Why We Fall for the Wrong People - Jessica Baum

Jessica Baum is a psychotherapist, relationship expert, and author. What does it actually take to feel safe in a relationship? If you’ve had chaotic partners or a past where you never knew where you stood, safety can feel like work instead of something natural. So how do you rebuild that sense of security, and what steps help you learn to feel safe with someone again? Expect to learn what the best definition of safety in a relationship is, what some of the signs for someone feeling unsafe in a relationship from their nervous system are, the common protection strategies and inner protectors people develop, why we confuse independence with strength, why romantic relationships reflect early attachment wounds, why anxious and avoidant people find each other so magnetic, how to retrain the body to feel safe after chaos and much more… - 0:00 How Can We Create a Sense of Safety? 4:53 Are Independent Women Becoming Disconnected with Their Bodies? 13:26 The Power of Slowing Down: Why Our Nervous Systems Needs It 19:18 Why We Confuse Familiarity with Safety, Even When It Hurts Us 36:47 Why Feeling Safe Feels So Vulnerable 41:11 Anchoring, Co-Regulation and Reaching the Ventral State 47:11 Healing the Wounds You Inherited 54:02 Practical Tools For Building Safety in Your Relationship 58:42 Why Rupture and Repair is the Foundation of a Healthy Relationship 01:04:23 Should You Stay, or Should You Leave? 01:10:36 Where to Find Jessica - Get up to 60% off during Gymshark's Black Friday Sale starting Nov 16th at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get 60% off an annual plan of Incogni at https:/incogni.com/modernwisdom - Check out Jessica Baum's new book "SAFE" here: https://jessicabaumlmhc.com/interview Jessica's Socials: https://www.facebook.com/consciousrelationshipgroup?mibextid=wwXIfr https://www.instagram.com/jessicabaumlmhc?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ== https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-baum-lmhc-cap-038a1538?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  What's your best definition of safety?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. I get so technical because safety means so much to me now. So, safety is just to feel really connected and like a sense of togetherness when you're with people and a feeling of relaxed and openness in your body.

• 0:21Chris Williamson?

  Hmm hmm. I recently did a week-long retreat, uh, working on emotions for 12 hours a day. Did your buck just fall down behind you? There's a poltergeist in there. That's okay. Um, I recently did a, a week-long retreat, uh, working on emotions for 12, 12 hours a day. And, um, 12 hours a day, 9:00 AM till 9:00 PM, uh, for six and a half days. And, um, one of the best definitions of safety that I came across while I was there was, uh, knowing that you'll be okay no matter what happens. And I really love that as a, a definition of safety because it feels,

• 1:03Chris Williamson?

  even if things are difficult, it's not about hard stuff not happening. It's about knowing that you'll be there on the other side of it and knowing that you'll be okay on the other side of it as well. I wanted to get your thoughts on that, given you've just written in Thai book about it.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Well, I, I explain not even about my book, but like, sometimes in life, we're not okay. But I think what gives me safety is knowing that I have the support that no matter what, even if not okay, things happen, war, crisis, that I have people around me that will be there and support me no matter what, which that actually gives me a sense of safety because we live in such a world that where anything can happen and there's so much uncertainty. And the support system that I have actually gives me more safety than anything else.

• 1:48Chris Williamson?

  So, safety is not just something that exists inside of you. You can actually outsource it. You can be unsafe and the people around you can make you safe? Or you can be not okay and the people around you can make you safe?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so now we're getting into the book, but we're talking about secure attachment. I mean, secure attachment is built from people who have, um, what we call a window of tolerance, a sense of safety within their nervous system and they're around you and you've internalized that. So, the more you internalize that safety from other people, the more you feel safe. In and out the world. And if you don't get that, that's when we get the insecure types of attachment.

• 2:25Chris Williamson?

  What are some of the signs that somebody feels unsafe in a relationship? Signals from their nervous system? What will they feel like?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I mean, everything from your gut dropping, your heart racing, feeling like the ball's gonna drop, feeling smothered, feeling like you're gonna lose yourself, feeling abandonment. All of those things are usually felt sensationally in your body through close connections and through small behaviors that you share with your partner or anyone that's close and important.

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. What are some of the small behaviors that people might not think of that contribute to this?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  You know, one that comes to me, comes to mind is the blank stare. So like when you're really engaging with someone and they dissociate and they kind of check out, my system will register, oh, my God, you're not with me right now. And that can kind of set my, my system on fire. And that's actually what a baby feels when they're with their primary caregiver. And the caregiver checks out because we need connection so badly. It's a biological imperative. When we can sense that someone's not with us, our nervous system responds to that and it signals danger.

• 3:33Chris Williamson?

  That's the blank face experiment?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, stare.

• 3:38Chris Williamson?

  Blank stare, blank stare experiment. Yeah. So you write about protective strategies, inner protectors. What are some of the common protection strategies and inner protectors that people develop?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Oh, man, we all develop so many protectors and we need them so badly. For me, one was workaholism. But it's anything that we might do compulsively, or we might do even unconsciously to avoid feelings that might be inside our body. So if we don't have safe places and safe ways to process what's going on with us, we usually develop behaviors. I mean, it can be drinking, it can be exercising, it can be workaholism, it could be hitting your vape, it could be internet. And I'm not saying that these behaviors are bad. It's one week. Turn to them over and over and over as a way to avoid what's going on inside, that they become ways that we use to protect ourselves from deeper feelings that we're not ready to face.

• 4:34Chris Williamson?

  So the role of them is to distance us from feeling stuff?

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Protect us. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we can't handle what's going on inside, so we need to go for a run, or we might need to have that extra glass of wine. We don't know how to process what's going on inside.

• 4:53Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned workaholism is one of, or was one of your protectors. Why do so many women who appear strong and independent actually feel unsafe or disconnected inside?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I talk about this a lot in the book, and I talk about the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere of the brain. I geek out on the science. But we grow up in a culture, male and female, where we're like so pushed to be independent, self-sufficient, self-regulating, which I could go on forever about. And we shift into our left hemispheres and we become like productive little doers and very successful. The problem is when we're living life like that, we're in survival mode most of the time, and we're not in our right hemisphere, and we are not relating, and we're not connecting deeply, and we're just like doing all the time. And I did that, and I think it's pushed on us as women and men to, in our culture, to be successful, and that that's the most important thing, and then that will make you happy.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  And I won't want to speak for you, but I know that being successful is not what makes me happy. It's my connections, it's my relationships, it's those, that's what gives me meaning. But I think that we're all misled a lot, and we can be very lonely in that category of just go, go, go, go, be successful kind of arena.

• 6:13Chris Williamson?

  It's a vicious combination because doing the independent thing is, it achieves two, two goals. First off, it, the lack of reliance on other people means that you're never at the mercy of them. So, safety may be very low, but it's only ever generated internally, and it's only ever at the mercy of what you do internally. Now, that forgets the fact that we need people around us and connection's very important and all the rest of the stuff. But that's like a slow drip, drip, drip of disconnection and misery, as opposed to the big roller coaster carousel that is, "I'm with somebody and I don't know if they're like me, and I don't know if I can trust them, and maybe I can, and oh my god, what's

• 6:57Chris Williamson?

  going on?" So, I think that's one side of it. It is this prophylactic that makes life much grayer, but kind of more predictable, at least in that regard, because it's on your shoulders. The other side of that is that it's rewarded by the world, because the independence is great in a meritocracy. It looks like agency. It looks like intentionality. It looks like you're able to take on things and you're a doer. And all of this is very compelling. It's beguiling, it's electric. The people around you would think, "Oh, look at you. What a wonderful person. They're an upstart and they can do it themselves, and that's the sort of person that I want to be around." So, it is protective, albeit

• 7:41Chris Williamson?

  in a sort of quite un-hallistic way internally, and it's rewarded, albeit in a very shallow, meritocratic, capitalist way externally. So, I totally see why the independence thing, the sort of boss lady energy is, especially for women, is very attractive. "Well, look, I'm no longer at the mercy." For almost all of human history, women have been at the mercy of the resources and the ability of their partner to protect them, the ability of their family around them to protect them, and now I've been able to do it on my own.

• 8:14Chris Williamson?

  And I don't feel connected to anybody. And I don't feel connected to my emotions. And I don't understand why I don't feel feelings. And I don't have to engage with my felt sense of unsafety fully, but I don't ever fully feel safe.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  And I'm not connected to my body.

• 8:30Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about that.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  So we store our relational trauma and attachment wounds in our body. And a lot of sensations move up through our body into our right hemisphere and we can make sense. And we develop interoception and all this stuff. But when we live in a left shifted society, so when we live in a space where we're constantly going, we're on sympathetic activation, we're more in our left hemisphere, which is important for survival. It's important for, you know, accomplishing tasks. It's important for a lot of things, but it disconnects us from our body. So we become more disembodied, more dissociated, and we're not connected to what's going on inside as much. And it actually protects us, like I needed to be protected from what was going on inside of me

• 9:17Speaker 01

  because I wasn't ready to face it. But, you know, you kind of feel like a bobblehead or you don't, you're not, you're not embodied. You're disconnected from self as a self protective way. And then you keep feeding the monster by saying, well, I'm just going to do more, do more, do more, do more. And 75% of our Western culture lives more left shifted. And it is the underlying reason for our epidemic of loneliness right now going on. Because you cannot connect relationally when you're in sympathetic activation and you're living more in that mode.

• 9:51Chris Williamson?

  How can somebody tell if they are in the independence disconnection energy? What are the telltale signs?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  I mean, a lot of it is you're not connecting to your body. When you do slow it down, you can't tolerate what's going inside. You're in sympathetic activation. So if you're listening, that means like you're stressed out all the time. There's cortisol going through your body all the time. You're busy all the time. You have a hard time slowing down. You have a hard time being present. You have a hard time connecting with others. You feel lonely, you feel isolated. Like this is going on for so many people and they don't even understand why. And they're just going to work and they're living in their apartment and they're doing what they need to do. And they're working out and they're like, why am I feeling so empty and meaningless? Or why am I having so much anxiety? Or yeah, mostly it's a loneliness.

• 10:42Chris Williamson?

  Isn't it strange?

• 10:45Chris Williamson?

  It's such a applauded type of coping mechanism. It's like an odd type of coping mechanism that the world and your bank account and your career title

• 10:57Chris Williamson?

  and your status will all give you props for.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. And it's like, for me, I mean, I'm forty two years old and and for me, it was so disheartening because I didn't get the connection and the understanding of what would truly bring me meaning and happiness in life. And I went down that that success rabbit hole and I had to learn, I had to learn the hard way, you know, I got to the top and I was pretty alone, like I had to slow down, be with what was inside, figure out how relationships are literally, relationships determine the quality of our life and are the most important things in our life.

• 11:35Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, yeah, it's an interesting one because without true safety, without fully tapping into that, you can't take proper risks anywhere else. The the the fundamental sort of safety that you get from your relationship allows you to go and do bigger, more extravagant, more risk taking things in the real world. But people see opening up to an intimate partner as the very thing that is going to limit what it is that they can achieve in the real world. It's like that the everything is upside down. As far as I can see, everything's upside down because if you know that no matter what happens in your career or your creative pursuits or this new project that you're going to

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  start or this change that you're trying for, you have home base and home base is deeply, intimately connected to you. That that seems like a really powerful foundation for you to go and do big stuff in the world. But the very reason that people are scared about doing the safety thing is that they've already got so much big stuff going on in the world that they don't have time for it.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're you're describing secure attachment, you know, so when you've had the experience of secure attachment as an infant and as an adult, you internalize the fact that this is safe for me and this is my home base. And when you have that sense of safety, that's actually a felt sense in your body from early on, you feel expansive in the world, you can take risks in the world, you move out, you move through the world in an easier way. I mean, it's literally a felt sense that gets like, like a blueprint that gets, it's a felt sense in your body, but not everybody has that. Uh, most people walk around with a lot of avoidance, a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear, abandonment. So they're not expansive and they don't have this internal sense of safety and they, they can't make

• 13:18Speaker 01

  free choices because they're kind of, um, trapped to whatever they need to do to survive and have the illusion of safety in their world.

• 13:27Chris Williamson?

  What would you say to somebody that's listening that identifies with the, I don't feel much stuff below the neck. Um, I'm quite disconnected, but career is going very well at the moment. What would be, because you're asking somebody to give up the thing that they know gives them some meaning for the thing which is scary and new and they have no idea whether it's going to actually lead to any happiness?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's, it's fucking terrifying and I get it. I, I'm not asking them to give it up. Like, I am not asking, I did not change my, my life overnight. Like, I gave up control inch by inch. I, I run two companies, I delegated, I slowed down and I just gave up just a little bit of control. Like, you're not meant to like, listen to this podcast today or even read my book and like, give up your career. Like, that would not be good advice. But you can slow down a little and you can start to invite people in and you can become more present with what's going on inside you and you can reevaluate what might actually make you happy and rethink things so that you don't get to my age or older and you're like, you have all this money and success, but you don't have the

• 14:35Speaker 01

  relational happiness or the deeper fulfillment that comes from leading with a little bit more of the right, right hemisphere leading and being more embodied.

• 14:44Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Yeah, I mean, look, the, the least popular thing to say on the internet is money won't make you happy because almost everybody has less money than they want. And almost everybody therefore looks at people who have the thing that they're after, which is More cash, more freedom, more time, fewer restrictions, less stress that's derived from success and status and resources and stuff like that. And they say, well, how ungrateful that they have the thing that I'm lacking and they still say that didn't fix my happiness or self-worth problem. But unless there's some weird cabal, like a secret club that all rich people are a

• 15:28Chris Williamson?

  part of, that they get inducted into, that tells them, once they become rich, to tell all of the poor people, hey, by the way, money won't fix your happiness problems, despite the fact that secretly it will. Unless that has happened for like, almost all rich people, you can be pretty reliable in the realization that they're not lying about the fact that they achieved the things materially that they said that they wanted to and they thought would fix their problems. And when they got there, they didn't feel anything other than like a tarnished sense of despondency that, oh, fuck, I did the thing and still feel this way and it hasn't fixed my internal problem. So it's an unteachable lesson. It's something that I don't think people can arrive at.

• 16:10Chris Williamson?

  It's actually quicker, I would, I would argue it's quicker to just become rich and realize that it's not going to fix your problem than it is to try and dispense with the dream, the mirage that this is going to be the answer to my questions. That being said, you can probably start to work on your connection en route to also realizing that thing too.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and this is like a deep topic and we can talk about like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like, the truth is, if you're struggling to make your bills, like, you're in survival mode and you're not going to be happy. You need to survive. You need to figure out how to survive. But once you, like, once you move past a certain point, happiness becomes very relative. I've had a unique, you know, upbringing. I grew up with extensive wealth and then I had nothing and then I made, I made some wealth back, not a lot. And I think it becomes all relative, once you kind of start getting in your life. And, you know, for men, I think it's even harder because I think there's a lot of pressure on them to, you know, succeed.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I had a client who lived in his left hemisphere, was very, very successful, and his biggest dream was get to the Olympics. And he got to the Olympics and he did really well. And then he crashed. He said, I was all alone at the top. So it's not just wealth. It's these stories we're telling ourselves that when I get here or when I have the perfect body or when I have this in my bank account or when I publish this book, right? Or when I make like, we keep thinking that we're gonna get to this idea of perfection or wealth or whatever, and then we're gonna be happy. And that's just an illusion that keeps us trapped into like this constant go and workaholism or whatever we need to do. It's a dopamine trap.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  And it's just not true. You're not gonna get somewhere else. You might be temporarily happy. But true meaning and connection and fulfillment come from deepening within and deepening in relationships. At least that's been my experience. And that's what the science says. And that's the message I'm trying to get out there in the world.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  I would have agreed with you intellectually, but disagreed with you in terms of a nervous system a little while ago. But this last year, I've been really obsessed with talking about emotions. I was trying to become less emotionally decapitated, as I called it, and start to try and live below the neck. And yeah, that week that I spent, which was there was nothing to do except for follow the process and sit in emotions. And it was the most sort of seen, deeply connected week that I've ever spent in my entire life. And it's a unique kind of

• 18:52Chris Williamson?

  happiness, presence, that you, there is no number of subscribers or fucking like paychecks that can get that because it's like saying, how much food do I need to eat to hydrate myself? And you go, well, no, you're doing the wrong thing. It's the wrong pathway. Yes, you do need some of this thing. You need some of the achievement thing, but you also need a lot of the connection thing. So I guess. One interesting question is how are our patterns associated with our past? How is the way that we're showing up now with regards to safety, our relationship to safety, our relationship to other people? How is that a mirror of what's happened in our past?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I talk about this a lot in the book, but I talk about implicit memory and I talk about our original childhood dynamics. I have the wheel of attachment in there and how we related to different people and what it was like in our home, what the temperature was like and how we adapted. And I go into that into deep detail. So the, you know, the reader really gets that. But what happens is as we grow up, we attract the familiar. So we tend to, people will say like, I manifested this, or we literally can pull or go towards a person, a job, a situation, and feel like, oh, my God, this is the one, or this is right for me. And it recreates familiar patterns from our childhood.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Because that's what our system knows, what our nervous system knows, that's what our nervous system expects. So many people who grew up in homes with a lot of neglect, or abuse, or trauma, end up attracting work environments and partnerships that recreate the familiar patterns all over again. So a lot of this is about getting conscious of the original wounds and patterns so that we can break, you know, trauma bonds and, you know, have healthier relationships. So it's a lot of getting out of what our system knows and reorienting towards true safety and what true safety really is.

• 20:58Chris Williamson?

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• 21:42Chris Williamson?

  Why do we find people who repeat old wounds? What is it we're trying to achieve through that?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Well, there's several ways you can look at this, but the scientific way would say because that's what our system knows. And our system will gravitate towards what it knows to expect from others. So if I got my needs met and I was met, you know, and I had emotional presence and my parents were available to me, I'm going to attract someone who's going to probably meet my needs, most likely, because this is what I know. And this was what feels familiar. So we tend to recreate our familiar. So most people with insecure childhoods and insecure patterns tend to feel more resonant with someone who matches that and ironically repeats the very trauma that they experienced.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  I can't tell you how many clients come to me and they're like, I'm reliving my childhood again in this, in this marriage. And I'm like, yes, you are. And now it's time to get conscious of that because we can heal it.

• 22:46Chris Williamson?

  It feels so fucking cosmically unfair that our nervous systems confuse familiarity with safety.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  You're telling me, Chris. I wrote the books on it and like, I think even understanding interpersonal neurobiology to the level that I did, I still couldn't prevent myself from making choices or being drawn towards familiar situations that recreated some pain for me. And I, it's just, it's just science. It's just the way we're, we're wired.

• 23:16Chris Williamson?

  What were, what was some of those situations? What was some of the ways that you recreated that?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I left a relationship not that long ago with someone I, I deeply loved and I did a lot of work with. But I grew up in a home with a dad who struggled with a lot of substance abuse. And a lot of wealth and had a certain mentality and my mom is beautiful model and all of this and I attracted someone who met all my emotional needs, but later in in our relationship, really struggled with substance abuse. So when he was struggling and and back in the substance abuse, it awakened a very young part of me who had a dad who was high a lot. And so I had to work really hard to not make it about him and his use

• 24:03Speaker 01

  and be with the part of me that was really young, that remembered being with a father who enjoyed substances on a regular basis and how scary that was for my nervous system and how much my nervous system remembered that when it reappeared in my relationship. And that's just one example of how we awaken early memories, early dynamics in our current relationships. Implicit memory is like water. It will go to the most familiar pattern, the most familiar tone, something that is familiar and it will weaken, oh, my God, I've I've been here before. Is this safe or is this dangerous?

• 24:42Chris Williamson?

  What are some of the more normal ways that this might show up? You know, you mentioned if somebody has been through extreme trauma, or if somebody has had, you know, a parent that's got a substance abuse problem. Now, that's probably sadly actually less rare than we might think, but still probably out toward the tail of the distribution, right? What about, I'm trying to think about common, but damaging ways that someone's childhood might be showing up in in adulthood. It might not be substance abuse, but what are some of the sort of smaller, more normal, lower grade ways that childhood might be being repeated in partner choice and and what we look for familiarity, masquerading as safety?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I'm like, I want to, I want to come up with the perfect answer for you right now. And we're talking intergenerational trauma here. Like, our parents are doing the best that they can, but most parents are not showing up emotionally present enough. So most parents are passing down some avoidant tendencies and more avoidance. So as we focus on success, as as parents are trying to get tasks done and they're not showing up emotionally in the way That their child needed needed and it's not their fault. They probably didn't get it from their parents and that's how this gets passed down intergenerationally. So until you do the work and you start to meet with what's going on inside and you're with someone who's emotionally attuning and you're like, oh my God,

• 26:12Speaker 01

  this is new for me. This is new for my nervous system. Like someone is being very emotionally present with me and available and I have to be vulnerable, which that's like another whole conversation we can get into. We don't realize that we didn't get that. We didn't, we, we needed it. We didn't get it until we start to receive it now. And I would say emotional availability is something that a lot of children are not getting because their parents didn't receive it from their parents. And now we're talking intergenerational trauma and we're talking about nervous systems and we're talking about parents doing that the best they can, but also focusing on success and tasks rather than really meeting the emotional needs of the child.

• 26:55Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that strange? I was thinking about this on that week's retreat that I'd done. Quite rightly, we look at parents who dedicate their time to earning money, to providing a better life for their kids, better in terms of sort of raw resources than they had when they were children with the kids' grandparents. I reckon if you actually asked people, especially people that are tapped in, I, I kind of see the world as split into two groups, people that are tapped in and people that aren't. And if you ask the people that are tapped in that have done a little bit of work, that have a bit of an understanding about what

• 27:30Chris Williamson?

  life is about, especially emotionally, would you have rather grown up with less money but more emotional availability? I really think that all of them would say yes. And it's so ruthless because again, it seems and is noble for a parent who's saying, well, so you're saying that working five days a week, 10 hour shifts for two decades to provide for a family of four, you're saying that that wasn't, that wasn't right. That wasn't something that's noble. Yes, of course, of course it is.

• 27:58Chris Williamson?

  But if you ask the kids, when they grow up to be adults, if they start to tune into themselves, what it is that they needed more of, it probably wasn't a bigger birthday party. It was for mom or dad to pick them up and hold them. It wasn't for more lifts to soccer practice. It was to have their needs met when they felt scared. And it's kind of a ruthless realization.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And it's also, you know, it's having that parent allow you to be upset without fixing you or changing you or giving you a cookie or buying. It's that parent that has the ability to be with you through your emotional experience. And it's the feeling of with that gives a child safety. And it's the feeling of with that gives us all safety. And I think that parents who didn't experience their parents being with them, they're doing the best they can and they're providing and they will do what they can for their child. So it's, it's kind of being passed down, but you're, you're just not aware of it until you slow down and do the work. Like I slowed down and done a lot of work and I'm sure there'll be much more work in my life.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  It never ends, but now I know how to be with people in such a deeper way. Because I've had people be with me in such a deep and profound way that it's cultivated that ability to give that to another.

• 29:23Chris Williamson?

  What do you say to people who call the inner child stuff woo woo?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  You know, in Safe, I talked about memory and like I get so deep into interpersonal neurobiology and neuroscience. I talk about implicit memory. I talk about sensations, think the body keeps the score. But if you don't want to call it your inner child, we still need to start to look at how memory systems work in your body and how that your memory system is constantly speaking to you. Your past is internally present through these streams. And so that's not woo woo, that's science and I got the science to back it up. So you want to take the word inner child out or little me out, we still need to work with memory. Because memory, our memory, our past is living right now in our present.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  It's, it's alive. It's in our body and it's right here all the time.

• 30:14Chris Williamson?

  How is that encoded?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Mostly through sensations. So when we're born, we're born as right hemisphere more creatures. And we're not, as humans, we're not like fully developed. We don't come out with like a fully developed nervous system or fully developed organs. We come out, like, think of it, we're like these little, like, sensing beings. And we don't store explicit memory till like a little bit later on, four or five. So explicit memory is like memory like a movie screen. We only store sensations. We can only, our body can only store sensations from womb to about four. And we're storing, I forgot the statistics, but so much more sensational memory,

• 31:01Speaker 01

  even in this second, second, second, between you and me, more sensations are being stored than like explicit memory. So we're constantly storing sensations as memory. Then if we're, we're growing up in a home where there's trauma and we're not processing our emotions, these sensations go into our body. They get tucked into our, our gut, our hu, our heart, our fascia, our body, and they stay there. And they, they'll stay there until we can tune into our body and become embodied again. And so these sensational memory streams and the sensations moving through our body, that's just the science. And those are the things that we have to start being more aware of if we want to heal.

• 31:45Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 31:47Chris Williamson?

  Why do we confuse chaos with chemistry? Like, what is it about this sort of sparkiness that happens in relationships? And how do we get sort of taken, taken aside by it?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not just chaos. I would say it's intensity with chemistry. So it can be chaos. So if you grew up in a home that had a lot of chaos. And you meet someone, even if they don't appear like they have chaos on the surface, but they have chaos underneath, you're going to be attracted to them because that's your familiar. So it's it's less about, it's more about how your familiar matches with somebody else's familiar. But I think intensity, love bombing, intensity, euphoric chemicals being released in our brain, all of that, like someone getting close really fast, all

• 32:41Speaker 01

  of that can be feel like love, but it's not true vulnerability and it's not true closeness. But it can feel so euphoric inside that like we're kind of blinded by it. And depending on what your familiar is, you're going to be attracted to someone and that intensity will feel like home. It's funny because my book is like, Safe and Attachment Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships and Coming Home to Yourself and Others. And there's a part in the book where I talk about hugging my partner and feeling like I was home. And like, he was, he represented the home I wanted because he was so attentive,

• 33:20Speaker 01

  but he also brought me home to all of my earliest experiences. And I think a lot of relationships do that. Like when you hear a lot of big people talk, it's like, our closest relationships will bring up our earliest wounds. They will bring up our earliest patterns. They will recreate those dynamics. They will literally bring you home.

• 33:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a very, again, it's like so fucking poetically ironic, right? That you have this early intimate relationship with your caregiver. And then you go through life to try and find one that, you know, hopefully transcends and includes and elevates what you did before, to when you realize, like, I don't know, some Groundhog Day thing, I'm fucking back to where I started. Like, I mean, this is the same thing all over again. I mean, it's twenty, two decades, three decades later, and I'm doing the same thing.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's exactly why I wrote this book, because like, I've been, I mean, we've all been there. Like, here I am again, right in my core wound. I'm being left. I'm not good enough. I'm unworthy, right? And I it's it's science. I mean, until we heal the original wound, until we go back, until we become more embodied, until we grieve what we didn't get, we will try to recreate it. Like, we will seek out something that actually we think will protect us. And ironically, it will recreate it. So it's like a little, it's kind of like, it's, yeah, it's a little twisted. I completely agree.

• 34:51Chris Williamson?

  The two things that I've taken away, at least so far, this confusion between familiarity and safety, I think, is familiarity is not safety, it is familiarity. And this confusion between intensity and intimacy, that that is also not the same thing. And often, I would imagine that the intensity is born out of some of the familiarity, too, that you, your ability to be able to tolerate that, like, your tolerance window for bad stuff that you're familiar with, is actually going to be greater than for bad stuff that you're not familiar with. Like, you have this, a palate, you know, like, you're a fine diner or something, and you have this particular, oh, Italian food, I can really eat a lot

• 35:34Chris Williamson?

  of that, but I'm not so, you know, Chinese, I'm not so used to. Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Well, and also, like, let's say you're familiar is violence, or you're familiar is neglect, or you're familiar is, I don't know what it is, when you're in a relationship, you regress. And think about a young kid, like, they don't have the choice to be like, you know what, you're neglecting me, I'm just gonna go over here. They just keep trying, and trying, and trying. So you just keep trying with the same pattern with someone who can't give you what you need, because that's literally what you did as a kid. So that's why you have more capacity for it. If you didn't get neglect, or you didn't get rejection or shame as a kid, and someone starts to shame you, you're like, this doesn't feel familiar, I'm not even, I don't even need to work through this, I'm gonna go over there. You're more likely to walk away.

• 36:21Chris Williamson?

  That's so clever. Yes, yes, yes. Your capacity for tolerating familiar mistreatment is greater as well.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Absolutely. And I think that there's another piece, like, if you grew up with neglect, or abuse, or anything, and someone comes along and they present as like, the perfect Parent, but they're also feeding a very young part of your brain, all this attention. They're flooding your brain and they're showing up as Mr. Or Mrs. Wonderful. You're now projecting like, this is what I didn't get in my childhood. Look how wonderful this person is showing up. They're filling a developmental part of your brain, a wound. They're filling it. And then what happens later in the relationship? If they change and become abusive or whatever happens,

• 37:10Speaker 01

  you stay hooked because you got flooded with that in the beginning because of the neglect, because they treated you so well. You're wired to stay in connection and will stay in relationships longer because of the beginning might have been so hopeful or more of an escape or a safety from your own inner trauma.

• 37:31Chris Williamson?

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• 38:12Chris Williamson?

  Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use with Neutonic on Shopify. Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to Shopify.com/modernd wisdom or lowercase. That's Shopify.com/modernd wisdom to upgrade your selling today. Okay, does that mean that safe and calm love feels boring at first?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I think that for me, and I'm not going to speak so much on love, but I feel like sometimes safe, safety for me felt very vulnerable at first. Like, I think it can feel like, holy shit, this is real. We're not in intensity. We're so much in reality. And that's scary because it's not an escape and it's not serving that, that need to escape my life. As I've done my own work and I've let more what I call anchors in and my nervous system has gotten so used to people being more present with me, I'm like, this is love. This emotional presence needs to register as love.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  So now I can attract more of that because my nervous system has experienced more of it in my life. But I had to experience enough of it for me to even recognize it. Does that make sense?

• 39:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it does. I, I'm interested in why safety felt vulnerable to you. Yeah, dig into that for me.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think Brene Brown's work really speaks on this, but in order to heal, we need to become vulnerable. In order to be vulnerable, we need to feel safe. And if I was living my life in a lot of chaos and intensity and workaholism and someone showed up and was slowed me down and was really present with me, I had a lot of protectors show up. I'm like, this is uncomfortable. Like, I have to, you know, be here and just see more of me, show more of me, be more vulnerable. So I think a lot of people struggle if they haven't received a lot of that. When true safety shows up, it can feel very foreign.

• 40:25Chris Williamson?

  I suppose the ruthless thing in that situation as well is this person showed up and they're prepared to wade through the obvious amber flags that are pouring out of this person that's across from them. It's like, huh, that was a strange, that was a strange way to react to me doing something nice. So that was a strange way to, to respond to me saying that we should just spend this afternoon relaxing and talking to each other or whatever it might be. And if, I suppose.

• 40:57Chris Williamson?

  Not everybody is going to have the tolerance to be able to do that. Not, not all partners that show up for you as the unhealed, unwhole person. That's got a ton of protectors and coping mechanisms. So you found someone and hooray, isn't that great? Problem is, there is kind of a little bit of a ticking clock. Because there is only, if that person is securely attached, there is only so long that they are going to put up, put up with showing up for you in a way that you are unable to show up for yourself, show up in relation to what they're doing, and then reciprocally show up for them, before they go, ah, I just don't think, I don't think we're in the same place. I, I don't think we're compatible. I don't think that we're aiming in the same direction here. I, I don't think that this can go on. So there is,

• 41:42Chris Williamson?

  there is a,

• 41:47Chris Williamson?

  you have an obligation, if you want to have a really good relationship, you have an obligation to see when people show up for you in a manner that, not that you don't deserve, but that you're almost like not ready for. It's like, oh my God, there's a lot going on here. And you say, okay, is this the sort of relationship that you want? Yes. Okay. Get to fucking work. Because if you don't, this person is going to go and be that amazing anchor for somebody else. And that means that, yeah, you do need to face your coping mechanisms and you do need to learn to let go of those things, probably sooner rather than later, ideally.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm, I'm a, a maglotherapist, I'm a couples counselor, and I love it when people do the work together. But if this feels like you, you don't need to start off with a romantic relationship. You can get really intimate with anchors, professionals, let your nervous system start to take in what true safety feels like, what healing feels like, so that you can do the work and you can be that anchor for somebody else. If this is really going on for you, you might have a little more individual work to do before you can really provide that for another.

• 42:54Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Okay. You mentioned anchors. We haven't talked spaceholding and ventral states. What, what this? Separate out, separate out all of this for me?

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean, you're probably so familiar with the nervous system. I'm sure you do lots of talks on this, but a big part of the book is based on Stephen Porjes's work, that our social engagement system, the way we have evolved is to be in social connection and in safety. And we call this the ventral state. So like you and I are pretty much in ventral. Ventral, I mean, it mixes. I'm a little nervous now, so I'm sure it goes in and out of ventral. But um, so when, when we are both in a ventral state, we are in a state of safety. And that's when we can be more intimate. And like I said, we shift all the time. We're shifting in nanoseconds, actually.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  But in order to heal deep attachment wounds, and I guess this is an important theme like out there, is that we do need sometimes adult anchoring in the ventral state of safety to hold space for our embodied experience. So we can't move trauma alone. We actually need co-regulation and adult anchoring to be with what's in the body with us. So we can start to move the earlier wounds. Does that make sense?

• 44:16Chris Williamson?

  It does. Yeah. What um,

• 44:21Chris Williamson?

  with the ventral state thing, what's a good indication that you're in it and what's a good indication that you're not in it?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so eye contact, your breath, feeling calm, feeling expansive, your thoughts being expansive. I sometimes I can tell my thoughts are not in a ventral state when I get protective or, you know, in a survival state. So your thoughts, your breathing, the way you're connecting, feeling free, feeling open, feeling safe. I have more awe in the world. Like I'm looking out my window. Like the world is more beautiful when I'm in a ventral state. Like things are more magical. Music feels even more heightened. I just feel more connected to myself and others.

• 45:02Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Okay. Talking about the other side of it now, then you mentioned space holding. There has to be an adult in the room, figurative or literal.

• 45:12Chris Williamson?

  What does good space holding look like? Let's say that you're somebody who's listening, who has a relationship with someone, and you think, I want to become better at, at sitting with them. What, what is good space holding?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, from the basic anchoring is someone who doesn't try to fix you, change you. I mean, truly learning how to listen to people is good space holding. But if we were in like a therapeutic relationship or you were my anchor, Chris, I was experiencing pain or dysregulation. Your nervous system being in ventral holds my experience and allows my nervous system to move, but eventually helps my nervous system get back into ventral. So good space holding is ability to hold safety for the other person and your nervous system is literally helping to regulate and that's what we call co-regulation. So that is true space holding.

• 46:11Chris Williamson?

  Is that why anxious and avoidant people find each other so magnetic? That there is something in the push and pull, which is almost the antithesis of that. There isn't one anchor. There are two boats getting ragged around by the sea at the same time.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  There's so many reasons why anxious and avoidant are attracted. I mean, the anxious is very lively and full of life and feels expressive. The avoidant feels stoic and grounded and independent and in control. So they're really attracted to these like lost parts of themselves. The problem with anxious and avoidant is that when an anxious person gets scared, the illusion of safety is I'm going to run towards my partner. I need to connect or else I'm going to feel my abandonment. And when a avoidant person gets scared, they need space and they need to run away to regulate their nervous system. So when they're both activated and they move out of ventral

• 47:11Speaker 01

  and they move into protective states, they both actually mean the opposite of what the other can provide. So one needs connection right away and it's out of fear. And one needs space right away, it out of fear. And so they get stuck in these cycles, which are quite miserable, particularly because their nervous system can't get back into connection and an eventual state fast enough.

• 47:36Chris Williamson?

  That's ruthless.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  I've been stuck in, I mean, and I'm sure many listeners have been stuck in that pattern. It is, it's an important one to get conscious of so that you don't spend the rest of your life in it because it does cause havoc on your nervous system and somatically inflammation can happen if you're constantly in these, you know, activated states.

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  How can someone help an anxiously attached partner to feel less anxious? What would you say? You have a partner that is regularly getting into, or even every so often intimately getting into these anxious states. What is a good way to bring them back into ventral?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Actually, more reassurance. For the most part, more reassurance calms them down. So if, if I'm dating someone and I'm anxious and they can show up for me in a secure way, over time, my system will internalize that. But if they're avoidant and they get anxious when I get anxious, then we start the whole dance again. So the more we can feel secure and reassured. If you're really, really, really anxious, you might need to do some healing first around your abandonment wound so that you're not constantly projecting this fear into the relationship because your partner might feel like, oh, my God, nothing's happening and I'm constantly reassuring and this terror just keeps living inside that person.

• 48:55Chris Williamson?

  What does healing attachment wounds really look like?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  I mean, it's like more like, what does it really feel like? It feels like holding states and places within yourself that maybe you have not met before and letting other people witness you regress. It means like getting in touch with the things you might have been avoiding. It means being vulnerable. I mean, it was probably most humbling experience that I've gone through. I definitely think it's, it's humbling to, to allow yourself to feel or re-experience what you originally went through. And it's also a gift because you're becoming more embodied and you're actually, you're becoming conscious of your original experience.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Like I became conscious of what it's like to feel like in my crib. Like I regress. Like I know what it's like to be a baby now, you know? And it was hard, but also.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I guess enlightening or just awakening and and helps me feel more alive in the world and I feel more free and I have more internal space. I could go on and on about what comes from doing this type of work.

• 50:08Chris Williamson?

  How come we can only heal in relationship?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so what was wounded in relationship must be healed in relationship. And this is like neuroscience. And so when, let's say, the abandonment wound, we could go to a lot of different wounds. If you were abandoned emotionally when you were little, in order to heal a wound, at least in in this philosophy, is you need to meet the wound and the wound needs to receive what it didn't get at the time it was created. So I need to be witnessed. I need to acknowledge what I didn't get. And then I need to also be received by somebody else. I need to not feel alone in the memory of the experience

• 50:54Speaker 01

  as I'm re-experiencing. I was ashamed. I need to be in touch with that. I need unconditional acceptance. I need someone to accept these parts of me. So I need to re-experience the experience. We call it, we need to have a disconfirming experience. So we need to have the experience and then revisit it and actually have it met very differently.

• 51:16Chris Williamson?

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• 51:58Chris Williamson?

  plan by going to the link in the description below. I'm heading to incogni.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's I N C O G N I dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. That's so good. I've kind of got it in my head about the, again, the ruthlessness that people need. If we have childhood wounds and we need to heal them in relationship with somebody else, that means that we need to find somebody who is able to do the work to accumulate the capacity or already has the capacity to be able to sit with us so that we can go through this. I'm thinking, you know, we talked earlier on about one of

• 52:39Chris Williamson?

  the challenges that women have, which is where you've got to let go of this only, you know, civilisationally relatively recently acquired independence socioeconomically in order to tap into getting below the neck, to not being hard charging, all the rest of it. But I think this is one in particular that guys will have an issue with, which is in order to heal in relationship, we need to be vulnerable, we need to be prepared to revisit something from our past, which is shameful or difficult or challenging or makes us feel insufficient or scared. And we need to do that in relationship. Doing that with another guy friend is going to be really tough. There are all of the concerns

• 53:22Chris Williamson?

  about your friend seeing you as weak, about you no longer being a, an ally or a compatriot that is competent. And you go, okay, well, I'll turn to my intimate relationship. And you're, okay, well, brilliant. Like, you need to find a woman who is able to sit with you going back into the most painful, shameful, vulnerable part of your life and be comfortable enough to come out the other side of it. Guys already have enough fear around emasculating themselves. Don't ever show your emotions to your partner. She's just going to leave you as soon as that is. I think almost every definition of masculinity that I've come across has some version of emotional mastery or emotional control in there as one of the

• 54:04Chris Williamson?

  definitions of masculinity. So you're saying that I need to literally let go of perhaps the keystone of my masculinity in order to be able to heal this thing. But if I go through that, perhaps my partner's going to leave me. So it does not surprise me that most guys go, ah, way safer, way easier for me to just swallow this and never actually tap into that. It doesn't seem particularly well rewarded or incentivized.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm smiling, but you like hit one of the most actually painful.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Like truths out there is that it's actually a lot harder for men to heal. Because being vulnerable as a man was not even supported and it feels very dangerous for most men. I mean, and it was hard for me as a woman to be vulnerable. So you're hitting on a point. And I'm smiling because I'm like, this is not going to sell my book, right? Like, who wants to walk into this kind of work? But it like, the research shows that if you do and you are courageous enough to get vulnerable, like, your life changes, like, things change inside, you have more freedom, you... I can't even put it into words, what it's like to go through the work.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  And yet, it is probably the scariest thing most people will do. And that's why you start slow. And it's not about, like, you get anchors and you start slow and you find safe people and it's not like, but it is, like, you're hitting the nail on the head, Chris. Like, it's really hard for men, a lot of men, and in the UK too. I mean, I have one UK client and, you know, feelings are not supposed to be talked about. And this is intergenerational and this is cultural. And the truth is, I think that true masculinity comes from this portal of being vulnerable and going there. And it's what women, a lot of women say they want, right? And it's what we have to go through to get to the other side of this. So you're hitting a very valid point and it's a very sad point, to be honest.

• 56:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, especially in a world that tells men your primary problem is that you're too masculine. Like, if you were just more like women, a lot of your problems would go, if you just talked about your emotions more. It's like, I think somewhere in the 90s percent of middle-aged men who take their own life had already sought help through some kind of therapy or had reached out to some sort of group or organization. You're okay, it's evident that "just talk about it, bro" isn't working. And also, all of the incentives align for guys to find that hard. So yeah, I think, you know, sympathy for the challenges that women face, but sympathy for the challenges that men face there as well. I'm interested...

• 56:43Chris Williamson?

  In sort of getting practical and looking at some of the practices that couples could do together to help regulate, maybe, well, I don't know, you tell me, like, maybe they're about to have a difficult conversation, or they want to do some emotional work. How should that be done? Or maybe they've been apart for a little while and they're coming back together and they want to have this sense of safety and deepen connection. Or maybe they've just had an argument. Like, what are the big buckets of practices that you think are powerful for couples to do together?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I'm an Imago therapist. I would say if you're struggling, find an Imago therapist or an EFT therapist. But I think understanding your nervous system and the basics around when I'm scared, this is how my nervous system responds. And do I shut down? Do I get activated? Do I fight? Do I flee? Do I collapse? Do I people please? And what do I really need in those moments? And when you shut down, you can tell your partner, or when you're upset, how does your body respond? And instead of getting caught in the behaviors that we might be doing, can we start having conversations around our nervous system? Hey, I'm not in a state of safety right now. I'm feeling very protective

• 57:53Speaker 01

  and I want to get critical, or, you know, this is where I'm at, or what I need right now because I'm not feeling safe. And how can we get back into connection and safety faster by having more conversations about where our nervous system's at, rather than repeating the behaviors over and over again?

• 58:10Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so that's the conversation. Are there any other practices that you think are good for couples to co-regulate together? Or is that not an area that you like to get into?

• 58:21Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, co-regulation is great. I think that, you know, what happens most of the time is one couple gets activated. Like, when we're in intimate relationship, we're telepathing, we're having a telepathing conversation. Your nervous system and my nervous system are speaking to each other every nanosecond. Am I safe? Are you with me? So what happens a lot of the time where couples get stuck is one person gets activated and unconsciously and with automatically the other person gets activated at the same time. You can't even help that because we're so connected. So I think just slowing down and starting to understand, like I have couples who get upset because their partner comes home activated and then they get activated.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you can't help being activated and you can't help getting activated back. So slowing down and starting to understand that and then figuring out what does regulate me? What do I need, need when I'm activated? Get out of the story, stop putting gasoline on the fire. How can I get back into a state of safety? What makes me feel connected to my partner? And can they give that for me to me? Can I ask for it, right? It's really hard for a lot of men and women, but to even ask for what is it that I need when I am dysregulated? So I need space. Can you give your partner space?

• 59:39Chris Williamson?

  What?

• 59:42Chris Williamson?

  I guess the challenge there is if you can only do it with somebody else, this kind of flies in the face of a lot of self-development, personal development stuff, which is you can Lone Ranger monk mode, sigma wolf your way through like whatever the problems are in your life. You're saying, hey, if you've got some wounds and some patterns from childhood that keep showing up and kind of controlling you in later life.

• 1:00:11Chris Williamson?

  This is something, this is a weight that you need a second person to help you lift as well.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's like, as a self-help author,

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I like, I think this is such an important, and as someone who does want people to read my book, like, the truth is I would be doing the science and injustice if I said, read this book and fix yourself. Because that's just not how developmental trauma heals. And I have spent too much of my life with every freaking self-help book that I could get my hands on, trying to help myself, not realizing that a lot of what I needed to heal inside, I needed the right support to heal. I needed safe people, safe environments. And now I understand the neuroscience behind it. So I don't want to put that message out. Read this book in three steps, you're going to be healed. That's, that's just not how it works.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  But I provide such a rich understanding of how it works that I hope you walk away feeling really grounded in the science around healing. So it's not woo woo. So you do feel like, oh my God, there is a lot of science backing up why we can't heal a lot of things alone.

• 1:01:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. What's the role? I'm interested in the role of rupture and repair here.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  So yeah, I mean, that goes deep. So when we're an infant and we're crying and we're fussing and we're reaching out in sympathetic activation, our parent is usually trying to figure out what, what do we want? Do we want, are they hungry? Are they thirsty? Are they hot? Right? There's a rupture and then the parent takes some time, some time and a repair. So rupture and repair is when we get dysregulated and the other person kind of works on figuring out what's wrong and we get back into connection and calmness together. Actually, rupture and repair happens a lot when we're infants and how well our parents rupture and repair indicate how well we handle conflict. And we rupture and repair as adults. So a lot of people think, oh,

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  I hate the word codependency, but like a lot of people think, oh, if we're fighting, this is bad or conflict is bad. It's like, no, actually true rupture and repair, like real rupture and repair, really understanding what your partner is going through, really getting to what's going on inside their body, really seeing their perspective and they're seeing your perspective. When we have conflict, it's an opportunity not only to repair on a deep level, but to build deeper intimacy. And so rupture, even though it dysregulates us, it's uncomfortable. It's a very important part of close relationships, rupture and repair.

• 1:02:46Chris Williamson?

  What about when it comes, you know, you work with a lot of couples. What is the, what do couples get wrong and get right when it comes to rupture and repair within a relationship?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I think that most people like they don't like rupture because it feels uncomfortable and they don't know how to use it as an opportunity for deeper understanding and more intimacy. So they get frustrated right away that they're uncomfortable and they're dysregulated. But I think once they learn the tools and they can step back and really understand and have more dialogue around what's going on inside, your side and my side. And it's just never about who's right. It's always about can I understand your world better and get back into connection. Then rupture and repair becomes easier. It's like, it's like, it's like people pleasing. It's like if, if I am such a people pleaser and I, I can't handle conflict, then I'm not

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  going to tell you, Chris, if something's really bothering me, I'm going to hold it in. I learned that conflict isn't okay. I didn't learn healthy rupture and repair. But if I have a healthy friendship and let's say you're my friend and I can come to you and I can say, you know what, what you said to me really hurt me. And you don't have all this shame getting kicked up on you and you can say, you know, Jess, I didn't realize that. Tell me what, what was going on inside of you and you can join my world instead of reacting and getting defensive. You have an opportunity to get so much closer to me and I have an opportunity to work through what's upsetting me versus people pleasing and fawning and just kind of keeping it all in. That's like the best example I can get on like a micro.

• 1:04:22Chris Williamson?

  It really is important to have people that are emotionally fluent around you because I can imagine how in a friendship like that, you have a pattern of compromising boundaries, people pleasing in order to not upset somebody else because you learned as a kid that other people's emotions need to be managed by you. And your friend, maybe the one time that you pluck up the courage to do that, does break down and does cry a load. And you think, well, this just, I, I knew that this was how the world was going to show up for me. This is exactly what I predicted was going to happen.

• 1:04:59Chris Williamson?

  And your friend's inability to tolerate a fair piece of feedback has reinforced and worsened this pattern that you're trying to get over. So yeah, surrounding yourself with.

• 1:05:15Chris Williamson?

  With people who are a little bit, at least as regulated as you, or at least trying to do the work to get close to that, seems to be really important. I was thinking about as well, there must be a unique challenge to healing from wounds that are created inside of the relationship that you're trying to heal them in. Like, that's, that's got to be a real difficulty.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like, you're kind of saying two different things, but absolutely. And I would, the one thing that blocks people from true repair is shame. So like, if I told you, hey, Chris, that really upset me, and like, you had so much shame, and you can't, you can't, you got defensive, it means that you didn't have the capacity. But here's what I'll say, if you can experience true rupture and repair with one friend, and say, hey, I want to come to you with this, and really experience it once in your system, you can keep recreating it, and you can know who has the capacity and who doesn't, right? And so if we keep going back to people who don't have the capacity, we're just confirming that we can't rupture, that we can't reach out, that we can't share what's bothering us.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  But if we orient towards a person who does have the capacity, and we're like, oh, my God, I was able to share, and I had a disconfirming experience, we only need one or two of them to be like, oh, my God, rupture might not be as scary as, as we think.

• 1:06:40Chris Williamson?

  I love the idea of disconfirming experiences. It's really cool. It sounds like the sort of thing you don't want, but I guess in this world, it's actually something that you're looking for.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially when you want to change a belief system or a pattern inside. We want to show your nervous system, actually, you're not going to get left this time, or this person is going to show up differently. But you do need to go to people who have the emotional capacity.

• 1:07:02Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, what about when people should stay or when they should leave?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  I have a whole chapter on that.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Sometimes the wounding is so early, I go into narcissism and I go into borderline personality and I really describe them as complex infant trauma. And sometimes you can be with someone and your trauma overlaps so much that either you're so focused on saving them, you're so invested in their trauma, or you regress so much that you can't get out of the dynamic. Sometimes the wounding, when it's so early, people need to heal a little bit more individually before they can have a healthy relationship. And it's important to understand where the trauma bond, or the trauma cycle keeps repeating itself, and to get conscious.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Like, I got conscious in my last relationship because I didn't make it about his drug use. I was able to go back to like, how this really impacted me when I was tiny. So it's important for people who are repeating patterns and are stuck and are miserable, to get conscious of the original wound that is actually being recreated, so they can get out of the here and now and dive deeper and then break the paradigm.

• 1:08:17Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting that you said about sort of very early wounds, sort of very extreme ones. I think about that in relationships as well. Like, the idea of very early rupture without repair, creating a signature that sort of defines all other interactions that occur from there. Like, the early months of a relationship are pretty formative and they kind of set the tone for a lot of things that are moving forward. Like, for instance, if you'd have a series of big blowups, three years into a relationship that had been relatively stable until then, the difference between that and what it says for the next three years after that, compared with, this was how the relationship started

• 1:09:02Chris Williamson?

  and now you've got to kind of undo all of these coping mechanisms. So, yeah, I have to assume that there is such a thing as too much rupture to repair inside of a relationship as well.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and you're you're kind of describing a couple of things, but if you rupture a lot and you don't have the tools to deeply repair, then you kind of just repeat the same thing without getting to the core of it. But most healthy rupture repair usually actually gets you closer. So that just a sign that you're not really repairing. You're just coming back together into connection, but you're not really resolving or getting to the root of of the issue. I know, like, also, I don't know if this is relevant, but I had a friend once, and we never fought. And I even tell people who are dating, like, fighting is good. And two years into our relationship, something happened, and we had a fight, and

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  she never talked to me again. And I was like, OK, we ruptured, and we couldn't repair. And I think that happens a lot. Like, you don't know how someone is gonna really, like, how to work through it with someone until you've had a rupture and repair. When you're dating someone, you need to have a little conflict. You need to see if they can validate you. You need to see if you guys can see each other's side of you. You need to use your voice. You need to have these ruptures and repairs, because it really tells you a lot about how you can evolve together or not.

• 1:10:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's an interesting one. I've had the friendships and relationships in the past that have been like that, too. And you're right, never testing the water with that does result in you a pretty catastrophic blow up happening. That being said, there is such a thing as too frequent and too large rupture. And obviously, if you're testing the waters regularly, oh, this is great. You know, it's building our resilience. Look at how much we're getting used to being in conflict with each other. Like, yeah, but only if you can actually come back together, hold each other, look each other in the eyes, and say, I'm still here. This is, you know, we're now stronger. You're right. The difference, it should actually be called like rupture and and build up as opposed

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  to rupture and repair, because repair looks like you go zero, minus one, zero again. But the goal is to go zero, minus one, plus one. And each time that you rupture, you end up in a stronger place than you were previously, more deeply connected, more aware.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yes, repair repair on a real level gets you deeper. It brings you deeper into intimacy. And this might be a really bad example, but let's say you've been cheated on. That might be a behavior that you walk away in a rupture and never want to repair. No judgment here. And you could do the deep work with that person, get to the root of it. And you might actually evolve past that and understand what was really going on and have a closer relationship than ever. And that's probably not the best example because people are going to be like, if someone cheats on you, just leave them. But I'm saying really bad things can happen. And if you work through them together, you actually can evolve to a much deeper level together, but it requires a lot of work.

• 1:12:07Chris Williamson?

  Where does somebody start beyond buying the book Safe by Jessica Baum? Where does, where does somebody start practically with moving through this?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Well, I actually provide your audience with the wheel of attachment, which is new to this book and new to the attachment space, but starting to understand what your earliest relationship dynamics were like, how you felt in your earliest relationship dynamics, starting to get a sense of those things because those are what we're repeating later on. So I think that's where we start. Of course, I'm a psychotherapist and that's, that's what I'm going to say. But our earliest relationships, how we felt safe in our home, who we felt safe with, who we didn't feel safe with, what did our bodies feel around these people? What kind of dynamics did we have with our siblings? Getting in touch with all of those things and who in my life now does that feel similar with? How am I repeating these patterns?

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  What core wounds are continuing, are continuing to show up in my life? And how much charge do these wounds have? Do I feel them in my body? Where do they live? And how big are they?

• 1:13:15Chris Williamson?

  Heck, yeah. Jessica Baum, ladies and gentlemen. Jessica, I appreciate the heck out of you. Two slamming books in a row that I think are very timely. Where should people go to keep up to date with everything you're doing?

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Well, you're supposed to get a link. With like free gifts for your audience specifically, so I'll have to make sure they get that. But it's a guide to the wheel and then a video of me and my mentor who's eighty two, who has provided me so much safety, talking about insecurity to security. I'm on social media, but you can just put Jessica Baum. I feel bad for anybody else named my name, because if you just put my name into Google, it just like I show up everywhere.

• 1:13:53Chris Williamson?

  So The number one Jessica Baum. I have a highly anti Semitic British MP who also shares my name. And I sometimes, I sometimes wonder if he, he sees me trending online and gets pissed off because I'm speaking to like Ben Shapiro or someone Jewish. And, and every so often I log on and find out that he's got into conflict with Israel. So I may be, I may be assassinated at some point because somebody has gotten the wrong Chris Williamson killed. But we'll wait and see.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Everybody knows you though. And yeah, you're just out there doing your thing. And I think it's just so awesome to see. And I'm excited for you.

• 1:14:27Chris Williamson?

  Well, I appreciate you very much. It's been a long time since your first one. And I'm so glad to see that you're continuing to flourish.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

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• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  One eight hundred contacts.