203: Why You Keep Choosing The Same Person Over And Over W/ Thais Gibson

We hurt in relationships, but we also heal in them. Sabrina sits down with Thais Gibson, founder of The Personal Development School, to map out the actual stages of healing attachment wounds: core wounds from childhood, unmet needs, subconscious rewiring, anxious attachment patterns, somatic work, and nervous system regulation. No secure partner is going to fix you, and this episode breaks down exactly why. If you are stuck in the same dating cycles, doing all the personal growth content and wondering why nothing is sticking, this one is for you. Thais explains why self-awareness is not the same as healing, how to re-parent the unmet needs from your childhood, and the 21-day practice that patterns new beliefs into your subconscious mind. This conversation covers inner child work, attachment theory, and the deep reprogramming that actually changes how you show up in love. Pre-order Sabrina's book coming out October 2026,⁠ "Why Am I Like This?"⁠ If you’re ready to slow down, trust your instincts, and break your old dating patterns, the Healthy Relationship Foundations Course walks you through it step-by-step ⁠HERE!⁠ If you’re serious about changing your dating patterns instead of repeating them, the Art of Going Slow course helps you unlearn urgency, regulate your nervous system, and build real connection without rushing, chasing, or abandoning yourself ⁠HERE!⁠ Get Ad free ⁠HERE!⁠ Want to work with Sabrina? ⁠HERE!⁠ Get merch for The Sabrina Zohar Show ⁠HERE!⁠ Don't forget to follow ⁠Sabrina⁠ and ⁠The Sabrina Zohar Show⁠ on Instagram and ⁠Sabrina ⁠on TikTok! Video now available on ⁠YOUTUBE!⁠ Please support our sponsors! Head to ⁠Greenchef.com/50sabrina⁠ and use code 50sabrina to get fifty percent off your first month, then twenty percent off for two months with free shipping. Treat yourself to gear that looks good, feels good, and doesn’t break the bank with Fabletics. Go to Fabletics.com/SABRINA and sign up as a VIP and get eighty percent off everything! Batch is offering 30% off sitewide. Go to hellobatch.com/SABRINA and use code SABRINA at checkout. ============================= Chapters: 0:00 Hurt In Relationships, Heal In Them 6:21 Why Your Subconscious Runs Your Life 11:32 You Can't Outsource Your Healing 18:55 Rewire Core Wounds In 21 Days 24:55 Unmet Childhood Needs Explained 29:49 Nervous System Regulation Truth 34:08 Somatic Processing For Triggers 41:21 How To Communicate Needs Clearly 47:33 Setting Boundaries Without Guilt 53:04 Rewire Anger And Reactive Behavior Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formerly known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A. Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.

• 1:00Sabrina Zohar?

  Have you ever heard the term, "we hurt in relationships, but we also heal in relationships"? Something that you might have no idea about is sure, right? Relationships can cause you to not trust. Relationships can make you feel like you're losing everything if you lose that person, but they can also help you find yourself and heal in a completely different way. And today, not only are we going to share with you how you hurt and heal in relationships, but the stages of which you do that. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to another episode of the Sabrina Zohar Show. My name is Sabrina Zohar and I am your host. You guys, we have a very special guest today. We have somebody who has been on the show before and she is now in studio with us in person and you guys get to see Tais Gibson again. I fucking love her.

• 1:43Sabrina Zohar?

  But today, we're really going to help you understand that there are stages of relationships and healing in those relationships because we all have those attachment wounds. We all have something that we're battling and fighting through. And today, we're going to give you a little bit more clarity, some tools to help you. And guys, as always, please don't forget to rate and review the show. We have a lot of new friends here. A little bit about me, I curse a lot. I say fuck every other word. I speak really fast, but baby, that's why it's marked explicit. So if you don't like it, that's okay. We don't take it personally. But if you do, welcome to the family. All we ask is if you leave a comment or review, please speak with kindness. We're building a community here of love and safety, and that includes how we speak to each other. But we're open and receptive to how you feel. If you guys need anything, everything's a link in show notes. You can join a course, work one-on-one, or just be here. That's really what matters.

• 2:28Sabrina Zohar?

  All right, babes, without further ado, let's get right on into it, shall we? Miss Tais, Mrs. Mrs. Tais. Ah, fuck it, you're married.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Whatever it is, yeah.

• 2:36Sabrina Zohar?

  Welcome to the show.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me. Excited to be here with you. Honestly, excited to hang out and just chat.

• 2:42Sabrina Zohar?

  That's the thing. I even was like, we're not, we have no notes, we have no outline. I'm like, I want us to just have a really real and authentic conversation today. But before we do, could you please tell us a little bit more about yourself? And how you got started with all this?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I got into this probably how a lot of people get into this work, which is I just went through a lot of my own personal struggles and was really seeking a way out. So I was telling you this not too long ago, but I, I went through a lot of childhood chaos and trauma and big stuff, and then just internalized everything. And by the time I, I turned 15, I had knee surgery, I got addicted to painkillers, and I was like, really, really struggling. And I just, I remember, there's sort of some interesting things when I look back on my journey. I remember being in an AA meeting one day and trying all these things out. I'd go to like AA meetings or NA meetings or inpatient rehab in between university semesters in the summer, outpatient rehab, all kinds of stuff. And nothing really was working for me.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  And I also wasn't really committed at the time to like working the steps very well. I was a kid. But I think one of the reasons that I struggled is that I went into a meeting one day and, and somebody was in there and she was like, I've been sober 100 days and today was the hardest day. And I remember that, for me, I was 18 at the time. And I remember going like, oh, my God, like, am I gonna just suffer my entire life? Like, is it gonna be this hard my entire life? It's always gonna be this crazy battle? And I wasn't really willing to accept that. And I think I was just like always searching for something else. So I was in school for psychology and probably on the outside, like, maybe my life looked like it was doing okay, got a full ride soccer scholarship, all these things. But like on the inside, I was like falling apart, like just getting in trouble and this thing

• 4:19Speaker 03

  and that, like just so much stuff was going on and behind the scenes. And I was in a class and somebody said to me, oh, your conscious mind can't outwill or overpower your subconscious mind. And I don't know if you've ever seen anybody that you've been close to in active addiction or anything like that, but it's like you tell yourself all the things. You're like, I'm gonna get sober, I'm gonna get clean, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. And you tell yourself and then you just never follow through. And you just feel like you're helpless and weak and not capable. And so that's what I believed about myself. And hearing somebody say that, I was like, oh, so my conscious mind wants sobriety and my subconscious mind has a different set of priorities going on. So how do I figure out what that is and what's going on down there? And I just became obsessed with learning about the subconscious mind first.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Like how we get wired and how we get conditioned and where we take our conditioning from and how you can rewire it and change it. And that to me was what ended up changing my life. So then I got into a way better place, got sober. Definitely am not somebody who like people and wanna be mindful about how I say this because everybody's journey is different, but like I don't think about painkillers. I don't think like, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, you're gonna be sober forever and and you're gonna struggle forever. And like I had my appendix out maybe five years ago and was prescribed painkillers. They sat in my house somewhere for like a few months. Eventually we moved and I'm like, oh, these are here, threw them out. Like it just and it doesn't have to be like that, but that's because I did a lot of the deep inner work so that I wasn't in relationship, the substance is that way.

• 5:47Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah, it's so interesting how many people share that story.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 5:50Sabrina Zohar?

  Right of like that they had something that took them that was like my brother had a drug problem when I was a kid. So like he was sent to a wilderness program and it's not really something I wrote in about the book, but I've never really talked about it publicly, how it impacted the family of like having to go to NA and being around the program and the 12 steps and doing all of that and then really looking and saying that was a byproduct. It was a subproduct of the deeper real issues like that that wasn't the issue. The issue was the toxicity, the chaos, that that was his coping mechanism. And so I find that really fascinating and I'm curious. So now you said that doesn't really impact you anymore.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, to be perfectly honest, like, you know, I've heard people talk about stuff over the years and for a while I would go to meetings and things like that, but I just don't even think about it. Like it's not something where I'm like, oh, my gosh, like I'm just jonesing for today. It's not even something that's like in my awareness and. It really, you kind of just have this in passing, but one thing I really realized over time is that like the problem isn't the problem. Like the painkillers aren't like jumping down my throat when I'm sleeping. Like it's, it's that, it's a fact that like I had all of these reasons internally that I was trying to run from pain. And one of the examples that, that showed up for me first is I remember at the time when I was trying to get sober, I was trying to learn about the subconscious mind. And then I had this like sort of spiritual mentor come into my life at the same time. And he was trying to tell me, I was so young

• 7:10Speaker 03

  then. And this is way before meditation and stuff like that was like more mainstream. And he was like, well, you have to meditate, you have to meditate. I remember sitting down one day and being like, oh, I'm going to meditate. And I sat down and I was in this, this apartment, I was living in Miami at the time. And, and I sat down and I was like, okay, I'm going to meditate, what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to just like watch my thoughts and just witness them. And I started to try to witness some of the first things that I noticed that I said is I was like, this is stupid. You're stupid. You're going to fail at this. Like you failed at everything. And I, and I just started like going off on myself. And I was like, oh my goodness. No wonder I numb. Like no wonder this is what's going on. And I realized a lot of how I saw people talk to each other growing up and how I was

• 7:54Speaker 03

  spoken to at times is like what I internalize is my own internal dialogue. So no wonder those are my programs. That's what was running at a subconscious level. And I was like, I need to change that first. Like whatever that is. Because if somebody was following me around all day, talking to me like that, I would want to numb them out too. Like no wonder. And so I, I started doing a lot of work on like my internal dialogue, my thoughts, my core beliefs, my nervous system, learning how to like be calm and present and through a lot of like mindfulness and meditation and, and, and learning who I was. I think I grew up in so much chaos and trauma that there wasn't time to be like, oh, who am I? What do I need? It was like, how do I figure this out? Like, how do I kind of survive on a daily basis? So I started doing a lot of work on like, how do you rewire your core

• 8:36Speaker 03

  wounds or your, your internal dialogue? Then how do you learn your needs? And how do you design your life according to like things that are true for you and who you are? And how do you regulate your nervous system? And I just started there. And it was so healing that I started giving these workshops for free to people. I'd be like, oh my gosh, I couldn't believe. Leave it like I was like I have peace like I had never felt peace. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And from that, I started seeing clients kind of by accident. People come after the workshops. So will you take us as clients? And I was like, I'm like 21 or 22 at the time. I was like, um, I'm really young. I'm still in school. Do you care? People are like, no, we love the workshop. And so I started seeing clients. But then, after being really sober and like really in a good healed space for for a few years on my own, I met now 11 years ago, my my husband.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  And it was the first time I dated and date anybody for like three and a half years, like all sober. And he, we, we, as things got more serious, we started living together. I was like, oh, like, I still have stuff to figure out. Like, I got really peaceful on my own. I was really good on my own, but I didn't really know how to do relationships healthily yet. And that's when I revisited attachment theory. I learned about it in first year university, and it's such a high level where it's like, oh, here's your attachment style. Here's your temperament. Here's some of your patterns. But it was like, no, no, what are the triggers? What are the needs? Like, what are, how do you regulate your nervous system? So then I started being like, I'm going to work with people to rewire their core wounds, which each attachment stuff. I knew somebody's attachment style. I know what their core wounds were going to be, what their needs were going to be, how their nervous system was going to be functioning. We could rewire those things.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  But then more importantly, what I learned to do was like, how do you communicate? Like, how do you actually talk in a healthy way? I had only seen people talk through fighting. Or like have conversations like that? Or how do you learn how to have healthy boundaries? Or be vulnerable in relationships? All stuff I didn't really know how to do. And so I was like, oh, I have to revisit that. And that's kind of what took a lot of the work I do full circle.

• 10:19Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, I'm so excited to have this conversation because I'm excited to learn about all that. The the painful truth I learned along my healing journey was that you do hurt in relationships and heal in relationships. But the biggest caveat about that is that we can't expect another partner to do that healing for us. And I see that content online of like, the right person's going to heal you. A secure partner is going to heal you. And all that person's going to do is create a safe space for you to be able to understand and get curious and look at that. But no one is doing that work for you. That is an internal job. And in the more that we outsource that to everybody else, we can't be so fucking shocked when we try to numb, when we try to escape, and when we try to rely on somebody else to do it for us, when that's the job that's meant for us. When you hear Like we hurt relationships, we heal in relationships.

• 11:04Sabrina Zohar?

  Can you give us like the zoomed out version? Because there's so much I want to talk to you about. My ADHD brain trying to fit it all into one question. But I'd like to start there because I know that there are stages and there's steps in the relationship. And there's all these different aspects. But can we talk about a highbrow of how that really works? For people that maybe don't understand what the fuck I'm talking about.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%. It reminds me of this quote, and it's a Rumi quote. And he says, if I'm irritated by every rub, how will I ever be polished? Oh, I love that.

• 11:30Sabrina Zohar?

  Yes.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  And it's like saying, you know, for anybody who doesn't know or didn't catch it as quickly as you. Because sometimes I tell people that and they're like, what? But what it means is like all of your relationships are not just about love and connection. They're about growth. And relationships are going to show you what's still wounded. Like they're going to be a mirror into yourself. And everything that irritates you or rubs you the wrong way is there to polish you. Is there to like help you see and like heal and grow through that experience? And most of our hurt comes from relationships, but so does most of our healing. That's an opportunity to look into yourself. If there's something hurting you or bothering you or upsetting you. That's an opportunity for you to take radical responsibility for what's going on in your internal world. And then be able to move through that and see what needs to be done. So I really agree with that.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  And I also think in relationships, to your point, so often people are like, oh, you should heal it for me. You should do it for me. All of the things that we struggle to resource most within ourselves. We put pressure on people around us to source for us. So if somebody who's like, let's say anxious in relationships and they're, they have a hard time self-soothing. What do they do? They're like, oh, my partner should always be here to soothe me. They should do it for me. And it's like, well, that's not the answer because that just puts stress on the other person. And over time, that puts stress on the relationship. And then when the person's not there, you haven't learned anything. You haven't learned how to like move through that without them. So I really believe that relationships, A, become this mirror into yourself. And B, you can have somebody who's secure, who can hold space for you or be a container for you to go through what you're going through.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  But at the end of the day, like each person has to do the work and I don't think there's any way around that.

• 12:59Sabrina Zohar?

  I love that. What's the quote?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  So Rumi has a great quote and he says, "If I am irritated by every rub, how will I ever be polished?" And what that means is everything that upsets you, makes you feel triggered in a relationship, all those things that rub you the wrong way, they're an opportunity for polishing, they're an opportunity for healing because they're showing you what hasn't healed within yourself yet.

• 13:18Sabrina Zohar?

  So I want to know, because I think you and I are on the same side of the internet, that we see a lot of this, so much misinformation between attachment styles and healing and doing the work, da, da, da, da, da. Have you noticed a clear difference between the rubric that it takes for every attachment style to really get to that place? And what have you seen? Because this, I know we could rant on for a long time.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  So I go through five pillars every single time.

• 13:41Sabrina Zohar?

  It's here.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  And it's so interesting because it's actually the work I did first before ever going into attachment styles. It was like, okay, what are your core wounds? And so traditional attachment theory is like, oh, here's sort of some of the frameworks. But like, the actual wounds we found is that anxious attachment styles are their biggest triggers, or the fear of being abandoned, alone, excluded, rejected, disliked, not good enough, unloved, unsafe. And I know that sounds a lot, but you can actually rewire two wounds at a time. And I can go through an exercise if you want for how to do that, but it's super simple. Dismissive avoidance, they have totally different wounds. So their big wounds are the fear of being trapped, helpless, powerless, defective, or shameful if somebody's critical to them, unsafe in a conflict, the fear of not belonging, which is a really big thing for them, and then the fear of being weak if they're vulnerable. And so these are all things. And like, the idea that I give as your actual core wounds,

• 14:27Speaker 03

  the analogy is like, if you go into the woods and you see a bear, and the bear chases you, and you run away, and thank God you're safe, but then you have to go back into the woods the next day, your mind is just like projecting the bear everywhere. Like, you hear the trees move and you're bracing for the bear. And it's because our subconscious mind, when it gets imprinted by negative experiences, we store them very strongly, and we hold on to negative things a lot more than positive things. You don't remember like being chased by the bear and thinking like, "Oh, the pretty flowers, look at the beautiful flowers as I'm running." Like, you're like the bear and its teeth, like, that's what you remember. And so our subconscious holds on to negative things more than positive, and then it re-projects them back out. So that's great if you have to be chased by a bear and survive, but it's not great when you felt abandoned as a child, and now every time you're not getting a text message back, you're like projecting that abandonment.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Fearful avoidance, they have the anxious and avoidant core wounds. They share in both of them. Often fearful of ones originally think they're anxiously attached. But fearful of ones, what's really unique to them is you have a really anxious side, but you push people away all the time because you're scared. You feel threatened by love and connection. And so they deactivate and pull back all the time, too. And they have this huge core wound around also being betrayed. That was a big thing we found in our research. It's like betrayal, unworthiness, I am bad, and then abandoned. Disliked, excluded, rejected. Those are sensitive points, too, and the fear of being trapped or helpless. So first pillar is always like, know your wounds, rewire them. And I'm happy to like, share a tool if you want. So, so a really easy tool is that we have to understand none of those core wounds are conscious. Nobody is like, let me tell myself I'm not good enough all day and see how I feel.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  They are subconscious wounds. So we have to deal with those things at a subconscious level. Your subconscious mind is responsible for 95% of all of your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, actions. Your conscious mind is 3 to 5%.

• 16:04Sabrina Zohar?

  Well, fuck.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:05Sabrina Zohar?

  Thais explains a lot.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's why everybody will be like, oh, I have to, I'm gonna quit eating chocolate for my New Year's resolution. Then like you eat chocolate three days later, or you're like, oh, I'm gonna stop raising my voice in a relationship, but you can't. Like, it's because unless you're actually rewiring those things that are causing you to do that, you're gonna keep repeating the same patterns. That's near and dear to my heart because that's why I was like, oh, I'm gonna get sober, I'm gonna get sober, and then nothing would happen. And so, so what happens is unless you're engaging the subconscious mind, we don't like, really heal so quickly. And we have a lot of like, trying to get around it and figure it out and like, go this way, that way. So there's three steps. First step is what is your core wound and its opposite? So now that you heard the main core wounds, you can find yours and its opposite. Second step is you have to speak to your subconscious mind. The conscious mind speaks in language, okay, so like actual like, language like we're talking right now.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  The subconscious does not. It speaks in emotions and images. And so i- if you try to do something like just affirm your way out of a wound, it's useless. And so what we want to be able to do is we want to use our conscious mind to speak to our subconscious mind. So that looks like leveraging emotions and imagery. And if you look at like, the container of emotions and imagery, you can actually see this if I'm like, oh, whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant. Like, you hear it, but you think of a pink elephant. That's your conscious versus subconscious mind. Your conscious hears the language, but you register it after your subconscious flashed an image. So we have to speak to our subconscious because that's where the wounds exist. Nobody's consciously choosing to wake up and be like, oh, I'm, I'm gonna tell myself all day I don't belong, or that I'm weak, or whatever it is. So step one, find your wound and its opposite.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Step two, we want to come up with lots of repetition of emotions and imagery because repetition fires and wires and emotions and imagery reaches subconscious mind. So now we're creating neural networks at the subconscious level of mind. So what we do here is we go, okay, let's say the wound is I'm not good enough. I am good enough. We need 10 memories of times we actually felt good enough because every memory that we have is a series of emotions and images. If I say, tell me your favorite childhood memory and you were like, oh, I'm playing at the beach with my friends. You see the images of the waves and the sand. And as you tell the story or the memory, you would laugh or smile. We've all seen people do that. Or if it's a sad memory, sometimes people tell a story and they cry, right? So now we're actually using our conscious mind to speak to our subconscious mind.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And then from there, now we've got repetition and emotion. The third step we have to take is we record ourselves saying it out loud. And then we have to listen back for 21 days. It takes 21 days at least to build strong enough neural networks that are going to stick. And we do it in a suggestible state, which means when your subconscious mind is really open to absorbing information, which is the first hour that we wake up, the last hour before we go to bed, after a meditation, breath work, any of those things, because our brain is producing more alpha and theta brainwaves. So now you have three steps. It's really easy. This is our first pillar of healing. It's like, what are your core wounds? Find the opposite, 10 pieces of memory to support the new idea. I'm good enough because I was a good friend two days ago. I'm good enough because, and get really specific because each memory will elicit those emotions and images. And then we record ourselves saying it, listen back, feel about it, visualize about it, and

• 19:00Speaker 03

  actually rewires your core wounds.

• 19:02Sabrina Zohar?

  I mean, I love that. That's why I'm so not a fan of the toxic positivity and everything's amazing and good vibes only. It's like, if your subconscious doesn't genuinely believe that it's safe, that there are good things happening, that all is right in the world, it's not going to fucking project that out. What's going to happen is you have an incongruence. You want to be positive and all that. That's why, for fuck's sake, I hate if he wanted to, he would, because it doesn't take into account the subconscious, the deeper roots and layers. And I feel like that's what's missing, right? When we chalk everybody up to a bumper sticker, we lose out on the minutia and the nuance and the actual fucking neuroscience of how our brains work because I didn't really know any of that. Okay, so we have that first step, right? We understand that. Now take it away. What's the next step? Where are we going? Because I'm on this ride with you.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Okay, second step is we have to look at, and it's a beautiful exercise to do. It's a little heart wrenching, but it's good. Um, depending on what your childhood was like. So I get people to write down mom and dad. On a piece of paper, draw a nice line right through the middle. And then I want people to sit down and be like, okay, what are the greatest unmet needs I had from each person in childhood? And there's this beautiful quote by Gabor Maté, and he summarizes this really well. He says, "Trauma are the things that that happened that shouldn't have happened. That's the obvious, the abuse, all that kind of stuff. That's what imprints core wounds. But trauma are also the things that didn't happen that needed to happen. So you didn't get a parent who was present, or you had a parent who wasn't safe and didn't protect you, or you had a parent who you didn't feel seen or connected to. So what we do is we find out what those things were. Wherever we have deeply unmet needs from childhood, there's grief.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  So we actually carry this sense of grief from those things forward into our lives. And then those are the very things that we're like, oh, my partner, you're gonna do this for me. You're gonna fix this wound. And that's not how it's ever gonna work. So what I get people to do is write, okay, here are the deepest unmet needs from dad. Here are the deepest unmet needs from mom. And I really believe this is like so cliche, but it's so true. Healing happens when we become our own parents. When we reparent these things in relationship to self. So what I get people to do, so that we actually build neural networks, so it becomes our new set point, is those times where we're like so anxious or needy and we want somebody else to do it for us, those are the things we have to give to ourselves the most. So I get people to be like, okay, what are the deepest unmet needs from dad? We have to start meeting them in relationship to self for 21 days.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  When you start driving a car, you get in a car and you're like, what the heck is going on? Like steer the wheel, look in the rearview mirror, like do all these things, turn on my signal. And it feels very mechanical and it feels weird. And like, this is what this will feel like to people. But then you do it and you get used to it, and then it becomes your new baseline. And then you get in your car, you don't even think about it, you listen to a podcast, you listen to music, you talk on the phone. And this is what we're trying to do, is we're not trying to keep prolonging these periods of grief where you felt so unseen as a child. And now you don't know how to see yourself or be in your own body or connect to your own emotions. You're trying to meet these needs on a daily basis for 21 days. It gets patterned and you're firing and wiring it, and now it's something you naturally do. So for example, if somebody felt really emotionally disconnected from in childhood,

• 21:59Speaker 03

  good, you're gonna learn to emotionally connect to yourself. Maybe that's through a mindfulness practice. Where you notice what's going on in your body. Maybe that's from setting an alarm on your phone every three hours to be like, what am I feeling? What do I need? Like trying to check in with yourself. Maybe it's journaling in the morning and evening, things that are connecting you to you. But as you do it across 21 day cycles, it has to be every day. We have to really be present and invested in it. What ends up taking place is we're filling this void of grief from things we didn't get access to in childhood. And then you'll see people at day like 15 or 20, they're like, oh, I noticed what I was feeling today. Oh, I realized this today. And they're emotionally connected to themselves because they've actually wired it in. And that's where we start to really heal on that second pillar.

• 22:36Sabrina Zohar?

  For me, what changed the game with that is like doing yoga, right? And it's so, it's, it's basic. And I know people listening might be like, I don't want to do that. And it's like, no, I sat my ass down. I meditated every single day for 10 minutes just to understand what are, like you said, what are my thoughts? What am I thinking? What's coming up for me? Because I, I saw somebody on thread said, I'm self-aware. I don't need therapy. And I was like, bitch, the fuck you don't. If you think self-awareness is all it takes for you to heal, you are gravely mistaken. You can be as self-aware as anybody else, but that doesn't mean you're implementing. That doesn't mean you're actually making the changes and that doesn't mean that you're making the choices that align with the person that you want to fucking become. The only difference between me, you and anybody listening are the choices that we make every single day.

• 23:19Sabrina Zohar?

  Outside of the obvious of like where you're from and who you are and the fundamentals of you as a person systemically. But outside of that, it's the choices that we make. And I find that a lot of people are so resistant to just trying something. I've been doing, for me, Wim Hof, every single morning for 10 minutes. Me and Ryan have been doing that. Now we're doing this like 21 day nervous system reset, but nonetheless, we have a routine because we don't sleep in the same bed. And so for me, I can't, that's a me thing. And so he comes in the morning, he lets Kobe into the room, he lays next to me, we talk for about 10 minutes, we kind of get it all out. We do Wim Hof and then we get the day started. And I've, I've seen it's uncomfortable and I don't like it, but I've seen that it expands my capacity.

• 23:59Sabrina Zohar?

  So that throughout the day, I'm like, I got this dude. Like I've even noticed, I'm so untouched with my body today. I got bitchy. I started getting, I was like, I'm tired. I feel like I'm sexual. I looked at my blood sugar was crashing. When you really, and this is coming From the girl that used to be so unaware, I didn't even know what was happening in my body. I didn't know what I was doing. And my point being is that it's not just about the repetition, but it's the intentionality behind it. That's what I'm hearing you say is like, how are you feeling? What are you feeling? And even for anybody listening, if it feels, even if you're like, I don't know, what are the unmet needs? Something that even helped me was to go, okay, who did I go to when I was sad? Right? Like who, when I came home from school and I got bullied, where did I go? I went alone in my room. Okay, Sabrina, why'd you go alone in your room? Mom couldn't handle it.

• 24:44Sabrina Zohar?

  Dacko, okay, that's your unmet need, right? Like they couldn't handle it. They didn't have the bandwidth. They didn't have the capacity. That doesn't make anybody right or wrong. But what it also does, and here's the beautiful thing. The more that we understand the wounds, the traumas, the triggers, the more we understand other people and we take it less personally. Cause something I actually said today on a show that I was like, ah, when we villainize everybody in our lives, right? It's the avoidant and fuck the avoidant and they're the terrible ones. You know what happens when we make everyone else the villain? We're the victim. And when I'm the victim of my story, everything's happening to me. Woe is me. But when I can take radical accountability and say, that's their journey. They are flooded, they're going through their thing. I don't have to excuse the behavior. I can say, what are my choices?

• 25:24Sabrina Zohar?

  And I'm no longer a victim and I'm actually leading my life and I'm driving the fucking car in the direction I want to go.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  That's so beautifully said.

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• 26:03Speaker 03

  The other thing that's a really good way, if people are like, I don't know what my unmet needs are, is to look at like in your relationships, what are you always trying to get? Like what are you always going to people for? Where do you feel like desperate if you don't get it? And maybe it's like that anxiety, you need to have that like validation or approval or support. People who always struggle with looking for external approval, really struggle to approve of themselves internally. They don't actually show up and be like, okay, here are my wins. Here's the things I'm proud of. Here's the things I'm doing well. They never pause and they're putting themselves down. So usually the things you're always trying to source externally, especially in your closest relationships are the things you have to learn to practice giving to yourself. And what that does in turn is it allows people to stop. And I, I think there's this like, we get this conditioning from like romantic movies or like Disney movies or whatever it is.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  And it's as if like, oh, somebody's just gonna come along and be your hero and save everything for you. And it's like, that's not how it works. And I thought, actually, that's not how healthy relationships work either. Healthy relationships happen when we end up becoming again, like our own parent or our own hero. We start meeting our needs halfway. What's really interesting is the subconscious mind can't properly receive from other people, things that are not part of its comfort zone. So for example, if you look at somebody who's like anxiously attached, they go into relationships and like, I need validation, I need approval. They get it and it feels really good initially. And then they start, their subconscious starts rejecting it because it's not a part of its comfort zone. And the subconscious equates comfort to familiarity and safety and thus survival. So we're always trying to get back there.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  So what ends up happening is they'll be like, wait, do they really mean it? Like, oh, are they, are they just being nice to everybody? And, and they start doubting the approval that they're getting. And it's almost as if like, there's a hole in your bucket. Like somebody pours in the approval, it feels great, but then it leaks out. So truly, us being able to resource our own needs is so important and we can't have functional relationships without it. We put too much pressure on the other person to do it for us and that fosters resentment long-term and codependency.

• 27:53Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, I see it all the time on the internet, right? I saw something the other day. I said it to Ryan and he was like, you gotta be kidding. It was a guy that fucking tweeted on threads and tweeted, and here I am. He said it on threads and it was like, if they go, if they even text you back in five hours, but in 30 minutes later, they post a, a story, then four hours minus 30 minutes equals blocked. And I was like, whoa. I said, first of all, that is the worst advice I've heard. And I said, that is really rigid, black and white, very myopically viewed. Because what we're saying is my lived experience is the only one that's important and yours doesn't matter and nobody else's does, but what I say goes. And I see, we, we see that often with the attachment style conversation and I appreciate that you're not so like, let's only talk about. That because I hear it all the time of like, oh, well, some people I'm anxious, some people I'm avoiding.

• 28:37Sabrina Zohar?

  It's like, that's, that's not, you're not disorganized in that, right? Like, that's not what that means. Back on, because you know what? I'm gonna fucking rabbit hole this, but let's get back because I want to know step three. I want to go through the, the stages because I think this is the meat and potatoes. Cause every day people ask me, what do I do? Where do I start? And this is where you start.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent. The third thing is that we have to learn to regulate our nervous system. So this sounds like such an interesting, people do a lot of this stuff in the world right now. And it drives me a little bit nuts, I'll be honest. People come to me and be like, I've done somatic experiencing certification, which I've done and is a beautiful certification. And I'm a big believer in polyvagal theory. And they'll be like, I, I know how to regulate. But then they didn't do the first two pillars. So they have all these core wounds, they have all these unmet needs. And then they get triggered all throughout the day and then they regulate. And then they do the somatic work and then they get triggered three hours later and then they regulate. Or then they'll do things like, oh, my gosh, I'm triggered, like I need space so I can go regulate. And it's like, okay, like, we don't want to be in a position. And this was a really important part of my own healing from addiction first was like,

• 29:39Speaker 03

  you can't be in a position where you, you use all these Band-Aids. Like somatic experiencing is really powerful, really important. Nervous system regulation is really important. It's definitely trending on the internet right now. But that actually has to be secondary because if you actually look at the mechanics of what's happening, by the time your nervous system is dysregulated, you either had unmet needs first, which caused you to feel negatively emotion, like negative emotions. And then those negative emotions signal to your body. If you have elevated cortisol or an epinephrine or adrenaline, that signals to your body to move from parasympathetic to sympathetic nervous system. And then we do the somatic experiencing to put, pull ourselves back into parasympathetic, that like rest and digest nervous system mode. But it's like, then you're just going to go through that all day. Or even worse, if you have a belief that's triggered, I give people this acronym, BTEA.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  If I have a belief, let's say I have a core belief from childhood where I'm like, I'm not good enough. And I didn't work through that. Then if I were to go into like a big networking event full of people, I might be like, oh, I'm not interesting enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not cool enough, I'm not funny enough, whatever it is. So beliefs create all these patterns of thought, almost like tree branches springing off of a tree trunk. Then how do we feel when we're thinking those things? Well, then we have all of these like stressful emotions. Those emotions then again signal to our sympathetic nervous system like, hey, come online. Cause when you're feeling stressed, you have all this cortisol. And then your body goes into the self-protection mode. And then people are like, good, regulate myself. Nervous system regulation and it's like, okay, that's good. But like, do you want to go through your life band dating all the time? And for me, that was drugs. It was like, oh, I feel dysregulated. Pop a pill. And, and it's like, okay, that's not functional.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  That's not, that's not dealing with root cause enough.

• 31:11Sabrina Zohar?

  No.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  So our third pillar is nervous system regulation. But that's why it's number three. Is that we got to do the deep, underlying inner work first, but then we have to teach our body that we're safe.

• 31:18Sabrina Zohar?

  It's like, you know, you see those videos of like, pull on your ear for 30 seconds and you regulate. And it's like, here's also another thing that I learned.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  I really don't like that.

• 31:25Sabrina Zohar?

  I don't like that stuff, right? It's clicky, it's, it was in clickbait, right? It's the same if you wanted to, he would of, of pop psychology. But what I learned was, as my, with my functional medicine doctor and everything, she was like, okay, we need to down regulate. Like I'm, I was, I found out with my Dutch test. I woke up with tons of cortisol, free cortisol in the morning. And so then she was like, okay, we're going to PEMF and we're going to do this, we're going to do this. Then what happened? The pendulum swung. I was down regulating too much. That then all of a sudden I was becoming like, super. All of a sudden I was like, wait, wait, why am I not feeling well? And she's like, okay, now we went the other extreme. We can't have you down regulate that much because now your body is like, wait, wait, wait, why are we so calm? Like this doesn't make any sense. And so I think what I see it as, like to your point, regulating my, like it's such, it makes so much sense.

• 32:08Sabrina Zohar?

  Because for me, my journey was understand the thoughts and the patterns and the core beliefs. Then that went into, okay, now can I, like, how can I challenge those? What can I do about that? How can I start to understand them? Then I learned how to regulate my nervous system. Uh, that came in six years into my healing journey because I was introduced to someone and she, you know, it opened up. But now I even learn, I'm like, okay, here's the other thing. And I'm sure you'll understand what I'm about to say. Regulating your nervous system doesn't make it all go away. All that means is that your body's like, okay, we can access choice now. Like we're here, head is where our feet are. Let's get into it because that's what drives me insane is this misconception that regulating means like, I'm fine now.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:45Sabrina Zohar?

  If only. You and I would be millionaires if that was the case. Okay, so we regulate. Now where do we go?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  So, and, and I'll give people like a little tool here because I think we get a lot of like, okay, you could do the obvious. You could do meditation and mindfulness practices and breath work and all these things. And that's great. Um, and it does teach your body you're safe. And that is an important part of healing and it's something to do repeatedly over time. Cause it teaches your body what it's like to be in parasympathetic and to attune to oneself. A really good exercise that I find that actually is very helpful in this pillar is, it's called somatic processing. So. There was a study I read years ago, and they were basically teaching this without having a framework around it. And they took these participants and they put them into FMRI scanners and they scanned their brains. And they told them, hey, tell us like your really triggering events, like the really like unprocessed stuff, like people would be like, oh, my husband cheated on me 13 years ago and da, da, da. Or people would be like, oh, my gosh, I caught my parent

• 33:36Speaker 03

  doing this thing, you know, all these like really triggering events. And they had them, as they were recalling these triggering events, they scanned their brains. And they found that all this brain activity drained essentially out of the prefrontal cortex and neocortex regions and into the reptilian brain, which is like, you know, when you're triggered, you're like the reptilian version of yourself. You're like the animal version of yourself.

• 33:55Sabrina Zohar?

  Feral cat.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  Exactly. So they go through this. And they're like, okay, now that you're really triggered, they're like, stop telling us the story. And instead, I just want to hear from you, what emotions you're feeling, what it feels like in your body. Tell me the sensations. And so people say, okay, I feel angry, and it feels like there's heat in my chest and down my arms. And then they would tell them, okay, and like stay in that and get them to observe the sensations for like 30 to 90 seconds. And in doing that, brain activity would come back up to the prefrontal cortex. So it's funny, because in like Buddhist communities, they're like, oh, be in witnessing consciousness, like, and it's where like neuroscience and spiritual audit just overlap. They're telling you the same things, which to me is like when you found truth. And so that's a really great practice. It's like, if you're triggered, rather than going into the story, practice just noticing the sensations in your body,

• 34:41Speaker 03

  getting grounded. That can be a really helpful thing. And it teaches you to move out of a sympathetic and back to parasympathetic more quickly, or at least is a good assisting support in doing that.

• 34:50Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah, because if you're dysregulated, the last thing I'm gonna do is be like, close your eyes and try to be zen. You're like, please, if there's a tiger running after me, I'm not gonna be like, let me just tap in. I think the somatics, if I do that with my, like, any of the clients I have, I usually try to get them to stop. And I'm like, no, no, no, describe the sensation. And you can see they want to get out of it. And they're like, I'm feeling, I'm really annoyed that he didn't answer. I'm like, that's not what I asked you. I asked you the sensation. And I've had plenty of people who are like, I can't, I don't know, I don't know. And I'm like, move on, I don't know what, all the way to the side. Basic, primary emotion, is there a color, is there a shape, is there a texture? To this day, I will say 100 out of 100, 100% of the time. You'll know exactly that when I have people focus on like, what is it by the time the ninety to a minute, right? The double Taylor, by the time the ninety seconds is done, they're like, oh, it's not as bad.

• 35:34Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, it doesn't feel as intense. I'm like, because you you're not going to feel better unless you feel. And that's really scary because for me as a kid, feeling meant I wasn't safe. It meant that I had to actually acknowledge that my father didn't have the the capacity to be the dad I needed. He was incredibly abusive, whether it be verbally, physically, right? Like my brother's drug problem wasn't just like, ah, what? That's so crazy. It was symptomatic of the origin story of like, he was the he was the oh, child, right? Like the the zero, the patient zero that everybody thought, look, look, that's a thing, but it was the red herring. Right? It was taking you away from everything else. And so if we didn't understand that, we're not going to be able to be able to do anything else. That was too threatening to me. Now, now, holding space for my emotions, it is scary, but that's the fucking point. That's the point of it is as humans, we have to be robust.

• 36:18Sabrina Zohar?

  And if we're only going to say, I only want the good, right? How many times you've heard that of like, I only, well, like, why is my relationship? I had one person actually write in and said her partner broke up with her because he said we fought. And she was trying to explain to him like, that's okay, like, we're allowed to disagree. And he was like, no, no, absolutely not. That means it's not a good relationship. And it's like, I I understand what you mean. Excessive fighting, no, repair is a problem, but it's meant to happen so that we can see the deeper parts.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  And truly, like, there's a lot of avoidant people who believe that, which is sad, that they think, okay, like, fighting just means it's not working. And it's like, no, no, no, conflict itself is not good or bad. It's how we handle conflict that becomes healthy or unhealthy. And it's like, those dynamics are times where somebody is like, no, no conflict, we can't do it. That's a problem. It's like, no, no, you just haven't learned how to navigate conflict yet.

• 37:01Sabrina Zohar?

  Which the other side of the coin, right? The anxious think that like, oh, that's normal, right? Like, oh, we're hot and cold, we're up and down, we're inconsistent. And you're like, no, no, no, no, we don't want that as a baseline.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So, fourth pillar.

• 37:12Sabrina Zohar?

  Fourth pillar, let's go. We're gonna get through this.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, fourth pillar is, at this point, it's communicating. And this was like what I learned, it was so interesting when I met my husband. I'd already been working with people for a couple of years and I um I thought, oh, I'm so healed. I'm so good. I got this. Oh, my gosh. Because relative to where I was, I had come a long way. But I was really in a bad spot to start off with. So it was sort of like, okay, came a long way. Thought I was good and realized like, oh, my gosh, I have no idea how to communicate in a relationship. Like, I have no idea. I I and and I remember, you know, dating and having things come up and just being like, oh, sweep them under the rug. And then I would just pull away, right? And when I was fearful avoidant before that, I would get like really mad in past relationships or really frustrated. It was a lot more chaotic, but at this point in time, I did a lot of the other work.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  So I would just kind of like pull away, pull away. And I was like, wait, this isn't like, yeah, I'm expecting him to figure these things out and know these things about me. And like, I haven't even communicated or expressed them. And I started really working with myself on communication, then eventually learning all these tools and frameworks and working with other people on it in my practice at the time. And it was so interesting because people would come in. And as I started to work on like unpacking their communication, people would come in and all the time they'd be like, Tyce, my spouse doesn't listen to me, my wife doesn't listen to me, my husband ignores me, da, da, da. And over time, I realized like, no, no, 95% of the time that that's happening, it's that that person has no idea how to communicate. Like, I once had no idea how to communicate. And what I realized is there's a few things that people do really wrong. There's like a few major ones, but I can just give a couple.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  The first one is people have no idea how to positively frame. So I was really guilty of this. I used to be like, oh, you don't care about me. You never spend enough time with me. Instead of being like, hey, I'm feeling disconnected. I would really love to spend more quality time together. Let's plan a fun date night on the weekend. And so the first thing is like, if you don't positively frame, nobody hears what you're saying. No. Like, people are like, oh, you're criticizing me. And that's all they hear. And behind every criticism, there's actually a need. But if you don't recognize that, then like your all your life, your criticism, your communication is going to fall in deaf ears. And one of the most crazy and like life-changing things for me is when I started communicating properly, I was like, oh, my God, all these people around me like really care about me. Like, oh, I say a need and I say it like that. And people like want to meet it and show up. And it was actually very healing to be on the receiving end of that.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  And I'd see that in so many people's lives afterwards. So first thing is positive framing. Second thing, and I would see this all the time in client practice, people would be like, oh, I need support. They go home, they come back the next week and the wife would be like, my husband didn't support me. And the husband be like, I took out the trash. I did the dishes. And she'd be like, oh, I needed you to like hug me more often. And so the second pillar is like, you gotta like actually paint a picture of what you expect this to look like.

• 39:47Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  And when people don't do that properly, it's a mess. Like you can say, well, I want support or I want these things. And people are like, okay, what is that? Like, I have no idea. Or a lot of times with anxious and avoidant, you see the anxious person's like, well, I want more time with you. And the avoidant person's like, oh, good. I'll sit with them for 10 minutes right now.

• 40:03Sabrina Zohar?

  Yep. Shout out to Ryan. Love him, but it's true. He's just like, okay, but I listened for like 10 minutes. You're like, oh, that's not what I meant. Like the positive reframing is so important. First of all, using I statements, but second of all, it's the same I feel when people are like my avoidant. And I'm like, first of all, they're not your anything. Would you want someone to be like my anxious? You're like, what the fuck did you just call me? Like you're reduced, it's reductive, right? You're reducing me down to a name. And then what do they hear is like you and you and you don't do this. It's like, or instead, I feel this. And if somebody's going to argue with my feelings, we can have a conversation about that not being the relationship I'm in. But I think that there's something really beautiful and strong and like the point being, notice how that was point four. Because point three is you do need to regulate to process.

• 40:48Sabrina Zohar?

  So that I don't go and be like, you said this and I don't like that. Instead I can say, hey, when you said this, I shut down and I felt really disconnected from you. Moving forward, could you say this?

• 40:57Speaker 03

  A hundred percent. Exactly. And that is when people actually hear you. That's when people know how to show up for you. And then you can properly vet how they show up.

• 41:05Sabrina Zohar?

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• 41:49Sabrina Zohar?

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• 42:13Speaker 03

  If you're like, oh, this person's not meeting my needs, I'm gonna leave the relationship and you didn't know how to communicate your needs or do it properly first, you never really gave somebody a chance. And I was a fearful avoidant, so I'll speak for myself, but I used to do this thing all the time where I'd be like, I'm trying so hard in a relationship, I'd be very giving and very generous. And then I would be like, oh, I'm not getting back what I'm expecting. I'm outta here. Like, that's it. And I would just leave. And I did this all the time where I'd just push somebody away or threaten to leave a relationship. And I did this when I was young, before I healed and before I got sober and all these things. But like, I would just do that like crazy. And I realized later, like, oh, a part of my own healing, and this is for anybody else who does that, is like, before I just like jet and run away, or threaten to run away or push away, I better be like saying what my truth is and actually taking up space and communicating my needs. Because

• 42:58Speaker 03

  if I don't, I'm just expecting somebody to mind read by default. I'm not doing any of my own work. And then pushing somebody away on like whatever pretenses. Like, they were supposed to be this character in my story and just show up and get it all the time. Like, that's not possible. And so that was really powerful for me as a person. And that was the big thing we ended up sharing in our programs. And so I'd get people to be like, go through and actually say what they need. And then you can vet. If somebody never shows up and never tries, that's a different conversation. But if somebody's trying and they're really making an effort and then they forget sometimes, the next part of our communication is like, you have to see your needs through. Because everybody has decades of different conditioning than we do. So what you might need in a relationship, Ryan might need something else, and vice versa. Like, everybody's like that. And so...

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Sometimes people will be like, and I did this in my own healing journey at the beginning, is I would be like, I communicated my need once. It was four months ago and they forgot today, four months later, how dare they?

• 43:51Sabrina Zohar?

  I hear that all the time, of like, well, I already said it. It's like, say it again.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 43:55Sabrina Zohar?

  Say it again for them. And not annoy, like, obviously, right, if you don't see progress and you're like, dude, I've said it to you 18 times this week, you're not doing it.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  But people are allowed to be human. Yes, 100%. And people are not gonna, if they have learned that relationships look a certain way because they grew up in a different household than you did, and they didn't see people, you know, be as validating, or be as vulnerable, whatever it might be, and then you saw only that, or way more of that. When we try to merge our inner worlds together and get like into a relationship with somebody, it's going to literally require that you learn how to talk things through, and that's gonna require that you see your needs through and remind people sometimes. And so having the conversation a few times is okay, and it's acceptable, and it's actually part of one person being able to become a good communicator. So that's a really important piece of the communication. And the very last thing is, when you're asking for your needs to be met, and you probably say this all the time too, when you're asking for your needs to be met, when somebody meets them, if they make a

• 44:46Speaker 03

  little mistake and they don't do it perfectly, you can't go criticize them. You can't be like, you folded the laundry wrong.

• 44:51Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah, it's like, and I'll do that. Sometimes I'll gently be like, hey babe, or like, you know, when Ryan, like, I'll ask him to make me lunch. And instead of being like, I didn't like this, I'll be like, hey, I thank you so much for making me lunch. I don't really love the chicken, and that's not a knock against you, I don't love the flavor. Moving forward, could we try something different? Because I, but I really appreciate this. Because I want people to understand, like, no, no, no, I'm not being, but I even say it, I'm like, how would you know if I don't tell you? Because then I'm just people pleasing my way through.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's a big piece. So like, be validating, and this is the example I give, it's so similar to that, that's so funny. It's like, if somebody's doing the laundry and they put it in the wrong place, be like, hey, thank you so much for doing the laundry. Like, I really appreciate it. You heard me, thank you. Just for future reference, I usually put it here next time. And that's it. And then somebody's like, okay, you validated them, you heard them, you can still get feedback. And you do it in a positively framed way, it's not criticism. But so often, people are like, God, you did the laundry wrong. And then people, and I would see this with couples time and time and time again, the other person's like, why am I bothering? Like, I'm gonna get criticized when I, when I ask for, or when I do something, so I gotta criticize either way. Why am I trying? And it's just so defeating to be on the receiving end of. So that's a big fifth pillar of communication.

• 45:55Sabrina Zohar?

  I see that with the boundaries conversation, right? The like, well, I said my boundary and they crossed it and like, that's not how that works, right? Boundary that's no one's crossing it, like you cross your own. But I see that often of like, well, I said it, like I said, I'm not doing this. And it's like, again, some people might forget, like Ryan might've told me something. I'm like, I'm sorry, where was I when you told me that? Cause I wasn't on planet earth in that moment. Or like maybe I had my period, maybe I was tired, maybe I hadn't slept that night. And again, I think what we're looking for progress, not perfection when it comes to, because not everybody that's listening is in a relationship, right? And it's like, this is also the pillars of dating.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Of human.

• 46:27Sabrina Zohar?

  Human, right?

• 46:28Speaker 03

  Being a human being, friendships, family relationships, everything. Yes.

• 46:32Sabrina Zohar?

  Relationships, right? The overarching doesn't have to be romantic. So fifth pillar that I just teed you up on, boundaries. Take it away.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Boundaries. So boundaries, and this is what was really important. Again, I learned a lot of these things myself first. It was kind of my own guinea pig before doing this work with people for 15 years.

• 46:47Sabrina Zohar?

  Life story.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  But yeah, but um, I would read all the books about boundaries. When I started learning about boundaries, I was like, boundaries, boundaries. Wow, I suck at boundaries. I had what I call the fearful of winning boundary cycle where I would be boundaryless, cause I would be really generous and over giving. And then I would be like, oh my gosh, I feel taken advantage of, cause I would pour into everything. Yeah. And then I'd be like, okay, here are all my boundaries. And I'd do them really intensely. And then I would go back, then I would feel guilty about my behavior and go back to being boundaryless again. And it was just like around and around in a cycle. So I started reading about boundaries. I was like, okay, I need this. And I read like four books on boundaries, read all these published papers about boundaries, all these things I could find. And then I would get into this trap, which I see with people all the time, where suddenly you're in the moment, it's real time. And you're like, oh, this is a time I have to say my boundary. And then like, you just can't do it. You clam up.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  I remember getting in situations where I'd be stuck in a conversation. I'd be like, at the end of a really long workday. And I'd be like, I gotta get out of here. I gotta go. And then I would just like stay there and like not leave. I remember like, this is a time for a boundary. Why don't I do it? And so what I realized is that if you want to do boundaries, it has to be at the subconscious level. And it can't just be like this intellectualized thing. And so for me, the first step was like, okay, what do I make setting a boundary mean? Or what am I afraid will happen? And when I looked back at my own childhood, I was like, oh, if I set a boundary, I'd be punished. And so I'm like, oh, a boundary makes me unsafe. So I had to first rewire that story and see how boundaries make me safe. See that, get lots of evidence and emotion and imagery for 21 days. Then I was like, okay, very wired in, boundaries are a safe thing. That's good. And the next thing is I was like, I had no idea how to set boundaries in just a normal way.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  So I had to practice exposure work, which is like small boundary setting and incremental doses over time. With easy people first, you can't just go to like the biggest, scariest person, your narcissistic boss or whoever it is. Your very first time and titrate it and you do it enough times and you get your like, it becomes a part of your comfort zone. So did that. And then all of a sudden I became good at setting boundaries and it was like natural to be like, oh no, I don't want to do that. Or like, oh, sorry, I'm, I'm gonna have to leave early. Thanks. Like it was so much easier to do those things and have those conversations without it being this like, oh my God, it's such a big deal or I have to stay my boundaries so intensely. And so that's how we have to do boundaries. It has to be at the subconscious level of mind. You need 21 days of doing it repeatedly. Because if we don't, then we're not actually conditioning the patterns and it's still this like intellectualized thing. You've got to remove your fears around it first and then actually make sure you're doing exposure work.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  And over time, that embeds it into your subconscious and then it becomes a natural set point. And that becomes the fifth major pillar.

• 49:06Sabrina Zohar?

  No is my favorite word. It is. I, I love, I used to never, I used to never, I have stories I've shared before of like, the dude that would text me at 2am, come over and I'd be like, okay. Like I would be on my way because I was terrified. If I said no, what would that mean? I'd lose you, you're not gonna be there for me. Then I am the problem. Until I started to realize like, wait a minute, and it was very incremental. It was saying it and then realizing, oh, I'm, I'm okay. I'm not dead. I, nothing happened to me. Like I'm fine. My life goes on. And building it slowly. And I think that's the biggest thing, everything that you're describing. I think a lot of people want to hear because I get it every day. How do I do this fast? What is a quick, how can I get rid of it? I get this every single fucking day when I'm on TikTok live. How do I get rid of my anxious attachment? And it's like, oh, no, no.

• 49:51Sabrina Zohar?

  If you think you're gonna get rid of it, baby doll, let me let you know. You learn to live with it. You heal the wound, but it doesn't go away. I'd be lying if I said I woke up every day being the most secure person. Someone could say something mean to me and I cry because I'm a fucking human. But what we learn is capacity and then to reframe the stories. Even Ryan actually caught me the other day. I was sending an email. And I over explained. I was saying something. I was breaking up with somebody. It was like a work thing. And I went into like, you know, this isn't, the scheduling doesn't work with me. Instead of putting a period, I was like, because you know, my schedule is really crazy and I don't really know my consistency. And Ryan went, ah, delete and put the period. And I was like, you're right. Okay, you're right. And like, sure enough, it was well received. They were like, totally understand. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that we got to do this. Take care.

• 50:33Sabrina Zohar?

  What I've learned really about setting boundaries is like, if you're going to set a boundary and somebody is going to have an overreaction, right? The pinch doesn't match the ouch. Like if I say, no, I don't want to go out to dinner and your response is like, whoa, Pollyanna. You start putting me down or mocking me or making fun of me. That is the clearest indication that the boundary was not just necessary, but mandatory.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 50:53Sabrina Zohar?

  Because people show you who they are. Please believe them. And oftentimes, like I see this all the time of like, I don't want a relationship. To me, that is setting a boundary with somebody of like, I'm telling you off the bat, I don't want this. I saw somebody post today about like a thread that happened between texts. The guy said, I had told you this when we met. I wasn't ready for a relationship and it doesn't feel like you're respecting that. And now I'm getting a yelled at because I don't want to be with you when I've told you from the beginning, that's not what I wanted. And that's okay, right?

• 51:19Speaker 03

  That's very fair.

• 51:19Sabrina Zohar?

  That's very fair. And I know rejection sensitivity and we start getting all into our house. But we can also remove ourselves and say, what was my part in that? My part in that was I didn't listen. I didn't respect what this person said. I thought I could change them.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 51:31Sabrina Zohar?

  That's okay. That's human, but that doesn't make it okay.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  And I think in those situations, if that's the case, you have to have follow up conversations. Like if you're like two months in, you might be like, hey, I know you said two months ago, you didn't want a relationship. I'm starting to feel like there's a connection here beyond maybe just something superficial. Are we moving in that direction? Like have that conversation, check back and things can change. Have the conversation. If you're just assuming, then you're angry because you're just assuming that you would change the person or that they would change their mind or your intention or relationship to it. From the jump was to change their mind. That's where unfortunately, there's a huge boundary violation that takes place there.

• 52:05Sabrina Zohar?

  A hundred percent. Okay. So we went over the five.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's a sixth bonus pillar.

• 52:08Sabrina Zohar?

  Please tell me.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. So sixth bonus pillar is how to rewire your behavior.

• 52:11Sabrina Zohar?

  Okay.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  So this came, this came from a lot of like my own behaviors at the beginning, but whenever we have a behavior that we're taking part in, if we judge it consciously as bad. If we're doing it, it's because our subconscious sees it as good. So there's this sort of like disconnect that's taking place. It's a form of cognitive dissonance. For example, if somebody goes into relationships and they're angry all the time, let's say they're always yelling or raising their voice. Consciously, they might be like, oh, my God, I don't want to yell at my wife and kids, or I don't want to yell at my partner. But subconsciously, they're doing it for a reason. So there's two things that are happening. The behavior meets a hidden need, usually a need that we're starving for first. For example, people who struggle with anger issues, they actually are using anger as a subconscious strategy to feel seen, heard, understood,

• 52:57Speaker 03

  to set a boundary and to take their power back. And so what happens is anger does that all in one fell swoop, right? You're like, oh, I yell, and then it's like, I get seen and heard. I'm yelling. I'm getting bigger. I'm getting louder. I get understood. I finally say all the things I wasn't saying. I set a boundary with my anger because my anger pushes somebody away. So your subconscious is getting a hidden need met, number one. But number two, because that's become a strategy that you had to use when you were starving for those needs, you actually have more positive than negative emotional associations wired into the behavior itself. Oh, yeah. So we have to actually rebalance that. So what I get people to do is when they're trying to change a behavior is first be like, well, what are the hidden needs it's needing? Let me figure out healthier ways of getting those needs met. So if it's anger, hey, let's practice like being vulnerable and communicating earlier about things.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Instead of, well, every person I ever worked with who had severe anger issues, they actually had vulnerability issues and boundary issues, and they weren't good at communicating. And so now anger becomes the thing that lets them get all these needs met. So the first thing is like, okay, what? And for people, it's different. Like if somebody's like, oh, they emotionally overeat all the time and they're like really struggling with food. Okay, well, what are your associations to food? Well, your first time you're experiencing food is when you're being breastfed, when there's a tremendous amount of oxytocin being produced, which is the bonding neurochemical, and you feel safe and you're cradled. So food usually equals safety, comfort, connection. So we all have these like needs to these unhealthy behaviors. So we define those first. Come up with better ways to get those needs met.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  But secondly, we actually have to wire in the costs of the old behavior and the benefits of the new behavior. So what that looks like is somebody sitting down and being like, what are all the costs of raising my voice every day? What are all the costs? Like, what does it look like? And the more emotion and imagery, the better, because it gets to the subconscious mind. So we want to be like, okay, what are all the costs of like, what, what does my wife look at me like when I, when I yell at her? What does my husband do when I push him away that way? What do my kids do when ABC happens? And so we want to get a ton of like emotions, images, all the costs of the behavior. Because the behavior first got wired in usually because maybe as a child you would have a temper tantrum. And then your parents would give you candy and you're like, oh, okay, anger equals good. Anger equals I get these things met. So we've come up with updated strategies to get the needs met.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  Second thing we do is we go, okay, what are all the negatives of this behavior? We want 10 to 15 of them for repetition. What are all the positives of dropping this behavior, leaving this behavior behind? What would my life look like? How would my relationships improve? Then again, same thing, we record ourselves saying it out loud, listen back for 21 days. We're trying to actually ingrain and shift and change the stored subconscious emotional associations next to the behavior while getting the needs met in new ways. And it works profoundly for people actually shape shifting their, their behaviors.

• 55:31Sabrina Zohar?

  God, that's so fucking cool. I love neuroplasticity. I think it's wild. And I mean, as you were talking with Ingram, like I used to be so reactive. Holy shit, the second something happened, I would get big, I would scream, I would yell. And I think for me, it was definitely the scene component of like, or I saw my dad do that. And I'm like, okay, so that's how people respect you, right? If, if you're a bull in a china shop, if you go in hard. And you know what changed it for me was like, it sounds so simple, but I gave myself permission to not. And I know that sounds so rudimentary, but I started it, right? Like, of course, then the rest of the work continued, but I needed to give myself permission to say like, that's not okay. Like, you didn't enjoy that. You didn't like when he did that. That doesn't make you feel good. So then how are you making other people feel probably not great? You look like a fucking nut job, Zohar.

• 56:15Sabrina Zohar?

  And so I really had to stop and say like, you're also allowed to just, sometimes Ryan will say something and I'll just look at him. And I'm like, no, give me a minute. Like, I'm allowed to take this second, even a minute, sitting across from someone and say, like, I've had it. We've had it where we're sitting in silence and he's like, are you upset? And I'm like, I'm still processing this. I'm still trying to understand how I feel. And I'm like, literally, give me a minute. And then I can come back and say, okay. Alright, so here's what just happened to me. That's really human, but I think within everything that you've described that I love is like you're giving people choices. You're allowing them to have the choice to make these changes and I think that really is the most beautiful part and like the here's the thing. Twenty one days. You said twenty one days. You didn't say twenty one years. You didn't say twenty one months. You said twenty one fucking days.

• 56:56Sabrina Zohar?

  So right now, what can we like, I always like to end with a tool of the week, even though you gave an entire tool. But is there something maybe specific tangible, something small, a micro moment where somebody can get started now on that twenty one day journey? Is it the list? Is it something? Is it even just smiling? I don't fucking know. But I think a lot of people are stuck either there's, I'll give you the two scenarios. Either they're stuck, they don't know where to start, or they've done so much work and they're like, but nothing is changing.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the reason that that happens is if the work doesn't reach the subconscious, you can read all of the personal growth things under the sun and you're just gonna go through the same cycles. And I get that because they spend time there. You know what I mean? Like I was like, try the AA meetings and the NME and all these things. Um, but the first thing I would say, just the simplest is be like, pick one need. Like, what are you seeking so desperately from other people? And just practice giving that to yourself for twenty one days and you'll just see that that huge shifting or moving of the needle from that one thing. And then it will give you momentum to be like, okay, let me plug into the other pillars and do work in those particular areas. And I always think too, like, I know, like, there's six pillars and they, you know, twenty one days for for some of the pillars and stuff like that, but but it's always so much more work not to do the work.

• 58:03Sabrina Zohar?

  Right.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  And I always tell people too, and it's kind of like tongue in cheek, but when you do this work, you get to consciously choose your subconscious patterns. When you don't, who's choosing your patterns?

• 58:14Sabrina Zohar?

  Mom or dad, probably, right?

• 58:16Speaker 03

  And it's like, so mom and dad are still running your brain as an adult and it's like, well, we have a conscious mind. So we can actually, our conscious minds are logical thinking analytical mind. We can actually go in and we can observe and we can use the tools and we can rewire and we can change those own thing, our our own programming and conditioning so we can become the person we want to be instead of the world or universe just choosing for us because of whatever family household we got it born into and and whatever childhood we had, like you, just because you were dealt that card of that hand of cards does not mean that has that has to be your entire future. So. Wild to go in and do that work because it really changes that very thing.

• 58:48Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, that's what's funny when people are like, it's hard. I'm like, bitch, choose your, you know what's really hard? Staying at the same thing. It is so exhausting waking up every day with this immense anxiety. I actually get excited when I have something new I can do. Like when my doctor's like, hey, your blood, your results came back with this, we're gonna do this. I'm like, yes, okay. Give me something I can do, something I can at least implement, try, even if that means sitting in stillness for a minute every single day. But it really, for me, I get excited about how much more can I grow? Because if this is it, unsubscribe, right? Like if this is the best I could do, until I take my last breath, I want to always be striving for better. And so I, I think it's a really beautiful practice of like choosing yourself is also implementing this, is trying it, is saying, like you said, people say, I listened to every episode,

• 59:33Sabrina Zohar?

  but then they'll come back and be like, I've listened to all the episodes, but I, I still, like, nothing's changing. And it's like, listen, baby, if you've listened to the hundred and whatever, how many fucking, at this point it was 200 episodes, if not more at this point by the time this comes out, and nothing is sticking, then it sounds like subconscious and conscious mind are not connecting.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Yes, 100%.

• 59:52Sabrina Zohar?

  Ah, Tyce, this was so much fun.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're one of my favorite people.

• 59:56Sabrina Zohar?

  One of my favorite people. I was like, I'm already thinking about the next episode. It's like a tattoo, right? You're getting one, you're thinking of the next. Where can people find you, work with you? Tell us more about the Personal Development School.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. So I am at personaldevelopmentschool.com. Um, there's a free attachment quiz that goes into all these different pillars of healing. Um, and people get sort of a personalized report. And then I'm on YouTube, which is Tyce Gibson-Personal Development School, and on Instagram at the Personal Development School. Thank you for having me. You have the best podcast.

• 1:00:21Sabrina Zohar?

  Love it.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Thanks, girl.

• 1:00:23Sabrina Zohar?

  We'll link everything. But guys, thank you so much for sitting with us. I hope that you were able to take away something from this to really start to implement it. Doesn't matter where the fuck you are on the journey. Like, you're worthy and deserving, and I hope you guys see that because we do. And so guys, don't forget, rate and review the show, share it with a friend, leave a comment, let me know what you think, let me know what we want Tyce to come back and talk about. She's the queen of attachment style of conversations in a way that, like, we had her on for disorganized last year, I think it was already last year. So like, let me know what you want us to get into because we're gonna have her back on. And I'm so excited, guys. Until next time, babies.

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