Let’s Talk Love Podcast Episode 120 with Jessica Baum | Transcript
11.12.25
This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love, a space for real conversations, fresh perspectives and expert wisdom. We dive into the joys, the challenges and the beauty of relationships, learning and growing in community. Join us as we expand our relational literacy, becoming better at love together.
This week, Robin sits down with Jessica Baum, a licensed psychotherapist whose lifelong curiosity about why we feel and connect the way we do has shaped her work in trauma, attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology. Today, they talk about Jessica's new book Safe. This is a powerful conversation about building healthier, safer connections and about having relationships that support real healing and growth.
Robin Ducharme | Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Love. Today, we're going to talk a lot about love with Jessica Baum, Jessica, welcome back to Let's Talk Love.
Jessica Baum | I'm so excited to be back here. Thank you for having me.
Robin Ducharme | I'm excited to talk to you about your newest book, Safe. The last time we had you on, Let's Talk Love, we were talking about your book, Anxiously Attached. But what was the inspiration and the reason that you wanted to write this next book?
Jessica | So after I wrote Anxiously Attached, I considered I continued to study Interpersonal Neurobiology under my mentor, Badie Badenoch, and I got so many questions about, like, I have avoiding tendencies, and I have this and like, deeper questions about attachment and Anxiously Attached covers a lot, but it doesn't really go very deep into the nuances of each attachment style and the embedded pattern. So I was answering what my audience was kind of giving me, but I was also going through more attachment, healing myself and studying even more science. So I was like, I need to provide the book that helps people understand how to build secure relationships and how to heal attachment wounds, because that's what I was going through. And so a combination of my own personal, humbling journey, which I share very vividly in the book with deep understanding of interpersonal neurobiology and where attachment wounds are stored in the body. And I wanted to give the public not a left shifted view of attachment, but a holistic understanding of how these embedded patterns are created. There's something called the wheel of attachment and safe so you walk away with a really, like attachment from the inside out, is kind of what I call it. And I healed some of my deepest wounds in the last couple years while I was writing Anxiously Attachment even more after that. And so I kind of, I dive into that, like, very vulnerably to share, you know, what my journey was like. So I just, I just wanted everyone to have the full picture. I feel like I'm on the other side of it, not that, not that I'm on the other side of healing, but Safe really, it does represent a lot of a lot of my inner work.
Jessica | I really want to talk about what it feels to be in a place where you feel healed, where you feel like I'm on the other side of a lot of the stuff that I've recognized, I became aware of, I actually tended to those wounds, and now I can be, I can be in a safe partnership, in a secure partnership that's really important.
Jessica | Yeah, no, I mean, and I, you know, I talk about getting to the other side, and it's never a finished feeling, but it's a feeling of, I've worked through my implicit enough so the stored trauma in my body has come up and been held and integrated, enough so that I have more safety within my system, and I can offer even more depth and safety to others. So it is, it is a process that I think you can get to the other side, and it continues to unfold throughout your life. But I think for me, I had to walk through the fire that I had been avoiding, and I didn't even know I was avoiding it.
Robin | You don't know what you don't know until you know it. And it sounds kind of like a tongue twister, but I mean, I think it's true. So Jessica, let's you said the word implicit. Let's talk about that. Okay, because you do a good job in your book about explaining the difference between implicit memory and explicit memory. So can you explain that to.
Jessica | So appreciate that you read the book and that you get this.
Robin | I read all the books and I really got this.
Jessica | The reason why I think it's so important, and it was a big theme of the book, is because, if you're listening, explicit memory comes later, and it's like a movie, and that's like, what everybody thinks of as memory is like, oh yeah. I remember when I went to Disney World. I remember sitting at the dining table with my family, and it's like, that's only one very small part of memory. There's another part of our memory system that starts at womb through sensational experiences, and sensational we come in as this, like right brained being, and we are storing our experience on a sensory level. And these sensory experiences and sensations and things that are happening are so much more implicitly than explicitly. So our earliest experiences are being stored or are being felt through sensation. And when we go through attachment wounds and attachment ruptures and attachment issues, we feel them sensationally. And what I help my clients realize is okay, let's go to the sensation in your body, and by the way, that is the memory. That is the memory, right. So, but like the the jump from most people thinking memory is this to oh my God, when my gut my gut is on the floor, or my heart is my chest is tightening, I'm like, oh my God, that that's what it felt like when you were small. Let's go to the memory. So I think implicit memory is what dictates our behavior. It what it's what makes our choices implicit information. It is a stronger it has a stronger influence on us than we even imagine. So when you read the book, you start to really tie into your sensational experiences and what's living in your body, and hopefully making the deeper connection to earlier wounding. And when you do that, you can, like, shift your paradigm, like, literally shift your world, when you start to understand your body and how your body is speaking to you in those ways. And that was a really important part of Safe. And even as I'm saying it, I feel like people listen to it, and they're listen to me talk, and they're like, What is she talking about?
Robin | Let's give an example.
Jessica | Well, I was just doing a session with a client who's like, I don't remember much of my childhood, and I'm like, okay, so, like, slow down. What does it feel like to be around your mom when you were six? And she was like, oh God, if I really slow down, I have this, like, tightness in my chest, and I'm like,kay, well, let's, let's go there, and let's hold the sensation. And let's not, like, make a whole narrative about it, but let's understand that feeling anxious or feeling this tightness around your chest lives in your body when you think of your mom, right? And so it's, it's her ability, and my ability to build a container for a window of tolerance for the sensations. And I say you might not remember everything specifically, but your body remembers everything. And so the more holding, and the more we go, okay, where do you feel that in your body? Clients can develop interoception, and they can develop the ability to start to understand that their body is always speaking to them, and all the wisdom is held in the body and all the memories held in the body, that's exactly where we need to go. So it's a big shift to get people to start thinking that way. And that's a big part of the book, and it's hard. You're right I spend a lot of the book trying to help people really deeply understand the memory around attachment and how that's stored in the body, implicitly.
Robin | So much of this is inner work, and a lot of us even just saying those words, it's like, oh God, inner work. What the hell. What kind of inner work are you asking me to do here? We might be just just complicating it too much. What we actually need to do is take more time and space, and a lot of us don't have the bandwidth for that we haven't created the space and time to actually do it
Jessica | Right, right
Robin | Like, just having space in our calendars, Jessica, like, if, for instance, you've got this client that's saying, okay, when I think about my mom, I have this tightness in my chest. So then, how would you guide her into that?
Jessica | Really, there isn't always an explicit memory, but sometimes, so when you go to those places with your clients, and you start to hold them, more neural nets open through the safety of the relationship, and usually more memories come up like it's a pathway in and then the sense of safety that two people feel. And I talk about anchoring relationships, so it doesn't have to be your therapist, but I talk about how to have these anchoring relationships, because my nervous system is lending itself to her, and so while she's experiencing this, I'm increasing her window of tolerance by co regulating with her and going there and through the holding and being with more and more unfolds organically, because our own system has a beautiful inherent knowing and a wanting to heal. And when we have people who can hold space, our system literally will start showing more and more, because it's been waiting for safe people to deal with what we haven't been able to deal with, because our parents probably didn't know how to be with our emotional states and hold us in that way. So in the book, there talks about core wounds, and we often pick partners that actually help us recreate it. We tend to go towards the familiar. And I talk about that like on a scientific level, a lot of people unconsciously pick someone because they feel right, and they end up creating similar dynamics that they dealt with in their childhood home, so I wasn't prioritized. For me, I felt neglected, so I picked a partner who didn't neglect me in the beginning, but as the relationship went on and the protectors came up, I found my little girl stuck in a similar felt sense of what I grew up in my childhood. In order to break. Take that paradigm is it's like, not about blaming your partner. It is happening in the here and now. He definitely was neglectful. But it's, it's the impact it was having on my system and inside my body. Let me know that this was actually how I felt a long time ago, and so I had to go back to the original places that I felt neglected in order to heal that wound and get out of, like, what? Like a trauma dance or bond or cycle of that nature.
Robin | Yes, I think of this like I was talking to my best friend this morning about about you, Jessica, and about your book, because we both read the books, and then we talk about the podcast before we meet with our guests. And I was like, Kirsten, you know what it's like the inner child work, right, like a lot of us are like, oh God. Like, what? What the heck is that? Like, woo, woo, inner child. But this is, this makes sense to me, is like my child is still in me, like I'm a 48 year old woman, but I still have a child in me. My teenage self, like all of me that is from my birth is still me, like I'm an adult, but I still have my child in me. And this is the approach that you've got with your clients, is like, to actually tend to that little self that that wasn't feeling in that secure, safe relationship at that time. And so our little self, or teen, or whatever that is, it's going to rear its head, that wound is going to be like, hello, hello. Like, I think you said this, right, Jessica. It's like a little child that little child that's going to be tugging on us, like, give me the love that I didn't get back then. Because it wants to be, it wants to be in that place of safe connection and safe that validation.
Jessica | Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's why I explain the science, like, I talk about little me, but I talk about the sensations being memory. I mean, if you don't want to call it little me, then you can call it memory, and it's, you know, if you didn't get the love, it's about being there for that child now. But really, what it's about, even more than than that, is getting in touch with the embodied experience of not receiving that love in the first place and really experiencing what you went through and letting that part of you be valid and right. So before, before that part of you might pick someone out to love them, thinking that's the solution. And in therapy and in anchoring relationships, it's about getting in touch with the fact that you didn't receive that in the first place. So it's very much a grief process and a allowing your real, embodied, embodied truth. So the real, embodied experience of your earlier days to speak to you so you can hold them and eventually integrate them, which is also a scientific, you know, process around healing trauma.
Robin | You share this really, this really great story to illustrate this in your book, around this man and his wife, where he comes in the house and he's got dirty, dirty shoes on, right, and he walks past the threshold, and she snaps, like, take your dirty shoes off, like, you know, like you could, we could all see that
Jessica | She snapped that much. It wasn't even that much of a snap but yeah
Robin | It probably wasn't even a snap. It was just like he, he actually did digest it that way, though, right
Jessica | Right, right
Robin | Feeling like he was being scolded. And you helped him realize that it was like from his childhood
Jessica | And so it's such a big jump, but you know, in my office, he was able to touch into his bodily sensations and realize that he was getting yelled at a lot by his mom, and how scary that was for him, and how much that lived kind of, I think I remember in his legs and his lower body, and how he would tighten and how, when his wife just flinched at criticism, it brought this all up in his body. And then he started to remember, like, I actually used to get beat for, yeah, so and so he made all those connections in the midst of couples counseling and his wife was able to really deeply understand his reaction.
Robin | So talk to us more about anchors and protectors, because you talk about protectors like, let's talk about protectors first.
Jessica | Yeah, so protectors are any behavior or thing that we think about that is more compulsive in nature, that that we do to try to deal with life or feelings that are going on inside. So a like a protector, can be alcohol, it can be social media, it can be an eating disorder, it can be a critical parent that's been internalized. And it's not like that you you know you that alcohol is bad. It's that when we can't feel what's going on inside, and we can't process what's going on inside, and we're struggling, we turn to certain behaviors and things to try to manage what's going on inside, because we don't know how to process and move through them. And I feel like we all have protectors. I think one of my protectors was like a very spiritual sense of, like, everything is going to be okay, and everything happens for a reason, you know
Robin | Like spiritual bypassing.
Jessica | Yeah, I had that when I was in my phase, you know. And like another protector for me was relationships, you know, not dealing with my own abandonment wound, hiding out in relationships and but there is an individual is our fingerprint, you know, someone like clients use alcohol. Some people use shopping. But it's not that shopping or alcohol or any things are any of these things are bad, but they're being used compulsively, at times, as a way to deal with what's going on inside,
Robin | As a way to avoid almost, and in a way
Jessica | You have to avoid, like so I talk about in the book my workaholism being like one of my best protectors in my left hemisphere. I talk a lot about the hemispheres of the brain. We have to avoid our pain. We can't face it unless we have safe places and safe people to process it with. So we will have a lot of protectors that we need. And a lot of people are listening, oh, I had an eating disorder, I had OCD, or I had we need those protectors, because if our system thinks that we can't process what's going on inside of us, we come up with a really, really adaptive ways to try to manage what we can't tolerate. And it's not until we slow down and we have safe environments and our system has safe people to connect with that we can start to deal with what's going on inside, so we develop all these wonderful protectors. And part of the reason why it's so important to know that is because I didn't even know that I was living in protection. You're just kind of, you're just kind of doing it.
Robin | I was living in protection mode when I was in my past relationship. It was a very unsafe, very unsafe relationship, and I think I was doing everything in my in my own self, yeah, to protect myself. Because it's like there was nothing I really because I was in such an unsafe place, the only, the only remedy for that, first things first, is to get out of that situation, get out of the unsafe relationship, and then I can tend to, like, my own healing,
Jessica | Absolutely, absolutely. And for those that are listening, that are in unsafe relationships are unsafe environments. Getting a safe anchor is the beginning of how we start to because I talk about implicitly, how we can get into these relationships that we know maybe aren't good for us, or trauma bonding, or whatever, but leaving is extremely hard, and so it's not something that you can do. I talk about a relationship where the woman goes back and forth a lot. You can really understand domestic why people in domestic violence situations stay when you read the book, when you really start to understand the implicit pull that trauma has over us. It's not like we can wake up every day and say, this is unhealthy for me. I'm gonna pack my bags and leave. But if you start with one safe relationship, and it one anchoring relationship, and you start to do the work, eventually you will leave. But it's a process for many people that are in relationships that they feel aren't, aren't, aren't well, because when our trauma is being reenacted over and over again. It's hard to break that loop.
Robin | Can you Can we talk about that Jessica, like, because I don't, I read your book, and I've read so many books around around relationships, and I would just love to hear your explanation around trauma bonding and why I mean, like, there is, why do we stay in relationships that are so hurtful?
Jessica | Yeah, I mean, so when our implicit wounds match up perfectly with somebody else, so, like, I think I use in the book an example about two people who had sick, you know, mothers that were not healthy, and then they kind of overlap, but when we find someone who meets our unmet needs and also matches our wounds. So they come in sometimes perfectly. You can kind of feel like the one. Sometimes these relationships merge a little bit more. There's more enmeshment in the beginning. We over identify with their little me and their trauma because of the blurred boundaries, and we under, identify with what's going on inside of us. So that's one thing that can happen where, like, I want to save my partner, or I want to help my partner, or I'm more in tune with my partner what's going on with my partner, and then with me. That's one way. Another other thing is we regress. So like, we can be in a relationship where, let's say my little me was neglected. We'll use me as an example, and my partner was using substances, which was very familiar from my childhood home. And I'm regressing to this younger state, and I'm now seeing my partner is unavailable, and I keep reaching out for him. That part of me is so young that she's doing the adaptive strategy that she knew how to do when she was little, which is to reach out. Reach out. Reach out. The adult part of me isn't online in that moment to say this person isn't unavailable, let's go to someone who is so we get stuck in these cycles that are very familiar to what we experienced when we were young, and we over identify with the other person. We regress a lot. We look to confirm our belief system, and we think that we need to resolve it with them, rather than turning inward and resolving it with doing our own inner work with people who are capable of holding our pain, we tend to go to what is familiar, just the way we would when we were a kid, like when we were a kid, we didn't get an option to say, oh, this parent is unavailable, we literally had to stay in it so that would
Robin | Yeah you do everything you could to maintain that, to maintain your connection to your caregiver, your parents
Jessica | Absolutely and that. And then that's vital, vital, but then that same part of us is activated in relationship. So it's the same thing. And, you know, I talk about, it's such a hard thing to talk about, like, because it's so intense, but I talk about the neuroception of safety, and not safety, but when we're in a relationship, let's say you and I are in a relationship, and it's bringing up a lot of me, and I'm feeling danger, but I really love you. I can run away from you, but the second I get the relief and my neuroception of safety is back, I'm going to feel the love for you again, and I might go back towards you, right. So when I'm away, I get relief, and then I can access safety, and I can access the good memories, and I can think of good things. So I might enter the relationship, or I might miss you, or when I'm away, I might feel my own abandonment wound, and then I'll miss what you provided for me, the shielding. So I'll go back, and then when I'm back in it, it gets dangerous again, and my neuroception of danger is there, and I run away. So people can get stuck in these kinds of dynamics too, where you know, when you're in a state of danger, you're not accessing the good times, and when you're in a state of safety, you might only be accessing the good times and not realizing that the relationship doesn't have the capacity to like be a safe container for you. So there's so many reasons why people stay stuck.
Robin | Tell us about the dynamic of anchors in our lives.
Jessica | So anchors in our lives are safe. People who lend us their neuroception of safety and start anchoring us in our experience can hold us with non judgmental care. Can be emotionally present for us, and basically their nervous system helps our nervous system regress and process and go through things, and we develop interdependence inner security, and all of that by the presence of enough presence people that we internalize through mirror neurons and resident circuits. So it's basically the process that a baby does. So when a baby is around really secure parents who have a neuroception of safety within them, and they're present with their baby enough of the time, and they're co regulating and they're attuning, the baby internalizes those parents and that that adult walks around the world feeling relatively secure inside. Well, the same thing is true if we have anxious parents or avoidant parents, we're internalizing their lack of sense of safety, and, you know, their fear, and this is intergenerational trauma, and those people are walking around feeling less secure inside, less safe. So we have to find new anchoring people to have these experiences, to re internalize more safety within our system. So that's a different experience than me helping a couple that's stuck in a trauma bond.
Robin | You're a psychotherapist. You're helping people with all the layers
Jessica | But I think that you know, if you're listening, it's not the therapist's job unless there's real abuse to be like, get out. It's the therapist's job to help you connect what is happening in the trauma, bond to your original trauma. And when we can start to connect things to your original trauma, and your partner can be part of this. I mean, a lot of couples counseling is successful because of this, or not part of this. But when you start to connect it to the original trauma, and really hold and go there. What's happening in the here and now isn't as relevant like or there it becomes clearer to understand what is old and what is being recreated. Hold and go to the old enough. Usually different choices come out of that. And that's a process, too, in itself.
Robin | Something you you also talked about, Jessica, is, once you're in a place where you have been able to tend to, let's say this wounding part of you that just keeps coming up. It's like that wound has been tended to. So you can look at those experiences you had with more compassion. You've got a different lens.
Jessica | Yeah I mean, so the re experiencing of memory. So I guess, like, give an example, a personal example. When I was like, four to six, I was in an apartment in Manhattan that was connected to my dad's apartment. My parents were going through a divorce. I didn't have a lot of access to my mom. My dad was using substances on the other side of this apartment. And my sister and I, we had housekeepers and stuff, but we were very much left alone in that apartment. I re experience that in my apartment now, but I also revisited that apartment a lot with my therapist, so that that little girl who was terrified actually is now feeling the presence of my therapist enough, enough enough that the memory is now accompanied. So the neuronet opens, and the amygdala, we kind of feel the intensity of it, and then a safe person is witnessing it, acknowledging that this really happened. And if we visit that enough, now, when I think back at that memory, it doesn't have a charge, and I can also add somebody else with me in that memory. So it's accompanied. I don't know how to better explain that, but whatever wounding happened when we were young, whether we were ashamed, whether we were abandoned, whether we were criticized, we need to go back meet those wounds and give them what they didn't receive at the original time of the wounding. So for me, it was abandonment. I needed a lot of accompaniment. For a lot of people who carry a lot of shame, it's criticism, and they need a lot of acceptance, you know, for you know, so if you're sad, you need to be comforted. So we need to go back and receive, acknowledge that you really were alone or you really were criticized, and be with that part of you. And you also need to receive what you didn't get at that wound in order to change the memory. And like, the memory then becomes the memory still there, and it's supported by this other layer.
Robin | Right I think you said it, you can have your memories, which we do, but there was no charge.
Jessica | Yeah, that the charge state, that charge changes. And believe me, that memory of me being it's so funny, so implicit memory, like I'm living in an apartment here, and I had, like, I had my mother in law on the other side, and I remember regressing, and I said to my therapist, like, what's going on? And it was like, wasn't about my my mother in law, my ex mother in law, or anything, but it was about the fact that I've been alone in an apartment before, with a parent, parental figure on the other side. So implicit memory is like water. So it will go to anything in your current life that feels familiar enough to the original wound, and then it will recreate it in that way. So even though, you know, I'm in my 40's and I'm in an apartment and I have a very good relationship with my ex mother in law. Some part of me regressed because it was familiar enough from my childhood, and I was able to kind of revisit it and relive it. And that happens to us all the time, things like that, but we're just not consciously aware of it.
Robin | So what you're saying is that you you had something go on in your in your 40's now that reminded you even you've done a lot of the work right around your childhood, but you're saying that something triggered,
Jessica | Yes
Robin | But you were aware enough, you were consciously aware enough to be like, oh, this is bringing up memories be similar to what I felt when I was six years old.
Jessica | Different things that happen in close relationships, or different things that happen in your life that wake you up in big, implicit ways with a lot of sensations in your body, usually are connected to earlier experiences and are a portal in and that memory system will find things that are familiar enough. That's why we attract people who are familiar to our primary caregivers. This situation happened. I wasn't in touch with that memory. I wasn't I didn't have an embodied experience. I had a memory that I was alone in that apartment, but I didn't have the embodied experience of it until the I was in a situation that was familiar enough to awaken that within me. And you know, all my therapist friends were like, cool, you can hold it and heal it and but then everybody who's listening, who's not, they're like, that's terrifying. But here's what I'm telling you, it's gonna it's gonna get awakened or not in your life, we can't control what gets awakened and what doesn't. You know, I use the word I don't use the word trigger, because really what got awakened was a much younger part of me, and I feel like when we use the word awaken, I have a much better relationship to what is coming up, versus oh, here I am triggered again. You know
Robin | I really like that Jessica, yeah, exactly, we don't need to say trigger I like, I like that awakened. What's being awakened in me?
Jessica | Right, right
Robin | Yeah. It's just, it's such a it's a way, it's a way softer, more compassionate way to look at because it's, yeah, it's good. Language matters for sure
Jessica | Especially like for people who are listening. And I'm one of those with big feelings, like, I just remember getting stuck in dynamics and feeling like, here I am triggered again, which, first of all, feels like a gun. There's so much shame attached the word. And I remember my mentor was like, change it to awakened. There's a part of you that's being awakened right now. What would you how would you treat a younger part of you who's alive in you right now? I think I would treat them a lot better than shaming them for having big feelings.
Robin | So I wanted to talk about this section in your book, which I just this my favorite part of your book was the end, where you talk about cultivating compassion for yourself, and where you've come to a place where you feel like all this work, it's so worth it, because if you can live your life differently in with have a better relationship, you have such a more compassionate relationship with yourself because of it, right.
Jessica | Yeah, it's so hard to sell a book like this, because I'm trying to sell the work, and you hear the work, we all don't want to, like, dive into the work, but I can tell you that, like, I feel like a completely different person
Robin | Yeah
Jessica | From moving through it. And there's a sense of freedom in me that I can't put into words, and an ability to be present and make such wonderful attachments, many of them in my life,
Robin | Yep
Jessica | And I was so humbled by the work like so I repeat in the book that you know, Stephen Porges says that connection is a biological imperative, and as someone who is identified as anxiously attached. And I also share in the book, I had some avoidant protectors doing the work meant that I had to really be vulnerable and depend on people. And as a therapist, I'm really good at being that for other people, but as a human, I really had to step in that role myself, and that really humbled me. I think what humbled me the most was like how badly I need people and how fragile we are and how most people, when you really do the work and you really understand interpersonal neurobiology and all this, like, how most people are just doing the best they can with what they've received, how intergenerational trauma really gets passed down. Like, I feel like I have such a sense of these things. And it does. It changes your level of awareness, your level of compassion for yourself, but really for everyone.
Robin | I think it's so worth it, really, it is. I mean, I know I've done a lot of personal work, I feel I've had peace for the first time in my life. I mean peace. What the heck is that? I never even realized what that word meant, really, until I'm living it. Now, you use the word freedom, I feel the same way, and stuff's gonna come up, but I'm now in a place where I'm like, I'm not afraid to go there. I know that I I have confidence and security, I guess, within myself to be like whatever it is. I can deal with it. I'm not gonna shy away from it, even though it doesn't feel good.
Jessica | Yeah, absolutely. And I know that if life gets tough, because life is tough, it is tough, and life throws us curveballs. I know I have the people in my life that are going to support me no matter what, and I have some more inner security that, like I can handle life that way. I mean, we're all so vulnerably human right, and we're also, we're also dependent on each other. And I think, you know, I talk a lot about in the books, like my interdependence and my independence, and super independence, and this left brain, you know, shift that we're in, and how lonely and how lonely it is to be in your left hemisphere like that, and how much I survived that way. And I think shifting into your right and doing the work makes you more interdependent on others, but it also like, it makes you more present, and it also brings more meaning into your life. So I think for those of you listening like, you know, I got to a place in my, like, mid 30's where I was like, I'm exhausted, I'm not happy. There has to be more to this. And I just started doing my work. And on the other side of your work, there's a depth to life and connection that I can't really put into words. But I wish for every single person, and I think the more people who go through this, I think just the more cultural, like the more compassionate and culturally understanding we are of each other. It just, it's profound work, and it's really hard to actually describe in words. I do say in chapter nine, how different clients that I've helped journey through respond differently, whether it's like for me, it was a sense of awe that would come to me all the time, and gratitude that I could feel in my body. Other people would get involved in community a little bit differently. And you know these shifts around meaning and connection that, you know, I'd hope that everybody can get out of that left, shifted, successful drive and understand that doing this type of work just deepens your life in such a profound way. And it's such a hard thing, Robin to sit here, I think I've had a hard time in this whole thing to try to even express the work. And, you know, for some people who are in it, they get it. And for others, it's such an abstract idea, until you start to experience it enough to understand it, you know, and I could tell you're in it and you're doing it. And for those listening, it's like, how do we get the courage? How do we give them the courage to take that first step, to start doing this inner explanation because the outcome is wonderful, and it is a journey through, you know.
Robin | I think what it is is like, just when we do come to those places where something in us is like, oh, I'm feeling that this is difficult, this this interaction right now is really getting to me, I don't know what, and it's like, okay, even just stopping and pausing, the pause, the magic pause. And like, taking like, three, four breaths, instead of the reaction, like the defense that we are so used to doing, even that in itself, like when we came to that, get to that place, we're creating more pauses in our interactions that are that are somehow bringing up something. There's going to be magic there, right. Where is this coming from? What needs to be tended to? Going inside and and like, invest doing some investigative work, right? And it may, like, like you said, it may not be the person that you're interacting with that's a safe place to do that with, but I love this. I love that you said that, Jessica, find the anchor, find the person that's in your life that you can make a phone call to and be like, this just happened, and this is my this was my reaction. And I don't know if this that the thing that just happened warranted that huge reaction, like just walk me through it. I just think turning to people that you love and trust, that you feel safe with, to navigate these things our lives with, is so important. It's connection.
Jessica | It is. You know, so many clients come to me and they tell me, I don't have an anchor. This is something I bumped up a lot, and even one of the reviews was like, this book brought up so much sadness in me, because I don't have childhood memories of any anchors, you know, and that's exactly what the book is supposed to bring up in you. And we do live in a world where there are less available people, and if you don't have an anchor, you're not alone in that. I teach people how to co anchor and let one anchoring relationship. This still means you have to get one can change the trajectory of your whole life, because if you have one anchoring relationship to do the work and be with you, your nervous system starts to recognize that type of emotional presence and attunement, and with enough of that going on for you, that becomes your new norm, and eventually you can pull in more anchoring people. But it is, you know, I remember my publishers. I remember editors being like, you need an anchor. And I'm like, You guys interpersonal neurobiology, studying attachment wounds and relationships with science, what is he wounded in relationship has got to heal in relation
Robin | In relationship.
Jessica | And I would be setting you up for failure if I gave you a self help book that says, heal your attachment wounds, but you don't need other people to be part of that process. And so I wasn't going to do that. And it's really important that you unders when you read the book, you understand the anchoring role, and you start where you are. I mean, I do have a process in the book where you can resource anchoring experiences in your life. My dog is an anchor. A place can be an anchor and a teacher. There are ways, hopefully, to resource some of them, and it is really important that you get them soon as you read the book, you're going to start looking for them, and like I tell my clients, if I'm your only anchoring person, and we meet enough, you're going to register what that is, and you're going to magnetize more anchoring people in your life. So people who've been wounded by emotional unavailability tend to gravitate towards unavailable people. So we have to be in the presence of available people, enough to change our system, to recognize that as love, to recognize that that's what we need. And once we start to change that, we tend to pull in more and more of that. So it's a process.
Robin | Yes, so many things came up for me when you were when you were talking Jessica first was a story that Kirsten and I were talking about because we've been best friends since grade six, so we known each other for a very long time. And when we were little, she had her cat Christopher, and she was like, cat Christopher was my anchor, like her cat, because she was, she's an only child, and her parents were busy. They were both professionals, and she spent a lot of time alone. But actually she wasn't alone, because she would go in her playroom and she would dress Christopher up and like her little outfits, and put them in the stroller and take them outside, put them on the sled, push them through the snow, and he was her companion. So your pets can be your anchor, like you said, but the other
Jessica | Thank God for Christopher, or else she would have been left completely alone.
Robin | And that is what she said, like he was her companion. And the other thing you said, Jessica, is that it only takes one person. And what that makes me think of is that we can be that person in somebody else's life, right. Absolutely, that's what it makes me think of. It's like, if you are seeking that, what if you were to flip it and be like, who how can I be that for somebody else? And if you can be, maybe could be a reciprocal.
Jessica | Yeah, yeah. I talk about co anchoring, you know, yeah, as long as the attachment moves, if they're young, they need a lot of holding, and sometimes co anchoring and sometimes you need a professional so it depends, but co anchoring is, is, yeah, phenomenal. And if, the more you do this, the more you can for parents too, like, if you want to be a better parent, the more you hold these parts of yourself, the more anchoring you can give to your kids. So it's like a, it's like a mirror effect, or like a, you know, it's like you do this work you can, you can hold more for others. You attract more for others in that way. And it grows and it grows and it grows. But so many people in our western culture are starting with either the felt sense of no one. Maybe they do. They need to go through the Rolodex. Or, like you said, Christopher was there, and there are these teachers or, you know, babysitters that were anchoring and really kind of saying, okay, maybe I didn't have a lot, but there were these moments of security or places that I went to, but, yeah, that's something that, you know. I mean, I had to face that too. So if you're listening and that's, that's part of it, and finding anchoring people now is part of how we heal attachment wounds.
Robin | Yeah, it is. Well, I so appreciate your book and your work, Jessica. I loved it. It was so great. I learned. It's a lot I really did, and that's why I love the work I do, is because I get to read these amazing books and talk to amazing people like yourself, and learn and grow.
Jessica | Thank you so much for having me, and I feel like you really get it. And I think that Safe is a wonderful companion for anyone who's just a little bit confused, I try to be anchoring as the author for you in Safe, I really try to be there with you, and it's a good start if you're just curious about this, it's it's going to open the pathway for you and hopefully lead you to the next healing person and place and continue to help you along your path.
Robin | Thank you, Jessica. I hope you beautiful day.
Jessica | Thank you. Thank you so much.
RLR Team | Thank you so much for listening. This podcast is hosted by Robin Ducharme. Please subscribe and rate our show. We value your feedback as it helps us bring you the resources you need to improve your relationships. Visit us at realloveready.com to attend our annual In Bloom summit and access more ways to build your relational literacy. We honor and express gratitude to the Coast Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play. Blessings to you in love and in life.