Relationship Expert Thais Gibson: Do You Keep Attracting The Same Emotionally Unavailable Partner? (Use THIS Attachment Reset To Break The Cycle And Choose Better Partners)

every relationship by rewiring your brain and nervous system. She shares practical tools to change the patterns that shape how we connect. Tedys Gibson, welcome to On Purpose.

to grow. And I feel this is a conversation that every single person needs to hear because whether it's their love life, whether it's their workplace, whether it's their personal image of who they are, this conversation will make a

difference in their life. Could you start by telling me if someone listens to our conversation today, what will change for them?

let me understand this. This temporary label gives me contacts into the things within me that may need a lot, little bit more love or healing or support. But the actual work is being able to say, Okay, here are my patterns, where do they come from, and then actually rewiring them at the subconscious level. And that's what I definitely hope the key takeaway is for today.

always have a hard time with that. I'm like, wait, it seems like it may not be quite so high. But basically, they have securely attached individuals are people who grew up in childhood with what we call a lot of approach oriented behaviors from their parents. And it sounds like such a small thing, but it goes such a

long way. So approach oriented behaviors really means that when a child is young, if they cry or they get distressed, the parent is a tuned They're very present and they notice it and they approach the child to be like, what's wrong, and they attempt to sue them and make the child feel better. And what that conditions a child to believe at a very young age is my emotions are worthy of being seen and heard. It's safe to

rely on other people. I can trust that people are going to be there for me, and also I can communicate and almost most importantly, I am worthy of love as I am on my good days, on my bad days, and my good moments and in my hard moments. And so there's a lot of really healthy condition that that child adopts. And so of course that's the type of

patterning they bring into their relationships as adults. And what's really interesting to me is it securely attached people, they report not just having the longest lasting relationships, but they report the most satisfaction in their relationships. And that's a very meaningful thing. And I'm just a big believer in relationships. I love people, I care about people, and I really think that relationships determine the quality of our life in so many ways, and so that's very meaningful in terms of,

you know, the stats on that. And then we have three insecure attachment styles. This makes up the other fifty percent or so of the population.

maybe that's why. But securely attached people often end up in relationships pretty early with other securely attached people, and we can get into why that happens at a subconscious level, because you usually pair up with people of a specific attachment cell for specific reasons. But to your point, I wonder the same thing. I'm like, come on this out.

am I going to be left or abandoned again. Perceived abandonment is really interesting because the neuroscience of trauma tells us that small tea trauma repeatedly enough over time has a quite similar impact to a singular big tea trauma. So perceived abandonment consistently in a child's upbringing cause them to have real, real abandonment wounds as an adult, similar to if there was a real abandonment that took place, and perceived abandonment is things like you have very loving parents,

but they're really busy. They're always working, they're always traveling for work. And so children grow up in this environment going Okay, love is here and then love is taken away and love is here and it's taken away, and that inconsistency there causes this child to really brace and

deeply fear love being taken away. And so as adults, these individuals they adapt in their life to be like, let me really be charming and charismatic and well legged, so I win people low and they end up having superpowers in that way in many forms, but also anxiously attach adults. They people please so much to the point where they can burn themselves out, or they people please to the point of self silencing, and they're big wounds. So we took this original body of attachment theory and

they know it, said here're your for attachment cells. Good luck, and it was sort of like, wait, but you can recondition pretty much anything, like you can rewire these things. And I originally started in this work for that reason. And so what we found is that anxious attachment cells They have big core wounds, specifically around the fear of abandonment, the fear of being alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, not good enough. These are like these huge wounds and triggers in their relationships,

and they need very specific things in relationships. They need more validation, approval. They really like certainty if somebody cancels plans with them, they really want to know, Okay, you're canceling plans, but tell me what I'm going to see you next, and then they can sort of rest and feel comfortable and safe. And so they end up in

situations where they sometimes struggle with their boundaries. Growing up, they often end up in situations as well where because they're so busy making sure that everybody else is good, they kind of forget about themselves and they put themselves on the back burner. So anxious attachment sells. As adults, they often also were very much invested in and attracted to emotionally unavailable people, and that becomes really problematic.

and had all of these these things come up. And what was really interesting is I felt like life was really hard, and I felt like relationships were really hard at that point, and I tried a lot of things that weren't really working. And I was in school for psychology and like maybe all the outside my life looked like you're doing well, You're you're okay, but on the inside, I was like a mass, like I was really hurting.

And I was in a psych class and I was seriously thinking, like I think I need to leave school, like I don't think I can take this handless. And somebody said to me in a class they were like I wasn't even the professor as a student, and he said, oh, your conscious mind can't outwill or overpower your subconscious mind. And for me that was like so powerful because I was sitting there going, oh, so you're telling me that, Like all the times they say I'm going to get clean,

I'm going to change my life. I'm gonna, you know, stop all these these really painful things that I'm doing. I'm going to delete people's numbers from my phone. I'm going to change, and then I don't. It's not that I'm weak or powerless or not capable. It's that, like, this is actually what's going on, it's my subconscious mind.

So I originally started this work by getting sober and then being obsessed with learning about the subconscious mind and the ego and how all this works from sort of this like spiritual perspective to how do we sort of transcend those patterns in those conditions. So I was originally working for the first few years of my actice not with attachment cells, but actually with people in their core wounds.

So like, what are these big triggers that we carry from our past into our present and you know, how is this showing up in our life? And so what was really interesting about that is I was working with people on rewiring their triggers, learning their own needs and how to meet them in healthy ways, learning to regulate

their nervous system, learning to communicate and set boundaries. And then I came to attachment cells actually because I met my now husband and we both had our own little things we hadn't worked out in relationships yet, and I started revisiting attachment theory, which I had learned at a very high level in university, and I was like, wait, Like, first of all, if I know somebody's attachment cell, I now know exactly what their core wounds are going to be,

exactly what their needs are going to be, exactly what these emotional patterns are going to be in relationships, and what their nervous system is going to be functioning like. And I know what types of boundary issues they're going to have and how they tend to communicate in relationships. And it was so interesting because like original attachment theory didn't cover any of that. It was more about like

temperament and some of your behaviors. And so I was like, oh, my gosh, tell me somebody's attachment cell and I can help them rewire all these different patterns and themes. And so what was really exciting to me is like attachment styles became mainstream, but then it was like, Okay, here's your attachment cell. And that's when people start to identify instead of like, hey, let me do that underlying work.

So going back to detoured there, but going back to this, that's the anxious attachment cell in the nutshells, Like, those are their themes and their patterns. They fear, like the abandonment, feeling not good enough, feeling excluded, dislike rejected. Those are those big triggers that they're bringing from their past because their subconscious mind was imprinted with that, and then we always project that into the present. And I often give people this analogy of like a bear in the woods.

If you go into the woods tomorrow and you see a bear and you run from it and you're safe, thank goodness. But then the very next day you go back into the woods, Well, what does your mind do. You're like bracing for the bear. You're like the bear is coming. The trees blow in the wind, and you're like, oh my god, the bear. And so what's really interesting is that we all do that, right, we all have. Oh I felt abandoned as a child, Okay, I project that as an adult. Oh I felt not good enough

as a child. That's what I bring into my relationships as an adult. And that's honestly what our relationship baggage is, and those are all things that interfere the most in our relationships, but those are solvable problems. So that's sort of the anxious attachment s all And do you want me to go into the other two?

trying to find food. Like of course it can be these really extreme scenarios, but most often childhood emotional neglect is very much that you have these kids who food's on the table, so there's structure and order, they're at school on time, but their parents are not emotionally available and not attuned. And it's usually not the inconsistency like

once attuned and one's not. It's usually both are not really attuned, and they're much more uninvolved, and because children are literally wired for attunement, they are wired for connection. We need as children to feel safe and to feel seen and to feel special. Children come into this environment and they're like, Okay, well, I guess this part of

me that needs this is defective and wrong. And so what they end up doing to adapt to an environment like that is repressing their attachment needs and minimizing their need for emotional connection. And so they feel better and like they have a sense of control when they're able to do that. But then as adults that really causes destruction to their relationships because they've learned, Okay, this part of me, my emotional, vulnerable self, is defective or shameful.

If I express it too much, I'll be weak. These are their big triggers. They end up feeling very afraid of relying on other people and being helpless or trapped in a situation or engulfed, and they very much internalize a lot of shame from childhood because as a child, if you yearn for connection and it keeps getting rejected and nobody's paying attention, well, then of course as an adult you're like, oh, deep down, if people really see me, they're going to reject me like that too, and it

must be shameful, like something deep down must be defective or broken within me. And so it's so interesting because they're very stoic. Dismissable winds are very stoic. You often don't see it, but that tends to be what they bring into their relationships. Those are their biggest core triggers

and fears from this new attachment theory perspective. And so then we have these adults who go into their relationships and there are the types of individuals as adults who are like, oh, they're great at the beginning when everything's easy and light, and then after you date them for four or five six months, when things get a little more real and serious, they jet or they pull away, or they retreat, and then they end up in situations where, you know, even if they make it through that period

of time and keep dating somebody and keep investing, they really retreat emotionally and they shut down. And so then you have these individuals as adults who are like, Okay, you know, I feel like I'm trying to connect with you and my partner's not really available or present, and they really cope by trying to always minimize their attachment needs and create space, and so they become quite distant in relationships. And then the very last one is the

fearful avoidant attachment style. Fearful avoidance are basically characterized by more big T trauma growing up, some more emotional chaos. You know, it can be anything from like having a parent with narcissistic personality disorder to having a parent who is an alcoholic or parents an active addiction, are really intense divorce growing up. You have more extreme kind of scenarios that that children are exposed to, but they're wiring

is such that. Well, an anxious attachment style is like they always want more closeness than to win people over, and avoidance always want more space and to keep distance. Fearful avoidance learn that love is both a really good thing and a really hard thing. Interesting, so they grow up essentially going, well, love is a good thing because

let's say, for example, that mom is an alcoholic. Well, maybe one day mom comes home and she's had a few drinks, but she's in a good mood and she's loving and she embraces you, and you're like, oh, love is safe, love is good. I want more of this and then other days, maybe mom's an alcoholic and she's drinking more heavily, and now she's angry drunk, and she's cruel and she's mean and she's unpredictable. And a child is like, well, love is a really good thing, but

it can also really hurt me. It will be really harsh and critical and cruel sometimes to me, And so they end up having very competing associations about the same thing. They're like, love is both really good and really bad. And then as adults what ends up happening is they're the very hot and cold partner. A lot of their core wounds from their childhood. Their version of the bear in the woods is they fear abandonment because they feel

that abandonment when that love isn't there. They fear being trapped and helpless if they rely on people, because they've had times where they rely on somebody who's really unpredictable and scary, and they have a huge core wound around feeling betrayed. That's the biggest wound we found from the new attachment theory perspective, is like always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always waiting to be on high alert,

like is somebody gonna hurt me. And what happens to fearful avoidance is they get into relationships and love feels like a very bittersweet experience. And I'll speak for myself because I was a fearful avoidant, and I remember before doing a lot of deep in our work, my early serious relationships when I was much younger, feeling like I would fall in love and feeling like I loved the feeling of being in love and connecting and really wanted

that depth and connection. But it was also very bittersweet because the more I loved, the more I was like, Oh, you're for sure going to hurt me that much more, Like this is going to be a really bad ending, and there was this sort of belief that everything was going to inevitably be really bad and really painful. So love feels so good, but it also feels like a threat and it's scary, and it causes you in a relationship to be like come get close, coming close, and

somebody get closer, like get back. I changed my mind. And so you see this, and you see it like clockwork. I've seen this with tons of thousands of clients I've worked with the same themes the same patterns. And I remember having one woman and she said to me, I could tell by the way my mom got home from work. I would be upstairs in my room, and I could tell by the way my mom closed the door on her way in if I should close my door quickly or not. And it's like, fearful avoids learned to be

very hyper vigilant. They learned to read between the lines. They read like every little micro expression and body language and change in a tone of voice, because that's how they've learned to attach. So anxious people are like, let me, let me get close to you, and people please Dismissive avoidance are like, let me keep space. Fearful avoidance are like, let me notice little thing about you so I can predict your future and I can know how to respond.

And it gives them that superpower in a way. But often then when you have these wounds and then you jump to conclusions like, oh, something change, something's off, you're gonna band and or betray me, or you're trying to

control me, and you sort of jump to those conclusions. It makes for a really turbulent set of relationships and lifestyle.

in our parents. It feels like this can help people actually give them a map of how to make sense of their emotions and even the people they meet. What would you encourage someone to do differently? If someone's listening right now and they're dating, how can they use what you've just shared to date differently?

to ninety seven percent. And so what's really interesting is consciously our conscious minds, our logical analytical mind, and our subconsciousness are our habituate itself, our programming or conditioning, and our conscious mind will say, I want the emotionally available partner, I want the person who is ready to be and a related We'll say all the things in the world, but secure people feel that consciously and subconsciously. Insecure people don't.

Insecurelyttuch people don't really have that same experience. So, for example, our subconscious mind equates familiarity to safety and thus survival, and ultimately we're survival wired. And so what ends up happening is people who are let's say anxiously attached, for example, they'll often say consciously that they want the emotionally available partner, but they will feel most attracted to and be most likely to invest in because your subconscious mind runs the

show people who are most familiar. What is most familiar to each of us is actually the way we treat ourselves. And so if you look at the anxious person, how does the anxious person treat themselves well? Because they're so externally focused on everybody else's feelings, and needs. They often dismiss and avoid their own feelings, their needs, their boundaries, and so what happens as a result of that is they are very much often attracted to people who will

mirror that back to them. And even if you flip that around to the dismissive avoidant, dismissive avoidance end up in situations where they're like preoccupied with their own time to themselves. They're going, do I have enough time to myself to regulate? Do I have enough space? And so what's really interesting is consciously they'll say, oh, I want somebody who gets my freedom and respects it. But subconsciously they'll often go and invest in people who are very

preoccupied with them. And so that's why you often pair up with people of different attachment cells, and that's often why you see secure people will be with secure people. And so when it comes to dating, the most important thing, and I will say this forever and nobody likes to hear of, but it's the truth, is that the most important thing you're ever going to do is learn to have a secure relationship with yourself first. And that's going

to be through rewiring these insecure patterns. And I'm sure we can get into all the ways, how but rewiring those insecure patterns. Because you can say that you want

the healthiest relationship, you can have your checklist, you can know your needs, you can try to ask all the right questions on the dates and go to the right places and find the right people. But ultimately you often will find that you're in relationships with people who might have all those things on the checklist, and you're like, I just don't feel trafted to them. Oh this person, And I've heard this all the time. I actually used to do this when I was much younger, before doing

the work. I had people who would date them or start to get to know them, and they were very secure, and I would be like, this is kind of boring.

which isn't ready, isn't prepared. Is rejecting someone that's actually good for you is boring and accepting someone who's terrible for you because it's familiar, and so the chaos and the ups and downs, and so that may it now makes sense listening to that why we're attracted to the people that make us feel insecure or people that are not emotionally available, because we've had that before, so we know what behaviors to play into, which is, I'll be hypervigilant,

if I'm a fearful avoidant, I'll be super distant. If I'm one of you knows, it's fascinating to me that. Yeah, just listening to that just makes it make sense. And as you said, the advice you just gave is becoming secure in your relationship with yourself. You're not just saying, hey, you have to love yourself first, or you have to you're saying to actually, you can actually technically develop a subconscious relationship with yourself that is based on security and safety.

I had already been doing this work with like the core wounds and the needs and the nervous system frameworks with people and help people communicate and how they behave, and I was specifically in the body of work for the first few years I was working with people, just helping people like rewire their painful patterns and a lot of it was from their childhood conditioning. But I hadn't ever put it into the theme of like attachment styles.

And then when I met my husband and we started getting more serious, and I was like, ooh, I still have a little like relationship work to do. I don't a lot of work to be really peaceful with him myself, but I had a little relationship work to do with him, and I kind of felt like he also had some work to do with me, and I revisited more about learning about relationships, and the first time I went back to it was like, oh, attachment cells, and I was like, oh,

my goodness. Once I know somebody's attachments cell, Every attachment cell has these core wounds and these patterns with their needs and these patterns with their nervous system communication behaviors. And so what we ended up creating is this whole body of work that's you can actually rewire each of those things at the subconscious level, because your subconscious mind

is literally driving your life. And so it's like all of the condition that we've picked up from past experiences in our own personal warehouse, how do we start to recondition and we really boil it into those five pillars. So the first pillar and this is like, I love that you said it's not just about self love, because sometimes I don't know. Sometimes you hear stuff and people say just forgive people, and you're like, that would be

nice if I felt like that. How do I emotionally arrive there and how do I actually feel that deeply? And so a lot of the work is how do we actually get to our subconscious mind because that's how things unfold this way, And same with self love. It's a subconscious process because if you didn't get love mirror too in healthy ways growing up, you're going to mirror that back in the relationship to yourself and as adult, and then you're going to be attracted to unhealthy forms

of love as an adult with other people. So first pillar of really healing is to learn to rewire your core wounds, and we can go through a natural exercise here. So first step, there's three steps in doing this. Let's just say, for EA's sake, that the core wound is not good enough when we talked about each of them for the different attachment styles earlier, So people can kind of hold that core wound in their mind that stood out to them, and you ideally want to work on

one at a time. So not good enough? What is the opposite? I am good enough. That part's really easy. The second piece when it comes to actually rewiring these things is I'm not a big believer in affirmations. The reason being that affirmations are of the conscious mind. Your conscious mind speaks language. Okay, your subconscious mind does not speak language. It doesn't really understand language much at all.

many ways. So we have to actually use our conscious mind to rewire our subconscious mind, because we can do that, but we actually our conscious mind cannot outwill or overpower our subconscious mind, can only rewire it. Part of why you hear people be like, oh, I said I was going to quit eating chocolate for my New Year's resolution, and then they go back to eating chocolate three days later. Because the last things are built into your subconscious we

really have a hard time changing behaviors. So first step, I am not good enough. I am good enough, the opposite of your core wound. I'll be abandoned, I'm worthy of connection, I'll be unloved, I'm lovable. Right, so we pick the opposite step two because we need repetition of emotions and imagery because repetition fires and wires in neural pathways, emotions and images do it at the subconscious level. So

you're like, how do we find emotions and images? Well, interestingly, every memory we ever have is a container of emotions and imagery.

subconscious mind. So, for example, I am good enough ten times I actually felt good enough. And they do not have to be big. It can be things like I was a good friend last week, I had our conversation with my spouse two weeks ago, whatever it is. It can be small things. But we need to just elictit a little bit of emotion, that imagery of the memory, and we need ten of them. Step three, we record ourselves sing out loud, so ideally we write them down.

We record ourselves singing into our phone, and then our subconscious mind actually sponges up a lot of information more effectively when we are in a suggestible state, meaning our brain is producing more alpha brain waves. And so what we get people to do is to sit down. They record themselves saying this out loud. It takes two minutes to listen back, and your brain produces a lot more

alpha brain waves. After a good meditation, the first hour that you wake up, before drinking coffee, the last hour before you go to sleep, after intense exercise, breath work, these types of things, you're in more alpha brain wave mode, when your mind is more relaxed, more still. And then what we're doing is we're listening back to those things during that time, the voice in your own voice exactly

saying it out loud. You're listening back and you're very much focusing on the images and the emotion as you feel back in that suggestible state. A neuroscience search tells us if we are in a suggestible state, Doing that for twenty one days builds new neural networks that are very strong that they are highly likely to stet And what's really interesting is we surveyed people who did this. We're like, okay, let's actually track how people are doing this.

People said they stuck to it every day for twenty one days. We had like tens of sixty thousand people who we did the survey on. People said they did not miss a day for twenty one days. Reported a ninety nine point seven percent score in actually rewiring the wounds. So it's highly effective, it's very simple, and it's something like anybody can do right now. And if you really look like those wounds, those are the things that recavoc

on people's lives in relationships. Those are the really painful things that Those are a relationship baggage that we're really carrying, and those are why we keep choosing the wrong scenarios over and over again or that same unavailable partner. So really simple starter tool for rewire and that's when I like to share it to begin with. And it's something people can just do at home from listening.

to go through like each of the pillars and share about them. But that's a really good exercise we start people off because it's high effective, it's super simple. There's other cool tools that you can use as well, but

it's a really good and to start. As people went through our programs, people reported a two hundred percent increase in relationship satisfaction, feeling more connected, more happy, more fulfilled, fifty percent less conflict because people were more regulated and have all these triggers coming up, and obviously less fighting

as a result, feeling more connected from that perspective. And then people who are out of a relationship doing this work on themselves and just preparing to go into dating reported three hundred percent more confidence in their dating life because they felt like they knew what they wanted, but also they weren't always triggered going into dating and panicking and having all these things come up, which is really important if you're going into relationships that way.

do any work with me, or communicate differently or do anything, and like, maybe I'm in the wrong relationship. So there is a risk if you're not with the right person to do that. Now, sometimes people do the work in relationships, and that's beautiful and it's a really powerful potent place

to be doing the work. But I always tell people too, like, if that's the case, each person in a relationship is one hundred percent responsible for their fifty percent of their relationship, so it can't be one person doing all the emotional load for both people, and work looks different for different people. It's not always both people sitting down doing the reprogramming and doing the work in that way, but one person has to be willing to practice hashing out conflicts learning.

You know, if one person's following or communication frameworks, the other person has to be willing to listen and jump in and move through conflict that way, because otherwise we don't really get resolution.

trying to control me? Like all of these my mind was so busy, and when I really did a lot of this rewiring out of all those painful patterns, it felt I had so much space back in my mind, Like I had space to think of how I wanted to design my life and create things, and just like room to be present in things. And that was just such a beautiful piece. So that's pillar number one, pillar

number two. As people have to learn their own needs and how to meet them in the relationship to themselves. We'll get into how to communicate them after, but in the relationship to self first. And the reason for this is it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from gaber Matte, and he says, trauma are the things that happened that shouldn't have happened. That's the obvious, like

the abuse things like that in childhood. But trauma's also the things that happened or that sorry, that didn't happen, that should have happened. And that's like the neglect, you know, or that's it. Maybe you didn't feel safe as a child, or scene or protected or you didn't feel like your

parents were present enough with you growing up. So that's also trauma because in a perfect world, we actually would have had our needs met in a healthy and consistent way where we felt like we could really rely on people. And so that's our second pillar is I get people to go in and audit what are your biggest unmet

needs from childhood, and you'll see people. For some people, it's like I didn't feel like my parents were present enough with me, or I didn't feel protected, or I didn't feel like I had that ability to really learn from a parent or be deeply seen or known or attuned to. I mean, there's a lot of needs in there, but we give a big list of needs and it's

okay if these are your deepest on met needs. What's really interesting is we internalize all of that condition and so whatever we didn't get met, we're often not meeting. In the relationship to self. If somebody wasn't present enough with you growing up, that's actually a huge part of healing. It's okay, well, I'm probably not very present with myself. Or if people said I really need validation, I didn't

feel validated growing up. Unfortunately, usually you're playing up that programming, and you're the one struggling to validate yourself the most, and you're sort of validating everybody else before you. And so what's really beautiful is it's deeply healing for people to go in audit where they're missing these deep needs and then for twenty one days, through that repetition and

emotion to really fire and wire those nural networks. We get people to go through here my deepest on met needs and actual actions and practices to meet them within relationship to self. And once we do for twenty one days, very repeatedly, and it elstits this emotional impact and we're doing it physiologically, so we have that like imagery that we're reaching our subconscious mind. That becomes our new baseline, it becomes our new step point, and we just become

good at doing those things. And as an example, as somebody who did all this work on myself first fourteen years ago, fifteen years ago, one of the biggest things I really wanted was emotional depth, Like I always cared about that with other people and liking to go deep

into things. And I realized, oh my gosh, I'm trying to and we always do this. We try to resource from other people the most, the things we struggle to self source.

like they're going to betray me. So that person better, oh, always be one hundred percent congruent, they better never tell a white behind nothing, or or you know, I might have to leave the relationship, or dismissile avoidance. They end up in situations where they're going, Okay, well I don't you know, I don't know that people understand me, and you know, I really need them to understand me without me having to communicate, because they really struggle to communicate vulnerablely.

So we all accidentally pressure our external relationships because we don't how to self source, and so self sourcing is obviously profoundly healing for our relationships in life, but also it's profoundly healing in the relationship to self.

Where do you discover that? Because if no one's ever valid if you've never experienced it, where does it appear from?

drive a car. Was so sided to drive a car, and then I got in the highway and I was like, oh my god, keep the wheel turt you know, keep between the lines, and look in your re your mirror and your side mirrors, and put your signal and oh, like I just felt like, oh my gosh, it's very mechanical to learn to drive a car, and then you do it for a while, and then you end up in a situation where you're, you know, a year later or in a pretty short time later, you know, thirty

days later, you're listening to a podcast while you're driving, or listening to your favorite radio station, or putting on music, or talking on the phone to your front whatever it might be. And it's because what we're actually doing is doing something that it first feels mechanical. We're giving to ourselves what we didn't get, and over time, through repetition and emotion, it actually seeps into our subconscious mind and

that's when it feels normal and natural. So what we get people to do is we actually have a list of every major need that people reported over collecting all the data, and then we have people we have like three or four, Hey, you can do these three or four things that are usually the healthiest, most direct ways of getting those needs met, and then we get them

to actively practice it across that twenty one day. So, for example, self validation is usually things like it can be as small as just writing out three of your wins each day and just taking the time to really pause and be like, hey, I did this today. I'm proud of these things today. Big or small. It can be like I made it to work early, it can be anything, but just having that ability to start training your subconscious mind to practice recognizing those things in your life.

And of course there's a slightly different one for each need, but when people start giving those needs to themselves. This sounds very cliche, but I really believe that if we had attachment wounds growing up, healing really happens when we become our own parents, and instead of trying to externalize

our parents should have done it for us. Are perfectly like our parents are human beings too, and so when we give to ourselves what we felt like we couldn't access through them, and we do it through that repetition, that's that second big pillar.

and sometimes that helps, Like those prompts can get wheels turning, and it starts as something that you're sitting there doing, but it becomes something and they usually buys some day seven or so people are like, oh yeah, this is this. Oh three, like that took me two seconds. Oh. And then what's really beautiful is we have this mechanism in our brain called the reticular activating system, and it's our

filtering system of information. People always talk about this in the personal for oh, if you see a car and you're trying to buy a white jeep, you're going to see a whitejeep everywhere. It is. It's your filtering system in that way. But it also filters information according to what we already believe, and so you know, if your core beliefs are working against you, then that becomes problematic. But if you rewire them in pillar one, that helps

a lot. But also, according to the information you're really giving and taking in repeatedly, you start noticing more and more. It sort of opens up that filtering system to notice those things. So what's really beautiful is when people start doing that work, they often end up in a situation

where they're going, oh, yeah, I did have this one. Oh, and they notice it in real time throughout the day and they feel it, and so it really gives that ability to start noticing that in a more natural way across time.

bears in the woods aka core wounds or triggers. Then you spend more time on high alert in various ways. So anxious attachment cells are very alert about when people are going to abandon them. Dismissed avoids are very much on high larder. But are they going to feel rejected and seem like they're defective or shamed? And they do. They need to create space and not to you know, not be a burden to anybody. And fearful avoidance are hypervidual.

It's about everything about all of the above, and so you know what ends up happening is your nervous systems in overdrive. And a big part of healing is learning to get back into your body. I've actually found deeply that each of the three insecure attachment cells struggles at the beginning to identify their emotions in real time, which is a form of dissociation. Like people often think of dissociation as being this really traumatic, catatonic thing, but it's not.

People can spend a lot of time in mild dissociation. So we do a couple of things. We take people through a process of retraining their nervous systems to do things like completion cycle work and a lot of that sort of polybig theory work to actually practice getting into parisympathetic nervous system over time, so it becomes your new baseline. But we also one of my favorite practices, and I was saying this to you before we record it, is when I started really diving deep into a lot of

this work. I did thirteen different certifications in everything from like CB to cogitive behavioral therapy to neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis and just all this stuff. But I was actually like really rooted in a lot of studying all different religions. Like I was really obsessed with spirituality and on sort of a spiritual journey, and I've always loved where those two things intersect. And I remember actually reading years ago one of Eckert Toli's books, and it was all about

the pain body. And at the time, I was reading these case studies on these individuals and they go into the researchers were taking individuals and putting them in fMRI scanners, and they were getting them in these fMRI scanners to recall triggering experiences where they felt upset, and then they

were watching their brain activity. And what they found is that participants' brain activity when they would feel triggered would drain out of the neocortex regions like the prefrontal cortex region of the brain and into their reptilian brain, and all this activity would come there. And we've all seen people in their triggered they become kind of the like reptilian,

animalistic version of themselves. And so all of a sudden, people would be sitting there in this sort of panicked state, and what they would find is that people would start being dysregulated like they would be in sympathetic nervous system fight or flight. They would see their heart rate increase, their their you know, hair in the back of their

neck often stand up. And then what they had participants do is they had them practice just witnessing their emotions and their body and labeling the sensations, which is a form of somatic processing. And they had them say, okay, you know, in this experience, instead of being so stuck in the story in their mind, they had them go, oh, I feel you know, anger, and anger feels like heat

across my chest and down my arms. Or I feel anxiety and that feels like butterflies in my stomach and a ball in my throat and a clenching in my job, and when they actually had people go through this, they found that all this brain activity came back online in

the neocortex regions of the brain. And it was so interesting because that Kert totally has to sing, oh the pain body, witness your emotion or you know, being witnessing consciousness consciousness, And it's so beautiful to see people practice that because in real time, when they are triggered before, they're doing a lot of wound rewiring and meeting their needs. A really powerful practice is to do that form of somatic processing work, which is, yes, do things to train

your nervousystem through breath work or meditation daily. All of those things are amazing, but in those moments throughout the day where you feel those emotions arise, practicing witnessing the sensations, being with the sensations, noticing what those sensations feel like in your body, it actually takes the emotional charge down quite strongly, and it gives people the opportunity to feel reregulated and back to more of their conscious mindself again.

And so, you know, we get people to practice that on a regular basis, and it's powerful for emotional regulation. But my favorite part of it is that it gives you the gift of self attunement because rather than being in a position where we feel emotion, let's like hide it through scrolling on social media or turning on the TV, or drinking a beer or whatever it might be. It's actually the practice of learning, in hard moments to come back and return to being fully present with it oneself.

and energy. But I feel so many of us our nervous system is completely dependent on everyone else around us, and therefore we can feel really good when we're with someone, feel really bad when with someone else, and we have no control anymore. So today's tell us about pillar four.

person to kind of do it for them. And that may work in specific cases for periods of time, like oh, you have a friend there and they really help you and they make you feel better. But like, let's take an anxious attachment sel somebody who's very anxiously attached, for example, they would usually end up in these themes or patterns over time where they would always be relying on their friends to do that. And then eventually their friends say, well,

they always come to me for stuff. But then they don't change their patterns or behaviors, and then the friends are it kind of drifting back or pulling away or not being as present, and then the anxious person gets frustrated or stressed, and then the other friend is becoming more resentful. And it just what may work in the short term isn't really working in the long term unless we learn to self regulate. So in those five pillars,

the first three are all about self. They're all about how do I heal my own internal conditioning, rewire the wounds, meet my owneede needs, regulate my own nervous system. The next two are actually about regulating with so with people together. So the next two pillars are about communication and boundaries. So what we do for the communication pillar number four is now that we know our needs, we can communicate

about them. And what often happens is people go through life and they don't even know what they need in a relationship, and then we're left saying things like, oh,

you hurt me and you did this. And I've seen this all the time with communication, even if people are so well meaning when they say hey, even though they're trying to be vulnerable and they're saying, hey, you hurt me last week when XYZ happened, the other partners like, Okay, I don't want to hurt you, but I don't know how to solve for it.

they do basically three things. Both parties have to communicate what came up for them in the conflict and then validate each other's emotions. Step one, okay, so validate each other's emotions. Step two, then we have to say what we actually need. And step three we have to paint

a picture of what that looks like. Because I ran far too many times into situations with couples who I remember working with a couple once years ago, and it was a husband and a wife and they they had this conversation, the wife that I need to feel more supported in this relationship. And I was like a year into working with couples, and they seem to have a

really constructive conversation about it. And they left, and they came back the next week and literally before they sat on the couch, like they didn't even finish sitting down, and the wife said, my husband didn't even support me this week. We talked about it and he didn't even try. And the husband looked shocked and he was like, what do you mean. I took up the trash, I did the dishes, I tried to help it around the house.

And she was like, oh, but support for me is somebody actually like giving me encouragement and we're of affirmation and telling me like they love me, they appreciate me, noticing my hard work. That's support. And so we have to paint the picture of what the need looks like so it's clear. So for example, let's say two people are in a conflict, and let's say it's an anxious and a dismissive avoidant, and the anxious person saying, hey, like,

you're not calling me enough. Often what happens when people try to communicate is they do what we call negative framing. So you know, and I always say to people, behind every criticism is just a need, And we say you don't care about me, you didn't call me enough, you didn't make an effort, and all that people here when that happens is that you're criticizing them, and all people

are going to do a shutdown. Because as a child, when you were criticized, what happened you then got punished, So now you're bracing for punishment, not trying to figure out and decide for what somebody's needs. So we would get people to say, okay, let's free frame behind that actual experience. What is the need? Convert your criticism into a need. And it's like, okay, well, if you said you didn't call me enough, obviously that the need is

for more consistency in calling or communication. Good paint the picture. What does that actually look like? Oh, that looks like a call every evening for fifteen minutes before bad or once a week, whatever it is. We got to get really specific because otherwise it gets lost in translation like ninety percent of the time. So what we do is we get people to say, hey, this is what came up for me. So for example, hey, I felt a little bit hurt this week because I didn't hear from

you as much as I hope to. And can we do a call every evening before bad for fifteen minutes. And when they're able to say that, now we actually have constructive communication. And then we flip it back around because if there was a conflict, usually there's two sides and then maybe the person on the other side if it originally wasn't done. While they say, oh, like, if somebody was a little bit critical, they might say, okay, I hear your need. I can see why you felt

like that. So they validate the person's feelings and then they turn around and they get to say okay, and you know, for me, I'm a little sensitive if communication is harsh or a little critical, And not that that example was harsh, but oftentimes that's how it starts. And so they might say, you know, can you just be a little bit more mindful with your delivery next time, and then I'll be more mindful in terms of communicating and calling more consistently. I think we can make that work,

and that's how we really resolve. So each person expresses their feeling and gets it validated, shares their need, paints a picture for what it looks like, and it's something you can actually train yourself to do naturally, and we get people to get into the mindset of feeling need,

feeling need, like, just know your feelings and needs and if it's top of mind, and if each person feels like they're able to communicate it that way, that's where we get real resolution. And then that's where we get actual breakthroughs. And I truly believe that doing the work to gather in a relationship to become secure, you have to become good at having those conversations.

think it will push the other person away. So if they don't say it, it brews up and then one day it's up and you break up anyway, or they say it it's a burden to the other person and the other person goes, well, I can't do that, and then they walk away. So how do we know our need is valid or is realistic? And how do we know if our partner is even should be capable of

doing that need? Because I think a lot of people will be like, well, my need is every day I need someone to tell me I'm beautiful and amazing or every day I need you know, and it's like, well maybe someone else doesn't have the capacity to do that.

one that makes sense. And then pillar number two is that we learn to self source because now we're feeling our cup halfway. And what's really powerful. As soon as we start self sourcing, we we ingrain that in the first thirty days, Well, now all of a sudden, there's not this crazy amount of pressure, and now it's really clear to say this is what.

not good enough. So now just by that they have more negative internal dialoguey're criticizing themselves, sort of magnifying their mistakes and minimizing their wins in their own natural set point of their conditioning. Then they are often not meeting their own need to feel you know, gonna for validated

or reassured. So now they have what we what I call like a hole in your bucket, like you're gonna go And because the subponscious mind will only receive, well, what's familiar because it equates it to safety, then you go and you say, oh, hey, tell me I'm good enough, tell me all these things. But then it's like there's a hole in the bucket. It feels really good when that water is going into the bucket. You get that

initial head of dope. Mean, oh my god, my partners said I'm good enough, and then it just leaked right out. And then that's why you see anxious attachments alls needing so much of that because they first struggle with those two pillars so profoundly. And that's where we get you know, confused in relationships because then we're like, you need to

do this, you need to do that. Yeah, and then when it becomes unreasonable because it's coming from lack and imbalance first, then it puts too much pressure on relationships and becomes problematic.

hundred percent taste. Please tell us about pillar five.

boundaries per attachment style, there's unique patterns. This is when I was like, whoa each attachment style that you have? These thenes with boundaries, anxious attachment cells are kind of boundaryless, like if they're really anxiously attached, they struggle with boundaries altogether, and so they're going to end up people pleasing into oblivion. They get scared to set boundaries because they believe that boundaries are going to get them abandoned or disliked or rejected.

Part of also why we do the core wound work first in that order, And so they end up just struggling with boundaries at all, dismiss some avoidance they set too strong a bound They are scared to make compromises because they equate that to vulnerability. And so they end up keeping distance and saying, you know, they're the types it instead of saying, hey, I've had a long week, it's Friday, I'm tired, instead of going out, can we

just stay in and watch a movie? Instead of setting small boundaries and requesting those needs within that framework, they'll instead go canceling, not coming over, sorry, not going to be there. And it's because they have these huge boundaries because they don't know how to corregulate and communicate in that way, and so then we have fearful avoidance and fear of the wounds are very interesting with their boundaries.

I call it the fearful avoidant boundary cycle where they are boundaryless at first because they start to people please. Usually then they get frustrated because they're very generous. They tend to overgive and kind of under receive, so they set, you know, no boundaries. They're super generous, and then they're you know, they eventually are like, oh, I feel taken advantage up and then they get really triggered because they've

got a lot of big core wounds. And then they get angry and they set boundaries from anger or frustration and they say things harshly or critically, and sometimes they're a little bit you know, too harsh or critical, and then they feel terribly guilty about it and they go back to having no boundaries. So they're like no bound budies, get frustrated, express anger, feel guilty, you go back to no boundaries, and they kind of just go around in

a loop. And so what we get people to do is first and it actually has to be done in order. And I'll speak from personal examples, but this is what I would see replicated at with like thousands of people. When I was first doing boundary work, I knew I had to do boundary work. I was like, I really struggle with boundaries. So I read all these boundary books and I learned about boundaries, and I read you know,

publications on boundaries and all these things. And yet I would get into situations and I would be sitting in a situation being like, I know this is where I should set the boundary, but I would clam up and I wouldn't do it because I didn't realize that I still had core wounds around my boundaries. So consciously, I'm like, set a boundary. And too many people intellectualize boundaries as this concept but you're not actually going to do it

in real time until you first read. Because if your conscious minds I set the boundary, or so conscious mind says, no, I'm going to be unsafe. And as a child I had some kind of heavy handed punishments at times for setting a boundary or saying no. So my subconscious minds that boundaries equals unsafety rather than safety and a healthy dynamic. That's what your brain would think. And so then I would in real time climb up, not say it, and then be like walk away, going why didn't I set

the boundary? So what we get people to do is step one, know your boundaries. We get people to audit their bundies in the seven areas of life, go through career,

where are you lacking boundaries? Financial area of life, etc. Through the seven areas. Then we get people to say, Okay, if I set a boundary, what am I afraid will happen? Or what do I make it mean? It's a good way to surface some of your subconscious stuff that may be they're oh, if I set a boundary, then I'm going to be abandoned. If I set a boundary, people are going to reject me or think that I'm a burden,

you know, you can really see what comes up. And then we get people to rewire using some rewiring techniques that fear of setting boundaries and then practice doing exposure work, which means you don't go set your your first boundary with your boss who you think has narcissistic personality disorder, because your brain's not going to take that very well. We set boundaries with, you know, small boundaries with trusted people, like ask your coworker you love, hey, can you bring

back my stapler when you borrow it? Like the small things first, so your brain. We try to set one boundary a day, and it's the repetition and emotion. I've seen that incrementalism work, and you've rewired the core fear that was stopping you from sending boundaries in real time.

And what I found in my own life and what I've seen with thousands of people is that unless you're actually doing boundary work at the subconscious level, you can know it, you can intellectualize it, but it's not actually going to change things.

three days a week with our students. We have colleagues in there so that they actually have two events every day, just at different time zones things like that, so people

can get in there. We have events that help people actually practice the tools and model out especially for communication or boundary setting, Like they actually get to practice it, they get feedback, it's relaid back to them, and then we teach classes about the tools in more depth. You ask questions in the chat. Then we have live questions at the end, so people can really get in there and like form those skills across time as they go through each of those pillars.

chat with each other in the breakout rooms. But we set it up so that we try to keep it as simple as possible. Here's your course. The course is only like two hours long or so they can go. They can take the course, get the fall up support, but the course will have Hey, here's your daily exercise for the next twenty one days. Then you finish that one. Okay, here's your next daily pillar for twenty one days, and it takes you know, they're very smile side this.

So here are some real life scenarios. One partner is anxious and the other is avoidant. The anxious partner clings, the avoidant pulls away. How do they break that cycle instead of repeating it?

mutually exclusive needs, okay, which is not the case. So people think like typical scenario anxious attachment style and exactly that scenario side, what do they want they what's their need? More time together? What's the dismissible avoidance need more space, more freedom, more autonomy. So what we do in that case is just because somebody wants more time, when somebody

wants more space, doesn't mean that that can't work. What we get people to do is talk it out from that feeling need framework enough or you have pockets of time to meet both each other's needs. So he'll probably see this. But whenever we have a trigger, we always think of the worst case scenario, right, we jump to

the worst case conclusion. So dismissive avoidance when somebody's like, why I want more time, they're like, you're going to take over my life, Like they think you, oh, you want like seven hours every evening together?

you're leaving me, You're abandoning yeah.

do we need. Paint the picture. And when people paint the picture, they realize it's actually very reasonable from both ends. Usually an anxious attachment style will say, okay, you know what can I actually do as a baseline in terms of how much time I need together? I think two nights a week would be you know, acceptable for me, and then maybe a fifteen minute phone call a couple

other nights a week. I could do that. And if I know that we're going to do that and commit to that, I can feel good about that and then dismiss some avoidance. They're not going, oh, you want to spend every night with me all day every day. You know you want to take up my whole life. They're like, oh, two evenings a week and then I can do my own thing on Sunday afternoon. I can do my own thing on Monday Tuesday evenings, and I have, you know, all

this other time to see friends, whatever it might be. Okay, that's actually feasible. So what I find is, even if people don't want to do the work, if they can communicate very clearly and specifically use that ingredient of painting a picture for what that looks like, we resolve a lot of those projected fears that cause those miscommunications to begin with, and now things can really work together.

One person can lead the way. Okay, So I see a lot of time one person starts doing the work, they learn to communicate, they become really good at it, and the other person, like, once they see their partner communicating so healthily and they're regular and they're not so triggered from their wounds, and they're so clear about their needs, the vast majority of time, it gives the other person permission to do the same and they follow their lead. But I will say in roughly ten percent of cases,

somebody's in a position where they're like, I'm not doing any of this stuff. I don't want to communicate, I don't want to have these conversations about your needs. I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that at all. It's usually from their own woundedness that their unwillingness is there. But I say to people like, hey, if that's the case, I tell people, set a deadline. Try your living heart out. Do everything you can in the deadlines. So deadline might

be ninety days, it might be six months. If you're in a longer term relationship, or if you're in a marriage with children, it might be a year or a year and a half. Do everything you can as that one person in that period of time to show up the best that you can, you know, without your wounds, no your needs, regular your nervous system, communicate beautifully, set

healthy boundaries. If it doesn't work and the person's literally unwilling at the end of that period of time, your only choice if you want to be in a healthy relationship is probably to walk away. And that's because you're going to if you're not happy in that situation. You cannot have one person doing the emotional labor for both people.

And then usually what happens is your position for a win win because you have healed so much and you're gonna be in a place where you feel stable and emotionally well enough to walk away from something that may

actually not be a fit for you. And so you're okay, And you also know I can walk away guilt and regret free. I tried everything, or your best case scenario is ninety percent of the time, the other person jumps on board and the relationship evolves because you led the way.

from a place. Usually we're going to see anxious or fearful avoidance do love bombing, and it's because a much lesser degree and their relationship to it is not because let me win you over so that then you're addicted

to me and I can control you. It's from a place of that They usually because of having so many core wounds and people pleasing behaviors as their adaptation to those core wounds, they have people on a pedestal, and so you're gonna love bomb somebody that you admire and you look up to and you want to win over and people please, and so that's often what will happen is you get a lot more of those compliments and trying to win somebody over and charm them and all

those things because of their own insecurity compared to how high they see other people that they're in relationships with.

weeks ago. What would you do in that scenario where you kind of see positives in this person, but their feelings are too strong and you don't want to get love bombed, but you still want to continue seeing them. How would you navigate that?

I also tell people all the time, if you're concerned a little bit, you think somebody's amazing, they're very charming, and they're very charismatic, and you're concerned a little bit that their love bombing and their charisma could be a sign of a narcissist instead of just an insecure attachment

cell be cause they're vastly different. Then one of the best ways to just vet them is to set a boundary with them, because narcissists do not like your boundary whereas insecure attachment cells, they'll like really honor your boundary. They'll usually be like, oh, I'm so sorry, and they'll be accountable and apologize and acknowledge, and so that's a really good way to separate out the two interesting.

I always say to people when you're when you're going into dating, know your needs and know your not negotiables, and then go in and ask one or two really meaningful questions a date. You don't want the dating situation to be like a job interview. Here's my seventeen needs.

Are you going to meet them? You know, it needs to be something where like each date you say you know, for example, I know for me, you know, I've been in a marriage, shouldn't been with my husband for eleven years and and but if I were dating again, I would One of my non negotiables early on would be you need to be able to have things out, like we got to talk through things, because it's so important to prevent any kind of resentment and relationship. So I might,

you know, have the first date, see if there's a connection, chemistry, have fun, and then by the second date that might be a question I bring up pretty early, hey, like how do you handle conflict? And then that way I can see if they say, oh, I would never you know, I don't like to talk about things. I don't go there. I don't like conflict. I don't believe in like having conflict.

I would be like, whoa red flag? And so then we bet And what we want to do is if we see those things and we're not sure red flags? If you're interested in somebody. Otherwise, people think red flags you should bolt No red flags, you should go to words and figure out because sometimes somebody might accidentally disrespect a boundary that you said, Hey, I want to move slower. But sometimes that red flag is well, you weren't clear enough at what slower means to you didn't paint the picture.

So that should be a conversation you move towards, they really get to the bottom of like kind of a detective like, hey, I mentioned last week wanting to move slower. I feel like we still moved at a really quick pace this week. For me, moving slower looks like seeing each other a little bit less, you know, so, spending a little more time getting to know each other before traveling together, whatever it might be. And then we really

get to the bottom of it. And that's part of the vetting that should be taking place in that early stage. And then if we see red flags and we see oh no, no, that's just the red flag, they're going to keep going without those boundaries. Now we know the answer and now we're really clear.

much emotional burden over time and that person's not self regulating at all, or the needle's not moving, they usually do because they're really good at being mindful of their own boundaries. They will pull away from that person or move in a different direction. Attachment seals are always a continue. If somebody's a little bit anxious, we'll see some movement there, right. But if somebody sometimes you hear things like oh, just dat a secure person, it doesn't usually work out that way.

Just like you know, people who are deeply insecure often are like, where's the spice? Where's the excitement? Is that this is the stability seems boring? Or they can reject the secure person as well. So you know, that really brings back to the work of like, you got to do the work in healing yourself first if you really

want that to happen. But if that were to be the case where you have somebody who's a little less anxious and then somebody who's really secure, then you're going to have the secure person say hey, I need you to be able to make sure that your self soothing sometimes,

or I need you. In maybe less clinical terms, they might say something like, hey, you know, I'm going to be here for you, and I'm going to do my best to be here for you, and there's going to be sometimes where I'm suck late at work, I'm going through my own human things and I need you to see me too, and I need you to practice being

okay and on your own. And so they'll set those boundaries, they'll communicate their needs, and in doing that it actually provides this beautiful opportunity for somebody to be like, oh, maybe I should practice that, maybe I should sort of train myself to do that, And that's often where we can see those good outcomes.

into the power struggle stage. And to your exact point, and I kind of laugh at this with endearment, it's not fun when you're going through it. Then people after the power struggle, there's the rhythm stage. You get into

your rhythm. Then you get into the commitment stage long term, and then the bliss stage, like things are really good long term, highly likely to break up in that stage but what's so interesting is it in the dating stage of relationships, usually we are very attracted to people who express or repressed traits, so the thing will invest in longest term or people whom you are back to us

how we treat ourselves. But one of the other things that does drive attraction early on psychologically is somebody who expresses your repressed traits. Okay, so if that office is attracted. So let's say, for example, that you're somebody who struggles with boundaries. If you meet somebody really assertive, you're gonna be like wow, like ooh, let me get close to them.

Or if you're somebody not a bad thing, or if you're somebody who's very type A organized, intense, and when somebody's really easy going, you're gonna be like, oh wow, like look at them. And so we're very drawn because the mind likes to attach, and when we attach to something, we have an allostatic or homeostatic impulse at the subconscious level.

We feel more holes through that person. But what's so crazy is over time we are still going to invest in the most people who mirror our subconscious comfort zone. So in the early stages were often attracted and then in the power struggle stage, it's the very thing that has one of the greatest likelihoods of driving the relationship apart, and that looks like this. They were so assertive. I loved that early on, and now in the power struggle

station you're like, they never compromised. Early on, you're like, oh my god, I love that they go with the flow. They're so flex the when he's going. And then you're like, hello, like we have plans, get here on time, and you're really stressed. And it happens like clockwork in every relationship. And what I believe to be both the psychological and

even spiritual lesson is to integrate those traits collectively. And so yeah, So for example, let's say, let's pretend it's me and my husband, and actually we were kind of like this. I met my husband, my little little boundary work to do, and he was so good at setting boundaries, just like so direct, so straight up, so to the point, and I remember really admiring it. And then sure enough

I knew. We got in the power struggle station and started to dives was like hello, and so I went to him and I said hey, And I knew this already. I was a quick thank goodness, and I knew that I was going to start feeling frustrated unless I took on some of the trade of assertiveness better and if he took on some of my flexibility a little bit more.

So I went to him. I had the conversation, said, Hey, I need you to make compromise with me sometimes, and this is really important to me, and it's going to be important for you to be more flexible and more mindful of me at times as well. And I gave some examples and sort of painted a picture. And what was really beautiful about that is I knew I had to communicate my needs more consistently and say my boundaries and do it better in real time. And I did.

It was profoundly healing for me and helped me in so many relationships going forward, especially in things like work. And for him, he became so much more flexible and I saw it really strengthen his relationships with his friends, his family members, like it was really beautiful to see him evolve in that way. And that's everybody. That's if you're the type a person, you got to learn that easygoingness sometimes and surrender. If you're the easygoing person having

some discipline is really valuable. So I really believe that relationships are not here for love, although that's a beautiful thing. They're also here for growth. And a lot of it's that we're attracted to people that way, because that's are subconscious mind calling us to take on some of those things internally, and that's how we become more whole together

in that power struggle stage. And now instead of having these two different people that are attracted, we're now to whole people collectively, and that strengthens us individually and collectively long term.

It's like, so me and Rady similarly ratherly spontaneous. I'm super hyper focused and I've become more spontaneous and more casual in our relationship with our timing and things like that, and she's become more organized in her work and focused and driven in her profession. And then Radi super healthy and you know, really health conscious and exercise, diet, everything that's really rubbed off on me. And so she's taught

me that and I'm like, that's what's worked. And it's but you both got to have the humility to be able to learn from the other person. And I think you have to have the humility to not want to teach the other person. So I don't think in what you said in the way you're talking about these conversations. I never went up to Radi and said, I think you need to be more organized, and she never came up to me and goes, I think you need to be more healthy. Like if it's almost like the humility

to not teach and the humility to learn. And that's fascinating because most of us think, oh, yeah, I wish my partner was a bit more like me, and I'm going to go tell them how they can be like me, and it's like, oh no, no, no, it's you live the quality so well that it becomes attractive. Like I know,

RADI like really values going to the gym, really values eating well. She sees how alert it makes And when you see see that change in someone, you feel inspired that I want to do it too, And so it's so fascinating. How Yeah, I'd say successful relationships are when the good things you both have rob off on each other and the bad things don't. And that simple principle allows you to have the humility to learn from your partner and not have the ego to want to teach them.

And those two things seem to make sense.

How do I communicate? That's that feelings need framework when you communicate, hey I need this, Hey I need a little flexibility sometimes from you, or hey I need you to sometimes be mindful of me. When you say it with like this this humbleness, you come to the table of like I care about you and sometimes I need to lean on you in this way and vice versa. That is a big part of what opens those dialogues,

those conversations to be more mindful. And then, of course, like you said, when somebody's living in their best version of themselves, they step into that truth and that's inspiring to be around one hundred person.

to commit. They make it mean things about themselves, especially if they have a lot of core wounds, are like oh am I not good enough? Am I unlovable? Am I unworthy? And then they project those onto situations or the person keeps dragging their feet and the other person's self silences and they just feel resentful in the relationship. Then that out in different ways and it's more arguments or disagreements. So the only actual reasonable solution is to

truly hash it out. And so we go and we say, hey, you know, here's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a commitment. Here's why, and here's like what you know, paint that picture, what does that timeframe look like, and be really honest and transparent, And then the other person

has to say what's holding them back? And oftentimes what I foun because they've done a lot of these specific conversations with people in relationships, and usually what's actually happening is that that conversation will be the catalyst for some

deeply unresolved needs and relationships. More often than not, the person who's dragging their feet and commitment the most is deeply directly running in parallel to the person who's also not communicating their needs and relationships, and so they're afraid to commit. And a lot of times people's commitment fears are yes coming from core wounds and being trapped or helpless or powerless in that pillar. But a lot more of the time, commitment fear are rooted in somebody not

knowing how to communicate their needs. So they're more scared

to get trapped because they're like, well, what if I commit to this and then I don't feel fully fulfilled or have my needs met. But once they learn to communicate their needs, a lot of those conversations usually end up being things like, Hey, yeah, I guess like one of the reasons I'm afraid to commit is I'm scared that I'm going to lose, you know, my time with my friends sometimes and I need to be able to have that in the long term and go off and hang out with the boys sometimes, or go have a

girl's weekend or whatever it might be. And then the person's like, oh, I can honor that, I can make

that a part of our marriage. I can, you know, And it's this catalyst to a huge breakthrough, or sometimes it's things like, hey, I guess what's holding me back is sometimes I feel like I get criticized more than I feel good about and it makes me want to pull away, and I'm not sure if I see that being you know something, I'm really happy in long term and then the person hears that and they're able to say, oh my gosh, it's time for me to clean up

the way I communicate, and then there's this breakthrough when they both feel safer. So I would love to tell people, Hey, there's some manipulative easy fix where you tell them this thing and you say I'll do if you don't, you know, commit, I'll leave and give an ultimatum. You're selling yourself short and the relationship short by not saying, hey, this is what I'm really looking for. Here's why. Tell me what's

coming up for you or want to understand. And when we do that and have that same humility to really go there with an open heart and open mind, usually there's big breakthroughs.

can last for a very long time. But when we go through a breakup, it's grief because what happens when we get into relationship is the mind attaches to another person, and when we attach to another person deeply, that's when our attachment behaviors exhibit themselves the most. But when we attach, what we're actually attaching to is very much the non physical. So this is kind of a morbid example, but if somebody passes away, it's not their physical body that you miss.

If their physical body was around in your house or something like, You're not going to be the way I feel better it's all the non physical true that we miss, and so we have to then ask the question, well, what is the non physical? Well, it really boils down to a couple of really major things. Number one, the needs somebody met in your life that we were used

to them meeting. Maybe that person made you feel seen or heard, or loved or validated, and maybe they weren't even doing a good job because it led to the breakup. But if they met your need a three out of ten and you were meeting your need one out of ten to feel validated, you're going to keep going back for those breadcrumbs because you're starving. So the first part is that grief is the detachment we were used to having these needs met in our life. Suddenly the person's gone.

They took our needs with them, and there's a void left behind. And that void is a big part of what we experience as grief. Step one. Number two grief, and this is a very sacred thing, I believe, But grief is also who we became around that person, the part of ourselves that we got to express. And I had times back in my practice when I was running my client practice before our online programs, where I'd work

with people on loss. And I remember one time I worked with somebody on the loss of a child and it was a very tragic situation. And her really big breakthrough that led her to really start healing is she realized what she was grieving the most. Years later, when she came to me, she'd been grieving for years and

wasn't really getting anywhere. She realized that what she missed the most was that she felt like she was a nurturer and a protector and a caretaker and a contributor and these really beautiful, sacred expressions of herself that she because she was going through that grief and then hadn't had another child again, she didn't feel like she had anywhere to express that or become that. And so you

know what she ultimately did is then started this beautiful charity that helped kids in a similar situation, and that deeply healed her heart. And so grief is also when we lose somebody, we lose the aspects of ourselves that we got to express in their company. And so you know, those are two big pillars of grief. And then third is we have all these stories we say it was all my fault. I'm not good enough, you know, the backs of a poor wound. So that's a big part

of rewiring it. But what I actually get people to do if they go through a breakup, and usually when people go through a breakup like that, it's because they tried to start doing the work when they already had too many resentments and they were already you know, half checked out. But if you go through that breakup, one of the fastest ways to truly heal great from a breakup is to write out what we're all of those

needs this person met. I know, I have to start meeting those needs in myself and I have to start sell or I have to start resourcing them in healthy ways with healthy people in my life. And as we do, we fill up that void that was left behind from that person, and it heals our heart. It heals us deeply. And part of why people say time heals all wounds is because human beings are naturally adaptable, and in time they start to learn to resource their needs in other ways.

It's not time doing that, it's our natural adaptiveness that's doing that for us. But we can fast track that process by being more unconscious and intentional about it. The secondary part of it is who were you? Who did you become when you had this loss, And a lot of times it's these beautiful things like I was a protector, I was a caretaker, I was a contributor. And when we look at who we became and we work to keep expressing those aspects of self, that is deeply healing

for us as well. And that's a really good way to kick start moving through the breakup much more quickly.

about this one. Is sometimes when we feel like we lost somebody, there's this old saying that there's no such thing as gain or loss, it's only ever changing forms. And when I think of in more extreme forms of grief, even like the law, like a death of somebody, oftentimes yes they're not here in the physical form, but they're here, and you know, we can meet those needs and we can become that expression of ourselves. But a lot of times they're still within you in their conditioning that they

imprinted or impressed upon you. In other words, you know, if it's the loss of a parent, you know, sometimes there it gets people to sit down around losses like that and they say, okay, what was your father?

to go. And I think that when we don't know where to put the love because we don't know how to express that part of ourselves, or we don't know how to get the needs met, or we don't recognize that that person they're with us in all of these non physical ways, then it feels like it's very hard

to get over somebody. But I think when we start to actually move through those steps in terms of how we process grief, we kind of feel this connection to somebody in our heart and we get over the deep mourning, the deep grieving, and sometimes we'll miss the person still, or sometimes we'll feel that care for people we love so deeply, but it doesn't have to be this painful relationship that we have to that person.

nobody's ever one hundred percent ready for me? Are you one hundred percent ready to take that new job, to move across the country to You're never going to feel one hundred percent ready, But there should be a high enough degree of certainty where you feel like, hey, this is me falling my hard or taking that leap of faith, and that bridge in that leap of faith shouldn't feel like the bridge is like something you can't surmount or

jump over. It should feel like Okay, I'm going to take that small leap of faith and there's a smaller gap there.

a relationship because people change, people grow, people evolve. You change, you grow, you evolve, And it's it's really crazy to think when you say on your wedding day, like you know till death do us apart the idea that you don't really even know what life's going to look like, and so there is a big risk in that commitment because you don't even know the version of the person that you're going to have to be with in like five, ten, fifteen, twenty years.

I experienced is so deeply firsthand. And this is actually something I'd want people so deeply to know and understand, because I know there's gonna be a lot of people like me who really struggle at points in relationships early on. And I had only ever done relationships in dating honeymoon, power struggle, breakup, date again, dating honeymoon, power struggle, breakup. So you think that relationships are just infatuation or pain.

And what I learned exactly to your point, is that real love is built in the power struggle stage the most, because we drop the mask we're not in our best behavior, and you learn to work through things. And the power struggle is this opportunity. It's this crisis, but it's also this opportunity to start saying, hey, this is what's come

up for me, this is what I need in these situations, this is what I'm feeling, Hey, this is sensitive for me. That's a pain point for me, can you be more mindful?

And I believe that we really move the needle from more conditionally based love to more unconditionally based love through having those deeper conversations, through doing that work, and then we deep and it's almost like in the early stages, you have this really pretty sapling, like this really nice little tree, but a windstorm can take it out because

it's so fragile. But when we have those meaningful conversations again and again and we build and we grow, and then all of a sudden and you know your partners, you know biggest pain points, and you're mindful of them, and you know when somebody else hit them and you're there to show up for them and caretake for them and be sensitive to them and that and they're that

for you too. Now you deepen roots and love in such a different way where those ideas of like, oh what if somebody else came along and one of us changed, you know that it's such a silly thing. And I could never conceive of that at one point in my life because I had so many wounds around relationships and

so many fears. And it's only through that beauty of like having those conversations and doing the work and deepening that connection in such a real way that then like some silly, frivolous thing, that oh, something attractive could come along and you could change it. Like it seems so almost like you know, like silly, like you can laugh at it after a while. But that's because I think the real work isn't that you're going to be one

hundred percent sure. It's that you build that hundred or close to one hundred percent certainty through all of those meaningful conversations that you're building over time. And I really believe love isn't just given. I think love has really grown, and I think that's part of what allows us to foster that with people.

my second book, Aprils, of love. It was all based on the Eastern teachings, which is every stage of life is called an ushram, and an usherm by definition, is a place of growth, and so being on your own is an ushroom, and then being with a partner is an ushrom, and the ushroom is a place of growth, a place of evolution. And so I think our views of love have been so warped by just happiness or pleasure that you forget that the greatest joy a human

can feel is the challenge. And ultimately you're choosing someone that you like to be challenged by, that likes to be challenged by you, and where the challenge becomes enjoyable and joyful as opposed to the challenge being exhausting and tiring and painful. Absolutely right, that's at least what's resonated with me.

Why is this happening to me? But I actually believe then this is actually again I'm going to throw a lot of this work on myself first, but I remember being so scared to see people in pain. I couldn't

handle it as a little codependent and somebody to be in pain I wanted to like because it for them right now. Yeah, And when I really started to reflect, they did this exercise once and I went and looked at the hardest times of my life. I wrote them all on paper, like the big ones, the really hard ones, individually, and I went through and I looked at, Okay, what did this give me? What was the hidden gift? And how did this serve me? How did this grow me?

What did I learn? And oh, my goodness, by the end of that, I was like tears of like relief and gratitude because I noticed that in every really hard time there was this like invaluable lesson that I learned. And I really believe that God puts on our path for a reason, and I was able to go, oh my gosh, Like there was a time where I was going through and trying to get sober, and I tried to reach out to people and I really didn't get

the support that I needed at that time. And also because I was difficult at that time of my life too, I understand why. And it was so painful for me at the time, and I thought like I'll never get over it, And it was so healing for me to realize, like because I didn't go looking outside of myself for something in those moments that brought me into relationship to myself,

into relationship to God. I felt like I really found a relationship to in those moments and through those times, and it was like, how could you ever want something other than that? Like how could like thank God that I went through that, and it was like this really big relief. And so I think sometimes we were so quick to think pain shouldn't be happening, bad thing shouldn't be happening, things in relationships should just be easy all

the time. But it's like sometimes pain is the greatest teacher and actually presents to us if we are willing to look and find those things. The greatest gifts in what's going to grow us in that next season of our lives?

them over. Doesn't work like that, never works like that. What you do is you honor your truth, you speak your needs, you stand in it, and you let that person either grow and move towards or you don't. And usually if you're into people pleasing, it's the self betrayal, and then that feeds back into the subconscious comfort zone. It just never works that way.

feel that sense of chemistry and connection. So safety is really healthy and good, but then build those things in that keep that that sparkle live.

is meeting your deeply unmet needs from childhood. That'll be the spark early, and then it'll be the thing that pressures the relationship later because you're trying to just source from them, So do that work to really build those It's sort of this key that unlocked all this awareness and to yourself. And then the third thing is how somebody's you know, treating you. If it's how you treat yourself,

we got to work that out. So I would say, follow the excitement, but vet that somebody is going to do the work with you, not negotiably.

after a breakup.

hear all those details. You know, what you're gonna do is you're gonna sit down and write all your stories on paper. It was all my fault, I wasn't good enough, I'm unlovable. You're gonna put all those things and you're gonna sit there and you're gonna question them and you say, really, I wasn't good enough? How was I got enough? How did I show up? I'm not lovable? How am I lovable?

And you're going to honor those things. And that's those things that we're trying to get from your exsor neck that your ACX is never going to give them to the way that you need, but you can give them to yourself in that way, and that's healing and its growth and you have a sense of control over it and I help you way.

and interact with each other. The framework so much gravitas, but the way you've built the program to be so simple and specific, feels so practical and tactical and easy to do for people. It's truly remarkable. Congratulations, Like it's really fulfilling hearing that I have something to give for people that I you know that I want to help. We end every on Purpose episode with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum,

So Teddy Skipson, these are your final five. The first question is what is the best love advice you've ever heard or received?

I just honestly felt so connected to you and chatting, and thank you for bringing all this out of me and letting me share.