man the podcast forward. And until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.