 So today we're going to talk about love attachment style in particular the fearful avoidance and I'm really excited to have a guest today. I have Bev Middleman on the, please forgive me for having a little laugh over my mispronunciation but she is a certified attachment practitioner and I'm really excited to have her out in the house. So Bev, welcome. Thank you. Very happy to be here. Thanks. Yeah. So we're going to talk about fearful avoidance. We're going to talk about love attachment style. We're going to talk about dating, mating and relating. So maybe for our audience that's new to the concept of love attachment, could you give like the cliff note version of what that is? Yeah. So attachment is really the connection that we form with another human, another individual. So this work has been studied since about the 50s where we started to identify the different attachments that children and babies would have towards their primary caregivers. In most cases it was the mothers and what we found was that there was a set of behaviors and emotional patterns that started to emerge from these children based on the interactions that they had with the caregiver. So if the caregiver was very attuned, very attentive, that would develop into a child who was very secure and confident in themselves and that has a whole set of behaviors. Okay. And if the caregiver was not so attuned, if the caregiver was inconsistent, abusive, neglected or neglective, that would result in an insecure attachment. And within the insecure attachment range, there's a spectrum. And we're hearing a lot about this these days, right? We hear about the avoidance attacher and the anxious attacher. Those two are on the either ends of the spectrum. And there is a fourth category which is called the fearful avoidant that is not talked about very often. Wait, so let me jump in. So you're telling me something I haven't either read about or heard before. So fearful avoidant is separate to the other to attack, because I'm familiar with anxious attachment. I'm familiar with avoidant and obviously secure since you mentioned it. But you're saying this is a separate category? Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's interesting because it's not talked about that often. It is considered to be the rarest of the attachment styles. And it's the most complex. So even the book, I know you referenced the book attached quite often. It doesn't even talk about fearful avoidance. So there are some people that call this particular style anxious avoidance. Yes, so sometimes called disorganized attachment. OK, it has three different names just to make things simple. No, I'm familiar with the other two names that you mentioned, but go ahead, please continue. Yeah, so it's all the same thing, right? It's all referencing this one complex set of behaviors that actually comes about when a child experiences, again, we're talking about inconsistencies, neglect, often abuse as well. So they develop an insecure attachment, whereby they have a high degree of anxiety and a high degree of avoidance. So we're used to looking at avoidance and anxiety as being on either end of the spectrum. Well, I always think of, please forgive me for interrupting, I always think of anxious as the one who has anxiety and the avoidant as the one that might have anxiety, but they don't show it because they're closed, you know, like it's all armored up. That's the way I've kind of observed it. Does that, is that am I on track here? You are, you are. But here's a really interesting thing is that it all comes from the same place. It means that the child did not receive consistent caregiving in some sense or that connection that their need wasn't met in childhood. So what infants do, what children do and adults do is that we make these adaptations. So the root of the problem is the same in most cases, but how we adapt, we either become really anxious so a child can figure out very early on that if I display this type of behavior, I'm going to get my needs met. I'm going to get the attention of my caregiver. So for example, a young girl might choose, she might learn very young that if she starts to cry, her parents will pay attention to her. OK, well, I want to address this for a second. Let's say you're an anxious person. OK, now I only bring this up because I know I'm a recovering anxious person. I feel like I've graduated to secure, but we won't know that until my next relationship. If I cried, I don't think I got love or attention from my mother. I think it's it's quite the opposite. I had to keep crying and keep crying to get some attention. And even then, that didn't satisfy me. I'm am I on the right track here? You are. I do want to make a distinction also between what, you know, the medical profession with Dima is generalized anxiety. OK, like like a diagnosis and the anxious, attached person, right? What we're talking about in terms of attachment styles is not it's not a diagnosis. It's not a personality disorder. It's none of that stuff. What we're talking about is really the connections and the pathways that we made very early on in our mind that we're like a set of rules for how we were to interrelate with someone else. So this has learned behavior at a very young age and it creates a set of pathways in our mind and it's stored in the subconscious. And we repeat these things. So if we use the example of your mother, yeah, and you're trying to get her attention, you're a child, you you require your mother's attention, right? You eat it. So you're trying to get her attention. You're crying, you're crying, you're crying. It's not working. A child will know I'm going to try something else. So I would venture a guest to say that if you noticed early on that that particular set of behaviors was not getting you what you needed, that you would have repressed that that decades later. I'm guessing decades later, you still it might have been hard for you to cry. It wasn't something that it wasn't helpful. Well, I will say this and I want to lean into outside of the child. Let's go to the adult. So, for example, what I've witnessed as a I want to say a recovered, I want to say past tense, anxious person, if I sent a text message to someone and a period of time went on where I'm like, I didn't get a response. My reaction was what did I do wrong? Like literally, I mean, I mean, I mean, I can say this with such a visceral feeling and it's something could been benign as they were just, you know, driving in their car and they couldn't they weren't able to text until, you know, they were, you know, in a place where they were stopped or something like that. But it's amazing how I literally could create a story of what I did wrong. And so and I want to want to bring it back to because this topic is more geared to fearful avoidance than the anxious person. I would say, though, I have had a habit of attracting avoidant people. That's so common. And so, you know, and and and that's I want to talk about that because I don't want to necessarily crucify any of my past relationships or anything. But what I've noticed with avoidance is that they and this is my perception based on my experience, and that's why I want to talk to you. They tend to be less expressive in the relationship. They tend to be less demonstrative. They tend to be less communicative of their feelings. And then they also seem to also the minute you want to talk about feelings, they become dismissive, maybe defensive, maybe stonewall, that sort of thing. And is that a fair assessment based on what I just shared? It is. So yeah, you're right on the money with that. So and what you're describing is really like when we talk about it in a spectrum, you're talking about really on one side of the spectrum, right? Because people could fall a little bit more towards the middle. But but those but those patterns really do exist. And the most common pattern that we hear about when we talk about attachment style is the anxious of hatch or coupling up with the avoidant attacher. And how do these two folks meet each other because they're from different worlds? Yeah, I don't I didn't consciously go. Let me find an avoidant. I mean, I'd rather find an anxious, because at least I don't know, I feel like we're on the same page. But you wouldn't. But you wouldn't. And I'll tell you why. So it's and it's interesting that you mentioned the conscious mind because this is all subconscious. Sure. Mine is your awareness. So your awareness, you know, guides three to five percent. That's it of your belief system, your emotions, your thoughts, your actions. So the other 95, 97 percent is being done at the subconscious level beneath your awareness. So this is where it starts to get super interesting. So attraction has a number of key, I would say, tenets. OK, one is trait variety. And this goes back to, you know, back in time in history. Oh, if you, for example, were very, very smart and you coupled up with someone that was very, very strong, the two of you together as a couple had a much stronger chance of survival. OK, God, God, God, God. So that's right. Yeah. We carry this forward. We're still wired for this to some degree. The other thing is, is that we're also attracted more often than not to people who exhibit traits that we ourselves repress. So as an anxious person, you might be very attracted to someone who, for example, is really good at sending boundaries. You might find that incredibly attractive. And there's something I can learn from this person, right? They can. OK, I'm tracking you now. Got it. Got it. Got it. OK. Well, let me ask you. So would you say that we are attracted to people that might have a quality about them that we wished we had within ourselves? I hear that very often, but I mean, I hear it very often. OK, I think the more accurate term is we're attracted to people that have qualities that we have that we've repressed. We see now, when you said repressed, I really want to I'd really like to unpack that for a moment, because is it because I wonder if is it repression or is it maybe it, for lack of a better word, a deficit between us? And I'll give you an example in my last relationship. She was very good at fixing things. She grew up with a father who was a he was in the upholstery business. He knew how to he just knew how to, you know, get shit done, right? And she had that same quality and I'm a little bit inept. Like, I'm not a do it yourself or I'm not a fixer. Like, I don't know how to fix stuff. I mean, I'm almost embarrassed to say I have a hard time putting in a light bulb, but I can get that done. Is that a repressed feeling or just a weakness within myself? Because I feel like it's I felt like it's just a a skill that hasn't been learned versus I've repressed something. Yeah, so that's it's a super interesting question. I think we have to make a distinction between traits. OK, and skills. Oh, OK. OK, got it. Got it. Got it. So, for example, I would I would venture a guest to say that you're more than capable as a person to learn how to fix jobs around the house. Let's just but it doesn't fall very high on your priority list. And maybe I'd hire a handyman, right? And so so you don't invest time. But you know, you're the ex-girlfriend that you're talking about. She would have learned from her father that maybe this was the way that she got her father's attention. Maybe she went with him to the store and maybe that's how they bond. That is so true. That is so true. So maybe, you know, every time she did something really well, she got praised. So she learns this is my way to get the attention that I want from the person I love. And she carried that as we all do. We carry those patterns into adulthood. So I talked about a skill. And so I saw that as something I admired in her just as a just a clarification. There were things she admired within me. What you talked about earlier was a trait. Yeah. Can you give me an example of a trait that we would repress? A person would repress. So, for example, you know, it depends on how a child is socialized. But I think, you know, we have these narratives in our society where, for example, we teach boys not to cry. And that's that's changing a little bit, right? So don't, you know, don't don't emote to that level. And we teach girls that it's not that you shouldn't be angry, that you shouldn't you shouldn't express anger. So what I'm talking about is more at that level. We learned when we're very young, which emotions are acceptable to display and aren't. So. And the response that we get from our caregivers, either we get punished, right, or we get ignored or we get rewarded. So we learn very quickly which one of those traits and which one of those behaviors we're going to exhibit. OK, I might learn part of me. I might learn very young that being selfish is is not is not allowed in the house, not OK. Now, there are times when you grow up that being selfish is not a bad thing. It's contextualized, right? Putting yourself first is, you know, the tenant of I think you would agree. Self love. Yeah, it's the putting the oxygen mask on yourself first. Well, you know, I want to I want to pause here for a second, because I really because we're going to talk about fearful avoidance. I want everyone I want to just dive into that because I've kind of steered this conversation to the anchors that I was recovering from. Let's talk about what does a fearful avoidant look like in the in when you're dating them, OK, and what does it look like when you're in relationship with them? And and I'll be candid, you know, I'm like, is it worth dating a fearful avoidant? You know, like, I mean, you know, those are a couple of things off the top of my head. OK, before we dive in, I do want to say that OK, so attachment styles are formed early in the early years, but OK, it's not a life sentence, which means that you can actually do work to move from an insecure style. Any one of the three insecure styles into a more secure base. So the work that I do is not just identifying attachment styles, but it's helping to guide people to work them much more towards a secure base. So I myself am a recovering fearful avoidant. I understand the patterns very well. I found this work years ago when I was on my own personal journey to understand my mind. So so there's some very interesting things with any attachment style or we'll talk just about the insecure attachment styles for now. Yeah, during the dating stage, these folks generally are pretty good, especially the fearful avoidant. So when you're with a fearful avoidant, they're very present. They're often charismatic, you know, they're very good listeners. They are very attuned to their environment. It's so interesting, because generally speaking, fearful avoidants are what we call hyper vigilant. Hyper vigilant. OK. So so I can still to this day, walk into a room and read the room in three seconds. Interesting. Yeah. And what and that was a learned skill because I would wake up in the morning and not know what to expect. What in your household in my household as a child. Yeah. Right. So when you're living in that level of inconsistency, abuse, neglect, every day is a little different. So you become very attuned to the folks around you because that indicates your level of safety or the route that you need to take. Right. So you learn it's an adaptation. And often people talk about, oh, I'm very empathetic. I can I can read others. I know you're hyper vigilant because you grew up in chaos. Right. That's usually kind of where we're at. But so dating a fearful avoidant in the beginning, people often will say it's it's lots of fun. Right. They have they have a little bit of the qualities of the anxious person and a little bit of the qualities of the avoidant person. OK. Until there's actually a bond that's formed. Right. So until you get to that, as you talk about the first layer of trust and you talk about 100 hours of this time, which I believe is very accurate. So by the way, it's it's not a by the way, for those watching when I talk about the 100 hours of face to face time, it is an arbitrary number. But it just occurs to me that we do, you know, we have to observe a person in a variety of different situations to build a level of trust. And I use 100 hours of the first level, 200 hours of the second level, 300 of the third level, it's just an arbitrary number. But I think it, you know, at least it's something to give some context of it takes time to build trust. So so please continue. Yeah, it absolutely does. And very poignant, that statement when it comes to fearful avoidance. So the biggest core wound for a fearful avoidance. And I'll take a moment and explain what a core wound on that. This is really similar to a limiting belief, something that we had heard repetitively that had an emotional impact and patterning on us. And we carry this around. So a fearful avoidance will have as their core wound, their top core wound, this sense that they will be betrayed. OK, betrayed, betrayed. So and the corbons are different depending on the insecure styles. So, for example, someone who is actually preoccupied, they their core wound is they're afraid they'll be abandoned, abandoned. Yeah, by the way, it's exactly what I do wrong. Are you going to leave me? Are you going to leave me, right? And I'll do anything to patch it up. I just I can't face the fear that you're going to leave me. Yeah. That's why they go into fawning and people pleasing and so forth. Now, what do you what do you think the core wound is for the for the avoidance? So what you said just so I'm clear, the fearful avoidant is betrayal. Mm hmm. So the core wound of the avoidance, you see, I would have thought it was but oh, being smothered, being overwhelmed, being, you know, a meshment. Yeah. Am I on the right track? I know there's I can't find the word I'm looking for, but it's something related to that. Yeah, all of that. I will be trapped. Yeah, the fear of losing their independence or free. Absolutely. They also have a core wound that I am defective. So a lot of their behaviors is to hide, right? So a lot of times what they do is they they hide. And again, they avoid. But this is an essence to detach themselves from their emotional needs because they learned in childhood that they could not rely on their caregivers. So they became overly self-reliant. Yes. You know, the narrative today that I see on social media is there's a there's a lot of like kicking at the avoidance that they're that they're bad people, that they're hard to date. Yeah, they are. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I always say that because I'm a recovered anxious person. So who's dated a lot of avoidance, right? Well, I suspect while I am not capable of full diagnostics or diagnosis, I do suspect that's the case. So I'm saying that from just a personal tongue and cheek. However, and and I'd like your perspective on this, Bev, it seems to me that women and this might be an improper characterization tend to be more anxious and men tend to be more avoidant. I not to suggest that it can't be the other way around, but I'm curious if there's any truth to that, you know, that perception that I have. And I only base this on speaking to so many women who seem to be with avoidant met. It's such a great question. I'm going to shock you. OK, so it's actually not gender based. Well, I figured it's not, but I'm just curious. So, well, but I'm still curious. Are there more anxious women than men kind of thing? Well, so, you know, again, the attachment style that we develop is not gender based, but I do believe that the way in which we're socialized in our world, at least here in North America is does have an impact on this. So, for example, little girls are given a lot more grace to show vulnerability, to cry, to say, I feel hurt right now, too. And so they have that outlet, which, you know, would be some of the behaviors that we see typically associated to someone who is anxious, preoccupied. Yeah, and we boys are socialized to tough it up, be stoic, that sort of thing, which seems to fit more of an avoidant characteristic. Yes, but no, because here's the thing is that there's another side to the anxious person, the anxious person. We're just talking about how these emotions come out. So anxiety levels could be the same for the little boy and the little girl. The little boy is taught that he's socialized, that it's OK for him to display his anxiety through anger. So he's emoting from the same place in a different way that's socially acceptable. And then we go and we make a connection and go, oh, anger is more associated to avoidant. That's not true. The root is there. It's the same. It's what we socialize in behavior of these children. And then that carries through on to. Got it, got it. So so I mean, I would ask you because you've mentioned a few times that you're recovering anxious. I want to say we're covered with an E.D. not in recovery. OK. I have to step into my secure, but, you know, I won't know this until I'm in relationship with someone. That's not true either. That's not true either. So. Oh, my gosh, you're dispelling all my myths. So my beliefs, I should say. So tell me what's not true there. Well, you don't need to be in a relationship with someone else to be able to question and identify, you know, your own stories, your own core wounds. So core wounds, depending on how intense they are and how the intensity and the frequency that you feel them at, those trigger points give you some really good feedback. So you can absolutely get triggered during a phone call that you have with a friend, a family member, a colleague. Now, we talk about romantic relationships because there's a there's a mirroring there. They are in our adult lives. They are the person that's generally closest to us. Which mirrors the relationship that we had as a child to our caregiver. Right. So we know that these patterns will show up strongest in a romantic relationship. But you absolutely can be having these patterns show up and get triggered. When in a simple conversation, you go have coffee with a friend, that person says something to you and all of a sudden your heart starts racing and you're getting upset and you're what's happening there. You know, people will. Well, I and and and only to not to defend myself. I I I'm intentionally saying recovered because I don't want to necessarily I don't want to necessarily associate with it and create that narrative as an ongoing thing. So I'm I'm I'm taking a bit of power by saying it that way. With that said, I believe we have defaults. In other words, even a secure I got. Well, I'm going to be candid with you. I don't think there are that many truly full blown secure people who are single. OK, they might be there might be those that are in relationship that are secure. But I really do believe that a majority of people have some level of insecurity within relationship and their default might be I'm default a little more anxious or someone like yourself might default a little more to fearful avoidant. Even though you've done a tremendous amount of work and I've done a tremendous amount of work on healing it and being aware and conscious and learning how to self regulate and that sort of thing. Is that do you am I accurate when I say this that I do believe most people are probably insecure on some level versus that there is this I think even in the book attached, they say 50 percent of people secure. And I don't believe that to be the case. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure where that's that comes from, but I've heard that stat too. I just I can't attribute it to North America and what decade they were talking about and so forth. But so, you know, this is hard stuff to research, right? Yeah, it's all self reported. So so, you know, the accuracy, there's a there's a margin there. But if we go with the principle that it's 50 percent of the population is secure and the other 50 percent of the population, let's just say North America is secure, then, you know, you have that population, you know, most of them are falling within the anxious or the avoidance. And then you've got a smaller population that has a mix of those two. And then there's a fearful avoidant. What I do want to mention is, is that everyone has insecurities. Yeah, we all we all carry insecurities. We all come into relationship, you know, with things that like we're never fully grown, right? We're always learning, we're always evolving, but that's not the same thing as having an insecure attachment. So having an insecure, like having an insecurity, you know, I might think that I don't know, I'm going to use an example. Maybe I'm dating a younger man and and I might think, you know, what my insecurity is, maybe I'm a little too old for him. He's going to think I'm a little bit too old. That's an insecurity. It's not a core wound. It has nothing to do with my attachment style. It's completely separate. So the core wounds were abandonment, betrayal, amassment or depending on your freedom. That's so you can see how it's not really connected to a core wound, right? Like an insecurity. Sometimes we have small insecurities and they crop up. So it's not about getting rid of the insecurities per se. OK, so one of the interesting things is, is that there's one common trait that or core wound, part of me, that is common for all three insecure attachments. It's the only one. So for now I'm dying to know what this is for the avoidance, for the anxious, OK, and for the fearful avoidance or disorganized, whatever you call them. There's one core wound you want to take a stab in. What do you think that might be? I'm not good enough. I'm very close. I'm not lovable. Super close. Yeah, like you're simmering in the warm water. OK, wait, wait, give me one more second. I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. I'm no good. Let me set the stage for you. All of these individuals lived as children where their parents were either misattuned. They were not. They were inconsistent. They were potentially abused. They were neglected. That's that's the framework. So when you grow up in chaos, OK, it's very difficult to develop a secure base. OK, so these individuals, they tend to feel. Unsafe, I love unsafe, unsafe. OK, so and by the way, and I want to clarify something because I think some people I'm just going to talk generally here for a second. When I talk about on my videos, childhood wounds and traumas, it doesn't have to mean you were, you know, beaten as a child, sexually molested or whatever. I mean, some wounds can be on some level could almost have been benign from your parent, but the child who's only four years old interprets at a child's brain and something benign could have been explosive in their world, so to speak, explosive is kind of a dramatic word. But, you know, overly dramatic to a child versus somebody who's by the way, and you know, somebody who's experienced true physical abuse, sexual abuse, that sort of thing. I have a great deal of empathy for them. I have a great deal of empathy for all of our experiences, quite frankly. But it's amazing. A wound could be small, but still carry a gigantic weight for the adult in their life. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, it's a very fair statement, actually. You're right on money. So it doesn't have to be overt abuse. You're absolutely right. A lot of times these are well-meaning parents and I'm a parent myself, so I would never sit here. You're totally right. And bash someone else. I do believe that we all do the best we can with the information we have at the time. Right? Like, I really, I believe that. I apologize to my son all the time for all of my unconscious parenting. You know, I'm bugging him. I've said some apologies, too. Because, you know, like, let's not be fools. I've made mistakes, right? But to learn from them, I think is that. So what we're talking about is the child doesn't doesn't necessarily know how to make sense out of a parent that's inconsistent with them. So imagine a really young child who has a mother who's an alcoholic, let's say. So one day that mother is super happy because they're drunk and they're very loving. And the next day they're not drinking and they're wearing withdrawal and they are shut down completely. Yeah. And then the next day they're happy again because they're drinking and then the next day they drank too much and they're passed out. And so what I'm talking about is inconsistency. So the child learns that they can't rely on parents, right? Or, you know, even in the scenario of neglect where the child becomes overly self-reliant and they become avoidant. Neglect maybe that, you know, it could be emotional neglect. It could be physical neglect. It could be that the parents had too many children to look after. They had too many hours at work. They were taking care of an elderly parent and couldn't. So it's not to say that these parents intentionally harm their children. But what happens is, is that if you are not consistent and attuned in those early years, the child believes it's their fault. They believe it's their fault. They internalize it in some way. And then they develop coping mechanisms for how to stay safe in the world. So if my mother is an alcoholic and this is my scenario and I'm inconsistent, I realize that if I can, you know, on the days that she's passed out, if I can get her a washcloth and a cup of coffee and I can take care of her, let's say I'm like eight or nine at this point. And I can take care of her and I can call for help. And I you could very easily see how that will become my internal programming for I have to take care of others. Yeah, so let's and let's let's now fast forward to those in relationships because, you know, how this shows up the this love, this thing called love attachment style shows up in, I suspect, a variety of different ways in basically dating, mating and relating. There's the early stages, as you said earlier, where a fearful avoidant could be a very charming person. They could be a very intriguing person and such in the early stages. Something shifts, though, right? Something shifts and and and the person that the receiving and feels, you know, you know, something going on for them. So can we talk about what shifts for them and what it looks like to both people? Yeah, 100 percent. So you're right. The shift happens very specifically when when the attachment comes online. So that is it's different for everyone. So initially, you go out on one, two, three, four dates. It's light. You don't have an attachment to this person, you know. However, attachment forms, maybe maybe you then have a really deep, meaningful conversation on date five and all of a sudden you start developing feelings. Maybe on date six, there's, you know, there's relations or you're intimate with each other and then the feelings deepen. It's at that point that the feelings deepen and there's the possibility for attachment, commitments, all of those things that the attachment styles start to come online. So I oh, please let me jump in for a second because you just said something that really sparked a curiosity within me. So, you know, oftentimes in the early stage of mating, we're experiencing lust or limerence, you know. You know, lust is that desire you want to be physically intimate. Limerence is maybe an over infatuation for a person. And those aren't real feelings. Those are, you know, biological, if you will. You're talking about the minute we start having feelings for someone. That's the point where we begin some level of attachment to this other person. That's what I thought I heard. Is it different for an anxious person versus an avoidant and a fearful avoidant in this? OK, please elaborate on that because that's new to me and I want to hear about it. So an avoidance will want to move at lightning speed. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. And no, sorry, an anxious. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes more sense. Sorry. An anxious, preoccupied individual will want to have two dates and we're together. Yeah, they need that certainty. They need that validation. They need to like that reassurance and they'll keep seeking that reassurance. It's very common for an avoidant to take, you know, six months before they decide if they want to be in a relationship. They're they're they're petrified of, again, that commitment because what comes online, right? They're afraid of you now see why avoidants get a bad rap. I do. I do that. But I want to I want to just distinguish that that doesn't mean they're bad people. No, I know, I know. But I mean this is that they have a different set of programming. So my teacher, who I studied under, she used to use this example and it was it was a very, very intelligent example. She talked about that our attachment styles are really like a set of rules that we use for how we're going to relate to someone else. So let's say you and I are dating, we've been on a couple of dates and I'm walking into the date with a set of rules for monopoly. And you're walking into the day with a set of rules for chess. OK, so we're going to have some friction. We're not even talking about the same stuff, right? It's like we could be really enjoying each other, but, you know, I might want to talk about where is this relationship going? And you might go, whoa, we are months away from that. And so you can see how that what this is really screaming for the situation is some really good communication. Yes, yes, talk about communication all the time. But the truth is, is that I'm not sure that people are very good at it. No, most humans are terrible. But it's fascinating to me. And I am to, you know, I'm speaking to the audience here for a second. It's fascinating how so many people think they're good at communicating and actually how poor they're at at even just speaking their truth, let alone doing it in a kind way that can be seen, heard and understood. I think, you know, most humans need to go to school to learn how to communicate with another human being. But continue, please. Yeah, we're not. No, no, we're not great at this, unfortunately. But I think it's I think the problem is even broader. Because I don't think it really has to do with us being able to choose our words and use the right tone. And I think when it comes down to it and we say you have to communicate your needs, I believe that a lot of people can't actually accurately identify their needs. Oh, now that's a really good point. I agree with that. Most I think people have a hard time identifying what they're actually feeling. They intellectualize it, but they don't necessarily come at it from they don't even use feeling words. They use thinking words, right? So because again, if if their emotions were shut down in childhood, this is not a skill they developed, right? And so if you look at avoidance, again, what they try to do with their avoidant patterns is they try to minimize their attachment needs so that they they they minimize that the anxiousness that they feel and and their fear. This is fear based, you know, activities, right? So we have to sort of give them a little bit of slack. I really that's my that's my take is that I think if we want to engage in the relationship with someone who's avoidant, I think there's a little bit of a way that has to be given. Well, I have a caveat when I I'm going to jump in because I'm not sure, you know, slack is a good thing either. And let me explain why I say this, OK? You know, I think when two misaligned people get together, you know, someone who's a high anxious and the other person's a high avoidant, that relationship is probably has some misalignment. And unless they have amazing communication skills and a real commitment to want to work this out, it's going to be rather dramatic. I mean, I'm using the two ends of the spectrum here for a moment. I do believe that your apps, your willingness to go all in with someone and and you're aware of your attach if two people are aware of their attachment style and they're all in and they and they have learned the skills to communicate. I don't think see any problem with that. But you're talking about a lot of moving parts to make that work. Am I making sense here? A hundred percent. So, you know, in a perfect world, yeah, if we could draw this perfect world, yeah, everyone would, you know, be curious enough to research themselves and understand their own attachment style. They would invest the time to address their core wounds. And there are ways to do this. I want to backtrack for a moment. I had tried so many different therapy modalities throughout my life. You know, as much as I understood that I was traumatized by X, Y and Z, where I had trouble getting unstuck was, OK, what do I do about it? How do I stop feeling this way? How do I I understand that being in a group of people makes me anxious? Great. How do I stop feeling anxious when I'm in a group of people? And I couldn't get the answer. And so we talk about we talk about is all over social media. Do the work in brace your insecurities. And yeah, but what does that actually mean? And so I had tried so many different modalities to figure this out. And this work in attachment theory is is what made the most sense for me. So that's why I'm spending my time talking about this now. What became so incredibly apparent to me is that there's a set of communication styles, emotional patterns, coping mechanisms, a relationship to boundaries for each one of these attachment styles. And so the way that I was coping with things was completely symptomatic of the patterning that I had. So if I could fix the patterning, then I was able to adopt better communication, understand my needs, meet my own needs. I was that I was able to master boundaries. I never thought I could put boundaries in place. Like it's I I understand the principle of boundaries, but in my mind, I would be heavily punished if I put a boundary in place because that was my programming. So you have to do that. And how do we do that? Yeah, we reprogram in the exact same way that the programming got programs in the first place, which is again, the subconscious does not understand language in the way that we're using it on the. So we use imagery, we use emotion and repetition, repetition and repetition. Yes, yes, yes. We identify these core wounds and we oppose the core wounds with vivid imagery, repetition and the emotions, positive emotions associated to the antidote of that core wound. And we do this for a period of three to four weeks. And it is remarkable. The brain will create new pathways and the old ones will atrophy. We will stop using the old ones. So you're describing something and OK. You're describing and I'm really I want to emphasize this for a moment because you and I have done quite a bit of individual work on ourselves, whether it's whether it's in our area of attachment, where it's in the area of our limiting beliefs and our negative patterns and revisiting our childhood and forgiveness and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, the average person doesn't do this. By the way, if you're watching this video, you have no excuse not to do this work. Let me just say this because you're being educated on this and I talk about this frequently if you're on my channel. So you're in a relationship with somebody who's a fearful avoidant and you're doing the individual work and this person is doing no work on themselves. You know, a day, you know, you can't tell them you need to go work on yourself, otherwise I'm going to leave the relationship because that's, you know, that's a threatening type of thing and that's not going to be successful. This person has to want to work on themselves, number one. They need to go seek the proper people, you know, individuals to help them with this. But more importantly, and this is the piece I want to get into. You have to be all in in this relationship. If you want it to work, you know, you can't be. I don't think it's if you're one foot in, one foot out, that's it's just an unsatisfying relationship to the other person who's committed, if they are fully committed to it and they do the work. So it's not just doing the work, but it's also the other pieces. Look, I'm in this because I want this to work. Yeah, 100 percent. But a lot of people aren't all in is my point. We have a lot of casual relationships out there and it's passive and people are butting heads with each other, wondering why five years later this didn't work out. So anyway. You know, I have a certain viewpoints. It's it's it's it's really just my personal viewpoint. But I think a lot of this casual dating has to do with, again, I believe unresolved traumas. I believe I believe that it has to do with not understanding your attachment style, your personal needs or communication stuff. Like this is work, right? But it's so rewarding in the sense that forget about the relationship. The relationship to yourself, like actually understanding your mind and most people think that they understand their mind well. Yeah. You know, my experience is is that anyone or everyone really could learn something new, right? So when I tell people that actually it's your subconscious mind that is driving, you know, your beliefs, your emotions, your thoughts and your actions, people actually take offense. No, I'm extremely logical. And I'm like, no, you actually are making the decision based on the patterning in your subconscious mind. And then you're justifying with logic at the conscious level. Yeah, it's great. You can rationalize such bad behavior. I mean, so it's interesting, right? Like people are like, no, I'm very rational. Like, OK, we we have we all have these patterns that guide us. So, you know, I think it's like anything else in life. When you find that it is disruptive enough to your life and you may have, for example, failed relationship after failed relationship after failed relationship. And so at that point, you say to yourself, OK, maybe I do have some work to do. The evidence is pretty clear. Or maybe, you know what, we all know that there's a very, very strong connection between mind body, right? So if you're if you're out of alignment with your needs and you're living a certain way, but you're unfulfilled and you're very stressed and you're constantly angry or you're constantly anxious because you feel you're going to be abandoned or all of this starts to wreak havoc also on our physical health, right? We talk about mental health, but also physical health. So a person may reach a point where they just had it. And, you know, I just I just want to learn how to calm my mind and seeking peace. And I often say it takes a humbling event. Yeah, for a person. I did a video on this about the I think it takes a humbling event to change a person. So I want to spend the last few minutes of our chat talking about you're in a relationship with a fearful avoidant. What's it going to take for this person to feel safe? What's it going to take for this person to be able to, you know, really be able to lean all into a relationship and not have that other person at arm's length? Because certainly the anxious person does feel a sense of anxiety when they're with a fearful avoidant. And as you said, they're they're not worth giving up on. OK, so so when should the anxious give up on a person? What's it going to take for that person to feel safe? What should the anxious do? And what should the anxious not do when they're with a fearful avoidant? So again, all of this falls on a spectrum, right? So a fearful avoidant may display some of these characteristics, maybe not, you know, some others. It's also very it's very important to articulate that a fearful avoidant will sway back and forth between their anxious side and their avoidant side, depending on the context. So if a fearful avoidant is dating someone anxious, they will absolutely fall into their avoidant side. OK, someone who is avoidant, they themselves will become anxious. And so you often see memes that will sort of laugh at this this style, you know, where it's it's the it's the attachment style. Like, come closer, no, get away, come more here. Give me the video I sent you this morning. Yeah, I know. And it is true to some degree, because what happens is, is that the the the anxious side of the the style is is is craving intimacy and connection for the fearful avoidant or just the general avoidant. The fearful avoidant has a handful of the anxious traits and the avoidant traits. Interesting. Yeah, so again, they have high anxiety and high avoidance. OK, they do crave intimacy. They crave connection they want, but but not too much because you're going to trigger that person to run for the hills. So, you know, we can laugh about this stuff, but there are certain things that I think are important to understand if you're dating a fearful avoidant. So trust is is is the most important thing. I think you'll probably notice if you're dating a fearful avoidant, one of the first clues in the early dating stage is they will ask a lot of questions. And I don't know why I said that as a secret. It's not but it's because they're looking for context. So they want to understand things because they're assessing, right? They're trying to establish, can I trust this person? Can I not? Is that true for the male fearful avoidant? They'll ask a lot of questions. It's it's yeah, it's not gender based. Yeah, well, I just, you know, I hear from women frequently there with men who don't ask them any questions. So I'm kind of curious about that. But OK, so continue, please, please. You know, emotional emotional depth is something that's very important. So I know myself. I'm very impatient when it comes to surface level conversations. OK, I have no interest in talking about the weather. And let's get to the good stuff, right? So that emotional depth is really tell me about your childhood wounds and how have you recovered from them? That's the first date with Bev. That's kind of accurate, actually. Well, by the way, I'm no different. I think, you know, I my ex-girlfriend said I was I was exhausting. But my point is, look, you know, getting to know someone you can do at the surface level or you can get underneath the water line and really do some deeper curious work. Because what's my point is what's the point of dating? If you're if it's going to be a short lived experience, you know, I'm I think it's important to talk about as many nooks and crannies as you possibly can to see if there's alignment, you know, but continue. So the avoidant will ask a lot of questions. What else? Yeah. So what I'm doing is I'm telling you some of the common needs of the fear in relationship. So we talked about emotional depth, trust, passion. Passion is way up there. We're talking about physical passion or passion within life. Passion can fall on different levels. In this case, when we're talking about the relationship, like romantic passion. OK, got it, got it, got it. Yeah, safety. So again, we talked about that all of the insecure attachment styles have a core wound of I am unsafe, so safety. So if I go out on a date with the man and he puts his hand on my knee a little too fast, I immediately feel unsafe. We're done. Like it's it's you've got to move a little slower with these individuals. Let them come to you. Like let them. Now, I'm a recovered F.A. So the story I was telling you was from before. I'm a little bad. Got it. But growth, learning, novelty. These are things that are very, very common. And then. But aren't these true for the anxious person as well? I mean, the fact is, is both anxious and avoidance and fearful avoidance, you know, they want to assess safety as early as they can possibly. It's just how they go about it is different, right? The safety factor is that one trait that all the insecure folks share as a core wound. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would agree with you. But novelty is not novelty is not something that the anxious preoccupied would value or be a common need for them. No, they're looking for certainty, certainty and consistency. That's right. Got it. Got it. You're not looking for novelty. They want to know from day two. OK, you're you're mine. We're together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Each other three times a week, Wednesdays at 7 p.m. And I mean, whereas, you know, the the the avoidant will say, OK, I'll text you. I'll let you know because they have decided themselves their own mood of when they want to see you next and they take a very long time to process emotions, they need a tremendous amount of space. And the fearful avoidance somewhere in the middle, the fearful avoidant would probably say, OK, let's agree to meet two days a week and we'll pick the days as we go. Like they're sort of OK. So I want to put a bow on all of this we talked about because I realize we could do a couple series of conversations about this. I'm happy to do it again. OK. So let's put a bow on this conversation. What what advice would you like to share with those that watched all of this based on the conversation we just had? What what kind of nuggets would you want to share? You know, again, I shared that I had tried many different modalities therapy and the place that I kept getting stuck was how do I move out of this pattern? And for me, it was life changing to be able to understand and learn tools and methods to actually move out of the set of patterns that was no longer serving me. So awareness is the first step, right? So awareness is like everyone on social media is talking and, you know, memeing about the avoidance and this and that. But but but how do we actually grow from that? How do we move towards secure secure attachment? So that's the work that I do is guiding people. And it's a set of tools. It's a set of reprogramming techniques. And it's not it's not like traditional therapy where you call your therapist and this is everything that happened to me over the last week. What I really aim to do is in a period of 12 to 14 weeks, give you all the tools that you need on it to be able to understand how to move towards secure attachment, how to communicate, how to set boundaries, look at setting, you know, different better coping strategies and so forth. So what I want to go ahead, finish that thought. Well, I was going to say is what you do is you first repair the relationship to yourself. Yeah. So and you don't have to be entirely healed to go into a relationship, but you should have a good idea of what's important to you and your needs so that the next time you're sitting across from someone and you say, these are the things that are important to me, you're coming from a very authentic place. Yeah, I want to piggyback on that, you know, to the extent that at least I can speak for myself, you know, I'm aware of my core wounds. I've done a tremendous amount of work. I have no reservation sharing that with somebody in the future as a as a guide post, as a guide or as a road map to how to build stronger intimacy between the two of us. And I would certainly would I know I personally would like to be with a person who's familiar with their childhood wounds and traumas and attachment style and has also done some work. So with all that said, I want to speak to everybody who's watching. If this is fascinated to you in any bit about attachment style, understanding your own attachment style, how to navigate, use the tools. I would I'm going to recommend Bev. There's going to be a link below to her website that will take you to. I'm assuming you have like a page where people can connect with you and schedule a call with you and all that stuff. I do. I do. My website is them securely loved dot com. I think there'll be a link right in the in the in the right in the description of this video. So I appreciate that. And you can actually sign up for a free 15 minute consultation. I do that just to make sure that those that are coming to me understand the type of services that I'm offering and that it's a it's a good fit. And yeah, I also have an Instagram page. OK, well, I'll put your Instagram page as well. Folks, you know what? I after chatting with Bev today, I recommend scheduling that 15 minute call and seeing if there's a fit there. I'm a big believer of individuals doing, you know, personal development, self-help, spiritual work therapy to really find that space within yourself that brings you greater, let's say inner peace, if you will, because there's nothing easy about the dating process. There's nothing easy about interacting with other people because we humans are kind of fallible, dysfunctional human beings. But the more we know about ourselves, I think the better we operate in the world with somebody else who's also doing the work. So I want to highly recommend Bev, check out those links as well. This has been a true pleasure, Bev. This was really fascinating to me, understanding a little bit about the fearful avoidant. Maybe we should do a follow up in a few months and put a bow on the next chapter of all this. How does that sound? I would be happy to do that. And thank you, Jonathan, for all the great work that you're putting out there and the guidance. I mean, I watch your videos too. So it's great. When you shared that with me, I didn't realize that I was very flattered. I I I this is a passion of mine to talk about this stuff. I could I can talk about the inner workings of human beings 24 seven and not get bored. So it's fascinating, isn't it? I don't think it's fascinating thing. It's human behavior. Yeah, exactly. So all right, well, folks, I hope you found value in this. I'm going to reach into the camera and give my guest, Bev, a big, gigantic John and Jonathan Bear hug of appreciation. And I'm going to reach out to everyone else and give you a big Jonathan Bear hug and hope you found value in this. And if you did, please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel and also check out the work of secure, secure, really loved.com as well. OK, there'll be a link below. Everyone, thanks so much for being on. We'll take care. All right. Bye now. Bye bye.