Why Is Everyone So Anxious & Avoidant? - Connor Beaton

what is attachment Theory how do you describe it to someone that's never heard of it before yeah I mean the the definition of attachment theory is that it is a psychological and evolutionary um Theory concerning relationships between humans so it's basically the the theory of relationships between people essentially and the the sort of most important part of it is that young children is young children we need to develop a relationship with a primary caregiver and that that is one of the foundational tenants to us operating as a normal human being in the world as adults right there are a lot of different attachment Frameworks a bunch of people that have written books lots of talk about it now I think it's kind of starting to be a meme of its own and lots of people are probably using it and misusing it and du using it in bad ways what's the best attachment framework that you like to focus on what are the things that people kind of need to know as the fundamentals of this yeah I mean like the Godfather of attachment is uh John bulby and Mary answorth they're they're really the first two people um that that really created the structure of what we know today to be attachment Theory um there's a great book called attached which has gained a lot of mainstream popularity um and I do think that you know it's kind of been hijacked by the ticktockers and instagrammers of the world to like gripe about their exes you know and it's become the the like end all Beall of relational problems and you can use some of these terms and label people and pathologize them and put them into neat little boxes to say see this is why the relationship ended it wasn't me they were just avoidant or they were just anxious but yeah I mean the the main people are are John bulby and Mary answorth and um you know this is John bulby really started the work back in the 50s Mary answorth continued it on um she really created the labels that we know today to be anxious and avoidant uh a lot of the research was interesting because it would watch children and you can tell uh around two to three to five in that age range how a child responds to a parent leaving and returning where their where their attachment style rests and you know for example if you have a kid that um uh you know a kid and a parent and the parent walks out of the room and goes away for five minutes and then walks back in and that kid is is pretty much just ignores that their parent has left and come back in that's a good signal that they're a little bit avoidant or you know if as soon as the kid breaks away from the mom or the dad uh that that child becomes sort of uh crying and orary and they're you know pretty upset it's a good sign that they're anxious um but ideally we're move we want to have a secure healthy relationship with one primary caregiver as a child because what a lot of the research has shown is that this will go on to form the behavioral patterns and the ways in which that we engage with people as adults and so the reason why I think that attachment has gained a lot of mainstream popularity is that it does talk about a lot of the relationship issues and you know garbage that we see in modern-day relationships where people are ghosting and piecing out or you know love bombing and turning turning into stage five clingers and so it does explain a lot of that behavior has this been shown uh in fmis of any kind is there a a neurological uh sort of basis of this could you show me 50 people that self ID as anxious 50 people that self ID is avoidant and look at their brains have you got any IDE how how this sort of manifests yeah I'm I'm not 100% sure about that I would imagine that um that what you would see if I just had to sort of speculate for a moment is what you would see is that the anxious centers of the brain would light up in within an anxious attachment but the the interesting thing is that the misconception about avoidance is that they don't care about relationships avoidance are also very afraid so there's actually a lot of fear so so you'd probably see similar things between the two structures of the brain between an anxious and an avoidant because an avoidant person is is afraid of connection and intimacy whereas an anxious person is afraid of not having that connection and intimacy and so it's still it's still a fear and anxiety response within both of them um so you'd probably see that underneath an fmri but I'm not 100% sure if people have dug into that do are you do you have some study no I don't I don't but I I would love to it I think attachment Theory sufficiently new that uh people are probably not quite getting into it from a neuroscience perspective um one of the other things I want to get into anxious avoidant secure strategies diagnoses causes all that stuff before we even get into that can you just try and think postulate for me what the Adaptive reason would be ancestrally for using the first two to five years and then presumably it continues to kind of imprint on you as you as you grow up up um why would that uh create a signature way that you see the world growing up into adulthood why would that be a useful mechanism for humans to have yeah well interesting so you know in the first few years developmentally um there's there's a couple things that are happening that are absolutely crucial as your brain is wiring right and we have to remember that you know before 2 or 3 years old you're non-verbal and so everything that's happening to you everything that's happening around you is happening in a non-verbal fashion so your your brain is coding that information your body is feeling that information and it's all sensory based it's all felt based um and so what's happening early on in life is you're starting to discern whether or not your environment is safe whether or not your world is okay and that's an evolutionary compon component right you're you're developing this sense of am I okay is my world okay am I safe is it safe to trust people and that's largely happening in proximity to the relationship that you have with your mother like a lot of the research that's out there shows that an infant's nervous system experiences the world through its mother's nervous system and those two things are are largely interconnected so is that what co-regulation is that is what co-regulation is is that in in some ways what co-regulation is is that you you know if so for example if I'm working with a client and he's got a lot of anxiety or he's going he's processing some trauma and he's you know got lots of Rage or something like that it doesn't help him for me to join him in the anxiety and the rage really good therapeutic process is that you can go through your experience of that trauma of that abandonment issue of that neglect with somebody who's grounded and regulated so that you can go through the hardship of experiencing that internal state that maybe has never had an expression and then you can come out the other side and reconnect and be in relationship with somebody who is regulated and allow your nervous system to come back down to a much healthier Baseline so you know I think in the we've gotten away from your question but in the first few years of life it serves an infant to learn relationship through proximity of caretakers plain and simple and you know we're very we're we're social beings we're wired to be social and so the first couple years is is Paramount for us to kind of understand um that infants in some way shape or form are learning how to be in relationship with other human beings based off of their primary caretakers I'm wondering whether or not why would this be adapt adaptive why would this be a mechanism that would be useful why is it that you know by age 12 or 14 ancestrally we probably weren't that dependent especially as a male probably weren't that dependent on our our family really at all except for maybe our extended family and then by age 16 18 we're probably what they're dependent on so I'm trying to think okay so why would it be the case that there's this imprinting that happened so early on that sustains throughout adulthood one thing that I could think of is that if you were born into a particular time of strife uncertainty maybe there's war with a local tribe maybe uh food is scarce and resources are scarce maybe there's a famine uh maybe you're born into a particular uh family which is uh lower in status maybe you don't have as much access and and that kind of is the same as being at war or being in a time of strife but it's a microcosm as opposed to sort of a macrocosm of this um what that would mean is as you grow up as you get older it's probably going to be advantageous for you to be more Vigilant it's probably going to be advantageous for you to maybe not trust people as much so I'm wondering whether it's kind of like a a very early warning system like a a weather report um of this is what typically on average you might expect as you grow up and your body is going to predispose you to behave in a manner that you have been alerted to very very early on because on average most people that had a disrupted uncertain anxious or avoidant childhood grew up to be in adult situation that were also similar to that and that is why this behavior is sort of predisposed yeah I mean in in essence if we were just condense it down it's that these your primary relationships as a child set the tone for what your nervous system body and mind can expect from relationships moving forward and so the evolutionary advantage of that is that you have a baseline of what's trustworthy and safe and what's not and so if we have this Foundation of here's what's safe and here's what you can trust that's a secure attachment then your body and your mind are much more attuned to the data and the data and the information of what is unsafe and what is not trustworthy and so you start to pick up on the social cues of relationships that are nonfunctional that are dysfunctional and and ideally you do that by having had an upbringing where there was some type of secure healthy attachment so that you have this homeostasis this line this like Baseline that you can always return to right kind of like an instinct or an intuition that lives in your body that says this is safe and this is not and what ends up happening is that we have all these minor and more acute interruptions to our attachments uh and sometimes for for some people they have much larger interruptions right trauma losing a parent very early on um abuse abandonment Etc that skews their capacity to gauge whether or not a relationship is safe and trustworthy just in a very basic foundational way and this is where you get a lot of like commitment issues happening and you know not able to discern whether or not somebody can be trusted and so you get into relationships with people that are an absolute [ __ ] show um because that's what your body climatized early on um so but that's that's the evolutionary Advantage is that you have an imprint of the social cues the relational cues of of what is a safe and trustworthy relationship because if you can do that then you can build much more of those safe trustworthy relationships which are going to serve you right if you're surrounded by a bunch of dysfunctional I was going to say dysfunctional Pricks but if you're surrounded by a bunch of dysfunctional people who you can't trust who aren't safe who are screwing you over and but you can't discern that you're not going to get very far in life because you won't have the capacity for social cohesion you won't have the capacity of collaboration you won't have the internal capacity of being able to bring a group of people together towards a common good or goal or task right which is essentially leadership and so it it will disrupt a lot of these foundational pillars of what makes a good human being a good human being um so yeah that's just a little side tangent hopefully that that digs more into your question what you want to get started should we explain how people can work out their attachment style from what they notice in themselves or do you explain how they work yeah I mean let's talk about how they're formed I think let's let's talk about that um uh so Jean P um and bulby uh Jean p is is pretty renowned when it comes to developmental psychology um they found that there's some early stages in life and those early stages in life some pretty important things are happening um and I'm going to refer to somebody throughout the this conversation his name is Dey Freeman um who's a good colleague and friend and mentor of Mine He's 74 uh imagine if Obi-Wan Kenobi was uh a counselor therapist living on the side of a mountain in Colorado who had like never been on the internet before but had basically just been studying attachment and and developmental psychology for 40 plus years uh that's him and so he's created his own model and so I'll be referring to that because I think it's one of the best that there is um but jean p and bulby found that there's two phases that happen in development early on in childhood the first one is is between Z and 18 months where we are trying to discern whether or not our environment is okay whether or not our external external environment is okay and secondly between 18 months to three years where we're trying to discern whether or not we are okay as human beings are we safe is there something wrong with us you know when we drive the truck into the wall does Dad freak out and scream at us are we you know do they shame us do we get criticized for it do we get spanked like what happens in proximity to our caregivers and there's a very simple foundational piece that builds attachment that I love um which is from Dewey Freeman and he says that attachment is built when we go through a hard time in relationship with somebody and come out the other side okay okay so attachment is built when we go through a hard time and come out the other side okay in relationship with somebody and that can look like a bunch of different things right going through a hard thing as a 36y old or a 27 year old is very different than a 2-year-old or a three-year-old right so when you're little we have to kind of contextualize what this may have looked like for you as a kid right so a hard time is you know you you needed food right and so you cried and you wanted food and you weren't fed you know for hours and hours and hours you needed attention um but instead you were you know left in your crib for you know half an hour or an hour and you're balling your eyes out um you crapped yourself we're just going to put that out there right like you you soiled yourself and um you know you needed to be changed but nobody was attentive to that those are needs for an infant an infant needs food touch and movement those are the three things that you as a child every single child will have needed and it's just food touch and movement and then we have ways of expressing that we need something right when you're a kid you cry you wiggle you make noise you act out you do all types of stuff to try and get attention to say hey I need something I have a need I have a want I have a desire and then hopefully that your parent or your caregiver will understand that you need something and if you know if there's parents listening to this you kind of run the gamut right you try a whole bunch of stuff you check their diaper they're fine you try and give them a bottle or some food or some like like what are they like goldfishes or whatever you go through like a diagnostic checklist that's right diaper diaper isn't full doesn't appear to need to be burped doesn't appear to need to be oh tired tired it's the tired one right yeah exactly so you kind of like go through this list and by doing that you are reinforcing when you figure out what the kid actually needs you're reinforcing to that child your needs matter your wants matter you matter to me and it's safe for you to express that need now that's in an Ideal World okay so again that's a kid going through a hard time I need something like food or sleep or movement or touch or to be held caregiver notices that and fulfills on it and then that child learns in that moment sort of like a little brick in the foundation of their attachments you just imagine your your relationship Foundation is like little bricks that are made up in these moments um you learn in that moment like oh it's safe for me to express myself my needs matter I matter now for kids what the research shows is that that's happening between 70 to 90 times an hour right 70 to 90 times an hour a kid needs something they want attention they want touch they want movement they want to play they want to crawl they you know the list just goes on and on and on so that's that's a healthy cycle they express a need it's a hard time they get their need met that creates attachment it gets disrupted when a kid starts to go through a hard time but the parent is checked out right maybe they're an addict of some sort and you know they just are totally not dialed in maybe they're a workaholic and they're just on email non-stop or on phone calls and the kids sort of like on the side uh maybe they parent or the caregiver gets reactive every time that the child cries or you know is trying to express that they need something and so what can happen is when a child is expressing a need or a want and the parent or the caregiver isn't attentive or not meeting that need the child has two response mechanisms to try and get the attention of the caregiver which is either Rage or shutdown so they'll either move to a response of full tantrum or they'll move to a response of effet um this doesn't seem to matter I'm just going to shut down and there's some really interesting experiments that have been done I'm blanking on the name of the one but it's it's where they sit a toddler um I don't know if you've talked about this on your show before but they sit a toddler in front of the mother it's actually kind of heartbreaking to to watch they set a toddler in front of the mother and they instruct the mother to play with the toddler and interact with it just in the normal way that they would and you can see the toddler is lighting up and it's you know he's engaged he's looking at her and he's playing and then they have the mother turn away uh face away from the toddler turn her back to it and turn around and Stone Face Stonewall the toddler and the toddler is 2 years old and you can see the toddler start to cycle through all of these different tactics right it's it reaches out to try and grab its mother's face it tries to smile it tries to point at something in the room and the the entire time the mother is just stonewalling this this kid and then eventually the toddler after probably about and this doesn't take long it takes like 20 30 seconds the toddler moves to a rage response and starts to scream and starts to try and cry and when that doesn't work then the toddler completely checks out and disengages from the mother entirely and won't look at her and and then the mother eventually reconnects with the toddler and repairs but that's an example of what can happen when you know you're you're a kid and you're trying to get your needs met and a parent is on their phone not attuned to you not present maybe they're not even there you know it's some other caretaker um and so you move to Rage or you move to shutdown and that's the same mechanism that the majority of people deploy as adults they move to some form of Rage uh blowing up getting angry or they move to shut down screw it I'm not going to bother I'm going to disconnect so those are some of the foundational pieces of how attachment is built and developed um I don't know if I if you want me to say one more piece about what happens when that goes on long enough so the big kicker and the reason why I love Dewey Freeman's model so much is because it explains what happens when this goes on and ongoing way so if you are a 2-year-old or a three-year-old if you're a kid and you continually try and get your needs met from a caregiver and over and over and over again what you're met with is your needs don't matter right they're not attuned like your parents not attuned to your caregivers not attune to you your need for attachment is so strong it doesn't go away right you keep trying to attach them connect to them but what happens is because you can't attach to them you attach to the need itself so instead of attaching to the parent you attach to the food touch and movement or another way of saying it is that you attach to a substance an object or a behavior and this is the foundation of where addiction starts we attach instead of attaching to a relationship or a person we or some type of intimate connection we attach to a substance an object or a behavior and so if you look at any addiction and any person that I've ever worked with that has had either addictive behavior AVI or is just a full-blown addict there is Major disruptions in their attachment growing up and they learn somewhere along the line that it wasn't it was so unsafe for them to connect or attach to a caregiver and instead they would attach to some Behavior some object or some substance early on and then that would essentially evolve into like a full-blown addiction later on in Life or some type of addictive pattern or behavior obviously the the reason it's important to bring up that this is something that needs to be done chronically it needs to happen lots and lots of times is that as a parent you're not going to all 70 or 90 times per minute you're not going to always be able to be there to be attentive and I don't want to make the parents that are listening go oh my god there was that moment earlier on where he was near the TV he's going to be [ __ ] God i' I've embedded a gambling addiction in him for the rest of time kids are resilient right and they're able to put up with things and that's why as sad as it must be to watch that experiment happen I it's probably not as far as to push it as unethical uh to do to a kid once for 30 seconds especially if it helps us to to sort of understand The Human Condition so you mentioned that there are kind of these two phases first one being to 18 months and then there must be something else that this transitions or or sort of graduates into what what what happens there yeah so the the experiment that I was talking about before it's tronic still face experiment you just search still face experiment and it's totally worth watching because for the average person they're going to see exactly what happens inside of them when they're asking their girlfriend or boyfriend to like go on a date that they want to go on and their partner's ignoring them or they want attention and their partner sitting next to them on the couch like texting and they're trying to get their attention you'll literally see what happens in your body through the vehicle of the toddler um but back to your question between 0 to 18 months so uh when you hit around the 18mon mark a a toddler will start to form language and they'll start to form a sense of separation from moms so between 0 to 18 months like I said the the world is sort of experienced through the primary caregiver um generally speaking through the vehicle of mom and so that toddler doesn't really have a sense of I right so if you have a six-month-old they don't have a sense of me or I that's not a concept that exists in their experience they experience themselves as uh a sort of extension of mom and as they get closer to 18 months they start to develop more of a separation of like oh mom goes over there but I don't and and that that that formation of I starts to really develop you know different parts of their prefrontal cortex their language uh section where they start to have vocabulary where they can express their wants and their needs so they're not just you know kicking and screaming and crying and you know acting cute and all that kind of stuff um and so that transition develops that sense of me this is mine um I want this I need this I don't need this um and then and then on top of that from 18 months to three is layered on this notion of like well am I okay right do Mom and Dad approve of me do the people that take care of me want me here uh am I desired in this relationship do my needs matter to to these people and so all of all of that expression is is pretty Paramount and for the parents that are listening to this and for the people that aren't parents that are listening to this of like well how effed up was my childhood um a lot of the research shows that it's like 34 to 35% of the time we need to have our needs met as a child by a primary caregiver so it's not like an 80% of the time thing in order to develop really secure healthy attachment it's actually a lower percentage you think you actually just need like a 35 to 40 percentage of you expressing that you want something uh and or or giving a clue that you want something and having a caregiver come to to to meet that so um hopefully that gives some hope for people yes yeah yeah I hope so too okay so people are listening they've heard about anxious and avoidant and there's different versions how can someone listening work out what their attachment style is yeah I mean the simple way to look at this is one I find the the labels to be somewhat useful but they're not something that you should cling on to I think that people have gotten into this habit of really over pathologizing um a lot of the psychological content that's out there and it can actually be debilitating for you to make any progress uh because what happens is like you know avoiding attachment becomes like your next star sign right it's like I'm a Leo and I'm avoidant attached right so it's like that's not the AIM the aim is not to be like you know this this new label of self-identification but uh a a couple things that I think are important one is when it comes to anxious and avoidant there's a couple signs that really uh build uh these these pieces okay so uh the anxious is more of a structure of somebody who feels like they can't trust themselves and so they have to over index and rely on relationship right I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay that's usually how I put it it's like I need you to be all right in order for me to feel all right or I need you to reaffirm that I'm all right in this relationship and the avoidant is sort of the inverse of that the avoidant is like I don't need you at all in order for me to be okay in fact if you're infringing on you know if you're trying to create connection with me or consistent relationship with me that feels like a threat that feels like my Independence and my individuality is going to be taken away and so often times for an anxious person they grew up in an environment where there was lots of inconsistency they may have grow up in an environment where there was an inconsistent parent who was uh you know sort of erratic in their emotional Behavior maybe mom had wild mood swings or or dad would have wild mood swings and you never really knew what you were going to get relationally and so that shows up in their adult relationships where there's a lot of anxiousness a hypervigilance uh on their partner like are they okay are they feeling okay are they happy in our in our relationship um so that's that's one another one can be really overly intrusive or overly bearing caregivers um that's uh another one that can create a lot of anxiousness within the relationship where if you have a mom or a dad who's like the helicopter parent you know which is been popularized in modern day uh sort of like psychological speak um the helicopter parent will create a very anxious child because the experience for that child is you don't trust me to make good decisions and you make it sound like life is scary and you make it sound like if I take risks there's going to be some type of punishment or damage that's done to me so having an overbearing parent that might also look like having a parent who's sharing too much emotionally um sort of putting all of their worries and their woses onto you as a child um and then having love uh and connection taken away um as a punishment can be another one that can produce an anxious attachment so if if you're somebody that gets a lot of uh praise and validation but then when Mom and Dad are angry with you um what they do is they withhold love or they you know they they become like despondent and they ignore you for days on end that can create a lot of anxiousness around am I behaving in the way that I'm supposed to behave uh and then lastly you know there's this sort of obvious one which is like abuse trauma um PTSD can create pretty severe anxious attachment because for a number of reasons right I mean if you were physically abused or emotionally abused in a relationship then that's going or in your childhood that's going to carry on into your relationship where you're constantly worrying about am I gonna do the right thing am I gonna say the right thing so it's very common for uh for people that grew up in abusive households of any kind that there's some level of really deep anxiety around am I okay um am I going to say or do the right thing so maybe I'll just pause with the anxious one and see if you let's let's move through anxious we'll go completely through that one I think that would be cool to break down so the core of anxious attachment is if you're not okay I'm not okay I need you to be okay there is this sort of degree of hypervigilance of being on edge of looking of checking making sure that everything's all right there's a degree of uncertainty around is my behavior acceptable is my behavior not acceptable what are the boundaries of being a good boy or a good girl uh and presumably that manifests as a lot of things but one of them being neediness yeah yeah a lot of neediness and a lot of externalization and external hypervigilance so when you when you talk to or listen to an anxious attached person they are they're very fixated in on how's the other person doing how's the relationship doing and how are my behaviors and choices going to affect the relationship versus how am I doing am I okay do I feel good about myself and so the some of the other Hallmarks of an anxious person are are often times lacking a deeper sense of self-worth and self- value and so it can be very common that an anxiously attached person is just constantly questioning whether or not they add value to the relationship um they're questioning whether or not they are deserving of that other person and of that relationship and because of that they can fall into this validation trap where they don't want to or mean to but how they start to act is in this sort of thirsty way trying to get anxious trying to get validation right tell me I'm good enough tell me I'm smart enough I'm good-look enough Etc and it becomes almost compulsive to the point where and there's sort of differing degrees but for some anxious attached people it's very hard for them to not overtext not overshare not love bomb um because in their experience in their mind it's like well if I can just tell you everything that I'm feeling then there's maybe a chance that you'll tell me that I'm okay or that you'll accept me even though I've just emotionally puked all over you right and so and and I'm not trying to like hate on the anxious people I'm gonna be just as harsh with the avoidance but um but that's the response and that's there because growing up again a lot of their experience was from this place of I need to pay attention very close to how my parents or my primary caregiver is acting and responding because if I don't get it right with them then I'm going to get severely punished they're going to with withhold love they might shame me uh really heavily uh they might criticize or judge me a lot and so my sense of worth is very externally dependent so obviously to deal with that there's a couple things that an anxious person needs to do tactically needs to learn internally in order to shift into a more secure place and this is true you know whether you're a man or a woman it's just true across the board so the first thing is you have to start to learn how to regulate yourself and some people call this self- soothing some people call this self-regulation but you have to learn how to soothe yourself and regulate yourself in the face of that anxiousness that fear that worry of am I enough am I good enough is this person going to leave me me um whatever the story or narrative is internally uh that might be coming up and so you have to learn you know maybe it's breathing techniques or meditation techniques that you can what are your what are your favorites you you work with people that have got this all of the time so there's someone that's listening they go Connor Bullseye that's me always feel like I need my partner or my friends to reaffirm my worth in their life I'm always worried I'm over over texting I'm oversharing um I I I get activated I get agitated I'm I'm permanently on edge um what is a strategic way what is some like takeaway tactics that people can use that can help them to to regulate from this first step yeah so meditation can be good my caveat there is that for some people meditation is going to feel like it's amplifying your anxiety in the beginning um and it's it's a it can be a hard thing for some people to to deal with especially if you're in the category of having experience some type of trauma or abuse uh growing up because trauma produces just an abundance of energy physically in the body that a lot of people don't know how to cope with um so if you're going to try that route definitely try and have some guided version where there's people there breath work is going to be your best friend um you can use breath work like whm Hoff there's some very good breathing strategies that you can use like box breathing that's inhale for four pause for four exhale for four pause for four at the bottom um that one is great I mean Navy Seals use that all the time and then there's another breathing strategy um that has been really found to support people that uh are more prone to panic attacks that uh have anxiety disorders and that breathing technique is inhaling for a count of four through the nose pausing at the top for a count of two and then exhaling out the mouth for a count of six and pausing for two so in through the nose count of pause the top for the count of two exhaling out the mouth for a count of six and the reason why you want the inhale through the nose and out the mouth at different intervals long shorter in through the nose and longer out through the mouth is that this forces your heart rate down and so when you're in a very anxious State what's happening in your body and it's very common that people that are uh very anxious or like chronically cold right they they have like a chronic cold response in their body their hands are cold their feet are cold they kind of feel like on the verge of shivering all the time but anxiety produces very real physical response in the body and what happens is that you're when you're anxious you can't quite get a deep breath in and the breath is like the modulating dial to your autonomic nervous system so it's kind of like the modulation dial between your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic is your fight flight or freeze it's your stress response and parasympathetic sythetic is your relaxation response and so when you inhale for the four and exhale for the six the longer exhale out actually pushes your uh heart rate down and pushes your breath rate down because those two things are interconnected and so the slower you can get your breath rate the deeper you can get your breath into your body the slower you can get the breath rate into the body the more you're actually going to reduce your breath rate per minute and that will force your heart rate down per minute which will send the signal to the to the brain to say stop dumping out so much cortisol and adrenaline and like let's chill out um so you want to do that for about 3 to five minutes is what a lot of the research shows and that will put you into more parasympathetic dominant state or relaxed State okay so that is a way that someone who has been activated in the moment can make themselves feel better the big question that I've got and this is the same with all of the different attachment Styles how much of this can be healed how much of the physics of the system that is kind of ingrained in us this is the way that we see the world how much of that can be unpacked a and and fixed for one of a better term or is it just that people there are a bunch of strategies that can help you to kind of cope or deal with it and Salve it like anesthetize yourself in the moment uh and then once that's done you kind of go back to Baseline and Baseline for you is anxious and Baseline for this other person is avoidant or whatever okay good question so depending on the severity of what you experienced growing up well maybe I'll just say this almost all of it is going to be salvageable you can move quite quickly from anxious to secure or avoidant to secure or anxious avoidant to secure um through very intentional work a big part of what gets missed out online and a lot of the content that's out there is the under indexing or the underestimation of how much your nervous system plays into this and so a lot of the content that's out there is super heavy on cognitive strategies which will only get you so far you cannot think your way into a secure attachment like I I just wish everybody knew that you just can't think your way into a secure attachment because your body is literally has literally been wired and trained early on in life to either not trust the security and safety of a relationship or to Crave for that in such a strong way that needing the other person to be okay or needing that validation from the other person is what gives you the Salve or the soothe so you absolutely can repair um you absolutely can shift your Baseline you can you know move your Baseline whether you want to call it up or down uh to a much healthier more secure place but it requires you actually getting into your nervous system and your body and out of your head I think that's one of the most important pieces okay so it's not just read a bunch of books do some internal family systems and and hope for the best you actually need to do some breath work you need to downregulate you need to learn that this is a response okay so that's the first one first one meditation breath work what else yeah next is for the anxious you're going to probably need to do some selfworth work um again very common that anxious attached people have a self-esteem issue for a lack of a better term they're they're lacking in self-esteem they're lacking in a sense of self-worth and so you're going to have to start to develop a couple things number one is either the the competencies that you feel like you need in order to know that you unequivocally are bringing value into the relationship not in an egotistical way um you know not in a bolstering way but to be able to know that hey these are actually valuable things I bring to the table and if you don't think that you have those things then you need to be able to develop them whether it's communication whether you know it's financial literacy that you're bringing into the relationship but like you need to know that there are certain things attributes characteristics that are valuable that you're bringing into the relationship so that's one thing and then the the next thing is a a pretty robust internal system of self validation because remember the anxious person is seeking from their partner to to get validation tell me I'm okay tell me I'm enough and that's often what is required internally um not often it is what is required internally is you have to begin to give yourself the validation that you're seeking from others and this is why uh the avoidant anxious relationships are so wild for a lot of people like if you've ever seen some of the content online where people are talking about the anxious avoidant relationships um they're they're so uh they're so alluring for people because they feed off of each other right the anxious person is constantly trying to get the avoidant to give them attention and validation and the Val the the avoidant person that just fuels their avoidant tactics and they pull away more and more and more so you have to start to develop more consistent routines this can be a this can be like a rigorous um gratitude journaling and I'll I'll recommend something because I think what most people do is like I'm grateful for the fact that I went for a run today and I'm grateful that I did my laundry and that is pretty surface level so there's two pieces that I found to be really helpful um that you add on so you can say I'm Greatful for and then whatever you're grateful for and then you want to add in this is important to me because and how this makes me feel is so we have to add those pieces in because we want to intellectually anchor in the importance of it and then we want to emotionally anchor in why it actually matters to us and without those piece those two pieces is just sort of analgous so you can say I'm grateful for uh what I appreciate today is or I'm proud of myself for but always follow it up with this is important to me because and how this makes me feel is and that'll in cognitively Anchor it in and then emotionally anchor it in okay anything else when it comes to tactics for anxious I mean there there's sort of the like bigger picture that we you know the anxious person has to begin to detach a sense of worth and safety from others and the the the challenge for the anxious person is that their wounding or their pain is wrapped up in the experience of constantly trying to seek safety from a a parental figure or caregiver that never gave it to them and so they've never really fully developed that sense of Worth or safety internally and it gets sought after in relationships and so there has to be this pulling of the Nets back in to say I'm going to dedicate this you know whatever however long a period of time it is to developing a sense of worth and safety Within Myself and you know that again breath work practices are phenomenal for that the Gratitude journaling is phenomenal for that uh exposure therapy can be very very helpful um so for the anxious person person exposure therapy can sound like saying no to a partner just as simple as that um it can be such a big deal because the anxious person is terrified of creating any situation in which they will uh give the their partner the ammunition to leave them essentially they're terrified of being left they're terrified of getting it wrong um they're very afraid that they'll do or say the wrong thing which will cause separation or disconnection and so generally speaking what can happen for an anxious person is that they they won't say no to things in a relationship and they'll constantly what's called Fawn right we've all heard fight fight flight or freeze but there's another one which is Fawn anxious people tend to Fawn a lot and they'll acquas to whatever their other person you know whoever they're dating wants and it can create a whole slew of challenges so exposure therapy to saying no uh can be incredibly helpful and actually putting yourself into situations where you might feel anxious whether it's like practicing public speaking uh can be helpful to bolster some confidence taking up a skill set um you know whether it's going to Brazilian jiu-jitsu or woodworking I'm clearly giving masculine examples but you can tell that I work with men predominantly um but those types of things like go take a salsa dancing class like M like whatever doing things where you actually have to confront the anxiousness that exists within you and then practice grounding and regulating in those moments is anxious attachment a sex uh does it discriminate on gender not really I mean well I'll put it this way I put out videos on and episodes on these like deep dives into anxious and deep dives into avoidant and avoidant and again my work is for usually for men um but the avoidant has like two to three times as many views and and downloads as the anxious one um I think traditionally men are more avoidant than women think traditionally women are more anxious than men that's not a rule it's a generality but it's certainly something that I've seen and a lot of you know my wife's one of the top couples therapists in the world and she works you know exclusively with couples and we've talked about this quite a bit and so you know this isn't hard data from a a research but in my experience men are usually more avoidant women are usually more anxious um and she you know verifies that as well in a lot of the coup's work that she's done she's got like 20,000 clinical hours um and that's you know we could talk about the sort of like socio part of it I think that men were generally socialized that when we're dealing with something hard in our lives that we should isolate right it's like when you're going through something hard as a man suck it up stuff it down deal with monk mod that's your stoicism that's your grit your teeth and get through it yeah right grit your teeth and bear it and so and so a lot of the The Narrative and the stories that are told to Men actually promote avoidant attachment style right they promote behaviors where the behaviors of isolation and disconnection and trying to figure things out solo where women are oftentimes more socialized to be more communal right when you have a problem go talk to your friends about it go get their advice and so there's an over indexing of external validation um you know social credibility uh social opinions really weighing in on what you should be doing and uh not a not a dissolving of independent thought or opinion but a a really overemphasis on you should value what other people think and say above what you think and feel so yes very interesting I wonder I I imagine that for men there is maybe with the anxious attachment style an additional layer of Shame around that neediness given that the masculine ideal is the grit your teeth and bear it get through it just Heist the weight on your back and keep on walking type thing that there probably is an additional layer of guilt and and and discomfort and and sort of uh self shame around anxious attachment yeah 100% I mean I think the guys that the guys that I've worked with that have an anxious attachment there's a tremendous amount of self-deprecation like it's it's like what the hell's wrong with me why am I such a [ __ ] like how come I can't just get over this like this is ridiculous like you know those types of narratives are super strong and you know I think it's interesting because shame is shame is something that develops early on in life actually as a protective mechanism and we don't talk about this enough I think shame is shame is something that a lot of men feel but are very disconnected from but shame develops early on to protect us from getting punished by our parents to protect us from getting criticized or disappointing the people that we love and so early on in our in our development as a human being shame tries to show up to course correct our behavior and what ends up happening is that we then try and motivate ourselves using that shame you know uh what the hell's wrong with you you can do better you know we try and use what I call dark motivation to propel ourselves forward and it works you know I've worked with a ton of you know worldclass athletes rappers musicians who get to a point in their career where they've shamed themselves to a certain level of Excellence yeah Elite level where they're like you know setting world records and sell you know getting Grammys and [ __ ] like that and all of a sudden the the the boats starts to fall apart you know like the scenes start to come a come apart and the there's cracks in the armor and they get depressed and they start to make really bad choices business-wise and they start to blow up in their marriage and their relationship and it's and in large part it's because this shame that has been brewing inside of them which once kept them safe and also helped to propel them to the heights of of their careers is now destroying them destroying their their relationships their intimacy so it's it's very I know it's just like a side tangent I hope you don't mind the N at all I it's something I've I've thought about an awful lot and Morgan howel uh quotes Will Smith in his book talking about how when he was poor and miserable he thought he had hope and when he was rich and miserable he was despondent and I wonder whether that happens with the elite guys that you work with that have maybe been driven to do great things because of their desire for validation and their need to be accepted and and and uh requited by the world and then they're like well you know I'm at the top of the tree oh and this problem's still there oh that means I'm really [ __ ] up oh this is a much bigger problem because all of the was it the money no was it the status no was it the cards no was it the women no was it the house no you go oh okay I'm fundamentally fractured and broken and and I imagine that that's where the Full House of Cards starts to collapse yeah yeah absolutely and I think what's interesting is that in our culture the roles are have sort of reversed a little bit right where like women are being encouraged are being encouraged to be more avoidant you know and to display some of these more avoidant um behaviors and like shut down more and and and try and use what's what's fascinating to me is the the use socially of Shame on things like social media you know we people try and deploy shame as a behavioral change mechanism or like a behavioral change tool I don't like what you're saying online so I'm going to try and shame the out of you to get you to stop well that happens at an individual level right this just more sort of like proof for what we were talking about where we try and deploy shame as a means of Behavioral correction internally and that can serve us sometimes um but when we use it as a crutch or over rely on it it becomes toxic within us not even toxic I hate using that word because it's just ridiculous but but it becomes something that is has a net negative outcome for us psychologically and relationally okay how is anxious attachment different to avoidant attachment yeah so the the way that anxious is formed is actually different from how avoidant is formed so remember anxious is this is just for the listeners not for you because I feel like um you've been D digging in on this but um for for all of us avoidant is is really formed in this I have to rely on myself only it's not safe for me to to rely and Trust in others and anxious is I have to rely and Trust in others so how avoidant is formed is through a couple key things number one um you can have very emotionally distant caregivers and so um John bulby again the guy that sort of started attachment talked extensively about how when caregivers are emotionally distant They Don't Really Express a wide range of emotionality they don't engage an emotional conversation um they're they're not willing to sort of connect with you growing up in a way that shows interest in what you're feeling that that can produce this sort of emotionally avoidant um attachment style where you learn through that relationship that it's not safe for you to actually talk about anything emotionally charged um another one is a a a big emphasis on premature Independence and so one of the big big big sort of Hallmarks of avoidant attachment is you experience something growing up where you were thrust into a position of responsibility and maturity long before you were ready for it right the sort of classic version in the men that I see is you know parents got divorced he was eight or nine years old or 10 or 12 years old and dad says you're the man of the house now you've got to look after your brother or sister and your mom and you know suddenly that guy is helping Mom to pay the bills and keep track of finances when he's 10 years old and you know the weight of being the man of the house is now put on his shoulders but he doesn't even really have a context for what the hell that means and that type of responsibility can produce somebody who later on in life is like I don't want to be responsible for other people I do not want to be in charge or in care of um what you are dealing with and what you're feeling so that's another one um not being able to have consistency or predictability can create an avoidant attachment so uh again if you let's just say you were asking to have pizza uh every week on a Friday night and every week you got a wildly different response right one one one time you ask for it and Mom and Dad are like oh sure that sounds great and then next time they you know throw a hissy fit and the time after that they you know slam the door in your face and ignore you um that type of inconsistency or lack of predictability I think is pretty common a lot of the men that I've worked with who have avoidant attachment Styles will often talk about one of their primary parents oftentimes a dad who just was really unpredictable emotionally you know like you just didn't know what you're going to get you didn't know if Dad was going to be in a good mood or a bad mood if he was going to yell at you for asking to change the channel um or if you know he was going to acques and so what that does is it trains your nervous system to see voicing your needs as a threat so your body literally feels a threat response when you think about saying this is what I need relationally um just to kind of cue that up for what that can look like in a relationship and then uh rejection of needs uh when you're younger so um again maybe you had a caregiver a parent a mom and dad who um just were not responsive to what you needed um very common ones that I've heard are things like you know family moves kid goes to a new school he's getting bullied pretty severely um voices that to his parents and nothing happens and so he's experiencing this uh this childhood of like I'm going through this exceptionally hard time I'm being bullied I'm telling you that I'm really struggling and you're doing nothing about it and so again that can reinforce my needs don't matter I have to figure this out all on my own and so there's a hyper Reliance individually it's like it's like learned helplessness about making your needs known yes yeah yeah and so what happens for a lot of avoidance is they fall into this trap of individual Reliance I don't want to tell people what I'm going through or what I'm feeling or when I'm struggling uh when I'm having a hard time at work I mean this is why I think you you and uh George from the tinmen talked about that study that was done in the UK about how like 92% of men who had taken their own lives had been in therapy and 80% of them had been marked as low risk or no risk right this is the case for a lot of men where the therapeutic industry can't even identify or recognize when a man is really struggling and for avoidance they've become in incredibly proficient at like a secret agent 100% yeah like they they they you can be around and avoidant and think that they're totally good and inside they're just all types of [ __ ] up you know and they're just like I'm like they're having a hard time with something they're like going through an existential crisis about whether or not they should sell their business or leave their career and you're having a beer with them and they seem totally good right they're acting like their relationship and their life is is completely F used to hiding their internal emotional state from the world yes yeah 100% And I mean like candidly this is what I have to deal with you know I I had learned through my childhood through a number of different experiences that it was not safe for me to communicate what I was experiencing it was not okay for me to communicate when I was going through a hard time it was not all right for me to express what I needed or wanted and so I became somebody who grew up and had relationships with women where I never said what I wanted I would just peace out I would never communicate when I was having a hard time I would just go find a side piece you know and so it it that wasn't functional to have a committed relationship um because I would just avoid all of the hard conversations and pretend like I was okay until you know [ __ ] would hit the fan and they'd be like what like how where did this come from I didn't know that anything was wrong and I was like yeah well I kind of just didn't tell you that anything was wrong you know and so um so that's that's another sort of like Hallmark of of avoidant behaviors it doesn't mean that it's like you know that you that you're absolutely an avoidant attached it just means that you have some of those avoidant behaviors what is the difference between dismissive and fearful avoidance yeah so dismissive I mean there they're kind of a um how do I want to phrase this they just kind of it's kind of semantic honestly um dismissive are going to be more um just like the word says they're going to be more dismissive of of attachment they're going to be more dismissive of needing connection of wanting intimacy of um seeing that as a priority seeing that as something that's valuable and meaningful and so when you hear a dismissive talk uh about their relationship and their relationship problems like if I've had a number of guys that come in to work with me IND individually or with their wives uh or their girlfriends and what you'll usually hear is well she should just be fine with what we have um and they'll they'll usually be talking from a place of like this doesn't even matter to me this isn't a big deal and so there's a lot of diminishing the problems there's a lot of diminishing that uh they that that there's an issue in the relationship but when you get inside of what's happening in their head and in their experience there's actually a diminishing that what they need and want Even Matters and that's usually because of these experiences where they learned what I need and want is so irrelevant to the people that love me that there's just no point in me expressing it and so again that's kind of like the Learned helplessness that you're talking about whereas with the fearful avoidant the fearful avoidant is exactly as it sounds it's just that is a person who is genuinely terrified of connection and intimacy and closeness and being able to trust a relationship and so they will generally operate from a place of acquiescing to their fear versus is conf confronting and risking rejection so these are the guys that are like I don't know if I should even dare say that less the internet get it but like the majority of incels are fearful avoidance right they're they desperately crave and want connection and closeness and intimacy but it is it's terrifying um again because and and it's often that fearful avoidance really experienced often times some sort of like heavy trauma growing up in child childhood where it became it became apparent that relationship and attachment was damaging or dangerous for them at a real physical level um so that's that's some of the differences between fearful uh and dismissive how does that feel let's say there's someone listening who isn't avoidant how would you explain the and I think we can kind of understand the anxious attachment everybody's been anxious right at some point um and that just being triggered by increasingly uh minuscule interactions with a friend or a partner it's like oh it's kind of like that what what what does being an avoidant person feel like in adulthood oh boy um it at the core of it is this kind of brutal aloneness you know where you want connection but it's even if it's at a sort of like deep level there's a there's a yearning and a craving for connection and closeness to be known to share life with somebody but there is this very real felt experience that that's never going to be possible um that you're too [ __ ] up to have that um that you're broken or unfixable um that's at the very extreme I'm obviously talking about an extreme version I think for the average avoidant it's it's more there's there's a heavy amount of perfectionism that can come in um in terms of mulling over you know every single scenario like try you know wanting to create connection but well what if I screwed it up so I'm not even going to bother or you know it could go sideways or I could get rejected so I'm not going to say what I need or I want um so that that's a big part of it disconnecting from from thinking that their needs are a priority at all and and having a a like having a good amount of of fear that if you actually got what you wanted you would blow it up that is kind of at the core of the avoidant part of the avoidant story is I I'm not even going to bother because something will mess it up either I'll finally get what I want and need or and they'll leave me or I'll finally get what I want and need and it won't be enough or I'll finally get what I want and need and I'll screw it up and it's like you one of those three and so you know in inside of an avoidant person is this frustration and this helplessness and this kind of like animosity towards themselves or life that they they just don't they don't feel like they're at the center of somebody else's orbit so they become at the center of their own orbit and that creates the sort of safety blanket that they need in order to get by and get through the hard times in life and and I think the last thing I would say is the inability to trust in anybody else to support you going through some hard [ __ ] and it really is heartbreaking because a lot of the guys that I work with who are avoidant have such a hard time even working with a therapist or a coach uh or a counselor and trusting that that person genuinely wants to help them you know it's like you're literally paying somebody to help you and you still don't trust that they want to help you or that they can help you and so that's that's some sort of like peeling back the curtain of what it's like for an avoidant person it's very lonely it can be quite isolating it can be very frustrating because you want closeness and connection but there's all these ways in which you're sabotaging it or mistrusting it and it feels like a threat and so the big the big sort of marker in a relationship is the closer that an avoidant person feels to somebody the more in love that he feels or she feels the the more intimate that they start to get the more known that they avoiding person feels the more that the danger and alarms go off in their body of like something bad is going to happen you are getting closer you know who I am and now I want to push you away yeah it's a it's a vicious cycle um and I would guess that in kind of Pop Culture at the moment the anxious attachment person is probably given more sympathy in some ways it's like more obvious that well this is a person look they they're foring that they're trying that this is them trying and look sort of dismissive and aloof and you an avoidant person you you you don't even care you're not showing up um so I imagine that as you know for the guys that maybe have shame around the neediness and and the hypervigilance and the sort of uh need for validation um there is probably like a guilt around being avoidant it's like I've made my own [ __ ] bed I did this I'm doing this to me here I go again pushing people away that get too close to me that this is why you don't deserve to have anyone this is why you're never going to have anyone uh so both individuals in have got their own guilt and shame and story and narrative that they tell themselves about how they are culpable for the thing that is happening to them but I would say at least on balance like social psychology I guess would suggest that the uh anxious attached person would be given more sympathy because it's more obvious that they need to be given sympathy that's right yeah and and I think the anxious anxious attached person's behaviors are more socially acceptable in our current culture versus the avoidant person's behaviors right because the avoidant person's behaviors relationally are often times more controlling they're they're and they're more controlling because when we don't trust control is what we exert right when we don't trust control is what we exert we turn to controlling when we see trust as something that's threatening and so because avoidance have a really hard time trusting outside of themselves trusting anybody but themselves um whether it's life or a partner um they will often deploy mechanisms of trying to control that other person to get what they want so instead of saying here's what I want relationally there's a lot of control and coercion and manipulation to try and get their needs met give me an example so you might have like uh for example you might have a guy or a woman in a relationship they're avoidant and they want some type of closeness some type of intimacy maybe they want to be sexually intimate they won't come out and say that they won't Express either verbally or sometimes even physically that they're aroused and want sexual connection what will happen for a lot of people in this space is they will start to criticize and judge their partner and try and criticize them into sexual connection you know that we haven't had sex in a week you know that we haven't had sex in a in like 5 days what's going on how come where are like what's going on with you and it'll be an externalized criticism of the other person to try and coax them into some type of sexual connection to meet their need and so on the receiving end of that is oh I feel controlled I feel judged I feel criticized what's happening but underneath that criticism in that avoidant person is I want sexual closeness I want sexual connection deployed in such a like UNC non delicate very uh untactful way that it kind of drives away the exact thing that that person probably needs deep down which is no your needs do matter and you you become a self-fulfilling prophecy I imagine because I try as you might it's probably not a good idea to try and passive aggress someone into having sex with you right yeah yeah you can never I just have like a like com saying of like you can never criticize your way into great sex um and it's just like you can't you can't but we deploy so many of us deploy that strategy right it's like I'm not getting what I want and so I'm going to try and criticize you into into giving me that so that's that's an example um you know you might you might want to open up and talk about something um you might want to go on a certain date uh you know go experience something but instead of being direct and and honest and trusting that you're your partner cares about what you want to do or what you want to experience you will manipulate the situation and so maybe you'll you'll book it and you won't tell them right and and all of a sudden you know the day before you're like oh by the way we're going to that comedy show tomorrow night like we're gonna go see Andrew Schultz tomorrow night and they're like what what are you talking about we didn't talk about this no yeah I told you about this I told you that I wanted to go to this so that's another example of um you know trying to get your needs met in a way without actually having to ask for your needs to be met okay what are the tactics for regulating yourself as an avoidant person so first and foremost you have to understand the the sort of roots or the origins of what created your avoidant attachment um same with your anxious I didn't say that in the other one but I'll say it now for both of these it is so helpful to understand the roots of your attachment because it will it will give light and inform the patterns that are showing up in your adult relationship so that's just plain and simple the next thing is prioritize your experience and prioritize the expression of your experience so avoiding people generally have a story that what I want in need doesn't matter and so as a practice you actually have to start to speak what it is that you want and it can start super simple you might want to start with like saying what you want for dinner or saying where you want to go on the weekend on a date or saying where you want to go for vacation uh expressing what you're really feeling right so you come home from from work and your partner says hey how is your day and instead of saying fine you you say actually it was really freaking great and here's why or it really sucked and it sucks because of X Y and Z and so you have to practice uh you have to practice prioritizing your own experience and expressing what's true within your experience because that feels like a threat uh within the avoidant person system next is to shift from blame to ownership so very again very common that an avoidant person lacks taking responsibility the a big sort of uh Hallmark of the avoid an anxious relationship when an avoid and an anxious person get together is that the anxious person always feels at fault for the dysfunction in the relationship and the avoidant person is happy to assign blame to them and so as the avoidant person you have to start to look at your own behaviors and this is a common Trope within the the sort of like avoidance space that anxious people end up taking a lot of the blame a lot of their responsibility they're constantly fixated and trying to figure out like what did I do and how can I solve this and how can I fix this and if they're with an avoidant person it's perfect because the avoidant person then never really has to take any owner ship her responsibility and it creates this like perfect [ __ ] storm where the aboring person's just like sitting back in the lazy you know Lazy Boy chair and like you know cracking a cold one and just and just taking it easy so so as a avoidant person you have to start to really take ownership over your defense mechanisms when you're closing off when you are pulling away um you know when you are creating disconnection actively and you have to practice calling yourself out on it you have to be able to say you know what I did X Y and Z to push you away to create some space because I didn't know how to ask for an hour of solitude which I really wanted and needed um so that's the next one and then start to use shutdown as a bridge so the avoidant person it's tough because their response mechanism to Hard Times the response mechanism to feeling too close is to shut down and disconnect and that is a great place to practice reconnection so I have this this sort of saying that you have to race to repair you know so if you're the avoidant person a relationship you have to be the one that starts to practice repairing after a disconnection or after a conflict or you know the two of you get into an argument and you just want to you know not give a crap for 48 hours because you get to Revel in the silence and not have to talk to your partner no you have to be the one that moves towards the repair and instead of shutting down notice the part of you that wants to check out and do the hard thing confront the hard thing and actually send the text message make the phone call make the FaceTime you know tap your partner on the shoulder say you're sorry take ownership over your part in the disconnection you have to lean into beginning to trust that when you take ownership you're not going to be severely punished because the the problem and the challenge that a lot of avoidant people have had is that when they did try and take responsibility in their youth they were generally punished really severely or they were criticized really heavily or they were shamed really heavily and so it you know developed a mechanism of oftentimes lying through Omission just not saying anything and and then you know hopefully you get away with it uh which was my favorite mechanism and modality as as an avoidant was just like if I just don't say anything then maybe it's not a problem um so that's that's another one and then again regulating your nervous system but instead of self soothing it's relational soothing or relational regulation so there's a bunch of different things that you can do um I can give sort of a an overview of something you can do to co-regulate with with your partner if you're in a relationship you can sit forehead to forehead with your partner and if you are a guy in a relationship with a woman you put your hands on the on her back where her ribs are the lower part of her ribs and she puts her hands on the lower part of your ribs so that you can feel her inhale and exhale and then you breathe together and you follow her breath because men have larger lungs so we have larger um oxygen capacity and so you want to follow her breath because if she tries to follow you it's going to be very suffocate she going to pass out my my wife and I have this running jok she's like how do you take in so much damn oxygen I'm like I don't breathe so infrequently Conor yeah right I know um so you follow her breath and then you take about 30 to 40 breaths together just at a natural pace forehead to forehead feeling the back of her ribs breathing with her and as you do this your bodies are going to start to synchronize and so as you breathe with her what will happen is your breath rate per minute will match with her and after about 20 breaths your heart rates will start to syn up and so you know if you're at a 75 BPM and she's at a 60 BPM or you're at a 60 BPM and she's at 75 what will happen after about 20 to 30 breaths is that your heart rates will start to synchronize with one another and your heart rates will match at the lower pace and you will co-regulate together so that's just a a good exercise that you can do um is that something that you do in response to a situation is that something that's good to just do as a habit yeah it's something that you I would recommend doing as a habit it's something that like after conflict you're probably not going to want to do you know like as an avoidant person it's just not going to be like the number one thing that you like you you want to do and so this is something that I would recommend people just practice a couple times a week in relationship um it can create a lot of intimacy I know a lot of couples use it um you know before sex or before bed or you know it just after the kids are down and life is crazy or whatever it is right so just you can use this as an ongoing practice you could use it postc conflict but I think for the average avoidant person that that's going to be too much level of discomfort uh how long you mentioned 20 breaths is around about where you start to synchronize five minutes yeah about about four to five minutes is where you want to land and and again both of you closing the eyes tuning into your body and just notice what happened to any anxiety uh any fear that you might be feeling notice what actually physically what happens in your body because again the main part of healing your attachment dysfunction or your attachment wound is about re acclimating your nervous system to either uh trusting the self or trusting the relationship so your body has to acclimate and then your mind will follow if you try and cognitively you know know think your way into a secure attachment it'll just never work you will stay in the same patterns your body has to trust yourself or trust the relationship and for the avoidant person you have to trust the relationship and so that's a really good exercise I think the last piece that I would just say if I can add one more piece in um is you have to practice getting uncomfortably close for the avoidant person you do not want to get close you do not want to be known there's there's resistance that is protecting you from getting too close and so the biggest challenge that avoidant people will face is that when they start to get close sexually emotionally psychologically Etc they are going to feel resistance and that resistance is normal it is just your body trying to protect itself from something that it falsely has labeled as a threat so you have to work to regulate your body to trust relationships and you know this can be hard if you found yourself in a relationship with a partner that you're like I actually don't know if I trust this person um that can be confus that's activating your intrinsic and maybe some cues that you're picking up on from the other person at the same time that's right yeah and I mean I had a I had a history of choosing women that I actually like didn't trust you know and it's like a classic avoid in just yeah hooray and there there was one woman that I did trust and then I you know blew blew that to smithery double hoay well done yeah double huray yeah but you know now I'm married and I have a child and I figured it out and so so can you did it um what if there's someone listening who goes this all sounds great but I see myself in both of these I find myself uh fawning and and needing reassurance but then also there's times when I kind of need to be on my own and push myself away and I subjugate my own desires and I I worry about making my own needs known I'm also needy and sort of isolated at the same time is that a thing yes yes so there's something called the fearful avoidant and the the fearful avoidant that we were talking about is kind of like anxious attachment and avoidant attachment sandwiched together it's a beautiful thing uh it's a much smaller it's a much smaller percentage of people so uh percentage wise roughly 50% of people have secure healthy attachments um and then you've got like 23% of people 22% of people um that are anxious and roughly about the same that are avoidant and then are very small percentage of people that are fearful avoidant um and so the the people that are fearful avoidant uh this is also known as disorganized attachment and it's hard because you will cycle through um the experience of the the the disorganized attachment is sort of characterized as a really deep desire for intimacy and closeness while feeling completely unlovable and distrusting people to accept who you are and actually support you so that's the essence of the disorganized attachment if you really genuinely feel like you have disorganized attachment I would strongly recommend finding somebody that knows about how to work with attachment to support you what you will what you will have to do is work on both of the pieces of anxious and avoidant you will have to to work on developing a sense of self-trust and being able to regulate and soothe yourself when that anxiety starts to spin up and you will also have to begin to choose some people in your life that you begin to trust that you begin to find safety in that relationship and bring yourself more openly to that relationship so you have to kind of spin both plates at once throughout this entire conversation you have used the relationship between yourself and another person as both the Battle Ground and the training ground for how this manifests and also how you improve it is it possible to improve attachment on your own can people monk mode their way through their attachment no yeah no Sigma the sigma male uh Community is not happy to hear that Well here here's what I'll say like I think I think this is where the red pill got so much traction right is that the red pill is very much a non-relational framework it is hyper contr control oriented hyper control oriented it's very much about create this Frame hold this Frame um you know walk through life in this Frame and that frame usually doesn't require you to be open doesn't require to be any type of vulnerable doesn't require you to be real doesn't really require you to Express what you need or want in the relationship and and so it allows you to to kind of like circumvent the the rawest that can sometimes happen in relationship um again we are wired to be social creatures and we are meant to be in relationship with other people and some of the greatest Joys that you will experience in life and a lot of the research you know there's the longest standing study that I'm sure you've talked about countless times on the show that talks about how one of the one of the greatest predictors of life's longevity and happiness is the quality of your relationships at 50 you know the quality of your relationships and so you know I think I know that there's a there's a lot of work that we can do on our own there's a lot of stuff that we can you know that we can work on psychologically and mentally and physically and financially within ourselves and we can do that work on our own but when it comes to getting better at relationships you have to do that in relationships and that's the hard part because some people just suck at relationships and it's and and I think that in today's world you know relationships are challenging and there's a lot of there's a lot of narrative and story out there that says don't bother it's not worth the rub and you know just monk mode it and make your money and buy your Bitcoin and then retire in Dubai and find yourself a chick from the Middle East yeah I I I think you're right man and you know the more that I see um even some of the conversations not some of the conversations I've had in the past I don't think I was dismissive of connection or or love or anything like that but there is definitely a risk when you look at the Dynamics of relationships through such a raw materialist evolutionary psychology human behavioral ecology lens they become very transactional you don't talk about the phenomenon of being in love like what does that feel like what is the texture of your mind when you're borted with somebody else it's not I don't hear about mate guarding or like comparative mate value or like cross- seex mind reading failure or self-objectification I don't want to hear about that I want to hear about what does it feel like to be a person that is in love with another person and in Union with them like what's that like to have this strange intimate fearful shameful guilt-ridden loving magnificent thing this what what's that like and so few of the conversations especially coming out of sort of the manosphere side but even my side as well like it it is largely bereft of that because it's really difficult to Define like how many thousands of years have poets and philosophers been trying to describe what love is and we still have like quite a crap definition of it so I understand why it doesn't really lend itself to the very utilitarian rational view of the world that we have right now but increasingly I'm I'm the the more attention that I pay to that side of things the more I realize that it those seem to hold an awful lot of the missing answers and I think that um it's an uncomfortable realization that you can't fix all of your problems yourself because that feels like my agency has being ripped away from me in a meritocracy where the winners are worthy of their successes what are the losers worthy of well they're worthy of their losses right like it it is ruthless to hear it but it seems to be true like look if you want to actually make this thing work you need to step not just outside of your comfort zone like do a heavier workout like actually outside of your comfort zone a different domain of of discomfort like doing salsa dancing or speaking on stage in front of people or opening up and trying to trust somebody in a relationship and it seems like a lot of personal development a lot of crap personal development is prepared to push people very hard within domains that they're already comfortable within so it's like get comfortable with the uncomfortable within the comfortable as opposed to get comfortable with the uncomfortable in the uncomfortable which is your relationship it's it's your it's your your conversations with other people um just to kind of round this out one of the important things that you've spoken about is how you understand um you weave this narrative together of what happened in childhood how that can contribute to the way that you feel now and then you sort of move forward from there with that information it's very important for you to couch how you feel now in what happened previously what happens if you don't have a particularly strong memory of your childhood you don't have you mentioned the a number of serious formative incidents that occurred for you and you could tell from there that this was the thing but what if you're like I don't know man like before 10 years old I kind of I don't know I don't really remember much and then you memories kind of spotty after that what did those people do yeah great great question because I think this is a very very common question that guys have which is I don't remember much from my childhood or I think overall my childhood was pretty good you know and that's a pretty common theme that I hear and and yet they have all of these relational issues that are getting in the way and so what I usually say is you don't have to have this vast Memory Bank of what happened in your childhood you know I don't I have one memory from when I was three that was pretty formative and and rough uh and then I don't have a lot of memories between three and like kind of like 10 to 12 but I do have the felt experience of what it was like growing up as a kid I don't have a ton of like Crystal Clear memories but I do have some general uh feelings and emotions and experiences from what it was like to be me as a kid and I think that if you work with good practitioners you will find that you can you can actually find a lot of that within yourself and and if that still sounds hokey to you and you're like I don't know about that ask yourself the question like where did these patterns come from these patterns that are showing up in my relationship the pattern of sabotaging sex or the P the pattern of sabotaging communication or continuing to attract these Gong Show you know like you have a part in that so there is some origin to it it didn't just manifest manifest oh God I hate that word it didn't just manifest out of nowhere you know it it originated somewhere and it originated in an experience likely in your Youth and in your formative years where you were learning how to do relationships and how to show up in relationships and so you can ask yourself a few questions number one you can ask yourself um what are some of my formative experiences or feelings growing up what are some of my formative experiences or feelings growing up so let go of memory let go of trying to you know locate some damaging moment you know uh ask yourself what did it feel like to be in relationship with my mom or my dad what did I experience when I would get something wrong with my mom or my dad what did I experience when I needed love or attention or valid from my mom or my dad and you can just go down the list and instead of trying to recall some very specific memory you go for sensation and you know a lot of the research shows you know the book body keeps the score your body actually holds that experience in it and so you have to look for sensation over memories and you have to look for experience over some very clear memory of you know when your uh when your attachment was inter uped because some people are going to have that where they just have those very clear interruptions the memories of the interruptions and for other people it's just more of like I just felt like I couldn't trust dad or it just felt like Mom was constantly smothering me and you know needing to tell me about how she was feeling and it felt suffocating and so that can be more of a lived experience than any one particular memory and for a lot of guys it actually helps to to evoke some of those memories where they connect with the experience and the feeling first and then they're like oh actually I do have this memory of X Y and Z so we have to connect with the experience and the feeling first um because you know you're I like to say that like just like your thoughts are the language of your mind your emotions are the language of your body and your nervous system and we as men have largely not been taught to decipher the data and the information of our body and so we haven't been taught how to speak the language of our nervous system and so we over index our mind and we get stuck and then we try and recall memories and then we get [ __ ] frustrated and then we're like f it I just won't do just I'll just be fine and then we get into another relationship and that same damn pattern shows up again and we're like why is this happening yeah well this is the next this is the next episode that I want to do with you um which is about integrating emotions understanding what we're feeling and it sounds so stupid it's sound so stupid to say how do you not know what you're feeling of course you're feeling it like how do you not know and yet when you try and get people to describe okay and what are you feeling right now I I've like a thing is it a is like is it anger is it agitation is it frustration is it resentment is it bitterness is it like you know it's just this big block of something and especially as guys especially as guys it is so we're so bad at this particular skill tell you one thing that might actually be useful uh I'm sure that you've got an answer for this someone is in a relationship with somebody who is anxious or somebody's in a relationship with someone who is avoidant what are the ways that that person can help an anxious or an avoidant person to um improve to to come to to get into secure attachment great I'm so glad that you asked this one um okay if you are in a relationship with somebody who is the anxious partner remember that that person struggles to trust themselves struggles to regulate and soothe themselves and struggles to see their own worth and value so you can do a couple things number one you can identify when you think that they're feeling that anxiousness okay and one thing that can be helpful is to actually inquire with the anxious person are you feeling anxious right now are you questioning whether or not uh you matter to me you know are you questioning whether or not you that like I care about you you know those those types of things can be very helpful because then that person would be like yeah actually I am feeling those things a lot uh and and then one big thing do not try and solve it for them okay this is a this is a relational pattern that happens for a lot of couples when one of them is anxious is that the other person moves into an overfunctioning role and tries to solve that problem for that anxious person and it recreates the dynamic that they sometimes have felt in childhood where they had a helicopter par parent solving all of their freaking problems so do not solve their problem instead put it back on them what do you think you need to do right now in order to feel better in order to feel less anxious in order to feel like you have Worth or value and they're probably going to try and put it back on you and say well I need you to X Y and Z right and you have to use some discernment about yeah okay I'm happy to tell you that I love you and I'm happy to tell you that I want to be with you and what do you think you need to do what do you feel like you need to do in order to develop some more confidence some more self-esteem some more trust that you have worth and value in our relationship and let that person start to tell you what they think they need to do sometimes that is an incredibly incredibly helpful step um the other thing is you you can practice co-regulation with your partner there's a ton of um other techniques outside of the one that I gave you you can just you know look up co-regulation online and there's some great um partnership exercises that you can do in your relationship that will help them reduce their anxiety if they if they are a person that genuinely struggles with anxiety but that person will need to tell you what they are doing to regulate their anxiousness and um and you can support them through that process you can say and tell them hey I'm here for you as you go through this I'm not going to go anywhere as you figure this out because the anxious person's greatest fear is if I don't figure this out you're going to leave me and so you have to just reinforce with that I'm anxious about fixing my my that's right that's right and it just and it just piles up you know on top on top and on top and for for a lot of women specifically in relationship this is the demon that they carry right is this debilitating anxiety of am I enough or are you going to leave me for somebody else so that's on the anxious side on the avoidant side it's a little interesting and tricky because you cannot make an anxious person or make an avoidant person not be avoidant um they have to choose to lean in to open up to express to take the risk and it's hard because a lot of behaviors and things that you're going to quote unquote try and do with that avoidant person are going to cause them to want to shut down more so you can do a couple things um number one you can ask them if they are interested uh in maintaining connection on a consistent basis and if they're willing to do what they think it takes in order to maintain that connection um open the conversation do they even want to do the work do they even want to lean in do they even want to face some of their fear because if they don't it's very likely that nothing that you can do because I get a lot of questions from women my my husband my boyfriend's avoidant what can I do um if he's not willing to lean into his own or she's not willing to lean into her own discomfort and fear of connection then it's not it's just not going to happen there's nothing that you can do um so in some ways and this is what I'll say in some ways the avoidant person puts their partner into the helpless position that they feel and that they felt growing up the avoidant person puts their partner into the helpless position that they felt when they were put into a position of over responsibility when they were put into uh the experience of trying to solve a problem for a parent right you know they put into a parentified position and they have to try and solve something for their parent that they absolutely cannot solve because they're eight um so what else you can do is invitations invitations invitations invitations create openings to connect with your avoidant partner without heavy expectations um do not use threats do not use demands let go of that what happens for a lot of Partners in relationship to an avoidant is you have to do this or I'm going to leave you you have to go see a therapist you have to read this book I need you to X Y and Z and for the avoidant that entrenches their position they're like [ __ ] you I'm not doing anything then right like I will show you how stubborn I can be and so stop trying to to threaten stop trying to demand things and reinforce and this is super important if you get nothing else from dealing with avoidance reinforce that that person has a choice and give them a choice as often as humanly possible hey would you like to come give me a hug hey would you like to have pizza for dinner tonight hey do you want to tell me how your day was versus tell me how your day was why won't you tell me how your day was what's going on you don't want to tell me what your day how your day was no do you want to tell me how your day went do you want to talk about you know what's going on with your mom and you just keep opening the door and inviting that person to express to connect to be in relationship with you that's the biggest thing that you can do hell yeah Connor Beaton ladies and gentlemen Connor I love you I I I think that the Insight that you've got is so phenomenal and it is a a very important antidote to a lot of awful advice on the internet you work with tons of men and the opportunity to kind of learn what you have uh seen firsthand on the therapy floor on the The Men's Work floor all the rest of it I think is a a total treat so thank you for coming where should people go they want to keep up to date with all the stuff you do the books the podcasts the courses all that stuff yeah I mean the the best place is mant talks.com um we've got Live Events uh and Retreats for guys there's a book that I wrote called men's work um which we talk talked about last time I really appreciate you having me on man so yeah man talks.com uh man talks on Instagram um your podcast great as well people should go check that out that's really good yeah yeah yeah and I I did a deep dive like deep deep on on these subjects so love you too buddy thank you so much for having me back on it's such an honor to just jam with you and hang out and be Bros I could talk about this all day dude I appreciate you until next time if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's available right here go on give them a watch