How can I become more securely attached?

Whether you're anxious or avoidant, there are steps you can take to make your relationships more secure. And the benefits extend beyond dating — finding secure people can help you build a community and maybe even live longer. Today, neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author Dr Amir Levine joins Sana to discuss all things secure attachment. From tiny meaningful moments with strangers, to prioritising the right people in your life, Amir shares his top advice for anyone wanting to change their attachment style. Guest: Dr Amir LevinePsychiatristNeuroscientistAssociate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia UniversitySecure: The Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life https://amirlevinemd.com/books Credits: Presenter/producer: Sana QadarSenior producer: James BullenProducer: Rose KerrSound engineer: Tegan NichollsMore information: We're all stressed. What should we do about it? https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/stress-burnout-what-should-you-do/106829964To explore more great episodes from the award-winning psychology podcast All in the Mind with host Sana Qadar, download the ABC Listen app (Australia) or search 'ABC All in the Mind podcast' wherever you get your podcasts. There you'll find more episodes on mental health, trauma, attachment theory, wellness hacks, and family relationships. You'll also hear interviews with experts like Esther Perel, Billy Garvey and Ethan Kross. All in the Mind is created for ABC's Radio National by specialist journalists and reporters at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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  So I am at a park in the inner south of Sydney and I'm playing a game of tennis. But my opponent is a bit unusual. They are about four metres tall, they're about eight metres wide and they're built like a brick wall. Actually, they literally are a brick wall. This tennis ball is really good at returning whatever I throw at it, always with just a little bit less energy than what I send its way. And our guest today on All in the Mind says there's a life lesson in that.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  He'll send me a text, "Hi." We respond immediately back. I say, "Hi." Then a week goes by, I don't hear anything.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, I've been there.

• 1:22Speaker 04

  But I don't do anything, I'm the wall.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  From ABC Radio National, this is All in the Mind. I'm Sana Qadar. Today on the show, attachment and how to build a securely attached life.

• 1:35Speaker 04

  Our brain really hates being ignored or being excluded and it has significant psychological and physiological health consequences.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  And what all of that has to do with a tennis ball.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  So one of the big misconceptions about attachment styles is that it's kind of set by the way your parents treat you in early life, and that's what you have for the rest of your life.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, it's definitely not that because if you think about it, this is like our biggest strength, the way that we associate with other people.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  This is Dr. Amir Levine. He's a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist at Columbia University, but you might know him from his extremely popular book Attached, which came out back in 2010.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  This is our biggest strength as a species because we're not particularly strong animals, yet we can make it to the moon and be in the North Pole and Antarctica because of our ability to collaborate and cooperate with one another. And it just wouldn't make sense that what happened to us in the age of like one or two is fixed for life. And that's what they find, that attachment styles can change at any time. And there's some studies that show that the parental contribution is actually not that big. It's less than 10% of our adult attachment styles. And another really more recent studies actually show that some childhood friendships is actually more important than our parental relationships in early childhood.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  And Amir says this malleable and constantly changing nature of our attachment styles means there's a lot that we can do to shape them. His latest book is called Secure.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  And that's really the main thesis of this book is by designing your interactions with the here and now, you can change your attachment styles. And I really walk people step by step on how to do it.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'll get to some of those steps in a moment. But one thing I wanted to mention is there's an analogy in the book that I really like. You talk about the brain and compare it to skin in that, you know, we spend a lot of time and attention caring for our skin, applying sunscreen and moisturizing.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Especially in Australia.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, especially in Australia, a lot of sunscreen. So we protect the skin and we should similarly kind of protect the brain, our social brain. So the question I have is like, what do we need to do in order to ensure our brain is well moisturized, so to speak? Like, what should we be doing to protect it?

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, we think about our brain as this organ that's tucked away in our skull, so protected, but it's actually one of the most environmentally sensitive organs that we have. It sends out these tendrils, our perceptions, and constantly checks to see what's happening in the environment. And so our brain really hates being ignored or being excluded. It really pains us, and on the other hand, our moisturizer, our sunscreen, all of those good things, is really if we can create what I call a hyper-inclusive environment. Our brain just loves being super included, like this feeling of connectedness.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  So if we can learn to create a hyper-connected world for ourselves, it's not just psychological the benefits, it really affects our longevity. Like, people think that if they'll do cold plunges, or peptides, or all these supplements, that's how they're going to live longer. But actually, the finding about living in that secure mode is like probably one of the most powerful ways of creating longevity.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Because you're more socially connected and have deeper relationships?

• 5:22Speaker 04

  That hyper-connectedness does something to our physiology. It lowers inflammation. They even had this one wild study, I think it was in the 90s, where they infected people with a cold virus. And they saw that people who had reported feeling more connected were less likely to come down with a cold.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  So it's that basic, yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  How definitive is that link, though?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Oh, so it's right up there with exercise and nutrition, smoking and obesity. It's one of the major factors of longevity.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  For me, that's the biggest pack from the book. It's not just about improving my relationship, but it's also the physiological advantage of living life in a hyper-connected way.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  And there are two acronyms you talk about throughout the book. You return to them over and over, that illustrate what it means to live in this hyper-connected, secure way. It's semi and carp. Talk about what those two things are.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  I know, I know. I apologize about these acronyms. It's a good thing there's only two. And actually, this is the meat and potatoes of how you create that secure life for yourself. So the first one, to create that hyperconnectedness, you want to be, I call it CARP. So it's you want to be consistent, available, responsive, reliable, and predictable. So the way that it works, like, let's say we're friends. So I want to be consistent, available, and responsive with you. But it's not enough that I think, oh, I'm so great. I'm CARP, I'm consistent, available, responsive. Uh-uh. It's a relationship. It's a dyad. So I have to make sure that you experience me as reliable and predictable. So it's like a two-factor authentication kind of thing.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Like, you know, it's never like perfect, but you try to the best of your ability. So CARP is very important to you. You want to be CARP, and you want other people to also be consistent, available, responsive, reliable, and predictable. You want to create an environment where most of your interactions are CARP.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Now, when Amir says this, he's not just talking about the major relationships in your life. It's actually much more mundane and minor than that.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  And what really brings about the biggest change when you understand how the brain works really on the molecular level, you understand that what we oftentimes miss is what I've come to call the seemingly insignificant minor interactions of everyday life. Those little things, those back and forth that we have all day long, they're so important for our brain. And each one of them is an opportunity to change the brain on a structural level.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  This is the semi?

• 8:01Speaker 04

  Yes, the semi.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  And so do you mean like the interaction you have with like the barista or, you know, someone on the train or something? Like, what do you mean by these seemingly insignificant interactions?

• 8:11Speaker 04

  The small interactions that you have with your friends and significant others, of course, they're important. But yes, I also mean with the barista, with acknowledging someone on the train. I personally, I've started being more friendly with people in the elevator. Or even when I take an Uber. I used to be like, don't talk to me. I just, I'm busy. No, I started having a lot more conversations with people like in Uber. Whenever I have a chance to connect, I connect because remember that longevity hack? I, I, I want to be healthier. I want, instead of taking the supplements, I use that. For me, it's almost like I'm like a Pacman going over and trying to collect all of those potential steamies.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  So even those fleeting interactions can have a benefit to our brains and our bodies.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Huge effect because it creates an immersive experience for your brain of this hyper-connected world. And not only that, we're very, very sensitive to that disconnect. There is one study where they had passerby's, there were non-suspecting passerby's. As they were walking towards you, the experimenter either looked at them and acknowledged them, or just like they were instructed to look at their ear, the other side. So like looking at them through thin air. And then they stopped them. They didn't know that they had any intervention and they gave them a questionnaire about their campus life or something. And these people, without even knowing that they were like, experienced that small disconnect,

• 9:41Speaker 04

  reported feeling less self-esteem, less in control of their life, and that their lives are less meaningful.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  It's really like, really profound effect of just like this fleeting not being acknowledged.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Okay, I want to talk through some of the steps to building a more secure life, depending on the attachment style you're working with. So let's start by talking about anxiously attached folks. What kind of cycles do they often find themselves kind of trapped in? And what can they do to climb out of that and build a more secure life?

• 10:14Speaker 04

  So people who have an anxious attachment style have like a sixth sense. They see things in the world that other people can't see. So for them, they're very sensitive to non-carb interactions. So if people, all of a sudden, someone disses them, someone doesn't include them, breaks that chain of connectedness, they become alerted, they, they become activated.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  So even things that happen often between anxious and avoidant. Let's say a couple, like they're going out together and they spend an amazing weekend together. Right. And so the avoidant comes back on Monday and it's like, okay, we spent all this time together. Now they take some time off for themselves because they're avoidant, they need their distance. They don't even think about it, but they just don't text the other person. But for someone anxious, there's a concept that's called the attachment homesteas. It's kind of like the attachment baseline. And we always have this sense of the attachment baseline. It's like, oh, wow, they usually text me on Monday and I didn't get a text. Danger, danger, danger, danger. And then they get into this idea, wow, this is the beginning of the end. I've seen this before. Whenever people get very close, then they pull away.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Like it really goes into this familiar script. And then they start getting upset and then they wait for the person to text. And when they text them, they either are very cold or they attack you. So that's what happens oftentimes to people with anxious attachment style. They get into this protest regret cycle. They attack you and the other guy's like, what do you want from me? We spent all this time. You want more? You never get enough. You're so needy. Not understanding the basic logic of that baseline. And so if you're anxious, you lash out and then there's a distance that happens. But then you miss the person and then you regret it. And then you reach out and apologize.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  But oftentimes now the focus is on how you lashed out and you're like, didn't really behave very well, which oftentimes you didn't, but there was a reason for it.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  I think that's going to sound familiar to a lot of people.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  You apologize, but the initial reason didn't get upset because you're both clueless about this attachment logic. There's a very, very simple logic. And if you know it, you can circumvent a lot of these cycles of unhappiness in relationships.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so what is your advice to someone who has an anxious attachment style? How can they step by step build a more secure attachment style?

• 12:42Speaker 04

  A secure life, yes. So people with anxious attachment style, their holy grail is to create.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  A secure village. And what do I mean by a secure village? To really find ways to surround themselves by people who are KARP.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Reminder, KARP stands for people who are consistent, available, reliable, responsive, and predictable.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  These are the five pillars of a secure life. And oftentimes, what happens for people who are anxious is that they actually give most of their attention to people who are not secure, to people who are not KARP, because they feel like, I need to fix this. What's happening? Why are you not texting me? Why are you not talking to me? While, at the same time, what you often find in secure priming therapy, when I have clients come in, is that they do have other people in their lives that are actually very responsive, that are very KARP, but they don't pay much attention to them, because they're always there for them, they always text them when they text you. They're like, oh, they seem boring. You're so occupied in trying to fix something.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  And part of secure priming therapy is really something very simple. You tell people, no, you have to shift your attention from here, trying to fix, fix, fix, to here. Text the person that always responds to you. And over time, to reprioritize your social habitat and bring to the fore, like, you know, like group boarding, when you're trying to board a flight?

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  The people who are not KARP, they get like group eight. And the people who are KARP, they get priority boarding

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  to your secure village.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  So turn up the volume on the people in your life who are consistent, predictable, available, responsive, basically. That's what you do.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Yes, like, really turn it all the way up.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  There's another reason to consider doing this, regardless of whether you have an anxious attachment style or not. Having so-called "hasslers" in your life can aid you.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  That's the findings in a study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  It's actually really fascinating. It shows in the study, they call these people hasslers, the hasslers in your life. And it shows that each hassler can age you by nine months. And it's cumulative.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  So the amount of people you have in your life that are a hassle to deal with, they age you?

• 15:06Speaker 04

  Yes, they age, each one ages you, biological aging, by nine months. So if you have more than like two, 18 months, three, like by nine months. It's kind of crazy.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  The study doesn't prove causation, but it shows an association between hasslers and the rate of aging. And basically, it's thought that these relationships act as chronic stressors. And we know that chronic stress has a range of bad effects on us. If you want to find out more about that study, we'll link to it in our show notes. Wow, is that why we have more people getting estranged from family? They're cutting off these hassles?

• 15:43Speaker 04

  I think so, but I think I actually give certain tools to actually be able to not get there. Because I think even estrangement, in some cases, it's necessary. But many, in many times, you can actually maintain a relationship with some of those hasslers, but really right-size it and make it work for you rather than have to cut something off. Because sometimes when you cut something off, you actually maintain the relationship more so in your mind.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Psychologically.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Yes, because you're always like, what's happening with them? It actually makes it loom larger in your psychologically than the solution that I offer.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  And so is the solution, again, the turning down the volume on that relationship? Or like, what is the solution for that?

• 16:25Speaker 04

  There's a very specific tool in the book that's called wall tennis with love. And I don't know if you've ever played wall tennis, tennis against the wall.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Like just hitting a ball up against the wall?

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, like when you're practicing tennis.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, yeah. So in Amir's Wall Tennis with Love, you are the wall. The person who isn't KARP, consistent, available, responsive, reliable, predictable, they are the person hitting the ball at you. The idea is that a tennis wall always returns the ball, but just with a little bit less energy.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  I have a friend, for example, that now I do World Tennis with Love with, because the relationship has been difficult. We've been friends for many, many years, like more than a decade. But there have been times, I would call him, like, he wouldn't always respond in a way that actually was helpful. Sometimes he would ignore me, different things that have happened over the years. So World Tennis with Love, basically what it means is, like, for example, he'll send me a text, "Hi", and then I immediately, because it's World Tennis with Love, you respond immediately back. I said, "Hi", then a week goes by, I don't hear anything.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, I've been there.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  But I don't do anything, I'm the wall. He texts me another "Hi", and then I say, "Hi", then two days go by again, and then all of a sudden he calls me. And if I can, I always answer. And actually, the conversation is really nice and warm. And it's not like, because it's with love, I'm not trying to cut him off. I'm trying to keep the back and forth in a way that works. Because when I used to initiate, I would actually find myself oftentimes very upset and would feel those non-CARP interactions. But here, I right-sized the relationship and actually feel that he has a much better place in my life. But when something happens to me that I need help, I'm not going to turn to him. Why would, I've done that so many times, and it ended up very badly.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  I have all these CARP people that I've turned the volume on. I'm going to turn to them.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Okay, so you're like responding to him with the same energy he's bringing to the relationship, basically. So you're focusing your main attention elsewhere on the people who are reliable, predictable around. But with him, you're still responding with kindness, but at the same level that he's coming to you at, is that right?

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, because, yeah, exactly. Because if I've initiated before, he wasn't CARP, he wasn't consistent, available and responsive. So it really activated my attachment.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I really loved reading this part because it felt like it was speaking exactly about a relationship in my life, a friendship in my life, where basically I feel like I was more into them than they were into me, is what was going on. But it would be this exact thing with the texts that you're talking about. I would text, and I wouldn't hear for days. And then they would text maybe a week and a half later, and I'd get back immediately, and then the whole thing would start again. And I was like, I don't think I should be investing this much energy in a friendship that's not bouncing back at the same level. So this feels very, um, very helpful for how to deal with these dynamics you can enter into with friendships.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  From ABC Radio National, this is All in the Mind. I'm Sana Qadar. Today, how to develop your secure attachment skills with neuroscientist and psychiatrist, Dr. Amir Levine.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Okay, I could ask you so much more about the anxious attachment style, but we should move on to avoidant, because the avoidant style gets a really bad rap. Talk about some of the cycles these folks can fall into and how they can build a more secure life for themselves. What steps do they need to take that are different?

• 19:54Speaker 04

  I have to say that secure is my way of making amends to the avoidance in this world, because in Attached, in the other book, I didn't have that much experience working with them in my clinical practice back then. And a lot of the, even the research itself, I find is biased against them in some ways. But when I started working with people who are avoidant, you really hear their plight, and you see their suffering, too, that they want to connect, but they just don't, like, they fall into these pitfalls. And they're not even aware about what's going on, and they're being given these stories about your childhood and this and that. But I find that if you walk them through some of the

• 20:34Speaker 04

  basic logic that they're not understanding, that it can bring about amazing transformation. And there, I mentioned three main pitfalls in the book. One is called heal thyself. The other one is not respecting the attachment or mystasis. And the third one is the closeness overdose. So which one should we talk about first?

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Ooh, let's talk about heal thyself.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's actually the number one. So the heal thyself, people who are avoidant, whenever they have a problem, they're very good in sorting things out on their own. So when the rest of the population, which is about 70%, 75%, like, come to them with an issue, like, something happened to me, they're like, okay, why are you coming, what are you coming to me for? Like, heal thyself.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  What do you want me to do for you? You take care of your own problem. That's what I do. They don't even think that it could be different for other people. They just, it doesn't make any sense to them. But now, they get themselves into big trouble. Why? Because if I'm in trouble and I come to someone and then all of a sudden they cut me off, what does it do? It triggers the attachment, the system. And I forget about the reason why I was in trouble and what it helped. And I put it aside. Now you're the problem.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Because you're not responding to me. So all of a sudden, it compounds in a crazy way.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I feel, I'm getting flashes of familiarity hearing you talk about it.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  So I teach them, you know that heal thyself? You're the minority in this. A lot of the time for avoidance, if you teach them, if you're not going to be carp, it's like having a child in the supermarket and disappearing all of a sudden. And expecting them to just like stay calm. Like no, they're going to start, like they're going to become frantic. It's the same kind of neurocircuitry in adults too.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Right. Okay. So is the way for an avoidantly attached person to become more secure and have a more secure life, basically to start being more available, responsive, consistent, all of that? Is that what they need to do?

• 22:39Speaker 04

  No, but the thing is, what you teach them is that if you do just a little bit, because attachment's about those series, it's not those huge gestures. If you just like hold their hand, hug them, say, I'm so sorry, just give something, then usually they're not going to, they're not going to bother you so much anymore. They actually gain the freedom and the distance that they want. It's like you're hacking the system.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  Right. But another pattern or trap that avoidance can sometimes fall into is something that Amir calls the closeness overdose.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  They finally meet someone and they really like them. But then it's like, oh, it's too much, too close. They feel suffocated by closeness. So sometimes what they try to is like, no, I have to go all in. And they try to actually create more closeness. So they will say, let's go to a whole weekend together. Or I give a really good example of this woman who actually like, I'm gonna throw your party and I'm gonna go come to the hospital and be there when you're having your treatment. And all of these things that the other person didn't ask for, because she wants to push through that feeling, oh, I feel that I need to take my space. And that's a big mistake for avoidance because it can really backfire.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Because one of the things that avoidants really need to learn is to pace themselves and not to try to outrun their biology. Because this attachment is such a powerful force. The best thing that we can do is learn how to live with our biology.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's not a bad thing to be a person who needs more space. It's just more about making your relationships more stable overall by adjusting how you respond to people. So they're not freaking out around you, basically.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Okay, I want to talk briefly about the fearful avoidant type. Because like, is everything just a lot harder if you fall into this basket?

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Yes, because what happens is like you push people away, but also you really seek a lot of closeness. So for a regular avoidant, not a fearful avoidant, it's like, oh, I don't need relationships. I can take care of my own. A person who's fearful avoidant really is like, no, I'm lonely. I want the company of other people. But when they actually get close to people, it starts to really hurt. They're very sensitive and they get suffocated by too much closeness. So it's constant push-pull situation. So there you need to learn how to work with really tiptoe between the two to find your way to security.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  But it's possible.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  It's possible. I mean, you talk a lot in the book about as well, building community, like to build the secure life, you need to find these secure people around who are responsive and reliable, et cetera. But it occurs to me, you know, like, there's a lot of talk about the loneliness epidemic. We have a lot of people spending a lot more time alone on screens as opposed to meeting up in real life. People are more prone to like ghosting and just being flaky in general. So it feels like a really hard task to build the community we want in this day and age. And I'm guessing, wondering, is kind of, does the advice boil down to you kind of need to be the change you want to see in the world? Like, start by acting secure and available to the people around you, and then that's how you go forward?

• 25:44Speaker 04

  So, so I think it's, I'm gonna, I try to give, it's a very nuanced answer, because I think there's several things that are happening with this whole loneliness epidemic that's being touted. I think, because the, the research really talks about a, an objective experience loneliness, than like, an amount of people that we're connected to. And I think what happens when we have all, all of these insecure people in our lives, that all of a sudden don't text us, I think it actually, the research actually shows when we're being excluded, it actually increases our feeling of, that we're not connected to others. And then it decreases our self-esteem. And it also gives us a sense that we're less

• 26:25Speaker 04

  in control of our lives, and that life is less meaningful. It has this profound psychological effects. So I feel that those insecure interactions actually enhance that feeling of loneliness. And if we rediverted and really turned the volume down on those insecure interactions, we would feel more connected and like, just by creating a tiny bit of more of a hyper-connected life. And remember, it's about those siamese, it's about connecting to people all around us, not necessarily forming these very close relationships. It's like, you can really collect all of these different interactions and start building it like that. But I really

• 27:07Speaker 04

  think that a lot of the loneliness epidemic is actually, is this insecure epidemic of having a lot of people behaving insecurely around you with the profound psychological effects that it has. And if you, we had a few very secure people that are, we can always have that reciprocity, it would feel very, very different.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  That's fascinating. I guess one thing I'm wondering is like,

• 27:32Speaker 03

  If everyone starts turning down the volume on those in their life that are avoidant and insecure, are you going to quickly end up with a very small circle and start having to build a new circle where you're again going to run into people who are avoidant and anxious and then you're like just kind of constantly shuffling through looking for the right people who are these golden, secure folk?

• 27:53Speaker 04

  So the one thing that we didn't really that I skipped over and that I didn't mention is this concept of the CARP intervention. I call it the CARP intervention.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  So we're not talking about the fish, to be clear, if you've just tuned in now.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, sort of being consistent, available, responsive, reliable and predictable. So when you find that someone is not that in your life, some of the research about secure attachment shows that to some degree, we all have secure kernels inside us, that we've had like these amazing secure experiences throughout our life, whether it's a parent, a sibling, a teacher, a mentor, and that we internalize some of these experiences and it's really a secure potential that lies within us. So before we cut, we sort of do that wall tennis with love and all of that stuff. I tell people to do this CARP intervention and to explain to people about CARP and about the brain.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  As in actually talk to your friends and family about what, you know, is required?

• 28:51Speaker 04

  You can either say it like completely that way, like, you know, the brain, all the research, the brain is really sensitive and it's really, it's harmful for the brain. So you can either do it that way, or there's one example of one of my patients who met up with this guy for a one night stand and they had a lot of fun. And then sort of they were going to beat up again for another one night. And then a few days in between, he wasn't that responsive to her texts. So after the second night, she told him, look, I really like you, but for me, I'm very responsive and consistent and I really want that in my life, too. I can't really deal with it because if you're not going to respond to me, I'm just going to be hitting up your phone and I just don't like that about myself. I can't help it and I don't like it. So I really, if

• 29:35Speaker 04

  this is going to work out, because we seem to like each other and we have fun together and we feel it feels actually more intimate and there's a potential, then not going to work out if you're not going to be that way. And he said, you know, I'm actually notoriously not responsive. All my friends complain about that. But I'm gonna give it a try.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Wow, okay.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  And now, 10 years later, two kids.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's a good story. And he says, because she put it in such a simple way, it didn't feel like this huge ask, and it felt like something that I can do.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  That's a nice, happy story of people working through their disparate attachment styles. I like that.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, but usually, before what you asked, once you find those scar people, I have to say in the process of my work, I've really come to fall in love with the secures of this world. And once you bring some of them to a prominent place in your life, they're keepers, they're there to stay. And so when you create that world for yourself, brain changes, and it's a, it's really a remarkable change.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  That is Dr Amir Levine, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and Columbia University professor. He's also the author of the books Attached and Secure. Thanks to producer Rose Kerr, senior producer James Bullen, and sound engineer Tegan Nicholls. I'm Sana Qadar. That's it for All in the Mind this week. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time.

• 31:10Speaker 00

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