September 29, 2025 • 46 mins
Hosted by Dr. Sarah Hensley, Specialized Social Psychologist, Attachment Theory Expert, and Founder & CEO of The Love Doc Relationship Coaching Services with Co-host Raina Butcher, Owner/CEO of Joyful Consulting, LLC.
Welcome to "The Love Doc Podcast" Season II, where Host Dr. Sarah Hensley and her co-host Raina Butcher dive deep into the intricacies of love, attraction, attachment, relationships, and self-awareness. Dr. Hensley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to help listeners navigate the complexities of modern romance. In each episode, Dr. Hensley tackles burning questions about love, relationships, and the mind’s complexities, drawing from her psychological research, real-life experiences, and her own individual expertise, to provide insightful perspectives and practical advice.
Episode 19, Season II: “Attachment Across the Generations: How Our Past Shapes Our Present”
In this episode of The Love Doc Podcast, Dr. Sarah Hensley dives into a thought-provoking exploration of how attachment styles have been shaped and reshaped across multiple generations. While research in this area is still developing, Dr. Hensley shares her insights, blending the data we do have with her own professional expertise and observations from years of working with clients. Together, she and Raina reflect on how cultural norms, economic conditions, and parenting trends have influenced the way each generation both experiences and passes down attachment.
We begin with The Greatest Generation aka the Silent Generation (1928–1945), who were shaped by the Great Depression and World War II. Their attachment strategies often leaned toward survival, self-sacrifice, and stoicism—traits that helped them endure hardship but often left emotional needs unspoken. This foundation directly influenced the Baby Boomers (1946–1964), who grew up in a time of post-war prosperity, suburban expansion, and cultural shifts. While this generation had greater stability, many were raised by emotionally distant parents still carrying war scars, creating a paradox of material abundance alongside emotional gaps.
Next, we move to Generation X (1965–1980), often called the “latchkey kids.” With both parents working and divorce rates climbing, many Gen X children learned independence early but often struggled with consistent emotional attunement at home. This set the stage for Millennials (1981–1996), who came of age in a rapidly globalizing world of technology, economic instability, and shifting social values. Millennials were raised with more open conversations about emotions but also felt the weight of high expectations, student debt, and uncertain futures—all of which influence how they form and sustain attachments today.
Finally, we turn to Gen Z (1997–2012) and Gen Alpha (2013–present), the most digital-native generations. Gen Z has grown up amidst political polarization, social media pressures, and the mental health crisis, shaping a cohort that is both highly self-aware and often highly anxious. Gen Alpha, still in childhood, is being raised by Millennials who are more intentional about emotional intelligence, attachment security, and breaking cycles—but also parenting in a world defined by technology, climate concerns, and shifting cultural landscapes.
Dr. Hensley and Raina bring compassion and clarity to this conversation, showing how the ripple effects of one generation’s experiences can echo for decades. At the heart of the discussion is a message of hope: while each generation carries wounds, each also has the opportunity to break cycles, build secure attachments, and create healthier family units for the future.
Tune in to "The Love Doc Podcast" every Tuesday morning for candid conversations, expert guidance, and a deeper understanding of life, love and relationships in the modern world. To see all of Dr. Hensley’s services please visit the links below and follow her on social media.
PROMO CODE FOR OUR LISTENERS: Use LOVEDOC27 to receive 27% off any of Dr. Hensley's courses or her Hybrid Group Coaching Program.
Cozy Earth promo code: LOVEDOC for 40% off at Luxury Bedding and Loungewear | Cozy Earth
BedJet promo link for our listeners: bedjet.com/lovedoc
Armra promo code: LOVEDOC for 15% off at https://armra.com/LOVEDOC
Patreons link: patreon.com/TheLoveDocPodcast
Dr. Hensley’s Hybrid Group Coaching: https://courses.the
Welcome to "The Love Doc Podcast" Season II, where Host Dr. Sarah Hensley and her co-host Raina Butcher dive deep into the intricacies of love, attraction, attachment, relationships, and self-awareness. Dr. Hensley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to help listeners navigate the complexities of modern romance. In each episode, Dr. Hensley tackles burning questions about love, relationships, and the mind’s complexities, drawing from her psychological research, real-life experiences, and her own individual expertise, to provide insightful perspectives and practical advice.
Episode 19, Season II: “Attachment Across the Generations: How Our Past Shapes Our Present”
In this episode of The Love Doc Podcast, Dr. Sarah Hensley dives into a thought-provoking exploration of how attachment styles have been shaped and reshaped across multiple generations. While research in this area is still developing, Dr. Hensley shares her insights, blending the data we do have with her own professional expertise and observations from years of working with clients. Together, she and Raina reflect on how cultural norms, economic conditions, and parenting trends have influenced the way each generation both experiences and passes down attachment.
We begin with The Greatest Generation aka the Silent Generation (1928–1945), who were shaped by the Great Depression and World War II. Their attachment strategies often leaned toward survival, self-sacrifice, and stoicism—traits that helped them endure hardship but often left emotional needs unspoken. This foundation directly influenced the Baby Boomers (1946–1964), who grew up in a time of post-war prosperity, suburban expansion, and cultural shifts. While this generation had greater stability, many were raised by emotionally distant parents still carrying war scars, creating a paradox of material abundance alongside emotional gaps.
Next, we move to Generation X (1965–1980), often called the “latchkey kids.” With both parents working and divorce rates climbing, many Gen X children learned independence early but often struggled with consistent emotional attunement at home. This set the stage for Millennials (1981–1996), who came of age in a rapidly globalizing world of technology, economic instability, and shifting social values. Millennials were raised with more open conversations about emotions but also felt the weight of high expectations, student debt, and uncertain futures—all of which influence how they form and sustain attachments today.
Finally, we turn to Gen Z (1997–2012) and Gen Alpha (2013–present), the most digital-native generations. Gen Z has grown up amidst political polarization, social media pressures, and the mental health crisis, shaping a cohort that is both highly self-aware and often highly anxious. Gen Alpha, still in childhood, is being raised by Millennials who are more intentional about emotional intelligence, attachment security, and breaking cycles—but also parenting in a world defined by technology, climate concerns, and shifting cultural landscapes.
Dr. Hensley and Raina bring compassion and clarity to this conversation, showing how the ripple effects of one generation’s experiences can echo for decades. At the heart of the discussion is a message of hope: while each generation carries wounds, each also has the opportunity to break cycles, build secure attachments, and create healthier family units for the future.
Tune in to "The Love Doc Podcast" every Tuesday morning for candid conversations, expert guidance, and a deeper understanding of life, love and relationships in the modern world. To see all of Dr. Hensley’s services please visit the links below and follow her on social media.
PROMO CODE FOR OUR LISTENERS: Use LOVEDOC27 to receive 27% off any of Dr. Hensley's courses or her Hybrid Group Coaching Program.
Cozy Earth promo code: LOVEDOC for 40% off at Luxury Bedding and Loungewear | Cozy Earth
BedJet promo link for our listeners: bedjet.com/lovedoc
Armra promo code: LOVEDOC for 15% off at https://armra.com/LOVEDOC
Patreons link: patreon.com/TheLoveDocPodcast
Dr. Hensley’s Hybrid Group Coaching: https://courses.the
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to the Love Dog Podcast. I'm your co host
Rana Butcher here with our host, doctor Sarah Hensley, the owner, founder,
and CEO of the love Doc relationship coaching services and
of course of this podcast. You can find her at
the lovedoc dot com or on all social media handles
at doctor Sarah Hensley.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, Hey, what's up.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You know, just recording our lovely podcast. Our favorite thing
to do, which we say are dane to do. It
is the most fun part of what we Oh, absolutely,
and it's like this for me, it's therapy. It is
because I get to come here and like you know,
I mean, obviously we're talking as best friends like we
(00:54):
would if we were just talking, but on this really
like on a deeper level.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, absolutely, on a much deeper level.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
And so it's a I get I get first class
access to the doc Herson.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yes, it's it's so fun because it's just a way
to be a little bit more myself and a little
bit and it makes me sad when people like, stop
talking about yourself, We don't care, Just tell me how
to have our relationship. And I'm like, fine, but there
is a part of me that's like I desire to
be known and understood. I'm a former FA and that
(01:31):
doesn't really go away. You just learn how to not
demand that people read your mind right right becomes secure.
I just I want to be cool too, Yeah a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah you are cool.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I don't know, maybe I'm not. I actually don't really
care that much if I'm cool, But I want to
be able to connect with people on a more human level.
And the podcast just feels like we get to do that.
It feels like we get to share some of our
personality and some of our personal struggles and wins yep
with our audience, and we love to do that. We
are so thankful for you guys being here. Which, speaking
(02:04):
of sharing amongst diverse people, we are going to talk
about attachment styles across generation today, which I will preface
this conversation by saying, we don't have a lot of data.
There's not a lot of data on this. Yeah, so
a lot of what we do have is speculative based
(02:25):
on the small amount of data that we have. So
side note footnote, yeah, asterisk, Yeah, and we don't have
a lot of data on this, so but let's talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, And just to kind of line out, you know,
give y'all the timeline and you might have helped me
with this. So we have our baby boomers, well.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
We have the greatest generation before them, so that was
our grand.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Poh okay, and ye I guess some of those are
some of them are still living? Yes, absolutely? And what
is that generation called?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
That is the greatest generation? The greatest they live the
Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I wish that was the name of mind.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Because they lived through the Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, the greatest generation. Okay, Then we have baby boomers.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And we have baby boomers. Then were their children? Right?
Then we have Gen X, Then we have Gen X,
and then we have millennials. Then we have Gen Z,
then we have Gen Alpha correct, and I have two.
I have one Gen Z or a one Gen Alpha kid,
so I get to be exposed to both of those.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The oldest Gen Alphas I think are twelve. I was
looking at like the timeline in terms of dates last
night because I was like, oh, Gen Alpha, I didn't
even know that exist.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It is the skimmity toilet generation. Gimbty toilet, skimmy toilet.
Ohio Riz Sigma. Huh what did you just say? Hopefully
I made some parents laugh in their car, Yeah, because
maybe the kid can't quit saying skibbity Yeah, maybe ohio
sigma six seven whatever. That crazy. That's I don't even
(03:54):
know what any of it. That's.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That's a foreign language to me.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And the gen Z language is a little bit foreign
to me too. Yeah, And I have a like I've
found myself saying low key all the time, low key,
don't do that, legit, don't do that. And then they
say literally, but they really mean figuratively. They're like, literally,
I'm going to die. I was like, I think you
mean figuratively because you're literally not going to die because
you can't find your hoodie.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I do catch myself saying that a lot, because Josh
will even call me on it. I'm like, I'm literally
starving and he's like.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Are you though, are you mountain nourished?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah? Are you starving?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Oh you're not. It's interesting, it's interesting. So the data
that we do have there was a adjacent cohort study.
I believe it's made meta analysis, which is an aggregate
of data. A meta analysis is an analysis of a
bunch of different studies. It could have been a meta analysis.
(04:47):
I'm not a one hundred percent sure, but I know.
It was a generational cohort study that looked at individuals
from nineteen eighty eight to twenty eleven, and we saw
a statistically signific My goodness, it's been a while since
I've used that term, since I'm not teaching statistics anymore.
Statistically significant finding, which just means greater than chance, Okay,
(05:11):
that we see a rise in dismissive avoidance by about
five percent interest, so that attachment style is increasing. And
I'm not gonna lie. It was the Baby Boomers that
raised them. So the Baby Boomers raised more dismissive avoidance,
and I would absolutely say that that mirrors what I
see in my practice. The Baby Boomers were very emotionally
(05:35):
dismissive as a generation. Why, I don't exactly know. They
grew up in a lot of chaos too. Later When
I think about my parents growing up, I think about
like the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War, and
they were basically being told there could be nuclear war
at like every moment. So maybe they were just like, you.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Know what, we know what we had to live through,
and theirs their parents were, you know, lived through the
Great Depression, so they're living through like one of the
hardest times in terms of our nation's economic health.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So they probably dismissed the boomers as being whiny little babies,
and then the boomers dismissed us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Right, there's a trickling down effect there for sure, Right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I think so, because we don't have the data before
that those boomer parents. We only have this nineteen eighty
eight to twenty eleven data really is all we have
in terms of co wort effects.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So I think though now we are seeing a rise
in attachment anxiety. And here's why, because I think we
are seeing that especially Gen Z is the most well
connected generation, but they're also the most depressed. So the
connections that they have are very shallow, which gives some
(06:55):
degree of intermittent reinforcement, like the need is partially met,
but it's not stable enough to create feelings of safety.
And I think that we have parents that are so
distracted on their phone, and I'm not going to say
that I am not guilty of at times being one
of them and having to be extremely intentional. I have
to be so intentional about my phone around my kids
(07:15):
because being a business owner, it's just like ding ding ding,
ding ding ding ding, like notification after notification constantly, and
at the end of the day, you know, the person
at the top has to eventually hear about this stuff.
But you guys are sometimes great about putting out the
fires before they come home.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I really do try.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I know you do, and I'm so appreciative of that.
And so we have a lot of distracted parents, but
we also have a lot of parents that are trying
to be emotionally aware and trying to be emotionally present
for their kid.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Now, millennials are known as like the therapy generation.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
We went to therapy. We did go to therapy. We
found out we were dismissed as children.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I feel like we not dismissed and we enable
a little maybe that risks.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So there's this fine line in parenting, fine freaking line.
We're walking a type rope here, and it's not fair.
You know what, Life's not fair. We're walking the tightrope
between not dismissing our children's feelings and raising a bunch
of dismissive avoidance that can't tolerate intimacy and vulnerability, versus
enabling every feeling as completely valid and teaching our kids
(08:23):
to catastrophize and become hysterical, and to become anxious about
the smallest things in life, and to not be able
to do anything for themselves, and teaching them to be
guilty step over people's boundaries concre there's a fine line, right,
And so I always say Donald is the best freaking parent.
He's just such a good parent because like when I
(08:46):
start to fail, like my girls will personally push me
a little bit, because the all kids push their parents, sure,
and of course I'm their only surviving biological parent. And
Donald has been in the picture for four going on
five years now, and I still think they have some
a little little bit of the okay, like I have
(09:07):
to do what you say. I'm not going to push
back on you like I would push back on my mom, right.
But also I think there's this beautiful parenting dynamic when
we have a nuclear family, and again I don't have
a full nuclear family. I have a piece together, a
nuclear family that I think now operates as a nuclear family,
which I really love because you know, Donald has adopted
(09:28):
my girls. But it really shines the light on the
role of a mother versus a father, where I think
the mother's role is to be a little bit more nurturing,
more validating. And then it is the father's role to
help a child sit in discomfort and face the fact
that you have to be tough sometimes too, because we're
(09:48):
trying to teach our kids empathy but also grit at
the same time. And that is such a fine line,
is so such a tight rope. And when we say, oh,
you just have to be a good enough parent. Kids
are resilient, that's actually not true. Yeah, that's actually not
true at all. Kids are adaptive, not resilient. Resilient means
I've overcome adversity and I'm still very highly functional. Adaptive
(10:10):
means I went through adversity and any behaviors that I
have that may be dysfunctional or a result of that
of adapting to dysfunction.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, there's a difference, and that's I mean, that's just
way more scientifically proven, I.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Would say, way more scientifically sound. Kids are not resilient,
they're adaptive. So yes, they may be able to be
somewhat functional, but we are going to see adaptation to
dysfunction if the kids are around dysfunction constantly, as it
is modeled to them and as they experience it in
their nervous system. So our parents are our first mirrors
(10:46):
of intimacy. They are are first experience with what does
it feel like to be close to someone, and that
experience will be so profound that it will shape all
the rest of their intimacy experiences throughout their life. So
when we say have to be a good enough parent,
don't worry, They're resilient. I think we need to take
a step back and say no, Actually, parenting is the
most important job that we have. It is the thing
(11:09):
that we should focus on the most in terms of
quote getting it right, and we should let everything else
come sort of secondary with putting our kids first, meaning
actually putting our marriage in our relationship first, because that
is their model under which they will imprint what does
it mean to be close to someone inside their nervous system.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I would give anything if I knew the basis of
attachment when JP, before I had JP.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I knew it, and I still couldn't use it. So
that's where awareness doesn't matter. When your nervous system is
shaped in a certain way, you can have all the
awareness and all the good intentions in the world, and
your nervous system will override you every single time, which
is why we have to understand that attachment is based
in a subconscious blueprint that is intimately tied to how
(11:58):
the nervous system functions around intimacy.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So which is what you teach.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Which is what I teach. So when you earn your security,
you're not just becoming securely attached in your romantic relationship.
You are earning the ability to shape your children's attachment security,
which I think is a really really amazing and profound thing,
and I have gotten to witness it with my older daughter.
So my older daughter is now fourteen, and she's on
(12:25):
her second boyfriend now first boyfriend. She went a little
avoidant and I was like, oh, here's the FA right,
like they lost her dad, they've had she's had childhood trauma.
She I know she has fearful avoidance and we've been
working on it. Come to find out though, you know,
I can read her phone, yeah, and she'll let me.
(12:45):
She'll put her phone up, and now I go through
it if I want to. Come to find out, there
was a little too much attachment anxiety on the other
end of that relationship, like that high high, high, high
high levels of attachment anxiety. And when my dad started
opening up to me about the things that this boy
was saying and doing. I was like, baby, girl, that
(13:08):
would even make a secure person want to run. So
the fact that you noticed that you were slipping into
your avoidance and you were open with him. You were saying, Hey,
I'm feeling like I'm slipping into a little bit of
my attachment avoidance because I feel a little overwhelmed here.
You're making Gosh, you're communicating so openly and so beautifully
and respectfully. And that's when I'm like, yes, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Doing it, doing it, You're doing keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And now she has this other boyfriend, and he's very
he's showing at least right now, he's showing up very secure.
She's aware that you know, if you're only a couple
of months in, it could change, right. And so I'm like,
if he starts pulling wife, he starts being inconsistent, you
need to know those are red flash.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
She really liked this one.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
She does, but because he's my daughter. Again. She is
a very busy lady. She has all ap glasses, is
a varsity athlete. She is doing private lessons and tumbling
to get better. I heard that cheer. There's not a
moment of that child's day. I feel like where she
can just relax. And so, you know, a relationship at
(14:14):
this age it looks a lot different right than in adult.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Really good though, because then it allows her to not no,
she to not get too to not get too attached,
because I think that that's not that JP didn't have
things to keep him involved when he was in high school.
He had the ROTC and that kept him busy. But man,
once he found that girl, it was just all in.
(14:39):
And here we are. Gosh, we're going on three years
now that they've been together, and and I love you
so much, Jessica, I couldn't love you more. But like
they they're pretty consumed with each other, and they have
been consumed, like I keep like Josh, and I keep
like secretly waiting for it to kind of like fizzle,
and it it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Has had, it has If anything, it's ramped for sure,
for sure. So it's very hard to see your children
go through these things. And once you are attachment aware
and you see their attachment style coming out, you just
want to be like, oh my gosh, no no no, no, no, no,
don't do it wrong. Don't do it wrong. Don't do it,
and then you want.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
To teach them. You want to teach them so badly,
like all the things that you know, But of course
they can't conceptualize the things that you know. A forty
plus year old brain knows versus you know, a teenager
or you know, eighteen nineteen year old.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Knows, right, And that's why it's really hard to come
to come to them after the fact and be like,
oh no, now you're doing it wrong. Right, if we
have the chance to start in childhood, when we are
their mirrors of intimacy before someone else comes into the
picture who does not love them like a parent and
is their mirror for intimacy, let's be a good mirror.
(15:50):
Let's be a stable mirror. So a lot of people
ask me in my my groups, well, what does a
secure parent look like? And I try to give them
some examples, like, say you have a three year old
little you on the playground and you're running around and
playing and going down the slide, and you come down
the slide and you have a hard fall and you
(16:11):
face first and you scrape your knees and your elbows
and you see blood and you're crying and you're three, right,
you don't know what is this stuff coming out of me?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Scary?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Scary, and it hurts and it stings. And you have
a parent that comes to you, and that parent goes, oh, sweet,
do you fell down? Oh my gosh, that hurts, doesn't it.
So a child is trying to answer the question, what
just happened to me? I'm feeling something? What is this?
And so we just had a parent that that modeled
(16:40):
you are feeling hurt. Oh that's scary. That was scary,
wasn't it. Okay, this is fear. So you're helping a
child understand their emotions. But then when that parent is
also very regulated, what happens is that child borrows their
parent's nervous system so they don't feel regulated, but their
parent is like this oak tree that they can essentially
(17:01):
like grab onto during the storm. Right, And so what
that teaches the child when the parent is stable and
the parent is attuned and is labeling the emotions and
is inquisitive about them and is not trying to just
make it go away, which we can create some anxious
kiddos when we just try to bandaid their emotions, right,
when we try to fix their problems for you and
(17:22):
don't allow them to sit into some discomfort When you
can allow your child to sit in that discomfort while
you name it and why you provide safety, that is
developing a securely attached nervous system because they're learning to
sit in difficult feelings without overreacting, while still staying calm.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And I also think another big mistake the parents made,
speaking from personal experience here, is that when an incident
happens that brings about fear in the child, I have
a specific circumstance. Jap and I were pa. He was
probably eight. We were carving pumpkins and he sliced his
thumb wide open. My reaction was fear and panic. Oh yeah,
(18:05):
and made that mistake plenty of times. Yeah, And so
of course my fear and panic he feeds off of,
you know, And I can I can look back on
my parents, like my core parents in years and think,
oh gosh, oh, I did so many things wrong.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And the sad thing is because we don't know what
we don't know. And even though I knew all this
stuff about attachment, I had already chosen my mate. By
the time I was learning about attachment, I was already married.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And probably super anxious because.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's because of who I chose to marry. So when
I started learning this back in two thousand and six ish,
I think that's right, two thousand and six to that, Yeah,
two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, I was
already married. Yeah, like I was already well, I was engaged,
and I wasn't going to call off the marriage. And
(18:58):
then when I really learned the deep stuff, when I
knew I was in deep shi T, I was already
married and I was already pregnant.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, and then you're already in it, do you well?
And and then you go into survival mode. And when
you're in that survival mode and that in your fight
flight responses, it's hard to You can't.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
And then execute anything.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
And this brings me back to really the subject of
the podcast, and you know, talking about maybe the baby
boomers and you know, raising the gen xers and the millennials,
is that I think so much of their life was
spent in survival mode that they could never learn how
to build the capacity around how to regulate their nervous system.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
No, my parents were one hundred percent chronically dysregulated.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Same and my dad not so much. My dad I
think a lot of what helped Daddy was he was
a pastor, you know, faith, and he had had so
much childhood trauma. I mean, I don't even know the
extent of his childhood trauma, to be honest. That it
(20:04):
made him so much more.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Aware, right, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
With certain things and then disassociate with certain things.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I had awareness for so long, but I had no
ability to execute because I was in a marriage with
somebody who was an addict, who was cheating on me constantly,
who was abusing me constantly, And then I was trying
to be a mom and I had no idea what
I was doing there either. And I had a lot
of sickness and a lot of problems with my health.
(20:33):
Obviously I've talked about that. But I just had no
capacity to execute. I was in my capacity. Isn't that
still tesching that what.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I was about to say, I'm still learning, you know,
so much about parenting in this new season of parenting,
which is parenting an adult. It's it's a totally new error.
But now knowing what I know, it's this was one
of the reasons why I wanted to have another child,
(21:03):
which I have come to terms with is just not
going to happen, but it's because I felt so much
more well equipped for it.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yes, I get that a lot, I do. I do
get that. I think the gen xers were very much
latch key kids' clo millennial.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
They're known as the latch general.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I am one year away from being a gen Xer.
So gen X ends in nineteen eighty one and I'm
in nineteen eighty two, baby, and so three. Yeah, you're
You're always be younger than May. It's fine. So the
latch key kids there was just there was instrumental neglect
(21:41):
as well as emotional neglect, so parents weren't around. This
is really when we saw a two household workforce start
to become a big thing. Yep, and a worked I'm
not hating on two household workforce, but what I'm just saying,
or two parent workforce, but we can't be blind to
the fact that a lot of kids were left alone
(22:03):
to their own devices and that there was some bitterness.
There was one time mentioned it before I'll mention it
again where I pretty much pissed off all of gen
z on the internet.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Oh yeah, that was pretty epic. It was epic, And
now it's hilarious because I said that I thought gen
X grew up kind of tough, and that gen Z
doesn't really get what it feels like to be alone
and isolated when all you have is a house phone
if that no internet, no cable and no parents.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
You know, the things that we.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Did what an awesome time in the world. Would do
anything to go back.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
To, Oh my gosh, where you could do stuff and
it wasn't just all captured in video.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
It was like true freedom.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
So what I'm just saying is I think that that
I think a lot of gen xers looking back are like,
I was kind of neglected, and there's something about just again.
I don't think they're crying victim, but I think they're saying, listen,
maybe there's something in between what we had to go
through and then how the millennials now are raising gen
(23:16):
Z and gen Alpha, which the pendulum with the millennials
swung way too far the other ways. We can't hurt
someone's feelings, so.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
We have to get everything validated.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Everything is validated, every little fear, concern, et cetera. And
I do think that's dangerous to validate every little feeling
through agreement. Now, do I I really do love empathy
through understanding. I think our job is to understand others.
And I think that's why Donald has just the golden
keys to parenting. He's he says, it's empathy plus boundaries
(23:54):
plus consistencystency and consistency is key, and He's like, one
thing that my kids are going to know about is
that I'm consistent. I'm consistent across all four of them,
and I'm consistent with what I say and do, and
he's one hundred percent consistent. And I am more prone
to being pushed into dropping boundaries. And what I have
come to understand in earning my own attachment security and
(24:16):
parenting these kids is I'm not going to drop my boundaries,
especially when they start getting tested. When they get to
the age of eight nine and all of a sudden,
they're starting to test you a little bit more in
ways because they're becoming a little bit smarter and they
know what your pain points are and they can press
on your pain points. And what I will say to
(24:37):
that is, yeah, I understand you're disappointed, and it really
stinks when we don't get what we want, and I
get that you're feeling mad or frustrated, by disappointment. Disappointment
inherently creates frustration, That's what I'll say. And so that's
a normal thing to feel. And this is still what's
happening here, and this is the boundary, and this is
still what I think is best for you. End of story.
(24:59):
We're not arguing about it. You got to tell me
how you felt. I understand, and it's not changing the boundary.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I think the boundaries in the consistency part is definitely
the most difficult, especially when you have multiple children. And
I can attest to this. It's interesting because my family dynamic.
I am the baby of four, but I am the
only millennial, and so all three of my siblings are
gen xers, and to if you knew us all four personally,
(25:27):
you could see it clear as day.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Like it is.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So it is so so clear that I am the
only millennial out of that group. But I'll say this
about my parents. I think what ended up happening is
specifically with Ryan, my brother, who is the oldest. You know,
they came in strong, they were ready, they were prepared,
they wanted that child. They you know, I mean, I
remember the day that my mom told me. I asked
(25:51):
her openly I was like, was Ryan and oops, baby
and she was like, no, actually you are a baby,
and I was like, excuse me, what what?
Speaker 3 (25:59):
No?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
So, you know, I think by the time that mama,
you know, it came to me coming of age, she
was exhaust tired. She was tired, so tired, and so
the consistency fell off, and you know, I think it
shaped me and molded me in ways that you know
(26:20):
is for a totally different episode, but it made me.
It made me pretty much dynamically, very different from my
three siblings.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I think. I think a lot of millennials they got tired.
They got tired, I agree, and they were just like,
you know what, do what you want. You're going to
do it anyway. Yeah, and at the end of the day.
But then then they would scream at you when you
did do something wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Right, And then I was like, you know, I'm like
nine doing my own laundry, you know, like because my
mom was like, you're I'm not doing this anymore. I'm
exhausted and you're on your own. You're you either you know,
wash your own clothes or you have dirty clothes. And
so there was like, like you said, there was this
intermittent reinforcement of I felt one percent loved by my parents,
(27:10):
but then at the same time somewhat dismissed and and
I don't know. And it happened later too, when I
went off to college. Because not throwing myself a pity
party here, guys, I'm just saying, I'm just talking about
the dynamics of my family, you know, when my sister
went off to college, when my other sister went off
to college, like daddy was paying for it, you know.
And then my parents divorced, and then I went off
(27:32):
to college, so it was like, sorry about you. You're
on your own here.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, and we ran out of money.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, we have no money. We're going through a divorce
and sorry, you're on your own, which made me extremely resilient.
And I don't want to say it's not fair for
me to say that I'm more resilient than my siblings,
but I am.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
But you are here. And here's the thing, too, is
boundaries create safety. Boundaries create safety for your kids because
your kids are constantly trying to test where are the parameters,
where are the lines in the sand, and they want
it is inherently in human nature to see how far
the boundaries go if you were in a wide open
(28:11):
field all of a sudden, just I don't know what
am I trying to say. Beamed beamed made me up, Scottie, right,
like you were just beamed into an open field and
would you not walk forward and to see where it ended?
Of course your kids are going to test boundaries. Doesn't
make them bad kids. That make some curious humans, right,
(28:34):
that's human nature. But boundaries in place let them know
what's safe, and so they might not like them in
the immediate, but in the long term, it trains their
nervous system to trust you, and to trust closeness and
to trust intimacy because you've set parameters around what that
looks like. And I think what's so interesting is when
(28:55):
we're boundary less in our relationship, can we really fault
our part for them testing them and pushing them because
you've never held them? And so we teach people how
to treat us. When you don't hold boundaries in your relationship,
do you sit there and wonder why your partner's not
treating you well? I think it is human nature to
(29:16):
test how far can I go with something? And subconsciously
very much so, and kids will test this. They will
act out, they will do things because they're saying to you,
if I act out, am I still safe? If I
am annoying? Do you still love me? If I break
the rules? Are you gonna throw me away? Does that
(29:36):
take your love away? They're trying to see how conditional
your love is. And so when you validate through understanding,
you're showing them that you still love them, that they're
still important, that they still matter, that their feelings matter.
But then when you set the boundary, then you give
them trust you and you can trust me because I
know what's best for you and the line ends here.
(29:57):
And I'm sorry that that frustrates you in the moment,
but guess what long term, that's going to teach you
that intimate relationships are actually safe and you know where
you can move within them.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And I think that's the beauty of like what let's
say the baby boomer generation gave us, because I think
their boundaries were set because they had to be set right,
like they had no choice. But then that trickling down
effect of that has created, you know, the gen X
and millennial generation that's raising these gen zers and who
(30:30):
are but we're more self aware and what those boundaries
need to look like And you know, again, I think there,
this isn't about me and the ways that I failed
as a variant. But I can't help but just go there,
like my brain cannot help, but go there.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
I go there too, I go there too. I go
there a lot, I go there a lot. And then
I have to realize Donald's really great about saying and
you can't change it. Yeah, And we're not going to
sit in self pity and we're going to say that
things are okay now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And I'm grateful for okay now to have you know,
Josh as a partner for that same reason. And I
often think about, you know, in this empty nest era
of my life, because you know, you've heard me talk
about in other episodes about you know, I'm moving into
this era of empty nest, and but I've never really
(31:19):
gotten into you know why, I think it is so painful.
And I think the reason why it is so painful
is because you're letting go and looking back on all
the ways that you could have done things differently, and
then you come to face face to face with that
at this time more than any other time.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Right, you come face to face that with who what
kind of adult did I create? Yeah, yeah, exactly, and
that's I'm and you're like, I'm seeing in the future
to that. Yeah, but I can only imagine that. Yeah,
it's hard, and regret is really painful, which is why
I always tell people try everything before you end your relationship.
Be christ. Regret is very painful. You don't want to
(31:58):
end your relationship and then go. But I maybe if
I would have shown up differently, Yeah, right, So start
showing up differently, and then if your partner doesn't respond
to you, then you know, well, I did everything I could.
I showed up well on my end and they didn't
match me. So I can actually leave and feel good
about leaving because I did the work first to show
up as the most secure partner I could be. And
(32:21):
if that doesn't create enough safety and allow my partner
to sort of lean into that and stabilize into their
own security, then I can go and I can be like, Okay,
it wasn't ever going to change no matter what I did.
And regret is so painful, and I think it's easy
to look back as a parent and regret a lot,
and I know that I do, and it is a
(32:41):
fact that again all we have is now. Life is
made up of many moments of now.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Well, and that's what I was going to say too,
again bringing it back to the generational topic, is that
I think we are better as parents at the repair.
At the repair, yeah, because my God love them, you know,
there's no repair, no, no, and like there would be
blow ups and like I don't know, like I just
(33:08):
remember blow ups and then my mom would either just
always be mad and they're like I don't know if ever,
and then my dad would just kind of disappear, and
so I don't ever recall and even like when there
was a blow up between my mom and me, I
don't know if there was ever any true deep repair.
And here's what I'll say after kind of beating myself
(33:30):
up through this episode about like, oh the regret, the regret,
is that one thing that I have tried to do
differently in my parenting journey is when I do mess up,
I make sure to always go back and repair.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
It absolutely, And I think that that's what we need
to focus on as parents. It's not perfection, it's repair. Yeah.
And if you are finding yourself having to repair all
the time because you're so dysregulated, then I think it
is worth checking into your attachment security and doing the
nervous system work and the work around intimacy because your
(34:07):
kids will trigger you too, trigger you in a different
way than your partner does. Your kids trigger you as
a mirror of yourself one hundred because when they do wrong,
it's a subconscious reflection on you. Right, You're the one
that grew them and taught them and model model to them,
and so when they do wrong it feels personal. It
(34:31):
feels extremely personal, but it's not personal. Yes, we may
have made them, but at the end of the day,
they are going to have to as adults, be responsible
for their own own well being and their own behavior.
And do we help shape that, Yes we do, But
(34:51):
they still have some of their own true personality, their
own temperance, temper their own you.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Know, I mean societal things that they're genetics, waited by peers,
that they're persuaded.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
A situations can't control that they've interacted with. There's a
lot of variables that we can't control. But one of
the things I think we can control and we should
try to control as much as possible is modeling love,
respect and repair, communication, communication, empathy, and having good boundaries
with our kids and when there is a blow up,
(35:22):
you go back and you make it better and you
take accountability. And I think that was one of the
things that was really hard for the Boomer generation. It
is still incredibly hard.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Oh and I mean, think about it. Their parents didn't
do that. Oh my god, listen. My mom grew up
her entire life and had a mother who never even
said she loved her. So, I mean love was just
too hard for her to express period. She couldn't even
say the words. And I mean, could you imagine now,
could you imagine living your whole life and never telling
your children that you love them?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
No, I couldn't imagine going one day not telling my
girls that I loved it.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
But that the greatest generation, that was just kind of
the norm. It was.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I think it was the norm. Children are to be
seen and not heard, and speak only when spoken to
and deal with your problems and get over it and
life is tough. And then that transferred to the boomers,
and then the Boomers were also part of.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
A huge group of dismissive avoidance.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Radical rebellious group too, kind of so we have some
rebellion from that. And I think the boomers are kind
of a mix of fas and das, but certainly a
lot of avoidance as the theme.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Right, They did have a lot of childhood trauma for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah. So yeah, like hiding under your desk thinking there's
a nuclear bomb coming. I think they did that a lot, apparently, apparently,
and our kids are doing it with school shooter drills.
I mean, maybe we're just no different. I just don't
want the pendulum to swing so far in either direction,
so far in the direction that we're just life stuff.
Get over it. Dismiss all your kids' feelings, which is
(36:54):
going to make them not know how to be intimate
with others, not know how to be vulnerable, not how
to repair not They're going to disassociate or dissociate and
suppress all of their feelings. Versus. The other side of
going too far is validating every little discomfort, trying to
make sure they don't experience any discomfort, trying to save
(37:15):
them from too many hardships and struggles.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Of life, because then they have no coping scus, then.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
They have no coping skills, because then you just coped
for them, and then you have one great ball of anxiety.
And then if we have a combination of the two,
then we get a fearful avoid it because they both
have neglect and lack of boundaries and son and potentially
(37:42):
heightened emotionality from seeing dysfunctional emotionality. So we have to
model regulated emotions. We apps. I always tell my daughter,
You're welcome to talk about your feelings, but I'm not
going to let you scream them at me. When as
long as you're screaming at me, I'm going to step
aside and you don't get access to me. But I
will always be here when you want to talk about
(38:02):
your feelings. So you can even cry about your feelings,
but you're not going to scream them at me.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Secure parenting might be, like you said, the most important
thing we can do in our lives.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
The most important thing. And I wish, I wish we
could earn our attachment security before we have kids. Yes,
and do it right from birth, do it right from pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
We're shifting. I think we're shifting as you know, our
consciousness around it, as a as a as humanity. I mean,
I want to believe that because it gives me hope,
and you know, the generations to come, and it gives
me more hope, you know, based on the episode you
know that dropped last week and what happened, you know,
because I want to believe that the generations to come
(38:45):
and the generations that are to come after us will
have the ability and the level of consciousness that we
cannot yet reach. Yeah, because that's the goal. The goal
is to have to reach your higher self. And the
only way to do that is through a level of
(39:07):
consciousness that you and I might not even fully understand
as we sit here talking about christiousness. Consciousness, Yes, christ consciousness.
And at the end of the day, there's one unifying
factor and that's love. And love doesn't just mean agree.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
It doesn't. It doesn't always mean agreement, and it doesn't
just mean validating. Sometimes it means telling hard truths and
sometimes it means holding hard boundaries. Because enabling someone's bad
behavior isn't love either. That's the furthest thing.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
All the time. Love without boundaries is not love.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's not love. It's enabling and it's teaching people that
they're bad behaving.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
It's abandoning.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
It is abandoning yourself. Yeah, and there is a self
sacrificial part of love, but it shouldn't be one hundred
percent self sacrificial. It's a balance between sacrificing some of
what you need and in giving and receiving right and
your partner sacrificing some of what they need. It's about
leaning in with compromise. It's not about taking on someone's reality.
(40:12):
And again, we only get if there's a winner and
a loser in your relationship. You have a losing relationship.
Let me just say that right now, whether that's in
your parent child relationship or whether that's in your romantic relationship.
It shouldn't be about winning and being right. It should
be about are we being productive and are we being healthy?
(40:33):
And are we collaborating to make sure that we are
reaching shared goals?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
And I know a lot of you at the.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Bottom of the episode here, we're going to kind of
wrap it up here.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, And I think that you know this just leads
me into wanting to say, in terms of your practice
for our listeners and all of your followers, I think
an ultimate goal of ours is to introduce, you know,
an element of you teaching secure parenting because it is
so very important. It's not just about your becoming securely attached.
(41:07):
Isn't just about your romantic relationships. It's about every loving
relationship that you have, or any relationship, even relationships with
coworkers and bosses. It plays into every aspect really of
your life when it comes to relationships. And so maybe
that will be to come. But in the meantime, doctor
(41:28):
Hensley does have a free guide that you can download
on specifically the fearful avoidant, and there's also one for
the dismissive avoidant. But if you are wondering, because a
lot of people I know come into your practice and
they're often confused, right, are they fearful avoidant? Are they
anxious preoccupied? Because of course the fearful avoidant has both
the avoidant and the anxious side, and it's sometimes hard
(41:51):
to tell because a lot of fearful avoidance live in
that anxious side.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Absolutely or the dismissive side. And so a lot of
people come into my practice they really think they're one
attachment style and they're not. And so the first step
and healing attachment is being aware of what your attachment is.
So yes, you can go to courses dot thelovedoc dot com,
slash DA or the courses dot the loovedoc dot com,
slash FA and download those free guides if you want
(42:19):
to deep dive into both of those attachment styles, because
just calling someone attachment avoidant doesn't do anybody any favors
because the two different types of avoidance are so different.
And really we have two different types of anxious attachment too,
because fearfuls can absolutely be anxious, and the majority of
the fearful avoidance I see are anxious in my practice.
So please go check out those free resources. We would
(42:39):
love for you to have them and to start your
journey through awareness. And if we can be here to
be helpful on any part of your journey, we want
to be. So please keep writing us, Please keep sending
us you know, messages that help us grow, you know,
positive feedback or constructive feedback as well. We thank you
guys for listening in.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, we love you guys so much. Course we also
want to thank one of our affiliates. Are both of
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Yeah, and you run hot at night like a lot
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And of course we cannot leave without saying thank you
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(44:09):
wal cup today. Absolutely it is we love Armor. I
just ran out of my watermelon this morning, so I'm
gonna have to order some more because I try to
like try a new flavor every month, but I keep
going back to watermelon. It is by far the best.
Like I did pineapp I thought, oh my gosh, I'm
gonna love pineapple so much. And it is good. It's
still good, but it's it's just not as watermelon.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, I like the watermelon and the blood orange are
my two favorites.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I never tried blood orange.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
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Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, I need to try blood worine.
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(44:58):
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Speaker 5 (45:04):
Code lovedog lovedoc for fifteen fifteen percent off. Yes, so,
thank you, Armorah, thank you. It's been a game changer
for me. So and of course another you know, guys,
we got to, we got to. If you are looking
for your attachment security, we highly highly encourage you to
seek out doctor Hensley Services at the lovedoc dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
I'm biased, but I think she's the best of the best.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
I continue even after eight years of friendship, I still
continue to learn something new all the time from her.
I'm still encouraged to like sit in on group. Like
the other day when I was at the house, I
was like, you know what, I think I might just
sit here and like listen to group for a little
bit because I always learned something. And so please go
check out her services at the lovedoc dot com. For
all of our listeners, we offer a special promo code
(45:50):
love dot twenty seven for twenty seven percent off because
we love you guys so so much, and please keep
tuning in because we want to provide the world with
so much freak content so that we can heal. Right,
we can heal and hopread that's right, and this is
what this podcast is for. This is completely free for
all of you, so continue to tune in and until
(46:12):
next time, peace, love, and perspective.
Welcome to the Love Dog Podcast. I'm your co host
Rana Butcher here with our host, doctor Sarah Hensley, the owner, founder,
and CEO of the love Doc relationship coaching services and
of course of this podcast. You can find her at
the lovedoc dot com or on all social media handles
at doctor Sarah Hensley.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, Hey, what's up.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You know, just recording our lovely podcast. Our favorite thing
to do, which we say are dane to do. It
is the most fun part of what we Oh, absolutely,
and it's like this for me, it's therapy. It is
because I get to come here and like you know,
I mean, obviously we're talking as best friends like we
(00:54):
would if we were just talking, but on this really
like on a deeper level.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, absolutely, on a much deeper level.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
And so it's a I get I get first class
access to the doc Herson.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yes, it's it's so fun because it's just a way
to be a little bit more myself and a little
bit and it makes me sad when people like, stop
talking about yourself, We don't care, Just tell me how
to have our relationship. And I'm like, fine, but there
is a part of me that's like I desire to
be known and understood. I'm a former FA and that
(01:31):
doesn't really go away. You just learn how to not
demand that people read your mind right right becomes secure.
I just I want to be cool too, Yeah a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah you are cool.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I don't know, maybe I'm not. I actually don't really
care that much if I'm cool, But I want to
be able to connect with people on a more human level.
And the podcast just feels like we get to do that.
It feels like we get to share some of our
personality and some of our personal struggles and wins yep
with our audience, and we love to do that. We
are so thankful for you guys being here. Which, speaking
(02:04):
of sharing amongst diverse people, we are going to talk
about attachment styles across generation today, which I will preface
this conversation by saying, we don't have a lot of data.
There's not a lot of data on this. Yeah, so
a lot of what we do have is speculative based
(02:25):
on the small amount of data that we have. So
side note footnote, yeah, asterisk, Yeah, and we don't have
a lot of data on this, so but let's talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, And just to kind of line out, you know,
give y'all the timeline and you might have helped me
with this. So we have our baby boomers, well.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
We have the greatest generation before them, so that was
our grand.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Poh okay, and ye I guess some of those are
some of them are still living? Yes, absolutely? And what
is that generation called?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
That is the greatest generation? The greatest they live the
Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I wish that was the name of mind.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Because they lived through the Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, the greatest generation. Okay, Then we have baby boomers.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And we have baby boomers. Then were their children? Right?
Then we have Gen X, Then we have Gen X,
and then we have millennials. Then we have Gen Z,
then we have Gen Alpha correct, and I have two.
I have one Gen Z or a one Gen Alpha kid,
so I get to be exposed to both of those.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The oldest Gen Alphas I think are twelve. I was
looking at like the timeline in terms of dates last
night because I was like, oh, Gen Alpha, I didn't
even know that exist.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It is the skimmity toilet generation. Gimbty toilet, skimmy toilet.
Ohio Riz Sigma. Huh what did you just say? Hopefully
I made some parents laugh in their car, Yeah, because
maybe the kid can't quit saying skibbity Yeah, maybe ohio
sigma six seven whatever. That crazy. That's I don't even
(03:54):
know what any of it. That's.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That's a foreign language to me.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And the gen Z language is a little bit foreign
to me too. Yeah, And I have a like I've
found myself saying low key all the time, low key,
don't do that, legit, don't do that. And then they
say literally, but they really mean figuratively. They're like, literally,
I'm going to die. I was like, I think you
mean figuratively because you're literally not going to die because
you can't find your hoodie.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I do catch myself saying that a lot, because Josh
will even call me on it. I'm like, I'm literally
starving and he's like.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Are you though, are you mountain nourished?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah? Are you starving?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Oh you're not. It's interesting, it's interesting. So the data
that we do have there was a adjacent cohort study.
I believe it's made meta analysis, which is an aggregate
of data. A meta analysis is an analysis of a
bunch of different studies. It could have been a meta analysis.
(04:47):
I'm not a one hundred percent sure, but I know.
It was a generational cohort study that looked at individuals
from nineteen eighty eight to twenty eleven, and we saw
a statistically signific My goodness, it's been a while since
I've used that term, since I'm not teaching statistics anymore.
Statistically significant finding, which just means greater than chance, Okay,
(05:11):
that we see a rise in dismissive avoidance by about
five percent interest, so that attachment style is increasing. And
I'm not gonna lie. It was the Baby Boomers that
raised them. So the Baby Boomers raised more dismissive avoidance,
and I would absolutely say that that mirrors what I
see in my practice. The Baby Boomers were very emotionally
(05:35):
dismissive as a generation. Why, I don't exactly know. They
grew up in a lot of chaos too. Later When
I think about my parents growing up, I think about
like the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War, and
they were basically being told there could be nuclear war
at like every moment. So maybe they were just like, you.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Know what, we know what we had to live through,
and theirs their parents were, you know, lived through the
Great Depression, so they're living through like one of the
hardest times in terms of our nation's economic health.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So they probably dismissed the boomers as being whiny little babies,
and then the boomers dismissed us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Right, there's a trickling down effect there for sure, Right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I think so, because we don't have the data before
that those boomer parents. We only have this nineteen eighty
eight to twenty eleven data really is all we have
in terms of co wort effects.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So I think though now we are seeing a rise
in attachment anxiety. And here's why, because I think we
are seeing that especially Gen Z is the most well
connected generation, but they're also the most depressed. So the
connections that they have are very shallow, which gives some
(06:55):
degree of intermittent reinforcement, like the need is partially met,
but it's not stable enough to create feelings of safety.
And I think that we have parents that are so
distracted on their phone, and I'm not going to say
that I am not guilty of at times being one
of them and having to be extremely intentional. I have
to be so intentional about my phone around my kids
(07:15):
because being a business owner, it's just like ding ding ding,
ding ding ding ding, like notification after notification constantly, and
at the end of the day, you know, the person
at the top has to eventually hear about this stuff.
But you guys are sometimes great about putting out the
fires before they come home.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I really do try.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I know you do, and I'm so appreciative of that.
And so we have a lot of distracted parents, but
we also have a lot of parents that are trying
to be emotionally aware and trying to be emotionally present
for their kid.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Now, millennials are known as like the therapy generation.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
We went to therapy. We did go to therapy. We
found out we were dismissed as children.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I feel like we not dismissed and we enable
a little maybe that risks.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So there's this fine line in parenting, fine freaking line.
We're walking a type rope here, and it's not fair.
You know what, Life's not fair. We're walking the tightrope
between not dismissing our children's feelings and raising a bunch
of dismissive avoidance that can't tolerate intimacy and vulnerability, versus
enabling every feeling as completely valid and teaching our kids
(08:23):
to catastrophize and become hysterical, and to become anxious about
the smallest things in life, and to not be able
to do anything for themselves, and teaching them to be
guilty step over people's boundaries concre there's a fine line, right,
And so I always say Donald is the best freaking parent.
He's just such a good parent because like when I
(08:46):
start to fail, like my girls will personally push me
a little bit, because the all kids push their parents, sure,
and of course I'm their only surviving biological parent. And
Donald has been in the picture for four going on
five years now, and I still think they have some
a little little bit of the okay, like I have
(09:07):
to do what you say. I'm not going to push
back on you like I would push back on my mom, right.
But also I think there's this beautiful parenting dynamic when
we have a nuclear family, and again I don't have
a full nuclear family. I have a piece together, a
nuclear family that I think now operates as a nuclear family,
which I really love because you know, Donald has adopted
(09:28):
my girls. But it really shines the light on the
role of a mother versus a father, where I think
the mother's role is to be a little bit more nurturing,
more validating. And then it is the father's role to
help a child sit in discomfort and face the fact
that you have to be tough sometimes too, because we're
(09:48):
trying to teach our kids empathy but also grit at
the same time. And that is such a fine line,
is so such a tight rope. And when we say, oh,
you just have to be a good enough parent. Kids
are resilient, that's actually not true. Yeah, that's actually not
true at all. Kids are adaptive, not resilient. Resilient means
I've overcome adversity and I'm still very highly functional. Adaptive
(10:10):
means I went through adversity and any behaviors that I
have that may be dysfunctional or a result of that
of adapting to dysfunction.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, there's a difference, and that's I mean, that's just
way more scientifically proven, I.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Would say, way more scientifically sound. Kids are not resilient,
they're adaptive. So yes, they may be able to be
somewhat functional, but we are going to see adaptation to
dysfunction if the kids are around dysfunction constantly, as it
is modeled to them and as they experience it in
their nervous system. So our parents are our first mirrors
(10:46):
of intimacy. They are are first experience with what does
it feel like to be close to someone, and that
experience will be so profound that it will shape all
the rest of their intimacy experiences throughout their life. So
when we say have to be a good enough parent,
don't worry, They're resilient. I think we need to take
a step back and say no, Actually, parenting is the
most important job that we have. It is the thing
(11:09):
that we should focus on the most in terms of
quote getting it right, and we should let everything else
come sort of secondary with putting our kids first, meaning
actually putting our marriage in our relationship first, because that
is their model under which they will imprint what does
it mean to be close to someone inside their nervous system.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I would give anything if I knew the basis of
attachment when JP, before I had JP.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I knew it, and I still couldn't use it. So
that's where awareness doesn't matter. When your nervous system is
shaped in a certain way, you can have all the
awareness and all the good intentions in the world, and
your nervous system will override you every single time, which
is why we have to understand that attachment is based
in a subconscious blueprint that is intimately tied to how
(11:58):
the nervous system functions around intimacy.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So which is what you teach.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Which is what I teach. So when you earn your security,
you're not just becoming securely attached in your romantic relationship.
You are earning the ability to shape your children's attachment security,
which I think is a really really amazing and profound thing,
and I have gotten to witness it with my older daughter.
So my older daughter is now fourteen, and she's on
(12:25):
her second boyfriend now first boyfriend. She went a little
avoidant and I was like, oh, here's the FA right,
like they lost her dad, they've had she's had childhood trauma.
She I know she has fearful avoidance and we've been
working on it. Come to find out though, you know,
I can read her phone, yeah, and she'll let me.
(12:45):
She'll put her phone up, and now I go through
it if I want to. Come to find out, there
was a little too much attachment anxiety on the other
end of that relationship, like that high high, high, high
high levels of attachment anxiety. And when my dad started
opening up to me about the things that this boy
was saying and doing. I was like, baby, girl, that
(13:08):
would even make a secure person want to run. So
the fact that you noticed that you were slipping into
your avoidance and you were open with him. You were saying, Hey,
I'm feeling like I'm slipping into a little bit of
my attachment avoidance because I feel a little overwhelmed here.
You're making Gosh, you're communicating so openly and so beautifully
and respectfully. And that's when I'm like, yes, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Doing it, doing it, You're doing keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And now she has this other boyfriend, and he's very
he's showing at least right now, he's showing up very secure.
She's aware that you know, if you're only a couple
of months in, it could change, right. And so I'm like,
if he starts pulling wife, he starts being inconsistent, you
need to know those are red flash.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
She really liked this one.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
She does, but because he's my daughter. Again. She is
a very busy lady. She has all ap glasses, is
a varsity athlete. She is doing private lessons and tumbling
to get better. I heard that cheer. There's not a
moment of that child's day. I feel like where she
can just relax. And so, you know, a relationship at
(14:14):
this age it looks a lot different right than in adult.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Really good though, because then it allows her to not no,
she to not get too to not get too attached,
because I think that that's not that JP didn't have
things to keep him involved when he was in high school.
He had the ROTC and that kept him busy. But man,
once he found that girl, it was just all in.
(14:39):
And here we are. Gosh, we're going on three years
now that they've been together, and and I love you
so much, Jessica, I couldn't love you more. But like
they they're pretty consumed with each other, and they have
been consumed, like I keep like Josh, and I keep
like secretly waiting for it to kind of like fizzle,
and it it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Has had, it has If anything, it's ramped for sure,
for sure. So it's very hard to see your children
go through these things. And once you are attachment aware
and you see their attachment style coming out, you just
want to be like, oh my gosh, no no no, no, no, no,
don't do it wrong. Don't do it wrong. Don't do it,
and then you want.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
To teach them. You want to teach them so badly,
like all the things that you know, But of course
they can't conceptualize the things that you know. A forty
plus year old brain knows versus you know, a teenager
or you know, eighteen nineteen year old.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Knows, right, And that's why it's really hard to come
to come to them after the fact and be like,
oh no, now you're doing it wrong. Right, if we
have the chance to start in childhood, when we are
their mirrors of intimacy before someone else comes into the
picture who does not love them like a parent and
is their mirror for intimacy, let's be a good mirror.
(15:50):
Let's be a stable mirror. So a lot of people
ask me in my my groups, well, what does a
secure parent look like? And I try to give them
some examples, like, say you have a three year old
little you on the playground and you're running around and
playing and going down the slide, and you come down
the slide and you have a hard fall and you
(16:11):
face first and you scrape your knees and your elbows
and you see blood and you're crying and you're three, right,
you don't know what is this stuff coming out of me?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Scary?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Scary, and it hurts and it stings. And you have
a parent that comes to you, and that parent goes, oh, sweet,
do you fell down? Oh my gosh, that hurts, doesn't it.
So a child is trying to answer the question, what
just happened to me? I'm feeling something? What is this?
And so we just had a parent that that modeled
(16:40):
you are feeling hurt. Oh that's scary. That was scary,
wasn't it. Okay, this is fear. So you're helping a
child understand their emotions. But then when that parent is
also very regulated, what happens is that child borrows their
parent's nervous system so they don't feel regulated, but their
parent is like this oak tree that they can essentially
(17:01):
like grab onto during the storm. Right, And so what
that teaches the child when the parent is stable and
the parent is attuned and is labeling the emotions and
is inquisitive about them and is not trying to just
make it go away, which we can create some anxious
kiddos when we just try to bandaid their emotions, right,
when we try to fix their problems for you and
(17:22):
don't allow them to sit into some discomfort When you
can allow your child to sit in that discomfort while
you name it and why you provide safety, that is
developing a securely attached nervous system because they're learning to
sit in difficult feelings without overreacting, while still staying calm.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And I also think another big mistake the parents made,
speaking from personal experience here, is that when an incident
happens that brings about fear in the child, I have
a specific circumstance. Jap and I were pa. He was
probably eight. We were carving pumpkins and he sliced his
thumb wide open. My reaction was fear and panic. Oh yeah,
(18:05):
and made that mistake plenty of times. Yeah, And so
of course my fear and panic he feeds off of,
you know, And I can I can look back on
my parents, like my core parents in years and think,
oh gosh, oh, I did so many things wrong.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And the sad thing is because we don't know what
we don't know. And even though I knew all this
stuff about attachment, I had already chosen my mate. By
the time I was learning about attachment, I was already married.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And probably super anxious because.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's because of who I chose to marry. So when
I started learning this back in two thousand and six ish,
I think that's right, two thousand and six to that, Yeah,
two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, I was
already married. Yeah, like I was already well, I was engaged,
and I wasn't going to call off the marriage. And
(18:58):
then when I really learned the deep stuff, when I
knew I was in deep shi T, I was already
married and I was already pregnant.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, and then you're already in it, do you well?
And and then you go into survival mode. And when
you're in that survival mode and that in your fight
flight responses, it's hard to You can't.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
And then execute anything.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
And this brings me back to really the subject of
the podcast, and you know, talking about maybe the baby
boomers and you know, raising the gen xers and the millennials,
is that I think so much of their life was
spent in survival mode that they could never learn how
to build the capacity around how to regulate their nervous system.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
No, my parents were one hundred percent chronically dysregulated.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Same and my dad not so much. My dad I
think a lot of what helped Daddy was he was
a pastor, you know, faith, and he had had so
much childhood trauma. I mean, I don't even know the
extent of his childhood trauma, to be honest. That it
(20:04):
made him so much more.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Aware, right, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
With certain things and then disassociate with certain things.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I had awareness for so long, but I had no
ability to execute because I was in a marriage with
somebody who was an addict, who was cheating on me constantly,
who was abusing me constantly, And then I was trying
to be a mom and I had no idea what
I was doing there either. And I had a lot
of sickness and a lot of problems with my health.
(20:33):
Obviously I've talked about that. But I just had no
capacity to execute. I was in my capacity. Isn't that
still tesching that what.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I was about to say, I'm still learning, you know,
so much about parenting in this new season of parenting,
which is parenting an adult. It's it's a totally new error.
But now knowing what I know, it's this was one
of the reasons why I wanted to have another child,
(21:03):
which I have come to terms with is just not
going to happen, but it's because I felt so much
more well equipped for it.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yes, I get that a lot, I do. I do
get that. I think the gen xers were very much
latch key kids' clo millennial.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
They're known as the latch general.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I am one year away from being a gen Xer.
So gen X ends in nineteen eighty one and I'm
in nineteen eighty two, baby, and so three. Yeah, you're
You're always be younger than May. It's fine. So the
latch key kids there was just there was instrumental neglect
(21:41):
as well as emotional neglect, so parents weren't around. This
is really when we saw a two household workforce start
to become a big thing. Yep, and a worked I'm
not hating on two household workforce, but what I'm just saying,
or two parent workforce, but we can't be blind to
the fact that a lot of kids were left alone
(22:03):
to their own devices and that there was some bitterness.
There was one time mentioned it before I'll mention it
again where I pretty much pissed off all of gen
z on the internet.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Oh yeah, that was pretty epic. It was epic, And
now it's hilarious because I said that I thought gen
X grew up kind of tough, and that gen Z
doesn't really get what it feels like to be alone
and isolated when all you have is a house phone
if that no internet, no cable and no parents.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
You know, the things that we.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Did what an awesome time in the world. Would do
anything to go back.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
To, Oh my gosh, where you could do stuff and
it wasn't just all captured in video.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
It was like true freedom.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
So what I'm just saying is I think that that
I think a lot of gen xers looking back are like,
I was kind of neglected, and there's something about just again.
I don't think they're crying victim, but I think they're saying, listen,
maybe there's something in between what we had to go
through and then how the millennials now are raising gen
(23:16):
Z and gen Alpha, which the pendulum with the millennials
swung way too far the other ways. We can't hurt
someone's feelings, so.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
We have to get everything validated.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Everything is validated, every little fear, concern, et cetera. And
I do think that's dangerous to validate every little feeling
through agreement. Now, do I I really do love empathy
through understanding. I think our job is to understand others.
And I think that's why Donald has just the golden
keys to parenting. He's he says, it's empathy plus boundaries
(23:54):
plus consistencystency and consistency is key, and He's like, one
thing that my kids are going to know about is
that I'm consistent. I'm consistent across all four of them,
and I'm consistent with what I say and do, and
he's one hundred percent consistent. And I am more prone
to being pushed into dropping boundaries. And what I have
come to understand in earning my own attachment security and
(24:16):
parenting these kids is I'm not going to drop my boundaries,
especially when they start getting tested. When they get to
the age of eight nine and all of a sudden,
they're starting to test you a little bit more in
ways because they're becoming a little bit smarter and they
know what your pain points are and they can press
on your pain points. And what I will say to
(24:37):
that is, yeah, I understand you're disappointed, and it really
stinks when we don't get what we want, and I
get that you're feeling mad or frustrated, by disappointment. Disappointment
inherently creates frustration, That's what I'll say. And so that's
a normal thing to feel. And this is still what's
happening here, and this is the boundary, and this is
still what I think is best for you. End of story.
(24:59):
We're not arguing about it. You got to tell me
how you felt. I understand, and it's not changing the boundary.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I think the boundaries in the consistency part is definitely
the most difficult, especially when you have multiple children. And
I can attest to this. It's interesting because my family dynamic.
I am the baby of four, but I am the
only millennial, and so all three of my siblings are
gen xers, and to if you knew us all four personally,
(25:27):
you could see it clear as day.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Like it is.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So it is so so clear that I am the
only millennial out of that group. But I'll say this
about my parents. I think what ended up happening is
specifically with Ryan, my brother, who is the oldest. You know,
they came in strong, they were ready, they were prepared,
they wanted that child. They you know, I mean, I
remember the day that my mom told me. I asked
(25:51):
her openly I was like, was Ryan and oops, baby
and she was like, no, actually you are a baby,
and I was like, excuse me, what what?
Speaker 3 (25:59):
No?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
So, you know, I think by the time that mama,
you know, it came to me coming of age, she
was exhaust tired. She was tired, so tired, and so
the consistency fell off, and you know, I think it
shaped me and molded me in ways that you know
(26:20):
is for a totally different episode, but it made me.
It made me pretty much dynamically, very different from my
three siblings.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I think. I think a lot of millennials they got tired.
They got tired, I agree, and they were just like,
you know what, do what you want. You're going to
do it anyway. Yeah, and at the end of the day.
But then then they would scream at you when you
did do something wrong.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Right, And then I was like, you know, I'm like
nine doing my own laundry, you know, like because my
mom was like, you're I'm not doing this anymore. I'm
exhausted and you're on your own. You're you either you know,
wash your own clothes or you have dirty clothes. And
so there was like, like you said, there was this
intermittent reinforcement of I felt one percent loved by my parents,
(27:10):
but then at the same time somewhat dismissed and and
I don't know. And it happened later too, when I
went off to college. Because not throwing myself a pity
party here, guys, I'm just saying, I'm just talking about
the dynamics of my family, you know, when my sister
went off to college, when my other sister went off
to college, like daddy was paying for it, you know.
And then my parents divorced, and then I went off
(27:32):
to college, so it was like, sorry about you. You're
on your own here.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, and we ran out of money.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, we have no money. We're going through a divorce
and sorry, you're on your own, which made me extremely resilient.
And I don't want to say it's not fair for
me to say that I'm more resilient than my siblings,
but I am.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
But you are here. And here's the thing, too, is
boundaries create safety. Boundaries create safety for your kids because
your kids are constantly trying to test where are the parameters,
where are the lines in the sand, and they want
it is inherently in human nature to see how far
the boundaries go if you were in a wide open
(28:11):
field all of a sudden, just I don't know what
am I trying to say. Beamed beamed made me up, Scottie, right,
like you were just beamed into an open field and
would you not walk forward and to see where it ended?
Of course your kids are going to test boundaries. Doesn't
make them bad kids. That make some curious humans, right,
(28:34):
that's human nature. But boundaries in place let them know
what's safe, and so they might not like them in
the immediate, but in the long term, it trains their
nervous system to trust you, and to trust closeness and
to trust intimacy because you've set parameters around what that
looks like. And I think what's so interesting is when
(28:55):
we're boundary less in our relationship, can we really fault
our part for them testing them and pushing them because
you've never held them? And so we teach people how
to treat us. When you don't hold boundaries in your relationship,
do you sit there and wonder why your partner's not
treating you well? I think it is human nature to
(29:16):
test how far can I go with something? And subconsciously
very much so, and kids will test this. They will
act out, they will do things because they're saying to you,
if I act out, am I still safe? If I
am annoying? Do you still love me? If I break
the rules? Are you gonna throw me away? Does that
(29:36):
take your love away? They're trying to see how conditional
your love is. And so when you validate through understanding,
you're showing them that you still love them, that they're
still important, that they still matter, that their feelings matter.
But then when you set the boundary, then you give
them trust you and you can trust me because I
know what's best for you and the line ends here.
(29:57):
And I'm sorry that that frustrates you in the moment,
but guess what long term, that's going to teach you
that intimate relationships are actually safe and you know where
you can move within them.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And I think that's the beauty of like what let's
say the baby boomer generation gave us, because I think
their boundaries were set because they had to be set right,
like they had no choice. But then that trickling down
effect of that has created, you know, the gen X
and millennial generation that's raising these gen zers and who
(30:30):
are but we're more self aware and what those boundaries
need to look like And you know, again, I think there,
this isn't about me and the ways that I failed
as a variant. But I can't help but just go there,
like my brain cannot help, but go there.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
I go there too, I go there too. I go
there a lot, I go there a lot. And then
I have to realize Donald's really great about saying and
you can't change it. Yeah, And we're not going to
sit in self pity and we're going to say that
things are okay now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And I'm grateful for okay now to have you know,
Josh as a partner for that same reason. And I
often think about, you know, in this empty nest era
of my life, because you know, you've heard me talk
about in other episodes about you know, I'm moving into
this era of empty nest, and but I've never really
(31:19):
gotten into you know why, I think it is so painful.
And I think the reason why it is so painful
is because you're letting go and looking back on all
the ways that you could have done things differently, and
then you come to face face to face with that
at this time more than any other time.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Right, you come face to face that with who what
kind of adult did I create? Yeah, yeah, exactly, and
that's I'm and you're like, I'm seeing in the future
to that. Yeah, but I can only imagine that. Yeah,
it's hard, and regret is really painful, which is why
I always tell people try everything before you end your relationship.
Be christ. Regret is very painful. You don't want to
(31:58):
end your relationship and then go. But I maybe if
I would have shown up differently, Yeah, right, So start
showing up differently, and then if your partner doesn't respond
to you, then you know, well, I did everything I could.
I showed up well on my end and they didn't
match me. So I can actually leave and feel good
about leaving because I did the work first to show
up as the most secure partner I could be. And
(32:21):
if that doesn't create enough safety and allow my partner
to sort of lean into that and stabilize into their
own security, then I can go and I can be like, Okay,
it wasn't ever going to change no matter what I did.
And regret is so painful, and I think it's easy
to look back as a parent and regret a lot,
and I know that I do, and it is a
(32:41):
fact that again all we have is now. Life is
made up of many moments of now.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Well, and that's what I was going to say too,
again bringing it back to the generational topic, is that
I think we are better as parents at the repair.
At the repair, yeah, because my God love them, you know,
there's no repair, no, no, and like there would be
blow ups and like I don't know, like I just
(33:08):
remember blow ups and then my mom would either just
always be mad and they're like I don't know if ever,
and then my dad would just kind of disappear, and
so I don't ever recall and even like when there
was a blow up between my mom and me, I
don't know if there was ever any true deep repair.
And here's what I'll say after kind of beating myself
(33:30):
up through this episode about like, oh the regret, the regret,
is that one thing that I have tried to do
differently in my parenting journey is when I do mess up,
I make sure to always go back and repair.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
It absolutely, And I think that that's what we need
to focus on as parents. It's not perfection, it's repair. Yeah.
And if you are finding yourself having to repair all
the time because you're so dysregulated, then I think it
is worth checking into your attachment security and doing the
nervous system work and the work around intimacy because your
(34:07):
kids will trigger you too, trigger you in a different
way than your partner does. Your kids trigger you as
a mirror of yourself one hundred because when they do wrong,
it's a subconscious reflection on you. Right, You're the one
that grew them and taught them and model model to them,
and so when they do wrong it feels personal. It
(34:31):
feels extremely personal, but it's not personal. Yes, we may
have made them, but at the end of the day,
they are going to have to as adults, be responsible
for their own own well being and their own behavior.
And do we help shape that, Yes we do, But
(34:51):
they still have some of their own true personality, their
own temperance, temper their own you.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Know, I mean societal things that they're genetics, waited by peers,
that they're persuaded.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
A situations can't control that they've interacted with. There's a
lot of variables that we can't control. But one of
the things I think we can control and we should
try to control as much as possible is modeling love,
respect and repair, communication, communication, empathy, and having good boundaries
with our kids and when there is a blow up,
(35:22):
you go back and you make it better and you
take accountability. And I think that was one of the
things that was really hard for the Boomer generation. It
is still incredibly hard.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Oh and I mean, think about it. Their parents didn't
do that. Oh my god, listen. My mom grew up
her entire life and had a mother who never even
said she loved her. So, I mean love was just
too hard for her to express period. She couldn't even
say the words. And I mean, could you imagine now,
could you imagine living your whole life and never telling
your children that you love them?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
No, I couldn't imagine going one day not telling my
girls that I loved it.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
But that the greatest generation, that was just kind of
the norm. It was.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I think it was the norm. Children are to be
seen and not heard, and speak only when spoken to
and deal with your problems and get over it and
life is tough. And then that transferred to the boomers,
and then the Boomers were also part of.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
A huge group of dismissive avoidance.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Radical rebellious group too, kind of so we have some
rebellion from that. And I think the boomers are kind
of a mix of fas and das, but certainly a
lot of avoidance as the theme.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Right, They did have a lot of childhood trauma for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah. So yeah, like hiding under your desk thinking there's
a nuclear bomb coming. I think they did that a lot, apparently, apparently,
and our kids are doing it with school shooter drills.
I mean, maybe we're just no different. I just don't
want the pendulum to swing so far in either direction,
so far in the direction that we're just life stuff.
Get over it. Dismiss all your kids' feelings, which is
(36:54):
going to make them not know how to be intimate
with others, not know how to be vulnerable, not how
to repair not They're going to disassociate or dissociate and
suppress all of their feelings. Versus. The other side of
going too far is validating every little discomfort, trying to
make sure they don't experience any discomfort, trying to save
(37:15):
them from too many hardships and struggles.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Of life, because then they have no coping scus, then.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
They have no coping skills, because then you just coped
for them, and then you have one great ball of anxiety.
And then if we have a combination of the two,
then we get a fearful avoid it because they both
have neglect and lack of boundaries and son and potentially
(37:42):
heightened emotionality from seeing dysfunctional emotionality. So we have to
model regulated emotions. We apps. I always tell my daughter,
You're welcome to talk about your feelings, but I'm not
going to let you scream them at me. When as
long as you're screaming at me, I'm going to step
aside and you don't get access to me. But I
will always be here when you want to talk about
(38:02):
your feelings. So you can even cry about your feelings,
but you're not going to scream them at me.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Secure parenting might be, like you said, the most important
thing we can do in our lives.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
The most important thing. And I wish, I wish we
could earn our attachment security before we have kids. Yes,
and do it right from birth, do it right from pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
We're shifting. I think we're shifting as you know, our
consciousness around it, as a as a as humanity. I mean,
I want to believe that because it gives me hope,
and you know, the generations to come, and it gives
me more hope, you know, based on the episode you
know that dropped last week and what happened, you know,
because I want to believe that the generations to come
(38:45):
and the generations that are to come after us will
have the ability and the level of consciousness that we
cannot yet reach. Yeah, because that's the goal. The goal
is to have to reach your higher self. And the
only way to do that is through a level of
(39:07):
consciousness that you and I might not even fully understand
as we sit here talking about christiousness. Consciousness, Yes, christ consciousness.
And at the end of the day, there's one unifying
factor and that's love. And love doesn't just mean agree.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
It doesn't. It doesn't always mean agreement, and it doesn't
just mean validating. Sometimes it means telling hard truths and
sometimes it means holding hard boundaries. Because enabling someone's bad
behavior isn't love either. That's the furthest thing.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
All the time. Love without boundaries is not love.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's not love. It's enabling and it's teaching people that
they're bad behaving.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
It's abandoning.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
It is abandoning yourself. Yeah, and there is a self
sacrificial part of love, but it shouldn't be one hundred
percent self sacrificial. It's a balance between sacrificing some of
what you need and in giving and receiving right and
your partner sacrificing some of what they need. It's about
leaning in with compromise. It's not about taking on someone's reality.
(40:12):
And again, we only get if there's a winner and
a loser in your relationship. You have a losing relationship.
Let me just say that right now, whether that's in
your parent child relationship or whether that's in your romantic relationship.
It shouldn't be about winning and being right. It should
be about are we being productive and are we being healthy?
(40:33):
And are we collaborating to make sure that we are
reaching shared goals?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
And I know a lot of you at the.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Bottom of the episode here, we're going to kind of
wrap it up here.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, And I think that you know this just leads
me into wanting to say, in terms of your practice
for our listeners and all of your followers, I think
an ultimate goal of ours is to introduce, you know,
an element of you teaching secure parenting because it is
so very important. It's not just about your becoming securely attached.
(41:07):
Isn't just about your romantic relationships. It's about every loving
relationship that you have, or any relationship, even relationships with
coworkers and bosses. It plays into every aspect really of
your life when it comes to relationships. And so maybe
that will be to come. But in the meantime, doctor
(41:28):
Hensley does have a free guide that you can download
on specifically the fearful avoidant, and there's also one for
the dismissive avoidant. But if you are wondering, because a
lot of people I know come into your practice and
they're often confused, right, are they fearful avoidant? Are they
anxious preoccupied? Because of course the fearful avoidant has both
the avoidant and the anxious side, and it's sometimes hard
(41:51):
to tell because a lot of fearful avoidance live in
that anxious side.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Absolutely or the dismissive side. And so a lot of
people come into my practice they really think they're one
attachment style and they're not. And so the first step
and healing attachment is being aware of what your attachment is.
So yes, you can go to courses dot thelovedoc dot com,
slash DA or the courses dot the loovedoc dot com,
slash FA and download those free guides if you want
(42:19):
to deep dive into both of those attachment styles, because
just calling someone attachment avoidant doesn't do anybody any favors
because the two different types of avoidance are so different.
And really we have two different types of anxious attachment too,
because fearfuls can absolutely be anxious, and the majority of
the fearful avoidance I see are anxious in my practice.
So please go check out those free resources. We would
(42:39):
love for you to have them and to start your
journey through awareness. And if we can be here to
be helpful on any part of your journey, we want
to be. So please keep writing us, Please keep sending
us you know, messages that help us grow, you know,
positive feedback or constructive feedback as well. We thank you
guys for listening in.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, we love you guys so much. Course we also
want to thank one of our affiliates. Are both of
our affiliates. We'll talk about budget first. We love you.
Budget Bedget actually was created by a NASA engineer and
if you are struggling in perry or postmenopause, then it
is a wonderful asset.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Guy, I rape you're a man who just doesn't sleep well.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, and you run hot at night like a lot
of people run hot at night. You don't have to
be perry your postmenopause.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Or is your menopausal wife freezing you out of the bedroom?
Okay with because the Vedget Vedget is your answer. Yeah,
there's a dual system. It's basically an HVAC system from
your bed. Yeah, and it doesn't blow directly on It
blows through this cloud sheet, which is amazing to sort
of experience, just like laying in a cloud and having
this temperature control without having it blow on you. That's
(43:45):
the best part. So you can go.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
To bedget dot com slash love doc and receive fifty
dollars off one of their dual systems. So that includes
the the two badgets, the two budgets, and the doubt
the dull sheet. Yeah, so thank you so much Budget,
And of course we cannot leave without saying thank you
to our other affiliate, Armor, which I of course have
(44:09):
wal cup today. Absolutely it is we love Armor. I
just ran out of my watermelon this morning, so I'm
gonna have to order some more because I try to
like try a new flavor every month, but I keep
going back to watermelon. It is by far the best.
Like I did pineapp I thought, oh my gosh, I'm
gonna love pineapple so much. And it is good. It's
still good, but it's it's just not as watermelon.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, I like the watermelon and the blood orange are
my two favorites.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I never tried blood orange.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
I'll get you.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, I need to try blood worine.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
But what it does is it's an immune supplement, and
it's kind of an all around supplement. So it's claws
drum which has very beautiful healing immune properties to it
to help your gut, your gut lining, to help your hair, skin,
and nails, and to just help you function better overall.
Because when your immune system is functioning well, you are healthy.
(44:58):
So please give Armor a try. If you are a
new Armor customer, you can go to their website Armora
dot com and use.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
Code lovedog lovedoc for fifteen fifteen percent off. Yes, so,
thank you, Armorah, thank you. It's been a game changer
for me. So and of course another you know, guys,
we got to, we got to. If you are looking
for your attachment security, we highly highly encourage you to
seek out doctor Hensley Services at the lovedoc dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
I'm biased, but I think she's the best of the best.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
I continue even after eight years of friendship, I still
continue to learn something new all the time from her.
I'm still encouraged to like sit in on group. Like
the other day when I was at the house, I
was like, you know what, I think I might just
sit here and like listen to group for a little
bit because I always learned something. And so please go
check out her services at the lovedoc dot com. For
all of our listeners, we offer a special promo code
(45:50):
love dot twenty seven for twenty seven percent off because
we love you guys so so much, and please keep
tuning in because we want to provide the world with
so much freak content so that we can heal. Right,
we can heal and hopread that's right, and this is
what this podcast is for. This is completely free for
all of you, so continue to tune in and until
(46:12):
next time, peace, love, and perspective.
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