How Safe Relationships Help Us Heal ft. Jessica Baum, LMHC

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello everyone, and welcome backto Needy No More, the podcast
dedicated to healing the anxiousattachment style.
I'm your host, anxious attachment style coach, and
author Chris Ratcliffe. I've helped thousands of people
across 6 continents to end the cycle of anxious attachment
through my books, workshops, digital downloads, and coaching

(00:21):
program. I'm excited to carry on that
mission here in the podcast, sharing tools and techniques,
principles and practices for youto explore on your journey to
growing more secure. Welcome back, everyone.
It's been a bit since we've beenlive here on the show, and I
cannot tell you how excited I amto share today's episode with

(00:45):
you. We have a very special guest,
and her name is Jessica Baum. Jessica Baum is a licensed
therapist and the author of Anxiously Attached.
As founder of the Relationship Institute of Palm Beach and the
Conscious Relationship Group, she supports individuals and
couples to form healthy, long term relationships with online

(01:07):
coaching and transformational courses worldwide.
Born and raised in Manhattan, she now lives in West Palm
Beach, FL. Her new book, Safe, an
Attachment informed Guide to building more secure
relationships, is out October 28th, 2025.
Jessica, welcome on the show. Thanks so much for being here.

(01:30):
Thank you so much for having me.I'm so excited for this
conversation. Yay, me too.
I have to say I know I mentionedthis to you before we hopped on
today and and hit record. I have read the book.
I encourage everyone listening to this and watching this
episode to buy it. It is so squarely in the
wheelhouse of what I talk about on the show, what I espouse in

(01:52):
every aspect of my work, all of my downloads, my books, my
coaching program. So I have really been looking
forward to diving in deep today.And that just means so much to
me when Someone Like You takes the time to read the material
and really values it and aligns with it.
So I appreciate that. You are more than welcome.
Like I mentioned to you previously, I've been on the

(02:15):
other side here as the author promoting something.
It's always so awkward when theyhaven't read the book and you
can tell and they're kind of flipping through the pages and
trying to come up with things onthe spot, you know?
So I want to make sure that you feel safe and seen and
understood. And I loved the book and I can't
wait for people to read it and really digest it.

(02:35):
Why don't we start with just a very basic question here for
folks. All of the folks watching and
listening are anxiously attachedor disorganized, leaning
anxious. So let's just start by defining
the word safe for safety. How would you define that for
folks watching and listening? Everybody wants to feel safe,

(02:57):
right? Like that's the new thing.
But in the book, I use a lot of Steven Porges work around the
nervous system and I'm going to really simplify this right now,
but we have 3 branches. We have a dorsal, which is a
shutdown, which sometimes you see avoiding people kind of go
into dorsal or you just see people shut down or close up or
distance. And we have a, you know, a

(03:18):
sympathetic, which is more of anactivated state.
And then we have something called ventral.
And a ventral state is where we're in our social engagement
system. And we're actually signaling
safety towards each other. You know, Chris, you and I are
through eye contact, through tone, we're signaling, hey, it's
safe to have conversation. Hey, it's safe to come closer.
And so our nervous system is fluctuating through these states

(03:41):
all day long. We're not ever statically in
these states, but in our deep romantic relationships, they can
activate certain things within us that can shift us into dorsal
or into sympathetic and out of astate of safety.
So a lot of people will deeply learn like what that is and also
how someone else's state of safety, a state of being in

(04:04):
ventral more again, it's not perfect, but they hold a ventral
state can hold our state of dysregulation and how healing
happens when those two things come together.
So it's really a sense of safetythat starts to like birth our
own healing process. So we need that sense of safety

(04:25):
in order to heal attachment wounds.
Amen to that. I always say it to folks, if you
were healed and unsafe relationships, then you heal
through safe relationships and being seen and having someone
look you in the eye and just hold the space for you to listen

(04:45):
truly without interrupting, without preparing what they're
going to say, really seeing you and seeing the reactions in your
body and how you. Are I also remind myself all the
time? Like I say to myself, your
presence is powerful. As a coach, I have to remind
myself all the time, I'm not always going to be able to help

(05:07):
someone get to where they want to go.
They have to help themselves andmy presence is powerful enough
if I can hold the space for them.
If I can greet them with a stateof regulation and help them to
Co regulate by identifying theiremotions and figuring out where
they are in their body and how to be with that, that is

(05:29):
powerful enough I don't have to take it on or take it away.
Which for many years, you know, as a anxiously attached person
myself and former codependent, Iwould do right.
And I think a lot of people can relate to that too, 100%.
I mean, safety is the treatment.And as people who provide that
for others, it's not that we have to have a perfect sense of

(05:51):
safety, but what when we can show up in that in that state
and hold that in, beautiful things happen.
And I explain the science of that.
Like that's just not woo woo. Like there's a science that you
know, when 2 nervous systems come together and that state is
being able to hold space, That'sessentially what it is.
And I I dive deep into that so that people can really

(06:12):
understand that concept. Yes, you certainly do.
And I love the reference to Porges is a Poly vagal theory
there that's obviously critical for people to understand the
different branches of their nervous system and why they're
feeling the reactions that they are.
Many folks I think have a basic understanding.
They might say I'm feeling triggered or I didn't like that

(06:33):
or I'm not comfortable with that, but this really gives a
lot more complexity for folks tounderstand where they are in
that kind of scale, if you will.For those who are listening, I'm
kind of referencing up and down motions here, almost like a
scale, so we can understand where we are on that scale at

(06:54):
any given time and to recognize that it isn't a static or a
fixed state. One of the things that you talk
about in the book is your own personal journey with healing
your patterns and and your own traumas and your own anxious
attachment and how your own fears have come up in a variety
of different relationships. And I thought it was so powerful

(07:17):
to hear you talk about the relationship with your mom and
your grandma, and also a previous relationship where a
lot of childhood stuff ended up coming out, a lot of fears of
abandonment. And I know that folks watching
and listening can relate to thatbecause that's something all
anxious attachers struggle with,is that fear of abandonment and

(07:40):
previous experiences creeping back up into their minds when
they might be in a romantic partnership.
What do you have to say to thosewatching and listening who are
more anxiously attached and who have experienced similar kinds
of traumas that have led to themfeeling unsafe or fearing

(08:01):
abandonment in their adult relationships?
Yeah. I mean, this might be hard to
hear if you're listening, but there's a line in the book that
says if you don't heal your abandonment wound, you will
recreate it. And I think there's a lot of
truth to that. And what I would say is that if
you are conscious. So I think of avoid and people
are unconscious more of it, but if you're anxious, you're more
conscious of your abandonment wound.

(08:23):
The way to heal it would be to go back to the original wound
and to start to embody or get intouch with the embodied
experience of, of feeling abandoned in the 1st place by
probably a primary caregiver andhaving that deeply held.
Because if not, we're consciously trying to keep
people close to avoid that feeling within.

(08:47):
And I know, like, I mean, I'm soguilty of it, right?
And I wrote the book anxiously attached, but it wasn't until I
was really held deeply in my wound that the wound is now
accompanied with the feeling of being held.
So it's not that I'm alone anymore.
It's that when I think of the times that I was alone, I have

(09:09):
had so much support around re experiencing them and being held
in them that those memories and implicit memories are no longer
carrying the alumnus feeling that I originally had.
I think that's such a great point here is that the pain
doesn't necessarily go away. I think in a lot of ways we

(09:30):
learn to hold it differently andalso to rely on others to help
us hold it so that we don't feelalone in the pain.
This is something I remind my clients of who are parents all
the time. You don't need to take away the
pain of your child. You cannot do that.

(09:50):
They just need to know that they're not alone in it.
And similarly, when that inner child within you who wasn't
heard or seen or who many of us may have kind of pushed down and
repressed and suppressed in various ways, that kind of
expression and Co regulation with others helps us to see,

(10:12):
wow, I can talk about this. I don't have to go through this
on my own. And to me, in a lot of ways,
that's what healing your inner child and safety are all about.
And you do talk about the inner child healing a lot in the book
as well. Yeah.
And I think it's good for your audience specifically if you're
listening. Healing anxious attachment

(10:33):
cannot be done alone. So if you are wounded in
relationship, like you said, Chris, you need to be healed,
healed in relationship. But also, and I talked about
this in the book, the younger the wounding, the more adult ank
luring you need. So for people who struggle with
early abandonment wounds, and you know that you're struggling
if you're listening, if you're having extreme sensations in

(10:56):
your body, if your your gut and your heart are really kind of
activated, you know that there'sa much younger part of you in
there that needs healing. And I don't want people wasting
their time thinking that that they can do this inner child
work all on their own. The truth is part of moving the
attachment trauma is a re experiencing the original womb

(11:18):
wound in the presence of someonewho can give you what you didn't
get at the time of the wound. So if you were abandoned, you
need to be met. So you need to regress and you
need to meet these parts with another nervous system and
recognize the original wound andalso allow someone to come in
and support you. That is the only way to move the

(11:39):
wound. So all these self help books
that are like heal yourself and you can do this on your own when
you really start to understand interpersonal neurobiology and
how we're wired and how trauma and attachment wounds are
stored. I would be setting you up for
failure if I said, yes, you can do this all on your own.
The truth is we really, really need people in order to start to

(12:00):
heal these deeper wounds. Connection is a biological
imperative. I think you may even mention
that almost verbatim 10 times. Yeah.
It's so important for people to hear that though, because
there's this insistence in our culture, which is hyper
individualized as it is, and ourstate of politics shows us this,

(12:21):
I think very clearly in the United States.
But that said, hyper individualization and the
obsession with needing to be independent and carry all of
this on your own can actually bemore harmful than helpful.
I always remind people that it'sabout self and it's about other.

(12:47):
And in my own book, Needy No More, same name as the the
podcast and my coaching program,I talk about how many insecure
attachers, especially anxious attachers, actually prevent the
relationships that they might bein from growing more secure and
being safer because they themselves are not allowing

(13:09):
themselves to be seen. They're not opening up and
sharing what it is that they're feeling.
They shut down. Of course, we do this because
we're afraid of being too much, of being abandoned.
We have shame, wounds and feelings of inadequacy, which
are very common, but safety alsorequires us to be able to open
up into other people and see howthey receive that.

(13:33):
If we don't do that, then we robourselves a lot of times of the
safety that we could be experiencing or the data we
could be gathering on the degreeof safety that might be present
in a given connection. Because it's never going to be
100%. So I think that's also important
to name here as well. We need other people and we also

(13:55):
need to be brave and dig deep and have courage to open up into
connection because if we don't, then we also prevent ourselves
from experiencing that ferry safety.
I went through a period in my own work where being vulnerable
was really hard. And I am a therapist who's been
practicing for a really long time.
And if you're listening like there's a like, I want to say

(14:18):
ickiness, but it's really shame that can come up when we start
to depend on people. And there's this vulnerability
that also came up for me that was like, my God, like I really
have, I am that vulnerable and fragile.
Like I really need to depend on my anchors.
And that's really, really hard and moving into deep

(14:39):
vulnerability. And I think that's the portal.
Like if you're listening like that, actually that feeling of
like, this is really hard and I have to actually depend on
people and I feel like a burden.It's like, no, no, this is how
we build in our security. And this feeling that you're,
it's like part of the process until we internalize the right
people, right? So if you lean on safe people

(15:01):
and they show up consistently for you, your nervous system
starts to register. You might need them more until
you internalize them. The opposite of that is if you
turn to unavailable people and they don't show up for you,
you're just kind of re injuring yourself.
So, so one of the things I had to do was, you know, I loved my
partner very much, but there were lots of parts of him that

(15:23):
were unavailable. So I had to start to bring these
parts of me that were showing upto people who had the capacity
and the safety and their nervoussystem to hold my younger parts
so I can integrate and heal them.
So if you're listening, it's also about knowing who has the
capacity and who doesn't and notfalling into like a trauma
bonded kind of situation where you're going to lean on people

(15:47):
who literally are repeating yourtrauma and don't have the
capacity to hold that kind of space for you.
The capacity and sometimes the willingness.
And that is a very powerful point to make here, I think.
Many of us do recreate emotionally distant dynamics,
often times unconsciously. Of course, we don't do it on

(16:08):
purpose. No one would ever, I think,
choose to consciously recreate their trauma.
We do it to try to resolve it without realizing that the
nervous system always seeks out what is familiar, and that's
because it knows how to be with it, even if it's painful or
uncomfortable. That unfamiliarity, even if it
might reach a more peaceful state, a calmer state, feels

(16:32):
almost at times more triggering to the nervous system because of
the unfamiliarity. So I love what you're saying,
and I think it's really, really powerful for people to hear
you're going to repeat what you don't repair, and that is also
OK. We all do this.
Literally almost every single insecure attacher I've ever met.

(16:52):
Anxious avoidant otherwise, doesthis until we grow more
conscious of our patterns and then interrupt them.
And a lot of that does boil downto the people that we choose to
provide access to us. And there's a concept in my own
work where it's called emotionaldiversification, where you have
to diversify your sources of connection because if you're

(17:15):
going kind of all in on a romantic partnership, that's
very emotionally risky. And for many of us who are
repeating patterns of disconnection and trauma from
the past, that also means that we are showing our nervous
system that all of its fears areconfirmed.
So you have to give yourself data that you gather from other

(17:38):
folks who can hold the space, who can listen to you and see
you and hear you and be there with you.
Even if they again can't take itaway, they can just tell you,
look, I'm here for you. I want you to know I care.
How about we go to lunch tomorrow?
Like, what can I do for you? You know, we need to hear that
because many of us having experienced abandonment, this is

(18:01):
our response to that in adulthood.
So the more that we can experience that kind of safety
in adulthood, the more it does write over that pain of the
past. Like you so beautifully mention
about anchoring, and I do want to talk about that.
I want to define that for folks.This is a big part of the book,
and I love the way that it's described just because of the

(18:23):
metaphor of the anchor. But talk to me.
Talk to us about what an anchor is and why they're important.
Yeah. I mean, I use the word anchor.
And it doesn't have to be a therapist or a coach.
And some therapists and coaches don't know how to hold space.
But this book very much also is a companion for you to bring to
a therapist or coach or friend who fits in the category of

(18:46):
they're committed to showing up.They will not have an agenda,
they will not fix you and they can hold deep space for you.
And I, I spell out, you know, wetalked about the state of safety
or the ventral nervous system, But I also spell out like how to
do this with a friend because not everybody can afford
coaching or therapy and not, notevery therapist and coach knows

(19:08):
how to do this. So hopefully it's, it's a, it's
a way for everyone to kind of have these resources.
And I, I think a big thing that I get in my practice and in the
world is I have no anchors. And so it's a little
intimidating to know like part of this work is finding your
anchors. And what I'll say is it only
takes one relationship to have the experience of holding the

(19:32):
space. And what I really spell out in
the book to change the trajectory of all your
relationships. Because what you're doing is
you're picking one person who has these capacities and maybe
you're having a Co agreement with them and you're Co
anchoring each other. And you're you're now letting
your nervous system have a different experience or you're
starting to recognize that this person shows up for me, hold

(19:55):
space for me, Co regulates with me.
And this is what I need in a partner too, right?
And often with anxiously attached people are scared parts
get like run at an avoidant person.
And they're like, I can't handlethese scared parts because
they're scaring me, right? So a lot of what needs to happen
are these scared parts need to find an anchor and they still

(20:18):
need to be experienced. And I like what you said like a
few minutes ago, like the difference between your avoidant
partner sometimes showing up foryou and an anchor showing up for
you is sometimes what you reallywant is the pain to go away.
But when you're really healing, it's not about taking her or his
pain away. It's about finding people who
can show up and help you hold the pain.

(20:41):
We need to start holding the experience rather than trying to
get rid of the experience because we, the more we can hold
it and share, like what we call a window of tolerance, the more
that we can build our own capacity to be with these
younger parts within ourselves and the less they take over in
that degree. It's a, it was an important
distinction for me too. My partner could make the pain

(21:05):
go away, but I, I really needed to learn how to be with the
pain. And so I needed people who were
going to sit in it with me. And that was so important.
And it was important to find those people.
And I've just been so fortunate to have such wonderful people
show up in my life. And I'm, I'm hoping that if
you're listening, go through your Rolodex, there's got to be
one person in there that you're not even, you're not even

(21:26):
thinking of right now or in the next week or two.
Think of like, who shows up in my life?
Who can I be vulnerable with? Who doesn't judge me, try to fix
me or dismiss me? Very well said in my first book.
It's good to see me again. I wrote a chapter called The
Board of Directors where I talk about how in my own life I have

(21:47):
a board of people and sometimes there's a shuffling of the board
of directors. They're kind of the five closest
people in my life at any given time.
Not to kind of harken back to a Myspace top aid or something
like that, but you know, we all have our kind of folks that
hopefully we can go to. And if you feel that you don't,
you can always start with a professional and you should kind

(22:09):
of date around, test out a few different professionals and see
how you feel with them. The most important thing is that
you should feel they really get you and that they're sometimes
going to challenge you to sit with that pain because a good
therapist, a good coach, they'renot just going to say, and how
does that feel? They're going to say, well, hold

(22:31):
on, wait a second. I actually, we need to go back
to that. I think you need to sit with
that for a moment. Let's be with that.
And as you're talking about anchors, of course, my own
anchors, you know, come to mind.There's so many experiences that
I've had over the years that have helped me to see, you know
what? I can be with this pain and I

(22:53):
can call this person. I can text them and say code
red, please, I need you to come over.
Can we order Thai food and watcha movie and just chat, please?
You know, I think we all need that getting down into the nitty
gritty of what it looks like. It's, it's not this kind of
grandiose idea that so many people build in their head.

(23:13):
It's just literally, it's sayingto someone, you know, I'm
struggling with this. This is how I'm feeling.
And then being like, yeah, babe,I I get it.
That's really tough. Like, is there anything I can
do? Do you need me to do anything?
Do you want me to just listen? You know, if you have someone
that's really emotionally intelligent, they'll know too
that it's not always about doingeither.

(23:37):
Yeah. I mean, like, you want to really
stay away from doing and you want to be more.
The magic is that being with. So your anchors and I spell it
out, it's more about I am with you in this experience.
You're not alone and you might even feel alone, but I'm right
here next to you with the intensity of.
So that's often what we didn't get as children because of our,

(23:58):
you know, and the book talks really deeply about attachment
styles and what your parents might have been going through in
order for you to adapt in the way that you did and how those
adaptations show up in your in your adult life.
And I explained the wheel of attachment, which is so new, but
it really shows you like the full picture of what you didn't
get in. A lot of people didn't get

(24:20):
emotional holding and that is the number one thing that builds
secure attachment. It's not love, it's emotional
presence that builds inner security.
So if you're listening, that's exactly what you need as an
adult to start to fill in the what you didn't get as a child.
So once you start to receive what you didn't get, that's when

(24:41):
the work starts to show up. Amen to that.
And it's not just a romantic partner that can do it, y'all.
It's a friend, it's a family member, it's a professional.
Sometimes it could even maybe bea colleague, someone that you
get coffee or lunch with who that consistency just adds up
over time where you can share tothe degree that it might be

(25:01):
professionally acceptable, of course, and just have them there
with you so that again, you know, you're not alone in it.
So, so powerful for people to hear that you got to build your
support system. And if you have to start with
one person and that person is a mental health professional, then
please do so. Do so absolutely and make sure

(25:23):
that professional doesn't try tofix you, doesn't try to diagnose
you, doesn't try to put an agenda on you.
Make sure they're going into thebody.
And if if they're really good and you like them, but they're
not going there, bring the book.The book is literally a road map
to do with a professional as well.
And make sure they're, you know,going into, you know, in your
implicit world, into the attachment wounds and into the

(25:45):
body because we can't heal attachment wounds logically.
We have to be with what's going on in our soma.
Amen. I, I definitely want to talk
about somatics and I just want to reference something you said
earlier before we do. You were talking about how a lot
of times we might go to someone.Usually if you're anxiously

(26:05):
attached, then probably a romantic partner or prospect to
try to get them to take away thepain.
I think it's really important torecognize this is how we create
dependency and more importantly,Co dependency.
That person becomes a drug. They become the pathway through
which we're able to experience relief instead of learning how

(26:28):
to be with that and share it with a variety of people.
Yeah and I mean, listen, I've been there.
We all do it unconsciously. And if you're in a relationship
that is a little bit like that, that relationship can be a the
portal in and I I talk about using your relationship if it's
activating new law as the portalinto either your own healing or

(26:50):
collective healing, because I dobelieve I helped many anxious
avoidant attachments heal. And I talk about that in the
book. And I also think that if you're
in a relationship that is wakingup a lot in you, that is your
portal. Like you don't need to leave the
relationship per SE. You need to start to be with the
deeper levels of what that relationship is actually waking

(27:12):
up and getting conscious around that.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. And I think a lot of folks also
beat themselves up for staying in a relationship while they
work on some of this, even if itmight not be fulfilling.
But relationships are a practiceground.
It's experiences that help us tolearn and apply a lot of these
principles. And of course, hindsight is
always 2020, as they say. You know, I do want to.

(27:36):
No regrets, right? Like, it's not so easy to leave.
And we all, we all get there in our own time, of course.
Yeah. We all find acceptance in our
own way and on our own timeline,certainly, and I help people to
understand that too. Like, it's easy for you to say
now that you would have left sooner, but maybe it's actually

(27:56):
important that you repeated whatyou needed to in the
relationship to arrive at a place where you were finally
able to accept that you were done.
Many of us need to do that. I want to talk somatics because
this is an area that I'm super passionate about.
In the book you talk a lot abouthow to identify sensations in
your body, the concept of enteroception.

(28:20):
Talk to me and the folks watching and listening about why
this is important and how to practice it.
Yeah, I have AI think it's 5 meditations in the book, but six
on my website. So if you buy the book, they're
in there and I record them separately for you so you can
work on building interceptions. How we store attachment wounds

(28:42):
when we're younger is in our fascia, in our gut, in our
nervous system, in our heart space.
I store a lot, I stored a lot inmy heart space.
We have to store these things inour body when we can't process
them. That's literally, it's not that
traumatic things happen to us isthat we are not able to process
process them. So they get stored in the body.
For anyone who's listening, if you're working on your

(29:02):
attachment wounds and your therapist or your coach or
anybody is not going into the body, not really going to get to
the root of it. So we have something called
implicit memory. The sensations that live in our
body are memory. So when we're born, we don't
have explicit memory. We can't think of things like
the way you would think of a movie.
We don't have that part of our brain fully developed yet.

(29:25):
So we're really born with the ability to store sensations.
So when your gut hurts or you feel queasy or your chest is
tight, I want you to know that that is memory.
That is your little me. There is science there.
I go into deep detail. You can't read this book and not
walk away without understanding memory on a deep level when we

(29:47):
were younger and our parents don't have the capacity because
they didn't develop interceptionthemselves.
So they're not sitting down withus.
They're not saying, hey, Chris, what's going on inside you?
How you feeling? Where do you feel that all that
makes sense? And they're not mirroring you
and they're not reflecting you and they're not giving you a

(30:08):
sense of what is inside of you going on, What matters?
How do you start to be with yourbody?
We end up like disconnecting from our body in many ways.
I know that I I write about feeling very just so like
disconnected, like a walking head.
And so many of us live in our left hemisphere and pretty
disconnected from our body. But our body is where we store,

(30:32):
where we store the memory. And so a lot of the book talks
about shifting out of our left hemisphere into our right
hemisphere, meeting another person in the state of safety in
our right hemisphere. This is all very scientific, but
allowing the streams and our body way to come alive and to
start to tune into what our bodyis telling us and start to

(30:53):
understand memory on a deep level and have that held.
If we didn't build interception,we can build it as an adult.
It is actually neuro wiring thatthey show that we can build as
an adult and we can learn how tohave interception.
We just need a little support asan adult to start to do that.
So I gently do that in the book.There are meditations through

(31:16):
out the book, so if you buy the physical book you will get them.
I recorded them in the audio andI recorded them separately
because I want people to be ableto go there and practice that so
much. Because if they don't have the
neuro wiring, it really takes a lot of practice to start to tune
into the sensations in our body and build the capacity for

(31:36):
interception as an adult. Super, super important there.
There is the connection between a lack of attunement and Co
regulation. Growing up with not really
developing this skill, many of us are dissociated and
completely detached from the experiences we're having in our
body. You know, if you're so

(31:59):
disconnected from your system that you don't recognize you're
not even pausing to breathe, Yeah, You need to learn to slow
down and come back into your container.
And interception is how we do that and how we recognize where
it's occurring, how it feels andin so doing, allow the energy to

(32:20):
surface and be released. I absolutely am in alignment
with everything that you are saying.
This is what I espouse in my work as well.
I've talked about it already on the podcast, so I know this is
going to resonate with so many people.
I think it's important that theyhave that phrasing though, and

(32:40):
taroception so they can do further research on this as
well. But remember folks, it's not
always about a logical, rationalunderstanding.
This is about embodiment. So slowing down, closing your
eyes, recognizing where the constriction, the tightness, the
tension might be, maybe not evenstarting to put a label on it
yet, but where is it in you? For me, a lot of times it was

(33:04):
also in my heart center, also inmy throat.
Anxiously attached. People tend to store more in the
heart center, believe it or not.And our avoidant protectors or
avoidance have more typically inthe stomach.
Makes sense. Makes total sense.
When I wasn't speaking up, I would also feel that
constriction or tightness in my throat as well.

(33:25):
Yeah. And I, you know, for anyone
who's listening, I know that understanding this information
is so important. And I understood it pretty well
with anxiously attached and dived way deeper with safe and
understand it extremely well. And yet understanding it
logically does not bypass the work.
Even as a professional, I had togo and do the work.

(33:48):
And I thought, well, if I learn enough about it, maybe I can
avoid it. I might be the hallmark for
that. Yeah.
I'm nodding. I'm smiling.
I'm laughing. Yeah.
I think we've all been there. Certainly.
There's such a discomfort with being with those sensations when
you don't really learn how to doit, when you don't have a parent

(34:09):
who, by the way, you beautifullymodeled this.
Tell me what's going on, sweetheart.
What are you experiencing? Where is it happening?
How can I be here for you? I'm not going anywhere, you
know, hearing those things. And I think the reason why folks
like you and I might even say that out loud for folks is
because we're also saying that to ourselves.

(34:30):
I've gotten into the the practice of pausing.
And I know this sounds kooky andwacky and woo woo probably.
But I'm going to keep doing it anyway because it works for me.
I will walk around my house and talk to myself when I'm
experiencing a deep emotional response to something I might be

(34:50):
in the midst of having like a big emotional reaction, like I
might be crying, like sobbing, shaking and I I will stop and
almost like re parent myself in that moment by saying it's OK,
sweetheart, let it out, let it out.
This is what this is for good. Keep going, release, breathe.

(35:11):
You've got this. It's almost like coaching myself
through the experience and you know, it's, it's like a
coexistence of like this logicalpresence and then the emotional
experience simultaneously. I don't know, but for me it
works. And that's literally what some
of this looks like. Folks crying it out, sitting in
the discomfort and learning to let it pass because it will

(35:34):
always pass. And things that are deeply
rooted. And you mentioned this earlier,
you mentioned it in the book. You might need to practice this
multiple times to be with the pain of the same event.
I mentioned to you Jessica, before hopping on, this is this
year is the 20th anniversary of my mom's passing.

(35:54):
My sister has passed, my dad haspassed.
I've talked about all of these things openly in my books, all
of my work, the podcast. It doesn't mean that the pain
goes away. It it's different.
Grief is unique for each experience that you have in each
relationship that you have it with.
But I can tell you I don't experience things as intensely

(36:15):
as I used to. And that's because I've allowed
a lot of the energy that was stored up that I pushed down.
I didn't even go to my mom's funeral, and I wrote about that
in my first book. But allowing that energy to come
up and out is so important, and it needs to happen many times
usually. Yeah.

(36:36):
And I really want to drive home the point, especially if your
audience is anxiously attached. Actually, this brought me
relief. Like, you don't do this work
alone. You are not supposed to move
through those hard spaces all byyourself.
You are meant to have someone else be present with you.
And in some ways, it's like, I got to find someone else.

(36:58):
But in another way is that someone who identifies as
anxiously attached clearly wrotethe book on it.
But it gave me relief to know that like I, I can't move into
these really hard territories sometimes because I actually
need the support of another nervous system to go there.
So both is true, yes. Lean into your feelings, talk to
yourself, go there. And if you're really stuck, you

(37:21):
might need someone else to hold the space.
And if it's really young, again,you definitely need someone else
to hold space with you. 100% yes.
And there were a lot of conversations that I've had with
my therapist in sessions that have led and with a lot of other
people in my life that have led to me being able to do this by
myself. Not always of course, but to be

(37:43):
able to build the muscle of interception and self
regulation. And that has occurred because of
all of the other experiences of Co regulation with safe people
that I have had. It's not mutually exclusive,
y'all. It is tied together.
The more you experience it with others, the more you learn you
can do it with yourself and alsoyou don't have to.

(38:06):
And that definitely does offer relief.
And I'm glad that you named. That as well, yeah.
That and that's such an important part, Chris.
It's like all those Instagram people that are like self
regulation is where it's at and you got to learn how to regulate
your nervous system. Like that is almost harmful
because I, you know, from the, from interpersonal neurobiology,

(38:27):
if you can't regulate your nervous system, it's because you
didn't get enough Co regulation as an infant and young person.
So we don't develop the ability to self regulate unless we get a
lot of really healthy Co regulation and that gets
internalized. So if you're listening to this
and you're like, I get really dysregulated and I reach out for
people, you didn't get enough holding, but with enough

(38:50):
holding, you internalize with that Co regulation, you
internalize that person and thenyou get the capacity for self
regulation. So one leads to the other and
you should never shame yourself.You should never live under the
idea that I need to learn how toself regulate.
Like that's not how it works. If you struggle with self

(39:10):
regulation, more Co regulation will lead to eventually having
more internal ability to self regulate because you'll
internalize that process. Yes, absolutely.
You have to experience it through other people to learn
how to do it with yourself. And also I have to say, even
just like being a coach and being able to hold the space for

(39:32):
other people has been healing for me in a lot of ways too.
Like it works both ways. Having other people hold it with
me is really powerful. And me being with others and
being of service is really powerful too.
So it's not just one directional.
Remember, we're all interconnected and that speaks

(39:52):
to something that I wanted to talk about with you too, which
is compassion. And I have to say, the way that
you write is it's so it feels soeffortless.
I know it's not OK. As a a fellow author, I know
it's not effortless. There's a lot that goes into
making something look and sound effortless and colloquial and

(40:13):
easy to understand and brimming with compassion.
And that's really what I took away from Safe.
And so I wanted to ask you, you bring this up in the context of,
you know, for yourself and also for other people who couldn't
love us the way that we needed. We talked about some of that
deprivation today. What does compassion look like

(40:34):
in practice when you have experienced old pain coming up?
I know we've talked about enteroception.
We've talked about inner child and work and re parenting and
things like that. How are you able to bring that
compassion to yourself? Yeah, I think, you know, from
doing my own work and being withthese, you know, parts within

(40:58):
myself and experiencing everything.
I think that I, I think that I'mhumbled by how fragile, how
impressionable we are, how experiences shape us.
I think I've had the embodied experience of that from, I even,
I even share about a memory of being an infant in the crib that

(41:20):
came to me as I was doing my work.
I regressed so much. And so I think just from
understanding how I've been shaped on such a deep level that
I'm able to just have so much compassion for all my choices
and all my behaviors now. And I actually have so much
compassion for everyone else, even people who have behaviors

(41:42):
that might appear hurtful or harmful.
And it's not that I allow those behaviors in my life, but I
think when you start to do this work, you start to understand,
wow, like, everyone is adapting and trying to survive in the way
that they know how to survive. And a lot of people are doing
the best they can. And you don't have to let people
into your world, but you start to understand how wounding

(42:05):
people wound others. And I start to see like my
parts, you know, I used to have a lot of shame around my big
feelings because my mom would always say, I'm like, so
sensitive and all this stuff. And as I do this work, it's like
my therapist and my anchors werelike, wow, like these big
feelings in you, like, are really speaking to things that

(42:27):
have really happened to you. And let's like, really make
space for them because they're so important.
And I remember a period of my life where it was like, I'm just
going to make so much space for what what's going on inside of
me to have, you know, have the space to express itself, really
pay attention to her. And I, I don't have big

(42:47):
sensational experiences as much anymore.
She whispers to me a little bit more now.
I think if I was in an unhealthyrelationship or if I was in a
certain situation, maybe she would get wakened up a little
bit more. But now, like I even just hear
her whisper and I'm like, OK, I'm going to put some time aside
to be with her. And I think a lot of people

(43:08):
would say that I have too much compassion maybe for other
people or that's not the right word.
But like there's a fine line between boundaries and letting
you know people's behaviors. But like when you start to
really understand people's behaviors, like I write at the,
I write in Chapter 9, like now when I see someone give me the
middle finger on the, on the, onthe on the road, I'm kind of

(43:28):
like, oh, that guy probably has like 3 years of crying to do and
it's being manifesting into his road rage and he's just an
angry, aggressive person who's never had a chance to release
anything in his body. You know, like, so my brain
works differently now that I've been through this experience.
And I think you start to look, you'll start to look at everyone

(43:50):
differently. Like you start to see that
people are adapting and people are trying to do the best with
what they've been given and not everybody's been given what they
needed. And so we've just kind of become
these adaptive versions of ourselves until we're lucky
enough and we have the privilegeto heal.
And I, I really think that healing in my own world has been

(44:11):
a privilege. I think I'm, I'm one of the, a
privileged person to be able to have slowed down enough and have
had the resources and the right people to heal these things.
And not everybody either. Not everybody has the capacity
and not everybody has, you know,the financial resources or the
people try to have a lot of compassion in my mentor, Bonnie

(44:32):
Bananak, who really was played aheavy hand in helping me write
this book. She wrote the Heart of trauma
and has study interpersonal neurobiology for 20 more years
than me. People say that when they
interact with her, they've neverexperienced compassion like
through a person. And even in my first interaction
with her, I just felt her compassion come through to me.

(44:55):
And I feel like she's like in printed in me in some way.
And a lot of the compassion in the book is really her tone also
coming through as well. I mean, that just speaks so
eloquently to the power of an anchor in your life to imprint
on you. Yeah.
And it's interesting because themore that I work on my healing,

(45:16):
which I still do, by the way, guys like I, it doesn't stop.
I'm still meet with my therapist.
I work with coaches off and on. I read books.
Not as many self help books as Iused to, but having written them
and doing coaching, sometimes I need a break.
Everyone, you know, it can't allbe healing all the time.
The more I do the work, the moreI can recognize the unhealed

(45:39):
aspects of others when they're coming up.
And I do have compassion for that.
And it's interesting because that also coexists with almost
like A and you can stay over there.
You don't need to come any closer than that.
Not about avoiding it, but recognizing that person's not
safe for me and they might not even realize the ways that

(46:02):
they're showing up. They're very unconscious to
this. You can have compassion for that
and I think that also is important for people to hear and
understand. If you see someone else
struggling, and I know many folks that are listening to this
and watching are guilty of this,you don't need to save that
person. You don't need to step in and

(46:23):
try to fix them or do the work for them or say, hey, I noticed,
you know, you seem a little off.Have you thought about reading
this book? Let them not to overuse a
certain phrase these days. Let them figure it out.
Some people never do and that isOK.
You can still have compassion for them.
You can see it for what it is, an unhealed part of them,

(46:47):
dysregulation. I mean, there's a lot of
different ways of describing this that are all
interconnected, but look at it for what it is.
They're doing the best that theycan, and they're probably not
safe for you. That's OK, so long as you
recognize that for yourself. Remember, access is everything.
Jim, Ron famously said we're theaverage of the five people that

(47:08):
we spend the most time with. And I believe that this is true
especially for our nervous system.
Get very discerning about the people that you allow to have
access to your time and your energy and recognize no one's
going to do this perfectly for you.
No one's going to have unending compassion for you.

(47:29):
We all have obligations. We're living through very
stressful times. We're more distracted than ever.
We have a lot of pulls on our attention.
But if more often than not, theycan do this for you, they might
deserve a seat at your table. 100% yeah.
Start locating those people. It's so, so important.
And yeah, when you do the work, and I'm sure many people are

(47:51):
listening, are in the midst of the work or get, you know, your
compassion builds for you and other people as you move through
the journey. It really does.
Before I go to some rapid fire questions that I prepared here,
what do you want people to take away from safe that we haven't
already discussed today? Well, one of the freebies

(48:11):
freebies that I have is I, I talk about the wheel of
attachment and I talk about attachment in a new way.
So if you're listening and you identify as anxiously attached,
they're very rarely do you have one attachment style.
And so the wheel like that I dive deep into and as part of a
freebie talks about how we move along the wheel, how we can have

(48:33):
more than one experience with one person and how attachment is
really the combination of two people's embedded patterns.
So I want people to understand like that this book is more of a
holistic view of attachment and it's it's a lens on attachment
that hasn't been written about before.
I want people to understand thatthey're going to get a very deep
dive into the new and a more holistic view of attachment if

(48:58):
they read the book. I think that that's like a
major, a major part of the book and and for people to understand
like don't box yourself in, likewith anxiously attached, like
you probably have some security in you.
You might have some avoidance aswell.
And if you read this book, you're going to start to have a
deeper understanding of your owncomplexities and where and how
these different patterns show upfor you and how to heal them.

(49:20):
Very well said. I mean it's important to
approach this work with nuance. And on that note, when you might
identify that someone, maybe it might even be you, is more on
the avoidant side of things. Please recognize not all
avoidance are the same. Not all avoidance are created
equal. Not all avoidance are worthy of

(49:42):
completely discarding and disqualifying and discrediting
because of a label that they might associate with.
I just did a TikTok video on this recently and got a lot of
Flack for it from speak of the devil.
Folks who haven't properly processed the pain that they
have experienced at the hand of perhaps someone on the more
avoidance side of things or moreemotionally unavailable side of

(50:05):
things. Not all people are the same.
Please approach this with more nuance, especially when it comes
to yourself. You don't have to be this static
label. Not all of us fall so neatly
into a category. Nuance, nuance, nuance.
It's everything. So I'm really glad you brought.

(50:25):
That. Yeah, And if you read, if you
read safe, you're going to deeply understand avoidance.
And it's, it's not a permission slip for you to engage in ways
that are harmful in certain relationships.
But you might walk away with, one, understanding your own
avoidance and avoidant protectors.
And two, you might understand what's at the core of them and

(50:47):
you'll start to make sense of that, which might bring more
compassion to the table. Yep.
Bring it full circle. I love it.
Yes, absolutely. OK, rapid fire questions here.
What's a practice you return to daily when you need to feel safe
in your body? So I talk about this in the
book, but I'll resource my safe people and pretend they're in

(51:07):
the room with me if I can't access them, like call them,
I'll say, what does it feel liketo have my best friend Julia
here? Or how can I feel my friend
Alan's presence? Or, you know, and I'll start to
like resource the feeling of them around me.
You kind of answered the second question here, too.
Who is someone alive or gone that instantly brings you a

(51:28):
sense of safety when you think of them?
You know, I have a best friend, Julia, and she's just, so, you
know, I remember when she came into my life, I was actually
struggling. She's just this ray of sunshine.
And I can call her and, you know, most of the time she's
just really cheery. And I have a friend, Alan, and
like, he is always there for me.Like I know I don't even need to

(51:51):
text him or contact him anymore as much as I did in my thicker
for healing yours. But like he's always there.
He's my, you know, my study. So like I think of these people,
they live inside me the way a secure baby in internalized
secure parents. As adults, we internalize our
anchors so they live inside me as a form of security at all

(52:13):
times. Very well set up.
What is a common piece of relationship advice that you
completely disagree with? I don't.
I don't really know one offhand that like irks me.
I don't know. All relationships are supposed
to heal you. That's not necessarily true.
All relationships are nearer. Sometimes our trauma is doing

(52:35):
all the picking and it's, it's so sad because if we heal that
trauma, we might not end up in some of these situations.
So be mindful that trauma can really lead us into some scary
situations and it's important toheal that.
Very well said. And if you need to repeat
something, but you walk away more quickly, that's also

(52:56):
progress people. So recognize that too.
This is an all or nothing. If you only stayed for a month
instead of a year or a decade, that's progress.
So celebrate that too. Recognize what you can learn and
move forward. If you had to describe what
healing feels like in one image or metaphor, what, what would it
be? I mean, I, I feel like it's this

(53:17):
hard vulnerability and awakeningexperience of parts of yourself
that have been there all along. And if you're listening and
you're like, oh, I don't want tofeel that they're there all the
time anyway, but a real recognizing of them and for me,
a real vulnerability of letting other people come and help me.

(53:39):
I'm so good at helping others, but it's just the space of
recognizing them, the shame of having them, working through
that, holding them. I mean, everything that we
talked about and everything that's in the book, like I have
walked through and hasn't been easy.
And it's not easy, but I will tell you if you're listening, it

(54:00):
is liberating. And not that I'm healed right.
Like the journey keeps going. But if you work through the
implicit, like the core stuff, you createspace in your body and
life is is better. You have deeper relationships,
you feel more free. So there is there is another
side to this when you walk through it.
I don't want people to think like this.

(54:21):
It's this horrible thing. It's it's a hard, courageous
thing to move through. And it creates a life of more
deeper connection and more innerspace and more peace.
I love that the recognizing the awakening, the awakening part
really, I saw this like burst oflight come forth that was really
beautiful and that's how I experienced it.

(54:43):
The idea of freedom that you described, love it.
The piece that you named, yes, beautifully put.
Final question, what's the most hopeful change you've seen in
your own relationships since doing this work?
I have never felt freedom in theway that I've felt freedom.
I just spent the summer in the Hamptons and I have had so many

(55:07):
wonderful people come and visit me and I am so present in my
moments and my connections and Ihave so many attachments that
fill me instead of just like a primary one that's draining or
causing me all my work. I feel like the sense of freedom
that I have from more inner security lets me expand so much

(55:29):
in my world in ways that I neverand I couldn't show up today,
here today in the way that I am,in the energy that I am.
If I hadn't gone through this work and felt so, I feel so
present and expansive and safe. I'm safe within my own being and
I wasn't. I wasn't for years and I didn't

(55:50):
even know that I wasn't. I was just surviving.
Wow. There's so many parallels in our
stories, in our careers. The final section of Needy No
More of the book is called Expansion for that very reason.
I've experienced that feeling myself too.
And it's not this constant stateof bliss, but it is a more kind

(56:12):
of consistent drum beat of connection that, I don't know,
it just it makes you feel more fulfilled, more supported, like
you're not alone in all of this,that you're not the only one who
struggles. You know, I think that's kind of
the essence of being human. We all struggle.
And recognizing that you can share that with others.

(56:32):
You can be there for them in their struggle.
Yeah, it does make you feel freer.
I think recognizing that. Definitely, Jessica, this has
been an absolute honor and pleasure.
How can people find you and pre-order or order safe?

(56:53):
Yeah. So I am giving Chris a link
actually gives you guys free gifts.
So it's a beyond the label like PDF that talks about the wheel
of attachment. And there's like a 40 minute
video of me talking with my mentor, Bonnie Battenock about
what it feels like to earn security.
So if you fill out the form and put your e-mail in there, you

(57:14):
will get those free gifts. Check your spam, but they come
automatically. And if it this is being
released, I think right before the book comes out.
So you'll get chapter 1 as well.So you can start right away.
So yeah, Chris will have the link for you either in an e-mail
or link it. And, and yeah, that that's a
great way, but it's also on Amazon if you just want to go
and directly buy it, it's on all, all major places, Barnes

(57:37):
and Noble. And I'm on Instagram as Jessica
Baum, LMHC. If you read the book and it, you
know, and you want to reach out to me, I try really hard to
respond to everyone. I want to know, you know, how
it's touched you. I encourage that.
So reach out to me, stay connected to me.
Yeah. And I hope, I hope that if

(57:58):
you're listening and you take this journey, I really hope that
this becomes a companion for you.
That URL, by the way, way, is jessicabaumlmhc.com/interview.
I'll include that in the show notes, everyone.
And Safe comes out on October 28th, 2025.
Jessica, thank you so much. Again, I'm deeply grateful.

(58:22):
Thank you so much for having me.It's been so amazing being
interviewed by you and you really get it.
And I'm just, I'm so grateful for you.
And yeah, thank you.

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Chris Rackliffe

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How Safe Relationships Help Us Heal ft. Jessica Baum, LMHC