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Why should you care to learn about attachment?
Because if you are learning about how your protective system developed,
then you're gonna learn what makes you feel threatened, what makes you respond,
and how do you regulate yourself?
And you can learn that these are real patterned things that you do with
everybody. You know how when you break up and you're like, oh my God,
every one of my partners has been A, B or C,
and then somebody finally points out to you,
you do know you're the only consistent factor there for all of us.
It's because we're doing these repetitive things that we've learned and we're
often looking for partners that fill the familiarity to us.
And so when we learn what our protective systems are doing to keep us safe
and that we probably needed that when we were younger,
we needed that with our particular caregiver or we needed it in our environment.
But as we grow older, we usually don't need that for survival anymore.
But our body didn't know that it's continuing to engage in that way.
Welcome to Therapist Uncensored building on decades of professional experience.
This podcast tackles neurobiology,
modern attachment and more in an honest way that's helpful in healing humans.
Your session begins now with Dr. Ann Kelly and Sue Marriott.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to Therapist Uncensored. This is Sue Marriott and I,
I'm Ann Kelly.
It is sometimes shocking as in depth as we always are about talking about
attachment and neurobiology that a lot of people out there don't even know what
the heck attachment is and that's the norm. ,
we're so embedded in this in our own brain,
it's hard for us to imagine that it isn't just the norm out there and yet we're
the freaks. Honestly. Exactly like not. Well I wouldn't call us freaks ,
um, personally, but,
but this episode we're gonna go really high level.
This will be the start here episode.
If you don't know anything about attachment, yeah,
those of you just joining the,
the podcast or those that have been a long time and you're like, oh my god,
really when they talk about attachment, what do they mean? Right?
So this is gonna be a high level summary. If you're interested,
go to the show notes.
There's gonna be lots of reference there for you to follow up. But we,
our idea here is to keep it really simple and quick.
So what is attachment Ann Kelly?
So that's a surprisingly hard question to answer. No,
don't make it complex. , no. Okay. Detachment ISS about biology.
Attachment is about how we as mammals
survive and thrive.
How we learn to do that by attaching to our primary people who
are caregivers out there to keep us alive.
We're born highly social, persistently interpersonal.
No matter how big and burly and independent you think you are,
actually you're quite interdependent on your fellow beings in the world.
And you know,
there's a new study that just came out by the surgeon General just in the last
month or so, that shows isolation being this huge,
huge risk factor in all the bad things. Health, cardiac,
longevity, immune system, all the bad things. And this is,
we believe related to flip it the other way,
when you have a secure attachment history,
which going back to Anne's definition,
we have this biological response very early on to adapt
based on the family we were born into the culture we were born into the
subculture we were born into.
Our bodies very quickly Figure out how to keep the parent close and available.
Then shapes kind of around that, about what things to do, what to express,
what not to express.
And those begin to layer and get embedded in our nervous system that eventually
become behaviors that eventually become thoughts about ourselves,
how we see ourselves and how we see other people. And then boom,
you're in a marriage or in a truffle or whatever.
And now it either is going really smoothly,
because you've learned how to emotionally regulate and bring people
close. All of this stuff. This is kind of the why and, and loves to say,
you know, why do people care?
We care because these neurological systems and the beliefs that form around them
impact us throughout our life. Well enough said, I think we're done.
. . That's a very good summary.
I wish this was live. So people could say, uh,
no that's not enough or that's too much or whatever. I love how you ended there.
Like in a sense it's like we are social beings, but we have to be social beings.
This isn't a choice. It isn't an option and are incredibly intuitive.
Pre-programmed body knows that from in utero on.
And so our wiring, we come predetermined, like you said,
ready to kind of figure it out.
What do I need to do to keep these people in my life close and caring and
nurturing and not too overwhelmed?
And the why do you care is because this isn't just,
most people when we're talking about attachment,
they think of parenting or they think of what happens.
And if you don't even have kids out there in the world,
why should you care about attachment?
It's because it actually informs how you relate
in your social relationships right now. Your primary relationships,
how you are able to bond with them or the struggles you're having.
Those are all not completely,
but they are interconnected to how you learned to protect yourself and to
connect with other people. You know, one of the things too,
to learn what attachment is, is also to talk about what attachment is not.
So we aren't saying the attachment is everything.
And we're not saying that all your problems are only because of attachment at
all. As a matter of fact, used to,
they thought if you had an insecure attachment pattern,
it was never a diagnosis for a baby.
But if the pattern between the infant and the parent was seen as either
dismissing or preoccupied,
in other words it was an insecure category that if you were dismissing as a,
or avoidant as a baby, that you would grow up to be a dismissing adult.
And that if you were preoccupied as a baby,
that you would grow up to be a preoccupied adult.
And that ends up not to be ex. I mean it's very complicated.
It's not so direct. But that's good news.
'cause the good news means that relationships throughout our lives impact us
both positively and negatively.
So our brains are constantly adapting to our environment. So just in summary,
quick summary is that this early attachment sets up a trajectory
and if uninterrupted then if we have developed patterns that
unintentionally push people away or assume that people aren't gonna be there for
us, things like that, if uninterrupted,
then that can continue to cause problems in preschool and school age and
adolescence with grades, choice of partners, and even your parenting,
again, not directly all the time, but it, you know, there's a general direction.
And what's so cool about that is that it can be interrupted and intervened in
any moment, no matter your age, no matter your history,
no matter how much therapy you've done or what you've studied.
None of that really matters because it's a deeper embodied
urge and embodied drive to seek closeness and also
to protect ourselves, which is, if you think about it, right,
that's complicated. How do I get close and be safe? Right? That's,
that's kind of screwed up who,
who designed that and that we have to do both at the same time.
We have to , we have to like co our system.
Our nervous system has to cooperate and like, I gotta let you in, but you know,
I wanna save my ass. So , you get more dangerous as you get closer.
You can hurt me more. Honestly, we're joking about it.
But that is a really complex set of requirements to have intimate
relationships and that's tough.
So one of the things also about what attachment isn't,
we said it's not everything. It's also not love.
Some people equate attachment and love like she loved her baby.
So it's a positive attachment or something like that.
Or there's just a confabulation about that. It's not love, it's,
it's more about protection.
Our attachment systems are only active when we're feel threatened.
We can look really good. But then when something happens and,
and it activates us enough to be scared about our relationship,
that's when you see the attachment pattern pop up.
And I think what's important about that is what does threaten us is not the same
depending on our early history,
what feels threatening to one person is not threatening to the other.
And you've mentioned if you've had a secure attachment pattern.
So if we were gonna back that up for just a second and talk about,
we wanna stay away from the categories, right?
But there are some ways that our body develops in more predictable ways
that says this is threatening and this is how you protect.
And through the early learning, we can either learn to upregulate,
in other words,
I need to activate in order to get my needs met and to thrive,
my nervous system has to stay really aware of my surroundings,
needs to stay in tune and very much emotionally
activate up.
And that's where we would might lean towards being more preoccupied or
what we call in our podcast red or did we have this really
early learning that says if I get too emotional and I activate too much,
it actually sends people away.
So I learned to sort of deactivate the need for other people and head more
towards a dismissing or avoidant kind of way of relating to people.
But these are not diagnosis as, they're not pathology.
It's how your nervous system has learned to keep you safe as we really wanna get
away from the idea that one's good or one's bad.
It's what is really effective in your environment,
in your subculture to keep you thriving and surviving the best
way possible. Yeah, to do that,
to do that balanced dance of both keeping us safe, but keeping us connected.
No, I think that that's exactly right. And you know,
Anne said that we wanna stay away away from categories.
And the reason for that is because this early research at 70 years old,
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth are the four leaders.
And the original research was all it was, it was looking at these mother baby,
and at the time it was mother.
That's certainly attachment has expanded since then to, you know,
include all kinds of families and family configurations and genders and things
like that.
But originally those categories were looking at the relationship between the
mom and the baby. And it was just for research purposes.
This was not designed to be interpreted as diagnosis
or as a individual pathology. It was they were looking at groups of babies.
So why Anne said that we wanna stay away from categories is,
especially if you're thinking of this early attachment research,
'cause it did evolve over time. Again, we're gonna keep it simple.
So it did evolve and the language changed and things like that.
But on TikTok and on Instagram and all of those things where you have these
really quick,
like this is preoccupied attachment and this is dismissing attachment.
The problem with that is we are not one thing.
Like we absolutely are not one thing.
And the research was not designed that early attachment research was not
designed to be used in that way anyway.
But it's also not true that we can just look at a list and say, I'm preoccupied,
or I'm dismissing, or even I'm secure.
We're notoriously terrible at self-identifying our attachment strategies
. Well, and one reason that is, is because what feels familiar to us,
what feels natural to us is what we're gonna do.
And that doesn't feel like we're being dismissive or preoccupied.
It just feels like we're being natural, right? Like if,
if we've learned that we need to really watch our environment out there to keep
ourselves safe,
then staying alert and being able to notice small flaws in our partnerships and
being able to feel the need to point it out and correct it.
don't point at me, is,
is a really natural feeling. It's very hard to go inside and say, oh,
that's actually because I'm activated because of my early learning.
It's because you're out there being unsafe and it's obvious.
And so it's such an integral part of who we are that we often think
of these things also as our personality. Like, oh, I'm, this is just me.
But actually when we learn more, this is the the part where we say,
why should you care? Why should you care to learn about attachment?
Because if you are learning about how your protective system developed,
then you're gonna learn what makes you feel threatened, what makes you respond,
and how do you regulate yourself?
And you can learn that these are real patterned things that you do with
everybody. You know how when you break up and you're like, oh my God,
every one of my partners has been A, B or C,
and then somebody finally points out to you,
you do know you're the only consistent factor there for all of us.
It's because we're doing these repetitive things that we've learned and we're
often looking for partners that fill the familiarity to us.
And so when we learn what our protective systems are doing to keep us safe,
and that we probably needed that when we were younger,
we needed that with our particular caregiver or we needed it in our environment.
But as we grow older, we usually don't need that for survival anymore.
But our body didn't know that it's continuing to engage in that way because
it seems normal. We don't even see it necessarily.
And because it's so embodied,
we've developed stories around the way that our nervous system embodied safety
and danger. So when you say embodied, what you're meaning is,
is how your body manifests this experience,
right? So there's the very,
very early limbic learning that before thought
before words, you know, this happens very,
very early before there's any conscious memory for sure.
Then you already have your nervous system patterns. And then on top of that,
you know, as you age by age, I mean two years old, three years old, ,
then you begin to form cognitions and thoughts.
But the thoughts they're already,
they're forming to make sense of what your natural patterns already are.
So that's part of why some of what the research looks at is it's, there's both,
this is why that those, when you fill out a little quiz online,
those are the stories that have formed about your,
that you have consciously about yourself and about relationships,
which are important and interesting,
but they're not the same thing as the original attachment research. Well,
and to give you an example though, when you're saying the embodied story,
oh yeah, I, I got distracted. . Go ahead .
What if your embodied stories may be,
let's say your body had learned that too much emotional connection.
Too much closeness, too much neediness. For example,
if you're emotionally expressive and your body learned that that actually pushed
people away, or your primary caregiver away made them shut down,
or they get angry or they got overwhelmed, then your body learns, oh,
when I get emotions again,
I get emotional and I start to cry and I get overwhelmed.
I'm actually gonna lose connection and that scares the crap outta me.
So then my nervous system starts to develop that belief.
So what that means is that my body feels threatened when I start to feel
emotional. That feels horrible. It feels scary. And all sirens say,
shut that down, shut that down. But we don't grow up saying,
oh my body learned this as a young age and I'm doing this.
What our body grows up doing is people don't like my emotions or
it's ridiculous to be emotional. You should be able to contain your emotions.
You're just weak.
So we tell a story about our body's experience
and that story makes sense to us. So if somebody asks us when we're older,
our conscious thought, we're usually not so aware of the embodied experience.
We're aware of the, I can't trust people or people let me down. We're aware.
Yeah, don't, don't don't air your dirty laundry in public. Yeah.
Why would you air something if you reach out for emotional support that's just
weak, you know, fix yourself. You know, I had to do it. You do it.
So those are the stories you tell that are based on your body's experience
of threat. But what happens is you quit actually feeling the threat.
You don't even know it's threat because you've learned to cut it off so easily
and so young, not easily, but so automatically and so young,
you don't have conscious awareness of that.
Especially talking about the pattern that has learned to deactivate,
which later ends up being called dismissing or what Ann and I refer to as kind
of blue little cooler over there on that side of the spectrum.
And we use the spectrum on purpose and we use colors on purpose to get the
pathology out of it. Actually the original research used letters A, B, C,
you know, so we're kind of picking up that idea of like,
this is just describing a tendency,
I'm not a diagnosis that as we begin to lean in that direction,
it's not that we're thinking these thoughts,
it's that we tell a story to explain what our body is doing .
That our brain is really there to just create these stories, .
And it's called the default mode network. Many of you have heard that.
That's kind of us thinking about ourselves and that's where all the stories lie.
And sometimes that can be good and that we're being self-reflective and
sometimes that stuff can go crazy. And that's when we get anxious,
we get depressed, we begin to ruminate, we begin to tell stories, we begin to,
Ann hasn't responded, she's probably dead.
Or those stories that we fill in that comes from, again, this early learning.
This is why this is, goes back to the why do you care? Yeah, I love that part.
Why do you care? Because if you're,
you can be really hard on yourself if you think that you should be able to just
turn this on and off. Like if you're ruminating and like, ah,
I know not to ruminate. This is ridiculous.
I can't quit thinking about how that conversation I had earlier
and I can't keep thinking about all I said wrong or I did wrong in that
conversation. I can't get it outta my mind.
And then I start getting my mad at myself because I can't get it outta my mind.
Oh that's, that's my favorite loop over. Yeah, that little loop like, ah,
just stop thinking about that. Like,
it's so important to understand that this is not a decision you're making.
This is your body's response to,
I better stay aware and keep rethinking and get it right or I'm probably gonna
get rejected. And this is in one's body.
And the reason that you it matters is the more you learn about your own
specific protection system,
the more that you can learn ways to soothe that or to really, uh,
tell a story to get more of a, you know,
an accurate story that people aren't really rejecting us and we
can learn to do. Even you bring up embodiment.
That's one reason why some of the body focused therapies out there are
considered so effective.
It's like teaching you how to tune into that bodied response and to be able to
calm it down so that you can then do what we really wanna do.
And that's activate our connection system,
our ability to really stay connected to other people.
Because when we are in our protection system, it overwrites,
we can't really feel safe enough to connect and to stay close.
And one of the advantages is that when we are in that more secure state,
that it buffers us from the stress response system.
That's part of how it translates. I think I did already say this, didn't I? Mm.
A little bit. You know,
you just talked about the protection system and the connection system and I love
talking about it that way. And that when we are in the connection system,
it means that our brain is flooded with these really feel good oxytocin and
you know, serotonin, we feel satisfied.
We're maybe feel excited a little dopamine.
The neurochemical bath makes us feel safe and open. We're more generous,
but it also protects us from stress.
So we're more likely to more accurately respond to and not texting
me.
I will have other ideas about what that could be when I'm in that more secure
state. So part of why the another, this is a why,
why do we care is because the more we can develop our secure sense of ourselves,
regardless of your history or regardless of your therapy or regardless of your
PhD, it doesn't matter.
But the more that we can develop that secure system and know how to get back
there when we're not feeling it,
it buffers us from this chronic stress that's going on in our protection system,
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now people understand what it is, why it's important,
where do we wanna direct them?
Like what kinds of things should we point them to is introductory things to do
to continue this, uh, exploration.
We keep talking about protection and connection.
It'd be interesting to kind of think of the ways that your system is set up
about what stresses you. So to question yourself,
one of the things to do is to ask. Instead of saying, this is just me.
What are the four things you say? Describe your personality in a relationship.
Instead of just saying, I'm just an independent person, I don't want any help.
Or I really like committees. You know,
I don't like to make a decision without having to committee right now.
That one you're not pointing at me. . That one you,
that one you're pointing at yourself. Absolutely.
If you have those kind of repetitive dynamics,
it's a good idea to stop and think where does this come from?
Because what is the threat under that? What is the worry? Like if for me,
I'm trying to make a decision now, if you didn't have a committee,
if I didn't have committee,
somebody in the room is gonna have to go eat dinner somewhere.
They're disappointed at. They're gonna be disappointed. Right? But see,
that's the embedded Exactly right. That's the embedded fear.
That's the embedded fear. So okay, but so somebody's disappointed.
And then what if you stop and go, somebody's gonna be disappointed.
Why is that so hard?
Why is it hard to imagine your child or your friend being disappointed?
And as I say that, think about your nervous system.
Don't just think about your brain, don't think about your thoughts.
Think about what feels em bodily threatening to you.
If somebody's disappointed, how has disappointed impacted you in your life?
Has other people that are important to you. When they get disappointed,
how has it impacted you? What is the fear? Are they gonna disappear?
Are they gonna get overwhelmed?
Those are really important pieces of information to be curious about.
Another example will be, do you take control in every situation?
Do you like have to be the one? Do you have to be the one to pay the check?
Do you have to be the one to be in charge instead of just saying,
I'm just got this personality. That's just great at being in charge.
These turn out to be strengths, but our strengths usually have the other side.
What happens if you're not in charge?
Do you then start feeling your nervous system, get activated and nervous,
pay attention to your nervous system.
So Anne's immediate thought was disappointment.
But your reason to use a committee might have a little bit of a different
flavor. Like it might be, but if I say what I want,
then I'm more exposed.
And if I put a flag in the ground and say this is who I am and what I think
that could feel vulnerable for Anne's first thought was about disappointing
someone. But this is where it gets fun and interesting.
Like for me to not know what I think feels threatening. Hmm.
Right. To be kind of,
to be over influenced by the committee is threatening to you to be like,
I need to know what I'm thinking. I'm not gonna be overly,
I wanna know what I'm thinking before I like,
but still there's a threat there versus somebody else. Say who?
Who does use the committee? Yeah.
That was just the first thought I had was like, if you put a flag in the ground,
it's really scary. And also if you know,
we can keep taking this deeper and deeper.
Sometimes this goes to grief all the ways that we've had to
not know our own minds or declare ourselves in some way.
Like this is not small stuff and this is not something you can just turn on or
turn off. This is a process.
So another just example of things to do would be to really
cultivate curiosity about how you relate and how
others relate to you and your history. Like how you got to be where you are now.
'cause one of the signs of security is you have a real free range of like
wondering about these things and you kind of have an interest in it because it
really matters. So if you're somebody that's like, the past is the past,
it doesn't matter, that's actually a sign. And again,
we're not confabulating everything into like,
not everything is about attachment.
You can also be depressed or have obsessive thoughts or you know,
there's lots of diagnoses that aren't even associated with this.
But right now we're just talking about attachment. So you know,
like when you're brushing off, like I'll give you something to cry about.
You know, there, there's, you know,
just those things that are not introspective but are as a matter of fact
devaluing and dismissing of the process of wondering about things. You know,
a lot of times you might say, uh, they're overanalyzing,
they're overthinking it, that kind of stuff. Well those are all little signals.
And what we would invite you to do is to get more curious and to begin to
actually pay attention to what the inner world of your other person and your
inner world. And like Anne said,
that like at sometimes as we begin to shift how we think,
then we can feel our heart rate go up .
Or even maybe you feel your defense go up even more. Like, that's stupid,
that's a waste of time. Why go back to the past? Well, okay, now you're fight.
Now there's some fight there. It's like what we're saying,
the science says is that a coherent narrative is one of the signs of security.
It doesn't cause it, but it just means it's a sign of neural integration.
It's a sign of that connection system and the protection system balancing.
So how you get a coherent narrative is that you begin to piece things
together and be curious and wonder about them.
So that what you mean by coherent narrative,
a coherent narrative is a story that makes sense on the deepest level that
includes your body. It doesn't just, it's just not your head, right?
If you just tell yourself, I'm independent and I know who I am,
that's not a coherent, yeah, that's not coherence,
that's not coherent because nobody's independent. In fact,
the more independent you think you are,
likely the more anxious you are and you're shut down to that anxiety.
It's crazy though. We're kind of saying like the more certain you are ,
the more of a problem it is. Well it's, it's actually kind of true on any level,
right? The more, if you're completely uncertain or completely,
if you're in either extreme of I don't have any earthly idea what I'm doing
or I absolutely know what I'm doing, that's a sign of defense.
Because when we're in our protection system,
there are certain patterns of our protection system that are inherently part of
being alive and surviving as a mammal.
And one of them is you have to make really quick decisions. If you're in threat,
you can't debate, you can't be curious,
you can't wonder why the hell somebody's chasing you.
I'm wondering if he's good or bad. You just run. It's just instinctual.
So if you are in a very concrete black and white, it's good,
it's bad, it's right, it's wrong. And it's very clear.
There's a good chance that that's your protective system moving a little too
fast and clarifying a two black and white.
So one of the signs that you're more in your connection system is that you have
curiosity. Why is it so important for me to be independent?
Like what would happen if I had to rely on somebody?
So if you bring curiosity to these parts of your personality that you say,
this is me and you're gonna answer first. Well of course,
'cause I was raised to be secure, right? But flip that on its head.
What is so threatening? So if you say, I'm so independent,
say what is so threatening to your body If you let yourself feel
your dependence and if you really feel that,
and those of you out there might be going, oh, shut up. That does, you know,
but that little threat in your body when you consider it,
that's your nervous system talking to you.
And that's what we suggest you listen to. Yeah, that's that tuning in. And,
and I love that you didn't get into the different ways that we activate
because I think what's just important right now is that we're either like,
just like you said, that we're either in our connection system, which generally,
yeah, curiosity is a great sign that you're there. Wonderment, warmth,
especially like warmth for yourself. Like compassion, like God, this is hard.
Or somebody's doing their thing that they do,
that we can see them with care and love and curiosity and compassion.
That's all good stuff that we want more of. And that means you're in your,
what we would call the green zone.
And then all you need to know is like you're either there or you're not.
And when you're not, it's all those other things that you were saying.
And I think that's easier than somebody trying to figure out which way that they
have activated. And,
and other podcasts we go into a lot of detail about the different ways.
Our nervous system, it doesn't have a lot of moves, it only has a few moves,
,
then it becomes easy to figure out what move you make and then how to get back
to green.
So we will be linking a bunch of other shows episodes for those of you that want
more. We're trying to keep it simple and high level. But I, I just,
I love that that being the first thing, right? Like you're either,
are you in your protection system or in your connection system and really
learning your own signs. And both of those are about attachment, right?
Like if you're in your protection system, it may be that you need to be like,
if you feel rigid and you feel it may be that you are in a culture that is
rejecting, it may be that the government around you is trying to suppress you.
Yeah. You're being persecuted, right? By the government, right?
Because of your gender.
So if you have been brought up throughout your life in a way that leaves you in
an unsafe, the environment,
the system that you're in really literally is threatening,
then the system that you're in,
the attachment relationship that you have and how you protect yourself and how
you connect is probably the perfect adaptation for you.
So it's really important to kind of not think of these things as negative,
right? Like we're gonna, if we have to rely on our protection system.
But the key is what we're recommending is no matter what that you're aware of
it.
Because if you live in that and you're not aware that you're in your protection
system, then it's such a disservice to you.
Does that make sense to you what I'm saying? Oh my gosh, it totally does.
And I'm so happy that you brought up about the systems and we can tie that
directly back to this thing about that we can't consciously see it.
So if you're in a culture that you,
the color of your skin makes you a target, for example.
So post-colonialism racism,
just being in a racist society is it's own trauma.
But because it's not identified as that and it's just again seen as normal,
what typically will happen is that we would internalize that and make it about
ourselves.
And so part of what's important about this is to begin to really name and
identify some of the traumas and the experience of being overlooked,
of being devalued of all of these things that often are unnamed and maybe even
unrecognized because they're just cinnamon in the cinnamon roll.
It's just the way it is, the way society is, but it's wrong.
And that's all, all been absorbed into your nervous system.
So part of this being curious is why do I feel bad about,
you know,
my gender expression or how my hair looks to really
get into that.
So being curious about it as a way again of having more compassion and
protection for your like healthy protection for yourself.
Not internalizing negative cultural messages.
So this is true like on the individual level mm-hmm.
and on the societal level, I love that.
And that actually is what can be so hopeful.
The reason we love doing this podcast is this is not just about explaining who
you are, it's about discovering for all of us. We're keep discovering,
we're discovering with you.
But as we have the curiosity about what we feel and why we feel it,
we have more agency, it's about having agency,
the security is about how we relate in our community.
And as we develop the ability to feel more secure in ourselves and to use these
protection systems with more awareness,
even if you're highly in your protection system,
if you're aware of it and you're allowing yourself to feel connected to yourself
and other people with this awareness, you're working in a secure way,
you are working in a secure related position. So even if we're in threat,
that doesn't mean that we've popped out of the green zone, you know?
And we've done a lot of neurobiology on these podcasts,
so we won't go into that right now.
But just that what you're saying is being aware,
like if I'm aware that I'm defensive,
it means that that some of the top of my mind is still active and like I still
have some choice.
Am I gonna behave defensively or just notice I'm defensive and try not to,
or identify what part of me is feeling attacked or what's the threat like,
in other words, the activation of the wanting to protect ourselves.
That in and of itself isn't the thing that pops us out of the green.
It's losing our thinking and losing our heart.
Like when we're protecting ourselves, we're not connected like to ourselves.
They go against each other. Mm-hmm. . That's right.
It's a self protection, which means that yeah, we, we overestimate what we know.
It leads to this whole cascade of kind of individually focused
orientation that is actually distorted. And that's a whole other thing,
that we won't get into today.
But literally when we're in our protection system,
the information coming into our bodies is actually distorted because of our
threat response, right?
So becoming aware of our threat response and our protection system,
we're already getting a more clear narrative. I'm in my protection system.
And what's really important about this is also relationship.
And I know we should wrap,
but what's also important about that is that it's not only our connections to
ourself, it's connections to other people.
If we're not aware that we're in our protective system, what are we gonna do?
We're gonna project that on everyone around us. We're gonna blame,
we're gonna defend, we're gonna criticize, we're gonna feel criticized,
we're gonna feel righteous, we're gonna see them as needy or put ourselves down.
And when we really get aware, oh wait,
our protection system makes us shut down emotionally when the other person's
upset, it's our protection system.
And so therefore it makes sense that the other person is a little distressed
about that rather than you eye roll them or vice versa.
So what we're an advocating for is that curiosity,
that exploration and the openness, this is non shaming.
This is like you're gonna be able to have conversations with your friends,
with your partner, with your child that says, I'm just activated.
Rather than you're being blank. Like when you can talk about yourself first,
rather than identifying the other person first,
you're already more in the green secure way of relating with other people
because you're able to have that self-reflection. That's great.
That's another walkaway tool is that as you get fired up a little bit,
one you're noticing, but then Anne's move that she just said,
which was rather than going just the lazy way,
the natural way is assume the other person's done something.
What we're saying is let's band together .
And as we begin to notice a spike in some sort of protection,
that we go inward first make the first move inward. Like, huh,
what's going on with me? Huh? I just, oh all of a sudden my stomach.
You know what I'm saying?
Just that move alone is gonna help you keep your higher functioning mind going
and it'll give you a better chance of staying in the green.
So today we're not gonna go in all the details of which you mentioned before
about what are our more predictable ways of protecting ourselves.
But the good news is that as humans we are very predictable and we develop
predictable patterns that can be more easily recognized.
We are extremely complex beings, but when you break it down,
because we all have our nervous systems and our nervous systems can only do
predictable ways of engagement,
you can actually learn to recognize things in your system quite
readily and much more easily. And your partner system, oh,
you can see how they're lit up. Absolutely. So learning about this,
learning about your own system,
do I go upregulated more frequently when I feel threat or do I go down and cut
off and disappear?
Or do I need to shut down emotions or can I not stop being in my emotions?
And so one of the things we'd suggest is,
is tune into some of the podcasts that we have that will be listed in the show
notes that will go into much more detail about the particular ways,
our nervous system response and you know,
whether it be our podcasts or you know,
you can learn about attachment almost all over the place this point. Oh,
that's true, that's true this.
But I will say on our behalf that we have for years now been studying, um,
that in relational neurobiology and all the more recent findings.
And our job here is to make the research apply clinically and apply
to your daily life. And if you have been listening from the beginning,
you may have noticed that even how we talk about it changes as we keep learning.
So podcasts are great, there's so many, uh, resources out there.
Look in the show notes, go to therapist uncensored.com/episodes.
I don't remember what this episode number's gonna be, I wish I had it.
But you can also just put in the, um,
in the search term attachment or you can put in, uh, relational neurobiology,
you know, or you can put it like you can search for anything. So that's great.
Yeah, I think you can search for blue, red, and green I think on there.
And you're gonna get . Yeah, yeah.
Check out the ones on the modern attachment spectrum. I think those, for sure,
the later ones are gonna incorporate all the new stuff that we've learned.
And if it says modern attachment,
then we're probably really focusing on that kind of stuff.
And then also anything about the spectrum really focuses on this as well.
Okay. And if you're still listening,
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thanks for joining us and we'll see you around the bid.
Therapist.
Uncensored is Ann Kelly and Sue Marriott.
This podcast is edited by Jack Anderson.