Relationship Neuroscience Expert Thais Gibson: Rewiring Your Attachment Style and Moving Through Power Struggles

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I personally do this work because I really plugged into it.
I was a fearful, avoidant attachment style, and relationships growing
up for me, all I saw was chaos, and relationships
in my young adult life, like in my late teens
early twenties, were also chaos. I was like the crazy one.
I was really. I struggled a lot, but I also
profoundly plunged into the work, and I did it from

(00:21):
the perspective of like I'm going to retrain my brain,
I'm going to retrain my body. I'm going to show
up for this and I will truthfully say that I
am so fulfilled in my relationship. I am so grateful.
It's literally one of the things I'm most grateful for
on this planet. If you asked me fifteen years ago,
before I really did the work, do you think that
you're going to be in a secure, healthy relationship, I
would be like, No, I grew up be in like

(00:41):
I'm never getting married. I'm never doing that. You obviously
need commitment, and it's going to depend on your ability
to show up and do these things. But it's a
very solvable problem.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Good I thanks for listening to the show. This is
better than Yesterday. That's the name of the podcast. Useful
tools and useful conversations to help make your day to
day better than it was yesterday, every episode since twenty
and thirteen. My name's Oshia Ginsburg. Thank you so much
for being here. It's the first couple weeks of December,
and it's just me or is it the time of
year when relationships start to come into focus? Because when

(01:17):
we begin to reflect on the year, we might be
feeling I don't know, burned out, maybe exhausted, So either
we are harder to deal with or we are more
sensitive to others around us. And you soon, look, we
might be going on a break shortly, We're go about
to spend a bunch of time around people we love
and possible close proximity to people we haven't seen it.

(01:38):
Sometimes all these things can really play a part with
us really kind of figuring out and being aware of
how our relationships are doing. And look, there's a lot
of information out there to help you, I don't know,
self diagnose or figure out exactly how you will love
or your loved ones act the way you do to
know where things might not be as easy as you

(02:00):
want them to be. But sometimes What doesn't get talked
about are ways that you could change or is that
even possible. Thankfully, my guest today knows for sure there
are plenty of ways to change, and yes, it is
very possible. My guest today is Tys Gibson. She is
a counselor, speaker, and a leader in the personal development field.

(02:21):
She's got a PhD. She's satisfied and other thirteen separate modalities.
Has even founded her own theories and her own method.
She's written two books, Learning Love and Attachment Theory. She's
got nearly forty million views across her social platform. She's very,
very powerful. She's been a guest on the Mel Robbins
podcast Women of Impact. She's a solid operator. She also

(02:43):
hosts her own in depth programs, courses and modules at
the Personal Development Score is what it's called. Look, we
cover a lot in this conversation. Not only does Tice
well and truly know her stuff, she also knows just
how to communicate that stuff and how we can put
it into practice right now and perhaps some changes in
our own lives now. If tyst She's got systems, she's

(03:03):
got steps, she's got examples, she's got practical takeaways. This
thing is wall to war. So we go through a
lot of stuff here, including attachment, codependency, changing any limiting
thoughts which might be appearing in your subconscious mind, what
resentment really means when it shows up in our lives,
and moving through the six stages of a relationship. Yes,

(03:25):
she's identified six and right at the end, some really
really valuable frameworks for working through conflict. You may need
to take some notes during this, you may need to
save it. You may need to send us someone you
care about. There's a lot going in here. It's an
absolute masterclass. Enjoy this conversation with Tys Gibson. Tys, how
are you mate?

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I'm wonderful. How are you?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah? I mean you know it's all right, Like many
married people. Had an unplanned disagreement with my wife this morning,
and that's an okay way to start, I think because
I for a long time I worked in the reality
dating space. I hosted The Bachelor here in Australia, and
there is this idea that I don't know once once

(04:08):
we get there and then you know, the big drawing
shot pulls away from us entire land. Well, everything's fine
from there on out. It's just queer silent. At what
point did you go, you know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to grow up and tell other people why
their relationships aren't good. At what point did this become
a thing that you felt, you know, I have to
do this because I can't do anything else.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Honestly, I started teaching before I did anything about the
subconscious mind and neuroplasticity, how we rewire our wounds and
our fears and our triggers. And I started working in
private practice there, and then I eventually revisited attachment theory,
which I learned in first year university, and was like, wait,
they talk about attachment styles and how everybody has one,

(04:51):
but they never tell us how to rewire and change them.
So I started actually like bridging all of this neuroplasticity
research and neuroscience research into a relationship and working in
private practice, and then had a lot of clients being like, hey,
you know, can you publish it somewhere? Can you put
it online? Started putting it online just for clients in
my practice, and then you know, sort of by accident,

(05:12):
our YouTube channel took off. So I wouldn't say it
was like a I thought about it in advance. I
sort of, I guess ended up there.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Right before we start. I mean, I think it's important
for people to understand the concept of neural plasticity in
that is something that I'm sitting here before you, because
it exists, but our brains can give us the false
idea that this is how it is, is how it
was always be. I can never change, you can never

(05:40):
change blah. But that's not true. Is it not.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
True at all? And the part of us it says
that and it tells ourselves that is usually a conscious mind.
So your conscious mind is a logical, analytical thinking part
of your brain, and your subconscious mind is your habituated self.
And sometimes our conscious mind feels helpless. Oh, I said
I was going to quit eating chocolate in New Year's
I said I was going to stop raising my voice
at my partner. I said I was going to break
this bad habit of smoking cigarettes. And I didn't. And

(06:07):
so it must be helpless. I must not be able
to change. But usually it's not bad. It's that we
just haven't figured out how our subconscious mind works, how
rewiring works. And so if we don't know that, then
we're using our conscious mind, which is responsible for three
to five percent of all of our belief, thoughts, emotions,
and choices. To then try to outwill our subconscious mind,

(06:28):
which actually we can't. We can't really outwill, We can
only rewire. And your subconscious is ninety five to ninety
seven percent.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
So when it comes through relationships, this can be very
difficult because whether we like it or not. Sometimes I'm
not saying that I'm immune to this, though sometimes we
might accidentally, even though it looks and smells and feels
and has named a different person, we can end up
with the same type of person that may or may
not be very similar to one of our parents who

(06:58):
just to say, and we don't understand that these choices
are getting made for, So how do we get a
little wedge in there? And even well, I noticed that
it's happening in base dot to rewire those things.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
I think the first thing to recognize is that your
subconscious mind wants what's familiar because it equates it to
safety and thus survival. So what is actually the most
familiar is the way that we treat ourselves. Now, of course,
the way we treat ourselves usually is conditioned by our childhood.
So let's say for example, just to keep it really simple,
I'd say somebody was criticized a lot growing up as

(07:32):
a kid. Well, then often you're going to become very
critical of yourself because that's your condition, that was what
was mirrored to you, that's your programming. And as a
result of that, then you're going to end up often
being attracted to people long term who mirror that back
to you. Because your conscious minds is I don't like this,
your logical minds is I don't like this, your subconsciosnises,
oh this is safe, this is familiar, we know this,

(07:54):
and so then we end up picking from those patterns.
So so much of rewiring, I mean so much of
real wiring is about firing and wiring your own networks
that are strong enough to stick. And we can do
it in different areas. We can do it with core
wounds and triggers, we can do with boundaries or behaviors.
But what we really ultimately want to be able to do,
and I guess it can share a tool if you like.
I mean, you asked a very big question. But let's

(08:15):
say you have a trigger. Let's say you have a
belief then that I'm not good enough and let's say
that's something you're caring for a long period of time. Well,
your conscious mind doesn't have that belief. No one's waking
up and being like, I'm going to tell myself all
day long, I'm not good enough and see how I feel.
Where nobody's choosing that your subconscious mind has acquired that
program from earlier conditioning. So maybe you were constantly talked

(08:36):
down to, or maybe your parents a lot that by
being critical they were going to prepare you for life,
and the repetition of hearing what you did wrong and
where you weren't good enough eventually conditioned in that belief
system for you. But that's a very solvable problem, and
we can actually change it. So we start by making
sure that we find the limiting belief in its opposite a.

(08:56):
Step one, so not good enough, I am good enough,
betray it, I can have loyalty, I'll be abandoned, I
can be connected to me. We peck a belief that's
really showing up for us and our triggers, and we
find it's opposite. Step two. We have to speak to
the subconscious mind, which does not speak a language. It
speaks in emotions and in images, and so affirmations don't
really work that well because affirmations are just language. It's

(09:19):
like saying I'm good enough, I'm going.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
To I'm just going to cancel my I was going
to cancel my cat posted business one second, like okay,
I have all these posts and say you're gonna be fine,
I'm worthy of it, not gonna make any money now.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Oh sorry, I.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Didn't know this coffee cup as well had a whole
line of But affirmations is the thing, you know. It's
just because it's a tile on an Instagram doesn't mean
it's going to change your life, does it. It's literally
just words, so you're saying it's emotions and feelings. So yes, affirmations.
I've said them in savashna at the end of a
yoga class and I've felt nice. But it doesn't. Why

(09:58):
doesn't an affirmation tick the box?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, because your conscious mind speaks language, and your subconscious
speaks and emotions and images. So if I say to you,
whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant,
you probably yeah, because your conscious your conscious hears, do not.
And here's the language, and your subconscious just speaks in
emotions and images, which just flashes these things out, so
we have to actually come up with emotions and images
to represent the new idea. So if we say I

(10:21):
am good enough, then we need emotion and imagery to
prove that to ourselves, and we can actually find that
in memory. If you look at old memory. All memory
is a container of emotions and imagery. So if you
were to tell your favorite childhood memory, you might be like, oh,
I was playing at the beach, and you see the
images of the sand in the ocean. And we've seen
people when they tell old stories or old memories they

(10:42):
smile or they laugh, and it's because memories actually contain
emotions that were sort of connected to them at the time.
So in terms of the steps to rewire, we go
number one, what's the belief in its opposite, I'm not
good enough? I am good enough? Number two, we need
repetition of emotion and imagery. It's what fires and wires
neural pathways together. So we would need ten memories of
times we did feel good enough. People might say I

(11:04):
was a really good friend yesterday, or I showed up
to have that hard conversation with my boss last week.
So we find these evident moments of memory where we
did feel that way, we did see that we were
good enough. And step three we actually record ourselves saying
it out loud into our phone and we listen back
for at least twenty one days while in an alpha

(11:24):
brainwave state. So your brain is more suggestible when it's
producing alpha data brain waves, which is the first hour
that you wake up, the last hour before bed, after meditation,
after yoga class, after heavy duty exercise, where we're sort
of in that relaxed state, And what happens is when
we're producing more alpha brainwaves, or our subconscious mind is
more suggestible, it's more open to taking information in. And

(11:45):
so if we do those three steps, we're like, okay,
what's the wound or trigger and its opposite? Ten pieces
of memory to support the new idea, I am good enough,
record it down, listen back for twenty one days. In
alpha brain wave mode, we actually are able to get
our conscious mind to commit, unicate to our subconscious mind,
and allow that information to permeate so that we change
our neural networks and neural pathways over time to feel

(12:07):
differently about ourselves.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
So I'm recording myself going, I might think that everyone
at work thinks I'm an idiot. However, there was a
time when they called me up in front of the
office and said I did a good job. And there
was a time where I fixed the printer and that. Like,
so you record those things.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, but you don't start at the beginning. You don't say, oh,
I think that everybody thinks that I'm an idiot at.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
So I'm actually really good at work. Here's why, right,
And when.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
We are when we are listening back to ourselves saying it,
we ideally want to be feeling as much as we
can in our body. Like when I had that hard
discussion at work on the phone, Hey, I actually felt
proud about that. I handled that well, really feeling about
that and really seeing focused on visualizing what that experience
was like, how it when, what was around me. And

(12:54):
if we stay really tuned into doing that for a
couple of minutes a day, while we're listening back to
the recording, we're literally getting repetition of emotions and images,
which is the language of our subconscious mind. It's the
language of firing and wiring neuneral networks.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Your work centers around intimate relationships, but the relationships that
we have in our lives extend well beyond that. And
certainly a relationship where there is a huge amount of
love and no intimacy is a relationship between a parent
and a child or a step parent and a stepchild.
Are we able to in, you know, say, if we're

(13:28):
trying to figure out something about you know, particularly if
it's a teenage person, you know, there's probably very little
willingness on their part to change how the dynamic is
between us. If only one person is willing to work
on stuff like that little shit always ungrateful Blair, I'm
going to have to change this. Is it possible for

(13:49):
one person inside the relationship to do this work and
then affect both of you?

Speaker 1 (13:53):
So the answer is yes and no. I always say
to people that you know, especially in marriages, you know
each person and is one hundred percent responsible for their
fifty percent of the relationship. And there can be occasions
or cases where somebody's just pouring into the relationship, trying
so hard, and the other person's literally unwilling to do
the work with you, or to show up or to

(14:14):
have that hard conversation. And in that case you're going
to see, well, you can't do anything for somebody else.
We kind of enter into codependent territory or domain when
we expect that. However, at the same time, when we're
looking at parent child relationships, especially when that child's still
living in the home, there are things that we can
do as a human being that create more coregulation and
a better chance or ability for somebody to be more

(14:36):
likely to open up. So, for example, teenagers respond to
having their needs honored very well because teenagers are going
through a specific stage of behavioral development where when they
feel like they're seen as their own person, when they
feel like their autonomy is honored, they're more likely to
actually feel a sense of connection to the person who's
doing that for them, who's embracing them at that behavioral

(14:57):
stage of development. Also, if somebody's validating your emotions, if
they make you feel seen and heard, and if somebody
is accepting a non judgmental we're more likely to let
our guard down around those people feel more comfortable and
when our feelings are validated, we feel like somebody's on
our side. So there are things that we can do
in terms of how we communicate, how we show up
to try to support somebody more that is more likely

(15:20):
to create a healthier bonder connection in a relationship. But
it doesn't necessarily guarantee that that person's going to be
willing to work through things with you and completely transform everything.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
You mentioned codependency there. This won't be the first time
someone's heard that phrase. What does that look like? Where
does codependency come into a picture?

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, that's a great question. So codependency is actually quite
common in people's relationships, and it's this idea that somebody
is taking more responsibility that is necessary over somebody else's
life and somebody else's emotions, irrespective of if the person
on the receiving end of that wants responsibility for them
to be taken or not. So an example is you

(16:02):
might see somebody who is trying to handhold their partner's
spouse saying no, you have to eat this way, or
stop drinking or stop doing these things, and they're sort
of trying to control somebody else's behavior and output. And
actually people who are attempting to do the controlling, what
they're actually trying to do is control somebody else's behavior

(16:23):
as a way to control their own feelings. So, for example,
maybe you have a husband and wife, and maybe the
wife is saying I need my husband to live his
life in this certain way, and she starts trying to
control how the husband is showing up and living well.
The reality is that she's actually just trying to control
her husband's behavior because she's trying to control how her
husband's behavior makes her feel. And so it's an attempt

(16:45):
to regulate oneself through the control or actions towards another person,
and a lot of times it can be confusing for
people because in you're mixed within there are positive things
like oh, well, I want you to stop drinking so
much so that your health and that can be positive,
but also, you know, we're often doing things indirectly. So
instead of saying, hey, I'm going to have to set

(17:06):
boundaries around this drinking. It's been unhealthy, this is no
longer appropriate, and hey, I'm going to show up for
the responsibility, responsibility of how that makes me feel and
what I'm okay for, instead of doing it from you know,
the inside out and speaking about one's own feelings and
needs and boundaries. Instead it's like, no, no, I'm just going
to change your behavior and focus on you rather than
speaking for myself. And unfortunately, codependency is a result of

(17:28):
that just creates more headaches long term, and it's not
really the right way of approaching things.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
We might not realize this is something that nobody does deliberately. Obviously,
we might find ourselves kind of in that space. What
are some things we might want to ask to figure
out if we might be overstepping the line.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
So a lot of codependency shows up in a few places,
so I guess we can go through symptoms to see
if this might be something that we're struggling with. Symptom
number one would be that you have a lot of
resentment in your relationshipseople who are very codependent or more
prone to resentment, because resentment is really a whole bunch
of unmet needs and a lack of communication, and so
somebody is often in a place where they're trying to
control rather than speak of their own needs, Hey I'm

(18:11):
needing more of this, or saying no, you stop doing that,
you should change this, and so Symptom number one if
you're likely to feel resentment when you're trying to control
the other people's behavior and it's not going well. Simptom
number two is generally codependents are people pleasers. They're trying
to get their needs met from others by basically changing
themselves to be what they think people need them to be,
and of course that creates a lot of dysfunction. Sometim

(18:33):
number three is poor boundaries. If you're very boundaryless in relationships,
you're likely to be struggling with codependency. Symptom number four
is something called covert contracts, And a covert contract is
when we say, oh, I'm going to do these five
nice things for you, and I think if I do
these five nice things for you the next week, I
can maybe ask you to do that one nice thing

(18:53):
for me. And so we're essentially trying to buy our
way into asking for our needs and really tracking who's
giving more, who has the upper hand, all these different
things in a relationship, which again just leads to so
much dysfunction, because it's so much better to just say
this is what I'm needing, what do you need, and
have open dialogue and transparent communication. And then I would say,

(19:13):
another really big symptom of codependency is when somebody's in
a position where they are betraying and self silencing themselves,
so they are not allowing themselves to take up space.
They're kind of being inauthentic about their own truth and relationships.
And until you learn to do that, you're obviously also
going to step into more resentment and that so the

(19:34):
very last thing is when people believe that they are
responsible for other people's feelings and they really take that
on and take that to heart. So those are some
big symptoms you'd see of codependency.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Resentment is as I'm a cyber person. It's one of
those things that I had to learn very quickly. I
had to get rid of it. I wasn't I will
to hold it. It was like it was like picking
up a taking a pot out of the oven without
any you know, and any oven myths, Like if I

(20:05):
held it, I would get hurt because of if I
had this resentment. I always found that resentment gave me
a justification for behaving in a way that was not
aligned with my values. It gave me a justification for
being the kind of person I did not want to be.
But because when I held resentment, I was like yeah,
and I well, of course I did, and I ended

(20:27):
up it really just pulled me off to one side.
So I have to be so careful when it shows up,
and as a result, I try. I try really hard
to just like off gas it like a pressure cooker,
like all day. I have to just let it go
because I can't have it in me. And I got
lucky because I identify that I don't do it perfectly

(20:50):
all the time, obviously, but it's something that I'm really
really mindful of when it comes to resentment. What are
your What's a way that we might be able to
let go of something? I know the way that I
do it. I do it for a thing called metal
or loving kindness, meditation. What's a way that you could

(21:11):
recommend or a way that people might be able to
approach releasing resentment out of their life.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
This is a great question. I have four major steps
for this.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
I got a lot of great lists to us. I'm
really great lists.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
I like to think in framework very.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
YouTube first or right, like, here's five things you can do.
This is like a masterclass. I love it. So.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
The first thing, and you actually touch on this in passing,
is that sometimes we use resentment as a way to
set boundaries, and it's actually a symptom of having poor boundaries.
So sometimes we say, oh no, I'm going to hold
on to this, and it justifies that I was treated poorly,
And sometimes that's actually acting as a subconscious substitute for
just saying to somebody, Hey, I don't like the way
that was handled, And so I often say. Number One,
we have to check and are we resentful because somebody

(21:58):
hurt us and we didn't speak up about it. We
didn't share our authentic truth in that situation, And that's
part of why we're carrying it is we never came
full circle. So step one is checking there, and obviously
if you're struggling with that, it's time to go have
that conversation, speak that boundary state the need communicate so
we can solve for it. Number Two, Another big reason

(22:19):
we have resentment is that we haven't taken the lessons
away from it yet. So whatever the experience was, that
is fostering resentment within us. One of the biggest reasons
we have resmment towards others is because exactly what that
person's doing to us, we are also currently in the
habit of doing to ourselves. And an example of this
could be maybe you're really resentful that that friend is

(22:41):
always so critical of you. Well, guess when you resent
it the most, when you're also very critical of yourself.
So sometimes there's a powerful lesson in there that Hey,
the reason this is hitting home for me and landing
so deeply is because I actually need to see what
within me is re enacting the same patterns and course
correct for that. Three is oftentimes as well, we carry

(23:03):
resentment when we're not being vulnerable to people about what
our needs are in a relationship. So the things that
feel uncomfortable for us and being able to say to somebody, hey,
this is what I'm looking for, these are my standards,
and so being able to share our authenticity also empowers
people to better understand us, so we're not constantly getting

(23:23):
hurt by the same person or repeating those patterns, or
often get people to check in there. And then the
very last thing is that sometimes we are resentful about
things that we haven't seen in a holistic way yet.
So we often carry things when we've seen them only
in a one sided perception. And I often get people
and it's a really powerful thing to do at home

(23:44):
is to look at the thing that you're resenting ask yourself, well,
how did that serve me in a hidden way? How
did that teach me? Was there a silver lining? Because
sometimes for example, we're like, so resentful about maybe your ex.
You know, I hear this a lot in our programs.
People will be like, oh, my ex they hurt me,
they did this terrible thing to me. And then when

(24:05):
we look sometimes they're like, oh, but when my ex
hurt me and betrayed me. Out of that really painful experience,
I found the relationship to myself. I started doing yoga
or meditation or personal growth and personal development. And sometimes
when we see wait, there was actually this hidden positive
that came out of it, not to take away from
the painful event, because that's very valid, but also to

(24:26):
see it full circle and be like, well, actually, this
positive thing did show up, did come out of it.
Sometimes when we see that in a more holistic way
and we get out of just this one sided perception
of all the negative, all the bad, that actually is
a really powerful way to release resentment at the subconscious level.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
You mentioned earlier attachment theory, which is the idea of
secure attachment or insecure attachment, and we get it to
delude to a little earlier about that whether we lock
it or not, we can accidentally repeate patents. When how
can we figure out if we're in a relationship which

(25:04):
is either secure or insecure. What are some things that
we can identify which might give us a clue that, ah,
there's something happening going on here.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah. I find people have the easiest time identifying when
I sort of explain the attachment styles, because usually in
these themes and patterns, you'll be able to pretty quickly
be like, oh, no, that one is me. So I
guess people can know first that there are four attachment styles.
Every single person has one. This is one of the biggest,
most steady bodies of research and psychology, originating out of
Cambridge University with John Bolby, and the first attachment cell

(25:36):
is secure attachment style. It makes up statistically roughly fifty
percent of the population build that numbers on the decline,
and securely attached people they have a lot of healthy
coping mechanisms and relationships. They communicate transparently, they are open,
they are vulnerable, they respect their own boundaries, They get
triggered less intensely and less frequently, and they actually report

(25:59):
not just having the longest lasting relationships, but they report
being the most fulfilled in those long lasting relationships, which
I think is an important metric because I've seen too
many people being in long lasting relationships and they're not happy, right,
and so that does matter. And so securely attached individuals
they grow up in childhood having approach oriented behaviors. They
have parents who are attuned to them, who are present

(26:21):
with them, and if the child is distressed, they move
towards the child. They try to sue the child, and
it teaches it conditions a child to be like, oh, well,
my needs are worthy of being seen, my emotions are
safe to express. I can trust people, I can rely
that people will be there for me. And as a result,
that's their modeling. It's how they will then treat themselves,
and it's what they will be attracted to in partners
in their adult life. And so that's our secure attachment style.

(26:43):
The goal is to become that way. If we're not
already knowing that from the insecure attachment styles that we'll
get into, you can rewire, you can change your patterns.
You're not born with them. They get conditioned into through
repetition and emotion. We can change them three insecure attachment styles,
and you're welcome to as I go through them, what
you are or might have been in the past. But

(27:04):
at one end of the continuum we have an anxious
attachment style. And anxious attachment cells go through real or
perceived abandonment in childhood. So they either have parents who
there's an actual abandonment like God forbid, a parent passes
away or parent leaves doesn't come back to the childhood home,
and of course that critsy's huge abandonment wounds, but also

(27:24):
it can be perceived abandonment. It can be repetition of
parents being there, but then maybe they're working a lot,
they're always traveling, and so the child gets conditioned to
feel like love is there, and then love is taken
away of is there. Love is taken away. And research
shows that big T trauma one time like the loss
of a parent, actually shows up in a similar way

(27:46):
as a lot of repetition of small TA trauma across time.
A lot of that perceived abandonment can still create these
big abandonment wounds. So anxiously attach individuals they cope with
a sphere of abandonment by trying to hold on really
tight and cling so much and not let anybody out
of their site. And unfortunately a lot of anxious attachment
styles they're so preoccupied with closeness that they accidentally invade

(28:07):
people's boundaries a little bit sometimes, and as a result,
the thing that they're so scared to create, they accidentally
often end up in these self fulfilling prophecies around and
also anxiously attached individuals. They are dismissing and avoiding their
own needs in favor of people pleasing all the time.
So then they, as a result, are often most attracted
to other emotionally unavailable people, right because it's people who

(28:29):
treat them the way they treat themselves. And so they
often end up in these kind of difficult relationships where
they feel like they're always chasing, where they date for
a while and they never really get to a long
term commitment. And so that's sort of one end of
the continuum there, and there's two other ones. But before
I get into the two other ones, do you know
anybody who's anxious or have you ever? I'm sure you
use a lot of that on The Bachelor.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Look, we could go into the various casting ramifications, but
I could only you know, speak to my own experience,
and I was understanding of, you know, going through the
therapy that I've gone through, the attachment stuff I found
really interesting. And but like most things, Tyson, you can

(29:11):
know it and you can intellectualize it, but to try
to get between you and it when it happens faster
than you can possibly get in front of is another story.
And that that's where that's where the work is. I
think that is. It's just often identifying it afterwards. It's
kind of cruel that where we have three kind of

(29:32):
separate bits of our brain, they work at different speeds. Unfortunately,
the most powerful, kind of most gigantic, you know, violent
one is the one that has zero impulsability, and it's
the one that causes the most damage, the one that
then we have to like go through life apologizing for
the car accident we didn't realize we just caused because
that's the way that our brains work. It kind of sucks,

(29:54):
but it's what we've.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Got, yes, And also it's you know, this is like
the whole body of work I end up focusing on
is like how to rewire because to your point, which
I love that you said that, it's so meaningful, it's
one thing to see the patterns and understand them, it's
another thing to rewire them. The healing is in the
rewiring without rewiring, or just intellectualizing. And so we'll keep
going through and repeating these same themes, and we can

(30:16):
talk about maybe a little bit how to rewire some
of your attachment patterns, because they're very solvable problems, but
we need the right tools. So at the other end
of the continuum, in a way from anxious is the
dismissive avoidant and dismissible avoidance. Grew up with a lot
of childhood emotional neglect. Obviously that can be in big forms,
the really big, like parents are never home, food's never
on the table, but the vast majority of the time

(30:37):
it's the covert. It's like parents are there and kids
are at school on time, theirs stability, but there's no attunement.
If a child cries, it's like, oh, come on, get
it together, take this out here. Children should be seen
and not heard. And a child who's actually wired for attuonment,
they can't understand that their parents are emotionally unavailable to

(30:59):
them because children personalize everything. So instead a child growing
up in that kind of environment says, oh, it must
be me, I must be the problem. This part of me.
My emotions are not acceptable. They're not worthy, they're not
safe to express. It's not okay. This part of me
is defective and broken. Let me just repress all of this,
park it away, and they get relief by trying to

(31:21):
not need people. It's the only thing that allows them
to feel a sense of control over their environment. When
it comes to this part of them being essentially rejected,
they're like, well, let me just not try to connect
emotionally and let me try to not bond. Let me
repress this, and then I at least feel like I
am not just longing and waiting and being rejected. And
so they adapt to this by repressing the emotional part
of themselves, and as adults, dismissable voidance end up in

(31:41):
dynamics where they, unfortunately, as soon as things get real
in relationships are too close or too vulnerable, they're like,
oh my gosh, I don't want to feel vulnerable again.
This part of me is not acceptable. I'm going to
get trapped and engulfed. Oh my gosh, I need to
push this person away, and they will cut and run.
They'll leave things as soon as they get real, and
they'll often sabotage relationships that way because they're trying not

(32:01):
to feel like that again. The last attachment style is
the fearful avoidance, sometimes referred to the disorganized attachment style,
and this individual grows up in a childhood of chaos,
and usually more extreme chaos. And you can see as
an analogy, this is not the only thing that would
cause us. But as an analogy, let's say you have
a mother who's an alcoholic and one day Mom comes

(32:23):
home and she's in a good mood and she's loving,
and you're like, oh, love is good, love is safe.
I feel connected to her. This is great. And then
another day Mom comes home and she's drink a little
too much and she's angry drunk, and she's cruel and
she's unpredictable and she's scary and you're like, oh my god,
love is terrifying. Connection is scary. I need to get back.
And then another day Mom comes home and she's sober
and she's in a good mood and she's sweet again

(32:46):
and she's being nice. She feels a little bit guilty
about her behavior, and you're like, oh, okay, love is safe.
Another day Mom is sobering up, but she's detoxing and
she's really struggling, and she's snippy and she's shut down
and you're like, oh, I can't really get close to me.
Childlike this grows up in an environment where they're like
I never know what version I'm going to get, and
so they wire in competing associations or conditioning is such

(33:08):
that they get competing associations about the same thing, like
love is sometimes great, sometimes terrifying. And as a result
of this this this individual as an adult ends up
wanting closest but also being scared of it. And so
we'll see whether it was mom was an alcoholic or
a parent had narcissistic personality disorder. Love bombed you one day,
was terrifying another day. These types of scenarios, maybe you

(33:30):
saw a lot of trauma growing up, with tons of
fighting in the home, abuse. These types of things cause
a child to be like I cannot trust connection. I
don't know what version I'm getting, and so they have
this anxious side to them or they want closeness and
they're scared of being abandoned and love being taken away.
But on the flip side, when people get too close,
they're like, wait, get back, I don't trust this. This
is scary and so fearful avoidance. As adults, they're the

(33:52):
hot and cold partner. They're like, come here, get close,
get close. Somebody gets closer, like get back, stay away,
and they pinball back and forth between these anxious and
avoiding sides to them. And of course that's really confusing
to be on the receiving end of, but also it
kind of is representative of this emotional storm they're going
through internally first and the relationship to stuff. And so
that's our fourth and last.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Time I've been in a come here, go away relationship.
And you know what makes it even better is when
they're really hot. It like I don't like this, but
I like us. I don't know what to do it
just fuck me, man, it is it is a bad time.
It is. We could get that the two that you know,

(34:34):
the primal urge part of our brain is very strong.
It's far stronger sometimes than the I don't know if
this is good for us kind of situation. We can
get into all kinds of trouble because I think you know,
the way you're describing it, why would anybody want to
be in a relationship The risks are so great and

(34:54):
the pain is so much there, and why would I
go near it, you know, you know, forget about it.
But we are driven by this need, this absolute desire
for intimacy and closeness and connection and a shared experience
of life that keeps drawing us back. So figuring out
our own stuff is vital if we want to even

(35:17):
have a chance at happiness. You mentioned the you know
breaking up after when things get real. Availability plays a
huge role in that. Like I said, I'm fifty one,
like and I grew up in a part of Australia
that I mean it wasn't huge, It wasn't tiny, but
it wasn't huge, And so like who was there to date?

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Was?

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Who was there to date? And so you kind of
did what you needed to do to figure out, Like
you couldn't just like just go swipey swipeswipes and just
have your physical needs met quite quickly without doing any
of the emotional work. But in this time of just
abundance of the physicality being able to be satisfied, whether

(36:03):
you know, for rightly or wrongly, just this huge rise
and transactional kind of you know, physical relationships, how are
we ever going to get past that sticky bit, the
sticky part where someone goes, hey, no, I like you,
but you're really going to have to stop talking over me, okay,
because someone might just go, I don't want that, and
then he was too hard.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, I think that that's such an important part that
you raised. So I think there's two things you said
that really stood out to me. One is that that
like hot and coldness can be so addictive, and it's
actually the addictive components of something called intromitt and reinforcement.
It's what gamblers get addicted to.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
With boobs. Come on, It's like, that's so funny.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
It's true, that is the perfect analogy. But actually when you.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
When you get when.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
You look at a gambler's brain when they when they
are gambling gamblers, actually research shows us that gambler's actually
produce dope, more dope of being the motivation neurochemical when
a gambler thinks about gambling than when they're physically like
polyvoslam machine or gambling itself. And so it's also the
addiction of like are they coming back? Are they going
to show up? And it's so strong. But to your

(37:16):
point that we live in this culture that also seems
to almost reward this interimitt and reinforcement or the touch
and go relationships and listen, like, I'm not going to
sit here and say like it's bad to date people
and figure out what you want or what you're looking for.
There can be sort of an individuation process that happens
through connecting with different people and learning who you are
is through some of those experiences. But the reality is

(37:37):
that you hear the same things over and over again,
which is those end up being superficial relationships, and real
fulfillment comes from doing the heavy lifting, doing the actual
work to get to know somebody so much more deeply,
learn each other's feelings and needs, learn to coregulate work
through having hard conversations. And the people who you see
in the research who are actually statistically the most happy

(37:57):
and fulfilled in relationships and report that people who are
securely attached, who learn to have the heart conversations, who
know how to set boundaries, who know how to self
sue but also sue through others, and know how to
work through their triggers, and ways that allow them to
regulate both on their own and in the company of
people around them, and vulnerability. The last thing I'll say
about this too is that there's a huge body of

(38:18):
research done on loneliness and it was a study of
over three hundred and sixty thousand people and what they found,
first of all, was that chronic loneliness had a significant
impact on physiological health as smoking a pack of cigarettes
a day. And secondly, loneliness had nothing to do with
the quantity of relationships people had, but the quality of
relationships people had, which was determined by the level of

(38:40):
vulnerability they felt that they had and that they could
be safe expressing in connections around them. And so when
we're really able to have high quality relationships, it actually
improves our sense of fulfillment in those relationships, but it
even has impacts on our physical health.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Just taking a moment away from Tys to let you
know that Story Club's YouTube channel is up and running.
The stories are coming out every Thursday I put a
new story up. This is the Stories live comedy storytelling
show I do in Sydney every month. I've been running
it for over a year now and so every Thursday
a brand new story comes up. If you're looking for
something new to watch, that is I don't know, an
Australian story that is a true story and it is

(39:24):
a reflection of Life in Australia. Jump in there right
there the links in the show notes, as well as
a place where you can get tickets for the next show,
which is on the fifteenth of February. The tickets are
on sale and the lineup is solidifying as we speak.
Well back in just a moment with Tys Gibson. I'm

(39:50):
fascinated with and I'm going to take a slight, slightly
wide arc to get here. I'm fascinated with the things
that organized religion have systematized that you know, it comes
with a threat of death, you know, and Satan and
you know, burning in hell forever. But there's things that
go in there to unlock things in our brain that

(40:11):
you know, we can achieve through secular means, but they've
kind of got in there. And I wonder, and this
is just you know, a question. I wonder if the
whole idea of like oh no, no, you're not allowed
to have your genitals touch until this moment is there,
because if you don't spend time in the courtship phase
figuring each other out and getting to know each other
and only rely on the massive release of feel goodness

(40:35):
that you get when you rub genitals you're never going
to get over the sticky part, the tricky part. I wonder,
I wonder if the idea of like dating without you know,
physical intimacy might be a part of forcing the two
of you to figure things out rather than always relying

(40:57):
on the physicality to do the Marvin Gaye work of
the sexual hailing.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
I think it's a really interesting topic of conversation. So
I think there's partly, you know, different parts to it.
I think that when you look at like religion in
and of itself, I think originally a lot of religion
meets multiple needs. So we have basic needs for certainty,
right which there's a sense of certainty we get through religion.
There's a sense of uncertainty. We get the novelty, the

(41:23):
understanding there could be something greater than ourselves to find
out about it, learn about it. There's a sense of significance,
which is a basic need which brings us meaning, love
and connection to a higher power, higher source, growth, contribution.
These are all our six basic needs, and so religion
meets a lot of those things. And I could see
that being probably a big part that a lot of
those things came about from because those six basic needs
are a fundamental part of our own wiring. However, I

(41:46):
think if you look back into history, having some sort
of parameters around things also adds a lot of benefits.
And I'm not sure necessarily that religion was introduced so
that people would do the heavy lifting before they you know.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
I just found out that people It's like, you know,
some cultures have I don't know, we meet for dinner
every Friday, and anybody can come. Cultures that have that deliberate,
cohesive community ritual every week tend to do better, you know,
And people in those communities do better because they don't
have that loneliness thing. The antidote for loneliness is built
into the rituals of their culture versus us, which is,

(42:24):
I'm going to sit in a room by myself and
rub a piece of glass hoping to feel something. It's
not not feeling it, but I'm just gonna keep going.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
And honestly, I think that that's the difference between like
superficial meeting of needs and actual meeting of needs. Like
we get the you look at your six basic needs.
You get the maybe significance from the lake on social media,
or the love and connection because you see your friend's
picture from across the globe that you haven't talked to
in a while, And yes, that gives us a short
term gratification. But what I've always found with people is

(42:56):
people's quality of fulfillment individually is large turn by the
depth of value they're getting in regards to their needs
being met. The more superficial the version, the less of
them one they're actually feeling, and the more people then
seem to rely on getting caught in this vicious cycle
of like, let me go back to the short term gratification,
because I'm starving for the need, and it's like, when
you're starving for something, you're going to accept the breadcrumbs

(43:16):
version of it. And so you'll see this a lot
in society. And I do think that to your point,
going back to the idea of religion, like having these
rituals of connection, having sometimes these parameters around relationships and
how we do them and view them. You know, I
think that sometimes there's been immense benefits for that, for
those particular reasons that you're alluding to.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
As a I met my wife as a cyber person
that was and I dated for the first time in
my life as a sober person, you know, in my
light kind of light light thirties. And if you're dieting
without alcohol, it's a very different story because if you're drinking,
you can find connection with anybody, but that's not real.

(43:59):
You know, if boze is involved when you're meeting someone,
it might, yes, take the edge off, but it then
puts a false sense of comfortability that isn't really there.
If you're dating without booze, pretty quickly you can go, oh, yes,
I might be physically attracted to you, but there's actually no, no,
this isn't for me. Thank you, though you understand like that,

(44:19):
and I found I found that really really interesting, and
to be honest, like the first week of meeting Audrey,
we just talked because we were at work and I
didn't want to be that guy who's trying to hit
on her at work, so we just talked. There was nothing.
There was nothing in that. It's not like you know,

(44:42):
meeting someone out and then you know, figuring out a
way to be in the same room that night and
then whatever, now it's on. It wasn't that at all.
It was way way slower, and it might have been
frustrating in some ways, but it certainly allowed us to
see each other in a different way at first, and

(45:04):
that was new for me. It was nice.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
I love that. I think that that's such a beautiful point.
And I think sometimes too, when you're drinking or under
the influence of any kind of substance as a whole,
it's like, you know, you're not in your right mind
to necessarily be asking the right questions either, or to
be really advocating for your standards or your needs, or
to really be looking at the sometimes harder questions like
do our values align? Are we on the same page

(45:27):
about you know, our morals, how we want to live
our lives. And you know, even a few drinks and
you're like, oh, your inhibitions are lowered. Let's throw those
things by the wayside. Let's just have a good time.
But truly, I think one of the most important decisions
we make as a human being is choosing the people
we surround ourselves with, especially in marriages, especially in long
term relationships, because the reality is that we are always
being conditioned by our environment and by the people we

(45:49):
spend time around. And you know, you've seen this in
your long term marriage. I'm sure everybody sees this in
their relationships. You know, I think back to, you know,
almost eleven years ago when when I met my husband, like,
he's rubbed off of myself and vice versus so much
over the past decade plus. We take on so many
attributes and characteristics of somebody in vice versa, and so
who we spend our life with you want to be

(46:11):
making sure is a very intentional decision. And to your point,
the amount of people that are like, I'm attracted to
this person, we have a good time, that's it, let's
go for it and base decisions on those things rather
than having these meaningful discussions that should be a part
of that courtship phase are like, so it's far too
many people that end up with that boat.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Yeah, if you are dating someone and you it like
if you get a surprise on election day when you
go hang on your voting for who, like you haven't
had good conversations you need to have early on You
mentioned just kind of what you did offer to talk
about it. I think it's important that we do in
case people wanted to kind of hear what was the
idea that we might be able to rewire or change

(46:55):
our attachment style in the context of a relationship by
assume like it's very difficult to do these things outside
of relationship. How do you even go about that inside
a relationship? I'm good, do you need the boy of
the other person.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
There's five pillars. Here's a list for you. But before
but I want everything. It's not you might be able to.
It's that like it you one hundred person can. And
I would tell anybody listening to not think, oh, maybe
it's a possibility, like it's an actual truth. And you
know you obviously need commitment and it's going to depend

(47:30):
on your ability to show up and do these things.
But it's a very solvable problem. So first things first.
So there's five major pillars of rewiring, and in order
to rewire, we have to apply tools to the subconscious
level of mind. So nobody chooses consciously to be like, oh,
I'm going to be anxious or I'm going to be avoidant,
or I'm going to do these things. These are subconscious
mechanisms at play, according to past programming that people have experienced.

(47:51):
So first thing is, first we need to rewire our triggers. Now,
each attachment cell has specific triggers. I kind of mentioned
them in passing earlier. I'll just give some specific ones.
Anxious attachment cells their biggest triggers from an integrated attachment theory,
like a rewiring point of view or being abandoned alone, excluded,
dislike rejected, unloved. These are huge triggers, like big things

(48:12):
that they really fear. We can use that exercise we
talked about earlier, the three steps of finding the wound
and its opposite, ten pieces of evidence for the new idea,
and listening back for that twenty one days. That's actually
firing and wiring new neural pathways in our brain over time.
Neural pathways are like muscles. If you're working them out,
your bicep grows right. Same thing. If you're firing and wiring, you're.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Actually and you know, I might be vague, but I'm
doing IK. So you have that.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Piece right where we're trying to fire and wire in
these new ideas. No I am good enough, No I
am worthy of love. So anxious attachment cells, those are
some of their big wounds. Dismissive avoidance are things like
I'll be trapped, helpless, powerless, not good enough, shameful and
weak if I open up too much. These are big
wounds and fears that they tend to carry into relationships.

(49:00):
We rewire those things too. Fearful avoidants have a little
bit of both in terms of their wounds. So they
have the anxious side because they fear that abandonment, but
they also have the dismissive wounds of fearing being trapped.
Those are a big wound of being betrayed and constantly
feeling like they're walking on eggshells. Can't necessarily trust. Again,
we can apply that three step process that we talked
about earlier. So that's pillar number one. We rewire our

(49:20):
wounds and triggers. Rest assured you're not born with them.
If you stick to twenty one days of repetition and emotion,
you can change these things. To the point by the
way that like we put sixty thousand people through this
process and people who said they addurately, yeah, people who
said we did end up reporting on them, and people
who said that they actually stuck to this for twenty

(49:40):
one days fully did not miss a day. Listen back
to the recording. People reported a ninety nine point seven
percent and PS score. So like that's your satisfaction score, right,
did this work for you? And so if you really
stick to it, it really works, Okay, so that's pillar
number one, Pillar number two. You need to learn what
your needs are and how to meet them yourself. It's

(50:01):
a huge part of self soothing and self regulation. Anxious
attachment cells they need a lot of validation, intimacy, closeness, reassurance, certainty, connection,
dismissive avoidance, need freedom, autonomy, independence, but they also need appreciation, acknowledgment,
and atonement. These are things that each style needs to heal,
and we actually start by giving these things to ourselves first. Okay,

(50:25):
if we try to get these things from others before
learning to give them to ourselves, it's like pouring into
a cup that has a hole in the bottom. It's
just going to come in and pour back out. And
that's why you see, for example, anxious attachment cells, they
always need that validation, They always need that reassurance. That
seems so chronic because they're usually very self critical and
they're not giving any of it to themselves. So what

(50:45):
we actually take people through is, hey, twenty one days,
let's find your needs. Twenty one days, you're going to
practice giving these things to yourself, self validating, maybe you
acknowledge your wins every day for twenty one days, certainty.
Maybe you create order and structure in your life. You
ask for your needs to be met. So we're doing
things where we're taking the needs and we're meeting them
ourselves for twenty one days. It actually rewires a subconscious

(51:06):
mind to then have a baseline of giving to ourselves
what we could not get access to in childhood, and
in turn, it's profoundly healing. Color number three. We then
go into learning how to properly communicate our needs to others.
Most people really suck at communication. I'm just being really honest.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Hang on what you're not picking out the passive aggressive
hints that I've been giving by, you know, just kind
of not putting that plight. Oh why do you not understand?
It's been months?

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Is that the worst?

Speaker 2 (51:36):
But we don't know any better. We like, we can't
sometimes bring ourselves to say the thing, you know, and
so we do the thing hoping they're going to get it,
but no one's ever going to get it.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Futile, just absolutely futile, Like such a waste of time
and energy to hope that too. It's so it's tragic.
And I would see people and then we come in
when I was running my practice, working with people. Back
in the day, people wonder when would comes to me,
and they say, tice, my husband never listens to me.
I've tried communicating. I've tried everything I could. Try to
communicate every day. I remember early on, I'd be like, oh, no,

(52:09):
like this is going to be a tough case, you know,
And then I would start asking them about how they
communicate and I would be like, oh, no, wonder it's
not that the person's not listening, it's that they have
no idea how to communicate. And so there's different tools
you can use. And I won't get into like, you know,
we spend the whole day, but I'll give two really
easy tools that people can start with. Number one, take
take a peek at your communication and ask yourself on

(52:31):
my negative framing or positive framing. Negative framing is when
we tell somebody something that they're not doing. We say
you don't care about me, you're not spending enough time
with me. Positive frame is saying, hey, I'm feeling disconnected.
I would love for us to spend more time together.
Why don't we plan a fun date night this weekend.
So you're saying what you do want, what you want
the outcome to be When we positively frame, we at

(52:52):
least three x the chances that somebody is likely to
hear us and actually receive what our need is. I
always say to people, behind every knee but a head
of your criticism, there's a need and you have to
figure out what that need is and actually share it
with somebody. So positive framing and secondly, get specific. So
many people be like I want support and their partner's like, oh,
let me take out the trash, and really what they

(53:13):
needed was encouragement. So you know we need to say, like,
what does meeting the need look like? So positive frame,
I want to spend more time together that looks like
a date night this weekend. I want more consistency in
our communication that looks like a ten minute phone call
before bed. Get specific and positive frame. Just doing those
two small things transforms your ability to be seen and
heard and actually get your needs bet in a relationship.

(53:35):
So that's our third pillar, and we practice it for
twenty one days. We need the repetition and emotion of
firing and wiring this until it becomes our new set points.
So actually checking in and if you don't have something
to communicate one day to somebody sit down, go into meditation.
Visualize yourself communicating. Go back to old arguments or times
where you didn't communicate well, Visualize, Okay I would have
said it this way instead to positive frame, I would

(53:56):
say it looks like this. And when we train our
brains to do that across time, we become proficient communicators.
So that's piller number three and piller number four. I
know I'm going through this in rapid fire, but these
are really important, okay, awesome. Piller number four is we
have to regulate our nervous systems. All insecure attachment styles
have disregulated nervous systems. We have to move from this

(54:18):
fight flight freezer fond aka sympathetic nervous system into parasympathetic,
which is rest and digest. And what that generally looks
like is we move into rest and digest mode. When
we practice doing things like yoga, breath work, meditation, mindfulness activities,
we practice actually being present in our body the past
and the meditations where we're noticing sensations in our body.

(54:40):
As we do these things more regularly, we actually are
teaching our body it's safe to be it's safe to
be safe, it's safe to be present. With myself and
rest and digest signals to our body that we are
in a safety mode and practicing doing that. I mean,
there's so much we could go into, like just nervous
system and improving our window of tolerance. There's a lot
we could go into there for quite some time at
ai high level. Some really good activities to do there

(55:03):
are starting with that one nervous system regulation activity for
ten minutes a day across at least twenty one day.
So you're teaching your brain to your brain and body
that it's safe to get into this mode. And the
very last thing that I'll say in terms of healing
at a high level is rewiring our relationship to our boundaries.
Anxious attachment styles and fearful avoidance of almost no boundaries.

(55:24):
They're like boundaryless and people pleasing Eventually fearful avoid and
cell they get frustrated and then they set extreme boundaries
from a place of anger and frustration, dismissive avoidance. They
set extreme boundaries to start with, they actually have to
work on making compromises, being more vulnerable coming towards people
and as we practice learning what that healthy set of
boundaries should look like. Just vulnerability assertiveness, being able to say, hey, no,

(55:46):
I don't really want to do that, thank you very much,
instead of saying, oh yeah, let's do it, and then
later feeling frustrated or resentful. As we retrain ourselves to
practice setting small boundaries on a regular basis, once we
get into a healthy relationship, there start to come full
circle and then we're actually protecting ourselves and having our
own back. And those are five major pillars when it
comes to rewiring our attachment style, and we have to

(56:08):
do everything through repetitions. What reaches the subplanche's mind.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
You are very generously sharing so many like things that
we can actually and practically use. And I really hope
people can hear this stuff and feel hope that if
they do feel stuck off the related to what you've
been talking about, that it's not set in stone, and

(56:33):
that with effort and you know, commitment, that things can
actually change and feel feel better for you. You mentioned that
you've been in a relationship, you're married for eleven years now.
And I'm always curious in this, you know, in this part,
because it's one thing. Sometimes this stuff can be quite

(56:54):
state dependent, and I wonder if it's the same for yous,
Like we may feel like, oh, I'm really good at
this stuff with people at work, but here at home,
like it all just goes out the window and I've
become a twelve year old again, and I don't know
what to do. And I'm wondering if that's true for
you as well, Like do you sit there and hire
and go like, I know these I know what I
should and should be doing it, but I still find

(57:15):
myself doing this weirdness in your own relationship.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah. To be honest, I know I don't want to
sound like because I know that that's a real struggle
for so many people, and I value that and understand that.
But I will say I personally do this work because
I really plugged into it. I was a fearful, avoidant
attachment style and relationships growing up for me, all I
saw was chaos, and relationships in my young adult life,
like in my late teens early twenties, were also chaos.

(57:42):
I was like the crazy one. I was, really. I
struggled a lot, but I also profoundly plunged into the work,
and I did it from the perspective of like I'm
going to retrain my brain. I'm going to retrain my body.
I'm going to show up for this, and I will
truthfully say that, like I am so fulfilled in my relationship.
I'm so grateful. It's literally one of the things I'm
most grateful for on this planet. If you ask me

(58:04):
fifteen years ago, before I really did the work, do
you think that you're going to be in a secure,
healthy relationship, I would be like, no, I grew up
be in like I'm never getting married, I'm never doing that.
And literally, I've just been through a difficult time in
my family, family member six and some hard things. And
one of the things that I was just so grateful
for was my husband. Like he just shows up. He

(58:24):
was dismissive, avoidant. I was fearful avoidant. We plugged it
and did the work together, and we're very secure together.
And it wasn't an overnight process, Like it's not like, Okay,
you start and you go, but I would say we
really built to that together to the point where I
feel like, yeah, I don't feel like I have those
moments anymore where I'm like, what's going on in all

(58:45):
went out the window?

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Is there a level of maintenance that goes on? Do
you you know if things because everyone makes mistakes.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Oh yeah, Like listen, we're not like robots. We're not perfect.
We still have like conflict at times and stuff like
that for sure, but I think we have to practice
how to navigate it. Like if we have a conflict,
we sit down, we deal with it right away, we
hash it out, and we have this little thing that
we do. We're like, Okay, what did you feel in
the situation? What do you need? Okay, Here's what I felt,
Here's what I need. And then we try to actually
support each other and meeting those needs. And I went
from somebody who was like when I was a teenager,

(59:14):
I would like I like punch holes and walls. I
was like a crazy kid, to somebody who through really
doing the work. Like I haven't been in a conflict
in like I don't know, years and years where I
felt like I didn't have a handle of my emotions. Yeah,
I've been in conflicts, but I not where I'm like,
oh my gosh, like I can't, you know. And so

(59:34):
I believe in this. I really think that. And I'm
not saying this to sound like I'm my high horse,
like I'm a human being. I definitely walk the flause.
But I just I do want people to know that
if you actually show up, and you actually plug in,
and you actually do the work at a subconscious level,
you can truly have a really secure, really harmonious relationship.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
What I kind of I was really interested to talk
to you today because the work you do it reminds
me of a conversation I have with my big brother.
He's a little other two years older than me, and he,
you know, like big brothers are you call? Let me
asking what's going on here? And he described to me
something a concept that I Heather too, had never ever considered.

(01:00:19):
I'd been with my girlfriend at the time for a
couple of years, and he said, yeah, you've been together
for three or four years by that point, because we're
moving states and I've you know, I was talking to
them about it and what's going to happen because I've
got a job there and she doesn't. And he said, mate,
you you know, every relationship we have is is made
up of squillions of different versions of that relationship. There

(01:00:39):
was a relationship when you first met, the relationship where
you first moved in the relationship where you went, Okay,
let's do something and you went into Ika for the
first time. And then there's the version where one of
you worked and the other one didn't. And then there's
a version where you both worked, and then when the
other one worked and maybe one of you is going
to UNI. And then there's the version where you're now
in a different state. There's a version where kids come
along and he which set each relationship is completely different

(01:01:02):
from each other, and the rules that and expectations at
every stage of that relationship are also different from each other,
and we can't the pain can happen when we want
that bit there. Maybe when we were in Bali and
we were twenty four and it was just panser hooy
and everything was fun. We want that bit to always
be that bit. But here we are now, and what

(01:01:24):
do you mean, No, I'm on school lunches. You were
on school lunches yesterday. I know I haven't called your
mum about the thinking. Oh fuck me, I forgot the
thing we did bend night like. And that's where the
pain comes because sometimes we're unwilling to move between those
those stages. And I'm wondering you talk about six stages
that the dating, the vetting, the power struggle, which we

(01:01:44):
kind of alluded to before, like what do you mean
and you hanging your voting for who? And then the
rhythm and the stability part of the relationship, and then
when we you know, I'm guessing when somebody gets down
on one knee and says, hey, let's go, let's do this,
and then and just kind of being in that not
saying holding pattern, but that you know, here we go,

(01:02:05):
We're off to this infinity and beyond together in this
kind of construct that we've created. Where do people normally
tend to come on stuck? And what are the things
we might need to get over that particular bit there?
Like for me, I think it's normally when people get
on stuck is when they get some amount of their
self identity gets challenged and no amount of physical attraction

(01:02:26):
can get beyond that, and they're so unwilling to let
go of how they see or feel about themselves like that.
Obviously you're not for me, I'm at.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
And it's such a great question. So we have that
dating stage that's usually the first zero to six months
of dating somebody until we make this commitment. Then we
move into the honeymoon stage that last another year a
year and a half. You got the rose colored glasses.
Then we move into the power struggle stage, which is
statistically where most people break up, and it's when we
drop the mask. It's when we're like, hey, this is
where I really am. These are my actual fears, these

(01:02:58):
are my actual flaws, these are my needs. We stop
people pleasing, we're not on our best behavior, and sometimes
that can feel confronting for people. But the right of
passage to get out of the power struggle stage and
move into that stability or rhythm stage, move into the
devotion stage, and then get to that everlasting stage, is
that we need to learn to navigate conflict. We need
to learn to be vulnerable instead of saying you're not

(01:03:20):
doing this, Hey, I'm needing more of this, or instead
of saying I can't believe you did that. Hey I
don't think I told you this before. But when that happens,
sometimes that hurts. And if we can be vulnerable, if
we can start opening up and talking through things in
healthy ways, if we can learn to communicate our needs
and meet them for each other, and if we can
also have a little bit of grace that our partner

(01:03:40):
is not the character in our story, you know, so
often we're like, they should behaving this way all the
time because I've decided that, And it's like, well, actually,
there are a human being just like you are, and
we're going to be imperfect sometimes. And so when we
can be accepting and flexible and practice that, those are
the key ingredients that move us out of the power
struggle stage. And then we get into the future stages,
which are very much about can we keep the spark

(01:04:01):
alive by having good habits? Can we make sure that
we're devoting to the relationship by devoting to healthy habits,
Like one thing I believe in so much to your
point a moment ago, like it was fun to be
in Bali at twenty four, but now, hey, it's all
this time later and things have changed. You need to
keep getting to know your partner, like you need to
have a weekly check in where you're checking in height,
how are we feeling our needs met in this relationship.
It can be a high level conversation. Ideally, I tell

(01:04:23):
people have a weekly date night, so where you're asking
meaningful questions. Keep dating your partner, because your version of
your partner ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago,
it's going to be a very different person decades later.
And we need to keep asking meaningful questions, talking about
our needs. And when we do those things, we stabilize
the relationship. And when we go through we're changing together,

(01:04:44):
and so we're going together instead of growing apart. And
those are some of those really crucial ingredients to navigating
relationships in the long haul, but also making them last
in a fulfilling way, not just making them last because
we're trying to white knuckles through or stick it out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Would it be fair to say that as the relationship
changes and challenges that show up in a relationship appear,
that the power struggle part may arrive again, for example,
when kids come along, or someone changes jobs, or you
move house, and the patterns that we had come to
rely on, that kind of you know, the rhythm mode

(01:05:19):
that we talked about, it no longer replies because now
there's an extra kid, or my shift to now take
me working at night, and then that power struggle might
show up again.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
The thing that relegates us back is if we go
through it an identity crisis. So if we're ever in
a position, for example, where we've learned to navigate conflicts together,
we've learned to hash things that were in a really
good place. But then all of a sudden, you know,
there's a really difficult situation where our partner knew us
as one version of ourselves with certain needs and learn
to navigate that aspect of self and take us into

(01:05:53):
consideration with those needs. But then we go through such
a fundamental shift. Sometimes it's for a painful reason. Sometimes
it's through loss or grief. We can go through those struggles.
Or sometimes it's for beautiful reasons, like we just had
twins and we're not sleeping and it's a beautiful gift,
but it's causing us to change as individuals. You know,
when we go through those things, sometimes we have to
go through this season of relearning. What do we need

(01:06:16):
to give to each other now? How do we need
to communicate differently? Are the structures that we've developed in
our relationship in need of change? And so having those
conversations and being able to continuously speak of our needs,
be vulnerable, open about those things allow us to then
shift through those things more easily. It's when we never

(01:06:36):
learned how to talk about needs, how to talk about boundaries,
how to be vulnerable, to begin with that, we get
really stuck in the power struggle stage, and then those
hard external things can break us. But if we learn
to work through things initially and we know how to
communicate and navigate conflict, and then we go through a
hard thing, it will be a hard thing, but usually
we're just going to have to talk it out again,
hash it out in a new way, make new structures,

(01:06:56):
make new systems for ourselves, and so we'll be able
to keep moving through through the relationship in a healthy way.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
I don't want to take advantage of the situation that
I have when having your ear and just like picking
your brain, but I will let you go. But I
do have one one thing because you did. You've mentioned
it a few times. As someone who's worked with you
know in clinical practice, you've done You've studied a lot
of modalities. You're across a lot of different ways of
doing things. There is there's more than just cognitive behavioral therapy.

(01:07:24):
It's well CBT, don't google CBT, that's not what you'll find.
But you you've worked because a lot of different modalities
with I'm assuming one hundred different thousands of couples. When
it comes to navigating conflict, what is the thing that
you wish people could know about, you know, the best
best chance you could give each other.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Here's a really simple, easy framework for people to keep
a mental checklist up. I think of it this way.
You used to teach clients this feeling need feeling need.
So when people are arguing, people think they're arguing about
being right and wrong, but they're actually not. It's people
could really care less. At the end of the people
are actually arguing about feeling seen and hard and understood
by their partners. And so people think that by being

(01:08:07):
right that then their point is heard and understood. But
we can actually get out of this right and wrong
construct and go into feelings validation and need strategization. So
what this looks like is, let's say you have two
people arguing. What I get people to do is each
person we start by just saying, hey, I see what
you are feeling. So you might say to your partner,
like let's say, for example, that your partner is hurt

(01:08:30):
that you forgot about something that was important to them. Okay,
maybe it was, you know, to drop something off at
the post office and it had to be mailed. It
was really important, and maybe they felt hurt like that
was important to me. How could you miss that? Well,
you would start the person who made the mistake would
go to the person who was hurt and say, hey,
I see why that's hurtful. Then I might feel like
that way too if I were you. So we're validating
the feeling. Okay. Then we get the person who did

(01:08:53):
the hurting or made the mistake to say, here's what
I need here, or what do you need to feel better?
And when their partner can say, Oh, I need to
know that you're going to be mindful in the future,
or I need to know that you actually care about me.
I'm scared of because you forgot that you're not caring
about me. I need reassurance. When that person can give
to the need, what would help the partner feel reconciled.

(01:09:17):
Somebody actually feels resolved, So validate their feelings, ask what
their needs are, make a commitment to show up for
that need. That's step one feeling need of partner one.
Then we flip it around. Whenever there's a conflict that
both people feel a certain way about something and both
people need something. So let's say that when old pretend
it was you and your wife and you forgot the
thing at the post office, and your wife became critical.

(01:09:39):
She was not she raised her voice. You know, for you,
you might have made the mistake by forgetting the thing first,
and so you'll give to her. Hey, I see why
that's hurtful. I'll be more mindful in the future, and
I do care. Of course, I give you the reassurance
I meet your need. Then we flip it over, and
you also are going to feel a certain way by
the way she treated you in that moment. So we're
going to get you to say what you were feeling. Hey,

(01:10:00):
you know, for me, I also didn't really love the
way that that landed. When when you raise your voice,
that didn't feel good for me, And I need for
you to come to me and communicate more vulnerably next
time instead of through anger or frustration. And when your
wife in turn is like, yeah, you know what, I
see that me raising my voice wasn't productive. I hear
that that probably didn't feel good for you, and I'll

(01:10:21):
be mindful and I'll commit to working on that in
the future. Both people feel resolved. So ultimately our framework
and this is there's lots of frameworks, but one really
good place to start is did both people get their
feelings hurt and validated. Did both people express a need?
And are we brainstorming together how to show up for
one another? And in doing that we get really a
really good batting average of actual conflict resolution.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
To us, the work you're doing is not it's very
successful because you're able to really help people. Nobody wants
to be in an argument forever, and lobody wants to
have a feeling that they just pisce off their partner
boy existing. So the work you're doing really gives a
lot of language to people. And I'm sure you know
it's clearly very successful and rightly so because you've put

(01:11:07):
a lot of effort into it. Thank you so much
for taking the time to share this stuff with us today.
I think you've really helped a bunch of people today.
Thank you, heges.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm grateful to
be here and really enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
That was Tys Gibson. Isn't she something? Her two books
are called Learning Love and Attachment Theory. Just find her
online wherever you find things online. T H A. I. S.
Gibson Gibs And she's an extraordinary, lovely lady and yeah,
she's got number one. She's got a lot of lists,
a lot of steps. I like that, she's very practical.
I like that, a lot of takeaways. It's good stuff.

(01:11:45):
Thanks for being a part of the show. If you
need a last minute gift for somebody, I may suggest
So What Now What? Which you can buy in any
good bookshop and also through the Lincoln My show Notes
where you can also see the story Club YouTube channel
with all the fabulous stories there and as well get
a ticket for the new show which is in the
fifteenth of February. Thank you so much for listening. I've
seen in a couple of days.

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Relationship Neuroscience Expert Thais Gibson: Rewiring Your Attachment Style and Moving Through Power Struggles

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