Understanding Anxious Attachment and How It Shapes Your Closest Relationships

If someone has no idea what attachment styles are and this is their first time even hearing that term, how would you break it down for them and define it for them? Yeah. So the first thing is everybody has an attachment style and there are four of them and this is one of the biggest studied bodies of work originally and it originally came from John Bulby and Maryworth of Cambridge University and they said, "Hey, there are four attachment styles. The first one is the securely attached style. So they represent about 50% of the population data shows us." I always have a hard time with that. I'm like, wait, it seems like it may not be quite so

high, but basically they h securely attached individuals are people who grow up in childhood with what we call a lot of approach oriented behaviors from their parents. And it sounds like such a small thing, but it goes such a long way. So approachoriented behaviors really means that when a child is young, if they cry or they get distressed, the parent is attuned. They're very present and they notice it and they approach the child to be like, "What's wrong?" And they attempt to soo them and make the child feel better. And what that conditions a child to believe at a very young age is my emotions are worthy of being seen and heard. It's safe to rely on other people. I can trust that people

are going to be there for me. And also I can communicate. And almost most importantly, I am worthy of love as I am on my good days, on my bad days, in my good moments and in my hard moments. And so there's a lot of really healthy conditioning that child adopts. And so of course that's the type of patterning they bring into their relationships as adults. And what's really interesting to me is that securely attached people, they report not just having the longest lasting relationships, but they report the most satisfaction in their relationships. And that's a very meaningful thing. And I'm just a big believer in relationships. I love people. I care about people. And I really think that relationships

determine the quality of our life in so many ways. And so [snorts] that's very meaningful in terms of, you know, the stats on that. And then we have three insecure attachment styles. This makes up the other 50% or so of the population. I can't believe 50% of people are secure. That's that's huge. That's what I think all the time. I feel like all my girlfriends are struggling to find that kind of person. Like all my friends who are dating are all my friends who are dating are definitely struggling to find that 50%. I always think that myself and to be honest, first of all, it's conditioning and we'll get into a lot of this, I'm sure, but conditioning changes. So somebody could be secure at a young age

when a lot of these experiments are originally done and then they can go through relationship struggles and become insecure later. And secondly, I'm always like, "Oh, maybe it's my sample size of people, you know, cuz I always see people who are insecurely attached become secure." So I'm going, "Okay, maybe that's why." But securely attached people often end up in relationships pretty early with other securely attached people. And we can get into why that happens at a subconscious level cuz you usually pair up with people of a specific attachment self for specific reasons. Um but to your point I wonder the same thing. I'm like come on this I don't know.

Yeah. But the other 50% are the insecure attachment. Exactly. So then we have three and I like to think of the other three as being along a continuum in a way. So at one end of the continuum we have the anxious attachment style. Anxiously attached individuals, they grow up with either real or perceived abandonment. [snorts] Real abandonment is the obvious. You know, a parent passes away at a young age, god forbid, or a parent is, you know, they leave at a young age for a child and all of a sudden that child grows up feeling like, "Oh my gosh, am I going to be left or abandoned again?" Perceived abandonment is really interesting because the neuroscience of trauma tells us that small tea trauma

repeatedly enough over time has a quite similar impact to a singular big tea trauma. So perceived abandonment consistently in a child's upbringing caused them to have real abandonment wounds as an adult, similar to if there was a real abandonment that took place. And perceived abandonment is things like you have very loving parents, but they're really busy. They're always working. They're always traveling for work. And so children grow up in this environment going, "Okay, love is here and then love is taken away and love is here and it's taken away." And that inconsistency there causes this child to really brace and deeply fear love being taken away. And so as adults, these individuals, they adapt in their

life to be like, "Let me really be charming and charismatic and well-liked." So I win people over and they end up having superpowers in that way in many forms, but also anxiously attached adults, they people please so much to the point where they can burn themselves out or they people please to the point of self- silencing and their big wounds. So we took this original body of attachment theory and they, you know, it said, "Here are your four attachment cells. Good luck." And it was sort of like wait but you can recondition pretty much anything like you can rewire these things. And I originally started in this work for that reason. Um and so what we found is that anxious attachment cells they have big

core wounds specifically around the fear of abandonment, the fear of being alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, not good enough. These are like these huge wounds and triggers in their relationships. And they need very specific things in relationships. They need more validation, approval. They really like certainty. If somebody cancels plans with them, they really want to know, okay, you're canceling plans, but tell me when I'm going to see you next. And then they can sort of rest and feel comfortable and safe. Um, and so they end up in situations where they sometimes struggle with their boundaries growing up. They often end up in situations as well where because they're so busy making sure that everybody else is good, they kind of forget about

themselves and they put themselves on the back burner. So anxious attachment cells as adults, they often also are very much invested in and attracted to emotionally unavailable people. And that becomes really problematic in different ways. I love that part. Yeah. So, they become attracted to emotionally unavailable people because and I guess maybe I'll give a little bit more of a backstory to this. Um, you know, for me, I originally got into this work because I uh, you know, had a turbulent childhood and I actually got addicted to painkillers after a knee surgery at 15. And I, you know, really struggled with about a 6-year daily use of opioids and tried inpatient rehab and outpatient rehab and had all of these

these things come up. And what was really interesting is I felt like life was really hard and I felt like relationships were really hard at that point. And I tried a lot of things that weren't really working. And I was in school for psychology and like maybe on the outside my life looked like you're doing well, you're you're okay. But on the inside I was like a mess. Like I was really hurting. And I was in a psych class and I was seriously thinking like I think I need to leave school like I don't think I can take this handle this and somebody said to me in a class they were like it wasn't even the professor it was a student and he said oh your conscious mind can't outwill or

overpower your subconscious mind. And for me that was like so powerful because I was sitting there going oh so you're telling me that like all the times I say I'm going to get clean. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to you know stop all these really painful things that I'm doing. I'm going to delete people's numbers from my phone. and I'm going to change and then I don't. It's not that I'm weak or powerless or not capable. It's that like this is actually what's going on. It's my subconscious mind. So, I originally started this work by getting sober and then being obsessed with learning about the subconscious mind and the ego and how all this works from sort of this like spiritual perspective too. How do

we sort of transcend those patterns and those conditions? So, I was originally working for the first few years of my practice not with attachment cells but actually with people in their core wounds. So like what are these big triggers that we carry from our past into our present and you know how is this showing up in our life? And so what was really interesting about that is I was working with people on rewiring their triggers, learning their own needs and how to meet them in healthy ways, learning to regulate their nervous system, learning to communicate and set boundaries. And then I came to attachment styles actually because I met my now husband and we both [snorts] had

our own little things we hadn't worked out in relationships yet. And I started revisiting attachment theory, which I had learned at a very high level in university. And I was like, wait, like first of all, if I know somebody's attachment style, I now know exactly what their core wounds are going to be, exactly what their needs are going to be, exactly what these emotional patterns are going to be in relationships and what their nervous system is going to be functioning like. And I know what types of boundary issues they're going to have and how they tend to communicate in relationships. And it was so interesting cuz like original attachment theory didn't cover any of that. It was more about like temperament

and sort of some of your behaviors. And so I was like, "Oh my gosh, tell me somebody's attachment style and I can help them rewire all these different patterns and themes." And so what was really exciting to me is like attachment styles became mainstream. But then it was like, "Okay, here's your attachment style." And that's when people started to identify instead of like, "Hey, let me do that underlying work." So going back to I detoured there, but going back to this, that's the anxious attachment style in a nutshell is like those are their themes and their patterns. They fear like the abandonment, feeling not good enough, feeling excluded, disliked, rejected.

Those are those big triggers that they're bringing from their past because their subconscious mind was imprinted with that. And then we always project that into the present. And I often give people this analogy of like a bear in the woods. If you go into the woods tomorrow and you see a bear and you run from it and you're safe, thank goodness, but then the very next day you go back into the woods, well, what does your mind do? You're like bracing for the bear. You're like, "The bear is coming. trees blow in the wind and you're like, "Oh my god, the bear." And so what's really interesting is that we all do that, right? We all have, "Oh, I felt abandoned as a child. Okay, I project

that as an adult. Oh, I felt not good enough as a child. That's what I bring into my relationships as an adult." And that's honestly what our relationship baggage is. And those are all things that interfere the most in our relationships, but those are solvable problems. So that's sort of the anxious attachments. And do you want me to go into the other two? Yes, please. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we have our secure, we have our anxious. At the other end of the continuum is our dismissive avoidant. So the dismissive avoidant attachment style, they grow up with their overarching theme being childhood emotional neglect. [snorts] And

sometimes you hear that and you kind of imagine that, okay, this person is going through their childhood and you know they have this really intense dynamic where they're alone at 3 years old and they're trying to find food. Like of course it can be these really extreme scenarios, but most often childhood emotional neglect is very much that you have these kids who food's on the table. There's structure and order. They're at school on time, but their parents are not emotionally available and not attuned. And it's usually not the inconsistency like one's attuned and one's not. It's usually both are not really attuned and they're much more

uninvolved. And because children are literally wired for attunement, they are wired for connection. We need as children to feel safe and to feel seen and to feel special. Children come into this environment and they're like, "Okay, well, I guess this part of me that needs this is defective and wrong." And so what they end up doing to adapt to an environment like that is repressing their attachment needs and minimizing their need for emotional connection. And so they feel better and like they have a sense of control when they're able to do that. But then as adults, that really causes destruction to their relationships because they've learned, okay, this part of me, my

emotional, vulnerable self is defective or shameful. if I express it too much, I'll be weak. These are their big triggers. They end up feeling very afraid of relying on other people and being helpless or trapped in a situation or engulfed. And they very much internalize a lot of shame from childhood because as a child, if you yearn for connection and it keeps getting rejected and nobody's paying attention, well then of course as an adult you're like, "Oh, deep down if people really see me, they're going to reject me like that too and I must be shameful." Like something deep down must be defective or broken within me. And so it's so interesting cuz they're very stoic. Dismissible winds are very stoic.

You often don't see it, but that tends to be what they bring into their relationships. Those are their biggest core triggers and fears from this like new attachment theory perspective. And so then we have these adults who go into their relationships and they're the types of individuals as adults who are like, "Oh, they're they're great at the beginning when everything's easy and light and then after you date them for four, five, 6 months when things get a little more real and serious, they jet or they pull away or they retreat and then they end up in situations where, you know, even if they make it through that period of time and keep dating somebody and keep investing, they really

retreat emotionally and they shut down. And [snorts] so then you have these individuals as adults who are like, okay, you know, I feel like I'm trying to connect with you and my partner's not really available or present. And they really cope by trying to always minimize their attachment needs and create space. And so they become quite distant in relationships. And then the very last one is the fearful avoidant attachment style. Um [snorts] fearful avoidance are basically characterized by more big tea trauma growing up. So more emotional chaos. You know, it can be anything from like having a parent with narcissistic personality disorder to having a parent who was an alcoholic or parents in

active addiction, a really intense divorce growing up. You have more extreme kind of scenarios that the children are exposed to. But their wiring is such that while an anxious attachment style is like they always want more closeness and to win people over and dismissive avoidance always want more space and to keep distance. Fearful avoidance learn that love is both a really good thing and a really hard thing. Interesting. So, they grow up essentially going, "Well, love is a good thing because let's say for example that mom is an alcoholic." Well, maybe one day mom comes home and she's had a few drinks, but she's in a good mood and

she's loving and she embraces you and you're like, "Oh, love is safe. Love is good. I want more of this." And then other days maybe mom's an alcoholic and she's drinking more heavily and now she's angry drunk and she's cruel and she's mean and she's unpredictable. And a child is like, "Well, love is a really good thing, but it can also really hurt me. It will be really harsh and critical and cruel sometimes to me." And so they end up having very competing associations about the same thing. They're like, "Love is both really good and really bad." And then as adults, what ends up happening is they are the very hot and cold partner. A lot of their core wounds from their childhood,

their version of the bear in the woods, is they fear abandonment because they feel that abandonment when that love isn't there. They fear being trapped and helpless if they rely on people cuz they've had times where they rely on somebody who's really unpredictable and scary. And they have a huge core wound around feeling betrayed. That's the biggest wound we found from an the new attachment theory perspective is like always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Always waiting to be on high alert like is somebody going to hurt me? And what happens to fearful avoidance is they get into relationships and love feels like a very bittersweet experience. And I'll speak for myself cuz I was a fearful avoidant. And I

remember before doing a lot of deep inner work, my early serious relationships when I was much younger, feeling like I would fall in love and feeling like I loved the feeling of being in love and connecting and really wanted that depth and connection. But it was also very bittersweet because the more I loved, the more I was like, "Oh, you're for sure going to hurt me that much more. Like, this is going to be a really bad ending." And there was this sort of belief that everything was going to inevitably be really bad and really painful. So love feels so good, but it also feels like a threat and it's scary and it causes you in a relationship to be like, "Come get close." Somebody gets closer, you're like, "Get back. I

changed my mind." And so you see this and you see it like clockwork. I've seen this with tens of thousands of clients I've worked with the same themes, the same patterns. And I remember having one woman and she said to me, I could tell by the way my mom got home from work. I would be upstairs in my room and I could tell by the way my mom closed the door on her way in if I should close my door quickly or not. And it's like fearful avoids learn to be very hypervigilant. They learn to read between the lines. They read like every little micro expression and body language and change in a tone of voice because that's how they've learned to attach. So anxious people are like let me get close to you and people please dismissive

avoidance are like let me keep space. Fearful avoidance are like let me notice every little thing about you so I can predict your future and I can know how to respond. And it gives them that superpower in a way. But often then when you have these wounds and then you jump to conclusions like, "Oh, something changed. Something's off. You're going to abandon or betray me or you're trying to control me and you sort of jump to those conclusions, it makes for a really turbulent set of relationships and lifestyle." I think what you just explained, I think everyone listening is like, "That's who I am. That's who I've dated. That's who my parents are." Right? Like when you break it down that way, I feel

it gives people so much clarity to actually recognize all the mistakes they're repeating, all the things they're carrying. Why we walk into relationships where we can sense something doesn't quite make sense or why we get attracted to familiar patterns that we saw in our parents. It feels like this can help people actually give them a map of how to make sense of their emotions and even the people they meet. What would you encourage someone to do differently if someone's listening right now and they're dating? How can they use what you've just shared to date differently? Yeah. So, really good question. So, you touched on something earlier and I sidetracked and forgot to come back to, but it's actually this. It's that we you

were like what causes that sort of attraction piece and this plays right into this which is we are attracted to people. So your conscious mind is responsible for 3 to 5% of all of your beliefs, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions. Your subconscious and unconscious collectively are 95 to 97%. And so what's really interesting is consciously our conscious mind is our logical analytical mind and our subconscious is our habituated self, our programming, our conditioning. And our conscious mind will say I want the emotionally available partner. I want the person who's ready to be in a rel. We'll say all the things in the world. But secure people feel that consciously and subconsciously. Insecure people don't. Insecurely attached people don't

really have that same experience. So for example, our subconscious mind equates familiarity to safety and thus survival. And ultimately we're survival wired. And so what ends up happening is people who are let's say anxiously attached for example, they'll often say consciously that they want the emotionally available partner. that they will feel most attracted to and be most likely to invest in because your subconscious mind runs the show. People who are most familiar. What is most familiar to each of us is actually the way we treat ourselves. And so if you look at the anxious person, how does the anxious person treat themselves? Well, because they're so externally focused on everybody

else's feelings and needs, they often dismiss and avoid their own feelings, their needs, their boundaries. And so what happens as a result of that is they are very much often attracted to people who will mirror that back to them. And even if you flip that around to the dismissive avoidant, dismissive avoidance end up in situations where they're like preoccupied with their own time to themselves. They're going, "Do I have enough time to myself to regulate? Do I have enough space?" And so what's really interesting is consciously they'll say, "Oh, I want somebody who gets my freedom and respects it." But subconsciously they'll often go and invest in people who are very preoccupied with them. And so that's why

you often pair up with people of different attachment styles. And that's often why you see secure people be with secure people. And so when it comes to dating, the most important thing, and I will say this forever, and nobody likes to hear it, but it's the truth, is that the most important thing you're ever going to do is learn to have a secure relationship with yourself first. And that's going to be through rewiring these insecure patterns. And I'm sure we can get into all the ways how, but rewiring those insecure patterns. Because you can say that you want the healthiest relationship. You can have your checklist. You can know your needs.

You can try to ask all the right questions on the dates and go to the right places and find the right people, but ultimately you often will find that you're in relationships with people who might have all those things on the checklist and you're like, I just don't feel attracted to them. Oh, this person, and I've heard this all the time. I actually used to do this when I was much younger before doing the work. I had people date them or start to get to know them and they were very secure and I would be like, "This is kind of boring." Like, what? Where's where's the roller coaster? Cuz that's what was most familiar. And this is a conversation I've had with thousands of people at this point. We

are not going to be attracted to the right people according to our conscious mind's evaluation of it. Until we do that in our workforce to heal to become secure to self and then that's what we'll be attracted to and want to invest in with other people. And as you said the advice you just gave is becoming secure in your relationship with yourself. You're not just saying, hey, you have to love yourself first or you have to. You're saying to actually you can actually technically develop a subconscious relationship with yourself that is based on security and safety. Yes. So earlier when I was saying there was the original attachment theory was like these are the attachment cells, but it kind of just talked about their

temperaments and some of the themes in their childhood and how they behave. I had already been doing this work with like the core wounds and the needs and the nervous system frameworks with people and how people communicate and how they behave. And I was specifically in the body of work for the first few years. I was working with people just helping people like rewire their painful patterns. And a lot of it was from their childhood conditioning, but I hadn't ever put it into the theme of like attachment styles. And then when I, you know, met my husband and we started getting more serious and I was like, ooh, I still have a little like relationship work to do. I done a lot of work to be really peaceful within

myself, but realized [snorts] I had a little relationship work to do with him. And kind of felt like he also had some work to do with me. And I revisited more about learning about relationships. And the first thing I went back to was like, "Oh, attachment cells." And I was like, "Oh my goodness, once I know somebody's attachment cell, every attachment cell has these core wounds and these patterns with their needs and these patterns with their nervous system, communication, behaviors." And so what we ended up creating is this whole body of work that's you can actually rewire each of those things at the subconscious level because your subconscious mind is literally driving your life. And so it's like all of the

conditioning that we've picked up from past experiences in our own personal warehouse. How do we start to recondition? And we really boil it into those five pillars. So the first pillar, and this is like I love that you said it's not just about selflove cuz sometimes I don't know sometimes you hear stuff and people say just forgive people and you're like that would be nice if I felt like that. How do I emotionally arrive there? And how do I actually feel that deeply? And so a lot of the work is how do we actually get to our subconscious mind because that's how things unfold this way. And same with self- loveve. It's a subconscious process. Cuz if you didn't get love mirrored to you in healthy ways

growing up, you're going to mirror that back in the relationship to yourself and as adult and then you're going to be attracted to unhealthy forms of love as an adult with other people. So, so first pillar of really healing is to learn to rewire your core wounds. And we can go through an actual exercise here. So, so first um step, there's three steps to doing this. Let's just say for ease sake that the core wound is not good enough. And we talked about each of them for the different attachment styles earlier. So people can kind of hold that core wound in their mind that stood out to them and you ideally want to work on one at a time. So not good enough. What is the opposite? I am good enough. That

part's really easy. The second piece when it comes to actually rewiring these things is I'm not a big believer in affirmations. The reason being that affirmations are of the conscious mind. Your conscious mind speaks language. Okay? Your subconscious mind does not speak language. It doesn't really understand language much at all. What does a subconscious mind speak? It speaks in emotions and images. So if I say to you, okay, whatever you do, Jay, do not think of a pink elephant. Like you probably flashed an image of a pink elephant. Even though you heard, do

not, your conscious mind heard, do not. And then after you flash the image and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have thought of the elephant. And that's because our subconscious also reacts a little bit more quickly than our conscious mind in many ways. So [snorts] we have to actually use our conscious mind to rewire our subconscious mind because we can do that, but we actually our conscious mind cannot outwill or overpower our subconscious mind. I can only rewire it. Part of why you hear people be like, "Oh, I said I was going to quit eating chocolate for my New Year's resolution." And then they go back to eating chocolate 3 days later. Cuz unless things are built into your subconscious, we really have a hard time changing

behaviors. So, first step, I am not good enough. I am good enough. The opposite of your core wound. I'll be abandoned. I'm worthy of connection. I'll be unloved. I'm lovable. Right? So, we pick the opposite. Step two is we need repetition of emotions and imagery because repetition fires and wires neural pathways. emotions and images do it at the subconscious level. So you're like, how do we find emotions and images? Well, interestingly, every memory we ever have is a container of emotions and imagery. Yeah. Absolutely. So if you say, okay, what was your favorite childhood memory and you were playing at the beach or the ocean and you see the red bucket and you see the waves and your family's faces like

you see the images and we've all seen when people have an exciting experience or a happy memory, they smile or they laugh or their body language changes. And so what we do is we're going to come up with 10 memories to support the new idea that we're trying to drive to the subconscious mind. So for example, I am good enough. 10 times I actually felt good enough. And they do not have to be big. It can be things like I was a good friend last week. I had a hard conversation with my spouse 2 weeks ago. Whatever it is, it can be small things, but we need to just elicit a little bit of emotion, that imagery of the memory, and we need 10 of them. Step three, we record ourselves saying it out loud. So

ideally, we write them down. when we record ourselves sing it into our phone and then our subconscious mind actually sponges up a lot of information more effectively when we are in a suggestible state meaning our brain is producing more alpha brain waves and so what we get people to do is to sit down they record themselves saying this out loud it takes 2 minutes to listen back and your brain produces a lot more alpha brain waves after a good meditation the first hour that you wake up before drinking coffee the last hour before you go to sleep after intense exercise breath work these types of things you're in more Alpha brain wave mode when your mind is more relaxed, more still. And

then what we're doing is we're listening back to those things during that time in your own voice. Exactly. Saying it out loud. You're listening back and you're very much focusing on the images and the emotion as you feel back in that suggestible state. And neuroscience research tells us if we are in a suggestible state, doing that for 21 days builds new neural networks that are very strong that they are highly likely to stay. And what's really interesting is we surveyed people who did this. We're like, "Okay, like let's actually track how people are doing this. People who said they stuck to it every day for 21 days. We had like tens of it was 60,000 people who we did the survey on.

People who said they did not miss a day for 21 days reported a 99.7% score in actually rewiring the wound. So, it's highly effective. It's very simple and it's something like anybody can do right now. And if you really look like those wounds, those are the things that wreak havoc on people's lives and relationships. Those are the really painful things. Those are a relationship baggage that we're really carrying and those are why we keep choosing the wrong scenarios over and over again or that same unavailable partner. So really simple starter tool for rewiring and that's the one I like to share to begin with. Um and it's something people can just do at home from listening. if you

could summarize for us the second to the fifth so that we have a process of what it looks like to build that relationship with ourel because as you're saying that's the most important starting point and I'm thinking for all of our audience before we get into certain relationship dynamics it might be useful for them to have a stepbystep process yeah so the first wound the first pillar is rewiring your core wounds that gives people so much relief and honestly just as somebody who's done a lot of this work on myself first I was my own first guinea pig you know 14 15 years ago Before really getting into working with people, the biggest change I noticed is that I used to always be in this like

internal emotional drama like this person is going to abandon me. This person is going to can I really trust? Is this person trying to control me? Like all of these my mind was so busy. And when I really did a lot of this rewiring out of all those painful patterns, it felt like I had so much space back in my mind. like I had space to think of how I wanted to design my life and create things and just like room to be present in things and that was just such a beautiful piece. So that's pillar number one. Pillar number two is people have to learn their own needs and how to meet them in the relationship to themselves. We'll get

into how to communicate them after but in the relationship to self first. And the reason for this is it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Gabber Mate and he says trauma are the things that happened that shouldn't have happened. That's the obvious like the abuse things like that in childhood but trauma is also the things that happened or that sorry that didn't happen that should have happened and that's like the neglect you know or that's that maybe you didn't feel safe as a child or seen or protected or you didn't feel like your parents were present enough with you growing up. So that's also trauma because in a perfect world, we actually would have had our needs met in a healthy and consistent

way where we felt like we could really rely on people. And so that's our second pillar is I get people to go in and audit what are your biggest unmet needs from childhood. And you'll see people for some people it's like I didn't feel like my parents were present enough with me or I didn't feel protected or I didn't feel like I had that ability to really learn from a parent or be deeply seen or known or attuned to. I mean, there's there's a lot of needs in there, but we give a big list of needs, and it's okay, if these are your deepest unmet needs. What's really interesting is we internalize all of that conditioning. And so, whatever we didn't get met, we're often not meeting in the

relationship to self. If somebody wasn't present enough with you growing up, that's actually a huge part of healing is, okay, well, I'm probably not very present with myself. Or if people said, I really need validation. I didn't feel validated growing up. Um, unfortunately, usually you're playing up that programming and you're the one struggling to validate yourself the most and you're sort of validating everybody else before you. And so, what's really beautiful is it's deeply healing for people to go in audit where they're missing these deep needs. And then for 21 days through that repetition and emotion to really fire and wire those neural networks, we get people to go through here are my deepest unmet needs

and actual actions and practices to meet them within relationship to self. And once we do it for 21 days very repeatedly and it elicits this emotional impact and we're doing it physiologically. So we have that like imagery that we're reaching our subconscious mind. We that becomes our new baseline. It becomes our new set point and we just become good at doing those things. And as an example, as somebody who did all this work on myself first 14 years ago, 15 years ago, um one of the biggest things I really wanted was emotional depth. Like I always cared about that with other people and liking to go deep into things. And I realized, oh my gosh, I'm trying to and we always do this. We try to resource from other

people the most. The things we struggle to self-source. Yes. Yeah. Well said. Yeah. We try to resource the most from other people the things that we struggle to self-source the most within self. And so what ends up taking place is that we also put all that pressure on our relationships. You know, anxious attachment cells, for example, they really struggle to self soo. So they're like, "My partner always needs to be available to soo me." Or fearful avoidance end up being like, "I don't know if I can trust people. I feel like they're going to betray me." So that person better always be 100% congruent. they better never tell a white lie.

Nothing or I or you know I might have to leave the relationship or dismissive avoidance. They end up in situations where they're going, "Okay, well I don't you know I don't know that people understand me and you know I really need them to understand me without me having to communicate because they really struggle to communicate vulnerably." So we all accidentally pressure our external relationships because we don't know how to selfsource. And so self- sourcing is obviously profoundly healing for our relationships in life. Um, but also it's profoundly healing in the relationship to self first. Where does self- sourcing come from when you've never had it and never felt it?

Like I think people struggle to like where do you find it? Because I'll often talk to my friends about this idea of self- validation. And I'll talk about how self- validation is the most powerful form of validation I've ever given myself, more than any form of external validation. But often something they come up against is like where do you even find that? Where do you discover that? Because if no one's ever validated you, if you've never experienced it, where does it appear from? Okay, so really beautiful question. So this is the analogy I give to people all the time for this. It's not the prettiest analogy, but it's the cold hard truth. If you remember the first time I ever started to drive a car, I

remember the first time I tried to drive a car. I was so excited to drive a car and then I got on the highway and I was like, "Oh my god, keep the wheel turn, you know, keep between the lines and look in your rearview mirror and your side mirrors and put your signal and oh, like I just felt like, oh my gosh, it's very mechanical to learn to drive a car and then you do it for a while and then you end up in a situation where you're, you know, a year later or in a pretty short time later, you know, 30 days later you're listening to a podcast while you're driving or listening to your favorite radio station or putting on music or talking on the phone to your friend, whatever it might be." And it's

because what we're actually doing is doing something that at first feels mechanical. We're giving to ourselves what we didn't get. And over time through repetition and emotion, it actually seeps into our subconscious mind. And that's when it feels normal and natural. So what we get people to do is we actually have a list of every major need um that people reported over collecting all this data. And then we have people we have like three or four, hey, you can do these three or four things that are usually the healthiest, most direct ways of getting those needs met. And then we get them to actively practice it across that 21 days. So, for example, self- validation is usually things like it can be as small as just writing out three of

your wins each day and just taking the time to really pause and be like, "Hey, I did this today. I'm proud of these things today, big or small. It can be like, I made it to work early." It can be anything. But just having that ability to start training your subconscious mind to practice recognizing those things in your life. And of course there's a slightly different one for each need. But when people start giving those needs to themselves, this sounds very cliche, but I really believe that if we had attachment wounds growing up, healing really happens when we become our own parents. And instead of trying to externalize our parents would have done it for us or perfectly like our parents are human beings too. And so when we

give to ourselves what we felt like we couldn't access through them and we do it through that repetition, that's that second big pillar. So in those five pillars, the first three are all about self. They're all about how do I heal my own internal conditioning, rewire the wounds, meet my own needs, regulate my own nervous system. The next two are actually about regulating with so with people together. So the next two pillars are about communication and boundaries. So what we do for the communication pillar number four is now that we know our needs, we can go communicate about them. And what often happens is people go through life and they don't even know what they need in a relationship

and then we're left saying things like, "Oh, you hurt me and you did this." And I've seen this all the time with communication. Even if people are so well-meaning, when they say, "Hey," even if they're trying to be vulnerable and they're saying, "Hey, you hurt me last week when XYZ [snorts] happened." The other partner is like, "Okay, I don't want to hurt you, but I don't know how to solve for it." Yes. And unless we're actually empowered to know what we need, then we can't say those things properly. So, the communication pillar is about us taking our learning and understanding of self, now we know our triggers, we know our

needs. Now, we are equipped to do the work with other people. And so what I get people to do and it depends like we have a couple of frameworks but one is whenever we are in a conflict like if that's ever coming up for us. People feel very resolved in conflict when they do basically three things. Both parties have to communicate what came up for them in the conflict and then validate each other's emotions. Step one. Okay. So validate each other's emotions. Step two. Then we have to say what we actually need. And step three we have to paint a picture of what that looks like. because I ran far too many times into situations with couples who I remember working with a couple once years ago and it [snorts] was a husband

and wife and they uh had this conversation. The wife said, "I need to feel more supported in this relationship." And I was like a year into working with couples and they seemed to have a really constructive conversation about it and they left and they came back the next week and literally before they sat on the couch like they didn't even finish sitting down and the wife said, "My husband didn't even support me this week. We talked about it and he didn't even try. And the husband like looked shocked and he was like, "What do you mean? I took out the trash. I did the dishes. I tried to help out around the house." And she was like, "Oh, but support for me is somebody actually like giving me

encouragement and words of affirmation and telling me like they love me, they appreciate me, noticing my hard work. That's support." And so we have to paint the picture of what the need looks like. So, so it's clear. So, for example, let's say two people are in a conflict. And let's say it's an anxious and a dismissive avoidant. and the anxious person saying, "Hey, like you're not calling me enough." Often what happens when people try to communicate is they do what we call negative branding. So, you know, and I always say to people behind every criticism is just a need. And we say, "You don't care about me.

You didn't call me enough. You didn't make an effort." And all that people hear when that happens is that you're criticizing them. And all people are going to do is shut down because as a child when you were criticized, what happened? You then got punished. So now you're bracing for punishment, not trying to figure out and decipher what somebody's needs are. So right. So we would get people to say okay let's free frame be you know behind that actual experience what is the need convert your criticism into a need and it's like okay well if you said you didn't call me enough obviously the need is for more consistency in calling or communication good paint the picture what does that actually look like oh

that looks like a call every evening for 15 minutes before bed or once a week whatever it is we got to get really specific cuz otherwise it gets lost in translation like 90% of the time so what we do is we get people to say hey this is what came up for me so for example hey I felt a little bit hurt this week because I didn't hear from you as much as I hope to and can we do a call every evening before bed for 15 minutes? And when they're able to say that, now we actually have constructive communication and then we flip it back around because if there was a conflict, usually there's two sides. And then maybe the person on the other side, if it originally wasn't done well, they say, "Oh, like if

somebody was a little bit critical, they might say, "Okay, I hear your need. I can see why you felt like that." So they validate the person's feelings. And then they turn around and they get to say, "Okay, and you know, for me, I'm a little sensitive if communication is harsh or a little critical." And not that example was harsh, but oftentimes that's how it starts. And so they might say, you know, can you just be a little bit more mindful with your delivery next time, and then I'll be more mindful in terms of communicating and calling more consistently. I think we can make that work. And that's how we really resolve. So each person expresses their feeling, and gets it validated, shares their need, paints a picture for

what it looks like. And it's something you can actually train yourself to do naturally. and we get people to get into the mindset of going feeling need like just know your feelings and needs and if it's top of mind and if each person feels like they're able to communicate it that way that's where we get real resolution and [clears throat] then that's where we get actual breakthroughs and I truly believe that doing the work together in a relationship to become secure you have to become good at having those conversations I feel like a lot of people struggle to do that for two reasons one is when they're saying their need is based on their attachment style And if it's one of the anxious attachment styles, often their need can

feel like a burden to the other person because it's such a intense demand where the other person just goes and so we're so a lot of people know that their need is intense. Therefore, they won't verbalize it because they actually think it will push the other person away. So if they don't say it, it brews up and then one day it pops up and you break up anyway. or they say it, it's a burden to the other person and the other person goes, "Well, I can't do that." And then they walk away. So, how do we know our need is valid or is realistic? And how do we know if the if our partner is even should be capable of doing that need? Because I think a lot of people will be like, well, my need is every day

I need someone to tell me I'm beautiful and amazing or every day I need, you know, it's like, well, maybe someone else doesn't have the capacity to do that. Okay, so I love this question and this is why we do 90-day frameworks for people and the first 30 days are rewiring your core wounds first because then you don't have these things that are causing a lot of that negative internal dialogue that will then overpressure you to source from somebody else. So if somebody feels not good enough, they're going to be like, "You better tell me I'm good enough all day, every day." But if we learn to do the rewiring first pillar and then pillar

number two is that we learn to selfource because now we're filling our cup halfway. And what's really powerful as soon as we start sourcing we ingrain that in that first 30 days. Well, now all of a sudden there's not this crazy amount of pressure and now it's really clear to say this is what I need. So by the time you get to this stage, your request is actually already more reasonable and thoughtful. Exactly. But the problem is if you jump to this stage too quick Yes. You could end up asking for something you should be self-sourcing for. Exactly. And that's that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And that's where it's really important. I love that you asked that because what ends up happening far too often and this is a really crazy part of this is because our subconscious mind wants to maintain its comfort zone because it equates familiarity to safety and survival. So frequently people think that they want somebody to give them their need and that's the solution. And let's take like typical example. Let's say somebody has they're anxiously attached. They believe they're not good enough. So now just by that they have more negative internal dialogue. They're criticizing themselves, sort of magnifying their mistakes, minimizing their wins in their own natural set point of their conditioning. Then

they are often not meeting their own need to feel, you know, good enough or validated or reassured. So now they have what we what I call like a hole in your bucket. Like you're going to go and because the subconscious mind will only receive well what's familiar because it equates it to safety. Then you go and you say, "Oh, hey, tell me I'm good enough. Tell me all these things." But then it's like there's a hole in the bucket. It feels really good when that that water is going into the bucket. You get that initial hit of dopamine. Oh my god, my partner said I'm good enough. And then it just leaked right out. And then that's why you see anxious attachment cells needing so much of that

because they first struggle with those two pillars so profoundly. And that's where we get, you know, confused in relationships because we're like you need to do this, you need to do that. And then when it becomes unreasonable because it's coming from lack and imbalance first, then it puts too much pressure on relationships and becomes problematic. That completely makes sense. now and I'm thinking about a lot of people that I know who sadly feel a lot of shame and guilt for their needs from their attachment style but without doing this work in this order as the pillars are being developed you'll never actually request something in a healthy way that natur and you're scared it will push someone away because it probably

will because it's coming from an anxious attachment style. Yeah, 100%. Ta please tell us about pillar five. Okay. So the last pillar is learning healthy boundaries. So healthy boundaries when people hear them I think some people think especially more anxious attachment styles think that boundaries mean a separation but truly every boundary is a joining because a boundary is an authentic expression of your true yeses and your nos which is an authentic expression of you as a whole human being. And so you know when we look at boundaries per attachment style there's unique patterns. This is when I was like whoa each attachment style they each have these themes of boundaries.

Anxious attachment cells are kind of boundaryless. Like if they're really anxiously attached, they struggle with boundaries altogether. And so they're going to end up people pleasing into oblivion. They get scared to set boundaries because they believe that boundaries are going to get them abandoned or disliked or rejected. Part of also why we do the core wound work first in that order. Um and so they end up just struggling with boundaries at all. Dismiss of avoidance, they set too strong of boundaries. They are scared to make compromises because they equate that to vulnerability. And so they end up keeping distance and saying, you know, they're the types that instead of

saying, "Hey, I've had a long week. It's Friday. I'm tired." Instead of going out, can we just stay in and watch a movie? Instead of setting small boundaries and requesting those needs within that framework, they'll instead go, "Cancing, not coming over. Sorry, not going to be there." And it's because they have these huge boundaries because they don't know how to co-regulate and communicate in that way. [snorts] And so then we have fearful avoidance. And fearful women are very interesting with their boundaries. I call it the fearful avoidant boundary cycle where they are boundaryless at first because they start to people please usually then they get frustrated because they're very

generous. They tend to overgive and kind of underreceive. So they set, you know, no boundaries. They're super generous and then they're, you know, they eventually are like, "Oh, I feel taken advantage of." And then they get really triggered cuz they've got a lot of big core wounds. And then they get angry and they set boundaries from anger or frustration. And they say things harshly or critically. And sometimes they're a little bit, you know, too harsh or critical. and then they feel terribly guilty about it and they go back to having no boundaries. So they're like no boundaries, get frustrated, express anger, feel guilty, go back to no boundaries and they kind of just go

around in a loop. Um, and so what we get people to do is first, and it actually has to be done in order. And I'll speak from personal examples, but this is what I would see replicated out with like thousands of people. When I was first doing boundary work, I knew I had to do boundary work. I was like, I really struggle with boundaries. So, I read all these boundary books and I learned about boundaries and I read, you know, publications on boundaries and all these things. And yet, I would get into situations and I would be sitting in a situation being like, I know this is where I should set the boundary, but I would clam up and I wouldn't do it because I didn't realize that I still

had core wounds around my boundaries. So, consciously, I'm like, set a boundary. And too many people intellectualize boundaries as this concept, but you're not actually going to do it in real time until you first re because if your conscious mind says set the boundary, your subconscious mind says no, I'm going to be unsafe. And as a child, I had some kind of heavy-handed punishments at times for setting a boundary or saying no. So my subconscious mind said boundaries equals unsafety rather than safety. And a healthy dynamic, that's what your brain would think. And so then I would in real time clam up, not say it, and then be like walk away going, why didn't I set the boundary? So what we get people to do is step one know your

boundaries. We get people to audit their boundaries in the seven areas of life. Go through career, where are you lacking boundaries, financial area of life, etc. through the seven areas. Then we get people to say, okay, if I set a boundary, what am I afraid will happen or what do I make it mean? It's a good way to surface some of your subconscious stuff that may be there. Oh, if I set a boundary then I'm going to be abandoned. If I set a boundary, people are going to reject me or think that I'm a burden. You know, you can really see what comes up. And then we get people to rewire using some rewiring techniques that fear of setting boundaries and then practice doing exposure work which means you

don't go set your first boundary with your boss who you think has narcissistic personality disorder cuz your brain's not going to take that very well. We set boundaries with, you know, small boundaries with trusted people. Like ask your coworker you love, hey, can you bring back my stapler when you borrow it? Like the small things first. So your brain, we try to set one boundary a day. So your brain gets the repetition and emotion. I've seen that incrementalism work and you've rewired the core fear that was stopping you from setting boundaries in real time. And what I found in my own life and what I've seen with thousands of people is that unless you're actually doing

boundary work at the subconscious level, you can know it, you can intellectualize it, but it's not actually going to change things. Ta, we wanted to ask you about real life scenarios. Okay, love it. Because we feel that, you know, when you look at all of these attachment styles, really the way we experience them is in a relationship or when we start dating. So, here are some real life scenarios. One partner is anxious and the other is avoidant. The anxious partner clings, the avoidant pulls away. How do they break that cycle instead of repeating it?

Okay, so really good question. So first thing is we do that work like the actual way is not going to be to will yourself through it which unfortunately sadly so many people are like oh we're just going to try to you know self silence and not say what we need and then it comes out in a negative way. So first thing is you do the rewiring work then we actually start to what if they don't want to do that work though. Okay great question. So here's what we do in that case. So this is actually I would see this sometimes when working with couples um where somebody's like I'm not going to be doing the selfwork.

We're not really going to be moving from that perspective. Well, people tend to think that because people have different needs that different needs mean mutually exclusive needs. Okay? Which is not the case. So people think like typical scenario anxious attachment style. In exactly that scenario, you said, what do they want? What's their need? More time together. What's a dismissive avoidance need? More space, more freedom, more autonomy. So what we do in that case is just because somebody wants more time and somebody wants more space doesn't mean that can't work. What we get people to do is talk it out from that feeling need framework enough where you have pockets of time to meet both each

other's needs. So you'll probably see this, but whenever we have a trigger, we always think of the worst case scenario, right? We jump to the worst case conclusion. So dismissive avoidance, when somebody's like, "Well, I want more time." They're like, "You're going to take over my life." Like they think you, "Oh, you want like seven hours every evening together?" Like, or they're thinking, "Well, I just gave you time this weekend. Like we were just hanging out. Like that how much more can I give you?" Exactly. And then when dismissive women say, "I need more space or time to myself." Anxious attachment are like, "You're leaving me.

You're abandoning me." Yeah. And it's because of me. It's like, "You want to get away from me?" 100%. And instead, it's because they struggle to co-regulate. So, what we get people to do is the feeling need framework. They each say what they feel. Hey, this is what comes up for me. Then it's a beautiful opportunity to say, I need space because that's how I recharge. I need time because that's when I feel connected. So, now they actually understand what's going on. And then, okay, what do we need? Paint the picture. And when people paint the picture, they realize it's actually very reasonable from both ends. Usually an anxious attachment style will say, "Okay, you know, what can I actually do

as a baseline in terms of how much time I need together? I think two nights a week would be, you know, acceptable for me." And then maybe a 15-minute phone call a couple other nights a week. I could do that. And if I know that we're going to do that and commit to that, I can feel good about that. And then dismissive avoidance. They're not going, "Oh, you want to spend every night with me all day every day? You know, you want to take up my whole life." They're like, "Oh, two evenings a week and then I can do my own thing on Sunday afternoon. I can do my own thing on Monday, Tuesday evenings, and I have, you know, all this other time to see friends, whatever it might be." Okay, that's actually

feasible. So, what I find is even if people don't want to do the work, if they can communicate very clearly and specifically use that ingredient of painting a picture for what that looks like, we resolve a lot of those projected fears that cause those miscommunications to begin with, and now things can really work together. A secure partner feels steady, but their anxious partner keeps searching for signs something is wrong. How can they help without becoming the emotional regulator? Yeah, really good question. So, this happens fairly frequently. Um, but what's very interesting about this is that I have yet to see it be any kind of frequent occurrence that somebody who's deeply anxious and deeply secure

stay in a long-term relationship together because their subconscious comfort zones are going to reject each other. Securely attached people, if there's too much emotional burden over time and that person's not self-regulating at all or the needle's not moving, they usually do eventually because they're really good at being mindful of their own boundaries. they will pull away from that person or move in a different direction. Attachment styles are always a continuum. If somebody's a little bit anxious, we'll see some movement there, right? But if somebody sometimes you hear things like, "Oh, just date a secure person." It doesn't usually work out that way. Just like, you know,

people who are deeply insecure often are like, "Where's the spice? Where's the excitement is that this is the stability seems boring or they can reject the secure person as well." So, you know, the that really brings back to the work of like you got to do the work in healing yourself first if you really want that to happen. But if that were to be the case where you have somebody who's a little less anxious and then somebody who's really secure, then you're going to have the secure person say, "Hey, I need you to be able to make sure that you're self soothing sometimes or I need you." And in maybe less clinical terms, they might say something like, "Hey, you know, I'm going to be

here for you and I'm going to do my best to be here for you. And there's going to be some times where I'm suckling at work. I'm going through my own human things and I need you to see me, too. And I need you to practice being okay and on your own." And so they'll set those boundaries. They'll communicate their needs and in doing that it actually provides this beautiful opportunity for somebody to be like, "Oh, maybe I should practice that. Maybe I should sort of train myself to do that." And that's often where we can see those good outcomes. Should you feel 100% sure about your partner? Ooh, good question. These are good questions. I love these.

Okay, so the answer is I would say 100% is a little bit of a fallacy. I would say that we should feel highly certain, but it's almost like when people say, and I hear this all the time, are you 100% ready to have kids? You're like, nobody's ever 100% ready for, are you 100% ready to take that new job to move across the country to you're never going to feel 100% ready, but there should be a high enough degree of certainty where you feel like, hey, this is me following my heart or taking that leap of faith. And that bridge in that leap of faith shouldn't feel like the bridge is like something you can't surmount or jump over. It should feel like, okay, I'm going to take that small leap of faith

and there's a smaller gap there. That's a good answer. Yeah, it's I agree with you. I don't think there's a 100% shortity. If anything, that shorty gets stronger the more time you spend with someone. And I think that's partly the challenge that a lot of these things are only tried and tested and proven over time because there is no substitute for time in a relationship because people change, people grow, people evolve, you change, you grow, you evolve. And it's really crazy to think when you say on your wedding day like, you know, till death do us apart, the idea that you don't really even know what life's going to look like. And so there is a big risk in that commitment because you don't

even know the version of the person that you're gonna have to be with in like 5 10 15 20 years. That used to be my biggest fear in relationships and this is something that really is true like runs deep to my heart. I always used to be like how can you ever know that you trust them now you love them now. How can you know you won't change your mind or they won't change their mind? And it was always this big fear. And earlier I mentioned those cycles of relationships, dating, honeymoon, power, struggle stage, then we have the uh rhythm stage, commitment, bliss stage. And what I actually found over and over again, and I experienced this so deeply firsthand, and this is actually something I want

people so deeply to know and understand because I know there's going to be a lot of people like me who really struggled at points in relationships early on. And I had only ever done relationships in dating, honeymoon, power struggle, breakup, date again, dating, honeymoon, power struggle, breakup. So you think that relationships are just infatuation or pain? Yeah. And what I learned exactly to your point is that real love is built in the power struggle stage the most because we drop the mask. We're not in our best behavior. And you learn to work through things. And the power struggle is this opportunity. It's this crisis, but it's also this opportunity to start saying, "Hey, this is what's come up for me. This is what I need in

these situations. This is what I'm feeling. Hey, this is sensitive for me. That's a pain point for me. Can you be more mindful? And I believe that we really move the needle from more conditionally based love to more unconditionally based love through having those deeper conversations, through doing that work. And then we deepen. It's almost like in the early stages you have this really pretty sapling like this really nice little tree but a windstorm can take it out cuz it's so fragile. But when we have those meaningful conversations again and again and we build and we grow and then all of a sudden you know your partner's you know biggest pain points and you're mindful of them and you know when

somebody else hit them and you're there to show up for them and caretake for them and be sensitive to them and that and they're that for you too. Now you deepen roots in love in such a different way where those ideas of like oh what if somebody else came along and one of us changed our mind you know that it's such a silly thing and I could never conceive of that at one point in my life because I had so many wounds around relationships and so many fears and it's only through that beauty of like having those conversations and doing the work and deepening that connection in such a real way that then like some silly frivolous thing that oh something attractive could come along and you could change it like

it seems so almost like you know like silly like you can laugh at it after a while but that's because I think the real work isn't that you're going to be 100% sure it's that you build that 100 or close to 100% certainty through all of those meaningful conversations that you're building over time and I really believe love isn't just given. I think love has really grown and I think that's part of what allows us to foster that with people. Stay with someone who feels safe but doesn't excite you or choose someone who excites you but keeps you on edge. I would say stay with the person who feels safe because more green flags but then build things that create mutual

excitement into your relationship. So it's actually one of the um ways it's a right of passage to get out of the rhythm stage and into the future stages of relationship is if you feel like there's a sense of safety but not enough excitement then you have to build novelty into the relationship spontaneity things that make you feel that sense of chemistry and connection. So safety is really healthy and good but then build those things in that keep that spark alive. It's easier to add excitement to a safe relationship than it is to build safety in an exciting relationship. It's beautifully said, right? And it's like we think that, oh, if something's exciting, oh, I can make this feel more safe. I can make

this feel more secure, but that's a much harder thing to develop from that foundation than the other way around. 100%. And like caveat being that you have to actually feel attracted to the person. You have to like the person. I can see some people being like, "Oh, which way I should stay with the person I'm not interested in?" No way. But like the reality is exactly what you said. And sometimes the constantly on edge is for really painful reasons, especially if the other person's not going to be willing to do the work with you. Yeah. Okay. Next one. Build stability slowly with someone dependable or follow instant chemistry and risk the uncertainty.

Build, you know, it's I'd actually almost go in reverse on that one. I would say follow the chemistry as long as you're going to do the work on it. Chemistry tells us a lot about ourselves. Those times we get those really exciting like connections and that like oh my gosh that is always we have lirance or intense infatuation for three reasons. Number one, somebody's expressing your repressed traits like we talked about. Do that integration work. Number two, somebody's meeting your deeply unmet needs from childhood. That'll be the spark early and then it'll be the thing that pressures the

relationship later um because you're trying to just source from them. So do that work to really build those. It's it's sort of this key that unlocks all this awareness into yourself. And then the third thing is how somebody's, you know, treating you. If it's how you treat yourself, we got to work that out. So I would say follow the excitement, but vet that somebody's going to do the work with you non-negotiably. We end every OnPurpose episode with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum. So Tibson, these are your final five. The first question is, what is the best love advice you've ever heard or received? to

learn to be compassionate towards yourself and gentle towards yourself. Second question, what is the worst love advice you've ever heard or received? To try to change other people if they're not willing to do the work. Can you ever change someone? No. People can choose to change themselves, but you can only show up and lead by example and vet how somebody else responds. Question number three, I had a couple here actually that I really wanted to get to. So question number three, what does the spark really mean in dating?

The spark really means that somebody is the expression of your repressed traits, needing your deeply unmet needs or mirroring back to you how you treat yourself. When people have extreme sparks, it's always that. Mhm. Good answer. Question number four. How do people unintentionally push away the love they want most? Because people end up trying to make somebody the person who's going to fill it all for them, complete them, do it all for them when really we're supposed to do half that job for ourselves, too. Otherwise, we can't receive it properly from anybody and we put too much pressure. And fifth and final question, we ask this to every guest who's ever been on

the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? it would be for people to learn about their own subconscious conditioning and how to rewire it because unless we deal with things at the subconscious level, we'll always set intentions or say we're going to do things and then we'll often feel so defeated. It was a big part of what I went through trying to get sober originally like what the heck is going on and I just I think that's the key that unlocks so much for people in a deep way. T Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Uh and I'm excited to have you back on soon.

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