May 1, 2026 • 28 mins
You've probably heard of attachment styles, but do you know how they're formed?? Jana is talking to Dr. Amir Levine to get the truth on attachment, and learn how to manage her responses in situations that challenge her style.
Jana learns what actually impacts your attachment style: your parents or your early friendships!
Plus, Dr. Levine shares the 5 pillars of a secure relationship and reveals easy steps to help us all feel more confident.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's Adult Education. We've got doctor Emir Levine on.
So he has a book that was a huge, huge
success book back gosh, how ten no more than that
fifteen years ago, is called Attached. Such a good book.
I feel like I see it at every therapy center.
It's a book that I read post divorce. But he's
got a new one out called Secure and kb. Isn't
(00:29):
that what we all strive to be for our children,
for ourselves, for our future generation. So let's get them
on and shout all about his new book.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hello, Hello there, how are you? I'm doing well. How
are you doing?
Speaker 4 (00:41):
I'm good, Thank you, I'm Jana. This is Kristin Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And we'll just kind of hop right into it because
that's how our attachment style works.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
We just get right in there.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
We get very anxiously attached, especially when we have a doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm curious how this all started for you too? Is
this what she started in? Was the attachment? And what
was it for you that was like? This is why
I want to speak about attachment styles.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Oh, I mean the whole thing. The story is a
very personal story. It was fifteen years ago when I
was going through a terrible breakup. At the time, it
was like really devastating, so painful, and I didn't really
understand what was going on, and it didn't really make
sense because I knew that we loved each other and like,
(01:31):
but still it didn't work out. And it just so
happened by chance that I was working. I'm both an
adult and a child psychiatrist, so I was working in
the therapeutic nursery.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We worked. I worked with the.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Mothers were trauma survivors and their kids, their toddlers to
help them create a more secure bond. Because when you
have like a mother with PTSD, like if the child
drops something or they scream or they just like which
they do all the time, they step back and they
shut down, and then with understanding the logical attachment, the
(02:07):
child tries to get them even more the attention, so
it escalates and escalates, and so in that particular treatment
will help mother become more secure with their children, with
their child. And he was so effective and it was
so amazing that I did something that I never really do.
You get this really long list of suggested reading and
(02:29):
I started I read everything on this suggested reading list,
including these several textbooks, and that's where I actually discovered
these whole adult attachment styles that I never learned about
in my clinical training because it's not part of clinical psychology.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
It was only part of.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Social psychology and other really like very niche buried in
academic papers. But it was so it felt like a
light bulb went on in my head. It made so
much more sense what was going on in their relationship
that then I called my my high school friend Rachel,
and I told her listen instead of me just like
(03:07):
talking about the breakup all the time, like at nauseum,
Like you can't listen to me anymore. Let's take all
that energy and channel it into writing this book. And
that's how Attached came to be. Now Secure, my new
book is a direct extension of that because I just
wrote in Attached about the attachment styles, But how do
(03:28):
you become more secure? There's anxious, aborting and secure And
you just mentioned the anxious, which I can relate to.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, my therapist actually was the one who recommended Attached
to me post my divorce, because it was one of
those where I know that I was absolutely anxiously attached
because you know, I have my own trauma from the past,
but also I wanted to be loved and told that
was good enough in this and it's like, don't you can't,
don't leave me because I have abandonment issues and so
(03:56):
it's just learning and your book was brilliant. I mean,
so I'm so excited to reach secure because I feel
like from a lot of the work post divorce and
then you know, obviously I'm a new marriage and I'm
how I am now? Is I feel more secure now?
I can drift back into moments at times if I
feel triggered or and I think that's the piece where
(04:17):
I'm curious, like, how do you because I know it's
still in me, it's not doesn't show up, it doesn't
show up how it used to, but I know it's
still there, And so how do you stay more on
the secure when you lean more attached.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, that's a great question, and that's part of and
so I mean, that's part of the reason why I
wrote Secure, because there's new science and new findings and
now we know that these attachment styles are actually not
setting stone and they're not categories. They're more on the
spectrum and that actually we can have different attachment styles
(04:54):
with different people. And in the book and Secure, I
have a very different questionnaire where I call it like
this cover your attachment topography. I also have it online
on my website where you go and there's a drop
down menu and you can really you can even check,
like I even put you can even check your attachment
style with your pet, with a co worker, with a
(05:15):
lot of different people in your life, with a friend,
with a sibling, and you'll see that they not all
made the same. And then you can have different attachment
styles with different people. And then so there's a general
attachment style and we can change our attachment style. And
actually I find it very promising, and I use that
topography that's basically the starting point of the new book.
(05:39):
You look at these different attachment styles and where you
are and who are to secure people in your life,
and you use that as a vehicle to change your
brain towards greater security. And you write that there could
be people in your life that can drag you or
push you towards anxious, that anxious quadrant.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's like four quadrants.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
No, but it's true because I definitely feel obviously more
secure initially because Alan is so wildly different from my
acts too, So that's also I'm sure a.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Big piece brings something different in you.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, and there's a more of a peace and safety
and security as opposed to what I felt in past,
which is why I always leaned anxious.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
So I do have a question, and I and I
wondered too, both for Jana and I, because we grew
up under similar circumstances and so how we deal with
attachment is sometimes different though, which is interesting to me.
So when you talk about I guess like and I
don't even know it's chicken or egg because you've got
(06:41):
you know, does your attachment style come from this? Did
it come from your parents? Can it be generational? Can
you break it right? Like we are both on a
mission to break cycles in our family and so and
in marriages, you know. So for you, where does I
guess take us to the beginning? Where does a if
we want to have a healthiest tap attachment style, which
is what we're both aiming to do as adults, but
(07:03):
more so you know in grain in our kids, where
does that start.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I'm so glad you asked this question, because again, like
it's been fifteen years since Attached was published, and now
we have new data and new information and actually it's
really it's paradigm shifting, if you ask me, because there
is really recent research that actually shows that the like
(07:28):
the attachment style we have as a child, the attachment
style we have as a child, and also the parental
involvement has actually very very small contribution to your adult
attachment style. And there's actually, yes, I know, it's very surprising,
and I will surprised myself.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
It's relieving, to be honest with you, a little, right.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, And that's why I love science, because it really
can you can test something and then you can find
that it's actually very different from what you thought, and
its relieving. I actually find it very like, very hopeful too,
because we can change our attachment style. We are such
an uber social species. This is our biggest asset. I mean,
(08:10):
we're not particularly strong animals, yet we inhabit every place
on this planet, every niche on this planet, even like
made it this time almost through the moon but not quite,
but we made it to the moon all because we
can collaborate so well with each other, so it wouldn't
really make sense we have to be socially savvy. Wouldn't
(08:32):
make sense that something that happened to us with one person,
like really early on, that's it. We're set for life.
And the research actually shows that that's not the case.
There's one study that came out actually this year, and
they show that the maternal effect was three percent on
adults the adult attachment style, but actually that early childhood
(08:54):
friendships had a greater effect, Like it was like eleven percent,
so still not a huge effect, but like three times
as much as the maternal effect. So you asked me
about how to think about children and how to actually
help children and us adults navigate this attachment terrain, because
that's how I see it now. It's more like navigating
(09:15):
an attachment terrain or topography, and I.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Have an answer for that. That's why I wrote Secure.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I really wanted to give tools for people in order
to help them end up in a more secure place.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Obviously, we're going to order the book, but what are
just some of the tools that are in your book
that are helpful?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yes, I'm gonna like tell you because I now really
have to say, all these years later, I don't really
think so much about these attachment styles and in it's
really a part of something that a secure priming therapy,
which how to help people become more secure. And so
it has to do with the fact that we just
really have to understand that our brain really hates exclusion.
(10:12):
It loads exclusion, and it really hates that we're like
if we're being ignored. It just hates it so much.
And they've done these studies. I call it the Sybable
effect in the book, it's.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
The first chapter.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
It's like, here's the problem, Like, we don't know in
our society that our brains really hate exclusion. So then
we have this inner narrative when let's say my boss
is not including me in their work call, or I
see on social media that I haven't been invited to
stuff or all sorts of things, and I used to
(10:44):
have this narrative in my head. I shouldn't let this
get to me. It's fine, I'm being too sensitive. But
when you look at the science and the studies, it's
remarkable because they had this cyberball experiment where you are
playing game of catch with two other imaginary people's like
a little simplified video game, and all of a sudden,
(11:06):
they stopped throwing the ball in your direction, so you're excluded,
and areas of really painful distress and self scrutiny light
up in the brain when they didn't and their MRI,
so it's really like painful and also you start thinking,
what have I done wrong?
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Am I? Okay? Is this like?
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Is this something that I didn't? Are there upset with me?
That's sort of like the self scrutiny. And when they tried,
they said, okay, you know what, when you're not getting
the ball thrown in your direction, we're going to give
you a sum of money. So they thought, well, you'll
get money that's going to maybe mitigate the decipable effect. No,
it didn't really work at all. Or when they actually
(11:47):
told I don't know they did that experiment, but they
did it the ethics committee.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I don't know how they proved it. They told minority.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Students that the other two that they're playing with the
members of the KKK, So you think, what do I
care about these people if they're going to play with me?
Or now there's despeakable people. No, it really didn't really
mitigate the effect, and it's still really areas of distress
light up in our brain, so it's almost like a reflex.
We're programmed to really be very sensitive to exclusion and
(12:20):
to being ignored, and it also affects us psychologically. It
affects with people who are excluded to report feeling less
self esteem, less in control of their lives, and less
like that life is less meaningful. So I was really
surprised when I came across this because I thought that
if life is meaningful my self esteem, what does it
(12:41):
have to do with the people who are inviting.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Me or not?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Or am I being included or not? But it really
seeps in so deeply into our psychological core, like being excluded,
of being ignored, or being shut down, shut out of
someone's life, because it really is about feeling of survivor
that's how we feel safe. We feel safe in the
world through our this seemingly uh, this seems like this
(13:07):
connection that we have back and forth. That's what attachment
is about. It's the safety radar. It's a way for
us to feel safe. So that's the first idea, really
having to really let that sink in, like like we can't.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Really we have.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Been giving too much room and too much allowance for
exclusion in our lives, also with our children I can
give you an example for that, for example, if you want, yeah, please,
So oftentimes I'll give you this a narrow and it's
just I'm also a child psychiatrist. So let's say you
have a three year old and they come home and
they say, mommy, mommy, like, I don't know, Sophie didn't
(13:46):
want to play with me today, So you like, like
what I would have done before knowing this information, I would.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Say it's okay.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I would feel terrible, but I would say to myself, well,
this is the world. She's going to have to learn
to live in the real world, and she's gonna learn
to be tough. So we probably bend down and hug
her and say it's okay, she'll play with you tomorrow.
But actually there's really an opportunity here to even teach kids.
And also I'm teaching adults and we'll get to that
(14:16):
that well, I mean, in my practice, I do it
like with this story. I tell them a story because
there's three year olds, but basically this story will convey
you know, well, Sophie is not such a reliable friend.
Maybe play with Rachel. She always wants to play with you,
She's always there and really teach them from a very
young age sort of the lesson of secure friendship, because
(14:38):
you remember, also I told you that friendships are no
less important than our parental figures in shaping our attachment styles,
our adult attachment styles. So that's just like one example
of how it can be used in everyday life.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah, I know, I'm curious about that piece because I'm
having My daughter has been feeling left out a lot.
She's in fourth grade, and I'm having a hard time
find the right words to kind of say to her,
like you know, she'll be like, Mom, you know, feel
left out and you know that my friends aren't talking
to me, and you know, maybe I'm saying the wrong thing.
But I'm like, well, I'm like, maybe, you know, just
keep trying to insert yourself and have But now I'm like,
(15:12):
am I teaching her to be like, you know, anxiously
coming to them? But I'm also just I'm wanting I'm like,
because you know, she can be shy sometimes, so sometimes
I say like, well, if you're not talking to them, like,
they might feel that you don't want to play or
talk or something, so maybe you need to insert yourself more.
But now I'm thinking, gosh, maybe that's not the right
(15:33):
thing to say. So what should I kind of do
around that piece? Because that fourth grade is tough?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I know, I know, I mean right now?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, you know, something like actually Balby, who's the father
of the adults attachment, he said that attachment starts like
even before we actually he didn't know that he starts
before we were born. He said it starts at birth
and ends when we die. And I think it's really true,
and you'll be surprised. Like I have patients to where
who live in retirement communities and all of a sudden,
(16:04):
they weren't invited to that majan game. And you know,
it's just as painful. It's something that repeat itself, you know,
throughout our whole life, and it's really part of the
whole I day and Secure is to teach us, to
teach the reader how to navigate your.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Social world towards more secure people.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
So what I've found often is that our brain naturally
gravitates to where there's problems, especially if we have anxious attachment,
we feel we have to solve it. It's like, no,
why are they not calling me here? Let me try,
Let me text them what's happening? Checking all of that stuff.
And usually what happens is that there are secure people
in our lives, but they're kind of like boring because
(16:49):
they're always there. They always call us, those reply to
us so and then like our tension is being swept
in another direction. And a big part of a secure
priming therapy is like, you know what, instead of looking
here and like what's happening, why you're not answering here?
There's this person who always answers, and instead of texting them,
(17:11):
text the person who always answers. And I think it's
also true with kids. I can give you an example
of something that happened to me when I was really young.
I had like I had three friends, and I still
remember it like it was yesterday. They came to visit.
They came, we had a play date in my house,
(17:33):
and they were mean to me. They didn't speak nicely
to me. And my sister, who's two years older than me,
she was there. She's always been my defender. She was like,
you can't speak to him like that. Get out of
the house. And she threw him out of the house.
And just before they left, they were like, you'll see,
we're going to get.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
You tomorrow and the next.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Day I was scared to go to school, but my dad,
who's a very tough person, he said, no, like, go
there and you'll be fine, and just like talk to
someone else and you like, don't even pay attention to them.
And I swear to God, I remember it as if
it were yesterday, because it's such an emotionally valent I
remember going down exactly where the stairs were. There's a
(18:12):
big tree in front of me, and they were there
in front of me, starting to say mean things to
taunt me. And I remember looking like to the left
and seeing I think it was Jared and Ethan. I
remember their names and walking up to them and starting
to talk to them, and the rest was history. For
(18:32):
their next three like two years, they were my best
friends and they're really really nice and very very secure,
and it made such a huge difference. So there are
ways of explaining. I think it's very important for people
from a very early age to understand what air reliable
(18:53):
friend is versus an unreliable friend. And in the book
I call it, I call I really came up. I
thought about what would be I thought about, like basically,
I call it the five Pillars of a secure life
of a real secure relationship.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And that's like a big.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
It's a major part of secure pharmic therapy, the five
pillars of a secure life, which I call CARP and
I can explain more.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
This might be a silly question, but is there a
phrase or something that you say or that you tell people,
like if they're kind of retrieving back into maybe a
negative attachment, that's something that can kind of set them
on the right path, Like something that's just I don't know,
like a one sentence phrase or just something question, yeah, yeah,
something that just kind of puts you back in today
(20:00):
instead of where.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Tell us how to think? Is really where we're at, doctor.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So the way that I look at it, I separate
the world now to two types, because you can also
look at it secure and insecure, not just the world
the social social environment. The two types of social environment.
One is of the people who are consistent, available, and responsive.
(20:26):
And that's basically the most important ingredients of the secure person.
And I would bet you that your new husband, like
new and improved husband, is more consistent, available, and responsive,
much more than the one that you've divorced. So there's
(20:46):
this three consistent available, and responsive, and you want to
be that too. But it's not enough that I think, oh,
you know, JOHNA, I'm consistent, available, and responsive. That's not
enough because it's a relationship. I need to reach out.
I need to make sure it's like a dual factor authentication.
I need to make sure that you experienced me as
reliable and predictable. So again then you get the five
(21:09):
pillars of a secure life, which is I want to
be consistent, available, responsive, reliable, and predictable, also known as CARP.
So I want to be CARP, and I want others
around me to be CARP. And if they're not CARP,
then we have a problem because, especially if you have
an anxious attachment style, you have a sixth sense for
(21:34):
uh little CUsing the environment. It's like you have this
it's really like a superpower. And I write about that
in the book, like you can see things in the
environment that other people can't see.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It's just like the data really shows.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yeah, reading Harper, get out carp or bust.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
I do have a question for you, though, because there
is you know, we talk so much about relationships, right,
and I think Jan and I would both I can
speak pretty safely to on both of our behalfs in
this that so much of being in a healthy relationship
has to do with the ownership of yourself and like
your own knowing of your own worth and your own
(22:13):
security within yourself. So do you feel like these things
can continue to grow at the same time or do
you think it is like more of like a step one,
step two. So, like, I know that I've grown less
anxiously attached even with my partner. We've been together for
eleven years, my husband and I. But as time has
gone on and I have created my own safety in myself,
(22:33):
I'm less anxiously attached to him, and I'm more likely
to like just see him more. I guess his response
doesn't maybe trigger as much in me. So is it
a two step process or are those two things constantly
growing at the same time.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I'm so glad that you asked me, And I think
what happens is that we if we are if we
have this ability to work with work with ourselves, we
usually come up with other solutions. And that's I really
try to emphasize that in this new book Secure. It's
(23:11):
really I see these different attachment style as like this
is the kind of like this is the kind of
animal that you are. You have this because if it's
not something that happened because the way that our parents
treated us. But it's really a confluence of things, and
some of it is very sensitive biology that we can
identify specific things that other people can't. And the avoidance
(23:33):
are more they just like a little bit of distance.
They don't like too much closeness. So if you can
come into terms with it, then you can find their
reassurance and the closeness that you need also in other people.
And there's less of an expectation, no, you have to
show up for me, because maybe oftentimes avoidance can't really
(23:55):
like show up for you in that way.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
So that's really so.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I wonder if we'll go down into the details, we'll
probably be able to see, like what is it that
made that transition possible for you in like in your
social in your greater social mill gain.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, I wonder about that.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
I wonder about it too.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Actually, something we can bring amy always something we can bring.
It's the worst thing that we could do as parents.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
We'd like to avoid that.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Oh, that is.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
The most honest from our heart question.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's like right out of my alley because there's a
whole chapter in the Secure it's chapter ten, which is
one of my favorite chapters, and it's called causality.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
I'm going to go right to it.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
When I go, I already knew you were going to
always skip to the end.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
I actually visualize you going straight to chapter ten.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
For me, it was so freeing starting to think that way.
And I even get goosebumps now thinking about it, because
really shifted the whole way that I look that I
look back at my life and my parents, my interactions
with different people. So what happened with me is that
I actually I was first I was trained as a
therapist and as psychiatrist, and then once I was down
(25:15):
on all the years and years and years of training,
I went into the lab and starting to do molecular northscience.
And when you become a scientist, all of a sudden
you see that you can't just throw causal explanations like
the way that so many psychologists did. Oh, because this
happened to you as a child, Now you're this way
or that way. Because proving causality, like it's the holy
(25:39):
grail of scientific discovery, it's really really hard, and especially
in one person, in one way, we know now that
things are so much nuanced in that and it's a
combination of like even exposure in utero and genes and
other things that come into play. There's so much that
we don't know. So I think to make all that
(26:02):
causal connections between the way that we parent and that oh,
because we did this, we're going to damage our kids
for life. That's just not like what the literature shows,
like there isn't such a direct cause and effect. And
I think for me, like, I think that's there all
of the I tell this to all of the parents
in my practice because I think it's very freeing because
(26:26):
let's be real, like raising a human child is an
enormous task. It never ends, and you can't do it perfectly.
There's just no way that you could do it perfectly.
It's like the human brain needs so much stimulation, it's endless.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
There's no way that you can do it perfectly.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
So the expectation that we have, which is based on
like basically these remnants fraud and remnants that haven't held
up to the new research, like we can really toss
them away because they don't really hold water. The best
that you can do is you can try to be
carp because that's sort of like the and then, And
(27:04):
of course you're not going to be able to do
it perfectly, but it's just the intention and trying to
the best thing is to try to anticipate things before.
And we all parents know that you're not going to
wait until your child is super hungry to feed them,
or you're not going to wait until they're super tired
to put them to sleep. So it's the same kind
of thing. When do they need the attention And if
(27:26):
you give it early on, then you actually can like
you get a lot more time for yourself. But the
whole cause and effect.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Well that's reassuring. But also they'll be going to therapy regardless, right, Yeah,
we just need less things on their list once they
get there. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
I'm so excited to read your new book is called Secure,
The Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life attached. Thank
you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Thank you. It was great.
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's Adult Education. We've got doctor Emir Levine on.
So he has a book that was a huge, huge
success book back gosh, how ten no more than that
fifteen years ago, is called Attached. Such a good book.
I feel like I see it at every therapy center.
It's a book that I read post divorce. But he's
got a new one out called Secure and kb. Isn't
(00:29):
that what we all strive to be for our children,
for ourselves, for our future generation. So let's get them
on and shout all about his new book.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hello, Hello there, how are you? I'm doing well. How
are you doing?
Speaker 4 (00:41):
I'm good, Thank you, I'm Jana. This is Kristin Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And we'll just kind of hop right into it because
that's how our attachment style works.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
We just get right in there.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
We get very anxiously attached, especially when we have a doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm curious how this all started for you too? Is
this what she started in? Was the attachment? And what
was it for you that was like? This is why
I want to speak about attachment styles.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Oh, I mean the whole thing. The story is a
very personal story. It was fifteen years ago when I
was going through a terrible breakup. At the time, it
was like really devastating, so painful, and I didn't really
understand what was going on, and it didn't really make
sense because I knew that we loved each other and like,
(01:31):
but still it didn't work out. And it just so
happened by chance that I was working. I'm both an
adult and a child psychiatrist, so I was working in
the therapeutic nursery.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We worked. I worked with the.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Mothers were trauma survivors and their kids, their toddlers to
help them create a more secure bond. Because when you
have like a mother with PTSD, like if the child
drops something or they scream or they just like which
they do all the time, they step back and they
shut down, and then with understanding the logical attachment, the
(02:07):
child tries to get them even more the attention, so
it escalates and escalates, and so in that particular treatment
will help mother become more secure with their children, with
their child. And he was so effective and it was
so amazing that I did something that I never really do.
You get this really long list of suggested reading and
(02:29):
I started I read everything on this suggested reading list,
including these several textbooks, and that's where I actually discovered
these whole adult attachment styles that I never learned about
in my clinical training because it's not part of clinical psychology.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
It was only part of.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Social psychology and other really like very niche buried in
academic papers. But it was so it felt like a
light bulb went on in my head. It made so
much more sense what was going on in their relationship
that then I called my my high school friend Rachel,
and I told her listen instead of me just like
(03:07):
talking about the breakup all the time, like at nauseum,
Like you can't listen to me anymore. Let's take all
that energy and channel it into writing this book. And
that's how Attached came to be. Now Secure, my new
book is a direct extension of that because I just
wrote in Attached about the attachment styles, But how do
(03:28):
you become more secure? There's anxious, aborting and secure And
you just mentioned the anxious, which I can relate to.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, my therapist actually was the one who recommended Attached
to me post my divorce, because it was one of
those where I know that I was absolutely anxiously attached
because you know, I have my own trauma from the past,
but also I wanted to be loved and told that
was good enough in this and it's like, don't you can't,
don't leave me because I have abandonment issues and so
(03:56):
it's just learning and your book was brilliant. I mean,
so I'm so excited to reach secure because I feel
like from a lot of the work post divorce and
then you know, obviously I'm a new marriage and I'm
how I am now? Is I feel more secure now?
I can drift back into moments at times if I
feel triggered or and I think that's the piece where
(04:17):
I'm curious, like, how do you because I know it's
still in me, it's not doesn't show up, it doesn't
show up how it used to, but I know it's
still there, And so how do you stay more on
the secure when you lean more attached.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, that's a great question, and that's part of and
so I mean, that's part of the reason why I
wrote Secure, because there's new science and new findings and
now we know that these attachment styles are actually not
setting stone and they're not categories. They're more on the
spectrum and that actually we can have different attachment styles
(04:54):
with different people. And in the book and Secure, I
have a very different questionnaire where I call it like
this cover your attachment topography. I also have it online
on my website where you go and there's a drop
down menu and you can really you can even check,
like I even put you can even check your attachment
style with your pet, with a co worker, with a
(05:15):
lot of different people in your life, with a friend,
with a sibling, and you'll see that they not all
made the same. And then you can have different attachment
styles with different people. And then so there's a general
attachment style and we can change our attachment style. And
actually I find it very promising, and I use that
topography that's basically the starting point of the new book.
(05:39):
You look at these different attachment styles and where you
are and who are to secure people in your life,
and you use that as a vehicle to change your
brain towards greater security. And you write that there could
be people in your life that can drag you or
push you towards anxious, that anxious quadrant.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's like four quadrants.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
No, but it's true because I definitely feel obviously more
secure initially because Alan is so wildly different from my
acts too, So that's also I'm sure a.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Big piece brings something different in you.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, and there's a more of a peace and safety
and security as opposed to what I felt in past,
which is why I always leaned anxious.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
So I do have a question, and I and I
wondered too, both for Jana and I, because we grew
up under similar circumstances and so how we deal with
attachment is sometimes different though, which is interesting to me.
So when you talk about I guess like and I
don't even know it's chicken or egg because you've got
(06:41):
you know, does your attachment style come from this? Did
it come from your parents? Can it be generational? Can
you break it right? Like we are both on a
mission to break cycles in our family and so and
in marriages, you know. So for you, where does I
guess take us to the beginning? Where does a if
we want to have a healthiest tap attachment style, which
is what we're both aiming to do as adults, but
(07:03):
more so you know in grain in our kids, where
does that start.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I'm so glad you asked this question, because again, like
it's been fifteen years since Attached was published, and now
we have new data and new information and actually it's
really it's paradigm shifting, if you ask me, because there
is really recent research that actually shows that the like
(07:28):
the attachment style we have as a child, the attachment
style we have as a child, and also the parental
involvement has actually very very small contribution to your adult
attachment style. And there's actually, yes, I know, it's very surprising,
and I will surprised myself.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
It's relieving, to be honest with you, a little, right.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, And that's why I love science, because it really
can you can test something and then you can find
that it's actually very different from what you thought, and
its relieving. I actually find it very like, very hopeful too,
because we can change our attachment style. We are such
an uber social species. This is our biggest asset. I mean,
(08:10):
we're not particularly strong animals, yet we inhabit every place
on this planet, every niche on this planet, even like
made it this time almost through the moon but not quite,
but we made it to the moon all because we
can collaborate so well with each other, so it wouldn't
really make sense we have to be socially savvy. Wouldn't
(08:32):
make sense that something that happened to us with one person,
like really early on, that's it. We're set for life.
And the research actually shows that that's not the case.
There's one study that came out actually this year, and
they show that the maternal effect was three percent on
adults the adult attachment style, but actually that early childhood
(08:54):
friendships had a greater effect, Like it was like eleven percent,
so still not a huge effect, but like three times
as much as the maternal effect. So you asked me
about how to think about children and how to actually
help children and us adults navigate this attachment terrain, because
that's how I see it now. It's more like navigating
(09:15):
an attachment terrain or topography, and I.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Have an answer for that. That's why I wrote Secure.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I really wanted to give tools for people in order
to help them end up in a more secure place.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Obviously, we're going to order the book, but what are
just some of the tools that are in your book
that are helpful?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yes, I'm gonna like tell you because I now really
have to say, all these years later, I don't really
think so much about these attachment styles and in it's
really a part of something that a secure priming therapy,
which how to help people become more secure. And so
it has to do with the fact that we just
really have to understand that our brain really hates exclusion.
(10:12):
It loads exclusion, and it really hates that we're like
if we're being ignored. It just hates it so much.
And they've done these studies. I call it the Sybable
effect in the book, it's.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
The first chapter.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
It's like, here's the problem, Like, we don't know in
our society that our brains really hate exclusion. So then
we have this inner narrative when let's say my boss
is not including me in their work call, or I
see on social media that I haven't been invited to
stuff or all sorts of things, and I used to
(10:44):
have this narrative in my head. I shouldn't let this
get to me. It's fine, I'm being too sensitive. But
when you look at the science and the studies, it's
remarkable because they had this cyberball experiment where you are
playing game of catch with two other imaginary people's like
a little simplified video game, and all of a sudden,
(11:06):
they stopped throwing the ball in your direction, so you're excluded,
and areas of really painful distress and self scrutiny light
up in the brain when they didn't and their MRI,
so it's really like painful and also you start thinking,
what have I done wrong?
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Am I? Okay? Is this like?
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Is this something that I didn't? Are there upset with me?
That's sort of like the self scrutiny. And when they tried,
they said, okay, you know what, when you're not getting
the ball thrown in your direction, we're going to give
you a sum of money. So they thought, well, you'll
get money that's going to maybe mitigate the decipable effect. No,
it didn't really work at all. Or when they actually
(11:47):
told I don't know they did that experiment, but they
did it the ethics committee.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I don't know how they proved it. They told minority.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Students that the other two that they're playing with the
members of the KKK, So you think, what do I
care about these people if they're going to play with me?
Or now there's despeakable people. No, it really didn't really
mitigate the effect, and it's still really areas of distress
light up in our brain, so it's almost like a reflex.
We're programmed to really be very sensitive to exclusion and
(12:20):
to being ignored, and it also affects us psychologically. It
affects with people who are excluded to report feeling less
self esteem, less in control of their lives, and less
like that life is less meaningful. So I was really
surprised when I came across this because I thought that
if life is meaningful my self esteem, what does it
(12:41):
have to do with the people who are inviting.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Me or not?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Or am I being included or not? But it really
seeps in so deeply into our psychological core, like being excluded,
of being ignored, or being shut down, shut out of
someone's life, because it really is about feeling of survivor
that's how we feel safe. We feel safe in the
world through our this seemingly uh, this seems like this
(13:07):
connection that we have back and forth. That's what attachment
is about. It's the safety radar. It's a way for
us to feel safe. So that's the first idea, really
having to really let that sink in, like like we can't.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Really we have.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Been giving too much room and too much allowance for
exclusion in our lives, also with our children I can
give you an example for that, for example, if you want, yeah, please,
So oftentimes I'll give you this a narrow and it's
just I'm also a child psychiatrist. So let's say you
have a three year old and they come home and
they say, mommy, mommy, like, I don't know, Sophie didn't
(13:46):
want to play with me today, So you like, like
what I would have done before knowing this information, I would.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Say it's okay.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I would feel terrible, but I would say to myself, well,
this is the world. She's going to have to learn
to live in the real world, and she's gonna learn
to be tough. So we probably bend down and hug
her and say it's okay, she'll play with you tomorrow.
But actually there's really an opportunity here to even teach kids.
And also I'm teaching adults and we'll get to that
(14:16):
that well, I mean, in my practice, I do it
like with this story. I tell them a story because
there's three year olds, but basically this story will convey
you know, well, Sophie is not such a reliable friend.
Maybe play with Rachel. She always wants to play with you,
She's always there and really teach them from a very
young age sort of the lesson of secure friendship, because
(14:38):
you remember, also I told you that friendships are no
less important than our parental figures in shaping our attachment styles,
our adult attachment styles. So that's just like one example
of how it can be used in everyday life.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah, I know, I'm curious about that piece because I'm
having My daughter has been feeling left out a lot.
She's in fourth grade, and I'm having a hard time
find the right words to kind of say to her,
like you know, she'll be like, Mom, you know, feel
left out and you know that my friends aren't talking
to me, and you know, maybe I'm saying the wrong thing.
But I'm like, well, I'm like, maybe, you know, just
keep trying to insert yourself and have But now I'm like,
(15:12):
am I teaching her to be like, you know, anxiously
coming to them? But I'm also just I'm wanting I'm like,
because you know, she can be shy sometimes, so sometimes
I say like, well, if you're not talking to them, like,
they might feel that you don't want to play or
talk or something, so maybe you need to insert yourself more.
But now I'm thinking, gosh, maybe that's not the right
(15:33):
thing to say. So what should I kind of do
around that piece? Because that fourth grade is tough?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I know, I know, I mean right now?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, you know, something like actually Balby, who's the father
of the adults attachment, he said that attachment starts like
even before we actually he didn't know that he starts
before we were born. He said it starts at birth
and ends when we die. And I think it's really true,
and you'll be surprised. Like I have patients to where
who live in retirement communities and all of a sudden,
(16:04):
they weren't invited to that majan game. And you know,
it's just as painful. It's something that repeat itself, you know,
throughout our whole life, and it's really part of the
whole I day and Secure is to teach us, to
teach the reader how to navigate your.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Social world towards more secure people.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
So what I've found often is that our brain naturally
gravitates to where there's problems, especially if we have anxious attachment,
we feel we have to solve it. It's like, no,
why are they not calling me here? Let me try,
Let me text them what's happening? Checking all of that stuff.
And usually what happens is that there are secure people
in our lives, but they're kind of like boring because
(16:49):
they're always there. They always call us, those reply to
us so and then like our tension is being swept
in another direction. And a big part of a secure
priming therapy is like, you know what, instead of looking
here and like what's happening, why you're not answering here?
There's this person who always answers, and instead of texting them,
(17:11):
text the person who always answers. And I think it's
also true with kids. I can give you an example
of something that happened to me when I was really young.
I had like I had three friends, and I still
remember it like it was yesterday. They came to visit.
They came, we had a play date in my house,
(17:33):
and they were mean to me. They didn't speak nicely
to me. And my sister, who's two years older than me,
she was there. She's always been my defender. She was like,
you can't speak to him like that. Get out of
the house. And she threw him out of the house.
And just before they left, they were like, you'll see,
we're going to get.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
You tomorrow and the next.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Day I was scared to go to school, but my dad,
who's a very tough person, he said, no, like, go
there and you'll be fine, and just like talk to
someone else and you like, don't even pay attention to them.
And I swear to God, I remember it as if
it were yesterday, because it's such an emotionally valent I
remember going down exactly where the stairs were. There's a
(18:12):
big tree in front of me, and they were there
in front of me, starting to say mean things to
taunt me. And I remember looking like to the left
and seeing I think it was Jared and Ethan. I
remember their names and walking up to them and starting
to talk to them, and the rest was history. For
(18:32):
their next three like two years, they were my best
friends and they're really really nice and very very secure,
and it made such a huge difference. So there are
ways of explaining. I think it's very important for people
from a very early age to understand what air reliable
(18:53):
friend is versus an unreliable friend. And in the book
I call it, I call I really came up. I
thought about what would be I thought about, like basically,
I call it the five Pillars of a secure life
of a real secure relationship.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
And that's like a big.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
It's a major part of secure pharmic therapy, the five
pillars of a secure life, which I call CARP and
I can explain more.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
This might be a silly question, but is there a
phrase or something that you say or that you tell people,
like if they're kind of retrieving back into maybe a
negative attachment, that's something that can kind of set them
on the right path, Like something that's just I don't know,
like a one sentence phrase or just something question, yeah, yeah,
something that just kind of puts you back in today
(20:00):
instead of where.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Tell us how to think? Is really where we're at, doctor.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So the way that I look at it, I separate
the world now to two types, because you can also
look at it secure and insecure, not just the world
the social social environment. The two types of social environment.
One is of the people who are consistent, available, and responsive.
(20:26):
And that's basically the most important ingredients of the secure person.
And I would bet you that your new husband, like
new and improved husband, is more consistent, available, and responsive,
much more than the one that you've divorced. So there's
(20:46):
this three consistent available, and responsive, and you want to
be that too. But it's not enough that I think, oh,
you know, JOHNA, I'm consistent, available, and responsive. That's not
enough because it's a relationship. I need to reach out.
I need to make sure it's like a dual factor authentication.
I need to make sure that you experienced me as
reliable and predictable. So again then you get the five
(21:09):
pillars of a secure life, which is I want to
be consistent, available, responsive, reliable, and predictable, also known as CARP.
So I want to be CARP, and I want others
around me to be CARP. And if they're not CARP,
then we have a problem because, especially if you have
an anxious attachment style, you have a sixth sense for
(21:34):
uh little CUsing the environment. It's like you have this
it's really like a superpower. And I write about that
in the book, like you can see things in the
environment that other people can't see.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
It's just like the data really shows.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yeah, reading Harper, get out carp or bust.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
I do have a question for you, though, because there
is you know, we talk so much about relationships, right,
and I think Jan and I would both I can
speak pretty safely to on both of our behalfs in
this that so much of being in a healthy relationship
has to do with the ownership of yourself and like
your own knowing of your own worth and your own
(22:13):
security within yourself. So do you feel like these things
can continue to grow at the same time or do
you think it is like more of like a step one,
step two. So, like, I know that I've grown less
anxiously attached even with my partner. We've been together for
eleven years, my husband and I. But as time has
gone on and I have created my own safety in myself,
(22:33):
I'm less anxiously attached to him, and I'm more likely
to like just see him more. I guess his response
doesn't maybe trigger as much in me. So is it
a two step process or are those two things constantly
growing at the same time.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I'm so glad that you asked me, And I think
what happens is that we if we are if we
have this ability to work with work with ourselves, we
usually come up with other solutions. And that's I really
try to emphasize that in this new book Secure. It's
(23:11):
really I see these different attachment style as like this
is the kind of like this is the kind of
animal that you are. You have this because if it's
not something that happened because the way that our parents
treated us. But it's really a confluence of things, and
some of it is very sensitive biology that we can
identify specific things that other people can't. And the avoidance
(23:33):
are more they just like a little bit of distance.
They don't like too much closeness. So if you can
come into terms with it, then you can find their
reassurance and the closeness that you need also in other people.
And there's less of an expectation, no, you have to
show up for me, because maybe oftentimes avoidance can't really
(23:55):
like show up for you in that way.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
So that's really so.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I wonder if we'll go down into the details, we'll
probably be able to see, like what is it that
made that transition possible for you in like in your
social in your greater social mill gain.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, I wonder about that.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
I wonder about it too.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Actually, something we can bring amy always something we can bring.
It's the worst thing that we could do as parents.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
We'd like to avoid that.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Oh, that is.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
The most honest from our heart question.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's like right out of my alley because there's a
whole chapter in the Secure it's chapter ten, which is
one of my favorite chapters, and it's called causality.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
I'm going to go right to it.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
When I go, I already knew you were going to
always skip to the end.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
I actually visualize you going straight to chapter ten.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
For me, it was so freeing starting to think that way.
And I even get goosebumps now thinking about it, because
really shifted the whole way that I look that I
look back at my life and my parents, my interactions
with different people. So what happened with me is that
I actually I was first I was trained as a
therapist and as psychiatrist, and then once I was down
(25:15):
on all the years and years and years of training,
I went into the lab and starting to do molecular northscience.
And when you become a scientist, all of a sudden
you see that you can't just throw causal explanations like
the way that so many psychologists did. Oh, because this
happened to you as a child, Now you're this way
or that way. Because proving causality, like it's the holy
(25:39):
grail of scientific discovery, it's really really hard, and especially
in one person, in one way, we know now that
things are so much nuanced in that and it's a
combination of like even exposure in utero and genes and
other things that come into play. There's so much that
we don't know. So I think to make all that
(26:02):
causal connections between the way that we parent and that oh,
because we did this, we're going to damage our kids
for life. That's just not like what the literature shows,
like there isn't such a direct cause and effect. And
I think for me, like, I think that's there all
of the I tell this to all of the parents
in my practice because I think it's very freeing because
(26:26):
let's be real, like raising a human child is an
enormous task. It never ends, and you can't do it perfectly.
There's just no way that you could do it perfectly.
It's like the human brain needs so much stimulation, it's endless.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
There's no way that you can do it perfectly.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
So the expectation that we have, which is based on
like basically these remnants fraud and remnants that haven't held
up to the new research, like we can really toss
them away because they don't really hold water. The best
that you can do is you can try to be
carp because that's sort of like the and then, And
(27:04):
of course you're not going to be able to do
it perfectly, but it's just the intention and trying to
the best thing is to try to anticipate things before.
And we all parents know that you're not going to
wait until your child is super hungry to feed them,
or you're not going to wait until they're super tired
to put them to sleep. So it's the same kind
of thing. When do they need the attention And if
(27:26):
you give it early on, then you actually can like
you get a lot more time for yourself. But the
whole cause and effect.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Well that's reassuring. But also they'll be going to therapy regardless, right, Yeah,
we just need less things on their list once they
get there. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
I'm so excited to read your new book is called Secure,
The Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life attached. Thank
you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Thank you. It was great.
Host
Jana Kramer
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