Episode 561: Thais Gibson: The Four-Attachment Styles Explained + Why "Self Sabotage" Is A Myth

Your subconscious mind is running 95% of your decisions. Your conscious mind, the part that's setting goals, making resolutions, and telling itself to do better, is only working with the remaining 5%. That gap is why knowing what you should do is never enough. Thais Gibson has spent over a decade building a framework that actually closes that gap. She is a counselor, founder of the Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory™, and has worked with over 60,000 people through The Personal Development School. In this episode of Habits and Hustle, she breaks down why self-sabotage is not what we all think it is, how your attachment style is quietly running your relationships, and the exact process to rewire patterns you have been carrying since childhood. This is one of those conversations that will make you look at your own behavior completely differently. What's Discussed: (00:05) The real reason your conscious goals keep losing to your subconscious programming. (15:30) What your attachment style is actually telling you about your childhood. (29:00) The attachment combination most likely to end in a vicious cycle. (45:00) Why dating a secure person does not fix an insecure attachment. (58:00) That one belief that's quietly destroying your ability to connect. (1:05:00) What limerence is and why people mistake it for love. (1:15:00) The five pillars to rewire your attachment style at a subconscious level. (1:20:00) Why affirmations do not work and what to do instead. Thank You to Our Sponsors! AirDoctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE to get up to $300 OFF today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty (an $84 value) FREE! Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits http://getkion.com/habits for 20% OFF Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com/ and use code JEN for 35% OFF your first subscription. Therasage: Visit Therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code JEN to get 15% OFF your order. Your skin deserves this level of care. Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% OFF sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use the code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Rho Nutrition: Go to RhoNutrition.com http://rhonutrition.com/ and try Rho's Liposomal Glutathione. Use code JEN20 for 20% OFF sitewide. Manna Vitality: Try it now by using the code Jennifer20 at http://mannavitality.com/mannavitality.com http://mannavitality.com. Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Thais Gibson: Instagram: https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/944b934452824210b03acf300dd7a768/16/67e39d45264b29acba3af17ae66bb18324dd3088cc4ded88be19c1572b440827?cache_buster=1771348356@thepersonaldevelopmentschool https://www.instagram.com/thepersonaldevelopmentschool/?hl=en YouTube: https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/944b934452824210b03acf300dd7a768/18/977ae53d68f03e2b2f482b5583cefa2bdca54bbe96af089976897d87aed42fc6?cache_buster=1771348356@thepersonaldevelopmentschool https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQ4lSaKRap5HyrpitrTOhQ Podcast: https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/944b934452824210b03acf300dd7a768/20/e75ad43927b6988352b6847b73c55f7fbfa8fb81d49c971b9151bc2da7dbc02a?cache_buster=1771348356The Thais Gibson Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thais-gibson-podcast/id1478580185 Facebook: The Personal Development School https://www.facebook.com/ThePersonalDevelopmentSchool/ TikTok: @thaisgibson https://www.tiktok.com/@thaisgibson Book: The New Attachment Theory https://www.amazon.com/New-Attachment-Theory-Relationship-Rewiring/dp/1964508584 Attachment Style Quiz: attachment.personaldevelopmentschool.com/ https://attachment.personaldevelopmentschool.com/

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Jen Cohen?

  Wow, okay, what a morning today. Okay, today, you guys, you don't even want to know my morning, but the good news is, we have a very, very cool guest joining us today on the show. Her name is Thais. I said that right, right?

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Perfect, you got it.

• 0:22Jen Cohen?

  Thais Gibson, who is certified in over 13 therapy, oh my god, 13 modalities.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:30Jen Cohen?

  Wow. And you also are a PhD in pastoral studies?

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Pastoral counseling. So I'm a-

• 0:37Jen Cohen?

  Tell me what that is, okay?

• 0:39Speaker 02

  So I, my thing for sure has always been where neuroscience overlaps with psychology and different spiritual teachings. So pastoral counseling links back to Christianity and Christian studies. And then I've been a huge fan for years of like studying Zen Buddhism and mindfulness and all these different things. And they played such a huge role in my own life that I really sought to understand, okay, if I started on that path, and that was so big for me, what was happening? From like a neuroscience-psychology standpoint, that they were so impactful? So that's where I went into all these different certifications in cognitive behavioral therapy and neurolinguistic programming and hypnotherapy and trying to just bridge understanding, especially our subconscious mind and how we get wired and how that changes, and how a lot of these different teachings have an impact on our neuroplasticity

• 1:23Speaker 02

  and impact our brain and the way that we show up and move in our lives.

• 1:26Jen Cohen?

  No, I know. A lot of the things that I, I always kind of think, when I think about you, I think about the attachment styles, because so much of your content and what you speak about is about all of our programmed, right, attachment styles. And you're a big believer that we can reprogram ourselves to change our attachment styles, to have better relationships, not just personally in terms of man, woman. It could be friends, it could be husband, it could be on every level, right?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:59Jen Cohen?

  My first question to you is, when we make a decision, in your opinion, are we basing the decision on our subconscious mind or our conscious mind?

• 2:08Speaker 02

  That's a great question. So- Ninety-five to ninety-seven percent of all of our beliefs, our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions or choices, decisions, are made at a subconscious level. That's, that's the part of us, it's our habituated self. So it's sort of the warehouse of all of our conditioning and programming. And it's interesting because you hear about it in spiritual teachings, kind of almost referred to as like the ego, right? It's like the warehouse of all of your conditioning. And it's so interesting how we get wired with these different patterns. But then your conscious mind is only three to five percent. And what's really crazy is that your conscious mind, that three to five percent of you, cannot outwill or overpower the subconscious mind.

• 2:41Jen Cohen?

  Isn't that crazy? So if, if most of what we do is based on that and that number, but yet like the, we, we have no idea what we're even, what was even in our subconscious, right? So it's kind of, we have, is it, do we, do we go by our intuition? Like, how do we know when and when we're being controlled by our subconscious? And then how do we like, uh, stop it in its tracks to take us on a trajectory that would be bad for us?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Great question. So it's very context specific. So that's why I got into attachment cells, because it's sort of the warehouse of our deepest conditioning from our childhood. And you can find it based on your patterns and themes, according to how you learn to attach. It's such a foundation of like what your conditioning will become. And so we can come back and explore that. But one of the easiest things to do is to recognize that there's no such actual thing as self sabotage. What we experience as self sabotage is our conscious mind intending one thing with that three to five percent of us, and our subconscious mind having different conditions that go against it. So nobody's waking up and saying, oh, today I'm going to sabotage my life. Like, there's no such actual thing. But if we say, okay, I'm gonna quit eating chocolate, or I'm gonna go to the gym every day, or I'm going to set these New Year's resolutions for myself.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Well, why do we think that roughly eighty-eight percent of people fail their New Year's resolutions in the first seven days? Because when we set goals, it's only with our conscious level of mind.

• 3:57Jen Cohen?

  You know, it's interesting, I want to interject there, because I know what I do a lot, and this is, it's always been very, it's nerve wracking. When I know I have to do a particular thing, like, like a shoot of some kind, like a fitness shoot, I've been in fitness, I was really heavily a fitness person many years ago. I've kind of morphed and evolved since. However, when I knew I had to do something that was really, really Really time sensitive, like I had six weeks to get ready for this, eight weeks or something like that. Without fail, I would, what you call it, there's no such thing as self sabotage, but I was self sabotage. Purposefully, like I would overeat intentionally, I'd eat the wrong things, I would not want to do this. Like I would go against my, my conscious want for that thing.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:43Jen Cohen?

  Why would I, why do I do that? If there is a goal in mind that I really want to achieve, why am I self, I say it self sabotaging? Even if I think, I know that's not what I want to happen, like I know I would, I know what I want to happen. I do the opposite.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'll give you a rabbit hole answer, but it'll come full circle and be super interesting, okay? We have two major things that are driving us at a subconscious level all the time. Our limiting beliefs that we've acquired and then our needs, okay? So let's start with our needs, because the limiting beliefs is a little more obvious. Everybody has subconscious drivers that are driving their behavior all the time. And we have six basic human needs and then how we get used to meeting those needs become our personality needs. They're sort of like our personal needs. So I was working with a woman once and she came in to meet with me and she said, hey, like I am here to actually do the psychological work. She was pre diabetic, she just got told by her doctor, she's pre diabetic and she's like, every year for the last 12 years, I've told myself, I'm gonna eat healthy, I'm gonna go to the gym and I don't.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  And I've tried meeting with dieticians, nutritionists, all these things, I don't, I just, I go through the same patterns, what's going on? So we did her needs assessment and what we found is her biggest needs at a subconscious level, these drivers were for family, social connection, emotional connection, comfort and safety. And so what happens is your conscious mind says, I want to eat healthy, I want to go to the gym every day. And her subconscious mind says, no, that's going to take time away from family, social connection, emotional connection, safety and comfort. We don't feel these things. And so these drivers is like your conscious mind intends someone with that three to five percent and your subconscious programming says something else. Second to that, what's also really interesting is that our earliest wired conditioning around food, it happens when we're being breastfed. And when a mother is breastfeeding their child, well, what happens? Well, there's a tremendous amount of oxytocin produced, the bonding neurochemical.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  So all of our wiring deeply about food is that food equals safety and comfort and being held and being protected. Protected and cradled and connection. So our wired associations to food are that it gives us safety, connection, comfort. And so what ends up happening for a lot of people is they say, I want to quit eating chocolate or quit, you know, or go to the gym every day. And this woman, what we had to do is we had to find a way to link her subconscious needs with her conscious mind's goals. So we had her, you know, social connection, family. We had her start there. We got her to go to group spinning classes with her friends, group yoga classes in her social community. We got her to sit down and then start doing hiking classes with her, or going to hiking groups with her husband, going to the park on weekends with her, her family. All these things that were more active.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So instead of her conscious and subconscious assuming that these things are separate, they were now working together. And right there, that diminished so much of what the, the resistance was because now those conscious desires or goals with the subconscious needs were in alignment and in resonance instead of dissonance, instead of against each other. Right? She no longer sits there thinking going to the gym and doing all these things takes time away from social connection, takes time away from family. Now she's lined them up together.

• 7:32Jen Cohen?

  Right. How do you figure that out, though?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  There's a needs assessment.

• 7:35Jen Cohen?

  Okay. Is there a needs assessment?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can take you through how to find them in a second. There's, there's a few, your needs are always going to be in your behaviors, but we can come back to that. The second part of it is that we have these limiting beliefs. So a lot of times if we acquired because of our childhood, things like I'm undeserving or unworthy, then sometimes when we get really close to a goal that we have, we sabotage because we just don't believe that we're worthy of it. Or if we think we're not good enough, then we sabotage because we just don't think that we're deserving of having that thing. So there's ways to find, both through a needs assessment and through a questionnaire to find your, your core wounds or, or limiting beliefs, what those things are. And then you rewire these limiting beliefs through neuroplasticity and changing, there's an exercise that we do, and I'm happy to share that. And then you align your conscious mind's goals with your subconscious needs and know

• 8:21Speaker 02

  those things that were causing resistance at a subconscious level are out of the way. So if you want to go back to that for a second and say yours, like when you think of that time period where you would sabotage as you were getting closer, a good way to find your limiting beliefs on this side is as you were going to go up and, and I'm assuming it was like a competition that you were preparing for.

• 8:40Jen Cohen?

  No, it was like a cover of a magazine. It's happened also in all sorts of times. Like, I guess, I've never been like a bodybuilder by any stretch, but I do a lot of, I did a lot of work in like the, I still do, health and wellness, but on the, more on the business side. So when people were profiling me or I had to do a cover for, I was getting ready for like a fitness magazine a couple of times. They put me on the cover. I, I never thought of it though, as me feeling unworthy of it. But if I would maybe go dig deeper, I would, like, you have, like, maybe that was why. I mean,

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Can I ask you and we can try to find it?

• 9:15Jen Cohen?

  Sure, if you want.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  So you're gonna go, think of a specific time in your mind.

• 9:18Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Do you have a specific time that you remember doing this?

• 9:20Jen Cohen?

  Oh, all the time. I do it all the time.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  It, it works best if you do a specific one.

• 9:23Jen Cohen?

  Oh, but I was gonna say that the thing that I was gonna point to is that I really believe it's because I don't like having restrictions. Like, I'm a, I, I don't like when people, I, I feel like, when I feel like I'm a caged animal or when I cannot do something.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:38Jen Cohen?

  That makes me wanna do it more.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:40Jen Cohen?

  So like with anything, like if I say, I'm only gonna have this for dinner tonight.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:45Jen Cohen?

  Those are the nights I'll eat ninety-seven more, you know, ca- hundred calories and I'll have the bad thing. Because I don't like to feel deprived or restricted.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Perfect. Okay. So you didn't even have to go through the question.

• 9:57Jen Cohen?

  I didn't have to. I answered my own question.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  So, big need for freedom, big need for freedom is probably the, one of the needs. So one of our ba- uh, one of our needs that's in our personality needs is freedom.

• 10:07Jen Cohen?

  Freedom.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Freedom, autonomy, independence, those can be big ones. So probably your conscious mind says restrict. Your subconscious mind says, no, we're prioritizing freedom. It's a big need. So then that's what we sabotage. But it's not actual sabotage. You're not choosing sabotage. Your subconscious programming's just winning out. And on the flip side, sometimes we can have core wounds or these limiting beliefs. And some of the big ones, and you know, you can see how these line up for you, is one is fear of being trapped. So sometimes if there's a history of ever feeling like controlled in childhood, trapped, um, really strict parents, some kind of instance or dynamic where you felt like you couldn't really be yourself, then that becomes a trigger as an adult and that causes more rebellious behaviors. And then the other one can be this fear of being helpless or powerless. So.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Those things, if there was ever times where you had to rely on somebody and you didn't feel like they were really helping empower you, they were kind of unpredictable or unsafe, then there can be this dynamic of like, oh, if I have to trapped helpless empowers just often go together. And so having to restrict, having to be in a container, having to be in a cage in any way or anything you would associate with that, there's this intense need to rebel. And so that would be these core wounds on the side or limiting beliefs. Like if I have to restrict, that means I am trapped.

• 11:16Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I love that. That's actually very, I like that. That's true. You know what, I guess with anything, right? You can go down, like that's what you said, going down the rabbit hole, right? Like you can get to a certain level and think that's the answer. But then if you keep on going, it's like, actually, maybe there's something deeper to that. No, I like that.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  And so what's cool is that once you discover it, you can find ways to restrict, you can actually rewire that discipline equals freedom. Cause discipline does equal freedom in a lot of ways.

• 11:43Jen Cohen?

  And that's what I talked about. That's the interest, that's the irony, right? Like I do believe that discipline does equal freedom. And that you can't rely on motivation. It's all about discipline. You have to do the hard things and things you don't like to get to the other side of doing the thing, to get to what you actually want in life.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  And you can make it so that it doesn't feel so hard to be disciplined by rewiring, cause consciously we can understand. But until your subconscious mind feels fully invested and believes in that, then discipline will still feel like there's a little bit of willpower or forcefulness.

• 12:13Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  And then the other part of it is that if there's this trapped core wound, then you'll still feel this like inkling to rebel. Like there will be this part of you that when somebody and you'll probably see it in different areas of your life, if that shows up for you, where somebody kind of tries to push something on you or force something on you, it'll be external too. That you may kind of sabotage when people are trying to ask you to do things and it feels like they're trapping you. Like you might want to push back just instinctively.

• 12:34Jen Cohen?

  So what kind of attachment style would that be?

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I'd have to ask more questions.

• 12:38Jen Cohen?

  Oh, no. Okay. Well, that's okay.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  But, but generally it's not anxious. Okay. So I mean, there's a lot that goes into it. Like you could have been some attachment styles and done a lot of work and become, have you been married for a long time?

• 12:50Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  So you're mostly, you're probably mostly secure? Are you happy in your marriage?

• 12:54Jen Cohen?

  Put you on the spot there? On a podcast. What am I supposed to say? Yes, Mary. No, I hate him. Like what am I gonna say here? We talk after the show?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  No, but, but, um, and do you find in your history of relationships? Cause you're probably mostly secure now if you've been in a longstanding relationship.

• 13:13Jen Cohen?

  No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't think I'm an, maybe I am. I don't think I am.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  I'm anxious people. Yeah. Definitely not anxious. We rule that one out. You're probably mostly secure, but you may have had a history of being either fearful avoidant or dismissive avoidant. The ones that are more.

• 13:27Jen Cohen?

  Okay. Well, what's the difference? Cause I think a lot of people would be curious for themselves. Cause that's, that's what I see a lot on social media. Like every second TikTok video is about an avoidant. A fearful one or a dismissive avoidant. What's the difference between those two? And is it the most popular?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:44Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Interesting. Right? It's just that people are, what happens is you, you get the anxious who are interested in the avoidance. So the anxious ones, because they're anxious and they're people pleasing, they're very externally focused. So right away, instead of them focusing on themselves or focusing on others. And then fearful avoidants like to learn about other people too, but they also like to learn about themselves. But then you get the skew towards dismissive avoidance. So you get everybody wanting to learn about the avoidance because of the sort of polarization. So I can take you through the, the differences. Okay? So fearful avoidance and grow up generally with a lot more chaos, bigger T trauma. So you'll usually see dynamics where there could be things like mom's an alcoholic, dad has narcissistic personality disorder. These things that basically the overarching theme are that you never know what version of somebody you're gonna get.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  So as an analogy, if, if mom's a drinker and one day she comes home and she's in a, she's had a few drinks. She's in a good mood and she comes home and she's, she's happy. She's nice. And you're like, as a child, you're like, oh, I want closeness. I, I like mom. I, I want to be closer. She, it feels good to be around her today. But then a few hours later, she keeps drinking or a couple of days later, she's drinking a lot more. I know she's passed out and you don't know if she's okay and you're so scared. Or she's mean and she's angry drunk and she's cruel. And so you're like, I don't know what version I'm gonna get. Same thing if you have a parent who's a narcissist. Like one day they love bomb and you're the golden child. Another day they're tearing you apart because they're taking their anger out on you. And so fearful ones grow up not knowing what version they're gonna get. And so they have this really interesting conditioning where they really want love and closeness, but they're also scared of it. They feel threatened by it. And so as adults.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  They have a lot of these kind of anxious leaning wounds where they're afraid of being abandoned and alone and they feel like everything's always on them and they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. And they're usually like the caretakers in all their relationships and people always go to them to solve the problem because they usually, that's their conditioning growing up. They had to be that way. And then they're usually really tough and strong individuals and they're great under pressure, but they feel a lot of internal emotional distress because one day they feel anxious and another day they're avoidant. Another day they're like, oh, you're going to trap me. Or you're, if I lean on you, I'm going to be helpless. I can't rely on other people. And they're scared of being powerless and they usually have a big wound of betrayal. And we found this from a lot of our research and the betrayal wound isn't necessarily just that they think somebody's going to cheat or lie. It could be that.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  But it's also like, geez, I like you now and you like me now, but how could I possibly trust the future? Because if you grow up in an environment where if your parents are so unpredictable and they're crazy and you don't know how to really deal with that, it's like, well, geez, if my own parents couldn't be trustworthy, how am I going to trust somebody who came into my life as a stranger? Like people are just, we can't really put into a clear box how they're going to behave. And so fearful of winds are very hyper vigilant. They really read into micro expressions and body language. They clock everything. I joke that the fearful winds are kind of the human lie detectors. Like they just notice every little shift. And if you tell a story one day and you tell it differently three days later or three months later, they're like, wait.

• 16:33Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  And they notice everything. And so they're kind of a little bit suspicious. They're kind of on edge. They're usually, if they do enough regulation, they're usually quite highly successful because they're very much like good at reading people and figuring things out and they're great under pressure and they're resilient. They often end up being entrepreneurs if they're regulated enough to

• 16:51Jen Cohen?

  Wow, yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  to get there. So those are fearful avoidance. They're very warm. They're very deep. They're very present. But then when you get close to them, they're like, ooh, too much. So they end up as adults being very hot and cold because they have the anxious and the avoidant side to them. And so they'll be like, come get close, come get close. And you get closer, get back. You're too close. And then somebody moves away and they're like, oh, we are so far, like come back close. And so they, they sort of pinball a little bit in their relationships, especially the relationships where they feel the most vulnerable. So they tend to be quite ambivalent. So that's the fearful avoidant. And then I'll go into dismissive avoidant unless you have anything you want to add.

• 17:23Jen Cohen?

  Well, no, I want to ask, so what type of relationship, do they have good relationships typically if fearful avoidant?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  They struggle a little bit until they do the work.

• 17:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  I was a fearful avoidant.

• 17:32Jen Cohen?

  You were.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  That's what I was. That's part of how I got into this.

• 17:34Jen Cohen?

  Oh, this is how you got into it.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Part of it. Yeah, yeah.

• 17:37Jen Cohen?

  Uh, cause, okay, and what is the other kind of avoidance?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  So dismissive avoidance.

• 17:40Jen Cohen?

  A dismissive avoidance.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Dismissive avoidance are very different. So they are, number one, their overarching theme in childhood is more childhood emotional neglect. And sometimes you hear that and you think it's gonna be really like overt, like parents are never home. Child walks home from school, parents get home at midnight, like it can be that. But the vast majority of cases, it's more subtle. So a lot of times instead, it's like, you know, parents are both home, but they're both emotionally shut down and unavailable. Cause they're busy or preoccupied or not present. And then when children try to make emotional bids for connection, the parents are like, they just don't have time. They deflect, they diminish. If the child cries or expresses distress, the parents end up being like, oh, don't be a crybaby. Get it together. And because children are wired for attunement and for that emotional closeness, if it constantly gets rejected at a young age, they're like, well, I just,

• 18:25Speaker 02

  I constantly get rejected. What's the point of trying to need somebody? And so they suppress their emotions. They actually come to believe that their own emotions are shameful or make them weak.

• 18:34Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  And so then they really suppress down their own emotions. And their adaptation to growing up in an environment like that is like, I just have to become hyper independent. I have to not need people. And if I don't need people, then I feel in control again. Because if I'm in this environment where I'm trying to emotionally lean on people and I feel like I need, but I can't get access, then I just feel out of control and shameful. And so as adults, they become really hyper independent. Sometimes they can, they tend to soothe through creature comforts. They never got to soothe through people, so they soothe through things. That can be food, television, work, it can be workaholics a lot of the time, can be people who, you know, take up a ton of hobbies, like fishing, hunting, all these things.

• 19:15Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  So they can have a lot of these things where they're soothing through external things, cause they never learned to co-regulate with other people. And they end up thinking that this part of themselves, it's emotional, is so wrong and defective. But as adults, they never wanna get seen. They, they don't want their emotions to be heard and seen. They don't wanna be vulnerable to people. So they usually end up in relationships where as soon as things get real, like four or six months in, they start shutting down. And if they stay in a relationship, they're quite unavailable to people a lot of the time unless they do the work. And sometimes they don't stay. Relationships. Sometimes they're like, they go through series of patterns in relationship where they get close to people and then as soon as things feel too real, their nervous system can't handle it. They're like, oh, every time I felt vulnerable as a child, I was just rejected and my needs weren't met.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Why would I want to put myself back in that position? So they sabotage. But what's happening is consciously, they're like, I should stay in this relationship. Maybe I want a family or a marriage. And subconsciously, their subconscious mind and nervous system are saying, no, connection makes you feel like you're shameful and defective. And like, you're trapped and helpless and powerless.

• 20:15Jen Cohen?

  So this is when your subconscious takes over because those are the core wounds or the core versus the core needs or, right? That's a whole other area.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. Or a lot of their needs are freedom, independence, autonomy. And so they sabotage relationships, but it's just their conscious mind saying, I should be in a relationship. And their subconscious and nervous system responding to the rest of their subconscious mind going, well, relationships don't meet your needs and they actually cause you to feel these wounds.

• 20:41Jen Cohen?

  Well, what I find so interesting is there's always trends in, you know, social media, right? I find there's right now, well, in the last, I don't know, a while, a big trend are talking about people's attachment styles.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:55Jen Cohen?

  To, to kind of explain away why somebody broke up, why someone ghosted you, why this. Like, there's a few things I constantly see, no contact, what attachment style are you? Now, is it because people are having a harder time than ever before? Staying in relationships, being in relationships because of the sheer volume of what people are like seeing because of social media, because of dating apps, because now you can just keep on swiping and there's no true connection anymore. You have to literally fight to get an emotional connection with people because of the noise around.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's such an excellent question. And I think there's three major factors. Number one, exactly. Social media is like dating apps, just short-term gratification. We're getting conditioned for that. And I think that one of the, yeah, and one of the casualties in that became like, a good relationship requires mutual effort, mutual investment and being able to work through hard things. Like, that's the only way a relationship really lasts and is actually fulfilling and successful. Because we have this outlet where we can hit the eject button because of dating apps and social media, you could feel uncomfortable three months and have some of your attachment stuff come up and go, oh, I feel uncomfortable, sabotage, it's easy to sabotage and go find somebody else.

• 22:08Jen Cohen?

  And then you say, oh, because I'm a blah, blah, blah avoidant, I'm a blah, blah, blah this. Like, we all have these like taglines and like titles that we can say and use those as the excuse for just behaving badly.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  And this is like my biggest bone to pick in the entire world right now is exactly what you just said, which is when you learn your attachment style,

• 22:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  for you to sit there and then just label yourself as it, identify with the label, and then just go around, God bless everybody, but making excuses for their own behavior.

• 22:40Jen Cohen?

  But people do that all the time.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  You're hurting yourself, you're, yeah, and people hurt themselves when they do that. The only reason you should ever be interested in learning your attachment style should be that you go understand your underlying patterns and start to rewire them.

• 22:50Jen Cohen?

  I totally agree.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  That's the only reason. And unfortunately, this whole trend of like, I'm this, they're that, okay, that's why, and then you put up with it or label yourself or excuse your behavior, excuse somebody else's behavior, it's actually really dysfunctional.

• 23:00Jen Cohen?

  Well, there's a bunch of them, right? Like, if I, if I never hear the word narcissist again, attachment style, ADHD, I can go on and on about what that person is and that's, that's the excuse of the, of the year, of why they behave terribly.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:16Jen Cohen?

  And to me, I don't want anymore, I don't want to hear any more titles or things that you are, what mental health issue you may have or what psychological, you know, issue you may have to then just like treat people badly and to be a bad person or, or to do bad things. Like, own it, accept it, either, you know, fix it or be, acknowledge it and then like, kind of like figure out how you can best, you know, be in society as a functioning human.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so like, so for us, that's like the exact body of work that we produce right now. Our main thing is like,

• 23:48Jen Cohen?

  Who's us?

• 23:48Speaker 02

  No, myself and our whole team and school. And yeah, we have some called the personal development school. It's all these like programs and things, yeah. And so, so what we do is it's like you identify your attachment style, you take an assessment, and then the whole point from that point forward is not to be like, I am this. Good, good for you, too bad. No, like the whole point is then, then you lock yourself in. To that, that, that pattern of behavior. And it's hard to be insecurely attached. I was, you know, and I've worked with tens of thousands of people who are. It's very difficult. And so finding your attachment style should be the very tip of the iceberg. And then it should be, now, how do I change it?

• 24:19Jen Cohen?

  Right. Or what do I do about it to be like, who's the best, like, who's a good match for me in this way? Like, or like noticing, okay, that person has this and this and this. Maybe they would, maybe it's not the right, you know, chemistry together or like long-term relationship together. Or how do I, how do I increase the odds of it working, knowing what I know?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll be honest, I still have a bone to pick with that too, a little bit.

• 24:43Jen Cohen?

  Oh, I could too, but I would try to be nice. It's what you do for a living.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Because people do this thing too. And this is like a big trending body of work too. They say if you're insecurely attached, just date a secure person. And the data actually shows us that that only works a very small percentage of people.

• 24:59Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Because here's why. Our subconscious mind, running the show at the 95%, it literally wants so badly to, it equates familiarity to, to safety, to survival. So it's like what's familiar is safe because we've been surviving this long. So it's working. And what's actually most familiar to all of us is the way we treat ourselves. So what's really interesting is if you pick that apart, you can look at somebody who's like anxiously attached. For example, and they say, I should date a secure person. That's what I consciously learned. Their subconscious mind will often meet the perfect person and go, they're boring. Because at a subconscious level, what actually feels familiar is somebody who makes you feel like you make yourself feel, which is what? Well, if you're anxious, you're people pleasing and you're looking outwardly and you're trying to bend over backwards for everybody else.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  So as an anxious person, you end up being in a position where you dismiss yourself. You avoid yourself, you don't set boundaries, you don't take up for your own feelings, you don't share your needs. So guess who you're most attracted to? Often dismissive avoidance, who also will dismiss you and avoid your feelings and not look out for your boundaries or your needs in a relationship. And so then we tell people, oh, just date a secure person if you're insecurely attached. And then they can go find the perfect person. And this happens to me, I see this like with literally tens of thousands of people. And I remember meeting somebody, I'll be, I'll use myself as the example. And this is a long time ago, I've been doing this work for a long time, but first year university and.

• 26:17Jen Cohen?

  Are you from Canada?

• 26:19Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm Canadian, but I go back and forth.

• 26:21Jen Cohen?

  Only sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. You said university. I'm Canadian. That's why.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Oh, are you Canadian?

• 26:25Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I did not know that. Toronto, I originally.

• 26:27Jen Cohen?

  Me too.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Mississauga, that is where I was, where I grew up.

• 26:30Jen Cohen?

  Okay, well, that makes sense. That's why you said, that makes a lot more sense to me now. You're Canadian. That's the title I'm giving you. You're nice.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 26:38Jen Cohen?

  You're friendly and nice.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Where are you from?

• 26:40Jen Cohen?

  I'm from Winnipeg originally. I lived in Toronto for many years. I went to school in Toronto.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Oh, crazy.

• 26:45Jen Cohen?

  And I've lived there for like, most of my life.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 26:47Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, but I'm Canadian. But when you said university, you seem very. This makes perfect sense now. So maybe titles do matter. Okay. Where'd you go to college?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  I actually got a soccer scholarship for university, so I went to Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

• 27:00Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay, sorry.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I moved out of Canada and then I went back there for a few years and now I kind of live between Canada and Austin.

• 27:08Jen Cohen?

  Oh, Austin too? Okay.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:10Jen Cohen?

  Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I had to say something about the.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Funny that you clocked that.

• 27:14Jen Cohen?

  Of course. Okay, sorry. So let's go back to that. You said something. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I had to. You were saying.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  We were talking about how anxiously attached people, you get told to date a secure person.

• 27:27Jen Cohen?

  Oh, no, I was gonna tell.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Oh, I remember. First year of university, I was.

• 27:31Jen Cohen?

  Okay, you were giving a story about yourself.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:33Jen Cohen?

  Okay, go, go ahead.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  So I remember I was dating somebody and they were like, probably the perfect person on paper. Tried so hard in the relationship, showed up and all these wonderful things going for them. Just excellent all around. And I remember being like, oh, I'm like, this is boring. Like, where's like the spark?

• 27:48Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  And this happens to people all the time where you sit there and so you sabotage the relationship, but it's just your subconscious mind wanting to go back to its needs and its comfort zone of what it's used to. Which for me was chaos at the time, before doing a lot of work.

• 28:00Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  And so we do these things where consciously we say, oh, date the secure person, find the healthy person. A lot of people say, date the emotionally available person. Or date the person who respects my need for freedom. And you can say these things, but ultimately, we usually don't end up doing that. So really, if you're insecurely attached, the idea that date a secure person, it doesn't really work like that. Instead, what we should do is kill your attachment style, rewire your maladaptive patterns. And then you become secure. And then you're gonna end up actually being attracted to those people.

• 28:26Jen Cohen?

  Also, though, I'm gonna like, take it one step further. If you're a securely attached person. Person, wouldn't you want to date someone who's securely attached?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  And that's exactly what happened.

• 28:35Jen Cohen?

  Right? Because if you're securely attached, why would I want an anxious attached person? Or an avoidant dismissal, or why? Because if I, because I would imagine the majority of people, though, are not securely attached. I would say that's the smallest percentage. Am I right?

• 28:52Speaker 02

  So, the data shows roughly 50% of people are securely attached. There's two ways that we get the data, okay? One is through childhood research, so research of people's attachment style in childhood. There's a few things happening here. One, you could make the argument that like, you know, securely attached people date securely attached people, which is absolutely what happens, because that's both of their comfort zone of familiarity, that's what feels safe. When somebody's really irregular or erratic, they don't like it. They're like, this isn't healthy for me, and they have good boundaries, so they'll walk. So, part of them go off the market, right? A lot of portion of securely attached people go off the market. But, we sometimes look at childhood conditioning, and we think that because this data shows that this amount of people are securely attached,

• 29:35Speaker 02

  that, like, as if conditioning doesn't keep happening. And, and so, they say, okay, this is the amount of people securely attached, but a lot of times, whatever we're exposed to our entire life through repetition and emotion rewires us. So, somebody, we talk about attachments developing in childhood, but the reality is that your attachment style is always changing if you are growing or going through massive life changes in your experiences. For example, if somebody's securely attached until the age of 12, and then, God forbid, one of their parents passes away, then they're gonna come out of that and probably be anxious. Or if somebody's anxiously attached, they get into a narcissist narcissistic relationship with somebody who has full-blown narcissistic personality disorder, not the throw-around term, but the actual pathology. And now, we see, okay, they're in this relationship with a narcissist, they're probably gonna leave that a fearful avoidant,

• 30:20Speaker 02

  because they went through that extreme chaos of back and forth with the person. So, it's not like our attachment style is just fixed, and there's a lot of things happening in life, and a lot of now things happening because of social media and dating apps that are shifting things. So, the way that people obtain that data is incomplete in its own sense. And then, another big way that people are obtaining data is self-reporting, and self-reporting is generally quite inaccurate. Like, we have a, an attachment style assessment, and people often will, will answer through the way that they feel. And when we, people come into our programs, sometimes people will be like, oh, I'm secure, because they're answering questions maybe in front of their partner, or the way that they would like to answer the question.

• 30:53Jen Cohen?

  Or how they, how they want to be, how they want to be perceived, or how they want to perceive themselves.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  And then I take them through like a little more in-depth questions. And then I'm like, oh, you're not securely attached and it's quite obvious. So, so a lot of times where it starts, like the, so 50% of the population securely attached, give or take, it's questionable. However, the one thing that is very interesting is that the secure attachment reported rate does move quite in lockstep with the divorce rate. So as the rate of securely attached individuals goes up, the divorce rate goes down and vice versa. So that is interesting.

• 31:25Jen Cohen?

  We could talk more about that. That's interesting.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Well, a couple of things. So securely attached people report being in the longest lasting relationships, but I think more important than that, or equally important, is that they always, they also report being the most fulfilled in those long lasting relationships. And as somebody who's been both insecurely attached, very insecurely attached, and then done a lot of deep work and neuroplasticity work and become very secure for quite a long time now, I used to never think that like having fulfillment in a long-term relationship was possible. I used to be like, oh, that's, that's not possible. You just stick it out. And I used to really believe that. And then learning healthy patterns of communication and connection and knowing each other's needs and rewiring my wounds, like I'm very fulfilled in, in my marriage. And I don't say that to say like, look at me, but just the reality of both sides is very different.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  And so when you see that, like, I get it. Like, I'm like, I get why securely attached people report being happy in their relationships because they have really good subconscious patterns that make relationships fulfilling that they both bring to the table. I get it. Like, I, I, I see that. So that's one thing, okay, is that they report the longest lasting relationships and the most fulfillment in them, and for good reason. The second thing is that when you look at the divorce rate, the divorce rate sits around 50%. It ranges a little up, a little down, and so does the secure attachment rate. And so as we see the divorce rate increase, it's correlated with an inverse relationship to the rate of securely attached people. And so in other words, what it's indicating is that the more securely attached people exist, the less likely they're going to get divorced and the lower the divorce rate is.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  So you can see that in, in that relationship, which I, I do find to be really interesting.

• 32:59Jen Cohen?

  That is super interesting. I think all of this is actually very interesting, though. I love like all of this, like all, all the neuroscience and how act, like what, what, how one thing leads to another thing and like the ripple effect of all the things.

• 33:19Jen Cohen?

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• 34:00Jen Cohen?

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• 34:42Jen Cohen?

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• 35:39Jen Cohen?

  How does someone then reprogram their attachment style?

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that. Okay, so, because that's the only reason you should even want to learn about it.

• 35:47Jen Cohen?

  Right, like, how do you? I mean, for the, I mean, and I would imagine everyone's trying to reprogram their attachment style to be securely attached.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 35:56Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  And you can think of your attachment style too as being the relationship to yourself. Like, every person has one, but it's ultimately like who you are to you first. And so it makes you a lot more fulfilled as a person. So the first, there's five pillars of rewiring. The first pillar is you have to rewire those core wounds, okay? So core wounds are these limiting beliefs. So I'll just list them off by attachment style. Anxious attachment style, their big ones are I'll be abandoned, alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, not good enough, unloved, unsafe if people leave me, okay? So those are their biggest triggers in relationships. Triggers literally affect our behaviors. So, so if you imagine, for example, that you are believing that you're going to be abandoned, well, what do you do? Well, neuroscience has proven every action we take is based on our emotional state. So when you believe you're going to be abandoned, you feel distressed.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  And then people who are anxious, they do things like cling or call a lot. So, so we have to be able to recognize that the root causes that we believe these things first. And I always give people the analogy that if you go into the woods tomorrow and you see a bear, and you run from the bear and you're safe, thank goodness, but you have to go back into the woods the next day, well, what does your brain do? Well, as soon as you hear the trees moving, you're like, the bear is coming, and you brace, and your nervous system activates because we've stored that perceived threat and we project it back out. That's how we're wired. And so that's great if it's a bear and we're protecting ourselves, but it's not great when you felt abandoned as a child.

• 37:11Jen Cohen?

  Right, of course.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  And now you see abandonment everywhere. So those are the big anxious ones. The big dismissive, avoidant ones are the fear of being trapped, helpless, powerless. Biggest ones are around feeling shameful if they're too vulnerable, weak if they're too vulnerable, feeling unsafe in a conflict or invulnerability as well. And the deep belief that they're not good enough and often don't belong. Fearful avoidance, they're the trickier ones. They have a little bit of both. They have the abandoned, alone wounds that are pretty big for them. They have the trapped, helpless, powerless wounds because they have both that kind of anxious and avoidant side. And then they also have the betrayal core wound. It's a big one that we found in our research. All of these we've, we've pulled from. From all of these different discussions and case studies over like the last 14 years. And then um and then betrayed and then unworthy.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Fearful ones always try to over deliver and over achieve just to feel acceptable at a baseline. Um they're very like, I'll do the most just to feel like, okay, I'm I'm acceptable at all. And then they haven't been corwounded feeling unsafe. Now, if you ask a fearful one, do you feel unsafe? They'll say, no, I can handle myself. I I'm tough. I'm strong. But if you pay close attention at a nervous system level, they spend a lot more time than the average person in fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode. They people please in fawn mode until they get frustrated with people pleasing and feel taken advantage of. And then they fight and they get mad. And then they have moments of kind of freezing or fleeing. They push things away and kind of run off or, you know, in a lot of different situations.

• 38:31Jen Cohen?

  Yes, I you know, it's so funny. You're you're describing an ex boyfriend of mine to a tease. Interesting. Is it possible to be a combination of anxiously attached and fearful? And a and a sprinkle of dismissive?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  That's usually just a fearful one who leans a little more anxious. So it's on a continuum. And because fearful ones have both sides, they lean usually a little bit more.

• 38:53Jen Cohen?

  He was a head case and a half, I'll tell you. Oh, my God. That one was like a disaster.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  So were you a little more avoidant, a little more dismissive one? Or are you secure mostly at the time?

• 39:03Jen Cohen?

  I mean, the funny thing is, I think I'm, I don't know, I feel like I'm a secure, securely attached. Until someone makes me feel insecure, then I maybe will get like anxious.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  A little bit anxious, yeah.

• 39:17Jen Cohen?

  Like, because typically, I would imagine, I, you know, have you ever heard, I'm I'm sure you have. But I'm a big believer that people like who like them. So if you feel, if you feel that you're really liked by someone, it makes you like them back more, right? So especially for women, I feel like women want to feel pursued and chosen. And cherished and loved. So when someone makes you feel that way, when someone makes me feel that way, I like want to be with them more. Until I don't. But that's a whole other story altogether for a different podcast.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  And and I think it's really important to note one thing that you said, which really stood out. To me, which is that secure people are not robots. Like you are going to, there's a difference between.

• 40:02Jen Cohen?

  You can make someone feel, to me, I think a lot of your attachment style can tweak based on who you're, who you are with and how someone makes you feel. So if someone makes you feel secure and chosen and just loved, it will make you feel more confident in the relationship and more secure. If someone makes you feel like you are an afterthought or that you are easily replaceable or that you are just kind of not a priority, that will make you feel more anxious.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  So here's a really interesting nuance to that.

• 40:35Jen Cohen?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  So if you're secure and somebody makes you feel not a priority, not chosen, doesn't show up, not good to you, first thing securely attached people do is they communicate about it. They'll say like, I don't like this, I need more consistency, that's what I'm looking for. And then they'll vet how somebody responds. And if the person keeps doing that, they will honor themselves. They'll honor their own boundaries, they'll step back, they'll move away. So they may have this anxious feeling because you're not a robot. You'll feel, ooh, uncomfortable, you'll dress it head on, communicate openly, leave if it's not working for you, honor your truth. Anxiously attached individuals, they will, when somebody makes them feel insecure, they'll generally feel anxious no matter what, no matter who they're dating. But if they're with a really secure person, they'll feel a little less anxious for sure, but they'll still have those wounds showing up. But if they're with somebody insecure, insecurely attached, especially somebody more avoidant,

• 41:21Speaker 02

  they're called anxious preoccupied. And anxious preoccupied means like they will ruminate nonstop. They'll try harder, they'll people please more. If somebody's being, you know, avoidant, not really choosing them, not making them a priority, they'll be like, oh my gosh, I have to do whatever I can to be what they want me to be. They'll think about the person nonstop, they'll have a hard time focusing at work, they'll text a lot, they'll try to cling. They'll try to look at the person's social media nonstop, see what they're doing. Like they literally make that person the center of their universe. And it just magnifies what's already existing in them, those anxious wounds. Versus a secure person will be like, I feel anxious, but I'm going to honor myself and eventually walk. So those are the big differences.

• 41:57Jen Cohen?

  Oh, that's a really good point. So you can feel anxious but not act anxious.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:02Jen Cohen?

  Yes, okay.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and not abandon yourself.

• 42:04Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:05Jen Cohen?

  So acting. Being anxious to me, though, again, because I don't, I, I, I'm not that person, right? And people can attest to that. But I will say that that's really interesting about the anxious attachment. Because what that exact behavior does is actually make that avoidant avoid, try to avoid you more. It's actually turns them off more when you are smothering them.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  One hundred percent.

• 42:31Jen Cohen?

  If you're constantly like, it's like, it's, it's like, kind of like not, it's like you're doing the antithesis of what you should be doing. If you're trying to like reel in unavoidable.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so what's so interesting is they establish this thing called trigger patterns in relationships. Every relationship has them until you work through them, even to secure people.

• 42:48Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  And I think after talking, like, okay, you're definitely secure. Just.

• 42:51Jen Cohen?

  I think so, but.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  No, no, for sure. Like, and, and from the, the things you said, if that's helpful.

• 42:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, good.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  So, so when you look at it, so interesting. So every person has trigger patterns in relationship. And what this means, usually one or two. But what this means is exactly your biggest core wound that you haven't worked through yet. How you behave to cope with your own wound happens to trigger your partner's biggest core wound. And how they behave happens to re-trigger yours. So you go in a vicious cycle. So for example, anxious dismissive avoidant. Dismissive avoidant, they like their space, they need space. They, they do their own thing. They, they kind of pull away. They're not as present and available as the anxious would like. Anxious person interprets it through the language of their subconscious mind. I am being abandoned. That's their bear in the woods that they're projecting out. How they cope with when they feel abandoned, exactly to your point, is to cling. Dismissive avoidant, one of their biggest core wounds. I'm trapped. You're now clinging to me.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Okay, you're trapping me. I need to push you away further because I feel more trapped. So their behavioral response is to push away further.

• 43:47Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Making the person feel more anxious, cling more, person feels more trapped.

• 43:51Jen Cohen?

  So that, so to me, that's a bad combination right there, right? That's a bad combination unless you really, like, what would make that person, those people, want to stay and work at it? If that is that vicious cycle of like, oh, my God, you're smothering me. Like, go away for a bit. Like I said, I had this one boyfriend. He was like so much, it was like, he, it felt like he was a girl in a lot of ways. And that was my next question. Do women tend to be more anxious and men seem to be more avoidant? Or and now in the last maybe 20 years, when now there's much more of a women have have more masculine energy or they're much more career oriented or whatever the thing.

• 44:35Jen Cohen?

  Has there been like a shift where now men are more anxious, women are more avoidant? Have you seen any of this in terms of, yeah?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  You nailed it. Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. That's exactly what it is. So historically, I mean, like if you look at culturally over the decades, men are told more stiff upper lip, don't be a crybaby, be tough. That's more their messaging they get. How we get conditioned is through repetition and emotion over time. And so keep in mind too, like if people hear these core wounds, you can rewire them, like you're not stuck with them your whole life either. But absolutely, men get a lot more conditioning about repress your emotions, stuff them down. So dismissive avoidant skew, very male based for decades. Anxiously attached women, I mean, you look at not just in terms of society's messaging, but even like hormonally, even historically, women tend to be more in groups, like the gatherers, right? So so there's a lot more of that inconsistency, and which is a big part of what causes anxious attachments.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Also anxious, women lean more anxious historically, men lean more dismissive avoidant, and that gap is closing. It's closing slowly, but it's starting to close a little bit, which is interesting, probably because of part of what we're seeing in society today.

• 45:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, there are more women who are educated, going to school, working more, making more money. Now there's a whole big trend with like friendships versus like women don't want to even like be in relationships. Like the whole, the whole idea of relationships has now shifted to such a place that that's even interesting.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 45:55Jen Cohen?

  So like I, I, I find all of this, and I think a lot of it is also kind of rooted in what you see in social media, which I think is also very toxic and terrible.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  100%.

• 46:07Jen Cohen?

  I'm kind of a traditional person. I mean, like I said, I think no matter how successful I am or how much of a boss, you know, air quotes, you know, people would say you are, or I think I am, whatever, you still want to feel like a woman. You still want to feel like taken care of. You still want to feel like. You know, you're you're being protected. I mean, some things never change, no matter what in life. I mean, do you know what I mean?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  I wholeheartedly agree with you.

• 46:35Jen Cohen?

  Girl, I mean, and any woman who sits here and says, oh, I don't need a man, or I don't need this, like, you're lying.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  And I'll be really honest, I'll be the first person to tell you that when I I was like that, probably almost twenty years ago now, I was like that. I was very like, I'm never getting married, I'm never having kids, because I was wounded. And I was wounded.

• 46:53Jen Cohen?

  That's right.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Father had my most fears from men around things I was carrying from what I saw growing up that were difficult, that I didn't have proper understanding for at the time. And I internalized a lot of that, and I was scared. And so I had all these wounds that I can't trust anybody, I'm gonna be abandoned anyways, I'm gonna be rejected, I'm all alone, I'm gonna be helpless or trapped in the wrong relationship. So I had all that internalized, and then that showed up as, I don't need anybody, I don't wanna need anybody. And as I healed, that distinctly changed for me. And then I stepped a lot more into the space of like, oh, my gosh, what was I thinking?

• 47:29Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  And then entered into a marriage where I'm actually very, very happy and so grateful. And I I I thank my own like inner child for like, for being able to withstand that. But I'm so grateful to myself, like, not to put myself on some kind of like pedestal, but I'm so grateful that I did the work, because I would have really, really missed out.

• 47:49Jen Cohen?

  And by the way, the fact that you would have to even say putting yourself on a pedestal, why? Why do people even have to say that? Like, you should put yourself on a pedestal, in my opinion. No, seriously, like, you did the work, you're accomplished, you're this, this, this, like, you know, good on you, you should be on a pedestal, I'm putting you on a pedestal.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Thank you, I'm just sensitive to the fact that.

• 48:09Jen Cohen?

  Women always do that, though. They always like stop themselves from giving themselves like a pat on the back.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I hear you, and I agree with that so much. And I should work on that in a lot of ways still, I I agree. But I also am sensitive to that there may be people listening who feel like I did feel at one point, who like, didn't understand. And if I heard somebody say, oh, marriage is so great, it's so wonderful, I'm so glad.

• 48:30Jen Cohen?

  No, it's not.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  I might, I might have been like, you're, you know, I I I just worry that it's sad for people. To hear that if they're not in that headspace and it's so worth working through your stuff because on the other side of it, life gets so much easier.

• 48:42Jen Cohen?

  Right. So you're just kind of trying to be cognizant of people who are in a different space.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  I bet that I go a little, I guess.

• 48:47Jen Cohen?

  Okay, that that's fair. I can appreciate that.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I do have to work on like owning and building myself up a little time though. Yeah, you're right.

• 48:52Jen Cohen?

  I do it too. All women do it. You know what I mean? Like, that's the other thing, right? Like, no matter how far we come, how far we've come, we're still are back in these places where in general, like, we feel guilty by like saying we've accomplished something or did something good, did something nice or whatever. Like, when someone compliments me or you or whoever, we're always like, oh, you know, like, it's like, we're always like, kind of like, shrinking ourselves.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yep, agreed.

• 49:18Jen Cohen?

  I don't know. It's like a very strange thing to do.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  I actually looked into this one time.

• 49:23Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Of my own self, because I was, I used to be really like this. And I'm like, come a long way, but I have a little work to do maybe. But um, I made it mean that if I do that, then it's a threat to emotional connection. And I, so I had stored in my mind that, oh, if I own fully and I take up space, because a lot of my conditioning in my own childhood was that when people took up space, they took up a little too much space, and they didn't consider others. And so it was mean or harsh. And so then I wired it in that way. And that's what I was playing out in my own conditioning at a subconscious level.

• 49:52Jen Cohen?

  No, but I think, I think that that's a really good point. I think that because we all want to be accepted and, and we feel that's alienating for people, right? Like, if we think too highly of ourselves, then it comes across as arrogant or conceited.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:07Jen Cohen?

  Right? And I think that the way we were conditioned to think is that, oh, yeah, like, if we do think highly of ourselves, then that's a bad thing. But isn't that what we're all preaching now? Like, isn't there like, it's so counterintuitive. Every second Instagram account is about empowerment, personal development, self-worth, you know, feeling, feeling good about yourself. And then when we actually like say we feel good about ourselves, then we get like trash that we're, that we feel too good about ourselves.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  You're not wrong. Yeah, I agree.

• 50:37Jen Cohen?

  So where do you win? You know, if you're too, if you're too pretty, you're, no, that's a problem. You're too ugly, that's a problem. If you're too smart, that's a problem. You know, everything's a problem to some. One, right?

• 50:47Speaker 02

  I, yeah, I agree so much. And that's the world of social media. But I think if, so two things, if you pull it back down to core wounds and needs. So for me, my core wound was like, oh, if I take up too much space, I'll be bad or I'll be rejected. So I had to work on that.

• 50:59Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  But I also believe that taking up too much space was a threat to emotional connection, which I really care about as a big need. So it's like me protecting that need, even though I've worked through the wound.

• 51:07Jen Cohen?

  I feel that, yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's one thing. But then the other thing, which is interesting is I do believe, and I'm curious your thoughts. I do believe that when people take up so much space, a lot of times it's from its own insecurity.

• 51:18Jen Cohen?

  Totally agree.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  I think true confidence is more quiet and subtle anyways. And it's not confidence is arrogance, it's confidence is the absence of all that inner dialogue and inner critic and, and somebody living in alignment with their needs, while being able to honor and be mindful of other people simultaneously.

• 51:32Jen Cohen?

  I think it's a really delicate balance.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:34Jen Cohen?

  It really is a delicate, it's a really delicate balance. Cause I totally agree because it's one thing to be, you know, abrasive in that, in that. And, and, but you're right, like, I think that there is a delicate balance because it's also about who you're talking to. It's like, there's also like an EQ piece, right? If you're speaking to someone who's hard done by or feels really badly about themselves, you're gonna be, you gotta be more conscientious of that, right?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 51:59Jen Cohen?

  But then, then you have to then still shrink yourself. It's a very delicate balance. But I just find everything, you know, with social media, how it's like, kind of like it's, what do you call it? It's making, what do you call, art imitating life now? Like it's, we are, like, life is imitating social media based on what trends for a week, right? How we date, how we talk to ourselves, how we, how we respond in relationships. Everything is now becoming like, it's a microcosm for what we see on social.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  It's so crazy that you said that, like, I, I actually have never thought of it that way. And it's such a, I love that insight. It's also scary.

• 52:37Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Because the reality is, when you look at like the neuroscience of conditioning, how we get conditioned is repetition and emotion. And especially repetition and emotion when we're in a suggestible state. So when our brain's producing more alpha brainwaves. And that actually happens in the first hour that we wake up and the last hour that we go to bed a lot. So you think of most people right now, what do they do? They wake up. Shut off their alarm, look at social media before bed, last hour before they go to sleep, scrolling through social media, a lot of people.

• 53:01Jen Cohen?

  That's when they begin and end their day.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  So we're getting conditioned and honestly, a lot of stuff that's on social media is kind of BS. Like a lot of stuff on social media, these trends or these things, they're not actually healthy. And so now to think that, you just, I got, I got a little jarred by that.

• 53:15Jen Cohen?

  No, it's true. It's become like, well, the, the, social media has become like the, like a real Truman Show. Remember the show, The Truman Show?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely.

• 53:23Jen Cohen?

  And also, nothing is what it seems in real life. I really believe that to be like, it's, it's like everyone is, most people are charlatans. And they're figuring out a way to hook you in. Like, what's the best hook to get you to watch this video? So they'll just say whatever is necessary and then they'll just, and they'll just keep on going down that hole. Like, so I think that we're, we are all being programmed in a way. That's not necessarily the, in our best interest for our own mental health. Well, I was gonna say earlier, you said something about limiting beliefs, right? I mean, I did it, I did it, my first TED Talk ever, I was, I talked about this and it went viral. It was like millions and millions of people. I wasn't the first, I mean, this was, my first one was like seven years ago or whatever.

• 54:07Jen Cohen?

  And this whole idea of limiting beliefs and now everyone's, of course, not, everyone talks about it. And it's about this idea of self doubt. You just talked about it again. And that's what kind of triggered me is even saying this is because time has passed, but we're still exactly where we are, right? Like, we're all preaching how to get over self doubt, how to kind of get yourself to a new place. And yet, when we eliminate self doubt, we get, we, we get kind of pounced on. That's why, that's what, that's what that whole thing happened.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:44Jen Cohen?

  I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor, Therasage. Their Trillight Panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations and Places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go to. Plus, it also has amazing anti aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for.

• 55:26Jen Cohen?

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• 56:05Jen Cohen?

  But I wanted to talk, so now that was a whole different tangent. I've got other questions and I know you're super, super, we're super like tight for time. Can you please tell me how we do reprogram ourselves? Because I still don't know.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 56:18Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  So there's different tools.

• 56:19Jen Cohen?

  What's the first step?

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the first step. So there's different tools for the, so there's five pillars. So one is we have to rewire those core wounds. Second is we have to rewire our relationship to our needs. Third is regulate our nervous system. Fourth is learn to communicate effectively because most people have really poor communication strategies and just never learned. And last is boundaries and we have to do it at a subconscious level. So I'll start with just the rewiring our core wounds. I do not believe in affirmations. I'll tell you why. Affirmations are language, okay? So if we have a core wound and let's just say, for example, that the core wound is I am not good enough, okay? Well, your core wound is of your conscious, or is of your subconscious mind. So nobody wakes up and consciously chooses to tell themselves, oh, today I'm going to tell myself 64 times that I'm not good enough, right? That's, that's not conscious. No one's choosing that. So the core wound has been imprinted at a subconscious level, like the bear in the woods.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  We stored the threat and now we project it onto things on autopilot. It's, it's not by conscious choice. So when we do affirmations, we are using our conscious mind to speak to our conscious mind. It doesn't even reach our subconscious mind because the conscious speaks in language and your subconscious speaks in emotions and imagery. For example, if I were to say to you, okay, whatever you do, do not think of the pink elephant.

• 57:24Jen Cohen?

  Yes, so true. Yes.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Subconscious is like pink elephant and conscious is like do not, but it was too late. And so what happens is is people do all these affirmations and they're just using their conscious mind to speak to their conscious mind. And it's not even getting picked up by their subconscious. So there's three steps to do this properly, to actually rewire. Step one, find the core wound and it's opposite. I am not good enough, I am good enough. I will be betrayed, I deserve loyalty, I'll be abandoned, I'll have connection. So you find the opposite, okay? Step two is now we have to take that information and drive it to our subconscious. The subconscious mind speaks in emotions and imagery. So how do we elicit emotions and imagery so it reaches our subconscious mind? Well, every memory we ever have is a container of emotions and images. If I were to say, tell me your favorite childhood memory, and let's say you said I was playing at the beach with my family.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  You would see the images of the ocean and the sand, maybe the red sand bucket as you're building a sand castle. And we've all seen people when they recall old memories or old stories. You get together with your friends from decades ago and you tell old stories and you laugh and you smile because all memory contains emotion. So now we know that we can leverage memory to reach our subconscious mind. So step two, after we go, I am not good enough, I am good enough. Step two is we come up with 10 pieces of memory of times we actually did feel good enough. And there's a third step. But this allows us, there's a little bit of repetition, repetition, emotion and imagery, fire and wire neural networks in our brain. So now we've got 10 times we felt good enough and we can pull from the different areas of life, career, family, or friendships, or romantic relationships, or money.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  You know, we can pull from different areas. Okay, when did we actually feel good enough? We don't need big things, just enough to elicit a little emotional response. So it might be, I was good enough last week when I had a hard conversation with somebody at work that I was nervous to do and did anyways. And you feel that little bit of emotion in your body and and you get that little, that imagery of you sitting at your computer, having that hard conversation, for example. So now we record that down, we record ourselves after we've written those down, saying it out loud. And in step three, what we now do is we listen back in a suggestible state for 21 days. Suggestible state means when our brain is producing more alpha or theta brainwaves. And we are super suggestible, meaning our subconscious mind really picks up information and sponges it up more effectively. And so what we're doing is first thing in the morning, you snooze your alarm and you're

• 59:41Speaker 02

  producing these alpha brainwaves instead of scrolling on social media and conditioning yourself with social media.

• 59:46Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  You're now thinking back and feeling in your body about times you did feel good enough and visualizing the imagery. And you've got 10 of them, so it's repeated across 21 days. And research shows that it takes roughly 21 days to build entirely new neural networks in our brain to believe new things about ourselves if it's laced with high emotion and we're doing it in a suggestible state. So when we're rewiring behaviors, it can take up to 63 days if it's just behavioral, but doing this fast tracks the process. And what you'll see, and we actually had people, we took all these people who came through our program, 60,000 people have come through our program and we took them and we said, not everybody answered, but we took everybody, we sent it to everybody. Hey, tell us if you didn't miss a day, you were highly present and focused for that

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  two to five minutes and you found yourself feeling the feelings in your body and visualizing the times you felt good enough or whatever the opposite of the core wound was. How effective was this, like getting rid of core wounds? And we used a satisfaction score, like an NPS score. And we got a 99.7% NPS score.

• 1:00:47Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  On just that exercise alone, yeah. So what's happening, and trust me, it like really, really works. I did this like crazy on myself firsthand and, and, um, and it really, really works. And people will go through these decades of carrying these crazy wounds, like these really hard things, like the fear of abandonment and look at how that blows up your life. You accidentally push people away because you're clinging or if you're avoidant, you sabotaged by pushing people away and stonewalling, like these things that really hurt us. And they can even be core wounds that show up in our workplace. Like you believe you're unworthy, you don't ask for raises the way that you showed, you don't take up space in a healthy way. So all of these things that show up for us, you can literally rewire them. You're not born with these wounds, they get wired into you and you can change them.

• 1:01:27Jen Cohen?

  No, I think that's a, that's a. That's why I like, I like things that are actionable that people can apply to their life as opposed to just, you know, talking in

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Learning.

• 1:01:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Cause then you just, it's just intellectualized information. It's just more info instead of actually changing things. So we have different tools for each pillar. There's the needs pillar, the nervous system pillar, the boundaries pillar, the communication pillar. But all of them are designed to rewire these patterns we're carrying at a subconscious level. And when you look securely attached people, what do they have? Less core wounds. They know their needs and how to meet them themselves. They have a regulated nervous system. They know how to communicate their needs in healthy ways to others and they have healthy boundaries. So we're just reverse engineering that by rewiring these five pillars at a subconscious level to ensure that people become securely attached.

• 1:02:09Jen Cohen?

  I love that. Now I'm going to read you one question I have here.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 1:02:14Jen Cohen?

  Okay. So what is the one belief about love or relationships that most people are holding on to? That is quietly destroying their ability to connect?

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  It's a really great question. It honestly goes by attachment style. Cause if there's one belief for everybody, I mean, the one belief everybody shares as insecurely attached is the belief that they're unsafe and manifests in different ways. Anxious are afraid that they'll be unsafe if people leave them. So they cling. Fearful avoidance are just unsafe because they don't trust the environment or the world and they're on high alert. And dismissive avoidance feel unsafe in a conflict. So they push people away and stonewall and avoid things. But I would say the biggest ones per attachment style are the fear of abandonment. If you're anxious, the fear that you're shameful deep down and need to create space. If you're defective. Or if you're a dismissive avoidant, defective core wound and the big fear of betrayal for fearful avoidance. And when you look at what happens in your life, when you believe this narrative that everybody's going to betray you.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  How do you show up? Right? It's chaos. Or if you believe that everybody is going to see that you're shameful deep down when they see you, what do you do? You make sure nobody sees you. You keep distance all the time. Or if you believe everybody's going to abandon you. You try to cling so hard and so fast so that that never happens. And so these things have this massive impact. And I think what's really sad is that it's an injustice that we acquire these core wounds in its own sense in childhood. It means you went through something hard. And we're getting conditioned all the time. So it can also be in your adult relationships that you get a core wound if you go through something difficult. But it's a greater injustice that we are replaying. Stories and their relationship to ourselves all the time and then driving they drive these behaviors that then cause those things to become self fulfilling prophecies because when you think that

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  everybody's gonna abandon you you cling and then people are like whoa and they pull away so these things drive the exact thing that we're so afraid of until we learn to actually rewire them.

• 1:03:58Jen Cohen?

  What do you think of AI being someone's now new therapist? Because people are like going into chat GPT or Claude and they're saying you know so and so did this to me and then it's viewing out well they are somewhat blah blah blah attachment avoidant or avoidment whatever attachment style and people are using this as their main reference point. What do you think of this whole?

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  I think it's scary. I mean, there's three reasons. Number one is that the AI loves to validate you like.

• 1:04:29Jen Cohen?

  That's I was gonna say by the way, that to me is the most scary.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:33Jen Cohen?

  Unless you say I learned a trick.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Be straight up with me. Tell me the truth. Yeah.

• 1:04:38Jen Cohen?

  Like basically if I don't say don't sugarcoat this, tell me exactly the truth as someone would see it. It would come back and say how wonderful I am, how marvelous I am. Like you have to be so careful with chat GPT.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Jen Cohen?

  Or else you're it basically just blows you up to be the best thing since sliced bread. It's so unrealistic.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  And it's dishonest. And exactly and so then so then you end up in a situation where it's validating. If you're in a difficult position in a relationship enough where you have to go to AI to type it out. You may have some of your own part to contribute and if you're only seeing it through the other person's side, it's deflecting, it's blaming, it's validating you and it may stop you from number two, having the awareness of what's going on inside of you.

• 1:05:17Jen Cohen?

  That's the problem. But if you do say something to AI like give me the hard truth, don't hold back, no sugar coating. Is it helpful?

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Here's the third thing. Here's the third thing. Where is AI getting all this information?

• 1:05:32Jen Cohen?

  I mean.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  The internet, all the crazy stuff we're seeing on the internet from a lot of it being it's almost like it's capturing the basket of the entire internet and we were just.

• 1:05:40Jen Cohen?

  It's consolidating everybody's problems.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  And and so there's some degree of truth on the internet, but there's also a lot of people like we were talking about who just call everybody the narcissist.

• 1:05:49Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, it's a terrible problem.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Throw around things and so now you're taking this basket. It's almost like an ETF, right? You take this basket of of all the information on the internet and now it's giving you the sample of all the information. Well, like, do you want? Do you think that for anybody doing this, do you think that?

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  The entirety of the internet is something that you think is a healthy resource for advice right now, because that's the consolidated version you're getting through ChatGPT. And so to me, it's gonna validate you, it's gonna cause a lot of shifting of blame and not allow you to really look at your own part.

• 1:06:23Jen Cohen?

  But if you do say, don't sugarcoat it, tell me the hard truth.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Then the third thing is that you get the basket of advice from whoever's out there doing whatever.

• 1:06:30Jen Cohen?

  Well, you know what, I always, I think that no matter how good AI gets, it will never take the place of human connection and self-awareness, right? Like, to me, that's the most fundamental skill someone could have to be successful in any area of your life, right? If you don't have the ability to like self-regulate and self-control and like know yourself, know thyself, all these tools are, you might, are just gonna be running rampant on you. Like, they're controlling you, you're not controlling it.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  A hundred percent, I could not agree more. And I love that you said that, I really agree that like the knowing of self and self-awareness and the ability, like there's, one of my favorite quotes is, criticism is an immense gift for those who are interested in self-realization. And, and I think that there's a beauty, like if you get criticized, it doesn't mean that everybody's criticisms are correct, somebody could say something that they're projecting, but there's a beauty to being able to sit in people's criticism and say, well, is that true? And to actively consider it, because it can give self-awareness. And so if we get a tool that's just taking that away from us, if people are not saying, don't sugarcoat, then you miss out on this like massive part of life that allows you to grow as a person because there's a mirror into you and you can become self-aware.

• 1:07:38Jen Cohen?

  Also, I think when a lot of the, like, to know someone else's attachments out is very helpful to a point.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:45Jen Cohen?

  But to a point, right? Because you, at the end of the day, you can never change somebody else, unless they want to be changed, you can only change yourself. So focusing yourself, focusing that time and attention on you and why you do something and how you can be better is way more productive in the long run than going and trying to figure out with ChatGPT if this person is a, you know, unavoidable, and if this person is a fearful, how that's gonna like, what's the attributes? Like, it's, I find it to be interesting just to know overall, so you know what you're dealing with. With kind of, but at the end of the day, you know, like there's other variables also that you can't like account for.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  One hundred percent. And also, I always say to people, look, it's great to know that your partner might be a dismissive avoidant because you don't personalize their behavior.

• 1:08:34Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  But if you keep ending up with dismissive avoidance, what is that thing about your conditioning?

• 1:08:37Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Or what is that? Or if you're putting up with somebody and you know it's unhealthy, consciously you know that this is not okay. I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled. But subconsciously you keep staying. What do you need to be rewiring within you so that you give yourself permission to leave?

• 1:08:50Jen Cohen?

  Right. Like what are your patterns?

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:08:52Jen Cohen?

  What's like, because, but you know what also I find is so weird is that you could be very self-aware and still make the same mistake over and over again. Because a lot of times you are mistaking chemistry for, chemistry and connection for love. Like there's a lot of things that you think are one thing, but it's actually another thing. Like lust and love are very different. Like chemistry and love, very different.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  One hundred percent. And to your point, the reason we can become self-aware and keep choosing the wrong thing is because the difference between your conscious and subconscious mind. So conscious mind can say, I know this is wrong. I know I should leave. I know this person's treating me unfairly. I know what my patterns are, but unless you're rewiring them at a subconscious level, ninety-five percent of you, it's going to keep running the show.

• 1:09:35Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, one hundred percent. So what, how do we know, when we, when do we know, can you give people some indications of when one thing is not what they, when, when something's not what they think it is? Like there's something here I wrote down in my notes or someone gave me something and I looked at it. What is limerence versus love?

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Great question. So limerence is intense infatuation to the point of like extreme self-abandonment. So limerence actually exists. If we're getting really real about limerence, it exists along a continuum with at the, far under the continuum being like stalking. Um, yeah. So not to get really, really down the road all there, but a lot of people experience limerence, but if you look at it this way. Our needs are driving us in a lot of ways. And our subconscious mind, when it can't get its needs met in the present, breaks off into fantasies of the future or memories of the past as a means to get its needs met. So, for example, if you see somebody feeling lonely, they might reminisce a lot about all the times that these nice things happened in the past. Because when you reminisce,

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  then your subconscious mind is, it has a hard time telling the difference between what's visualized versus real. And so, and if you think of times you reminisce, it solicits feelings in your body and it creates this neurochemical cocktail of like you feeling like those needs are kind of indirectly met. And if you look at limerence, a lot of it is about fantasies of a future. So, somebody in limerence, they might meet somebody after a first date and say, "Oh, my gosh, we're gonna travel here, we're gonna do this thing, we're gonna get married, we're gonna have a family." And when they think those things and visualize those things, that creates all these, these feelings that create neurochemical reactions throughout their physiology and now they're in that space. So, limerence, a lot of what's happening is people fall into limerence, they're very prone to limerence, when they have profoundly unmet needs from childhood. And what happens is when somebody comes along and meets the need,

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  it's like fireworks go off in our brain. And now, all of a sudden, somebody's like, they keep thinking and feeling and trying to simulate that need being met in their brain again, and it can lead them to doing sometimes irrational things. So, for example, I had a client come in years ago when I worked in private practice and she was supposed to get engaged and she came in to meet with me and she said, or sorry, she was engaged, supposed to get married. And she came in to meet with me and she said, "Hey, I'm thinking of calling off my wedding because I met a man in the coffee shop and I spilled my coffee everywhere and he came and he sat and he helped me mop it up and he checked in with me and he picked everything up and he, he could tell I was stressed and he said, 'Are you okay?' And he asked about my day." And she was like, I think it was love at first sight.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  And I have kind of like, I'm a little skeptical of things like that where it's like, okay, love at first sight, that's usually limerence. Okay? And so, I asked her, I said, "Okay, what was your childhood like? What did, what did this man make you feel?" And we landed on, she felt deeply seen. And when we looked at her childhood, she felt deeply unseen by both of her parents. So felt like her parents were always unavailable. We looked at her fiance, and her fiance had all these wonderful qualities, but wasn't the best at being present and making her feel seen. So I said, okay, why don't we try this? Before you call off your engagement, why don't we sit down for the next four weeks? And I want you to work on telling your partner, your fiance, all the information you need to feel seen. So sharing more vulnerably, talking about what your needs are, asking him to be more present,

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  sitting down, having these dinners together where like phones are off, and you say that this is extremely important to you and it's something you're missing. And at the end of four weeks, if that need is filled in your fiance relationship, and because what you'll see, and this happens over and over again, is exactly what happened. So we sat down there, and at the end of the experience, at the end of four weeks, by like week three, she was like, oh, I can't believe I thought I was thinking of calling off my wedding. Because we have a void of this need being met, we're trying to simulate it and meet it by fantasizing about the guy in the coffee shop, gets the need met in the marriage instead. And actually, one of the biggest reasons people cheat, out of 100%, 10% of people cheat for pathological reasons, narcissistic personality disorder, sex addiction, these things. 90% of people cheat because they have deeply unmet needs in their relationship.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  They don't know how to communicate them and bridge the gap. They then feel resentful of their partner because the partner's supposed to meet their needs. Somebody comes into their life externally, happens to meet this deeply unmet need, causes some degree of limerence in their brain, fireworks going off, oh my gosh. Then they fantasize about that person constantly because they're actually fantasizing about the need and trying to gain proximity to it at a subconscious level because your subconscious is a needs-meeting machine. And now, they're chasing after somebody outside of the relationship, and they're highly likely to cheat. And what we get people to do, I spend a lot of time with people doing this who are thinking about cheating or having marital issues. What are they, in the fantasy of cheating, what needs are being met? Sometimes it's to feel more seen, more protected, more wanted, more prioritized, to feel special again. And when we start implementing those needs in the marriage itself with people

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  through healthy communication and consistency, people don't cheat anymore, or they don't think about cheating, and that comes out of the relationship because that's the subconscious root of why those things happen.

• 1:14:25Jen Cohen?

  That is so like spot on what I think happens.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing. You just described it though perfectly.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:14:33Jen Cohen?

  Like that whole, that whole pa- pattern.

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:37Jen Cohen?

  So who, is there a particular attachment style that doesn't?

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  All insecurely attached styles are slightly more likely to cheat than secure people because secure people communicate their needs openly and consistently. Anxiously attached individuals are more likely to emotionally cheat in marriages because they have deeply unmet emotional needs a lot of the time. Dismissive avoidance and fearful avoidance may, dismissive avoidance are more likely to cheat without emotional connection, so for, for physical reasons. Usually because they want to feel a sense of something outside of their relationship, but yet they don't like to be too vulnerable. And fearful avoidance are the ones most likely to cheat for both three. But again, cheating is a symptom. It's just a symptom of deeply unmet needs and a lack of communication. When you bridge those gaps, as long as the person's willing to work with you in that relationship. Sometimes people who think about cheating, or even in certain cases, and this is a touchy subject for like, we could do a whole podcast about this one, but I spent a lot of time

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  working with people who had cheated in relationships. And I'll be the first person to say like, if I was cheated on, I would probably just exit. Like I, I, and I dearly love my husband, but that's always been kind of a non-negotiable for me since a young age. But I also respect very much that people want to plug in and do the work. And I also respect that people's situations are different. It's easy to say that, but what if you have three kids and you have, you know, a marriage or a mortgage and you can't afford to leave? You know, so everyone's situation is different. I spent a lot of time working with people on addressing the root causes of cheating. And there's a very long process to go through. It's not easy, but sometimes I would work with people on this because they get to the roots of these deeply unmet needs. And sometimes they rebuild an entirely new relationship that was much better off than it was before. Because if there's this cheating symptom, generally there's multiple parties, both

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  parties have completely unmet needs in their relationship for usually a longstanding period of time, have never figured out how to bridge the gap in communication. They're carrying this chronic resentment. And then by getting to the roots of things and doing that underlying work, they rebuild from an entirely new place and they actually see and connect to each other for the first time.

• 1:16:28Jen Cohen?

  That's incredible. I mean, so you work with people. Like, do you have a private practice then still?

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  So I did for years and then I moved everything to online programs because we had a really big waitlist and I couldn't get to enough people. So now I take people through online programs and we do group practice. So people come through courses, they get these processes and exactly what to do. And then after that, I'm in there three days a week with people so they can come ask me questions, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:16:53Jen Cohen?

  How much is it?

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Sixty-seven dollars a month.

• 1:16:55Jen Cohen?

  That's it?

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Yep. We make it accessible for people. That was my number one goal doing all of this.

• 1:17:00Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna ask you something that's also a big, you know, social media highlight. Love bombing. Who love bombs? What type of attachment style love bombs the most?

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Great question. So anxious attachment individuals love bomb the most, but for reasons that are very innocent. It's because they naturally see themselves as having to win and earn approval. So they're in the pit, they put other people on a pedestal more easily. So their love bombing isn't with the intent to manipulate. It's with the intent to get close to somebody because they think they're so amazing. Okay, so that's natural for them. Fearful avoidants often do the same thing. They also see people as being on a pedestal compared to themselves. Dismissive avoidants are the least likely to love bomb because they don't really engage in that kind of behavior. They don't feel comfortable or safe for them. But the one that's malicious is narcissists. Because narcissists love bomb with a different intent. It's let me get to know. And they're so good at getting people into limerence because they're so good at finding people's deepest childhood unmet needs.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Building into those. And then when they've love bombed and got you hooked, now the devaluation phase begins. So they love bomb with the intent to manipulate you because they're conditioning how you see them. And then they have a lot of control over you long term.

• 1:18:06Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so when an anxious attachment or a fearful avoidant does the love bombing, what happens next?

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  So when the anxious and fearful avoidants love bomb, anxious attachment cells, they'll basically keep love bombing through a lot of the relationship because they always put this person on a pedestal. And they're trying to people please and gain proximity. Fearful avoidants frequently love bomb. Then they, when somebody gets too close to them, it triggers their avoidance side. And then they feel like, oh my gosh. And fearful avoidants are also very much enmeshed. And they feel like they lose themselves in relationships. And they can only do that for so long before they set a big wall and deactivate. And so a lot of times fearful avoidants will get into these dynamics. And then they will love bomb at the beginning. And then they will eventually get burnt out and feel overwhelmed. And then completely fall off or really retreat.

• 1:18:54Jen Cohen?

  This is so interesting. I love all this. It's so interesting.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  I love this stuff too.

• 1:18:58Jen Cohen?

  Oh my god. I had one other question that was so like, oh, codependence. I wanted to ask you about codependence.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Jen Cohen?

  When is, like, I would imagine anxiously attached people are very codependent.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:19:10Jen Cohen?

  And that's when the problems start with the avoidance. How does, how can someone fix some, how do I say this in a nice way? How does someone who's codependent stop being so codependent to make the, like, to actually stop being so codependent so they don't destroy the relationship?

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  Great question. So, number one thing that happens is that we get into codependent dynamics because we've never learned a healthy sense of self. So people who are codependent are trying to find their identity through others. And so they usually have a couple of things happening. They don't know their own needs and they don't know how to meet their own needs. So they don't know how to actually self-soothe. That's a huge part of self-soothing.

• 1:19:45Jen Cohen?

  Self-soothe, yeah.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  So they soothe externally through others. And then they usually have also been conditioned with these beliefs that say, you literally are responsible for other people's feelings. If you don't take care of them, you're a bad person. If you're not sacrificing all the time and being selfless, you're also a bad person. So they get conditioned beliefs that are actually moving them towards being more codependent. And they also don't know how to source their needs outside of relationships. So now they have a perfect storm. And so what ends up happening is anxious attachment cells are highly codependent. Dismissive wounds are highly counterdependent. They're actually trying to constantly create distance. And fearful wounds oscillate between the two extremes, going back and forth. And healing codependency and overcoming it is rewiring the beliefs that are keeping you codependent. Things like if I'm not with somebody 24/7, I'll be abandoned.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  If I'm not taking care of everybody's feelings, I'm not good enough or a bad person. We have to rewire those ideas that we've been conditioned with, that we're not born with, that got conditioned into us, solvable problems. And on the flip side, we have to learn who we are, start to meet our own needs halfway so that we have a healthy sense of identity and self, and decide what we want in the different areas of our lives. Discover who we are in the career area, around money, mentally, there are hobbies, the things we learn about emotionally, how we regulate or grow and introspect. Spiritually, physically, in all relationships, that's a part of it, like keep friends, keep family. So we have to learn who we are across those seven areas of life. And then we need to learn to build good habits so we have a strong sense of self. And then we rewire those wounds, we're meeting our needs and we know who we are. And that's the antithesis to codependency.

• 1:21:13Jen Cohen?

  Wow, so there's an action plan.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Yes, 100%. I am such, I love that you said earlier that you liked actionable things. That's like my thing.

• 1:21:19Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I'm so, I'm so not a person or interested in just like woo woo, like, you know, manifestation without an action plan, or like, just like, thinking something into existence doesn't really happen.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Or intellectualizing information. Oh, here's, here's codependency, here's what is, here's how it affects you.

• 1:21:37Jen Cohen?

  Or just keep on reading another, yeah, like, just keep on reading another blog, but then don't do anything about it.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:21:42Jen Cohen?

  Right? Because that's what we're doing. We're just, we're just consumption or just consuming information without having any, like, like, execution.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:21:51Jen Cohen?

  You know, and that's where, and that's where, that's 90% of it. 99% is execution. 1% is what? Inspiration and, no, yeah, 1% is inspiration, 99, perspiration. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I like, love this podcast. I know I gotta, I gotta wrap it with you. You are, this was really interesting.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  This was so fun.

• 1:22:10Jen Cohen?

  It was so, it was so interesting. Tay's.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Tay's.

• 1:22:13Jen Cohen?

  Geez, no.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 1:22:15Jen Cohen?

  Tay's, her program is called The Personal Development School. Check her out on Instagram, on YouTube. She has a podcast, The Tay's.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Tay's.

• 1:22:25Jen Cohen?

  Tay's. Oh, God, what is wrong with me?

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  It's okay, I get this all the time.

• 1:22:29Jen Cohen?

  Her podcast, oh, my gosh. You, yeah, this was really fun. And, uh, but anything else you want to add before we wrap it?

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  Uh, the only thing I'll say is if people want to go to personaldevelopmentschool.com, they can get a free attachment test. It goes through their assessment, gives all their wounds, their needs, all that good stuff, too.

• 1:22:45Jen Cohen?

  I'm gonna do that. I didn't even know you had one. Uh, I'm gonna do that. That's, that's a great test to have, just so you have your own knowledge. I appreciate the, like, again, action.

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. And this was so fun. I, I really enjoyed being here and chatting with you.

• 1:22:57Jen Cohen?

  Thank you, me too. You can come back next time you're in town.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Yes, I would love to. We could talk about cheating and all the root and get into the root.

• 1:23:01Jen Cohen?

  Of all the things, I mean, there's so many. We could do a whole series of this stuff. I, I love this stuff. Uh, all right, thank you.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:23:08Jen Cohen?

  Bye.