Anxiously Attached & Building Secure Relationships with Jessica Baum, LMHC | Ep. 106

Oh my gosh, Hadlee, that conversation was mind-blowing.

Oh my gosh, you guys, I cannot wait for you to hear this conversation. It's really, really good, and it's something that we, we've touched on a few of these different topics on this podcast, but we really go in deep in this conversation, and I'm just So excited to get this out there.

Yeah. So get ready. Hadlee is going to do an introduction and you're going to have your minds blown too, is our guess, when you learn all about attachment. Super hip topic is what kind of attachment style do you have? What do you do? How does that show up in your life? So Hadlee, can you tell us about this amazing interview we're all about to hear?

Yes. So we just interviewed Jessica Baum, who is a psychotherapist who specializes in attachment, codependency, and addiction, and she helps people create conscious and balanced relationships. In our conversation, we talked about everything from codependency to all of the different types of attachment styles. We talk about trauma and how things get embedded in our body, even that are, you know, pre-memory, pre-verbal, and how that impacts us throughout our lives, not just for ourselves, but in our relationships as well. So It's a really awesome conversation. She is also the author of Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love, which is an awesome book. So definitely go check that out. We have the link, link to that in the bio or sorry, in the show notes. And she is just a wealth of information, like so much neuroscience, but she's very, very good at breaking it down into all of the very, very actionable steps that we can take to be able to come to a place of more interdependence rather than codependence or, you know, fierce independence, which doesn't allow for the kind of intimacy and connection that we really, really crave in our lives as humans.

Oh my gosh. I'm like, so on the edge of my seat. Are you ready to jump in?

Grab some popcorn or grab your favorite coffee. Let's, let's get started.

Let's do this.

I'm so excited to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you guys.

Yes.

So attachment theory, some of us may be familiar with the attachment theories that we learn in Psych 101 class in undergrad, Mary Ainsworth and all of those different experiments. But I think that there's a lot more nuance to the conversation, especially when we're looking at how attachment could show up as adults. And so I'm kind of curious to learn about that. And just to put our toes in the water, can you tell us a little bit about how you got to this interest, this area of expertise?

Sure. I mean, those are 2 big questions, so I'm just going to start with the first one, which is attachment. We attach at birth and we continue attaching throughout our whole life. And we need really healthy attachments and healthy connections in order to thrive. And the adaptive patterns and strategies that we learn when we're really tiny, infant and younger, in our nervous system, and the way we handle connection and disconnection, and what our nervous system does with that stays with us throughout our life. And when we reattach later on in our romantic life, the adaptive strategies that our nervous system has and our way of surviving and staying in connection or dealing with pain and any kind of conflict, they stay in our nervous system, and they stay in our psyche. And we tend to repeat patterns in our romantic life that very much mirror how we adapted and survived early on. So we can get into attachment theory. I, I've been fascinated with it because I've struggled with quote unquote codependency a lot in my life. And, you know, learning that I am anxiously attached, which means I tend to self-sacrifice as a way to survive. So when anxious babies are young, in order to kind of stay in connection, they self-abandon in their body, and they can kind of sense into their primary caregiver pretty well. And so this ability to do that is how we, we're surviving. And so this ability to leave our body and monitor the temperature of the room outside of us and everything that's going on is what develops those quote unquote codependent traits, which I carried a lot of shame around. Um, you know, and I got a lot of the messages in early 20s, like be independent, learn how to self-regulate. Those are the very things that anxiously attached people can't do. They don't have self-regulating abilities because there wasn't enough co-regulation. And they're learning to depend on the right people is actually how we gain a very thriving and interdependent lifestyle. So I got all the wrong messages. Um, I read Facing Codependency. I felt like that was me. And then I started to study interpersonal neurobiology and attachment theory. And I was like, okay, this this is how I adapted. This is how I survived. And I started to have more compassion for myself. And I started to see these dynamics of anxious and avoidant play out in my, in my office. I'm a couples counselor. And I was like, I have to get this information out to the general public. They need to know what's going on in their nervous system, what dynamics are showing up in their personal relationships, and make it more digestible so that the everyday man or woman can really start to make sense of of their behaviors or their patterns, and also the insanity that goes on inside of our bodies and what that really is about.

Oh my gosh, that was just so rich and delicious, and you just dropped so much brilliance there. I would love to dive in. Is that okay with you guys?

Sure.

Yeah, let's do it.

First of all, I'm glowing in joy because you're speaking from a trauma-informed model, and I love that. And so you talked about, in essence, the AIP model from EMDR. And so looking at attachment from a perspective of what kind of adaptive mechanisms are going into place that create these patterns for ourselves. And so I was wondering if you could introduce the audience to that for those who may not be as familiar with this sort of way of looking at our thoughts, behaviors, and sensations?

Yeah, and it's interesting. I'm trained in EMDR, but I don't look at it from that lens because I don't use that as much. But adaptive strategies or behaviors are ways in which we keep ourselves ironically safe. So they're the patterns or things we do to stay in connection or deal with pain or suffering going on inside of our body. So that might be texting a million times, that might be All the things that actually cause us pain, and we don't really love these behaviors. These are behaviors born of trying to stay in connection, trying to not feel abandoned. Our sympathetic activation can go up, and we can go into fight mode to try to stay in connection. There's all these protectors. And so I refer to them in the book as protectors. So these behaviors and these voices that we have, even if they're judgmental or even if they're negative, they're protecting us. from our core wound and our core pain. And they're there and they're developed for good reason. And we don't necessarily want to get rid of them. We want to get underneath them to try to see what they're protecting us really from. And usually that's that at the root level, it's, it's that suffering or pain from that core wound.

And could you tell us a little bit more about the different styles of attachment, just like a broad overview for people who don't know? Obviously, you talk a lot about anxious attachment. But can you just Give us a little bit of a, like, a snippet of what are the different types of attachment and how do those things kind of happen?

Yeah, I mean, so I do study interpersonal neurobiology and there are labels, although I hate the labels because the truth is we can fall into one category and our embedded patterns are a combination of 2 people's embedded patterns and how the relational dance plays out. But traditionally there are 4 categories. There's secure, And most of— a lot of the population is secure, and doesn't mean that they don't have anxious or avoidant traits. It means that they come back into balance faster, and they have a general sense of trust in the world, and they can deal with being alone and being connected fairly easy. So their nervous system kind of adapted pretty well in all those states, and they got a lot of attunement. So they, they have just an easier time in general. There's avoidant. And so a true avoidant usually is growing up in a home where their emotional needs weren't met because maybe their primary caregiver lives more in their left hemisphere, or their needs are kind of met, like food and all their security needs are met, but they're not emotionally seen into. So they can focus more on success, achievement, things in the world, but lack a little bit of empathy. They can lack emotional attunement. They can, um, they shut down sometimes or just, you know, disengage in order to self-regulate. Um, and then the other extreme is anxious, which we, again, we leave our body. Um, we need a lot of co-regulation. So we didn't get a lot of self-regulation, uh, co-regulation as a baby. So we didn't have a primary caregiver in parasympathetic enough. So we struggle with self-regulation, so we can become more dependent in our relationships. And all those codependent traits kind of fit in the anxiously attached bracket. We turn up the volume when we're upset. So we as babies learn to cry louder and reach out. And then there's fearful. And I think fearful is tricky because it's a little bit of both. And sometimes someone with fearful Disorganized is the scientific name for it, but they can struggle in connection and they struggle alone. So they really don't have a safe place to go. Often as babies, they experience some kind of abuse. So think of it as a baby, you need your primary caregiver, but if your primary caregiver is scary or abusive in some way, you get trapped as a baby. It's like, I can't move towards and I can't move away. It's a very scary feeling. And I will say that we all have pockets of all of them. And we can show up one way with one person, and we can even change our attachment style in a relationship. It can switch. But the hallmarks are there. And traditionally, we can usually identify with one hallmark or enough. I traditionally can identify with anxious, although I feel like I've moved to more secure with a lot of inner work. But if I partner with someone who's a lot more anxious than I, I might have my avoidant protector show up. So it's so layered and it's not that black and white and everybody's unique and different. But those— that was like my, my best attempt at explaining the 4.

That was a really good attempt. I think that you, you explained it beautifully. I'm also curious, you mentioned the— in avoidant attachment, you mentioned that the parent might have been Operating from more of that left brain. Can you just give us a little bit of what left brain versus right brain is and how that kind of plays into this as well?

Sure. I mean, that's such a fascinating thing. We're using both hemispheres of our brain, but our left brain is more task-oriented and more transactional and more like meeting the needs and kind of you and me and looking at the world like we're like separating things. Where the right is more in touch with we and the relationship in between us and being together and having that oneness or that holistic feeling. And so we live in a world and a culture that really glamorizes the left hemisphere. And the problem with that is that we're losing the sense of we in, in our experiences. And so culturally or intergenerationally, we can look at how we're becoming more and more left shifted. And as we become more and left shifted and we're more focused on tasks and achievement and meeting the child's needs, we are losing the sensitivity around the we-ness, the connectiveness between child and mother, the attunement that happens. So this is actually intergenerational trauma. This is cultural issues being passed down. And, you know, a lot of parents feel like, well, if they struggled giving their kids the best education and all the— and they should be achievers and all these things, and they're losing that connection of we. And so a mother might also, also be really stressed out. And stress puts us in the left because the left is survival mode. So if your mom is in a lot of anxiety, or she's really stressed out, or there's a lot of primary caregiver— might not be your mom, but there's a lot of stress going on in her world— she's not in what we call a ventral state of connection. And so she can't attune well because she's just surviving. So that also impacts the child developmentally. So they, they develop— they can develop more of these avoidant non-connected, you know, struggle with empathy type of way of relating to the world because of the stress that the mother might be under while she's kind of nursing and taking care of you. A lot of this happens really early on.

Because if that child keeps leaning in and she has this pattern of behavior, the child that keeps leaning in and may have more anxious patterns, as an example, as opposed to an avoidant pattern, that's not going to be reinforced in a way that facilitates survival with a mom. And so there's like this, this like almost butting of heads of the child's needs versus the mother's needs. And children, like you were using the word adaptive, they're able to sort of adapt to what their parent or their caretaker is mirroring to them in order to help them best survive. Is that kind of in line with what you're describing?

Absolutely. And an anxious person will keep leaning out, and every once in a while they'll be inconsistent, but they'll get some reinforcement, where a true avoidant child eventually gives up on their parent. And so they, they shut down more. So it's a slightly different way of adapting, is that I can't depend at all on my mom, so I stop leaning in for that connection, and they kind of just shut their system down.

And so then, if somebody who's listening to this and they're thinking about these different styles of attachment that you described, Is maybe someone's like, oh, as you said, like, I sort of identify with being avoidant, but then I have moments where I feel secure. Is what are the mechanisms that may affect us, maybe internal or external mechanisms that may help us ebb and flow between those states? Can you speak about that?

That help us ebb and flow in between those states?

Because you described that maybe you resonate with the anxious attachment style, but then you feel like you've moved more towards secure. But then there's also moments where you then ebb out more into an anxious. And so I was curious about maybe even the neurobiology of how that may happen.

Sure. Yeah, I definitely have built more of a secure base. Some of doing the work with a therapist around being with someone who was more avoidant and what came up for me and attaching that to deeper grief. For me, that was very profound, but also internalizing. So when we're a baby, we internalize the essence of the people around us. And so if our mother was anxious, we internalize that. If our father— and remember, we have pockets of many. So my mom might have been anxious, and at times she might have showed up in a secure way, and same that other way. But as we start to heal and hopefully start to build new relationships, because we have to heal in relationships, and we pick people who are consistent, warm, nonjudgmental, our nervous system starts to recognize that. And we start to do the work or start to depend on dependable people. And then we start to internalize those people as well. So we're always internalizing people. And so if we can start to internalize really healthy support, our nervous system will start to say, OK, I can call on this friend, or I can call on this therapist, and they're really dependable for me. And if I can't call on them in the real world, What happens over time is that I can call on them internally as a resource. So what would they say to me? How would they help me? So that's what insecure children didn't get. And as we start to heal, we're internalizing these loving relationships to become internal regulators inside it. And I refer to that as inner community. And that's a cool spiritual process, but it's also neuroscience. Like, we do internalize other people. We internalize other people's nervous systems. And building the support around you, if you're insecure, with supportive people who have really a healthy sense of self and base and you can depend on them will actually start to shift and heal your nervous system. So that's part of getting to the work.

I love that, the neuroscience of internalizing other people. That's really fascinating to me.

It's so huge. And I love how you talk about how the way that we regulate is not just like you just do the work on yourself, you just do the work on yourself, you just work on yourself. We are so interdependent and so we need that with other people. I also am curious about because it's— you mentioned that this happened with you where you were attracted to someone who was avoidant attachment, and that's pretty typical, right? Can you speak a little bit to that? As well?

Yeah. So anxious and avoidant tend to attract each other like moth to a flame. And, you know, there are so many reasons for that, and that could be a podcast on its own. There's a lot of chemistry about being attracted to what you perceive as stable. So the avoidant person is really attracted to the liveliness and the expression of the anxious person and the freedom that they have. And the anxious person is usually attracted to what they perceive as stoic and well-independent and well put together, everything that they don't have. So there's like a lot of variables, unfortunately. Like, both people have some inner work to do, and that shows up later in the relationship. But initially, that, that's why the attraction is there. I, you know, I think wherever you're at, whether you're single, if you're, if you're listening and you're in a relationship and you, you're like, my partner's avoidant, my partner's anxious, If they're willing to do the work with you, that's great. I'm a couples counselor, and it's amazing to get conscious and do the inner work with your partner. And if they're not, there's so much agency in doing your own work and bringing what your partner is bringing up inside you to someone who can actually help you connect the dots and link it back. And that's what I did in my life. And I think sometimes that's the only choice we have is to say, OK, I'm really unhappy. My partner might not have the capacity to do the work because let's face it, it is really hard to walk into our own suffering. And it takes a lot of faith and a lot of the right support and a lot of safety to be able to do the work. And if your partner can't do it, it's the saddest thing in the world. But you, you have a choice, and you have some agency to say, okay, I'm going to do the work anyway. And that was, that was my path. I wish, as an Imago therapist, that people would do the work together, because I love to see people kind of grow together. And, and that's always the path that I hope for people. But No matter what, you always have that choice. And again, it's about finding safe enough people. And you have to have a safe environment, you have to have the safe enough support in order for your nervous system to allow you to kind of access what you need to access. And that's neuroscience as well, to do the deeper healing.

And I like what you're saying in terms of finding safe people. And you used the words of consistent, warm, and nonjudgmental, which can feel, I think, maybe a little scary for people. I imagine that, at least in my experience and my studies, is we tend to go towards what feels normal, or maybe even what feels familiar, or what feels comforting and better. And so I would have actually imagined that an anxious person would see familiarity in anxious. But what you were describing— is anxious and avoidant are maybe drawn to each other because there's this sense of safety. Like you said, anxious attachment may be drawn to that more stoic, well-put-together avoidant versus the avoidant may be attracted to the anxious because, like you said, that energetic freedom. And so I really appreciate that. And do you see particular elements of that safety when you're looking for people that, that tends to be like a little bit more, I guess I'm trying to word the question as I'm thinking through it, but maybe cues like, how do I know that I am being attracted to this person because it's familiar? Or I'm attracted to this person because it's like I'm an anxious and they're an avoidant and it's kind of balancing me versus. This is like a truly healthy, balanced relationship? I know it was kind of a big question.

Yeah. And so the anxious and avoidant is familiar too. Usually there's an— like, for me, I had an avoidant parent, right? And so there's a familiarity around that perceived safety that's not really safe because behind an avoidant person is a very scared, anxious little boy or girl, right? And but that's not what you see because they're really disconnected. And in a way, their facial expressions are not expressing the anxiety that lurks underneath them. So, oh gosh, the original question is how to know the difference. I think like if you're dating or you're in a, you know, relationship and you're like, oh, this person didn't text me back and somehow they became more interesting to me, or it's slightly more charged, or, you know, this person's available and wants to see me and I feel like running in the other direction, it's like, well, let's start to look at that, you know, because you seem to want to go towards what's not available, because what's not available or has a challenge to it seems to feel more alluring for you than what might be really available, which might feel really scary because it's not familiar to your system. And so as you start to heal insecure attachment and you start to become in the presence of people who are more available, it is terrifying at first. And that's why it's good to do it with friends and therapists and coaches that are really in a state of presence that can hopefully offer that kind of anchoring for you. And as you start to heal, your nervous system starts to say, oh, this is love. Well, or this is connection. This is real connection here. This person is really here. And as we connect, it might be hard because more things— your system might say, okay, this person actually is here. So what might come up for you in those interactions might be very different than someone who's actually emotionally unavailable. So looking at why am I charged, you know, am I attracted to the qualities in them because they're a bad boy or a bad girl, or they're, you know, there's something about them that's mysterious, or what are they being consistent with, what they're— how they're showing up? And is their inconsistency making you more, uh, excited? And if that is excitement, then we know there's a little bit of trauma there. There's a little reenaction, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that's where you want to to get curious as to why am I actually attracted to this. And I don't know that there's any wrong or right person. I, I truly believe that if you are looking at every relationship as a mirror in and a portal in, that if you're really attracted to someone who's quote unquote narcissistic or toxic or whatever, there's an opportunity for you to say, okay, there's something about this person that is bringing up all of my work And I, instead of trying to change them or try to understand that, I'm going to bring up all of these things that are going on inside of me to someone who can help me actually sort through why I'm attracted to this type of person. And that's when you start to get a little bit of leverage, or you can start to make a little ground as to why you keep attracting the same type over and over again, which we've all been there. Well, I mean, I write about it, but So many people. And then I have this other theory. It's like, if the wound lives inside of you, it's going to play out. There's just healthier people to have it play out with. And different people have different capacities to become more conscious with you. So finding people who can work through their work with you is the goal.

If the wound lives inside of you, that reminds me of the words that you use in some of your work is embedded trauma, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so speak a little bit more about that embedded trauma for people who may not know what that means.

Sure. Yeah. So when we're really small, we have traumatic events happen to us all the time. Like, little things impact us in big ways, right? And so when we're small and things are impacting us and we're not being received, We're not being witnessed, we're not being validated, and we're not being held. When that happens over and over again, we start to store these experiences in our body because they need to be seen, witnessed, and held. And if our parents don't have the capacity for that, over time we store them in our heart, in our fascia, and in our gut, and they become, um, embodied memory that we, we carry with us until we can re-experience them and be seen, witnessed, and held with a nervous system that has the capacity to hold the original wound. So it lives in our body, and bottom-up theory has proved to us that most of the information from our body shoots up from our body into our brain, into our right hemisphere. That's also why we stay in the left, because there's a lot of suffering that we can store in our body. that we might not be ready to process yet. So we can become very disconnected, like walking heads. I know I did that. I mean, I was a workaholic. And I was doing everything to avoid what was going on inside my body because I didn't have the people and the resources to really dive in. And I didn't know any of this consciously, by the way. But once we start to slow down and we find safe people and we start to do the work, we actually become more embodied or we get in touch with the sensational world in our body, which is really embedded trauma. So if you're feeling something crazy in your gut or in your heart, we know that that sensational world is how we store memory from womb to 4. We don't store memory like a picture in our brain. We're storing sensation. And I think most clients or most people that I work with, that's like a light bulb moment. It's like, oh, this is happening in my relationship. But this is so sensational that this is actually also trauma or embedded an embedded sensation that's living in my body. So can we be with that? And can we take notice that that feeling in your gut or in your heart is actually something you've experienced before and kind of go there together? And that's how we start to be with everything that we've had to avoid because we haven't had the safe people or the safe places or the consciousness or whatever the container to start to kind of unpack what our body is holding on to.

There's so much richness to that. You're describing this bottom-up approach to how the body is holding on to trauma. We know Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score, where he talked about that. And what I love that you're talking about specifically is this womb to 4 years old, where we're not necessarily storing logic and thoughts and images, but it's storing in the body. And I think that that is Such a valid resource. And I resonate with this as a person too, is doing my own trauma work in EMDR specifically. It got to the point where there were no words for what was coming up, and it was very somatic. And I was having images of being a fetus and the feeling of what it was like and having impressions of things that were going on in my environment, but there weren't any words to that. And I think at the time and where I was in my developmental understanding of how trauma can live in the body is it felt very much like, is this real? Am I just using my imagination? Am I making this up? But I love how you're emphasizing this as an important factor that neuroscience is substantiating as a process for healing not only our own personal trauma, but our relationships and our attachment patterns now.

Yeah, and I think that's so amazing that you had that experience. I too had an experience not that long ago where I was an infant in my crib, and many pre-verbal, um, re-experiences that were actually terrifying. And I think as a therapist, I mean, I would tell my friends, and if you're listening, and they'd be like, that's awesome, you're like reliving your embedded trauma and you're bringing and you're doing the work. But as a Normal walking person, if they're re-experiencing some of these earlier pre-verbal experience, it's, it's terrifying. And, and, you know, having the anchor or the knowledge that like, this is memory, this is memory coming up, and it's such a gift if you can bring this to the right person. And, you know, that can make— Like, that can make the difference between going to the ER and thinking you're crazy, or saying, wow, I'm having some trauma come up. This is such a gift. Who do I bring it to? Who's a safe person? And how do I start to navigate some of these sensations that can feel really, really scary?

It's so good. Everything you're saying is just like absolute gold. Yeah. Every time you open your mouth, I'm, I'm learning so much. And I know that our audience is learning so much as well. I am also curious about the SELF-FULL method and speaking a little bit about that and how that can help us if we are— if we find ourselves in avoidant attachment, or if we find ourselves just being selfless in general, or thinking that we need to be selfless in order to have love. And, you know, for me personally, being called selfish was probably the most triggering thing for me, I think. And I was called selfish a couple of times, like throughout my childhood. And it was like, that was like the worst thing that you could possibly be. And so I'm really, really interested in the self-full method that you have and kind of how you talk about that as well. So do you want to talk a little bit about that for us?

Sure, sure. I, I love that question. So I think of adaptive strategies and attachment issues or strategies as anxious people tend to self- Abandoned, they become selfless, right? We talk about them leaving their body. This is a sympathetic activation. So this is fight flight, right? We're leaving. We're not in a state of connection. If we're in a place of fear, we might overextend ourselves. We might people please. We might you know do all the things that we need to do out of fear. It's not out of a place of genuinely feeling safe and having this reciprocal relationship. It's a place of I don't do more. I won't get the love that I need. And so that's a fear place trying to stay in connection. And the other end of the pendulum is perceived selfish, right? And so there are plenty of people who shut down their capacity for empathy or disconnect or disengage, and they kind of go off on their own to self-regulate. And it can feel like they're very selfish. And the truth is, they're also in a sympathetic state of activation. And they're also in a state of fear. And both self- selfless and selfish are not able to connect. And eventually, that is the anxious avoidant dance. They have 2 different ways of trying to get back into connection. One is running towards in fear, one is running away in fear. And so neither of them can connect. And then there's self-full. And self-full is when we are in a ventral state. That's the scientific word. And so we're in a state of giving and receiving and having boundaries and able to move close and further away. And I talk a lot about this in my book. The truth is we're shifting out of these states all day long. There are inner and outer cues due to what we call neuroception that shifts us in these states. But we can show up in one of these states more often or not in an embedded kind of pattern with a certain person. So I might show up more selfless with someone who's more selfish, and we get stuck in these patterns where we're not in connection ever. We're either running towards or running away. So I think, you know, developing a capacity to be in the self-full state more means expanding our window of tolerance, or our window of neuroception. And it means being with more of what's going on inside of us, so that we have the capacity to be with our suffering and our pain and our trauma. And that when it shows up in relational spaces, our fear to run towards or run away to typically lessens, and we're able to have an ability to be more grounded in our body and less reactive. And that takes time to expand the ability to stay in a self-full place. I hope that kind— I know that's pretty complicated, and I talk a lot about it in my book. And I think we all have experiences of all 3 of them where it's not like we're just in one category. We just tend to maybe go into one when we're scared. The most.

Totally. No, I think that it's a great, great explanation. I think it's so interesting because we think when we're being selfless that we're being generous, but really it's more of like a— it's more of like an interaction or like an exchange of like, if I do this, then I will receive the love or I'll, you know, it's not— it's not a place of just like feeling like, oh, I'm just gonna do this for someone because I really want to. And it sounds like that is what's possible when you're in a self-full state.

Yeah, I was like, I give the example, um, that like, let's say you were my really good friend and you were sick and I wanted to make you chicken soup, but I had like, I was overworked, I was burnt out, I was, I, I really didn't have time to bring you soup, but I'm like thinking to myself out of fear, If I don't get this chicken soup to her, she's not gonna be my friend. I'm— I need to be a good person. I need to go give this chicken soup to her, and I need to make it. And, you know, my mentor gave me this, this analogy that would become a selfless place of, I really don't have it to give right now. I'm not really taking care of myself. But if I don't get this chicken soup to her, I'm so scared of losing this connection and what she might think, and I'm not being a good friend, that I'm gonna override my needs. And get her that soup. That's very different than, wow, I have a friend who's sick. I have some time this afternoon. I'm gonna pick up some soup. I feel like I'm gonna drive over to her house. I'm gonna drop it off. You know, like that energy of self-full, like I have this to give right now. Those are the same things, the same behavior of bringing someone soup that you care about. But one is like, I don't have it to give, but out of fear, I'm gonna do it anyway and run myself into the ground. And the other is, I really do have it to give, you know. And then the selfish state is, I'm so disconnected from other people's needs that I don't know what to give. And there, there's no judgment there. That person's also out of connection, right? And they're also in, in this kind of isolated place of disconnect. And that's not a fun place to be either. I think people are like, oh, it's so much easier to be selfish. I think people who tend to to lean in that direction tend to be very lonely.

Yes, I've definitely gone back and forth between those states throughout, throughout my life. So

yeah,

neither of them is fun.

No. And I think we can swing the pendulum. Like, you know, I've been so selfless, and now I'm going to be selfish. And it's like, where do we learn flexibility and fluidity and reciprocal, you know, having reciprocal relationships? That's where we start to To learn I can meet my needs and my partner's needs, or I can learn to say no and yes depending on the day. And these are safer relationships to start to explore those things with.

Yes, I think so often people are like, well, I'm not— I'm done being selfless. But then they do. They swing over to that selfish place. And not that there's anything wrong with that. Sometimes that's actually that, you know, that's what they need for a little bit of time. But yeah, I think there is that place that we can come to where it's like a home inside of ourselves, and then that is what is directing our— how we're acting rather than being like, I'm just going to be selfish for myself.

When I first started writing the book, I was swinging the pendulum with my writing, and my mentor, she's like, no, you got to swing it back into the middle a little because I was selfless. And I was like, no, you got to take care of your needs first. And I mean, it was 4 years before re-editing and all this studying and all that. But it's normal to swing the pendulum, and it's also Really important if you're listening that there are relationships out there if you've never experienced where you can say yes and no and maybe too, all depending on what's going on inside of you. And there's a little bit more flexibility, and having those relational experiences is like a light bulb moment.

It's so good. Yeah, we often talk about boundaries here and how sometimes people will put up boundaries so that they're actually just walls. And I think it's similar to that where it's like No, actually, we can, we can allow people in, but in a way that we actually— that actually feels good to us. And so it sounds, it sounds similar to that. And yeah, I think you explained that absolutely beautifully. Yeah.

Yeah. And I really dive into boundaries. There's a chapter on it around anxious people never having a secure sense of self. They weren't attuned or seen into from early age, so they have a hard time understanding their needs to begin with. And so they tend to have no boundaries or be boundaryless. And there's a reason why, where avoidant people tend to have walls. And so looking at where are their gates and why are we internally developed in 2 different ways and building compassion for both.

A word that's coming to mind that you touched on earlier, and I was wondering if you could weave in or clarify Or differentiate is codependence in patterns of relationship?

Yeah, I mean, so I struggle with the word codependency because, um, someone who suffered with some of those traits, I, I was like 20 thinking, okay, I got to be independent. And I think that interdependence is when we learn how to depend on dependable people and we actually become more secure. So the irony and the paradox in all of that is if you are codependent, you actually need to depend on people. It's the people whom you're choosing to depend on that is actually the most important thing. The more you depend on people who are reliable and consistent and warm, the less your, your need or your fear goes down and the more security you get built. It does not come from being more independent, self-regulating, and self-sufficient. It actually comes from learning who to depend on. And so that was a really big message. that I wanted my readers to get, because so many people who are labeled codependency, there's so much shame attached to that word. At least for me, there was. And then I learned that it was my adaptive strategies, and I learned the neuroscience, and that's what the book provides. And then once you learn that, you kind of step out of the shame, and you're like, no, I was just— this is how I adapted. This is how I survived. It's actually quite brilliant what my body does. And so you shift away from that word and hopefully you move into what interdependency feels like and start to experience that. And if you're listening, independence is not— it's not the goal. That actually will just lead to a lot more loneliness and is just another form of a protective place that you'll feel very lonely in. So interdependency is kind of what we are all striving for.

Ooh, I love this. So I wanna make sure that I, I captured that. So there's, there's 3, generally speaking. Uh, there's the independence, which can be withdrawn. It can be very lonely, just relying on yourself, maybe not in relationship in a really congruent and vulnerable way. And then there's the codependence, which has a lot of shame attached to it. And so I love that really you're looking at it more as an adaptive process of who is it that you're depending on? Are they reliable and consistent and warm and helping you feel secure or not? If it's not helping you feel secure and confident and brave in yourself, then maybe it's a codependent sort of pattern versus interdependence is when you start to develop and cultivate those relationships that help you feel more secure.

Yeah. And they kind of relate to the selfless state and the selfish state, as someone can be perceived as really independent and selfish. Someone can be seen as codependent and selfless. They're just born of abandoning yourself or connection in order to get to safe— you perceive safety. But it's not, it's not really where true intimacy and safety is built. That's all built in connection, and we are biologically wired. It's our biological imperative to be in connection. We need connection just like we need food. And we need air, we need each other. And so that's not a message that is broadcasted in our culture. We actually idealize very selfish autonomy, self-reliant, which is very harmful for people who struggle with regulating and wanting to have a, you know, a thriving life. Like, those messages can really isolate that person and send them into the wrong path, not a healing path.

It's so good. And the way that you said— I've never heard this said before. I've heard of, you know, the codependent, interdependent, independent distinctions. But the way that you said that, actually, it might just be that you're being, you know, quote unquote codependent with, like, the, the type of person that you're relying on. And actually, you still need to be dependent on people, but you just maybe need to be dependent on someone who is more actually safe for you, which I think is so beautiful and such a different way of looking at it than I've even heard of, you know, even in our field. So that's really, really beautiful. So thanks for saying that.

Yeah, for sure. And even who you attach to. I mean, I think, you know, codependency, we can attach at an early wounded age. And so we're trying to get our partner to take care of a part of us that's not really They're not really capable of taking care of that part. So we have to bring that part to a therapist or a coach or a nonjudgmental friend who can really help, you know, be in that space. So we, we can all get into trouble, trauma bonding, whatever you want to call it, with that early attachment slash codependency when we are expecting our partner to be the only person that self-regulates us.

Yes. Oh my gosh, thank you for saying that. Yeah, I think Especially in our current culture, we expect that our partner will be able, or our family, you know, our immediate nuclear family will be able to do that for us. And we need more. We need a larger community to be able to lean on for all of our needs.

And the awareness to know who has the capacity and who doesn't. And the forgiveness for those who don't.

Yes. Yes, totally. Oh my gosh, this is so good. I feel like we could talk to you forever about this, but I want to be mindful of your time. And I also want to let everyone know about your book and where to find it and how to connect with you as well. Do you want to give us a little bit on how to, how to do that?

Sure. Yeah. My book, Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love. It's out there in the world. Doing amazing. And you can get it literally anywhere. You can go to Amazon, Barnes& Noble. It's in a lot of bookstores. It's in like 11 countries. It's in a lot of languages. And I just— I've been getting great feedback. And I love getting it out there because I'm really proud of it. And you can find me on Instagram @JessicaBaumLMHC. And then I have 2 companies. I have the Relationship Institute of Palm Beach if you're a local person here in Florida. And then I have beselfful.com. So, or you can just put Jessica Baum in Google and basically it all shows up as well.

And we'll make sure to have links to all of that in the show notes. So be sure to check that out. And if you haven't, follow her on Instagram, cuz there's always tons of great new information on there and you'll learn a ton. I know I have.

Yeah, she's got a lot of great stuff there.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate the conversation. Was great.

Yeah.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah.

Thank you so much. I'm really excited for everyone to hear this. I think people are going to have their minds blown. Yes, for sure.