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270: Attachment Patterns & Secure Relationships with Jessica Baum

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this episode, Shane talks with Jessica Baum about attachment patterns & secure relationships. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 270: Attachment Patterns & Secure Relationships with Jessica Baum

 

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

Get the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Join the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new 

In this episode, Shane talks with Jessica Baum about attachment patterns & secure relationships. Jessica is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and the Author of the new book, Safe: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships. Hear the 4 attachment styles, what causes different types of attachment, how to help your clients develop compassion from themselves, how to use attachment insights with your clients, and why we rely on protectors. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

  • What is attachment? Understanding the basics
  • Understanding your story without blaming parents
  • The adaptive strategy of people pleasing
  • Using your partner's behavior as a portal to self-work
  • How the body stores early experience


To learn more about Jessica Baum and her book, Safe, visit:

JessicaBaumLMHC.com

JessicaBaumLMHC.com/Safe

Instagram @JessicaBaumLMHC

 

 

Show Notes

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:00

Without these things, feeling can be unbearable. oh

 

00:08

Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now,  your host,  Shane Birkel.

 

00:24

Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy.  Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

 

00:53

Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. Everyone, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel. And today I'm speaking with Jessica Baum, licensed mental health counselor and author of the new book, Safe, Coming Home to Yourself and Others, an attachment informed guide to building secure relationships. Hey Jessica, welcome to the show.

 

01:22

for having me excited for this talk. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to chat with you. I know. Well, we were just talking about your your first book was Anxiously Attached. And what inspired you to to go to take that and go with the second book? Well, yeah, Anxiously Attached was born in 2022, but really started way before that when I started my personal work.

 

01:49

I'm in interpersonal neurobiology and understanding attachment and I was like, oh my God, this is the book that everybody, but I needed when I was like 20 and that everybody needs and it's, it's doing so well out there in the world. And, um, I was in a relationship when I wrote that book that I chose to leave, um, because  of him not really wanting to do the deeper work that was necessary. And  since that book, I also did a lot more.

 

02:18

of my own personal work, which is actually shared in the book, Safe.  And  I studied a lot deeper into interpersonal neurobiology. And I had a lot of questions coming from the audience around avoidant attachment and different things. And I decided to write a book that explains attachment kind of from the inside out. So  like there's the wheel of attachment, which is one of the freebies for your audience, but like really helping

 

02:46

um, the world understand attachment on such a nuanced lens and less left, less of a, like a linear, I fit into this category and more holistically around how, um, different attachment patterns develop. And so it was through my own personal  humbling work that I've done on myself and through studying more interpersonal neurobiology, I just wanted to write an even deeper.

 

03:11

book.  this safe is  a deeper dive in attachment and it is a deeper dive in the science of healing attachment wounds when it comes to the body and what healing  what is what is healing and I really unpack that so the reader can have the science is one of the anchors help you on the path.  that's really cool. mean, obviously you're a therapist and you're an expert in the field but

 

03:38

you know, it sounds like you use a lot of your own personal experience to sort of help people  connect with the material that you're writing about. Yeah. I'm like, I'm like joking. My next book I hope is on like joy and expansion. I,  like I went through a lot of like facing my own abandonment wound again and just learning about attachment on such a primal level that I'm so grateful because I do feel like I've earned security and it's a process and

 

04:05

It's a process I share in the book and cause I want people to earn security.  And yeah, I, yeah, you know, I'm good with what I've been through right now and it's embodied and it's out there and I'm coasting a little hopefully for the time being. Yeah. Well, and I think that resonates for a lot of people who have some fear about doing the hard work where, know, it's, it's not fun  oftentimes, but you know, it's

 

04:33

One of the things I think a lot of therapists say is that it's worth it, right? Once you do the hard work and you go through that and go through the discomfort sort of  of it, that it's really valuable.  And I'd love for you to just sort of start by taking a step back and just  for those people who  it might be helpful to hear,  what are we talking about when we're talking about attachment? Just sort of the overview.

 

05:02

to start with. Yeah, mean, so safe looks at attachment from more of your nervous system and  embedded patterns. And I talk about our primary caregivers show up in particular ways. And I talk about the ventral nervous system, Stephen Porges's work around our parents' ability to be emotionally present with us  and attuning to us. That ability happens if they have a sense of safety within themselves.

 

05:31

And that ability to be with us  is what gives an infant and a young person the sense of I can internalize their safety and their safety becomes my safety.  So this is nervous system to nervous system, intergenerational stuff. But many of us, myself included,  didn't have parents with a big experience of safety within them. They were on the anxious side or more avoidant. Maybe they had pockets of security, pockets of disorganization.

 

06:01

but they didn't have enough of a like eventual state of safety to help that young infant internalize enough safety.  And many of us grow up with a sense of insecurity inside of us. And then we have patterns that we experience due to how we adapt to stay in connection with our primary caregiver or the patterns we adapted in that relationship. So I talk about anxious patterns. I talk about avoidant patterns.

 

06:31

And I talk about what disorganization feels like. And for those that listening, they might've heard the word fearful avoidant, but the scientific word is really disorganization.  based on our early experiences with our parents and how they were attending to us, we adapt to survive, to stay in connection. And those adaptive patterns play out later in our adult lives with other usually intimate relationships, but also like...

 

06:59

really close work relationships and  just close relationships  play out these adaptive patterns. So I go through the four different types of attachment, but also how that forms into like a wheel and how we are never just one style. You know, as the person who wrote Anxiously Attached, I identified very much with that, but I also had a lot of avoidant protectors and avoidant patterns. So I really unpack why that is.  And I don't want people to like pigeonhole themselves.

 

07:29

in one particular spot. Yeah, for sure. When you say the four types of attachment, could you just name  what you're talking about with the four? Well, anxious attachment is also referred to as anxious ambivalent. That's a scientific word.  Avoidant attachment, which everyone seems to be so  curious about.  Disorganized, which sometimes people refer to as fearful and then secure. Okay, great. Now, I've heard

 

07:58

statistics like I don't know 65 % of people are like would if they took a test they would be defined as securely attached or something like that which I think is just ridiculous or I don't think it's I think that it's better to have sort of a nuanced view of it to sort of think like all of us probably fall on the spectrum of either being a little bit more avoidant or a little bit more anxious or a little bit more disorganized.

 

08:27

based on what we grew up with, would you agree with that sort of perspective? Yes and no. think some people have more security within themselves, but it doesn't mean that they're not going to have insecure reactions in certain dynamics. They're just going to rebound faster and they're going to get back to homeostasis. Like their nervous system will rebound. But yeah, even a  quote unquote secure person like has issues. So I think the problem

 

08:53

And I do agree with you. The problem is it's not that black and white. It's not like,  oh, you're in the secure bracket and you don't have issues, you know? So yeah, the language around it is, is hard. And I think we're actually moving more sadly in the direction of more avoidant attachment growing in our culture because of many things. Yeah. That's interesting. Can you give some examples maybe  of like how, how, you know, you were talking about

 

09:23

Oftentimes someone  develops these attachment styles based on what they're growing up with in their family or their culture or whatever.  What are some examples of how people would become either anxiously attached or voyantly attached? Yeah, so like for an anxious baby, that's a parent whose nervous system and sense of being is inconsistent.  sometimes they're with me, sometimes they're not. So  usually that infant leaves their

 

09:51

body, they self abandon and they  can regulate and sense what the other person is feeling.  And the hallmark is inconsistency, there's a conscious awareness of abandonment in those people. And I wrote a whole book on it. And it's when we try to keep our partner close.  And there's a lot of fawning and there's a lot of people pleasing, it fits the quote unquote codependency, even though I don't like that word on bracket. Would you so we're talking about anxiously attached.

 

10:18

Are there different ways that that could form? you're so, and you're talking about the inconsistent parents, but let's say like for some people,  there's not a lot of emotional connection going on with their parents. They could develop this feeling, the,  uh, being anxiously attached, almost like starving for that connection with other or something as an adult. Yeah. And it's actually a good question because.

 

10:47

For someone who has more of an anxious attachment, primary experience, sometimes mom is there,  but she's so dysregulated.  Her nervous system isn't present all the time.  So we get periods of her being present and attuned and periods of her being so lost in her own implicit world or her own dysregulation or her own stress that she can't connect. So that's a feeling of sometimes there's a lot of connection and sometimes there's not connection.

 

11:16

that sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't, is classically  anxious when a parent is not emotionally connecting at all, but physically there. So a parent is taking care of their needs, but they're not really connecting emotionally. That is avoidant attachment.  Because that child doesn't learn to reach out because sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. That child literally feels that that

 

11:43

The emotional presence isn't there. So why even bother and the mirroring and the the circuits are mirroring the parent who is not as Emotionally doesn't have the emotional availability. So that's getting passed down more in the on the avoidance side So they don't reach out at all. They tend to be super independent super successful  Join with their parents by achieving things so that

 

12:09

that gets passed down and in our culture, many parents are so focused on getting their kids to do so many things, to be good enough, quote unquote, and they're not really connecting emotionally. And again, this is intergenerational. This is not about blaming parents. It's usually because their parents weren't emotionally with them. So how do we give a child what we haven't received? And that's where healing comes in, in terms of receiving what we didn't get. Absolutely.

 

12:38

Yeah. And I talk to people a lot. Like it's not about talking bad about your parents. I mean, in my mind, the goal is that you will  like, if you're an adult who's exploring these things and you're learning about attachment, you're learning about the ways that, or the things that you didn't get growing up in your family.  The goal in my mind, like I'm hoping you'll have better relationships with your parents after you go through that process as an adult. But the

 

13:07

I think it's about getting the story straight, right? Because  oftentimes  what happens is that people end up feeling like, what's wrong with me? Why do I keep making these mistakes  or  failing in relationships or whatever the case may be? And I think when you start to learn, it actually makes sense based on things that you went through growing up.  people can move into more compassion for themselves.

 

13:36

and worthiness and feel like it's not that there's something fundamentally flawed with them or something like that. No, absolutely. I think the narrative changes. That's what therapy does. And a lot of what healing attachment wounds wants you to do in an embodied way is to get in touch with the original felt sense of what you experienced around.

 

14:02

your primary caregivers in your home. What did it feel like in your body? What did that disconnect feel like? What did mom's anxiety feel like?  What did dad's avoidance? And I'm being stereotypical here, but part of healing is getting out of the story and into the embodied experience around what those connections felt like for you. And I think a lot of people have the denial system of my, my parents are lovely people and they love me and my childhood was fine. And normally  there's a lot of truth to that.

 

14:32

but it doesn't mean that your parents were emotionally available  and processing your emotions in a way that you needed. And a lot of parents missed the mark in that because that's not what they received. And so when you're in therapy or what I call have anchoring relationships that attune to you and emotionally help you regulate and anchor you, you start to realize, oh my God, I didn't get this kind of holding and attentive care when I was younger. So then we can start to grieve.

 

14:59

what was missed and it's never about blaming but it is about getting in touch with the unmet needs and what that really felt like as a little one and most people don't know what they missed until they start to receive it.  And what do you mean by those anchoring relationships? You mean like relationships that people form in adulthood? Yeah, mean in Safe I talk about finding your anchors.

 

15:25

I don't necessarily feel like everyone needs to go out and find a therapist. I mean, I'm not sure that all therapists are anchors, but I talk about people who  hold what we call a ventral state for us.  But basically what a therapist should do or what a coach should do is their nervous system has the capacity to stay in enough safety while we regress and re-experience and that their

 

15:52

their nervous system is anchoring our nervous system as we start to do the work. And I talk about, you know, they need to be non-judgmental, warm, consistent, and not try to fix us.  And so finding people, and I talk about co-anchoring and  obviously a lot of therapeutic relationships, especially ones who really work  with the body and implicit information, those definitely can be anchoring, but that we need anchoring relationships.

 

16:22

in order to heal insecure attachment patterns. So it's the anchoring in those relationships and the revisiting that actually rewires and helps move what we call implicit pain or attachment wounds that live in the body up through streams into our right hemisphere and then eventually getting integrated into our left. So I unpacked the science around  why safe people and safety  in relationship through nervous system and nervous system connection  is

 

16:51

a big part of how we heal and it is necessary component. Yeah. And are you referring to, I mean, could that be people who aren't therapists in the way that you're talking about it? Yeah. I mean, I didn't want to write a book and be like, you need to have a therapist. first of all, that's expensive. I had the luxury of having an amazing therapist. And I also don't know that many all therapists do this work, but I do know  what you need in another human.  And I unpack that.

 

17:21

And you do need a human who can be really present  and emotionally available and not have an agenda and not try to fix you and can hold emotional space. That is something that is needed. So what was wounded in early relationship has to be healed in relationship. And that's just the neuroscience. And it's really important. know, a lot of people are like, oh, go out there and find your own inner safety. I think when you really understand

 

17:47

interpersonal neurobiology, you understand that co-regulation and a felt sense of safety comes from experiences that feel safe that we internalize. Building a private practice can be challenging. Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients. That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days.

 

18:17

and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment. Plus, when you join ALMA, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform. ALMA helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients.

 

18:45

visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more. It's interesting. It makes sense  what you're saying. I mean, it's great for people to feel empowered and to be able to give themselves what they need and to learn how to do that. But I agree. Oftentimes like how are you going to be able to figure that out on your own? You know? Um, so, but one thing I was going to ask about, like, I feel like, you know, cause there's, there's a difference between

 

19:14

uh, healthy  connection,  whether it's a friend or a romantic partner  or whatever, versus this sort of like attack something that's coming from the attachment wound, which is like,  I, I, I won't be okay unless I find someone who loves me and cares about me or something, you know, this, maybe that's sort of an  anxious, anxious attached feeling. And so I just wanted to clarify or  get your thoughts on that because

 

19:43

I think there are a lot of people who feel like once I meet that person, then I'll be okay. And that's different than a situation where there is a healthy connection. A hundred percent.  And  I actually talk about that a lot in my first book, Anxiously Attached, but the fantasy that someone is going to come along and  make everything okay is a really great fantasy to stay in  when things aren't okay.

 

20:12

and we need a place to go mentally to try to survive. And it keeps people  stuck in patterns where they might find relationships that save them, quote unquote, save them or rescue them. And then that becomes like a trauma bonded kind of situation where we're  expecting our partner to soothe something that's so young inside of us that really needs to be held, you know? And so...

 

20:40

I know that I definitely experienced that and that happens so unconsciously for most people. Yeah. I mean, I think all of us do it on some level.  Like, I think I have a relatively healthy relationship with my wife, but like there's still something deep down psychologically where I'm like using her love for me to feel better about myself. Right. And I just say that to sort of, sort of like let people know, like that's a normal

 

21:09

part of being human, but it's good to be conscious of or it's good to be curious about just sort of how that's playing out in your relationships. Well, and I think that, you know, the difference might be early wounding,  you know, so the earlier the wounds, the more likely that connection is serving like a soothing from an earlier place that needs to be held and healed. Or else that person becomes like a like a medicator. The illusion of safety is this person is going to make me feel

 

21:39

better,  but underneath it, I have this unrest that actually has been there my whole life. And can I be with that? And can I bring that to people who actually have the capacity to be present with what's going on underneath? Yeah, because I think, well, and I just thought of an example, you know, if someone's like a people pleaser, right, where it's sort of like, I can only be okay if other people are happy with me or other people are loving me. And then

 

22:07

They sort of make sure everybody else is happy, but in the long run, it's damaging to them. They're not setting appropriate boundaries for themselves or speaking their truth about what they may need or want or what they need to feel safe. And so  just as an example, like sometimes there's a fine line, like, of course it's okay to do nice things for other people, but like how much of that energy is coming from that childhood place?

 

22:36

Yeah, I think that I talk about this in both books, actually, but I think that, you know, Steven Porte just says connection is a biological imperative. And most people are adapting to a lot of situations, people pleasing because the idea of disconnection feels intolerable to their system.  The idea of disappointing

 

23:01

feels too big in their system. So like one of the ways we work on healing that is being with the parts of them. What comes up in your body when you disappoint someone? What happens when you say no? What happened, you know, and where in your family origin did you learn to override your internal compass? If you even had someone to say, hey, Shane, what's going on for you? What do you need?  Or you were just kind of growing up and.

 

23:28

adapting and figuring out what everybody else's needs to stay in connection. And it's actually, it's a brilliant adaptive strategy to be a people pleaser. mean, and I try to look at all our protectors and adaptations as brilliant because at the end of the day, we are all scared of losing connection  and we all do many things to avoid loss of connection. And  that's because losing connection can be very painful. So it starts to make sense.

 

23:56

And then when we make sense of it, we start to sit with a discomfort that comes up when we don't do the adaptive strategy, what comes up in our body and where does this anxiety live and how old is it and how long has this been going on, et cetera, et cetera.  That's a wonderful point, Jessica, like, you know, thinking about the ways in which,  I mean, I think it helps people stay in compassion for themselves because

 

24:23

most of us have this part of us that moves into judgment and criticism of ourself,  right. And, you know, when you when you talk about having gratitude for those parts of you that  they just did what they had to do to survive and to get through the situation. Like it helps you just move into compassion for those parts of yourself and, and avoid that negative self talk or the judgment.

 

24:47

Yeah, think that when you I mean, that's why I've been so fortunate to understand the science  around survival. I think when you really start to understand how you uniquely survived, and  how all your behaviors, adaptations, protectors make sense, you change your relationship to yourself to what's going on inside you to what you're doing. You're less judgmental for sure. And you get out of that left hemisphere judging and any do you form some

 

25:17

passion, sometimes it does take another person to help point that out. Like, of course, of course you drank or of course you, you did this or it makes sense that you shut down, right? Like sometimes we need help to understand that the way in which we adapted, which can cause shame for some people, cause sometimes our behaviors cause us shame and we can reframe them and see them as, you know, brilliant little ways in which we survived.

 

25:43

And there's another point, it's like, let's say I talk about protectors in chapter three, and one of my protectors was workaholism. But I had a client today say, you know, one of her protectors were her eating disorder.  And, you know, it's hard to turn towards these things and welcome them. But the truth is, whether it's shopping and  workaholism, eating disorder, alcoholism, whatever it was, we needed to do these compulsive behaviors because we didn't have the safety.

 

26:13

and the support to process what was going on inside of us. So we develop many brilliant ways to adapt and survive. And until we can be with the original wound and be with what's going on inside, we need our protectors. We need, you know, I needed workaholism. Like I hit out, I was pretty accomplished until I could slow down and really be with what was going on in my body. And I had the support to do it. I had to stay very productive.

 

26:43

So  it's never about judgment. It's always about like making sense of why all of these things are here and befriending them and welcoming them, which if you're listening, you might be like, oh, you know, I don't want to befriend, befriend my drinking or befriend my eating late at night. without these things, feeling can be unbearable, can be unbearable at times. So until we get the right support, those things help us survive. Yeah.

 

27:13

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it does seem a little counterintuitive. But yeah, I think I think that's part of the therapy process or  I'm sure there are other ways of achieving this. But I think it's sort of like leaning into  to that part of yourself and trying to create space for those parts of yourself and not not create space for more drinking or something in your life, but create space for that part of your whatever part of you thinks that that's  the right answer to cope.

 

27:41

to connect with that part of yourself? Well, yeah, and I think when you do hold and I talk about the science of holding sensation and implicit memory, when you do hold  what's going on in your body and your original wound,  your protectors don't have to work so hard. Yeah. Oh, you know, they lesson  when you can start being with what they're protecting you from. And ironically,

 

28:05

If you don't do the work, your protector is usually end up recreating the very wound that you're trying to avoid. And that happened relationally so many times where it's like, Oh, I don't want to be abandoned. And then I'm going to go and jump into this relationship. And then by not being with what's going on,  ended up here I am again, you know? So,  um, it's always worth doing the work.  think. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, um,

 

28:33

Let's talk a little bit about relationships. think that would be interesting. You know, one thing I was thinking about, seems like there's often  people who are anxiously attached to find a partner who's avoidantly attached or something like that.  so we can talk about it that directly or maybe it's more nuanced in a lot of relationships. But, you know, you have these two people who are sort of struggling in the relationship. How do you help them?

 

29:03

sort of  use the insight about their attachment stuff in order to help the present day relationship. Yeah, I mean, the anxious avoidance dancers like a phenomenon around that, right? And on a nervous system level, when someone who is more anxious and anxious and avoidant tend to attract each other and

 

29:24

Even if we have like different types, if you have an anxious type and you attract someone who's avoiding, more anxiety is going to come up and more avoidance is going to come up. But the way a baby who's anxious soothes is to reach out and move towards their primary caregiver to try to regulate them, but also they expand their energy and they move into sympathetic activation and they try to get closer to feel regulated.

 

29:55

It's out of fear.  way an avoidant person  tries to process and regulate their emotions  is they shut down and they move away out of fear. So what happens in this dynamic often are um two nervous systems that are moving into a fear state and one needs connection out of fear and one needs space out of fear.

 

30:23

So we have this dance that's going on where they're never getting back in connection because the very thing that the other needs to calm down is the one thing the other can't provide. So a lot of couples counseling can help with that, like another nervous system in  the  room. Also learning about your nervous system, like when you're activated, what goes on for you? How can you communicate differently when you're activated? If you have a partner who shuts down, how can they give you reassurance when they shut down?

 

30:53

How can we get back into a state of connection,  AKA the state of safety? Because that's what we really wanna do. And  usually when the fear goes up on  one or both sides, like the person starts getting really avoidant, the anxiety increases, or the anxiety increases, the avoidance increase. And that's a miserable cycle to be in, but it's a very common cycle and it is a portal into your own work if you find yourself.

 

31:19

in this kind of relationship. It's not always about getting out of the relationship. It is about being with what is this partner waking up in me and what part of me is being waken up that has nothing to do with this partner. Now, I have an example  in the book where my partner at the time was using substances  and I grew up in a home where father used a lot of substance. So when my partner was using substances and his nervous system was really like chaotic and

 

31:49

You know, in kind of active addiction, would say  my nervous system was like, Oh my God, danger, danger, danger, danger. And I remember like,  sure. If you're listening, one of the ways to fix this is to make my partner get sober and get my partner help. Right. And surely try to do that.  But the other thing and my, you know, my anchor really helped me is like, Oh my God, what is being waken up in you is this little girl who was in an environment with her father who was.

 

32:18

He was not, you know, he was not sober. So it's the work is about being conscious of what's happening in the current moment through the behaviors in your romantic relationship.  And I'm not discounting what your partner's behaviors are. But how is that waking up earlier attachment wounds? How is there a familiar pattern here? And can we be start getting conscious of both? Yeah, I think that's great. Well, and it's empowering, right? Because

 

32:47

I was just talking to Catherine Woodward Thomas, who  I think is wonderful. And she was talking about like, we're always focusing on the 95%. You know, or it could be true that 95 % of the issue is your partner. But like, how do you  take a moment and take a step back and focus on your 5 %? Right? And it's like, there's an opportunity there. Like you're what you're saying, Jessica is like, you know, it's creating

 

33:15

there's some sort of thing that's getting  brought up inside of you  based on what your partner is doing. And that's a really uh big opportunity for you to take a look inside and to do that work for yourself. And then that is a really good pathway to sort of get out of the pattern. I think if each person can learn how to sort of take a look at themselves and how they're bringing themselves to that situation. Yeah, I mean, and that's what my book

 

33:43

I want people to get because that's not so easy to be in a situation that is quote unquote triggering or awakening. I call it in the book and to have both the experience now and to be able to access what it implicitly is holding earlier to have that level of awareness takes a very mature person and it also takes some tools to really go there. And I know for me  it broke the cycle and it really awakened me to my own.

 

34:11

another level of my own deeper healing and I'm so grateful for it and if you're listening I'm grateful now it's not so fun when you're in the middle of it and I get it but in order to not recreate it we have to  get out of the current narrative and get into the origin and I talk about memory a lot in this book implicit memory you've heard me say that but how we store memory when we're small is not like how we store movies it's

 

34:42

sensational. So I talk about the sensations that are going off in your body. When you're in a fight in your current relationship, if it's really big in your body and really sensational, there's usually memory attached.  And so when we can start to really understand memory and our history of memory and we can understand, my God, that feeling in my chest when my partner shuts down, it's not just about my partner. There's a  memory system in my chest that's letting me know that I've experienced this before.

 

35:12

And so we become more embodied. We become we have a more embodied awareness of what we went through and we have a chance to become more connected to our body and  to hold these parts because that's how you create space  and actually move them out of your body and integrate them. That's great.  And just so I understand what you mean by implicit memory, right? Like like  in the example you were giving before, like let's say my partner is using drugs or something.

 

35:40

And I could have a huge  sense of anxiety that comes up in me.  And I might not even be consciously thinking about the fact that my dad used drugs or  something, but  it's more of just a felt experience of something that may or may not have thoughts attached to it. Yeah, I would say the more sensational, the sensation sometimes is the memory alone, but sometimes the sensation is attached to what we call an explicit memory. So there's implicit.

 

36:09

which is streams of information that are coming to us all the time right now,  smells, nuances,  and there's explicit hyum on this call with you. I can see the screen. So there's two versions of how we're storing information constantly and our implicit world, which is what we're born with. We don't develop the other  type of storing information until about four years old.

 

36:33

but that implicit stream of sensational experience is what gets stored a lot in our body. And that implicit information that we're taking in all the time and that we have in our body controls so much more of our behavior than our logical mind. So we are being controlled implicitly  through so much information through whether we're conscious of it or not.  That is making a lot of our choices in our life. So some of the book is about

 

37:02

A lot of the book is becoming conscious of this information because it's usually driving the ship until  we hold and integrate it. that's along in the short of it, but implicit memory is very implicit information  is much more powerful than explicit information. No, that's great. Well, I'm thinking, so let's say that my partner doesn't call me back for several hours, right?

 

37:29

you had said something earlier, I forgot the words to use, but it was sort of like, you know, I might have a strong emotion, because my partner hasn't called me back. And then my mind starts making up meaning about,  like, oh, my, maybe my partner doesn't care about me,  or  maybe they're a jerk, or whatever, like the meaning I start to make up in my mind, right. And so that's not connected necessarily to anything that's true in reality.

 

37:58

but it's connected to this implicit feeling that I'm having  in that moment. And so, you're talking about like in the process of working  maybe in therapy or whatever,  getting to know these parts of yourself better and understanding that these are the ways in which  your protectors are coming up for some reason.  And it'll help soften the feeling toward your partner hopefully  if you can.

 

38:27

make up a different meaning about what's happening. Yeah, absolutely. I like that you use that example because, you know, my dad being like the substance abuse is extreme, but it can literally be my partner forgot to show up for something and they  checked out on me.  They didn't return a text message. Like it can be micro things that happened between you and your partner  where your nervous system goes into either sympathetic activation or a shutdown state.  And

 

38:56

Yeah, like Shane, like we make up all these stories and we get really upset and those stories keep us locked in a dance with someone  and our nervous system is just not feeling safe because it's experienced this type of disconnect, this type of treatment before.  And if it lives very big in our body, we know from the science that it also existed before. And so that information can change the trajectory of your romantic relationship.  And, you know,

 

39:26

As someone who didn't heal with my partner because the implicit side of his wounds were so big and I talk about that, I think there's a lot of agency that no matter whether you're a partner, I'm a couples counselor, I'm an Imago counselor, we could heal in relationship and you can pick up this book or you can start right where you are and you have the agency to be with what shows up in your world, in your body and start to heal your insecure patterns no matter what. Whether you're in a deep relationship right now,

 

39:54

whether you're miserably in relationship. If you're miserably in a relationship, it's like perfect grounds for like deep healing and portal work. Yeah. And some people do the individual work and stay in the relationship because the behaviors don't activate them as much. other people, know, Terry Real and other people will say, other people, the more you heal, you might evolve out of the relationship. And in a MAGO therapy and the type of therapy that you do,

 

40:22

If there's not a lot of early wounding, like I talk about narcissism and borderline personality as, you know, in as infant attachment wounds, but if there aren't a lot of early wounding, you can do this healing work with your partner and it can be, you know, it can be so beautifully done in partnership. So there's something for everyone. Yeah, no, that's great. I, you know, yeah. And I think there are different opportunities, right? Like if you're a single person who's not in a relationship,

 

40:51

there's a lot of opportunities  to heal in certain ways. And if you're in a good relationship, maybe there are different opportunities. If you're in a challenging relationship, there are certainly opportunities to work And if you're alone, you can do it alone because that's where your abandonment moon might show up the most, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes I tell people, like, doing this work,  it's like, it's the same pathway

 

41:21

If you decide to do this work, could lead to the end of your relationship. It could also lead to this being the best relationship you ever had. It's the same work. We don't necessarily know what's going to happen when you start moving more into your authentic truth of who you are and having a voice and, you know, communicating uh in a healthy way. Because like you said,  you never know how your partner is going to respond to that. Oftentimes,

 

41:47

It's really positive and it makes their relationship a lot better, but sometimes it doesn't. Well, and yeah, I can really deepen intimacy when you do this work. If you have the maturity to be like, hey, this is what's coming up with us. And this is what it's deeply bringing in with me. And I give a lot of examples of this in a lot of couples examples in the book of where implicit information got brought into couples counseling and how the partner

 

42:15

who was frustrated suddenly had compassion and a deeper understanding of why their partner responded in anger or always does this behavior. It just, can shift and deepen your relationship in such a profound way.  It deepened my relationship with the person I'm not in relationship anymore because I have so much compassion for his ways of adapting. I just  couldn't get my needs met, but I have such compassion for that, that even my relationship with him is better. So always.

 

42:44

doing the work, you know, I think it leads back to the beginning of our conversation. This type of work gives us  more compassion for ourselves and our behaviors. And when you have more compassion for yourself and your behavior and you do that work deeply, you typically have  more compassion for others and their behaviors too. You start to see everything through a slightly different lens. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's great. I know we have to wrap it up here. Any other final thoughts?

 

43:10

No, I was just going to say we talked about this before. Like I provided Shane a link for you guys who are still listening. If you buy the book safe  and fill out the form,  you'll immediately check your inbox, get  a the wheel of attachment. So for those of you who love attachment, it's like brand new to this book and it really explains the nuances in the wheel. And we didn't dive into that.

 

43:33

And there's like about a 40 minute recording of me and my mentor, Bonnie Badenoch, who wrote Heart of Trauma, talking about what it feels like in your body to go from insecurity to security. And she was such an anchor for me and such a genius in this space. And I just wanted, I wanted you to have an experience of her and get that, those resources right away if you choose to go out and grab the book.  Reach out to me. I'm on Instagram, Jessica Baum, LMHC.

 

44:02

I tell this, I said this on a lot of podcasts, but I really, I try to respond to everyone. So if you read the book and you want to reach out to me personally, that's usually me responding. I want to know if this touched you, if this resonated with you,  if it helped, if you hated it, whatever, I am there. You can reach me that way. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So Instagram is the best way to try to connect for people. Yeah, I think.

 

44:28

I'm on my Instagram probably too much than I should openly admit. Yeah, and that so the conscious relationship group  is a group of therapists that I work with. Seven of us, we all work with attachment issues.  And I have a private practice here called the relationship Institute. So the conscious relationship group, like if you want to do this work individually with a therapist, you can go to that website, but you can find me online. And again, it's Jessica Baum, LMHC and safe is just pretty much  anywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, you name it. It's in like.

 

44:58

got 10 countries, hopefully more on the way. So hopefully it's making its way out into the world. that's awesome. Yeah. And congratulations on releasing the book and I'll put links to all that stuff in the show notes for people. Yeah. Thank you so much. This is great conversation. Yeah. It's been great talking to you. I learned so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

 

45:28

Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!

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