May 22, 2025 • 24 mins
Attachment styles: Internet BS or hardwired truth? Find out on Part 1 of 2 with Dr. Sarah Hensley!
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Nice to meet you, very nice to meet you. I'm
a pretty big fan, so, oh, thank you. You're like
the holy Grail of women entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much. So
I found you on social media. And you do sort
of like these therapy snippets on relationships in the car
and you have a practice, you have patients. I do.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I have clients.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm a relationship coach and I've been running my practice
now for about four years. So it's been a real
blessing and a real joy. I was in academia before that.
I was the director of a clinical psychology program at
a university, and so I did that for a number
of years and taught in psychology. So what is your training.
My training is in social psychology. So a lot of
(01:00):
people are not familiar with that because it is a
smaller part of the discipline. So about thirty three percent
of the discipline is clinical psychology and they deal with,
you know, severe mental illness, and then we have the
rest of us who are specialized in different areas of psychology.
So social psychology is just really the study of human interaction.
So I am basically a researcher in human behavior expert
(01:23):
in romantic relationships, So I study relationships from kind of
a scientific point of view, and then I went into coaching,
which is just fundamentally kind of a different avenue than therapy.
It's really focused on the science and then results, you know,
and being very prescriptive and results oriented, versus kind of
like processing and discovery, which is a lot more of
(01:43):
what therapy is about.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Okay, So my question is, so you talk a lot
about attachment, attachment disorder, all the different attachment styles, and
I think we're in the era of like a designing
certain labels to people that you're in a relationship with.
(02:06):
Because for the first time ever, I heard someone talk
about personality types in order to find matches, like and
there's this personality test that I thought was amazing online
that I took, my friends took that was spot on.
I was the protagonist, shocking someone else. I knew the
(02:28):
woman who runs my company is the commander, which was
perfect and like, but the description is really amazing, and
this is going to sound like it's belittling the rest
of this. But I also do now look at someone's
astrological sign. I don't live in this anymore than I
live in what you talk about, which is attachment styles.
But I do think there's something to all of it. Actually,
(02:51):
I think there's something to the personality types. I think
there's something to the attachment styles, and I do think
there's something to the astrological signs, for example, and then
the love languages, like all these things. So let's just
talk about all these things and how someone could sort
of boil this down because, for example, let's say you're
let's say you want to lose weight, and you're going
to be like, I'm going to do the eat right
(03:13):
for your type, your blood type, and to get my
blood taken because someone said that, but someone else said macrobiotic,
but someone else said carb and keto and look, so
it's like hard to know how to be educated and
then also not be debilitated by trying to figure out
all these things that also could freak someone else out.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Sure, absolutely, I completely understand where you're coming from, and
I definitely agree with you. And I think from my
point of view as a scientist, I think the place
that I like to look is just going to the
science and seeing how credible it is and seeing how
long the theory has been around, how much you know,
validity and reliability you know, comes with whatever assessment you're
you're taking. And the thing that I love about attachment
(03:51):
theory is that it's been around since nineteen fifty eight,
and so far nobody's been able to falsify that theory,
and so we have so much evidence that has built
since that time time that attachment style is very predictive
of people's behavior inside of relationships. And so when we're
taking an assessment or where we're putting a label on something,
my first instinct is to just go, Okay, well, what's
the scientific evidence behind it?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Is this something that somebody just kind of like made
up and it sounded good and it was clickbait on
the internet, or is this something that has validity to it.
And so we do have a lot of really great
measurements out there for things like personality and attachment, and
differentiating between those things I think as a lay person
is hard because attachment really functions at the level of behavior,
(04:33):
whereas personality is more ingrained into who you are. And
so we have, you know, somebody who has say attachment
wounds that's triggered by a lot of their external environment,
whereas personality characteristics are inherent to the person and might
be displayed across different situations, right where attachment's really just
going to show up inside of the romantic relationships. So
(04:55):
I think for everybody out there on social media, you're
definitely getting hit with so many things at once, and
it is hard to differentiate between, you know, what's really
valid and what's just kind of maybe some kind of
something that's going around TikTok right now, that's that's popular.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, it makes sense that you are saying a personality
test could talk about where you're gonna be like in business,
or what you're going to be like in friendships or
different situation, or if you go away on a reality
show or something, what you're going to be like in
that group. But an attachment style is going to present
itself based on intimacy and communication and connectivity. So you're
(05:32):
going to see that arise there. That's that's definitely interesting,
and so how much you know there's the one that
it seems like you talk about the most is dismissive
avoidant because it seems to be a problematic one that
people are bumping up against. And to back this up,
years ago, it was actually Cia this musical artist who
(05:55):
brought up attachment theory to me, and I didn't even
know what she was talking about. And I understood it
to be the way you attached with your parents, and
it could be as young as being a toddler, but
it could be older based, and it doesn't have to
mean you had a dysfunctional childhood by most people's standards.
You could have a life like mine, which is dysfunctional
by everyone's standards. But you could be a person where
(06:16):
your parents were together for fifty years, but they're very
cold and there was no feeling and they never really
gave you any kind of love, and you felt like
you had to sort of there were conditions to everything,
and so that can sort of translate into modern day.
There could be many different shapes and sizes to this.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes, absolutely, you hit the nail on the head completely.
A lot of the clients that I have, honestly don't
recognize their own attachment trauma, so especially dismissive avoidance. A
lot of the neglect that they experience looked very benevolent.
So it might have been like a mom being like, oh,
you're fine, calm down, you don't.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Need to be so upset.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
You know that mom was very well meaning to just
try to gain some emotional control with her child, but
essentially she's also passing along the message, hey, your emotions
are not welcome here, and the display of emotions when
you have big emotion inside of you.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Isn't like a good thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So when that's repeated over and over and over again
in those small benign or benevolent looking ways, it can
cause someone to suppress emotion over time and to really
internalize things and to cope with things within themselves or
even dissociate from things, which is really what happens with
the dismissive avoidant. They suppress all of their emotions, and
(07:27):
because they're not in touch with their own emotional experience,
they get very overwhelmed by other people's emotional experiences, which
is a real block to intimacy.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think what you're saying is that someone is just trained.
It's like a dog that's trained to do the same
thing every time, and it's very hard to untrain a dog.
So this is a person who's trained that there's a
siren that goes off when intimacy or connectivity happens, and
they literally dismiss and avoid where It might seem good
(08:07):
in the beginning because there are no stakes, but as
the stakes get higher, they dismiss and avoid. And you
talk about that a lot because that is very difficult
to intervene in and retrain. And so what does that mean?
You just give that dog back to the breeder? Like,
how do you Because I've been in relationships with people
like this and you kind of do want to give
that dog back to the breeder, But what do you
say to that person, like that poor person who can
(08:30):
help themselves?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, the DA is just it's they're so hard because
their major wound is around effectiveness, which is essentially brought
up by criticism or even just perceived criticism. They don't
actually have to be being criticized, they just have to
perceive that they're being criticized. And so if you come
to them and you're like, hey, I think you have
this dismissive avoidant attachment, immediately they're going to feel defective, criticized,
(08:52):
and that is attached to so much internal shame, and
then they go into their suppression and their avoidance right
to cope with that internal shame. So they're not going
to age with you, and those kinds of conversations around
personal growth and development. For them, that's insanely triggering, and
then they use their old tactics of just suppressing and avoiding,
and so it's hard to actually even engage them in
(09:12):
conversations about hey, I think we you know, you might
benefit from understanding this about yourself, or that our relationship
could benefit from you understanding this about yourselves. From what
I have experienced, the best way to be able to
talk to a dismissible avoidant about the need for them
to maybe explore emotional development is, hey, you know, I
came across this really cool science about attachment, and I
(09:33):
think I know what my attachment style is.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I'm interested to see if you know what it is.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And so they kind of see it as like a
little bit almost of like a game of discovery, and
that's when they go, oh, I think I'm a dismissible avoidant.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
And then we usually have two roads.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
We have somebody that kind of has a light bulb
moment and they go, oh, well, I really want to
be with you and so maybe this is something I
need to work on, which is usually people with more
mild dismissible avoidance. And then we have the more severe
people who are like, well, you know what I am?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I am who I am.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
That's like famous tagline for the da as I am
who I am, and you can lend me like this
or not or leave.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh I've heard the middle. I haven't heard that. I've
heard the well, I've heard the middle, because they go
highs and lows. These people go low and then they
think they can change it. But the next day it's
a new day and that's over. And I've also I
think this is the if this was a sign, I
would call this the biggest gas lighting sign. This is
a gas lighting sign because again they want to avoid
(10:26):
and if they dump something on you, you can avoid
doing it. If it's on you, they don't have to
do it. So this is literally a dog I would
give back to the breeder. But if you're married to
this person, how do you cope with this? And then
we can get into the other styles too.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
The only thing I have ever seen work for dismissive
avoidance is really strong boundaries, because they have really strong
boundaries around their behavior, their time, what they're willing to give,
and so inherently they might push back against it, and
on the surface they're like Ooh, I'm not getting my way.
But deep down at that subconscious level, which is really
driving the ship, they're like, man, I respect that, right,
like I respect people who can say no, I'm not
(11:00):
giving that or I'm not doing that right. So they
kind of view people who self abandon and who are
a needy as weak. Yes. And so when you hold
a really strong boundary with the DA and they realize
I don't get access to this person unless I give
a B and C or meet their needs, that sense
of loss can be what causes them to stop suppressing
(11:21):
so much, because the pain of the loss can't be
suppressed to the degree that they need it to be
in order for them to sort of move on and
get over it. So if they really love somebody and
that person throws up some really strong boundaries, oftentimes that
is what it takes for them to come out of
their avoidance, start being able to access the feelings that
they have for their partner, and make some decisions that
they're going to honor the boundaries of their partner and
(11:44):
making some strides towards change.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So let's talk about the other styles I mine. Is
is there an anxious avoidant? What is the anxious anxiousness.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So there's a lot of terms that have been used
for what moderns fearful avoidance. Yeah, and it's been called
in the past anxious avoidance or disorganized attachment. So those
people have both an anxious side to their attachment and
an avoidance side to their attachment. Yes, me, odd's what
I was too, And you know I have. I've worked
really obviously, worked really hard on it, but you know,
(12:16):
it never completely goes away. It's more of a learning
to be aware, to catch, to correct, to make sure
that you're sort of always on top of it. There's
no like triggers completely going away for the rest of
your life. There are going to always be those trigger
moments and you have to be able to learn to
identify and cope with them. But for fearful avoidance, they
really have wounds around betrayal because there was some dysfunction
(12:37):
in their childhood. They usually had one or more parents
that had enough problems going on where they looked at
their parent and they were like, yeah, you can't love
me in a way that feels good to me, Like
you have X, y Z other problems issues deficits going on.
So we usually see this in parents that maybe have
a substance abuse disorder, or parents that have a mental illness,
(12:57):
or parents that you know, go through a really awful
divorce when their child is younger, or you know, something
of that effect. We have parents that are highly consumed
with some other issue that's causing them to behave in
an emotionally dysfunctional way, and the child witnesses that, even
if it's not directed towards the child, oftentimes they're witnessing
it in the marital relationship of their parents, and so
(13:20):
they really imprint this idea that love is unsafe, love
is hurtful, people will betray you if you get close
to them, and so ultimately they sort of develop this
very disorganized strategy of trying to get intimacy where their
need for connection is really strong, but it's always sort
of competing with their desire to avoiding.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Which one is that that's anxious attached.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
That's the fearful avoidance, that's like the modern term for it.
But what about the disorganized one?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So that's the same.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So there's oh, fear several different terms attached to it
over the years, and I think the most probably the
most up to date term is fearful avoidance, but a
lot of peop use those older terms and so it
can get confusing.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Okay, so fearful avoidant. So for me, it's sort of
like a zero sum game. So I'm like in and
I'm connected, but if I sense any sort of danger,
I'm fully out. Yeah, that's sort of it. I feel
safe until I don't, and that's like not a gray
and the healthiest way is But that's actually you can
(14:32):
intervene in that because I've gotten to a point over
Just like learning, there are things that dating people on
here have told or psychologists have told that you learn
that you can like mix into the recipes. So, for example,
there are a couple of things that I believe and
have learned. So one is that men are equally as
insecure as us, and I think that women don't really
(14:54):
believe that. So if you believe that a man is
equally as insecure, you'll then go respond to something or
come reach out to someone that you normally wouldn't, thinking
that there has to be some version of it, Like
they reach out, you reach out back, they reach out,
you reach out back. You do a little extra because
you're someone said to you that they're just as insecure.
And I said on a previous podcast that you know,
(15:16):
it's been a man's world for so long, for generations,
that it's not going to be a crash diet of
us all of a sudden, just like believing that it's
both a man and a woman's world, even though we
see proof of that. So the dynamic comes up in dating,
not even about fearful avoidant or any of this stuff,
just in normal dating every day we believe that the
(15:38):
men are holding the cards, short of like boobs and
like you know, holding out for them, Like that's just
sort of basic. I just mean, like we believe that
men are holding the cards. So therefore, even if a
man is not that attractive, we believe we should give
them a cookie for doing something so basic because we
are not we don't have an equilibrium with that. So therefore,
(15:59):
if someone doesn't respond to you, you want to basically
say in some subtle way, fuck off, like not responding
like you'd have respond I'm insecure, I'm going to go retreat.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Absolutely, And I think there's a real dynamic where in
this culture too, we kind of view men as being
like the ones that have all the power, and that
have the power to destroy their relationship as well. Right so,
because they do hold all the cards. And I think
there is some truth to that, because if more men
tend to be dismissive avoidant and dismissive avoidance act as
(16:31):
dictators and relationships, they do. They dictate when you talk,
how much you talk, what you talk about, what the
intimacy is, you know, how much quality time you have.
They dictate all of it in a relationship. And eighty
five percent of dismissive avoidance are men, right so, and
a man.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
A dismissive avoidant with money is a lethal combination because
I had.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
It because a very well off dismissive avoidance, and it
was a nightmare because they they because he who makes
the goal makes the rules.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And this is why I tell women to begin with,
just to make money work, you put it in a
hole and not even use it, but you have it there,
and you know you have it there because it affects emotion.
So a man who's a dismissive avoidant who has money
is he's running the program. He who makes the gold
makes the rules. And then you are just abiding by
feeling powerless emotionally and financially but he then doesn't respect
(17:19):
that you neither have money nor control. So it's a
very strange Goldilocks imbalance.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
It is, you're very right, and so we have somebody
who's acting as an emotional dictator and then who can
act as a kind of a financial dictator as well.
And I have had clients who are married to these
people and you know, they maybe they've been a stay
at home mom for fifteen years, right, But then they
discover then they're in this like loveless marriage where they
get absolutely nothing back. And they got to go with
the program, right, and they got to go with the program.
(17:46):
And then as soon as they push back and say, hey,
this isn't working for me. I mean, the dismissive avoidance
is going to dismiss an avoid and they've had years
and years and years of that, they get fed up.
They try to go get a divorce and then I mean,
I don't have to tell you how that process works.
If you don't have any money, you can't get anywhere, right,
And so then they they're really scared of losing custody
of their kids.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
They're really scared.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
The man has control now emotionally and financially.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
You know, because the family court system is all about
who can outspend you, know, who can you can keep
it going for literally ever I've been through fugual Well.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
They can emotionally outspend you.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Also, absolutely they can wear you down completely with their
inability to compromise, with their inability to see what's in
the really truly the best interest of both parties in
the situation. It really dismissible avoidance, thrive on control, and
that comes from and it's not in the same way
a narcissist does. It's definitely different from narcissism. So I
always try to tell people this isn't das aren't necessarily narcissists.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
They can be, but not all das are narcissists.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Many are very deeply insecure, deeply insecure, and and their
insecurity though is not only unrecognized by them, yes, it's
recognized by most of society. What they look like on
the outside are very stoic people, people that really have
their stuff together, people operate based on logic and you know,
have all of theirs in a row.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
And that is true of them.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I mean, most of the DA's that I encounter are
very successful people. And then they come to me, and
they're like, I've been successful in every ever, every area
of my life except with my wife, and I don't
know what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And those are then amenable to change.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But in situations where you know, a woman has been
through this for fifteen twenty years and she's tired of
living in a loveless marriage and she wants to get
out their deep desire to have control, which comes from
being pushed into hyper independence too soon for their development,
where they had to have control in order to survive
because they were tasked with doing things developmentally that they
(19:35):
weren't ready for as children. It makes them hyper control
their environment and they almost have like the spirit of rebellion,
which is if you push for something, they almost push
back harder, like no, I'm not doing that right. So
they're not the compromise. They're not good at compromising. It's
sort of a my way or the high way type
of mentality, and obviously that can be really detrimental when
(19:56):
you're trying to have reciprocity in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
It's the most common female attachment style.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I would say, you know, it's kind of it's kind
of split. Now I have what in my practice it's
called selection bias. Feet fearful avoidance have the most pain,
so they're the most likely to get help. Right, So
you know, if you're the more pain you're in, the
more likely you are to reach out for help. So
I would say the most common attachment style I see
is fearful avoidance. But I know we also have a
lot of anxious preoccupied women too. They don't have that
(20:25):
avoidance side. They only stay anxious, and no matter kind
of what happens in the relationship, they continue to try
to make it work. Whereas the fearful avoidance is like, well,
as soon as you hurt me, I'm going to pull back,
and I may exactly in right, I may. The fearful
avoid it might decide to jump out of avoidance and
back into anxiety and establish connection, and they can do
a push pull. The anxious preoccupied is sort of always
(20:47):
pushing for the connection no matter what.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It's sort of like, I'll.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Takes more insecure, it's more desperate.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, just don't leave me.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Wow, Okay. And that's a lethal combination with the dismissive avoiding,
because they're gonna run and they're gonna be yelled or
just dorm at you. Let's talk about the dating, because
it's a dating podcast, so your dating, you go out.
And I think that people, I think that women really
believe things that men are saying in the moment, whether
it's about sex, whether it's about money, whether it's about commitment,
(21:13):
and it's a stranger. And I think Barbie Adler, who's
a matchmaker on here, really was the one who. I
think it was her who basically who basically was like,
this person is a stranger. Yeah, and I just and
then you probably touch on love bombing and all this
different stuff, like there's someone I met recently who looked
at me and was like, oh my god, and like
just had a feeling about me. And that can happen.
(21:35):
You can feel like you had an instant connection. And
then they started to operate in the pre dating phase.
Hadn't even been on a proper day, just met them
a couple of times. You're vibing with them, there's an
energetic connection where like it's a strong connection, so you're
allowing them to push it a little further with you
in like fantasy like oh we'll do this one day,
we'll do this, we could start a business together, we
(21:55):
could live near each other. Where do you live? I
live there too, That's what I want to And like
now you're like in love with so five minutes in.
But like, we have to recalibrate ourselves. It's our responsibility
just because the guy says, oh your eyes and that's
exactly what I want. You're what I want. You have
to be rational, insane and no, this is a stranger.
So it doesn't matter that they told you they want
to marry you on the first date. Like every rom
(22:17):
com movie with Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, it's not
realistic and it doesn't make sense. So and I hear
women all the time he said this, he said that,
or even three dates he said this, he said that,
And like they're then mad at the guy. So you
have to recalibrate yourself with a stranger.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean our brain chemicals are definitely going
to lie to us in the beginning. They're going to
lie to us, and they are going to give us
feelings of euphoria and happiness and a lot of what
ends up happening, especially for fearful avoidance.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
This is a really fa thing.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Is you know, emotions are made up of the feelings
that we have in our body, plus the story around
what's happening. That's actually what emotion is broken down into,
So what we feel inside of our body, plus like
our like story or understanding of what's occurring.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Well, but none of those irrational too. Describing two fantasy things.
Then there's one which is like the boring logic and
intellectual knowledge you are discussing like you're a libido and
like is it your it or you're super ego like
those things that are coming in and like excited on
two different.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Ends, right, yeah, definitely the definitely the primal like energy
part of us, I think is really activated in the
early dating relationship. And you know, so what ends up
happening is people experience an emotion that is really fear
and associated with red flags like love bombing. Right, Like
love bombing should be a recognizable red flag, but it's
(23:40):
not because it provokes feelings in the body that mimic excitement.
It's really fear. Fear and excitement have the same feeling.
But the story that you're telling yourself helps you determine
what emotion this is. And so the story is like, oh,
new partner, they're so attractive, like they're doing all these
great things.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
They're you know, they're what I want. I really want to.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Connection and this seems so amazing, and maybe compatibility details
are kind of there. It looks good on paper, but
nobody shows you who they really are. For the first
six months of a relationship. Everybody's trying to put their
best fit forward.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Well, that's amazing, you're saying, first six months, that's being generous. Wow,
Nice to meet you, very nice to meet you. I'm
a pretty big fan, so, oh, thank you. You're like
the holy Grail of women entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much. So
I found you on social media. And you do sort
of like these therapy snippets on relationships in the car
and you have a practice, you have patients. I do.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I have clients.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm a relationship coach and I've been running my practice
now for about four years. So it's been a real
blessing and a real joy. I was in academia before that.
I was the director of a clinical psychology program at
a university, and so I did that for a number
of years and taught in psychology. So what is your training.
My training is in social psychology. So a lot of
(01:00):
people are not familiar with that because it is a
smaller part of the discipline. So about thirty three percent
of the discipline is clinical psychology and they deal with,
you know, severe mental illness, and then we have the
rest of us who are specialized in different areas of psychology.
So social psychology is just really the study of human interaction.
So I am basically a researcher in human behavior expert
(01:23):
in romantic relationships, So I study relationships from kind of
a scientific point of view, and then I went into coaching,
which is just fundamentally kind of a different avenue than therapy.
It's really focused on the science and then results, you know,
and being very prescriptive and results oriented, versus kind of
like processing and discovery, which is a lot more of
(01:43):
what therapy is about.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Okay, So my question is, so you talk a lot
about attachment, attachment disorder, all the different attachment styles, and
I think we're in the era of like a designing
certain labels to people that you're in a relationship with.
(02:06):
Because for the first time ever, I heard someone talk
about personality types in order to find matches, like and
there's this personality test that I thought was amazing online
that I took, my friends took that was spot on.
I was the protagonist, shocking someone else. I knew the
(02:28):
woman who runs my company is the commander, which was
perfect and like, but the description is really amazing, and
this is going to sound like it's belittling the rest
of this. But I also do now look at someone's
astrological sign. I don't live in this anymore than I
live in what you talk about, which is attachment styles.
But I do think there's something to all of it. Actually,
(02:51):
I think there's something to the personality types. I think
there's something to the attachment styles, and I do think
there's something to the astrological signs, for example, and then
the love languages, like all these things. So let's just
talk about all these things and how someone could sort
of boil this down because, for example, let's say you're
let's say you want to lose weight, and you're going
to be like, I'm going to do the eat right
(03:13):
for your type, your blood type, and to get my
blood taken because someone said that, but someone else said macrobiotic,
but someone else said carb and keto and look, so
it's like hard to know how to be educated and
then also not be debilitated by trying to figure out
all these things that also could freak someone else out.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Sure, absolutely, I completely understand where you're coming from, and
I definitely agree with you. And I think from my
point of view as a scientist, I think the place
that I like to look is just going to the
science and seeing how credible it is and seeing how
long the theory has been around, how much you know,
validity and reliability you know, comes with whatever assessment you're
you're taking. And the thing that I love about attachment
(03:51):
theory is that it's been around since nineteen fifty eight,
and so far nobody's been able to falsify that theory,
and so we have so much evidence that has built
since that time time that attachment style is very predictive
of people's behavior inside of relationships. And so when we're
taking an assessment or where we're putting a label on something,
my first instinct is to just go, Okay, well, what's
the scientific evidence behind it?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Right?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Is this something that somebody just kind of like made
up and it sounded good and it was clickbait on
the internet, or is this something that has validity to it.
And so we do have a lot of really great
measurements out there for things like personality and attachment, and
differentiating between those things I think as a lay person
is hard because attachment really functions at the level of behavior,
(04:33):
whereas personality is more ingrained into who you are. And
so we have, you know, somebody who has say attachment
wounds that's triggered by a lot of their external environment,
whereas personality characteristics are inherent to the person and might
be displayed across different situations, right where attachment's really just
going to show up inside of the romantic relationships. So
(04:55):
I think for everybody out there on social media, you're
definitely getting hit with so many things at once, and
it is hard to differentiate between, you know, what's really
valid and what's just kind of maybe some kind of
something that's going around TikTok right now, that's that's popular.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, it makes sense that you are saying a personality
test could talk about where you're gonna be like in business,
or what you're going to be like in friendships or
different situation, or if you go away on a reality
show or something, what you're going to be like in
that group. But an attachment style is going to present
itself based on intimacy and communication and connectivity. So you're
(05:32):
going to see that arise there. That's that's definitely interesting,
and so how much you know there's the one that
it seems like you talk about the most is dismissive
avoidant because it seems to be a problematic one that
people are bumping up against. And to back this up,
years ago, it was actually Cia this musical artist who
(05:55):
brought up attachment theory to me, and I didn't even
know what she was talking about. And I understood it
to be the way you attached with your parents, and
it could be as young as being a toddler, but
it could be older based, and it doesn't have to
mean you had a dysfunctional childhood by most people's standards.
You could have a life like mine, which is dysfunctional
by everyone's standards. But you could be a person where
(06:16):
your parents were together for fifty years, but they're very
cold and there was no feeling and they never really
gave you any kind of love, and you felt like
you had to sort of there were conditions to everything,
and so that can sort of translate into modern day.
There could be many different shapes and sizes to this.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes, absolutely, you hit the nail on the head completely.
A lot of the clients that I have, honestly don't
recognize their own attachment trauma, so especially dismissive avoidance. A
lot of the neglect that they experience looked very benevolent.
So it might have been like a mom being like, oh,
you're fine, calm down, you don't.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Need to be so upset.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
You know that mom was very well meaning to just
try to gain some emotional control with her child, but
essentially she's also passing along the message, hey, your emotions
are not welcome here, and the display of emotions when
you have big emotion inside of you.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Isn't like a good thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So when that's repeated over and over and over again
in those small benign or benevolent looking ways, it can
cause someone to suppress emotion over time and to really
internalize things and to cope with things within themselves or
even dissociate from things, which is really what happens with
the dismissive avoidant. They suppress all of their emotions, and
(07:27):
because they're not in touch with their own emotional experience,
they get very overwhelmed by other people's emotional experiences, which
is a real block to intimacy.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think what you're saying is that someone is just trained.
It's like a dog that's trained to do the same
thing every time, and it's very hard to untrain a dog.
So this is a person who's trained that there's a
siren that goes off when intimacy or connectivity happens, and
they literally dismiss and avoid where It might seem good
(08:07):
in the beginning because there are no stakes, but as
the stakes get higher, they dismiss and avoid. And you
talk about that a lot because that is very difficult
to intervene in and retrain. And so what does that mean?
You just give that dog back to the breeder? Like,
how do you Because I've been in relationships with people
like this and you kind of do want to give
that dog back to the breeder, But what do you
say to that person, like that poor person who can
(08:30):
help themselves?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, the DA is just it's they're so hard because
their major wound is around effectiveness, which is essentially brought
up by criticism or even just perceived criticism. They don't
actually have to be being criticized, they just have to
perceive that they're being criticized. And so if you come
to them and you're like, hey, I think you have
this dismissive avoidant attachment, immediately they're going to feel defective, criticized,
(08:52):
and that is attached to so much internal shame, and
then they go into their suppression and their avoidance right
to cope with that internal shame. So they're not going
to age with you, and those kinds of conversations around
personal growth and development. For them, that's insanely triggering, and
then they use their old tactics of just suppressing and avoiding,
and so it's hard to actually even engage them in
(09:12):
conversations about hey, I think we you know, you might
benefit from understanding this about yourself, or that our relationship
could benefit from you understanding this about yourselves. From what
I have experienced, the best way to be able to
talk to a dismissible avoidant about the need for them
to maybe explore emotional development is, hey, you know, I
came across this really cool science about attachment, and I
(09:33):
think I know what my attachment style is.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I'm interested to see if you know what it is.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And so they kind of see it as like a
little bit almost of like a game of discovery, and
that's when they go, oh, I think I'm a dismissible avoidant.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
And then we usually have two roads.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
We have somebody that kind of has a light bulb
moment and they go, oh, well, I really want to
be with you and so maybe this is something I
need to work on, which is usually people with more
mild dismissible avoidance. And then we have the more severe
people who are like, well, you know what I am?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I am who I am.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
That's like famous tagline for the da as I am
who I am, and you can lend me like this
or not or leave.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh I've heard the middle. I haven't heard that. I've
heard the well, I've heard the middle, because they go
highs and lows. These people go low and then they
think they can change it. But the next day it's
a new day and that's over. And I've also I
think this is the if this was a sign, I
would call this the biggest gas lighting sign. This is
a gas lighting sign because again they want to avoid
(10:26):
and if they dump something on you, you can avoid
doing it. If it's on you, they don't have to
do it. So this is literally a dog I would
give back to the breeder. But if you're married to
this person, how do you cope with this? And then
we can get into the other styles too.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
The only thing I have ever seen work for dismissive
avoidance is really strong boundaries, because they have really strong
boundaries around their behavior, their time, what they're willing to give,
and so inherently they might push back against it, and
on the surface they're like Ooh, I'm not getting my way.
But deep down at that subconscious level, which is really
driving the ship, they're like, man, I respect that, right,
like I respect people who can say no, I'm not
(11:00):
giving that or I'm not doing that right. So they
kind of view people who self abandon and who are
a needy as weak. Yes. And so when you hold
a really strong boundary with the DA and they realize
I don't get access to this person unless I give
a B and C or meet their needs, that sense
of loss can be what causes them to stop suppressing
(11:21):
so much, because the pain of the loss can't be
suppressed to the degree that they need it to be
in order for them to sort of move on and
get over it. So if they really love somebody and
that person throws up some really strong boundaries, oftentimes that
is what it takes for them to come out of
their avoidance, start being able to access the feelings that
they have for their partner, and make some decisions that
they're going to honor the boundaries of their partner and
(11:44):
making some strides towards change.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So let's talk about the other styles I mine. Is
is there an anxious avoidant? What is the anxious anxiousness.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So there's a lot of terms that have been used
for what moderns fearful avoidance. Yeah, and it's been called
in the past anxious avoidance or disorganized attachment. So those
people have both an anxious side to their attachment and
an avoidance side to their attachment. Yes, me, odd's what
I was too, And you know I have. I've worked
really obviously, worked really hard on it, but you know,
(12:16):
it never completely goes away. It's more of a learning
to be aware, to catch, to correct, to make sure
that you're sort of always on top of it. There's
no like triggers completely going away for the rest of
your life. There are going to always be those trigger
moments and you have to be able to learn to
identify and cope with them. But for fearful avoidance, they
really have wounds around betrayal because there was some dysfunction
(12:37):
in their childhood. They usually had one or more parents
that had enough problems going on where they looked at
their parent and they were like, yeah, you can't love
me in a way that feels good to me, Like
you have X, y Z other problems issues deficits going on.
So we usually see this in parents that maybe have
a substance abuse disorder, or parents that have a mental illness,
(12:57):
or parents that you know, go through a really awful
divorce when their child is younger, or you know, something
of that effect. We have parents that are highly consumed
with some other issue that's causing them to behave in
an emotionally dysfunctional way, and the child witnesses that, even
if it's not directed towards the child, oftentimes they're witnessing
it in the marital relationship of their parents, and so
(13:20):
they really imprint this idea that love is unsafe, love
is hurtful, people will betray you if you get close
to them, and so ultimately they sort of develop this
very disorganized strategy of trying to get intimacy where their
need for connection is really strong, but it's always sort
of competing with their desire to avoiding.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Which one is that that's anxious attached.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
That's the fearful avoidance, that's like the modern term for it.
But what about the disorganized one?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So that's the same.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So there's oh, fear several different terms attached to it
over the years, and I think the most probably the
most up to date term is fearful avoidance, but a
lot of peop use those older terms and so it
can get confusing.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Okay, so fearful avoidant. So for me, it's sort of
like a zero sum game. So I'm like in and
I'm connected, but if I sense any sort of danger,
I'm fully out. Yeah, that's sort of it. I feel
safe until I don't, and that's like not a gray
and the healthiest way is But that's actually you can
(14:32):
intervene in that because I've gotten to a point over
Just like learning, there are things that dating people on
here have told or psychologists have told that you learn
that you can like mix into the recipes. So, for example,
there are a couple of things that I believe and
have learned. So one is that men are equally as
insecure as us, and I think that women don't really
(14:54):
believe that. So if you believe that a man is
equally as insecure, you'll then go respond to something or
come reach out to someone that you normally wouldn't, thinking
that there has to be some version of it, Like
they reach out, you reach out back, they reach out,
you reach out back. You do a little extra because
you're someone said to you that they're just as insecure.
And I said on a previous podcast that you know,
(15:16):
it's been a man's world for so long, for generations,
that it's not going to be a crash diet of
us all of a sudden, just like believing that it's
both a man and a woman's world, even though we
see proof of that. So the dynamic comes up in dating,
not even about fearful avoidant or any of this stuff,
just in normal dating every day we believe that the
(15:38):
men are holding the cards, short of like boobs and
like you know, holding out for them, Like that's just
sort of basic. I just mean, like we believe that
men are holding the cards. So therefore, even if a
man is not that attractive, we believe we should give
them a cookie for doing something so basic because we
are not we don't have an equilibrium with that. So therefore,
(15:59):
if someone doesn't respond to you, you want to basically
say in some subtle way, fuck off, like not responding
like you'd have respond I'm insecure, I'm going to go retreat.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Absolutely, And I think there's a real dynamic where in
this culture too, we kind of view men as being
like the ones that have all the power, and that
have the power to destroy their relationship as well. Right so,
because they do hold all the cards. And I think
there is some truth to that, because if more men
tend to be dismissive avoidant and dismissive avoidance act as
(16:31):
dictators and relationships, they do. They dictate when you talk,
how much you talk, what you talk about, what the
intimacy is, you know, how much quality time you have.
They dictate all of it in a relationship. And eighty
five percent of dismissive avoidance are men, right so, and
a man.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
A dismissive avoidant with money is a lethal combination because
I had.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
It because a very well off dismissive avoidance, and it
was a nightmare because they they because he who makes
the goal makes the rules.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And this is why I tell women to begin with,
just to make money work, you put it in a
hole and not even use it, but you have it there,
and you know you have it there because it affects emotion.
So a man who's a dismissive avoidant who has money
is he's running the program. He who makes the gold
makes the rules. And then you are just abiding by
feeling powerless emotionally and financially but he then doesn't respect
(17:19):
that you neither have money nor control. So it's a
very strange Goldilocks imbalance.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
It is, you're very right, and so we have somebody
who's acting as an emotional dictator and then who can
act as a kind of a financial dictator as well.
And I have had clients who are married to these
people and you know, they maybe they've been a stay
at home mom for fifteen years, right, But then they
discover then they're in this like loveless marriage where they
get absolutely nothing back. And they got to go with
the program, right, and they got to go with the program.
(17:46):
And then as soon as they push back and say, hey,
this isn't working for me. I mean, the dismissive avoidance
is going to dismiss an avoid and they've had years
and years and years of that, they get fed up.
They try to go get a divorce and then I mean,
I don't have to tell you how that process works.
If you don't have any money, you can't get anywhere, right,
And so then they they're really scared of losing custody
of their kids.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
They're really scared.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
The man has control now emotionally and financially.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
You know, because the family court system is all about
who can outspend you, know, who can you can keep
it going for literally ever I've been through fugual Well.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
They can emotionally outspend you.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Also, absolutely they can wear you down completely with their
inability to compromise, with their inability to see what's in
the really truly the best interest of both parties in
the situation. It really dismissible avoidance, thrive on control, and
that comes from and it's not in the same way
a narcissist does. It's definitely different from narcissism. So I
always try to tell people this isn't das aren't necessarily narcissists.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
They can be, but not all das are narcissists.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Many are very deeply insecure, deeply insecure, and and their
insecurity though is not only unrecognized by them, yes, it's
recognized by most of society. What they look like on
the outside are very stoic people, people that really have
their stuff together, people operate based on logic and you know,
have all of theirs in a row.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
And that is true of them.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I mean, most of the DA's that I encounter are
very successful people. And then they come to me, and
they're like, I've been successful in every ever, every area
of my life except with my wife, and I don't
know what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And those are then amenable to change.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But in situations where you know, a woman has been
through this for fifteen twenty years and she's tired of
living in a loveless marriage and she wants to get
out their deep desire to have control, which comes from
being pushed into hyper independence too soon for their development,
where they had to have control in order to survive
because they were tasked with doing things developmentally that they
(19:35):
weren't ready for as children. It makes them hyper control
their environment and they almost have like the spirit of rebellion,
which is if you push for something, they almost push
back harder, like no, I'm not doing that right. So
they're not the compromise. They're not good at compromising. It's
sort of a my way or the high way type
of mentality, and obviously that can be really detrimental when
(19:56):
you're trying to have reciprocity in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
It's the most common female attachment style.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I would say, you know, it's kind of it's kind
of split. Now I have what in my practice it's
called selection bias. Feet fearful avoidance have the most pain,
so they're the most likely to get help. Right, So
you know, if you're the more pain you're in, the
more likely you are to reach out for help. So
I would say the most common attachment style I see
is fearful avoidance. But I know we also have a
lot of anxious preoccupied women too. They don't have that
(20:25):
avoidance side. They only stay anxious, and no matter kind
of what happens in the relationship, they continue to try
to make it work. Whereas the fearful avoidance is like, well,
as soon as you hurt me, I'm going to pull back,
and I may exactly in right, I may. The fearful
avoid it might decide to jump out of avoidance and
back into anxiety and establish connection, and they can do
a push pull. The anxious preoccupied is sort of always
(20:47):
pushing for the connection no matter what.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It's sort of like, I'll.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Takes more insecure, it's more desperate.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, just don't leave me.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Wow, Okay. And that's a lethal combination with the dismissive avoiding,
because they're gonna run and they're gonna be yelled or
just dorm at you. Let's talk about the dating, because
it's a dating podcast, so your dating, you go out.
And I think that people, I think that women really
believe things that men are saying in the moment, whether
it's about sex, whether it's about money, whether it's about commitment,
(21:13):
and it's a stranger. And I think Barbie Adler, who's
a matchmaker on here, really was the one who. I
think it was her who basically who basically was like,
this person is a stranger. Yeah, and I just and
then you probably touch on love bombing and all this
different stuff, like there's someone I met recently who looked
at me and was like, oh my god, and like
just had a feeling about me. And that can happen.
(21:35):
You can feel like you had an instant connection. And
then they started to operate in the pre dating phase.
Hadn't even been on a proper day, just met them
a couple of times. You're vibing with them, there's an
energetic connection where like it's a strong connection, so you're
allowing them to push it a little further with you
in like fantasy like oh we'll do this one day,
we'll do this, we could start a business together, we
(21:55):
could live near each other. Where do you live? I
live there too, That's what I want to And like
now you're like in love with so five minutes in.
But like, we have to recalibrate ourselves. It's our responsibility
just because the guy says, oh your eyes and that's
exactly what I want. You're what I want. You have
to be rational, insane and no, this is a stranger.
So it doesn't matter that they told you they want
to marry you on the first date. Like every rom
(22:17):
com movie with Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, it's not
realistic and it doesn't make sense. So and I hear
women all the time he said this, he said that,
or even three dates he said this, he said that,
And like they're then mad at the guy. So you
have to recalibrate yourself with a stranger.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean our brain chemicals are definitely going
to lie to us in the beginning. They're going to
lie to us, and they are going to give us
feelings of euphoria and happiness and a lot of what
ends up happening, especially for fearful avoidance.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
This is a really fa thing.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Is you know, emotions are made up of the feelings
that we have in our body, plus the story around
what's happening. That's actually what emotion is broken down into,
So what we feel inside of our body, plus like
our like story or understanding of what's occurring.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Well, but none of those irrational too. Describing two fantasy things.
Then there's one which is like the boring logic and
intellectual knowledge you are discussing like you're a libido and
like is it your it or you're super ego like
those things that are coming in and like excited on
two different.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Ends, right, yeah, definitely the definitely the primal like energy
part of us, I think is really activated in the
early dating relationship. And you know, so what ends up
happening is people experience an emotion that is really fear
and associated with red flags like love bombing. Right, Like
love bombing should be a recognizable red flag, but it's
(23:40):
not because it provokes feelings in the body that mimic excitement.
It's really fear. Fear and excitement have the same feeling.
But the story that you're telling yourself helps you determine
what emotion this is. And so the story is like, oh,
new partner, they're so attractive, like they're doing all these
great things.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
They're you know, they're what I want. I really want to.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Connection and this seems so amazing, and maybe compatibility details
are kind of there. It looks good on paper, but
nobody shows you who they really are. For the first
six months of a relationship. Everybody's trying to put their
best fit forward.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Well, that's amazing, you're saying, first six months, that's being generous. Wow,
Host
Bethenny Frankel
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