Attachment Theory & Why It Matters w/ Dr. Wendy Walsh

Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. So a few years ago, in therapy with Jennifer Burton, who some of you have met through this podcast, she said this thing about attachment style to me, and I was like, what are you talking about? And she was like, there is this theory about attachment and I think it could be really useful in your work. And she suggested this book and I downloaded the book and I started it reading it and never finished reading it because, like life,

happens and it keeps coming up in therapy. So then I discovered Dr Wendy Walsh and that she specializes in attachment theory. Thought since I never finished reading the book this, this would be a really great opportunity for me to learn more about attachment theory to help my life and my own therapeutic process and maybe help you as well. So for anyone else out there who has not finished the book, just listen to this podcast. Dr Wendy will break it all down for you in a brilliant and

very clear way. Dr Wendy Walsh is a psychologist specializing in human development and attachment theory. She's an author of three books about the science of love, a professor of psychology at California State University, Channel Islands, and an award winning television journalist and radio host kf I AM six forty in Los Angeles. She also has her own podcast, Mating Matters, which uses evolutionary psychology to explain human mating strategy.

Please enjoy my conversation with Dr Wendy Walsh. It's gonna be made. Hello, Dr Wendy Walsh, Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Like so many, I'm just at home trying to find privacy during COVID with kids doing stuff. You have two children, I do, they're almost grown young woman women. I have a twenty two year old daughter who just graduated college, and I have a seventeen year old daughter. Wow, good for you. That's incredible.

So a couple of years ago, I was in therapy I'm often in therapy, thank God, and my therapist said this thing to me about attachment theory, and I was like, what are you talking about? And I learned that I had an anxious attachment style, and I was like, if I had known this twenty years ago, I could have saved so much time. So can you please talk to the people and held them what attachment theory is? Sure?

So it's an area of psychology that's been very well researched for many, many decades, and it is the one that spoke to me most in graduate school. I just it just made so much sense. And basically, we all come into the world with a genetic predisposition for closeness or feeling easily smothered, or predisposition towards anxiety or depression.

And then what happens with our beautiful little genes is they meet the environment, and our primary environment when we're young are our parents, and so they behave in a way that either activates some of our genes or suppresses them. And so what ends up happening is, in simple terms, during the first three years of life. We form a kind of model for love in our heads, and then in our adult romantic lives, we go out and we

go right back to the scene of the crime. We try to find somebody who will play along and what we believe love is. So even if love was filled with criticism, abandonment, God forbid abuse, we will find somebody who will give us all that and more, because that's

what's familiar to us. So attachment theorists put people into sort of categories, loose categories, secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized, and and then you know it's incumbent on us to understand our model for love and to try to heal attachment injuries. I love that so much and something and all the research preparing for this, and then when I've learned from my therapist, I didn't realize that there was a genetic

component to this. You just said that the way our parents treat us in those first three years activate something genetic, And as can you tell us a little bit more about that research around the genetic piece of attachment theory, Well, I would say that in fact, about every single human behavior, there's a biological, there's a psychological, there's a social component. We aren't born in a vacuum. We're actually a many

one brained species, and we interact with each other. And while we're interacting with each other, we're enlivening or suppressing genes. So here's an example. Let's say a baby comes into the world with a very big gene for anxiety. Maybe their parents or their grandparents suffer huge trauma that actually changed their DNA. And in fact, we're learning, for instance, that even grandkids of Holocaust survivors have huge genes for anxiety and depression and they live in wealthy neighborhoods in

Connecticut and never saw any trauma. Right, But it's you know, passed down from generations. Can I just can we just pause there? I just think it's so important because that that that's something that I've been looking into and reading about.

The first time I heard that trauma can be passed down from generation and generation, it just like I felt there were some things when I heard about my grandfather, you know, living on plantation for example, it was just like I was like, oh my god, It's just like I knew it was the truth immediately, just in myself.

But but go on, So here's our anxious baby comes into the world, happens to come into the world into a set of parents who read all the parenting books they can, and they really believe in what we call attachment parenting, wearing their baby, consoling their baby, not leaving them alone to cry it out because it's good for their lungs. But when that baby feels anxiety, they say, sure, come in my bed, baby, it's fine, and they soothe that baby. Well, that gene for anxiety doesn't get enlivened.

Then you might have a same baby with a different set of parents who read a parenting book that said, oh, you know, they just need to cry it out, just leave them alone in a room. They'll fall asleep eventually, and that baby lies there in the dark, maybe hungry, maybe with a wet diaper, and that anxiety gene flourishes because of it. And I want to talk about more

examples book I want to share as yours online. Personal so from chief as in one into two thousand and five, I was in a relationship with a man who was a really an insane alcoholic and he was really emotionally abusive, and it became a codependent relationship where it was it was it was gruesome and it was awful. It really really was awful. And what I as I was in therapy at the time and working a lot on codependency issues,

I realized that he with my mother. I realized that he was my mother, that he was my emotionally abusive mother, and he spoke to me, and very soon I thought I was in love. He spoke to me in very similar ways that my mother did, and that felt like loved me. And it's so deep to me now and so like my goal in the relationship. If I can make him love me, then I can then my Mom's gonna love me, and then and then I'm enough, and

then I'm worthy. I'm worthy. It really was about that working out this whole thing with my mom through him, which is a strange thing. I was. It was twenty years ago, so you know, so no, even in our later adult lives were constantly talking about our partners as representations of pieces of our parents, because they always are. We go back to try to resolve conflict. Yeah. What I what's been lovely though, is I've actually gone to my mom. We kind of done work together. My mom

and I are in a great place now. I feel so weird. It's like talking about like her being emotionally abusive publicly because I'm like, we're in such an awesome place now, But it wasn't easy getting to where we are now. It was a lot of years of painful conversations and saying this is how you made me feel, and it was really awful, and now it's it's wonderful and now and and now I'm in a place to

where I'm like, she did the best she could. And then that piece of inter generational trauma to so informed how she treated me and my grandfather was really abusive anywhere. We're not going to go there, but like that, all of that is actually connected to attachment style if we're talking if it's genetic, and so what is so beautiful is that I've you know, healed a lot of that with my mom. She's still with us and she's healthy, and that's awesome. And now I have not repeated that

relationship either. I have not dated an alcoholic since you know, since I broke it off with him, and I have not repeated that pattern of dating someone emotionally abusive. I've done other things, We're always growing, but I haven't done that one again. I do want to say, though, that that is such a beautiful story, hardly because you were given the gift of an open minded mother who was

willing to grow with you. But for other people listening who may have an abusive parent where they're only ability to heal is to completely cut off all communication with that parent. You don't have to go back and fix things with them to change inside yourself, and you can use what I call the romantic objects that you pick, because as you pick better and better ones, as I say, you start to heal yourself. You know, I don't know if you've ever heard this metaphor for the four stages

of personal growth. The first stages, you're walking down the street. You don't see a hole, and you fall in it. There's your alcoholic, abusive boyfriend. Right stage two, someone tells you, oh, this is about your relationship with your mother, and you're now aware of it. So stage two, as you're walking down that street, you see the whole this time and you still fall in it. The third stage, that's the

second alcoholic boyfriend you get next. The third stage is you're walking down the street, you see that whole, and this time you very carefully walk around it thinking about every step you take. But the fourth stage is you take a different street. Oh yes, that is if I get to bed fourth stage. But it's a process. It's a process, and learning doesn't always happen in the moment. And sometimes I have what I've learned to about relationship that I was if igiated this guy briefly next like

two or three years ago, met this guy. I knew immediately that he had issues. He was he was in recovery, but he it was a mess. He was a mess. I knew that there were issues there, but I also knew that I needed to work something out. So I didn't just like unmatched, blocked delete immediately. I was like, let's just see this out, you know. And so it was about three months of you know, with some boundaries,

and like then I had to cut it off. But sometimes we have to like see something through and work it out. And I say this to friends of mine, what do you think about that that sometimes we have to you know, go back the hole in the street, you know, and maybe like risk falling in. Well that's the walking around stage, right, So watching it and walking

around stage, and I think that's a lovely concept. Now, not for everybody, because there are some people that just continue to re injure themselves, and there are other people who cut off something at the first hint that it could be pain and their manufacturing it in their head. So they definitely need to stay in it and walk through a little bit. But you know, I always say relationships are a gymnasium for the mind. Relationships are a

gymnasium for the mind. Explain. In other words, you don't get stronger by sitting on a mountain and meditating alone. We need to actually be entangled with somebody and pushing back against them to grow bigger muscles, and the same with your psychological muscles. So you've touched on this a little bit. But can we change our attachment style? Are we're always going to be anxious, once anxious, always anxious? Or can that change? And then does knowing that can

it help us in navigate relationships better. Well, now I'm going to get really complicated on you, because our attachment style is actually a number of things. It's based on the relationship we had with our mother, the relationship we had with our father, and the relationship we witnessed between the two of them, and that our own genes. What if what if you had a single mom and never knew your father like me, like I met my dad

one exactly. So there's a big empty space and a hole in one piece of your love map, right, And so the short answer is, even in present day, you can have different kinds of attachments with different people. It's not like you are doomed to have an anxious attachment with all your friends, your work curse, and your lovers. The dysfunction tends to show up the most in our most intimate relationships. And yes, there are three kinds of relationships,

according to research, that can actually heal attachment injuries. The first one is the therapist patient alliance. No matter what degree your therapist has, no matter what brilliant intervention they make during a session, that's less important to your brain than the consistency, the fact that you know, every Friday at ten am, good mommy's there, who's going to reflect back to you good parent, and that shifts your attachment style.

The second one is if you're lucky enough to get hot for somebody who happens to have a secure attachment style and they accept our craziness, then after a while you calm down right, So you get like the really secure attachment guy who's like really straight and okay, and the spinning out the drama queen who you know, come forward, go away kind of person, or the drama queen and he's like, you are so cute when you're doing that. Don't worry, baby, I'm here when you want to come back.

That was my That was my last two relationships because I very much have an anxious attachment style. And two boyfriends. He was just so consistent and he was there and it's soothed and then and then we had to break up and the next one sued that even more, and so and literally my therapist like, you're learning secure attachment. I'm like, okay, cool. And then the third relationship is parent child relationship because plenty of people like I myself

had an anxious attachment. So I can definitely tell you that I had all the symptoms of it, and I practiced attachment parenting with my girls because I used my anxiety to be attached to them. Oh, through you being a parent, not with your parents, but with you being a parent, you can explain because what ends up happening is, let's say a mom with anxious attachment style is consoling a baby, and she's saying, you know there, to a toddler, It's okay, baby, Mommy will always come home. Don't worry.

Mommy's gonna let's look at the clock. When the big hand gets on the floor, Mommy's going to come back. And here you can hold my nightgown that smells like me. And here's your teddy bear, your transitional attachment object. And the more she does all these things for her child with their anxiety, consoling them, there's another brain in the room who's also getting consoled, and that's the mom's brain. We are self consoling at the same time as we

become good parents, we are reparenting ourselves. That cool, It's really cool. I'm just like processing that in the moment. It actually kind of got emotional, so I'm like just kicking him in it. That was like, I mean, just the idea of I'm just breathing the energy, the idea like when you know, tin to the coccus, tin to whatever, like my parents going to be there. It's like it's I don't know why. That just makes me very emotional. It is these are the most tender feelings in the

human mind. These are really tender stuff. It is the most important motivator of human behavior that exists, and it is the backbone of who we are because we're programmed for connection, like we are social beings, connection and belonging our immutable needs of human beings. Wow, that's just blowing my mind. And attachment impacts our careers, our relationships with co workers, our ability to manage people. It impacts our need for power or not attachment every relationship. How what

is an attachment theory in the need for power? What's that control? So here's the baby, right who's out of control and doesn't have reliable parents, and so as a result, they need to be the CEO and dominate, right, because their parents may be narcissists or had substance abuse issues and there was no consistency for them, so they have this desire for control. Then you could have the other baby who was waiting and longing all the time for

mom to come back to the crib. And there's that employee who's always taken advantage of at work, who's just waiting for somebody to notice them and give them a promotion. But they're not going to actually go out and get it because that's their normal place to be, that's their familiar place to be longing. Wow, this is a good time to take a little break. We'll be right back though. Okay, that's taken care of. Let's get back to our chat.

What's kind of interesting to me as you talk about attachment theory, there's a lens that we can sort of filter almost everything through attachment theory in the same way that we can through a shame lens or trauma lens. Look, I will say this about of Americans have a secure

attachment style. There's been so much research done. People with a secure attachment style get better grades in school, they tend to make more money, they tend to have fewer divorces, they tend to have fewer mental health problems physical health as well. Know, attachment theory has been studied in relationship to just about everything, including religiosity. God as an attachment figure.

Some people have an anxious attachment to God. I that feels like a full episode, but I think physical piece because you because I wanted to ask you about this, how does attachment style affect our physical health? So here's the sad part. When babies either fear their primary attachment figure, or are left in states of longing for them to

come back. Their cortisol levels rise, and so lots and lots of research has been done, long term, longitudinal research on babies who have an insecure attachment style early in life and later diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, because these it's like they're in their life long in a constant state of alert, either alert that an angry parent will hurt them, which in adult life is the world is against me, or that they're just in a state of pression and anxiety and longing for a lover to

call them back, and that impacts our health. You see, love is so good for our health. A good secure attachment lowers our blood pressure, it lowers our heart rate, it lowers our stress hormone cortisol level, It rises levels of don't bemane oxytocin Europe and there from all those feel good neuro hormones. Love is the best medicine we have. I've always felt that, but I love hearing the research

on it. And what I'm aware of listening to that is that that very much intersects with a lot of the work I've been doing in my therapists over the years. The community resiliency model and regulating my nervous system and dealing with trauma and cortisol levels, right, and so just be I've just been kind of aware over the past few years that I've been in a constant sative bipe lighter freeze that at my court is all that I and I'm thinking that it's started with attachment, and my

therapist is that this. But now it's like I'm still of having an AHA in a different way where it's like, oh, okay, So, like I I had a moment happened in in Griffith Park, like you know, a couple of months ago, and I was so triggered by it. And I've learned that when it's hysterical, it's historical. So it's not about that moment, but I'm just thinking about, Oh, it's because I've been bullied so much in my life, and I've experienced violence

and and like I've had so many traumatizing experiences. But even before that, it started with the attachment, even before all the bullying, Right, So the bullying that I experienced in school activated this sort of insecure, anxious attachment that started when I was a baby. That's that's exactly girl.

It was the next version of it. And you know your inability to at the time as a child, to maybe stand up for yourself or find other connections with people who would help make you feel secure, was that you were just sort of reenacting what was familiar to you. We know we have voices inside our head, right and we're not even aware. But sometimes that voice is saying, you know, you're bad, you're wrong, you don't fit in or whatever. We don't know. They're so subtle. I know

the voice very well. Yes, I did a lot of work around the voices in my head, especially during quarantine and I live alone. But go on, But did you know we can actually change those voices ourselves. We can reparent ourselves. So here's my little trick for you. Because of and I'm going to tell you this is an outsider first. You may not know that this is how most people look at you. Beautiful, glamorous, brilliant, well spoken, and an absolute survivor and crusader. You don't know that,

but that's what we see. I'm assuming you don't know that because I'm talked to the child in you. So every time you go in the mirror and begin your makeup. I want you to literally say out loud into the mirror, I am so proud of you. I'm so proud of you, Laverne, and I want you to implant that a voice, and if you do it every single day for months, you will be amazed and how your brain will literally change that. That feels like that drew to me that I'm going

to add that one. I become very aware of just the thoughts because I'm alone with my thoughts a lot, because I you know, I'm single, now, kids, now pets. And I became aware early on in quarantine, like March or April of the quarantine, and I was like, oh, the negative thoughts and negative self talk is strong with this cognitive behavioral therapists call it thoughts stopping and thought replacement.

Thought stopping and thought replacing replacement. So as soon as you sense that thought coming in you, I'm not allowed and then replace it with I'm so proud of you. I love it. What my what Jennifer, my therapist says, is if I slew myself down and enough to um look at the thought, is the thought useful? Is this thought useful? And I love that too? Stopping the thought is great, and then if we can't stop, is this useful? And oftentimes it's not. It's just it just re traumatizes me.

It just re and it reprograms the same neuropathways instead of creating new neuropathways. And and I'm so proud of you that replacing the thought, replacing the talk creates new neuropathways. Does it literally reprograms? You know? There's a guy I think he's at the University of Kansas. I interview him a lot. He's a neuroscientist who actually puts people live, people who brains and m r I machines and he

hasn't even just think about their loved one. And he can tell by what parts of the brain light up if they have a secure attachment style or not, whether it's associated with stress centers, fear centers, and love centers. It's real. I kind of want to do that. Where does he do this? Now? I'm serious. It's been so interesting for me lately thinking about the brain and then

the chemistry of all of it. It's so interesting. I mean, you said, there three elements is biological, sociological, and psychological. Every human behavior has all three. So one has to do with our mind's manifestation of what happened. That's our psychology. Then there's a biological ramification of what happened. But also nothing happens without being in a social world, so you know. And and so for people who don't fit into their current social culture, they have such high rates of mental

health issues. And it's not there's nothing wrong with them, it's just that there's this big social factor because somebody decided, you know, you don't fit in on this year, you're not in fashion. And I think, you know, I feel like you're kind of almost reading my mind a little bit, because I I know from my own experiences that I've made different choices, I've changed energetically, and I've attracted different kinds of people. I've really they have, so that is

the truth. But I also but I also am considered attractive by certain cultural sort of standards. I you know, I'm not. There's a lot of other factors that are aesthetic that are systemic around race, colorism, size, age, that are also factors. So in terms of the attachment lens or in relationships, what would you say about all of the sort of discriminatory things that happen around like women of a certain age, or women of a certain size or color. I'm always talking about women, but it's not

just women, it's LGBTQ people in the gay community. What would you and through an attachment lens or whatever lens you have, what what what are your thoughts on those sorts of things that are not really about us? Right? Um, it's I'm not responsible for somebody else's racism. But you have to understand that human survival since the history of our species has been paramount on us being accepted by

the village. Right, so our d this fear is being shunned by the village, literally left in the wilderness to die, being eaten by a lion, or not having enough food. We survived because we we are a cooperative species who have cooperative breeding, and we share food and we share childcare. You know, every other primate of try to take a newborn baby from a chimman zie, you will be murdered in a second. But yet a human will hand their

newborn to a total stranger in a hospital room. So so what happens is if somebody comes into the world with a genetic predisposition to be different than whatever that cultural norm is for a very long time, their only choice was to suffer in silence because their survival was paramount on being accepted. But now we've reached a place of such I mean, I know people don't believe it,

but such enormous wealth. If you think about it, even a hundred years, their entire life and your day was spent procuring enough food or enough money for food, right, and that's all we thought about. Now it's about which kind of designer shoes. And we don't even need food. We're trying to not a feat too much food. In general. If as the species globally we're actually doing better survival wise, that doesn't mean that there aren't disparities and there aren't

starving children in America today. So as a result, those people don't need the tribe. In addition, the tribe has gotten so darn big that there are million subsections of the tribe and so people who come into the world genetically not matching the particular tribe can find their own people, or they can fight to dribe and try to change the rules. And we are seeing all of the above happen in our culture right now. It is actually a time of really great freedom. It is a time where

more people have a voice. You know, if I can say only one thing about the commonality that we all have as human beings is the social revolutions that have happened and l g P t Q, trans life, Black lives Matter, etcetera. And there are a group of Americans that are playing catch up, and progress happened really really fast for them, and many of them survived by having very strict rules in their life, rules about religion, rules about gender, rules about jobs, who gender roles, men do this,

women do this, whatever. And so this progress has come on fast and furious. And there are groups of Americans who are not bad people who misspeak and get canceled as they're trying to play catchup, and they are angry. They use words like, oh, you know, we don't have to be political correct. And so the leader that they chose was the most politically incorrect leader because he spoke to that piece of them that was unacceptable to the culture, and so they had an attachment to him. Yeah, and

I talked with Bernie Brown about this. We've sorted ourselves to such an extent that we don't usually get to interact with people who might have different backgrounds and different beliefs. You know, Bernie Brown says its heart to hate, close up,

lean in, you know. And I'm hanging out with someone now who has different political beliefs, and it has been very challenging and in a really good way, in a really loving way, because it's challenging me to be more empathetic and to practice what I've been preaching for years around having difficult conversations around different Okay, it's that time again.

A lot more is coming though. Alrighty, we're back. There's something I wanted to ask you, because lot of research out there talks about relationships and dating that tense to be like, Okay, men do this because they're looking for a woman who's going to be able to have children, and women do this because they're looking for someone who's going to be a provider or be smart enough, you know, um to provide. And all that feels so hetero sexist to me. I always think, like, what about the gay

and lesbian people, and what about a trans people? And where do LGBTQ people fit into there? Okay, So I want to remind everybody that you know, I'm an evolutionary psychologist and the history of our species. They're always were gay by and trans people in some cultures around the world in some ways speak absolutely okay. So this is not like a new invention of humanity. It's just a

more vocal invention so that we're aware of. So when I talk in terms that sound heteronormal, I want to remind people who are in between the wonderful scale, whether it's the Kinsey scale, when have you, that you know, in some ways you have the freedom because you don't have culture saying these are your gender roles, you must do it. You have the freedom to construct your relationships

the way you want to. Also, we're evolving. I mean, there was a great article I think it was in the New York Times, and I did a segment on my show that it was like, how to make your marriage happier, make it more gay, and it was about getting rid of some of the strict gender ideas in

a relationship. But even if somebody is on the Kinsey scale more gay than not, say I think we're all programmed to be by by the way, depending on the situation, then that person still has stopped up a few messages from their family of origin of a gender role, and indeed because of either their hormonal expression, they may have

more feminine or masculine qualities that come along genetically. Right, So we know that gender is a little bit biological and a lot cultural, and biological sex as a huge range of variations based on the sex chromosomes that you know, we know at least seventy different variations of the sex chromosomes alone, and so there is this human variation biologically and that expresses itself in sometimes more feminine or masculina

to use those tired terms of wants, needs, desires, or characteristics. So, having said that, where does l g pt Q fit in, they are They fit in everywhere across the span. You know you're gonna see gay couples who have the most traditional gender roles that you've ever seen in your life, and you're gonna have others that have more equitable peer relationships when it comes to their gender roles, and the

same with sexuality. However, having said that, evolution has evolved in us all the tools needed to keep the species alive by procreating. So back in the day, when I tell you that there were always l g pt que people, it doesn't mean the gay people didn't have babies. They still did and we also know that the evolution of homosexuality in our species partly is because we are cooperative breeders.

In other words, if you had a gay brother or sister, you got to have more babies yourself because he was there protecting and feeding it as well. And guess what, he or she was also nurturing their own genes in their nieces and nephews, so the genes stay alive. Fascinating. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. A lot of the conversation gets very heteronormative and and it's it's something I noticed, but that's awesome. Pheromones. What's deep from me is like if a guy does not

smell right, it's over for me, Like it's over. And I think you said for women, I think is that smell is like and I'm not I'm a trans woman, but smell is so huge for me, for both particularly women, but for all genders. So what pheromones do is they

indicate immune system genes. So back in our hunter gather pass, when we weren't taking showers every single day, we were pretty fragrant, and we learned that our brothers and sisters did not smell so good to us, and we did not want to mate with them, partly because they shared the same immune genes. In other words, they had immunities for the same group of diseases that we did, because

we're genetically close. Right. So here's the interesting thing. When two humans get together and procreate, they may take blue eyes from one, long legs from another, brown hair from another, except immune system genes. Immune system genes combine to make a stronger superhuman. So when this hunter wandered into our village from another tribe as he was off hunting, I'm telling you, he smelled delicious. If we'd only been spelling our brothers and cousins at that point. This guy came

in and we were, oh, my good news. Who was that man? And so we can determine reproductive fitness through smell. Wow wow. And I don't have children, but the smell is very important. That is so interesting and so fascinating. There's research to show that if couples have a desperate a different immune system, they actually have longer term relationships.

They have better sex that lasts for longer. Um. I love that, So so I should really like lean into like the smell even more that I love that that's amazing. It's your body telling you what's good for you. Yes, And I think that the big thing is like how do we listen? So much of my work right now is like, really, how do I listen to my body more? How do I because my body is talking to me, how do I listen to it more and honor and

instance of being an opposition with it? And I think that goes for just you know, being by myself, and then also for relationships we should be wrapping up. Is there anything else you want to say to the people out there about all pheromones, attachment style, all the things we've been talking about today. I just want to say this. First of all, thank you so much for having me on. I've always been a huge fan of yours, So I'm gonna fan girl for a moment and say that I'm

just so grateful you're on the planet. I just want you to know that I appreciate that. But secondly, I want everyone else to know that to not give up hope that love is here. There are different kinds of love. Don't let your culture tell you that it has to be you know, swinging from the chandelier sex. There are plenty of people who have mature companion at love who for physiological reasons or whatever, may not be having sex, but they're having lots of closeness and cuddling and getting

dopamine from their hugs and kisses. Um. There's so many different ways that human beings can connect with each other. There is somebody there who will love you and respect you the way you deserve, but not until you do it first, you cannot. We can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Or how you going to love somebody else if you don't love yourself? Can I get amen in here? Exactly? Amen in Thank you so much, Dr Wendy. Will we like to end this podcast with

a question what else is true? And this actually comes from my therapeutic work in the community resiliency model, from the idea of both and and Basically, it's it's like, when things are really, really, really difficult in our lives, that is one thing, but then there's something else that is true. We can be in the space of both and and what else is true is what is a thing that helps you get through? What else is true? For you? Dr Wendy to die, I think the thing

that helps me get through is the question why. Every single day, at every single moment, I'm saying, why, why do they do that? Why is that? Like that? Who created that? Why? And keeping my brain and my nickname is Nerd Barbie in a Nerd Barbie case where I'm constantly investigating human behavior just keeps me going. It's so

fascinating to me. I love that. And I love that because of another therapist of mine who said, we're not living in reality when we make positive or negative predictions of the future, when we're ruminating on the past, when we're reading minds, and she says, our work is to stay present, curious, and non judgmental. So the why is the curiosity. And I think the why and the curiosity

keeps this in the present moment too. Yeah. Yes, And it also makes me very forgiving of everybody and their behavior. I don't get Piste off because and I was like, ha, why were shot a bit? What happened there in her life? Like I never I don't get mad at people. I'm more trying to understand people who think differently than me or act differently. I love it. I love it. This was so amazing. I'm gonna need to listen to this because you said so much that I need to like

take notes so I can practice all this. Thank you so much, Dr Wendy Walsh. M TILM till is your podcast. The podcast is Mating Matters and you can follow me anywhere on my social media at Dr Wendy Walsh Perfect. How could you not want to go listen to Mating mad after this incredible conversation. Thank you so much, Thank you. By Wow. There are a few moments when I felt like I was in a therapy session which felt very vulnerable.

Um at that moment when she talked about letting her baby know that, like it tend to be our mommy is going to be there. I don't know why that like just hit me in my gut. Um. What I know for sure is there's a little kid in me that still needs my mommy. And that spoke deeply to the little kid in me. And there's a little kid

in all of us that needs nurturing. And I love having it reaffirmed by Dr Walsh that we can reparent ourselves, that we can be reparented through friendships and romantic relationships, and we can reparent ourselves as we parent our own children. That's amazing and it just reminds me of something a dear friend of mine said to me many years ago when I a struggling, and he said, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Isn't amazing. It's never

too late to have a happy childhood. And the way I interpret that is that it is never too late to give the child within us the love and nurturing that she needs. So yeah, I'll leave you with that, It's never too late. I love you. Thank you for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Join me next week for my epic conversation with the original trans supermodel, Tracy Africa Norman. I walk in the footsteps of many women, but Tracy's courageous modeling career in the nineteen seventies has

provided a blueprint for breaking barriers. You don't want to miss it. Please rate reviews, subscribe and share with everyone you know. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland, audio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.