451. Why you need to stop psychoanalysing the people you date

Dating can bring out the psychologist in us. One delayed reply, one vague comment, and we try to decode someone’s attachment style, childhood wounds, and capacity for commitment. But while psychological language can help us make sense of relationships, it can also become a way to avoid the much harder truth - sometimes we simply don’t know yet. In this episode we look at why overanalysing feels so reassuring, especially when we have been hurt before, and how the search for hidden meaning can distract us from direct communication, being present, and the person actually in front of us. Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s We explore: • The difference between noticing patterns and control rumination • Why dating uncertainty makes labels feel so appealing • Why overanalysing often comes from fear rather than insight • Why this can stop us from being vulnerable ourselves • Why behaviour matters more than the story behind it • How to slow the spiral and regain clarity, communication, and self-trust Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s https://substack.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Our favourite sources: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_stop_overthinking_your_relationship https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X16300306?via%3Dihub https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.75.2.545 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-01742-003 The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Jemma Sbeg?

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• 0:48Jemma Sbeg?

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• 1:34Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:19Jemma Sbeg?

  why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good.

• 3:04Jemma Sbeg?

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• 3:31Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

• 3:51Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. As someone who studied psychology and spends a lot, and I mean a lot of time in psychology research and psychology spaces and therapy spaces, I used to have this terrible habit of psychoanalyzing my romantic relationships, my Tinder dates, my friends' Tinder dates, the relationships of people I saw online, of people in my family. It was a terrible habit. And over time, it created this barrier between me and the people that I met.

• 4:34Jemma Sbeg?

  Because I was always on high alert for warning signs or what their behavior might mean more clinically or psychologically that I needed to be aware of, that I needed to be alert to. I think these days, our just like collective understanding of psychology and of therapeutic terms, like hyperindependent, like emotionally unavailable, like mother wounds and father wounds and insecurely attached, avoidant, anxiously attached, like all of these, our knowledge of them has all just increased. And I think many of us who are actively dating

• 5:13Jemma Sbeg?

  find it very easy to rely on these categories to explain the individuals that we are dating. If you're somebody who finds dating very anxiety-inducing and scary, or you've been hurt before, it feels like a wise decision to overanalyze, psychoanalyze people's behavior and be on the lookout for red flags. It feels like a safe call. But what do we actually lose by, by doing that? Is it really actually necessarily helpful to look at dating behavior through this lens all the time? And just because we have the language, just because we understand these concepts,

• 5:55Jemma Sbeg?

  does it actually reduce the fact that maybe these people will just show up? And does it actually increase our chances of finding somebody who does match our style of loving and match our way of connecting? It's a very complicated topic, right? On one kind of hand, I do think that our understanding of this language has really helped a lot of people. On the other end, I do think that if you're dating and you're in your 20s or 30s, just because you are intellectually aware of the way that people can have difficulties with love or the ways that they can show up, and just because you can intellectualize relationship problems, doesn't mean that you're actually solving them, especially when you're at the beginning of a relationship

• 6:38Jemma Sbeg?

  and you don't really know a person well enough to make a call. So even though we feel like this is helpful, is it? And what is it actually doing to our dating prospects? That is what we're going to explore today. I hope you find this episode informative. Without further ado, let's get into the psychology behind why we psychoanalyze the people that we date.

• 7:02Jemma Sbeg?

  When we talk about psychoanalyzing or overanalyzing somebody that we are courting or that we are dating, what we are usually talking about is the tendency to link behavior, everyday behavior, to something deeper, something hidden, something pathological even, psychological or unconscious. And we often base this explanation on maybe limited or inaccurate information. It is our tendency to take something they say or do and just dig, dig, dig, interpret, interpret, interpret, look to find a deeper meaning

• 7:42Jemma Sbeg?

  in order to avoid maybe a simpler, more accurate explanation that might hurt our feelings. For example, it might look like assuming somebody is avoidant because they take longer to reply to your messages, or interpreting someone's distance as a fear of intimacy when they simply just don't like you back. Like, that might be the actual explanation. It can also happen the other way around, right? We might hear that somebody's had a really difficult childhood or had a really tumultuous previous relationship and assume that this will mean they are emotionally unavailable. This will mean that they have a fear of intimacy, when we don't actually have the experience with them yet

• 8:27Jemma Sbeg?

  to make that call and to be able to actually understand them for all their different nuances. Now, to be clear, as I said in the intro, the words or labels we so often hear around relationships are really important. Things like attachment styles and emotional availability and boundaries and self-sabotage and avoidance, they all describe very real relational patterns that influence people very deeply. We know from extensive amounts of research, literally too many pieces of research to even begin citing, that something like an insecure attachment pattern that was developed in childhood tends to show up

• 9:07Jemma Sbeg?

  when we experience love in adulthood, in our 20s and beyond. We know that people who have had traumatic past relationships and relationship experiences may respond to that by becoming closed off naturally. We know that if someone saw their parents fighting all the time or saw a parent cheat or saw their parents stuck in a really toxic relationship, this can create a belief that love is not safe or that love is not a positive experience. And that creates a pattern within them that's not really about them, but is,

• 9:50Jemma Sbeg?

  and influences how they go out into the world and treat the people they date, unconsciously or not. But just because we logically know that these things do occur and what they look like in relationships and the struggles that they cause does not mean that we should be so quick to pathologize and label every dating behavior through this lens. We need to be aware that a single psychological concept can never be the full explanation of a person. A label is there to describe a pattern. It can also flatten an experience. It can flatten a person. You know, someone texting slow could be avoidant, or they could be busy. They could be overwhelmed, they could be unsure, they could be neurodivergent,

• 10:33Jemma Sbeg?

  they could be depressed, they could be uninterested, they could be cautious, like... There's all these different explanations. We typically just search for the one that fits our past narrative. Someone who struggles to talk about their feelings may have deep wounds from the past, but they may also have just grown up in a family where they just, this just wasn't normal. There just wasn't that kind of emotional language. It wasn't modeled to them. Or they may just need time to feel safe and to like really open up about their feelings and about how they feel about you. And that's again, totally natural. Someone needing space and saying, hey, I just need to back off for a little bit. One explanation is that they're emotionally unavailable.

• 11:16Jemma Sbeg?

  They could also be regulating themselves. They could also be actually trying to do what's best by you. They could be trying to maintain healthy independence or move at a pace that feels sustainable for them because they don't wanna hurt your feelings, because they're taking this seriously. When we psychoanalyze, what we often do is is take a word that's been used in one specific context for one specific thing, and we apply it to a lot of other behaviours that, as I said, have a different explanation. This links to a psychological idea that we know as concept creep. So in a two thousand and sixteen paper that was published in the Journal of Psychological Inquiry, this psychologist, his name is Nick Haslam, he's from the University of Melbourne.

• 12:01Jemma Sbeg?

  He argued that many harm-related psychological concepts, including terms around trauma, around abuse, attachment styles, mental disorders. They have expanded over time. In some ways, that's been really helpful. In other ways, it hasn't. These concepts, many of which began as as clinical terms and and clinical observations, they get taken out of that context and they start being used, I guess, more freely and being applied to more and more things and more and more experiences and events until their everyday use just doesn't reflect their original meaning. Avoidant attachment is an amazing example of this.

• 12:46Jemma Sbeg?

  When researchers first started investigating this pattern of of children relating to their parents and relating to others, they were looking at kids in orphanages, they were looking at kids in foster care. They were looking at children who had been seriously abused, and that's why they were seeing this deep avoidance of connection. Nowadays, it's not uncommon to hear people use it to simply describe someone who doesn't want a relationship. That's concept creep. And those two things are obviously not the same. And if the word we have for the most severe abandonment and attachment wounds

• 13:26Jemma Sbeg?

  becomes the same word we use for personal preferences or for somebody who is just dragging their feet. What word do we use for those extreme cases anymore? Like, what word do we now have to still ensure that the severity of what somebody is experiencing is clear? So that's kind of what we're describing in the kind of, I don't wanna say problem behaviour, but the problem behaviour we're thinking about. Why do we do this? Because it's not always intentional and it usually stems from a very real and a very sincere place, which is a fearful place. Labels like avoidant, like emotionally unavailable, like codependent, that we can

• 14:08Jemma Sbeg?

  very easily access and use to very easily explain away or categorize somebody's behaviour. They help give us a sense of certainty when a lot of dating is really, really uncertain. Like dating someone for the first time, dating somebody new, being interested in somebody is a really vulnerable human experience and the knowledge that we gain about somebody else and whether they're right for us or whether they have certain quirks, like the knowledge we gain is often slow. It takes time to really see somebody's true intentions. To get to understand who they are, what they are, the way they think, whether something's gonna work out

• 14:48Jemma Sbeg?

  is a slow process. And our fear wants answers now. Our fear is urgent. The anxious part of us wants to know as soon as possible, is this person safe? Is this person gonna hurt me? Am I wasting my time? It wants, it just wants any kind of clarity against the uncertainty of dating. When we simply don't know yet and all we have is little clues that have kind of put us on edge. We try to solve it in our own minds through labels and mental shortcuts. There is a really interesting article from this, I can think it's like a cent, it's like a centre, it's called the Greater Good Science Centre, I think at Berkeley, UCLA, one of those.

• 15:30Jemma Sbeg?

  And they wrote this paper titled How to Stop Overthinking Your Relationships, and it outlines the five types of rumination that takes place in romance. It's blame rumination, control rumination, doubt rumination, worst-case scenario rumination, and self-pity rumination. If you are an over thinker, it's an amazing article. And the biggest one on that list that takes place when we psychoanalyze a potential partner is control rumination, control thoughts. They um they orbit a desired future outcome. And they're very obsessed with the best way to achieve it. We wanna control exactly how this relationship is gonna go.

• 16:13Jemma Sbeg?

  They're also extremely sensitive to any deviations from that plan. Your control rumination is on high alert for anything that is out of the ordinary, anything that's gonna hurt us, anything that goes against our desire to control a situation. Instead of simply acknowledging that you like them and that you don't know where this is going and that maybe some of their behaviour is a little bit hard to categorize. Your control rumination, your mind starts analyzing, predicting, interpreting and explaining the reasons behind these very normal feelings through somebody else's behaviour. And it feels productive. It feels like the more I think about this, the more answers I'm gonna get. And with the more answers I'm gonna get, the more certainty I'm gonna receive.

• 16:55Jemma Sbeg?

  That's what we're craving. We're not actually craving anymore this, the love or the relationship or the slow burn. We're craving the knowing. This fits in with a much broader area of research on the psychology of uncertainty, which is like one of my favourite things ever to talk about as an uncertain person and a very anxious person. In a rather old paper published in nineteen ninety six, not that old, but old for psychology standards. The social psychologist Krogolansky and Webster, they developed the idea of the human need for cognitive closure. And this essentially refers to the desire for definitive answers to reduce discomfort and ambiguity.

• 17:39Jemma Sbeg?

  They suggested that when people strongly want closure, they may seize an explanation quickly and then freeze around it. And when they freeze around an explanation, they become less open to other interpretations of the same situation. In dating, this might look like labeling somebody as emotionally unavailable at the first sign of anxiety because that feels more tolerable than just accepting that you don't really know what they want yet, or that you're not that far ahead or down the line to know, or that this may just be anxiety that is coming from your own perception,

• 18:21Jemma Sbeg?

  not the reality of of the relationship or somebody else's behaviour. All of this is to avoid getting hurt. We're not blaming you. We're just, I'm just trying to explain it. Giving the person you're dating to a category feels very manageable, feels very stable. It almost feels like the more intelligent way of approaching a situation. Rather than simply admitting that you feel scared, rather than simply admitting that, hey, maybe this actually won't work out and there is a possibility that I'm gonna be hurt. You don't wanna be hurt, you wanna avoid that. This is a strategy for doing it. Sometimes trying to delve into their past as well to figure out like what's wrong with them also feels less humiliating than admitting that this connection isn't working out

• 19:06Jemma Sbeg?

  or that it just isn't developing in the way that you hoped. Again, that's a really hard pill to swallow if you really like somebody. Maybe you're right. Maybe they weren't told or made to feel loved when they were a child. And so they do have a very anxious or avoidant attachment style. Maybe their ex really did screw them up and they have a fear of intimacy. Maybe they just don't have the capacity to love as deeply as you. Maybe there is something psychological and pathological about their behaviour. But does that really change what is happening right now? Does it help you show up in your best way in this situation? Does it help your heart stay open? Does it help you feel hopeful or open to possibility? Probably not.

• 19:51Jemma Sbeg?

  This becomes, as I said, very intensive. You've been hurt before. So often, our psychology is intermingling with our perception of their psychology. If you have dated someone that turned out to be emotionally like avoidant, inconsistent, manipulative or just genuinely unsafe. It makes a lot of sense that you are more alert the next time you date someone. It makes sense that you wanna read all the books, know all the concepts, know everything there is to know. We learn from pain, neurologically, psychologically, emotionally, mentally. If something hurt you really badly at your core,

• 20:33Jemma Sbeg?

  you naturally become quicker to scan for signs that that is happening again, sometimes without you even knowing it. The thing is, is that this actually ends up. Hurting and influencing your own behaviour more than you really can tell. In another rather old but very well cited nineteen ninety eight paper that was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, these researchers wanted to kind of prove or provide some evidence for this theory and they conducted two studies on rejection sensitivity and conflict between couples in romantic relationships. They conducted a longitudinal study and they conducted a laboratory study to basically figure out

• 21:14Jemma Sbeg?

  if we enter a relationship scared, does this influence how the relationship's gonna work out? We actually featured this study as part of our Study of the Week series over on Substack a couple of weeks ago. So if you are not a member and you wanna know the full details of how they went about discovering or finding the outcome of this study, you can go and join there. But I can tell you what they discovered. I can tell you the conclusion, which was that people who entered a relationship expecting rejection often exhibited behaviours that the researchers claimed contributed more to a rejecting response from their partner. They were more likely to start arguments, they were more likely to be suspicious, they were more likely to sense rejection in places that it wasn't occurring.

• 21:59Jemma Sbeg?

  And this contributed to a really awful cycle for them where they entered a relationship anticipating that things were gonna go wrong. This increased behaviours that made things go wrong, which therefore made them feel like in the future, relationships were going to always be a catastrophe and the cycle started again. A more recent piece of work actually supports this. This one was in, conducted in twenty twenty three from researchers at the University of Wollongong and the University of Leeds in Trinity. And it was a massive meta-analysis. It looked at sixty studies involving like seventeen thousand people exploring the same thing. Do our, does our fear of relationships and fear in relationships create a self fulfilling prophecy?

• 22:41Jemma Sbeg?

  They found that it did because our fears often shape our behaviours in ways that we don't really know, which in turn shapes our reality. When we are primed to see rejection or relationship problems, we are way more likely to interpret such relationship problems from ambiguous cues. And then we behave with fear, often creating more conflict. I think a really key thing here is that this situation often gives us that I told you so moment. Like I told you, this guy was a bad egg. If we predict the behaviour or the rejection or the problems and it actually happens, we can turn around and say, see, this, this intellectualising I'm doing, this psychoanalyzing

• 23:25Jemma Sbeg?

  is helpful. I knew this was gonna happen. I need to continue to be on high alert because here's the evidence, not realising our contribution to the evidence. In reality, I don't think any amount of preparation or prediction for rejection or difficulty in a relationship like makes it any less painful. All it does, as the research suggests, makes it perhaps more likely to get a little bit out of control or makes it more likely to come up earlier. Again, is this intentional? Does that mean we are responsible for this person's pain or trauma? And does that mean that pain and trauma can't be overcome? No. It just means that entering a relationship on high alert,

• 24:09Jemma Sbeg?

  thinking it's gonna be helpful, often isn't. I wanna explore this a little bit more and why the narratives we construct about people might not always be accurate after this short break.

• 24:29Jemma Sbeg?

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• 25:12Jemma Sbeg?

  doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:29Jemma Sbeg?

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• 26:12Jemma Sbeg?

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• 26:54Jemma Sbeg?

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• 27:20Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritise my health in a realistic way this year and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 28:05Jemma Sbeg?

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• 29:13Jemma Sbeg?

  Psychoanalyzing the people we date, as we have explored, is a form of self-protection. We know that now. Does it actually protect us?

• 29:24Jemma Sbeg?

  No, I think we may have the label. We may understand the behaviour, we may be able to determine where it came from. But we still feel attached to this person, we still feel hurt when it doesn't work out, and we still feel pain. But another reason we may psychoanalyse or overanalyse their behaviour is because perhaps when we feel them pulling away, it protects our ego to do so before that reality really takes its shape and really happens. If someone doesn't pursue you in the way that you hoped, or is reluctant to kind of define the relationship, or maybe doesn't seem so invested, it is really painful to consider that the simplest explanation might possibly be that they just don't like you.

• 30:08Jemma Sbeg?

  Maybe they just, this wasn't gonna work out. Those possibilities are really uncomfortable because they require us to feel exposed in a very human way. So then if we assign a psychological explanation to it, maybe they're scared of intimacy, maybe their parents really like fucked them up, maybe they like me too much, maybe they're self sabotaging, whatever it is. That is a much easier pill to swallow because it allows our ego to be protected. It allows us to feel like there was nothing wrong with me, everything was wrong with them. Again, sometimes those explanations might be true. Not denying that, but sometimes they merely protect us from the pain of

• 30:50Jemma Sbeg?

  just not being chosen and just not being the one this time, which sucks. It really, really does. Sometimes, and not in all cases, but sometimes this also protects us from looking at our own behaviour, which I know is gonna be controversial. But if we can put everything down to somebody else's trauma or their emotional unavailability or their past issues, we don't have to ask ourselves the big questions we're asking them, like, did they communicate clearly? Did I communicate clearly? Did they overcompensate? Was I overcompensating? Why are they trying to rush intimacy? Was I trying to rush intimacy?

• 31:35Jemma Sbeg?

  Like, what about their behaviour was I ignoring? What about my behaviour was I ignoring? These are huge questions. It's really confronting to realise, hey, maybe I'm not the person I thought I was in a relationship. I think we often engage in this habit of psychoanalyzing because it kind of pushes those explanations and the mirror they'll hold up to our own kind of behaviour. Away, like it makes it not a priority. As somebody who's done that before, I feel quite confident in saying that happens quite a lot. Like, before I met my boyfriend, I was gonna say my current boyfriend, but my boyfriend. Um, I used to do this all the time. It'd be like, oh, God, he is just so, so insecure. He just has such an insecure attachment style.

• 32:20Jemma Sbeg?

  Meanwhile, I was like messaging this man or these men like multiple times a day. I would block them and then unblock them, mute them and then unmute them. The insecure person was me. It was so much easier to say that like they were the problem because then there was nothing to fix. They were unfixable. Whereas if it's about me, I'm responsible for my own issues, I'm responsible for my own, my own problems, I now have to do the work. I also think we often engage in this habit, and this is my final explanation for it, because it also provides us with a social function too. And I really don't see people talk about this. I don't see people talk about how psychoanalyzing is a way of bonding. Overanalyzing people has become, again, part of a shared language within friendships.

• 33:03Jemma Sbeg?

  You go on a date, something confusing happens, something weird, and suddenly like the group chat is on fire and like everybody's talking about it. Even when we watch like reality TV and it's like this person is acting this way, suddenly we all become psychologists and it's a fun thing to do. Everyone has a theory. Somebody says they're love bumming, somebody says they're intimidated by you. Somebody says, oh, he's overwhelmed by how much he likes you. They say this because they're your friends, like they want you to feel good about yourself. And this is part of being there for each other. This is part of bonding is hearing somebody's terrible relationship stories and being like, you're not the problem, they're the problem, here's the explanation. Sometimes the best part of the day is going home and telling the bad stories to our friends.

• 33:48Jemma Sbeg?

  As much as it is telling the good stories to our friends. There's a very interesting paper from two thousand and nine by the Belgian psychologist Bernadine where he talks about what he called the social sharing function of emotion. He argues that although there has been a shift in modern psychology towards a very individualistic view of emotion and emotional regulation and emotional experiences. When we experience intense things, we naturally wanna talk about them. We naturally wanna share it with others. We naturally want to unload and unburden ourselves. And that sharing has a very, very crucial interpersonal and social function. It creates connection, it creates meaning, um, it brings about support for us.

• 34:32Jemma Sbeg?

  So it makes sense that we wanna process dating uncertainty and dating unfortunate dating stories with friends, even if that means that the theories can get really, really wild and maybe inaccurate. It doesn't really matter at that stage. It just helps us feel less alone and less pessimistic. The danger in this though is that our desire to put somebody else's dating behaviour just like through a psychological prism or through a set of psychological criteria actually harms the potential for a relationship to develop naturally despite perhaps what are early hurdles.

• 35:14Jemma Sbeg?

  Firstly, what would happen if they're doing the same thing back to you as well? Like I spoke about, I've had all these issues in previous relationships and I always put it on them. And I, sometimes I think, I'm like, well, if they were doing that same psychoanalyzing, I wasn't gonna come out clean. Eh, either, like, I wasn't gonna be looking great. So if you're just two complicated people, two interesting, you know, deeply flawed but deeply loving people in a relationship and you're both in the early stages, putting the magnifying glass on each other, you're always going to find something that is wrong with somebody. You're always going to find some kind of psychological flaw. It's just only natural.

• 35:55Jemma Sbeg?

  By both doing that, by one person doing that, like the relationship is done, you'd never date anybody. Secondly, it can also create a confirmation bias, right? It can create this situation where we end up seeing things that just aren't there. But because we've imagined them or had come in with this preconceived notion, we believe they are. Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to seek, interpret and remember information in a way that supports what we already believe. It is one of the biggest cognitive traps that humans fall into. Often with things like politics, often with things like prejudices, belief systems. People don't talk about it with dating, but this is a classic example.

• 36:37Jemma Sbeg?

  Basically, if you decide that person you've gone on three dates with, based on what I've seen, they're avoidant, based on how they're texting me, based on the fact that they're a little bit awkward at the end of the last date, like they're avoidant, I know it. Once you have that fixed belief or what those previous psychologists called the frozen belief, there is nothing else you can say. You are going to look for evidence that they are like that. And you're going to discount any evidence that counteracts that or says something differently. It's not always your choice. This is a cognitive bias. It happens below conscious thought. You know, if they want space, that confirms that they're highly independent and they're gonna pull away. If they come closer, you also interpret that as being a negative thing.

• 37:23Jemma Sbeg?

  They're love bumming me, they're coming on really strong, maybe they can sense that I'm pulling away. When you have a preconceived notion, the theory becomes almost impossible to disprove. In psychology, we say that it lacks falsifiability. You cannot find any evidence contrary to how you already feel. And this hyper vigilance becomes very damaging in the early days of dating because nobody's getting past that. Nobody's getting past that. And as we said, because dating is naturally ambiguous, it's just plain awkward. It's, you're just trying to get to know somebody. You don't have the textbook on them. Applying this knowledge prematurely means that

• 38:07Jemma Sbeg?

  nobody is allowed to be imperfect anymore. Nobody is allowed to not be the one from the get go. And love just doesn't work that way. Even people who actually don't have any flaws, and not to say that psychological relationship patterns is even a flaw anyways, but even somebody who has nothing like that can still come off as if they do because of other things in their lives. Like the fact they're busy, like the fact that like their family may be having problems at the moment. Like the fact that like, maybe they're just in a weird stage of life. So if we interpret every moment of discomfort as a diagnostic clue, there's no space for connection. Nothing real ever develops. And.

• 38:52Jemma Sbeg?

  I also think we miss out on the exciting part about dating, which is the not knowing as well. If you just like fill all the not knowing with descriptions, dating is no longer fun and dating should be fun. It should be fun. It should be sexy. It should be adventurous. And we kind of lose that. The second thing we lose, as I've also said before, is our own emotional availability. And this is one of the greatest ironies. We often psychoanalyze people because we want intimacy to feel safer. But the analysis itself can become that barrier to intimacy that's coming from us, not from them, because it's originating from our own anxiety and from our own need for control. Therefore, we are going to pull back in ways we're imagining they're pulling back.

• 39:37Jemma Sbeg?

  We are going to try and play games as a form of self-protection that we would never like it if they were playing. Games like, I'm only going to message them if they message me first. I'm only going to plan the next date if they've planned the last one. I'm going to wait exactly as many hours as they did to message me back. If you think I'm being hyper-specific here, it's because I literally did all of those things. I think maturing is realizing, maybe you should just message them because you like them enough to risk it. Maybe you should just plan the date because you want to go on a date with this person. And it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. You can just ask them out and maybe you'll get hurt, but also maybe something great will come of it.

• 40:20Jemma Sbeg?

  The thing is, when we use the psychological jargon, um, sometimes this makes us sound very emotionally literate, but all we're actually doing is avoiding feeling emotionally exposed. And if somebody has attachment issues or past relationship hurts, they're doing the exact same thing. And we don't ever truly admit how we feel or what we need. And so this essential part of us like remains unseen. You know, it lets us feel like we're participating. It gives us the illusion of vulnerability without ever having to risk anything, without ever having to actually be vulnerable, direct or open about what we want.

• 41:02Jemma Sbeg?

  And there's an interesting contrast here with research on on naming emotions, right? Here's where the psychology comes back in in full force. In a two thousand and seven study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers at UCLA used brain imaging to examine what happens when people put their emotions into words. They found that just labeling negative emotions and just saying, I feel really anxious right now. I'm scared this won't work out. I'm fearful that this person would just be like the last guy or the last girl or the last person. Just doing that was associated with reduced activity in the amygdala, which is the, um, like the fear center of the brain.

• 41:45Jemma Sbeg?

  It was also associated with better emotional coping as well as increased activity in the prefrontal regions, which are involved in regulation and executive functioning. There is such an important and crucial difference between naming our own emotional experience in dating and forming theories about somebody else's emotional experiences in dating. Noticing that you feel anxious and uncertain can actually help you regulate yourself. Forming a theory around the person you're dating and who they are feels like self-regulation, you are actually just analyzing them.

• 42:31Jemma Sbeg?

  Naming your own emotions brings you closer to your own experiences. Whereas analyzing somebody else pulls you deeper into speculation, into uncertainty, because there's never really a correct answer unless you really, really do take the time to know somebody and pulls you away from actual real connection. This is why when you're spiraling, it's not necessarily helpful to just sit there and wonder what's wrong with them or what happened or like what they're thinking. The best thing you can do is actually just to sit in that feeling. And the better question to ask is like, why is this triggering me? What about their behavior is hurting me? What can I do with this feeling?

• 43:13Jemma Sbeg?

  How can I manage this feeling in the way that is best for me so that I'm regulated? And so that I can find the love that is meant for me? Like, that is the better question, putting it back on yourself. We have to remember when we analyze other people, we are creating or we're at risk of creating this thing called the parallel mind. We're going to talk a little bit more about this and also how to stop doing it, perhaps when you don't even realize you're doing it, which seems like it wouldn't work out, but I promise you, we're going to make sure that it's in our conscious state of awareness and something we can actually act on after this short break.

• 43:56Jemma Sbeg?

  These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors,

• 44:40Jemma Sbeg?

  to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know that feeling when your skin just needs a tall drink of water? That's what Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer is for. Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer absorbs instantly and hydrates for 100 hours for plump, glowing skin. That is correct, 100 hours. It is a lightweight, oil-free gel cream, safe for sensitive skin.

• 45:21Jemma Sbeg?

  It's allergy-tested, it's fragrance-free, it absorbs quickly, so skin feels hydrated without feeling heavy or weighed down. I use this daily and I'm very picky with what goes on my skin. I have a combination skin type, so I really don't want to feel too oily or too dry. And this product is perfect for that. I also find that Moisture Surge is a great lightweight base if you like something under your makeup. It makes your skin look so plump and soft, especially first thing in the morning when it's maybe not looking that way. Basically, I think it feels exactly like how you want a moisturizer to feel. Fresh, lightweight, and deeply hydrating.

• 46:01Jemma Sbeg?

  Try Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour today at clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 46:47Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 47:32Jemma Sbeg?

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• 48:17Jemma Sbeg?

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• 48:39Jemma Sbeg?

  A healthy relationship, whether it's with a friend, a romantic partner, a family member, it's built through communication, it's built through shared experiences, it's built through empathy. And crucially, it's built through something called rupture and repair. Rupture and repair is this idea that was first posed by the psychologist Edward Tronick in the nineteen eighties that essentially says, relationships cannot be amazing all the time. We actually need conflict and tension to reveal the things that may not be going right and fix them before they get any worse. Rupture and repair is how we re-establish trust and connection by splitting and then coming back together and filling that hole with each other.

• 49:24Jemma Sbeg?

  Basically, any relationship, even those in the early days, will have their moments, should have their moments. But over-analysis creates a second relationship, a second mind about the relationship that exists mostly inside your head. It creates a parallel relationship, one that isn't actually real, but one in which you are responding from that place. You are not just responding to what is happening, you are responding to what's happening in this parallel relationship. You are responding to what you imagine they're imagining about this imagined situation, what it resembles from your past, from their past, what your friends think, what a TikTok thinks. All of it is creating this reality that doesn't exist anymore. It's completely detached.

• 50:09Jemma Sbeg?

  And the more time you spend in that parallel world, the less time you spend in the actual relationship, the less time you spend in that repair stage, not even in that repair stage, but just in that building stage. Soon you're making decisions from this place. Again, sometimes your assessments may be correct, especially if you are very emotionally intelligent and very clocked in, but I want to get to this point, which is that it doesn't actually matter. Whether or not your assessment of this person as having this psychological or relationship issue is correct, is actually no longer the point. Because knowing that is only helpful up to a certain point.

• 50:53Jemma Sbeg?

  People are not the sum of things that have happened to them. They're the sum of the things that have happened to them and how they have responded. They are also their potential to be better in the future. They are also the potential for for for improvement and to prove themselves to you and to themselves as somebody different. People don't like to be related to as if they are just the things that have happened to them in their past and their potential is done. Even if your analysis is partly accurate, it can be invasive, it can be patronizing. And like I said, that's it for that person. You're saying that everything they've experienced before the age of twenty five is all they're ever gonna be, or before the age of thirty is all they're ever gonna be.

• 51:39Jemma Sbeg?

  I don't think that's true. A lot of people who have had really deep attachment problems, really deep issues in the past with parents, with exes, with complex relationships of all sorts, go on and have incredibly healthy relationships. And the people they're in relationships with, do you think that they would have had that if they'd been sitting there and somebody had come up to them with a big rap sheet of everything that was wrong with this person and said, here is every single label that you should know about before you make this choice? Like, we think that more information helps us make a more informed decision about somebody. It actually just overwhelms the part of our brain that is able to look at somebody

• 52:23Jemma Sbeg?

  and see who they truly are beyond this. We think that we're getting to the core. We think that we're getting to the ultimate essential part of who this person is, who they are at their essence. That is like, actually means very little. It means very little if somebody is committed to growing, is committed to you, has love in their heart, is trying really hard. This is not an argument for ignoring red flags. I really should say that. It's also not to say that we need to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially if they are demonstrating very harmful or manipulative behaviours, like just get get out of there. If they are somebody who has not done the work, doesn't wanna do the work, trust your intuition in those situations and like trust

• 53:07Jemma Sbeg?

  your assessment of how they are treating you. In those cases, pay attention to the labels, pay attention to the psychology of of their personality. But I don't think that's always the case. Even then, you don't always need to know the deepest psychological reason for somebody's behaviour in order to respond to it. This person might not even have a label, there might actually not be anything psychologically wrong with them. It might just be a dick. You do not need to know whether they are hyper-independent and why narcissistic and why traumatised and why. Just to decide that like this dynamic isn't working and like this person isn't nice to me and I don't feel good. Like you do not need a diagnosis to leave.

• 53:51Jemma Sbeg?

  You do not need to prove somebody is emotionally unavailable to admit that you feel emotionally lonely with them. This is what I'm trying to get to, the diagnosis, the psychoanalyzing, understanding intellectually why someone behaves a certain way, actually doesn't change the way that we feel. It can just provide further excuses, even at that point, to push down your feelings or to feel sorry for them or to give them a second chance, when maybe you just actually feel awful. Like, this is the thing that we're really trying to get to. Sometimes there's actually nothing wrong with this person, they're just not your person. Sometimes there is something wrong with this person, but you could know that regardless. Like you didn't need a label to tell you.

• 54:35Jemma Sbeg?

  And sometimes people are deeply hurt, but actually you're the one that is preventing what could be a very healthy relationship from emerging because you're the one with the wall up, you're the one who's not giving them a chance. So, how do we slow down when we know this about ourselves? When we find ourselves in an over-analyzing spiral? Let's talk about it. As someone who has been in your shoes, I I think I know, I know I know how hard it can be. I was guilty on all counts of doing this and feeling like this was gonna make dating safer. But then also, you know, not perhaps putting the spotlight on me

• 55:18Jemma Sbeg?

  and not actually thinking about where all this fear and anxiety was really coming from, which was unhealed wounds of my own. I think what helped me was just to name what was actually going on. Like, it was just to say, when I was finding myself in these spirals, I'm psychoanalyzing again, I'm giving labels that may or may not be there. I'm using this as a buffer between them and how I feel. Describing your tendency, remembering times before that you've done this and how it's worked out, and searching for the actual behavioural grounds for your assessment

• 56:00Jemma Sbeg?

  and whether you would think it was fair if somebody gave you this label this early on, gives you something concrete to work with. From there, you can really ask quite simple questions, which is like, label or no label, am I getting what I actually need from them? Psychology or no psychology, can they meet my needs? Are they happy? You don't have to over-complicate things. Like I would always try and come back to simple truths. Doesn't matter what may or may not be happening, am I okay with the behaviour, yes or no? Again, there are multiple possibilities. Analyzing them, assessing them, takes time away from the important thing, which is just like, how do I feel?

• 56:44Jemma Sbeg?

  I also used to do this thing where, like I said, I would like mute and unmute and I would block and I would unblock and I would do all these things to like keep people I thought weren't good for me at bay. And I'd become very obsessional and I would really like almost gather data on like their behaviour as justification for why they were the way they were. Sometimes you've just gotta be like, I'm sick of what my imagination is doing here. Why are you acting like that? Sometimes you just need to be like, okay, why are you taking so long to text me? What's up? I'm gonna be honest, like, if you want honesty from them, you need to provide them with the opportunity. And I remember doing this to my boyfriend and being like, God, he doesn't text me all day.

• 57:26Jemma Sbeg?

  And I know that I've previously self sabotaged relationships by filling in the blanks myself and telling myself that they're emotionally mature and maybe they weren't. I'm just gonna give this one shot, like, we've gotta try something new. And so I just asked him and he was like, I'm just, I can't have my phone on me at work. And I was like, God, all that psychoanalyzing. And I didn't even think that was gonna be the response. Like, all that psychoanalyzing for an answer so simple, the mind wouldn't even think about it. The next step is just to notice what the feeling of analysis is protecting you from. Underneath over analysis, there is often a very simple feeling or emotion, which is, I like them, I miss them, they remind me of somebody, I feel embarrassed, I'm jealous, I'm scared.

• 58:11Jemma Sbeg?

  And that is the emotion that you really need to be targeting. When you name the feeling directly, as we talked about before, the mind often has less of a need to build an elaborate theory, which takes away from addressing the feeling. It makes it so much less complex if we just admit that dating is hard and this is one of those points where it feels a lot harder. From there, you can turn your attention even further inwards and ask yourself, what am I afraid will happen? I feel afraid, I feel scared. Why is that a bad feeling? Am I trying to predict the future so I don't have to feel this way anymore? Or would me trying to analyze and actually help?

• 58:56Jemma Sbeg?

  Turn your attention back in on yourself and think of your own needs for a second. What is actually gonna help you regulate? Yes, you might know how you're feeling, you might know the simple answer for their behavior. What do you need right now? And look for consistency, like, look at their behavior right now as more than a backstory, more than psychology, more than something to solve, and just as a truth. I think this is a thing I've probably said, like, um, the same thing in a million different fonts, but like, it doesn't actually matter at the end of the day if there is a category for how they are treating you, if they are treating you badly. So if you have evidence in your feelings that you are not happy, that is the answer.

• 59:39Jemma Sbeg?

  And now the next thing to do is to be like, okay, I'm gonna ground myself here and I'm gonna do what I need to do for myself. I don't need a label. I might not even need to talk about this with somebody else who could give me one. They're not making me feel good. How am I going to go about feeling good? With or without them? Am I gonna communicate it? Or am I going to exit this situation and find somebody better? I think the other amazing part about taking a step away from psychoanalyzing is that it actually just saves you time. Like, I think all the complicated stuff just kind of rolls back. And you are so much better able to just be like,

• 1:00:23Jemma Sbeg?

  this isn't actually what I want. This isn't actually what I need right now and I'm gonna make that call. Again, psychoanalyzing is all about uncertainty management. And it's all about predicting what you need, want, can expect in a relationship. The other great way to be certain is to just make decisions based on your gut instinct and to just make the decision when you know you need to make the decision. I think often we talk about this with our friends. We talk about things with, with our therapist, which you should do, but you know, we, we overanalyze, we talk about it because we actually want a different answer or want a different outcome to the one that we are experiencing, right?

• 1:01:06Jemma Sbeg?

  We already know the truth of this, we know the truth of their behavior. The most certain thing you can do is to just do something about it. And if you're really worried about like, am I going to get hurt? Is the person gonna hurt me? Sometimes it's better just to be like, I'm going to take the evidence I have and let myself get hurt, maybe, accept the certainty that that is part of love. Or instead of going to a million people hoping a different thing when I already know what the thing is, just accepting that this isn't working and making the call for myself. What all of this comes back down to is trusting that you are going to be okay without this person. You are going to be okay if this person doesn't accept you.

• 1:01:49Jemma Sbeg?

  You're going to be okay if this person does and maybe has things in their past. That is like something we mentioned before that is so critical. So many people out there have deep issues. It's actually not about that. It's about whether they are willing to work on this relationship with you. And it's about whether they make you feel safe. Because somebody with the most intense relationship trauma you can imagine, like, if they do the work, if they go to therapy, if they really sit with their pain and sit with their own feelings about it, and if they really have awareness about it, could probably show up in a relationship much better than somebody who hasn't had any of their trauma, but just like, doesn't have any responsibility.

• 1:02:35Jemma Sbeg?

  So I think that's like the perfect way to finish this episode. All the language in the world isn't going to help you predict or ascertain or make any promises about whether a relationship is gonna work out or not. The only thing you can do is trust that you are going to be okay. Put the spotlight back on yourself and assess how maybe your emotional in- unavailability or issues is being projected into the relationship and do something about that instead. And then also just stay open to the fact that like, love and people can change and the right person will make you feel good about yourself. The right person will not have you overanalyzing and psychoanalyzing every single little thing

• 1:03:20Jemma Sbeg?

  they're doing in search of answers because they'll just be frank with you about what's going on in their mind. So, thank you for listening to this episode. Slightly rambly, I know, I had a lot to say, you can tell. You can always tell the episodes where like, I have a personal experience with it because I go very off script. So hopefully that's the kind of thing you enjoy, um, and we gave you enough psychology to really back it up. Thank you to our researcher, speaking of psychology, Libby Cobett, for her assistance with this episode. If you want some further research or to look at some of the um, research that we did use for this episode, it's in the episode description down below. You can also follow us on Substack, that study of the week, the one about rejection sensitivity is currently up there right now.

• 1:04:05Jemma Sbeg?

  And if you relate to rejecting people before they reject you, it's definitely a critical one to read. There is so much more information down below for you to explore. But I do just hope this has helped you understand your own patterns first before you try and interpret others second. And if you did enjoy this episode, leave a five star review. Leave a comment down below if you're listening on Spotify. And make sure that you check out an episode on Netflix, it does help us out a lot. Uh, it's a new thing for Netflix and maybe you didn't even know that we're on there now, but yep, we are. And, um, I don't really know what else there is to say about it, just really helps us uh, that they know that people like this podcast and are willing to watch it.

• 1:04:47Jemma Sbeg?

  So, thank you again, I hope you enjoyed, we will talk very, very soon.

• 1:04:55Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights that have made me more intentional

• 1:05:41Jemma Sbeg?

  and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is.

• 1:06:25Jemma Sbeg?

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• 1:06:37Jemma Sbeg?

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