474 | Attachment Styles

The Minimalists talk with Eli Harwood about secure attachments and attachment theory. Discussed in this episode: How is collecting related to emotional insecurity? (2:19) What is attachment theory? (16:52) What are the four attachment styles? (17:46) When is attachment useful and when is it clinging? (22:44) Listener insight: the gift of listening! (33:03) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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

• 0:06Speaker 00

  This podcast has bad words.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  You're listening to The Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, thank you, Alabama. Happy New Year, everybody. Today, we're talking about attachment styles and attachment theory. And joining us in the studio to discuss this topic is Eli Harwood. Eli is a licensed therapist, bestselling author, and educator, who helps people process relational traumas and develop secure attachments. She's also the author of Securely Attached, and her new book, Raising Securely Attached Kids. Coming up on this free, public, minimal episode, a caller has a question about collecting and how it's related to emotional insecurity. And then we've got a lightning round question about attachment versus clinging. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment, and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 474. That's the

• 1:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions, and we dive deep into several simple living segments. That private podcast is out right now on Patreon. You can find the link down in the description. When you subscribe, you'll receive a personal, private feed, so that our weekly maximal episodes play in your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives. That's nearly 10 years of archives. Big thanks to our patrons, by the way. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or email

• 2:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  a voice recording to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Anna.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Hi Minimalists, this is Anna from Wisconsin. I have a question about my six-year-old daughter who has recently started obsessively collecting a wide variety of items during our walks or trips to the park. These range from natural items like sticks and leaves to garbage such as bottle caps and plastic wrappers. She often shoves them in her pockets or begs me to put them in mine. When I tell her we don't need to bring everything home, or that garbage should be picked up only to be put in the trash bin, she becomes very upset. By the time she's picked something up, she has assigned it a human-like emotion, saying it might feel lonely or left behind, and she feels strongly about protecting it. Once these items are in our home, she usually hides them in her drawers or among her toys. Fortunately, after she's placed them somewhere, she tends to forget about most of them, allowing me to gradually remove them without her noticing.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  If I didn't do this, would quickly accumulate a large number of these items, which would otherwise overwhelm our orderly and minimalist home. I suspect this behavior may be linked to her processing the emotions from her father and I separating over two years ago. She splits her time between our two households, and I feel that this collecting might reflect her own need for security or control. It's been suggested that I limit her collection to a small box or drawer, but that isn't going to get to the root cause. I've tried explaining why I choose to keep or let go of items in my own life, emphasizing that I value things that bring joy or purpose. However, this doesn't seem to be a mattering of different opinions or what adds value.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Instead, it feels like an emotional need for her to protect these objects. I'm not sure how to best address this behavior in a way that validates her feelings while helping her develop a healthier perspective, especially as I don't want to squash her creativity and imagination. She pretends her dolls and stuffed animals have human emotions while playing, and I don't want to destroy that for her. Any guidance or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all you do.

• 4:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Anna, wow, what a thoughtful question here. Eli, where do we start with this? Because there does seem to be a link between maybe collecting and some sort of emotional insecurity here. Where would you like to start?

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Well, I want to start by just saying to this mama, well done. Look at the way that you consider your child's emotions and needs and how you are so present and curious about why she's doing what she's doing and not just simply clamping down and focusing on control. That's just chef's kiss. So, and then what I want to say to almost any parent who is calling into a show and being curious is like, okay, take a deep breath. One of the best things about kids is that they're in a process. So where they are right now is not going to determine where they're going to be someday. So we don't want to project forward that because she's collecting bottle claps on the street, that she's also going to end up with a hoarding habit. Right? There's meaning here.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  And if you can pause in this process with her and come to her and say, here's what I'm seeing, I'm noticing, it feels really good for you to pick these things up on the street. And I'm wondering if sometimes it makes you feel a little bit more secure, or whatever word she would understand, you know, kind of using her vocabulary. It makes you feel good, it makes you feel strong, it makes you feel safe. Right? I want us to do a little experiment. I want us to have not just a box, but a whole drawer. And I want you to tell me how long the happiness lasts. Is it just on the sidewalk? Is it when you get to the drawer? Is it three days later? And we're going to do this experiment.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  And then, once we notice that the happiness has passed, let's see what it is the object is asking us to do in order to give us back that feeling that we had at the initial meeting of the thing. Right? So let it be a process. Because we're wanting everyone, but especially our kids, to learn as early as possible that it is not things that bring us joy. It's the adventure, it's the togetherness, it's the learning. Right? But if we just say to a kid, this is what it is, and you shouldn't do that, they don't ever get to actually learn what it feels like.

• 6:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Pathologize the collecting of things and then that gets misunderstood as any consumption whatsoever is bad. So owning a thing can be bad. And then we inadvertently turn our kids into different kinds of control freaks. I'm obsessive compulsive and that is a need to control things because I had a really chaotic childhood. It sounds to me like this is a response to at least one chaotic event or something that's been perceived to be a chaotic event in the home. And it doesn't mean those things last in perpetuity, but this is a moment in which she'll pick up some learnings that she may accidentally carry into the future in a way that is not necessarily going to help her adult self or even herself a year from now.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Well, and we want to think about the relationship between us and our children. So there's a sense of that intensity of desire, you know, from a child. Like what I'm hearing about this little person is like, there's something really intense for her about this collection and about her relationship to her idea of what these things are feeling. Right? So we want to maintain that parent child bond and really be attuning to that child. This is really important to you. This feels big as opposed to this is my agenda. This is what you need to learn. This is how you need to learn it because at the end of the day, we want to connect before we correct. That's from Dr. Karen Purvis, one of my psychology heroes. That when we are with our kids where they are, it is far easier to guide them because they feel securely connected to us and that that's our priority.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Yes, we want them to learn not to, you know, accumulate a bunch of shit. But we also first and foremost want them to learn that we are witnesses and we are present and we are able to be with them and what they're experiencing in the world.

• 8:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, TK, it's fascinating, this, this aspect of curiosity here also has to show up without judgment. Because curiosity with judgment is really just correcting them, shutting them down. And what Eli is saying, it really resonates with me because in the moment, it is easier just to shut it down and say, no, no sticks, no bottle caps. You cannot collect anything. And if you collect it, you're bad and therefore you're inferior to the other kids who aren't collecting something. But that doesn't really help. What helps is trying to better understand and that's more difficult in the moment.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  That's exactly right, and you're not going to help anyone let go of anything if you're not willing to become a student of why they procured it and why they protect it in the first place. And when it comes to children especially, it's so important that when we look at some behavior that worries us, that we ask ourselves, what does the most healthful, brilliant expression of this look like? And then you deal with the problem in a way that doesn't kill that. So for instance, I can imagine some possible future in which people from all around the world travel to see the amazing works of art created by this young woman, using things that others dismiss as garbage. I can imagine a future in which she is one of the greatest storytellers of all time

• 9:23Speaker 05

  because she has the ability to make something like a discarded Coca-Cola bottle, take the form of a character who tells us something beautiful about humanity. Ramsey Dukes has this excellent little book called Uncle Ramsey's Little Book of Demons. And the case that he makes in that book is one of the reasons why our brains evolved to become so large and powerful is because ancient cultures engage the mechanical impersonal aspects of reality as if they had personality or consciousness. And so they looked at a fire as being a spirit. They looked at a tree as being a spirit. And before we dismiss that too quickly as like, hey, that's just arbitrary woo-woo, that actually taught them to engage nature in ways that were more creative than just looking at everything as a mechanical blind force.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  And you don't have to accept their worldview as true in order to see that there are aspects of our creativity that only flourish in an environment where we look at things that conventional thinking says, here's the definition of it. And you say, well, maybe there's another way to look at it. And so underneath this behavior problem, there is some brilliance. And by unearthing that with a little curiosity, we can create the kind of conversation and context where it's possible to deal with it. I think one of the problems here, though... Is that as parents, we often feel the burden to take on all the responsibility of making the passions of our children happen. Our child wants a dog. Okay, I'll buy the dog for you, really in name only.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  Cause I'm gonna wash the dog, I'm gonna walk the dog, I'm gonna feed the dog, and you're not gonna have any responsibility. And I'm gonna be stressed out, but yet I'm too guilty to say no, because a good parent buys a dog for the child. But a good parent doesn't just buy the dog for a child. A good parent creates an environment where the child is able to feel at least some of the weight of the things that they want to do. And I think if we create those kinds of boundaries, we help children think not only more creatively, but more critically about the things they're asking of us. So when the daughter says, hey, here's something that I want, can you stuff it in your pockets? That never happens. Make that immediately off limits. You can only take home what you can carry and fit on your person.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  It's your passion, you can carry it, that's not too much for me to ask of you. Another kind of boundary is, alright, you can only keep the things that you bring in the home for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, whatever it is you can handle. Another boundary, you can only bring so many things. We have a box or a drawer with 15 things. Every time one new thing comes out, something else has to go out. Now, your child not only thinks about what I want, but they think about what I want realistically in a world where trade offs have to be made. This is great for their growth and maturity, because that's how the real world works, right? You can't just have an infinite amount of things. You put down a few boundaries like that. You're already helping her think about what she wants

• 12:13Speaker 05

  in a way that prioritizes and acknowledges a hierarchy of value. And then you also add something like, alright, you get to keep this, but we either have a conversation about it, and you tell me why you like it and why it matters to you, or maybe you write me a story about it, or you tell me a story about it, or maybe something along the lines of, you know, you take a picture of it and you do something with it. And if you don't like any of my ideas, you can come up with your own, but whatever we bring into the house, we've gotta assign it a purpose. And now you give her that opportunity to have her creativity, but you have the boundaries that protect you from it actually being a problem.

• 12:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Eli, I want to get into, in a moment during our lightning round, I want to get more into sort of attachment theory and the four different attachment styles that you talk about in your book. But when we wrap up this question here, I thought what TK was talking about was really helpful. And he started philosophical, then he got real practical with the boundaries. And I think that's an important thing to, because that word has become so part of the zeitgeist now, that boundaries, boundary. But you can call it whatever you want. You could call them rules, you can call them doctrines, you can call them principles, whatever language works for you. But there are some things you simply won't accept at all. And I think we know that. It's easy to set a boundary. If all of a sudden your daughter said, I want to start bringing home raccoon feces. You're going to say, no. What

• 13:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  about squirrel carcasses? No, I'm not going to let you bring certain things. So why do I say that? Because we know that there are certain things you're not going to let in the home. Now, the extreme examples, they're easy to identify. But now it gets closer to the line. We have to figure out where that line is. And it seems to me that line might change over time as well.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I use the word structure when I'm talking about this with parents, because I think it has none, it's not punitive, it's not shaming, it doesn't feel like a distancing, right? So what's the structure that we're putting into our home? And so a structure in your home could be, hey, we only bring things into our home that help to add to our health, our creativity, and our ability to care for each other. Right? So then we're going to, you know, this is very Marie Kondo, we're going to pick up an item and we're going to ask these questions. Does this add to our health? Does this add to our creativity? You know, and kids can see all things. And yes, a squirrel carcass can absolutely add to my creativity, right? Ah, yes. However, it detracts from our health. And so you can kind of come up with a matrix like that of structure that helps you figure out how to

• 14:42Speaker 04

  identify what comes in, what goes out, what relationship do we have to these things?

• 14:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, and we have a relationship to those things, and that relationship changes over time, because even as she says, she often forgets about the things as soon as they come into the house. And that could be part of the structure, is as soon as we've forgotten about the thing, I have a rule that I call the junkless drawer rule, because even as a, as a good minimalist, I have a junk drawer, but if I can't name something that's in the junk drawer, I let it go. And so, a really fun game here for Anna and her daughter could be, alright, you've got this drawer, we gave you this box of things, you can keep anything that you can name as we keep the box shut. So, we'll write them down, you name 15 things, oh, it looks like there's 19 things in the box, what four things didn't we name? Why didn't we remember them? Oh, because they're no longer adding value to our lives, we can

• 15:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  let them go. And I'd love to give you a copy of Emotional Clutter, to deal with some of the clutter that's going on emotionally here. It's a book that TK wrote, and you can download it for free over at theminimists.com. Just click on our resources page, we have a bunch of free resources over there, including Emotional Clutter, or if you want the audiobook version of that, we'd be happy to send that to you as well. Before we get back to our callers, Malabama, what time is it?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  You know what time it is. It's time for the lightning round, where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week.

• 15:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now, Eli, during the lightning round, we each have 60 seconds to answer these questions with a short, shareable, less than 140-character response. We call them minimal maxims. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes over at theminimists.com/podcast, and every minimal maxim ever, at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free, if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimists.e-mail. We'll never send you spam, or junk, or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. Now, during the lightning round, don't worry about a pithy answer, we never keep it to 60 seconds. We figure it out here. What is the question of the week this week, Bama?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  When is attachment useful, and when is it clinging?

• 16:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, when is attachment useful, and when is it clinging? TK, before we get to our pithy answers, I do want to hear how some of our listeners answered this question. But first, Eli, I'd like to hear from you. Can we talk a bit about attachment theory? What is attachment theory?

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Well, I like to now change that lexicon into attachment research because it's not just a theory anymore. We have like 60 years of research that says human beings are wired to have close relationships and our close relationships are key to how we develop and whether or not we're thriving in the world. So it's a study of the way in which children and parents relate to each other, the way that we relate to our partners, to our besties, those very special attached relationships have a role in our lives that other relationships don't play.

• 17:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And this is so this is specific to attachment and there is a difference between attachment and clinging as this this question of the week sort of gets to. I think of it from a Buddhist perspective and those two terms are used almost interchangeably. Attachment is suffering or clinging is suffering, but that's not what we're talking about here. Maybe you could talk a bit about the four different attachment styles that you talk about. I think it's page 24 in your your new book.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  So the data we have says that while human beings require these close relationships, there is a difference in the quality of how those dynamics play out. And we've been able to study that in several different modes to show that in general, our relationships fall into one of these four places. The ideal is in a secure dynamic. A secure dynamic means that we are able to effectively rely on somebody. And when we're talking about kids and parents, we're talking about a child being able to rely on a caregiver. And it is not just for the basics. It's not just for survival, but also for that deep felt sense of connection, of emotional attunement. There's a sense that I am not too much. I

• 18:36Speaker 04

  can bring myself to my caregiver and they are going to know how to help soothe me, how to help me regulate, how to celebrate me when things are going well. I feel secure in my ability to rely on this person. The second category, and this gets real tricky with words because there's lots of different studies and different people got involved. So this one has multiple different ways of talking about it, but. We call this resistant, or ambivalent, or anxious attachment pattern. And this is the pattern where a child is in relationship with a caregiver who is intermittently able to be an effective support. So sometimes they are soothing, understanding, regulated, but maybe they struggle with a drug addiction. And so they come in and out of that capacity, or they're in an abusive relationship. So maybe they're

• 19:20Speaker 04

  able to be that way when the abuser isn't in the room, but not when they are. And so what happens to a child is that they learn to be hypervigilant in their relationship. They come to believe that they have to be in charge of making that connection happen. And so they're constantly scanning their caregiver. Do you love me now? Do you still love me? Am I too much? Am I too much now? Are we okay? Are we okay? And there's this lifelong trajectory, unless there's some intervention or healing, of feeling very anxious and preoccupied and clingy in those romantic or partnership/friendship relationships, in those close relationships.

• 19:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so it can apply, it obviously starts with childhood development, but then it applies to different types of relationships. It can apply to your coworkers, to your parents, to your lover, to your spouse, to your kids that you then have as well.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yes. Anyone that you perceive to be a close relationship, right? That's where it kind of clicks in. The third category we call in childhood avoidant, in adulthood we call it dismissive. In the childhood research, we actually tag on the word anxious to it. This gets confusing again, but I think that's important to note.

• 20:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Because sometimes our avoidant friends get stereotyped as non-feeling and non-caring, and that's not true. So what happens for an avoidant child is they're in relationship to a caregiver who is consistently unable to be a place where they can rely. So that might be that that caregiver is very dismissive in their emotional stance. So they're like, you know, the tough parent who's like, you're fine, kid. Deal with it. Get on with it. Or it could be a caregiver who's so anxious that they're a source of intrusive anxiety. And so the kid learns, like, best thing to do is to shut it down, not show it, not let anybody know that I'm feeling something or needing something, because it gets worse when I show it to people.

• 21:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hmm.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  So this child learns, when I'm tender or in distress, the most effective thing to do is to swallow it, to not display it on my face, to not reach for somebody, because that is as regulated as I can get in this situation. And so then they go into adult relationships, or in relationships with their kids, with the belief that their needs are a burden to other people. So that's the third category. The fourth category, and this part I'm always like, wanna pause because if you're in this category, as I start talking about it, it's real emotional, which is you grow up in a home where a caregiver is a source of distress or fear for you. So if, if in our bodies, we're wired to go near towards our caregivers when we are in

• 21:47Speaker 04

  tenderness or in some form of unsafety, but our caregivers are themselves frightening to us, that's extremely distressing to our nervous system. So we develop what's considered disorganized pattern, which is that instead of moving towards our caregiver, or swallowing our feelings, or becoming hypervigilant, all those other three categories, those are patterned ways of responding. A child who's afraid of their caregiver has to go into a more primal state. So they go into fight, flight, freeze, faint, fawn, right? They have to go into survival mode because when they are not okay, there's nowhere safe to go. So it's deeply traumatic. And I call that attachment trauma.

• 22:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so these last three you're talking about, they are all insecure forms of attachment. Resistant, avoidant, disorganized, as a recap there, in contrast with secure attachment. Which brings me back to the, the question of the week here. I'd love to get your insights on it. When is attachment useful? And when would you consider it to be clinging? And is that a worthwhile distinction?

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would say this. Attachment is always useful. You know, we know this from lots of studies. No one gets to the end of their life and they've evolved out of the need to have close relationships. Like, human beings are fundamentally relational. But when we are obsessive, or preoccupied, or in that clingy place, the, the problem isn't the attachment. The problem is our inability to utilize the attachment. So if we have come to believe that it is our job to be constantly on guard, analyzing our relationships, and focusing on every little nuance, do you love me? Do you love me now? I mean, this is that preoccupied pattern, probably, is what we're really talking about. Then we have not done the work we need to do to believe we are worthy.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  Of those attachments. And so we have to kind of do that that work on our past to be able to come back into the present and to be able to receive what it is we do have in our lives, to receive the love that is there and the security that is there, instead of believing that we have to constantly wait for the other shoe to drop.

• 23:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay. Yeah, I think that when I think about attachment theory, it's often much different from when we talk about a clinging to material possessions. You know, our first question was sort of asking about the insecurity that is caused by this collecting, which is almost a a form of of clinging when it reaches its terminus. I often say that collecting is or organizing is well-planned hoarding. Now, the irony of that is that is a bit of an oxymoron, because hoarding is unintentional. It's not deliberate. And so you can't intentionally hoard. That doesn't work. It doesn't fit together. But in a way, it does often hide

• 24:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the problem. We're clinging to things with an unwillingness to let go. There is a lack of intention there. I'll just hide these things. And it sounds to me like in the relationship attachment theory, these attachment styles, it sounds to me like what's going on here is we're often finding ways to deal with something from our past that is forcing us to cling in ways that are obsessive.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Correct. And, you know, in this in this vein, we could be clinging to someone who we don't need to cling to because they are readily connected to us and available, and we can release that clinging and we can go, oh, my gosh, I don't have to cling because I am worthy of this connection and it is solid without my vigilance, right? But it also might be that we're clinging to people who cannot meet our needs. And so we have to stop and pause and recognize, at one point, did I give up on the hope that I could find people who are my people? And instead, I've become this desperate to stay with someone who treats me like dirt.

• 25:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hmm. Yeah. Let's check in with some of our listeners here. What did Zachary have to say to this question?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Zachary said, "Attachment is useful for focusing your thoughts and actions in a way that furthers healthy development, like attachment to personal goals in fitness, finance, relationships, etc. It becomes clinging when you must have a particular outcome to be happy, like six-pack abs, a billion dollars in the bank, or the perfect spouse."

• 25:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, it's funny because often the idea of perfect changes as well because the goal at first probably isn't a billion dollars in the bank. It might be a thousand dollars at first. And of course, that's not enough. And then the hedonic treadmill kicks in, the disease of more, needing more, more, more, more things, more square footage, more relationships, more acclaim, more adulation. The six-pack abs aren't enough, so now I need the eight-pack abs, right?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I need the 12-pack abs!

• 26:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And we don't even know why we're doing it necessarily. Maybe six-pack abs are great as a byproduct of health, potentially, but when they become the goal and I will not be satisfied until then, that does, to me at least, sound like a bit of clinging. Alright, so many other people answered questions or responded to this topic. You can read dozens of other listener responses in the Patreon community chat. Did you know you can join our Patreon community chats for free? Of course, we'd love for you to support our work financially, but if you can't afford our private podcast episodes, you can still join our community chats by becoming a free member on Patreon. The link is in the description. How about you, listeners? When is attachment useful and when is it clinging? Let us know in the comments. Alright,

• 27:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  give me something pithy, TK. When is attachment useful and when is it clinging?

• 27:13Speaker 05

  I'll say, "Attachment anchors, clinging confines." So, in this context here, I see attachment as connection, intimacy, trust, security, that which produces healthful engagement. Whereas I see clinging as the perceived inability to create value in the absence of something, or the perceived inability to be valuable in the absence of something. So, an example would be, in my home, I have a beautiful painting that is attached, anchored to my wall, and I believe that it may- Makes my home look nicer. I believe that it adds value. Attachment. Clinging would be if I say, if I lose that painting, someone steals it from me, if it burns down, then I'm a nobody.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  Or I'm such an irresponsible person for allowing it to happen on my watch, or I'll never be able to replace it with anything better, or I'll lose my status in society. Clinging is a judgment that we make about ourselves, where we take on these harsh, self-defeating beliefs about what it means for who I am and what's possible for me, when the things that I'm attached to are no longer a part of my life. It's the failure to honor that cycle of coming and going, dissolving and appearing, that all beautiful relationships and things that flow into our lives have.

• 28:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I really like that distinction because with many of our things, I do use these two terms interchangeably. Because I think it makes sense. Quite often, it's a way to soften the idea of clinging. We say, oh yeah, I'm really attached to the sentimental item.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But maybe I'm not simply attached to it. Maybe attachment becomes clinging the moment I refuse to let go. If I have a willingness to let go and the ability to let go, it doesn't mean I have to let go of the thing, of the relationship, of the material possession, of the house. Earlier this year, we walked away from social media. We had a willingness to walk away from that, but not in the spirit of renunciation. I think as soon as we renounce a thing, it's like the first question we had from Anna. What we don't want to do with the kid there is say, you must renounce these things. You should not collect anything. By the way, if you wanted to bring home more things and make her more discontent, tell her that, right? And so I'm interested in this distinction here, especially with respect to relationships.

• 29:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because, yeah, I can see how harmful clinging can become. How harmful being obsessive. Not just harmful to me, but I would think it also harms the relationship in some way. Is that a fair categorization?

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Absolutely. When we are secure in our dynamics, we aren't trying to control somebody else or the connection. We're relating. There's a deep sense of there's a you, there's a me, and there's an us, right? And there's this flow of energy between us, you know, this give and take. You know, this morning, I'm away from my kids and my family to be here. And I've got a text from my husband just saying like, I hope you're having the best time. I'm so proud of you, lady. Aww. And, and that only bonds me to him more, right? His ability to, to celebrate the going in and the going out just bonds us together more. Right? So it's sort of that paradox of, you know, if you love something deeply, you have to allow it to be separate from you.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  And it isn't allowing it to be separate from you that it becomes more magnetized to you.

• 30:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's spot on. Ladies and gentlemen, Eli Harwin. You can check out both of her books. We'll put links to them in the show notes. Securely Attached and Raising Securely Attached Kids. You can also follow her on social media, at Attachment Nerd on Facebook and Instagram. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. We're getting close to the end of page one here. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to on pages two and three. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. We just did this short film series. It's called Fragments. Our good friend Danny Martinez, he directed it. It's a six-episode short film series.

• 31:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All six episodes of Fragments are now available for free at theminimists.com/fragments. Episodes four and five are my favorites. TK did this one about the museum of things. We were in this really nice, like, general store up in Ojai, California. And he gave this great video essay about the usefulness of attachment to things, when that can be useful, when it doesn't, when we're not clinging to those things. And I also talked about something I think we're going to address later here in this episode, but about the boundaries of our discontent are often defined by what we tolerate. You encourage what you tolerate most of the time. When we're tolerating, I'm just thinking about my daughter.

• 31:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She was, same thing with, with Anna's question. My daughter, she was, she doesn't like making her bed in the mornings, but she does, she does it because that's what we ask her to do. And she, she formed this habit of taking the sheet off and like hiding it in a drawer, hiding it under her bed because it was- And at first, it was just easy to dismiss it, but I realized that I was encouraging her to continue to do that if I didn't at least talk to her and try to understand why do you do that? Not, here's what you need to do or else, but I'm just trying to understand why you're doing that and what would it take for us to change that? So those episodes are available for free at theminimalists.com/fragment. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Also, a quick programming note, we have no podcast next week. We're recording

• 32:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  this right before Christmas, so we're closing the studio for Christmas. Give us the folks some time off here. So we won't be back with a podcast next week, but we will the following week. We're going to talk about going without that week. This has been a year for us off of social media. We're going to talk about going without social media. We also want to talk about how we've been compelled to go without other things in our lives over the years. So we'll talk about that in two weeks. No podcast next week. All right, before we get to page three, or page two, Malibu, what else you got for us?

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners. Jess said, I stumbled upon your first documentary on Netflix several years ago and really enjoyed it. It was very thought provoking, so I decided to follow the minimalist on Facebook and Instagram. I followed along there for a while, and then probably two years ago, I read three of your books. Everything That Remains was wonderful. Then you did the experiment of not being on social media, and I found myself missing hearing from all of you. So I asked for a subscription to Patreon as a present. Listening to the maximal episodes are even better than the clips on YouTube. I'm so glad I received this subscription as a gift. Your private podcast is helping me figure out what my real values are.

• 33:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow, Jess, I'm so glad that you are enjoying the maximal episodes on Patreon. It's a really good reminder. You can now gift a subscription of our private podcast to folks for a month or several months or a year. Patreon.com/theminimalist, if you'd like to give someone the gift of less. Anyway, Jess, thank you so much for that thoughtful comment. For anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can send a voice memo to [email protected], so we can feature your voice on the show. All right, that is the first 33.3% of episode 474. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, how do you detach while still caring about someone?

• 34:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What questions would help me determine whether I'm compatible with a potential partner? How do I talk to my kids about their feelings when I don't even understand their feelings myself? Plus, we have a million more questions and Simple Living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. We'll see you over there. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malabama, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, Inspire Dave, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 35:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.