Anxious or Avoidant? Why Your Relationship Patterns Repeat & How to Change Them (Part 1)

Music. Hey, everybody, welcome to The Virtual Couch and Waking Up to Narcissism. Now, how does that work? First, happy 2025. This is one of the first times that I've taken a little bit of a break from the podcast world, and I have missed it. I have missed each and every one of you listeners. So I'm glad to be back. There are so many exciting things planned for 2025.

Now, why Waking Up to Narcissism and Virtual Couch? Let's go on my train of thought. There have been a fair amount of people who have said that they almost have to sneak listen or sneak watch Waking Up to Narcissism. And that truly does break my heart. And while I have all of my podcast friends listening here, virtual couch and Waking Up to Narcissism, I will own that I am contributing to the overuse and even maybe the desensitization of the word narcissism over time.

But the name of that podcast is very well thought out, Waking Up to... That could be waking up to the narcissism or narcissistic traits or tendencies in yourself, in your relationship to anyone, a spouse, a boss, a pet, if you happen to be a cat person. But I was clear early, and I try to say often as much as I can to the detriment of word count, that it's more like waking up to the narcissistic traits, tendencies, or states in yourself or your spouse or boss or cat or even more.

I think it's really important to recognize that narcissistic personality disorder is a very small percentage of the population. And I would even say that if you are listening to this, even in protest, chances are probably that you are not a narcissist, but you are most likely emotionally immature. I believe we all are. So welcome to the club. Becoming more emotionally mature, more emotionally consistent. More emotionally safe is a lifelong pursuit.

But once you get the hang of it, it is actually a very empowering feeling and something that becomes part of the journey of finding out who you are, the whole solid sense of self, recognizing that I am okay. I'll give you a pretty good example. So I am currently, right now,

experiencing back and arm pain literally for the first time in my 55 years on the planet. And I had an MRI a week or so ago, and I had to sit in a little tube for half an hour and not move, and that was a trip all in and of itself. But the results admittedly weren't what I had hoped for or even anticipated. And apparently, I can't just ignore them and everything will go away because the pain continues to be there.

So over the past couple of years, I've talked a big game about just being and doing. Check that out. This is happening for the very first time in our lives. And give yourself grace and accept the emotions and the feelings and all of those wonderful things. And I believe them. And then all of a sudden, I have some really acute pain and I'm thinking about it so much. And I was also on another podcast that I'm associated with, The Q&A Files. Go find and subscribe.

It is with my friends, Tricia and Dr. Jeff Jamison, where we answer all kinds of questions from the view of a life coach, Tricia, a doctor, Dr. Jeff, and a therapist, me. But I made sure in this recording that I worked into my part several times that I now think that I will never get better. I will never feel whole again. I will never run again. We're going to have to take off my arm at some point.

I do have more empathy now for people who experience chronic pain, and I'm only on three or four weeks into this. But I complained about it like a little child, a very emotionally immature child, wanting people to tell me that I'm going to be okay, making all of the focus on me. So check that out. All of a sudden, I'm struggling a bit to use all of those tools, those incredible tools that have served me so well. But I hopefully have now settled more into acceptance that this is happening.

And it truly is my muse, my opportunity to self-confront and grow, possibly even make some significant changes. And everything from diet to the type of exercise I do, which brings up questions about identity. And all of that is uncertain and scary. So truly check that out. But ultimately, these are all me things and I need to do everything that I can to learn to heal myself, advocate for myself. Sometimes I do want to shut down. I do want somebody to tell me that it's going

to be okay. I do want somebody to tell me what to do, despite the fact that nobody knows exactly what it feels like to be me. Back to that emotional immaturity. We are all emotionally immature and we never know when it's going to creep up on us because we likely weren't modeled how to adult perfectly by our parents because we're barely scratching the surface of how to do that now.

Now, our feelings and our emotions, while I will still argue that they aren't necessarily welcome everywhere, they are being tolerated or we are starting to talk about them more and we're starting to understand what our emotions are trying to tell us. I'm grateful that they are not 100% shunned by society.

But what I've decided to do, and this is the big takeaway, is to slowly but surely bring all podcasts back to a home base, the virtual couch. And while I would love it if you subscribe to everything I do, so if you, my Waking Up to Narcissism listeners, can eventually make your way over to hitting the subscribe or follow button on the virtual couch podcast feed, all content will be there.

All content will originate there. Now, if you only want the Waking Up to Narcissism content and you're not in a place where that can be viewed or taken the wrong way by a spouse, a partner, or your cat, because I do swear that they know things, then you can just continue to stay right where you are, just subscribing to Waking Up to Narcissism. But if you subscribe to the Virtual Couch, you'll start to see Virtual Couch Presents a Waking Up episode.

So catch that, Waking Up. Maybe we'll leave out the narcissism of the title. Or you'll see a Virtual Couch Presents a Love ADHD episode, or a Murder on the Couch episode, or just a general Virtual Couch mental health episode. You name it. So this Virtual Couch podcast feed will be home to all, and Waking Up to Narcissism will stay Waking Up to Narcissism.

So go to my newly updated website, tonyoverbay.com, sign up for the newsletter and follow me on TikTok at virtual couch or on Instagram at virtual.couch. I still have my private women's Facebook group. That is phenomenal. And then the men's emotional architects course and group and monthly cohort is here and we are ready. So email me. I will reach out to those of you that I have the emails to, but email me. It is going to be a very powerful group of helping us become more emotionally mature.

And I also have the path back, the online. And I realize now that one of the reasons that I don't think there's as big of a subscriber base on YouTube. Maybe it sounds like I'm making excuses, but I have now learned that just straight up talking about cornography, but not referring to it with the corn. Hopefully you see where I'm going with this, that I have a cornography recovery program that helps you become the very best version of yourself.

But when I've been saying the real thing, apparently that is not always okay. I've been needing to blur that out verbally, But regardless, the Path Back is an incredible program. If you are struggling with turning to corn as an unhealthy coping mechanism, go to pathbackrecovery.com or reach out to me. I will give you a coupon code as a happy new year. Come join that group. It's phenomenal. The Emotional Architects group is amazing. The Private Women's Facebook group is so incredibly good.

My Magnetic Marriage course, online parenting course. Go subscribe and follow and like and all those sorts of things. Let's get to today's show. Hey, everybody. My name is Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family

therapist. And today we are going to talk about something I think is so fascinating, and I want to start with story time. This is a study that changed how we understand human relationships. Let me take you back to London in the 1930s and the 1940s. I will not try to do an accent or even close. But what's really interesting is sometimes the biggest discoveries that we have come from somebody simply paying attention to what everybody else is overlooking.

So picture this, you've got a young psychiatrist and his name is John Bowlby, and he's working at a clinic for troubled kids. And at this time, the popular belief was very, very straightforward. And you may see some of this today. Feed kids, keep them clean, give them a roof over their heads, and they will be fine. The emotional stuff, not really on anybody's radar.

But Bowlby started noticing something that didn't quite fit into this theory because he kept seeing patterns in the troubled kids that he worked with. And a lot of them had experienced very early separation from their parents, or they had really disrupted relationships with their caregivers, whatever that caregiver was, if they'd been orphaned or if they'd been adopted.

So, Bowlby was onto something big, but it's so wild to throw that concept of presentism in here, where we know what we know now, but at that time, this was so old school, so unstudied. But he started documenting how when young kids were separated from their parents, like during hospital stays, which were so common back then, that they go through these pretty predictable stages. First, they would protest and they would go into this deep despair.

And then finally, this kind of emotional detachment. Fast forward to the 1950s and enter a woman named Mary Ainsworth, and she was a brilliant psychologist in her own right. She started working with Bowlby and she's fascinated by his ideas. So she's thinking, how can we study this scientifically?

And this is where we so often talk about the therapy. Psychology is more of a soft science because you have these true scientists that wanted to observe and study things using scientific method, but then you have real human beings with so many different variables. She says, how can we study this scientifically? Because they truly didn't know what they didn't know. But Ainsworth was determined to figure this out in these attachment patterns with kids.

And in doing so, she didn't even realize that she was about to help us know something pretty incredible about human relationships that has persisted today in the world of attachment. So she heads over to Uganda for a research project and she starts observing mothers and babies in the wild in their natural settings.

And she's noticing that there's these really, really subtle differences in how the moms respond to the babies and then how these differences seem to affect the babies and how they behave with their moms. And anybody that has done a job for a while or they really love what they do, they really do start to notice patterns.

It's one of the things that I love about my job. You start to recognize a little bit of what such an easy way to put this is, but maybe what more normal behavior looks like versus somebody that is something just seems a little bit abnormal in the way that they are showing up. Someone that in my world, then it looks like they're pretending to do what they think someone would do in this situation rather than just being their authentic self.

But she wants to understand this more. And again, very systematically. And thank goodness. So she's thinking there has to be a way to see these attachment patterns more clearly. Still looking at this from a scientific model. And this leads to her design. This is the fun part.

What might be one of the, probably one of the most important psychology experiments conducted. The strange situation. I wish we could cue in some eerie music in here, but what she discovered was very strange and it was very mind blowing. And it completely changed how we understand human relationships, Mary Ainsworth set up a room with toys like a playroom at a daycare. And then she creates what she calls an eight episode drama.

She was well ahead of Netflix and Hulu, but the way this thing happened, it unfolds about every 20 minutes. Each step was very carefully designed to activate what's called the attachment system. Basically, it's the kid's internal programming about relationships and about safety. So how this thing played out, a parent and their young child, usually between 12 and 18 months, we're talking really young, enter a room.

And at first, it's just the two of them. And the child typically starts exploring the toys while the parent sits in a chair, not even on their phone, which is odd to think this is in the 1950s. So this first phase tells us something important. Does the child feel secure enough to explore or move away from this home base when their parent is present? Do they occasionally check back with their parent? And that's what Mary Ainsworth

called refueling. Are they going out and are they exploring and checking back? And then comes the first plot twist. A stranger enters the room. Now the researchers watch how the child responds to this new person. Do they show appropriate caution? Do they look at their parents for cues about whether this person is safe? And this starts to tell us a little bit about what that child's ability is to use their parents for what I would refer to as a secure base.

Looking at what the concept of a secure attachment could eventually become. And here's where I think it's really interesting. The parent then leaves the room. Now the child is left with the stranger. And this is the first separation episode, and it's designed to activate this attachment system. And at that time, researchers are closely observing how the child responds to the separation. Does the child become distressed? Or do they try to follow mom out of the room?

Do they accept comfort from the stranger? And now minutes later, the parent returns. And this reunion is one of the most revealing moments in the entire experiment. The researchers watch. Does the child greet the parent warmly? Do they ignore the parent? Do they seek contact, but then angrily resist it? Almost like, what the heck, where did you go? And then there's the second separation. And this time the kid is left completely alone.

And after a brief period, the stranger returns. And then finally, the parent comes back in for a second reunion. And you might even be thinking, would this even be something that someone would allow today? Because they would probably worry a lot about the stress that that would put on the kid. But what made the study kind of mind-blowing was the clear patterns

that emerged and how different children responded. Because Ainsworth was able to identify three main patterns. And then there was a researcher named Mary Main, and she added a fourth down the road. But first, securely attached children. They became upset when their parent left. But then when the parent returned, they actively sought contact with their parent. And then they were easily comforted. And then once they were comforted, they returned to playing and exploring.

So it's like they had this internal working model that said, my parents are a safe haven. So when I'm upset, I can count on them to help me feel better so that I can go back out and explore the world. Now anxiously attached kids showed a lot of distress during the separation and then they had difficulty settling down when their parent returned They might actually go seek contact from their parent, but then resist it.

It's almost like they're they're pushing their parent away while they're also crying It's like this internal model said I can't count on my parent to be there consistently and. Man, I need my parent. So I'm going to cling a little bit tightly, but I'm not happy about it. It's kind of interesting. If any of you have already identified yourselves as anxiously attached and I am raising my hand, then that might resonate.

And then let's talk about avoidant. Avoidantly attached children showed little to no distress when their parent left, and they often ignored or even avoided their parent when the parent returned. So they might just keep playing with the toys and turning their back on the parent. And it's interesting that it wasn't because they didn't care. Because when you could eventually start measuring heart rates, stress hormones, those were actually elevated, just like with the anxious kid.

But they had learned to suppress their attachment needs. Like their whole internal model said, it's safer not to show that I need comfort. I can't show anybody that I care. And I wonder if any of you avoidantly attached can identify with this feeling, even now in your relationships. And then later researchers identified a fourth pattern, disorganized attachment, where the kids, they seemed very confused and they exhibited contradictory behaviors.

Like they would literally freeze in place or they would even approach their parent backwards. And what made the whole study revolutionary was how it demonstrated that these early attachment patterns weren't just about a child's personality or their temperament, but they were strategies that the kids displayed and they developed based on their experiences with their caregiver.

And it showed that our very earliest relationships create this template for how we then expect relationships to work throughout our lives. And that becomes part of our hardwiring. We don't even know what we don't know. That is just what we are doing and how we are thinking and feeling. It's just the way that we show up in the world. And we so often think that this is how everybody else looks at the world as well. A little projection, anybody?

Even more fascinating, when researchers then started eventually studying adults, they found very similar patterns in romantic relationships. So the kid who learned, I can't count on others to be there, they might become the adult who is checking to see if their partner has read their text message or checking their devices or where are they or why is it taking so long? Or I thought they said that they would be home at this time. Why haven't they responded back to me?

And the kid who learned to suppress their attachment needs might become the adult who gets very uncomfortable if their partner really expresses too much emotion, which you can see these patterns that start to play out if they are not curious or meeting that partner where they're at. When their partner is getting anxious and expressing emotion, it can just cause that partner, the anxious partner, to elevate even more, which can cause the avoidant partner to suppress even more.

And now we're into this dance, this cycle, and it's a very unhealthy dance. This research gave us a window into how our earliest experience is very, very early, before we got into our relationships. Well before that, they shape our expectations about our relationships that we're in now. But those patterns, and I just want to be very clear what we're going to talk about today, they can change with new experiences, but you need to know what

you didn't know first. You need to have this understanding and then a fair amount of work and consistency. So this is where the hope lies in attachment theory, that understanding these patterns is the very first step in being able to work with them and potentially change them. Because we're going to move from today, if there are things that you didn't even know that you know about. Well, now you know. And it's going to be a very fun but frustrating ride now because you're going to know.

You're going to want to make changes and you're going to continue to try and have some success and then you're going to go back to your home base. Maybe that is this anxious or avoidant or even that disorganized attachment style. Then you'll make a little bit of progress and then you'll go back to your home base and back and forth. So we're moving from that, that I didn't know what I didn't know, that now I know, but I'm not 100% sure what to do or I don't do it.

All the time or all that well, even. And that is probably the longest place that you'll stay in, in this growth process, one of the most frustrating parts as well. So just know that you're on the right path. We're going to eventually get to the point where you're doing whatever it is that you're trying to do way more than you did before. Now you still might return back to that old home base from time to time, but finally you're doing it so much that it just becomes who you are.

You become, and that is an amazing place to be. So let me explain this relationship and attachment concept in a little more clear terms.

Think of your early childhood as the time where we learn our very first and most important lessons about relationships. And maybe the genesis or the origin story starts in that mother-child relationship. And I want you to know, I'm not saying that dads don't play a role. As a matter of fact, oh, we will get into that. We'll get into a lot of detail about that because they really do.

And in same-gendered households, there may tend to be one partner who takes on more of a nurturing role, maybe one that takes on more of an assertive role. But just for the sake of today, I'll go with the gender stereotyped mother in this scenario is the more nurturing parent. So the mother-child relationship creates a template that often shapes how we connect with others throughout our lives.

And the key idea here is that babies and little kids have, they have a need, they need their moms or their primary caregiver to be mirrors, reflecting back their experiences, their emotions, their needs. And this helps kids develop a very strong sense of who they are. So when a mom constantly responds with empathy and attention and affection, the kid learns I matter and my feelings matter and I can trust others.

I can trust that they will be there for me, but sometimes that mirror gets a little bit distorted. And let me go into a couple of ways that this can happen. The first scenario, we'll call it the absent mirror. And this is when moms are unavailable and it's whether physically or emotionally. And I would just like to lay down some tracks right now. Welcome to a shame-free zone for the rest of this entire podcast or any of the podcasts that you listen to that I put out.

Because nothing is wrong with you if you're hearing this and thinking, oh my gosh, that's what I did as a mom or that's what I did as a dad or that's what I'm doing right now. Because again, you did not know what you did not know. And you are a product of your nature and nurture, birth order, abandonment, hope streams, DNA.

It just is. Give yourself a lot of grace because this is going to be a pretty fun ride when you start to recognize how we got to where we did, the origin story of how this all worked, because now we can start to heal it. Now we can start to improve it. A child, again, this goes back to when moms are unavailable and it could be because they have a lot of kids. It could be because they were forced to go into more of a provider role.

Maybe their husband became sick. Maybe he was abusive. Maybe somebody passed away. You never know. Maybe there's betrayal. It can be so many different things. So when the mom is unavailable, again, physically or emotionally, no judgment. The child experiences a deep sense of abandonment.

And this is especially impactful because young kids depend entirely on their caregivers, not just for physical survival, but for the emotional development, which as we noted earlier, has not really been a thing or not talked about very much at all. But this early experience of abandonment often creates this anxious attachment style. So these kids often grow up to become pursuers in the relationships, always seeking reassurance and connection, afraid of being abandoned.

And again, that can feel like a lot. I'll raise both my hands here because I am a card carrying member of this anxious attachment club. I know that vibe so well. Hey, everything good? Are we good? It's been a few minutes. You haven't really told me how cool I am yet. Just making sure if there's anything wrong, you'll tell me, right? I'll be right over here and you're sure. Okay. You know, watch what I'm doing while I'm over here. I mean, it is kind of fun.

Watch me juggle. I'm very good at this. It doesn't seem like you're very into that. I don't know. Do you want to ask me some questions about it do you think i'm fun. That anxious attachment, that can be a lot. It can also be a lot of fun. Second scenario, you've got this distorted mirror. So sometimes moms who struggle with their own emotional issues, depression, lower self-esteem, unresolved trauma, really unhealthy relationships, they aren't able to see their kid as a separate person.

So instead of responding to who their child actually is or is becoming, they project their needs and their own feelings onto the kid. It's like the mom's using the child more as an extension of herself rather than seeing the kid as their own separate person. And kids in this situation learn that love comes from meeting others' needs while ignoring their own. They become a human doing, not a human being.

And that probably sounds pretty familiar to a lot of my listeners. And this often leads to what is called an avoidant attachment style, that these kids grow up to become emotionally unavailable partners because they're afraid of being engulfed or they're afraid of being controlled in a relationship. So, what does that look like in the long run when these avoidantly attached kids become adults?

Then intimate relationships feel like walking through a minefield of proverbial eggshells all over the place that the person with the anxious attachment has left behind. This avoidantly attached person does want connection, but they also fear their own abandonment so bad. And that causes them to feel rejection, loneliness. Even the avoidant can often think I'll be alone forever. I'm okay with that.

And what can be so difficult is that pursuer, the anxiously attached, desperately wants connection, but also they fear their own abandonment so bad and they fear rejection and loneliness. So I got to make sure I cling to this person regardless of whatever it is that I need to do to make that work.

So then the person with the avoidant attachment, now they want their independence, but they fear being controlled or they fear being invaded or overwhelmed. And that creates a painful dance where neither person feel secure enough to really be intimate. True intimacy is being known by somebody and knowing another person without having that threaten who you are. So for real intimacy to develop, both partners have to develop the solid sense of who they are.

It's like taking two whole circles coming together to form a healthy relationship rather than two incomplete circles trying to complete themselves to the other person. It's not two halves make a whole, it's two holes start rolling. And maybe that didn't hit as much as I thought it would. But without this foundation, the relationship becomes codependent.

It becomes enmeshed with each person either focused way too much on maintaining a connection, the pursuer, or maintaining their independence, the avoider, not allowing others to help them. That is just too much for the avoidant to ask. It's really vulnerable to put themselves out there. And unfortunately, the anxiously attached views that as, okay, you don't care about me enough to allow me in because to the anxious partner, they want people to know them.

They want people to ask them. They want people to help them. You can see where that dynamic is so difficult. That's why I think so often people that are in these push and pull, these pursuer, withdrawer, these anxious and avoidant attachments in their relationship can feel so stuck because they're stuck in that push and pull pattern, the pursuer and the withdrawal pattern.

With one partner pretty continually seeking a closer connection, while the other is more avoidant, keeping their distance and feeling overwhelmed and engulfed. But then the good news is that understanding these patterns is truly the first step toward healing them, usually with the help of therapy, counseling, maybe some good coaching. Okay, so let's now talk about the dad's role in the attachment origin story.

Dads, I come in peace because I am one of you. I'm one of you four times over and please go find on YouTube, some of the live question and answers that I've done with my daughter, Sydney and Mackie. As I mentioned earlier, I think it takes a lot of courage to know somebody, especially someone that you had a hand in raising. And it can be really difficult to hear how different your child's experiences were of their childhood or of their life in general or of you.

But this is where I think the work really lies because I believe that the father has just such an incredible opportunity to provide that presence to their spouse or to their children's, shall we call it, radiance. You're providing the presence to their radiance. Let me just take you on a quick train of thought.

In my original Magnetic Marriage course that I did with my friend Preston Pugmire. We gave this example of these concepts, and it's more around the concepts of masculine and feminine energy or polarity. And we're not even talking about male, female, but more presence and radiance. In other cultures, this is Shiva and Shakti or yin and yang. Presence, radiance, nurturing, assertive. We need to become the picture frame to their beautiful artwork or the river bank to the flowing water.

And these are concepts. These are energies. These are vibes. This is woo-woo. And I think what a father can provide is think about when you are getting on a roller coaster, when you get in and you first sit down and the attendant puts the lap bar down, what's one of the first things that you do? You pull up on it, you test it for safety. Am I safe? And if that thing is locked in, then when I am going, my hands are up and I am yelling and I am screaming.

And I hope that we're doing one of those things that goes upside down. But what do you do before you even go upside down? Typically, maybe with your legs or even your hand, you pull up on it. You push up with your legs a little bit and you say, okay, am I still safe? Because if I am safe, then I can experience this entire ride because they will test for safety on occasion. They will lift up to see, am I safe to make sure.

But when they know that they are safe, then they can raise their hands up in the air on those downhills of life, and they can really enjoy the ride, and they can feel your presence.

Assuming that life's attendant wasn't overly aggressive as they boarded the ride and pushed the lap bar down just one click too much, kind of as an act of defiance, maybe thanks to an argument that they had with their own dad earlier that day before heading to the amusement park, then I can just find joy in this radiance. And so, I think that the father can play such a role in this masculine presence,

this emotional consistency, this emotional safety. And that's why it's so important to understand emotional immaturity. So that then we can know what it feels like to be emotionally mature and not to use our kids as emotional support animals and to learn how to deal with my own emotions, not project them onto my wife, not project them onto my kids so that then they have to deal with my anxiety or my anger or my fear.

That's a me thing. And that's something that when I have the right tools, it's an incredibly powerful thing to be in touch with my own core masculine presence and know that, yes, my emotions are still welcome. They are still valid, but they're there to teach me. And it turns out that I can learn how to self-soothe, to regulate, to not need somebody else to tell me that I'm okay. And when I know I'm okay, when I truly love myself, now I can love others. I can love my family wholly.

I can't need them to make up any deficiencies that I find in myself because I am also enough as I am. We need to become this lap bar on their roller coaster of life. But hopefully you can see that dads in particular, not only need, we have this opportunity to become this stabilizing figure in the home, to become more emotionally consistent, to become more emotionally aware, emotionally mature, emotionally present. And that doesn't mean that we're not allowed to have our emotions and feelings.

But what if I were to tell you that for us in particular, we really don't have a clue what to do with those emotions and feelings. Again, because most likely we were told or conditioned or modeled, don't let them see you cry, rub a little dirt in it to fix everything, fix it mentality, even things, unfortunately, that maybe don't need to be fixed, like other people's experiences or their emotions or their big feelings.

And this, gentlemen listening or people who know, gentlemen who can listen, is a slice of the work that is happening in my men's emotional architects group. So please reach out to me and contact at TonyOverBay.com or through the website, TonyOverBay.com.

Because there is so much more there that is born from a place of emotional immaturity and the way that we often don't even realize that if we are not aware, self-aware, doing our own work, that we are projecting a lot of our own anger, frustration, discomfort into the family system. And this is where even the best of dads will hear at times that their kids or their spouse doesn't even know what version of dad is going to walk through that door.

And that can be a humbling experience to hear, but I think it can also be one of the most helpful things to hear and understand and use as your muse to self-confront and grow, because that is 100% an experience that I have had in my own family system, thinking that I was the world's greatest dad in all things, but not realizing that when I was down and walking in, not even realizing the way that I could upset the mood or disrupt the mood of the entire house.

And so then I would be surprised if I came home later, a different day, a different time and now I'm feeling on top of the world and wondering why isn't everybody wanting to celebrate with me because I feel great now. But then why isn't everybody wanting to back off when I need a moment and realizing, oh, I don't know how to communicate. I don't. My feelings and emotions in an emotionally safe and emotionally consistent way.

And over time, learning that, okay, actually, those emotions and feelings and

thoughts are there for me to do a quick check-in and see why this is important to me. But so dads, reach out because there's a lot of good work that can be done. And it has to do a lot with the things that we don't know that we don't know. And I do think that there's a fair amount of what I deem as unhelpful advice or tools that are out there right now around some concepts that can start to move into the realm of, well, shall we say toxic masculinity.

There's a pendulum effect to so many things in human behavior, in therapy, in psychology, where you may go your whole life, not even realizing that you're being this nice guy, that you're being overly accommodating, that you're a people pleaser, that you're actually more sensitive than you lead on to be. And that if you can just do everything for everybody and put your head down

and keep working, that they will all appreciate you. and you're meanwhile setting up these covert contracts, these, okay, we'll see if anybody does this. We'll see if anybody appreciates me. We'll see if she'll hold my hand. We'll see if she'll initiate. And then when this person who doesn't even know that they're being tested fails that test and we get to say, what is wrong with me? And nobody cares about me.

But then that pendulum will swing all the way over the other side where then we go too big with our emotions and we finally can't take it anymore. But there's a way to recognize what is happening inside and finding this place down in the middle of this pendulum that I like to call calm, confident energy. So reach out and I can help with that.

But again, I believe the father's role in attachment is very crucial, just like the mom, even though historically we do see that attachment theory focuses more on mom since they are typically the primary caregiver. So when the theory was developed, that was the data that we were looking at. But here's what I think is more of what the father's impact can be as well.

So just like a mom, a father's presence or absence and then the quality of their interactions, that also then creates powerful blueprints on how a child learns to relate with others. So while moms often provide the first experience of nurturing and comfort, fathers can often offer very different but very equally important experiences. Fathers may tend to, in a healthy situation, encourage maybe more playful or challenging interactions to help a kid learn to regulate strong emotions.

And I feel like I could almost insert a record scratch here because we're talking in a perfect or are in a really good world because I know that a father has to be comfortable with his own emotions or he'll easily regulate these strong emotions by simply telling their kid to calm down or knock it off or why would you do that? Or here's what I would do if I were you.

While that would technically fit into the regulating strong emotions, I really want to start painting a picture again, plugging into my men's emotional architects course that ideally there's a way to provide that strong presence as in I'm not going anywhere and I'm emotionally calm. I'm emotionally consistent. I'm stable. I'm here. You can share your emotions, even your big emotions. And I'm going to provide you with some safety while you do so.

Because some of the stories that we tell ourselves is that, okay, if I then am allowed to release my emotions, to let them out, then I'm going to have this emotional throttle wide open for the remainder of my whole human existence. No, in a healthy way, you'll be more than likely able to process your emotions and then move forward. This is a developing passion of mine over the last couple of years, and I haven't done enough content on this, but I will.

And it turns out that the more that you don't need others to tell you who you are, how you should feel, the more you feel whole and complete. And that's the concept of having this solid but flexible sense of self. And I want to put a little bit of a math formula in there. I want to help people get to this place of maybe we'll call it 90% solid sense of self and will be 10% open for flexibility. So therefore, I can interact with people in the world and they can give me all the feedback they want.

They can tell me what they think of me, what they think that I am doing wrong, what they appreciate. But I'm starting from a place of I'm okay, I'm good. So if they say, I don't like the way you did that. Well, I'm okay, but tell me about that. I'm going to operate from this place of a 90% solid sense of self. But here's the thing. What are the things that you don't like? Because I want to be the very best version of me.

But if I'm operating from this place of having the solid sense of self, it is that cliche that's so true. If I don't love myself, I can't truly fully love you. Because if I don't love myself, then I have to try to figure out a way to get you to love me. And so therefore, I will be betraying my own sense of self. And that will most likely be in a very immature way. It might be in a controlling way. You can have love or you can have control

in an adult relationship, but not both. And I am opting for love. I will teach love. But you have to learn to love yourself first. So the secure attachment that a dad can provide, he can provide this emotional safety and consistency, can help a kid.

We're talking entire generations in your family system. Because if you can help a kid take these healthy risks and navigate this broader world beyond the mother-child bond, developing confidence and exploring while knowing that there is a solid, secure base to return to. And I just think these things are so important to dig into. Let me give you a couple more concrete examples to show how they support healthy attachment development from a dad, this taking of healthy risks.

So a dad might learn to help his kid navigate challenging playground equipment by saying, hey, I see you want to try the big slide. I'm here. I am right here if you need me, bud. Do you want to climb up by yourself or should we do this first time together? Not, hey, get up there. I wasn't scared when I was your age because if we're saying, hey, how can I help? I'm here. I have your back.

I'm right here beside you if you need me. This teaches the kid that it's okay to feel both excited and scared about new challenges. It is not an all or nothing or black or white thing. And I don't even need to look to somebody else to tell me what they think I should do. I'm going to say, this is what I think I'm going to do. And you got somebody right there to support you. That is such an important concept because we do not know what to do with our emotions when we're kids.

They are just bubbling there. And so, as a kid then, when we're told, calm down, or why did you do that, or that's not what we do, or how do you think that affects me, or any of those things, or heaven forbid, hey, look, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen somebody do. If we hear those things, then we're going to eventually feel like, man, I don't even know what my emotions are telling me because I know they're wrong. It's okay to be both excited and scared about new challenges.

And when you have that secure attachment with a parent, when they are there for you. Then the kid can learn to assess risks and have support. And they can have this capacity to face challenges. And they, with the secure attachment, can especially right now, I'm talking about from a father figure, the kid won't feel pushed beyond their comfort zone, but they'll be supported and pushing themselves. It becomes a them thing.

And in talking about navigating the broader world, imagine a dad taking his kid to a busy park or a new environment. And then he might say, man, look at all the stuff that's going on here. What do you want to explore first.

And when the child starts to venture out to meet new kids or try new activities, the dad will maintain a watchful but not a hovering presence because this will help the kid learn to interact with the world beyond their immediate family, develop social skills with peers while having parental backup, understanding the world is generally safe to explore and not having too much anxiety and fear and worry about everything that is happening.

And I think if you look at that piece of the puzzle, if we are anxious about things, that's one of the clearest ways that we project our anxiety onto our kids to, hey, watch out, be weary. That person, you never know what their angle is. Or I don't know, this park looks pretty scary to me. Is that slide safe? So we're projecting our anxiety, our discomfort into our kid. So now they're going to view the world in a similar way. That might be our issue.

We might be terrified and have anxiety, but hopefully we're going to go work on that and not work it out through our kid. Because we want our kid to start to build confidence in their ability to handle new situations. Back to that masculine presence that the dad can exhibit by showing up in a secure way that can help develop confidence with a secure base. I was told of an example recently of a dad at a swimming lesson with his kid, and the kid swims a real short distance to him.

And then the kid ventures a little bit further to swim to the instructor, looks back, occasionally sees dad's encouraging smile. Dad yells out, hey, you're doing great, bud. I'm watching you. I see you. This creates a physical and emotional safety net and the confidence to move progressively further from the secure base. And it helps the kid understand that independence doesn't mean abandonment. I mean, holy cow, that would have been nice to know as a kid, right?

Independence does not mean abandonment and the knowledge that it's safe to return, even if you are feeling overwhelmed, because now you have this secure base where that person, your parental figure, they're going to be able to say, Hey, tell me what that, tell me what your experience is like. Help me understand what's going on for you. How can I show up? Because how often do people say, you know, I got to get my kid out the door at 18 or else they're going to want to live on my sofa.

And I will maintain. I think they need to know, hey, my sofa is always here if you need it. Now go venture out. The knowledge is it's safe to return if you're feeling overwhelmed, not like I can't go back. There's no safety net. And I understand there are going to be some people that said, well, it worked for me. But I would say, what's that relationship like with your parental figure?

And it's okay if you are realizing that it's not the ideal relationship that I would like, but I'm going to change that with my kid. If that is the case, if you want to change that dynamic with your own kid, we really do need to be able to self-confront and look at, well, what was my experience like? And am I just repeating that? I got to figure this out. Because when a kid is told, hey, you're not coming back here, that's my parents saying, I got to figure this out on my own.

That can be really scary. And again, what is wrong with having a secure base to operate from? But you have to start doing the groundwork early in all of these scenarios. So dads need to act as what attachment theorists call a secure base, a reliable presence that allows kids to venture out and explore while knowing they have somebody to return to for comfort and reassurance. And yeah, this balance of supporting independence, but also maintaining connection.

Independence and connection, independence and connection. It's crucial for developing a healthy attachment and confidence in exploring the new world. And that is what this world is about. It's about going out and exploring and then coming back.

You can go back and talk about what those experiences are like because those experiences then create this internal working model that the kid can carry into adulthood, knowing that they are okay, knowing they can take risks, knowing they can explore new situations, knowing that they can figure out who they are, that they can still maintain healthy independence and be connected to others.

That's what differentiation is all about. It's two of our most innate needs to develop connections with others while autonomy, while discovering who we are, while learning to become interdependent and differentiated when we naturally start from this place of codependence and enmeshment. So, when the father attachment goes, shall we say, awry, if the dad is emotionally or physically absent or dismissive or inconsistent or emotionally immature,

then it can create some real specific attachment wounds. So for sons, now we're talking about struggling with that masculine identity because then a kid might feel uncertain about how to be quote a man without having had a positive male role model. For example, he might swing between extremes, either becoming overly aggressive to prove his masculinity or withdrawing from traditionally masculine activities with his friends altogether because he feels inadequate.

And now look at what that could be in relationships. He might think, okay, I don't even know how to be there for my partner because I never saw what that looks like. And that can turn into a complete lack of confidence in relationships. So imagine a guy in his career who received a promotion. So instead of feeling accomplished, he's consumed with imposter syndrome. I know that feeling well, constantly thinking, I don't even deserve this.

Or they're going to figure out that I don't know what I'm doing. I can't do this. Because without that consistent. Parental figure who showed confidence in their kids' abilities and celebrated their achievements, he might struggle to internalize his own success because it's still dependent on what other people think.

And I think it'll also play into difficulty trusting his own judgment because a person will eventually start seeking everybody else's opinions for even minor decisions like what car to buy, whether to accept a job offer, where to move, and what eventually boils down to what should we have for dinner. And he might think, well, I need to check with everybody first because I don't trust myself to make the right choice because I wasn't allowed to make these decisions on my own.

And that stems a lot from having a father figure who didn't validate his thinking or support his decision-making abilities. And this can also be a mother figure as well. But right now we're just talking about the dads. And then also having this absentee father figure can lead to challenges with emotional vulnerability. Because if you picture a guy who can't cry at his wedding or share his fears with his partner because he learned early on that men don't show any emotion.

So without seeing a father figure open up emotionally, he might think, okay, if I show how I really feel, people are going to think less of me. And then if we're staying, let's stay here for a minute and talk about for daughters, if there's an absent male role model, the proverbial dad issues, I mean, I think an easy one is difficulty trusting male partners because a woman might consistently expect her partner to disappoint or leave her just as her dad did.

And so when her partner might say, hey, I'll be home at six, she might feel intense anxiety, even if he's five minutes late thinking, okay, he's got to be lying to me. And it can be conscious or subconscious of like I saw my dad do to my mom, or I would hear my dad promise to do things and not do them. And then what would that lead to? It's probably going to be seeking some male validation.

And I remember an example where there was a very successful businesswoman who she identified that she really still sought approval from her male colleagues or supervisors in ways that she did not with female ones. In that scenario, she might work twice as hard for a male boss or compromise her boundaries I used to please male partners thinking almost this, again, it can be happening in the subconscious. I need to prove my worth to him, this male figure.

Maybe I'll be good enough. And not even realizing that. He is not dad. Probably realizing that, but not realizing that's what's going on. But it can lead to insecurity in romantic relationships as well because a woman might constantly test her partner's love through behaviors like creating artificial distance or one that I see often, manufacturing crisis to see if he'll chase after her.

That's one that I see a lot as a marriage therapist. Different examples come to mind where a husband is going out of town on business or has something that he's going to go do with his friends and there will be a crisis that seems to happen regularly. And it's almost like she's subconsciously saying, do you care more about me than you do about this business or about your friends.

And I will find guys that will put themselves in these positions where then they feel like they can't go on the business trip or they can't hang out with their friends because they're so afraid of the consequences that those will be too negative at home. And so they do have to go chase after her, but then it isn't about whatever that crisis was because she may be subconsciously thinking, I just need to know if he really cares about me because my dad never showed me that I was worth caring about.

And then if we talk about what this looks like in intimacy, she might become either extremely clingy, texting constantly, feeling panic when her partner needs alone time, thinking if I let him have space, he will leave just like my dad would. Or to completely avoid deep connection, keeping relationships very superficial and leaving before she can be left, telling herself that it's safer to not need anybody at all.

And these patterns, they often play out unconsciously until somebody recognizes them through therapy, self-reflection, maybe today listening to a podcast. But let me reiterate, the good news of today is that understanding these patterns

is the very first step toward healing from the patterns. Just as these early experiences with dads can create these wounds, new experiences and healthy relationships are learning more about how you show up differently because of your experiences is the way you start to help repair them. So now let's go to the extreme. Let's talk about an emotionally unavailable

partner plus an anxious mom. Actually, I think this is a good time to take a break. We'll pick this up with a part two. And in part two, I'm going to go into almost a grid of when you have a healthy, let's say a healthy mom and an emotionally distant dad, emotionally distant mom, a healthy dad, two emotionally distant parents. And we'll talk about how that can play into your adult relationships. And then I'm going to go through an article that talks about how you change your attachment style.

There is plenty coming up on part two. It's great to be back. If you have questions or thoughts, I would love your questions about attachment styles or anything that you've even heard today, taking us out per usual on the Virtual Couch is the wonderful, talented Aurora Florence with her song, It's Wonderful.

And I want you to know that you will be hearing some of Riley Hope's music, which is the anthem for waking up the narcissism in the near future, It's Not My Job, which is a beautiful song as well. Okay, everybody, have an amazing week and we will see you next time. Music.