Let’s Talk Love Podcast Season 2 Episode #10 with Jessica Baum | Transcript

22.11.10

This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.

Robin Ducharme | Today on Let's Talk Love, I speak with Jessica Baum. Jessica is a couples therapist and founder of The Relationship Institute of Palm Beach. She has helped 1000s of clients with her unique approach to healing called The Self-Full method. Today we talk about Jessica's book Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure In Life and Love, which creates a roadmap to help you go from being anxiously attached to building strong secure relationships. Jessica and I talk about using the intelligence of our hearts to guide our actions and behaviors. The importance of validating our feelings, and how to become the observer in our lives which helps us form deeper connections with others. This is a wisdom-filled conversation we can all benefit from, enjoy. Welcome to the let's talk love podcast, where we flip the script on outdated narratives and cliches about love and relationships. I'm your host, Robin Ducharme, founder of Real Love Ready. This podcast is for anyone who wants to be better at love, regardless, of relationship status. We'll talk about the intimate connections in our lives. And the challenges and complexities inherent in those partnerships. Through our no holds barred interviews with global experts will gain insight about ourselves and learn new skills to improve our relationships. Because when we learn to love better, we make the world a better place. Are you ready for open and honest conversations about love? Let's get started.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Let's Talk Love. I am very happy to introduce our guest, Jessica Baum. Jessica, so happy to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

Jessica Baum | Thank you so much for having me.

Robin Ducharme | I just finished listening to your book yesterday, Anxiously Attached. And we're gonna talk a lot about that and about attachment theory and all the work that you do. But I would love to ask you a question that I ask all my guests when we start the podcast. What in your life right now is giving you the most joy? And what is one of your biggest challenges that you're facing in your life right now?

Jessica Baum | Wow, those are really good questions. Something that in my life gives me joy right now, my dog. I know that sounds weird. But my dog is always an unconditional love source for me. And he's just so funny. And he's just always I don't know, he's just, he's a goofball. And so he just lightens my day a lot. Things that are hard for me, you asked what was hard for me in my life right now.

Robin Ducharme | Yes, your challenge. What's a challenge you're facing?

Jessica Baum | Yeah, I think you know, I'm really learning about love and attachment. And I have written my book, and I'm an expert, but about detaching and keeping love for people you love, but you don't necessarily want to stay in connection with anymore, you know, but holding the love anyway. So that's something I've been doing with personal relationships, and friendships and even work colleagues. It's like, who do I want to stay connected to? And if I don't, how do I hold love for them and how they showed up in my life and kind of let that go.

Robin | Wow, I really liked that. That's, that's coming, that in itself is coming from a place of boldness. When I hear you say that, and you teach all about being self-full, which I really I've never heard that term before and I really, I really, really liked that. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Jessica, you know, your journey to becoming a therapist? And what led you to write Anxiously Attached?

Jessica | Sure. I mean, that's a long question. But throughout my 20s I think I struggled a lot with depression, and maybe one of those kids who had like existential issues like what's the meaning of life and I had pretty bad like, catatonic depression at some point in my life, and I actually went to school. I had a couple other careers before I became a psychotherapist. But I really, really longed for, like a deeper sense of meaning. And I came to Florida, that's where I live now, when I was a little bit depressed I lived in Manhattan, I was born and raised pretty much there. And I think I healed my own depression, but then I realized I wanted to help people who had mental health issues that you couldn't see because mine was like having a broken leg and I became fascinated with what you can't see that exists and I studied a lot of different types of mental illnesses. And then during my career, I kind of found my niche around system issues, working with addiction, and then working with couples and energy and attachment and interpersonal neurobiology. So understanding the whole system and how we connect and how important our biological need for connection is. And so I just studied that a lot, because I was fascinated with it. And I truly believe there's a lot of meaning in life that comes from deep connections and being supported in the right way. And that's truly what gives me meaning. And I think that's why I found what I love to do. And I'm really good at kind of meeting people and seeing where their core wounds are, and understanding where that gap is, and filling in the pieces and helping them kind of get to the other side of whatever they're struggling with. So it became natural for me. But I didn't know that I had to, I had to go through this path of figuring it all out.

Robin | I think that that lends to this idea that we teach what we most need to learn. And so you went through it, you learned the lesson, and now you're teaching about it. Which I think when you are in that position, when you're coaching people and you're in, you're actually in deep therapy with people, you've gone through it. And so you can really, you come from a place of knowing. I like that.

Jessica | For sure. And you know, be careful what you write about, because I for sure, I've embodied my book as well. And I think I wrote it from a place of like, you're not alone. I'm here with you not only as an expert, but I've walked this path, it might look a little different. But I think it's important to know that even experts suffer and have gone through hard things.

Robin | Your book is full of a lot of tools and techniques for calming the nervous system and dealing with these things that are happening. So I have to recommend people download the book, listen to you or read it because there's no way we have time to go through all the tools. But what I wanted to do today is just go through kind of like the principles of what we're talking about. And then people just have to read the book. That's just the bottom line. So why do anxiously attached? This was interesting to me because I was like, you know, this idea that opposites attract. But then there's also the idea that like attracts like, but yousee often that anxiously attached and avoidant styles tend to gravitate each to each other. Well, can you explain why that is and actually what is happening in that dynamic?

Jessica | There's a lot of reasons to why that is. And if you have an anxious attachment, or you are avoidant or you're not healing those parts of yourself, the pattern is going to play out because attachment is a combination of two people's energy and patterns combined. That's why you can be more anxious with a friend and more avoidant like if you're listening and you're identifying as anxious attachment is someone who gets really scared easily has abandonment under there, wants closeness, needs a lot of reassurance, you could have a friend who's more anxious than you and you could want to push them away. And you could be a little bit avoidant. So it's not always static, you usually have a default in terms of where your nervous system goes. But depending on the combination and the type of relationship, the pattern might look different. So you know, you kind of want to keep that in the forefront. If you identify as someone who has anxious attachment, there's usually an underlying wound of abandonment. And these people are often classified as codependent which I don't love that word because we are interdependent, and we definitely need each other. And the message isn't to be independent, which a lot of people think that's the solution, and it's definitely not. But if you're anxiously attached, you're gonna need extra reassurance. And when you were born for one reason or another, the missing developmental link was self regulation. So you didn't get enough self-soothing co regulation. So soothing your own nervous system is actually something that is very hard. And sometimes you need another person to help calm you down, because you literally don't have the internal abilities yet. And we can talk later if you want about how we move towards security in that way. So an anxious person will cling a little harder. Even when they feel connected. Their fear is when will I lose this connection because they had inconsistency. So they're they're always feeling like the shoe is gonna drop and they live in a little bit of fear like that. The avoidant person on the other hand, there's two different types of avoidant but their emotional needs didn't get met well. So what happens is sometimes a parent is very not attuned to the emotional experience of the baby but meets their physical needs. So they're kind of there taking care of them. They're the type of parents that are focused on homework, they're taking them to football, like their achievement based, but they're not there kind of seeing into their emotional world. And so they don't value relationships quite the same. Sometimes that infant is left a little, and so they just don't need, they feel that they don't need other people so well. And so their adaptive strategy is to be super independent. Because i's very scary if I depend on you, I'm not going to get my needs anyway met, is really underneath the surface of all of that. So they have a lot of good protectors. And they're usually very successful people longing for closeness, but scared to death that if they get close, they're gonna get hurt, or their needs are gonna get met. I don't even know if they're conscious of that all the time. So you have two different ends, one person needing a lot from the other person to feel safe and the other person needing a lot of space in order to feel safe, because getting close is extremely scary. So those are the two ends of the pendulum so to speak.

Robin | And so why are the anxiously attached and the avoidant styles so, like how is it that they gravitate to each other? Because each of them are giving each other what they don't, what they can't give or what they don't, they don't have?

Jessica | Yeah, and there's a lot of different ways to answer that. So your patterns are going to show up no matter what so if you're very anxious, the other person might present a little avoidant if you're if you really they're if they're secure, they're not going to feel threatened by the sense of urgency or need for connection. But um, you know, avoidant people are usually detached from their emotional selves sometimes, and are longing for a liveliness and the vulnerability or perceived vulnerability or just the anxious people can be very full of life, full of, of energy moving expressive, their express they feelings. And so there's an attraction to that liveliness that they're locked away from, and they don't have access to, and, and an anxious person can be attracted to like the stoicness of someone who's avoidant, they seem really calm on the outside, they're not they're anxious on the inside, but they seem like they have it all together, they, they tend to not show their cards, they tend to look very, very dependable and independent. And that's kind of the missing piece of the anxious person, like they're desiring to feel more secure. And the avoidant person is desiring to feel a little bit more liveliness. So when they see that in the other person, they're kind of seeing lost parts, or disconnected parts within themselves. That's one reason and there are probably many, but that's the one reason that I see or research the most.

Robin | And the other thing you talk about is how anxiously attached, it's like, it's almost like the way I looked at this, you didn't really use this word a lot. But the way I learned I think about it is like when you're when you're a child, your attachment style is adapting, right? It's adaptive, you're using all these strategies to adapt to to make yourself like to regulate to make yourself feel better, right? Or I'm sorry, to have that connection.

Jessica | To stay in connection.

Robin | To stay in connection with your caregivers. Whereas if you carry those behaviors into your adulthood, with relationships, it becomes maladaptive. Right?

Jessica | I don't love the word maladaptive.

Robin | You don't?

Jessica | But I understand why you're saying it.

Robin | It's counterproductive. It's like these strategies that I were, so how would you? What word would you use? Or what words would you use?

Jessica | Yeah. no, no, no, it's okay. Yeah, they are adaptive strategies that can sometimes hurt the relationship. But they make total sense. And I think like, yeah, befriending them getting to know them. Because I often think maladaptive makes me feel like there's something wrong. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with these strategies. But there's some healing to do around them. And yeah, so yeah, there's nothing, the maladaptive just makes, I hate. I hate anything that makes anybody feel like there's something wrong with them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with you even if you go insane in your relationship, your nervous system is usually seeing something so scary or sensing something so scary. And I just spent a lot of work taking out the shame around the behaviors and the adaptations because they just start to make sense when you start healing, and I think that they still continue on bad days. So that's the only reason why I don't use that word.

Robin | Yes. Okay. Well, you know, I really appreciate that, Jessica, I think that that's coming at this from like this loving, compassionate perspective. So let's talk about the strategies though, that each style could use or has used, right? Where the anxious uses, like activating strategies in a place of threat, whereas the avoidant uses deactivating strategies. And so I was like, Oh yeah, I get that like this kind of fits with how an avoidant would act compared to an anxious, can you go through a few of those things?

Jessica | Sure, yeah, activating set strategies I use, I use the example of the octopus in the book, it's almost like the energy expands. So they can be ultimatums, they can be threats, they can feel like controlling, there could be texting a lot, they're kind of hyper focused on the other because as a baby, they disconnected to themselves and they became more aware of what was going on in the room and their primary caregiver. So they became they become other focused so that if they get out of connection, they'll do whatever they can to get back into connection. And it can be all these strategies. And you're right some of them don't work like threatening your partner doesn't really work. It only makes the situation worse, especially if your partner's avoidant. So for an avoidant person, their strategy is, sometimes it's working, often getting on planes, fleeing, shutting down, being vague, not committing, being distant, if they're really, really in an activated state, they get very cold, and struggle making eye contact, and they just shut down, they shut down emotionally. So you have one person who gets very emotional and very activated and the other person in order to survive, they shut down their emotions, they actually become disembodied. So in order to survive, they cut like basically cut off their head from their body, they're not connected to their body, because if they were connected to their body, the feelings would overwhelm them. So they end up disembodying and kind of living in a little bit more dissociated or numb place.

Robin | You share a story about clients of yours that you worked with Sam and Mark, I think Sam was your client, right? And she was telling you her experience working through her experience, about how she entered her relationship, can you tell us that story?

Jessica | Yeah, she met someone who didn't present quite as avoidant in the beginning. But she started to give up her life, like she stopped taking care of herself in the same way, she stopped going to workout classes, and she spent a lot of time with him, and everything seemed really well. But there was like a shift in balance. And she started to put a lot of pressure on herself and around the relationship. And then he started to pull away. And when he started to pull away, it activated all of her abandonment fears. And she spiraled a little bit out of control as anyone would because it is scary when your partner pulls away. And I think that's where the work is for an anxious person is not to necessarily get that person to come back, but to work with the fears that are coming up and have them being, be held. But yeah, I think that the more anxious she got, the worse, the more scared he got. And the more he pulled away, and neither one of them could help the response that was going on inside of their nervous system because they weren't really conscious of the underlying fears that we're going on.

Robin | Mhmm. So this is a really good quote, it'slong, but I wanted to read it because I think it explains a lot. You say, when we're young, we soon learn which of our behaviors lead to our parents disappearances. And we begin to suppress those parts. With no thought involved at all, we begin to stop ourselves from healthy expressions of joy or sadness or anger, in efforts of keeping our parents with us. Meanwhile, our autonomic nervous system is spending way too much time in sympathetic arousal, leaving us continually afraid of loss and abandonment. We bring this legacy to our adult relationships. Tucked away in our subconscious until it becomes activated with the prospect of intimacy. Now everything we didn't learn about how to connect rises to the surface, I thought that was a really, really good explanation about what's going on with anxiously attached, right?

Jessica | Yeah, for sure. And I think you might not even be aware of it. But if your parents valued your beauty, or they had a hard time with your anger, or they valued achievement, or whatever it is, it happens unconsciously. So if a parent has a hard time with sadness, and couldn't show up for you, maybe they give you a cookie, maybe, you know, whatever they do, we start to shut down these parts because they're not being received. And then we start to do the things that work and you know, you sometimes you see this, it with scapegoating. So the child is actually acting out, while acting out is a way to get attention. And so they're, they're doing what works, you know, so, most of what we're doing is on a subconscious level, when we're really young and we're constantly reading the room, we're reading our caregivers, and our behaviors are kind of an expression for connection or to see or have space, whatever that is, but we are acting them out all the time. And that often repeats itself in romantic relationships and the acting out probably looks different. Sometimes it doesn't. But yeah.

Robin | You call them invisible tendencies. And I'm like, Yeah, because you don't know until the behavior comes out. You're like, oh. So what I was worth thinking about this. And you actually Terry Real teaches so much about this with his work, like you're doing. It's like when you are aware of these behaviors, like when you become okay, it's no longer invisible, okay, I'm acting out like, I'm acting like a crazy person right now. And I don't know why I'm doing this. But there's a reason right? And it's like becoming it's becoming aware. Right? Was that like one of the first steps to healing your patterns?

Jessica | Yeah, I think that's the first step. And it's actually, you don't change the pattern or the behavior right away. It's the awareness around the pattern in the behavior, and then the self-compassion of making sense, why this is there. And then working with that for a period of time, that builds kind of new understanding. But we're also talking about neuroplasticity at some point. So the behavior doesn't change overnight, because you're like, wow, I'm doing this, oh, this is making sense, you're probably still going to use that pathway, it's probably still going to have an extreme reaction in your body, you might still have the same narrative. But over time, when you start to learn where the origin of that is, and start to hold the fear that's underlying the behavior, and become more aware and more present more healed more integrated, slowly, you're building new pathways, and eventually, you're going to build new choices.

Robin | Yes. And so when you have that awareness, and it's like, practice me at least like when we often we don't know what we're doing the first or second or third time, right? And it takes a lot of practice to relearn or to learn something new. But of course, it's possible you're teaching how to rewire the ANS, like our autonomic nervous systems.

Jessica | Yeah, and not just the ANS, so you know, sometimes your ANS is going off when you're in fight, flight, freeze, fawn, even people pleasing, which is fawn, but you're building something called dual awareness. So what happens is your ANS is going off, your system is going off, but there's another part of you that's starting to become an observer of that system. So you can be in the experience of hysteria or upsetness, and also have another part of you access and say, Wow, this is my nervous system. This is really scary for me, what can I do to get support? And so the more work you do, the more you build this dual awareness. And that is kind of something that's happening in your brain. And it's also something that happens with yoga and meditation, when you start to become very mindful, or an observer of yourself in another light, and in my experience, is having compassion for the experience you're having, being the observer of it, starts to build space between the reactivity of it.

Robin | So you have this, this idea about how we all have a little me, inside of us, right? And getting to know our little me, that's part of, that's a chapter in your book. So can you explain to us with the little me, inside of us is? It's our little, it's our child, right? Our little child?

Jessica | Yeah, it is. It's our little child, but it also lives in our amygdala, and then it lives in our body. And sometimes it's embedded trauma, and it's a part of you, that can get scared or get lonely or be frightened, and has, you know, we, everybody thinks what's happening in the here and now is just in the here and now. The past is our eternal present, no matter how, how we want to look at this, there's streams of information coming through us all the time. And we carry experiences of the past, in the present moment, all the time, and little me is parts of you that might be awakened in the present moment, from certain situations. So I think you I don't even like to say triggered because what I like to say is that when you're in a relationship and something gets touched inside of you are awakened, it's an opportunity to hold it, to reparent, it to heal it, it's trigger feels like it's just a repetitive thing. And it's kind of shaming and, you know, we're, we're constantly getting awakened through our intimate bonds, and through just important people, sometimes our bosses, our colleagues, our best friends, and we're like getting really touched. And it's like, okay, what, what is being touched inside of me what's being awakened? And when we can hold that, and sometimes we need someone else to help us hold that and really understand that has deep roots. That's actually what's integration or healing your brain, you know, taking it out of an embedded trauma into a place of being held and integrated. That's how it loses its charge. And that's how it starts to become a window into deeper meaning.

Robin | Yes, I love that. So two thoughts came to mind when you said that. Dr. Berman talks about how those points that are like, it's like a thorn, or like she's like, think of it as like a cactus. It's like, are you when you touch a cactus with your finger. It's like ow, it's a prick, right? And so inside of you, we all have these thorns, we all have them. And so if you know that about yourself where your thorns are, you're like, oh, like, I know where that's where that is. And I can be a little bit, I can be more aware and conscious of it. And Silvy, like, would you, Silvy Khoucasian says this, Jessica, would you say that like our little me and also like, like you said, that our past is our inner ever presence. Are those things that are that we are, it's our vulnerabilities. Right? It's like making, getting close to what our vulnerabilities really are.

Jessica | Getting conscious, a lot of people are either not ready for consciousness or don't have the support to help with the consciousness of it, or don't want to look at it, because they're just not ready. But yeah, I think things get touched. And we can make up a story that this person hurt me or this person did this to me. And maybe they did, it also touched something deep inside of you. And there's a chance you've experienced a theme or something similar, because what we know about the nervous system is if you're having an extreme reaction. Now granted, extreme things happen and appropriate reactions are appropriate reactions. But if you're having an extreme reaction, when your partner is on their phone, or they roll their eyes, or there's a sigh, there's a chance of disconnect there. And you're having this sensational experience, we know it's trauma, we know it's an embedded experience through science. I mean, science actually proves this. And what's frustrating is that our society, we don't advertise this enough, people are walking around a little bit unconsciously blaming each other projecting, and it's not their fault. They're just not conscious of it fully yet. The sensational experiences that you're experiencing in your body live there, and they got planted their way before you met your partner.

Robin | Yes. So you talk about having the importance, iif you're gonna have a healthy relationship with somebody, the foundation of that relationship has to be safety. Like, you need to feel safe with that other person. And I think, you know, you talk about this, the idea about, which I think is so prevalent in our society, is like this idea that chemistry is like the be all and end all when it comes to meeting somebody or being with your partner, you have to have this mind blowing, like this, this fireworks and chemistry with somebody. And it's like we're neglecting to even like put safety on like the top of the list as well. Right? So what advice do you give your clients that are trying to find a stable partner, but they're not meeting anyone that gives them that feeling of butterflies? And that rush of crazy chemistry?

Jessica | Yeah, I mean, so there's so many different, you know, ways to answer this, and it's not. So it's like an and or kind of question. Chemistry is great, right? If you're having chemistry, because someone's being, if you're anxiously attached, and you're having chemistry, because someone's hard to get, or they're inconsistent, or they blow you off, and then they text you. That's not chemistry that's triggering your attachment system. And so you could be trying to prove your worth or thinking it's more excited to get the unavailable person which will only lead to more like torture for you. And so there's some healing work for you if you're constantly attracting someone who's really, really unavailable. So that I wouldn't say that that's chemistry, I would say that's a trauma charge. That's a charge your systems are recognizing I have work to do, and I want to play it out with another person. But what I would say is, bring that to a therapist or a coach so they can help you work through that so that you don't go after people who are just going to recreate the trauma bond, or if you're experiencing that chemistry, and there is healthy chemistry. So there's both you know, and there's also a really anxious person or an avoidant person, if they met someone who's really secure and available, they might push that person away, because they're not ready for that level of intimacy. Or that person can be perceived as boring, because their system is used to chaos or it's used to something and now they are they don't know what to do when someone who's really present and really attuned and really available shows up it can feel like no, this doesn't feel right. There's something wrong with this, I'm gonna push this person away. And that's just an indicator that they have to work on intimacy issues with themselves. So start to look at why am I pushing away someone who is steady and available and kind and warm? Why am I always going for the person who's hard to get or the quote unquote, jerk and I'm not going to use other words, but you kind of find yourself attracted to the same type over and over again, that really says more about where your inner work is.

Robin | So, a lot a lot of your book is dedicated to obviously the healing of these wounds and becoming what you have termed self-full. I really like that. So can you tell us what it means to become self-full?

Jessica | Sure, I was, like I had mentioned, I've worked a lot in the space of codependency. So a lot of people came to me with those kinds of issues. This was a long time ago, and I kept telling people, you have to learn how to be selfish. You know, you have to take care of yourself and telling a codependent to be selfish is like they don't know what to do. And it's really not, selfishness is a born state of survival too. And so what I say is that anxious people or more codependent become selfless, they self abandon, they track the bodies of others, they self sacrifice, and they're usually attracted to people who are quote, unquote selfish, which is also not a happy place, their islands on their own, they're not living in fluid connection at all. So self-full is actually they're all three states. It's not like you live in one state, if you're listening, you probably have, you know, vacillated between each of these states. But the self-full state, which you can expand is a state of safety, and a state of fluid connection with another. So when you feel safe in connection, you can expand in this cell full state, if you get awakened or touched or triggered, you might move to a selfless state of giving or fixing or expanding, or you might move to a selfish place of retreating to your own island. And so you can move in and out of the states, like for example, I can be in different states, depending on what's coming up for me. But the more healing you do, and the more ability you have to be with the parts of you that need to be held and the deepening that happens there, the more you'll be able to access more of a self-full state. And there'll be more intimacy, not just with yourself, but with your relationship as well.

Robin | Yes. Oh, I really, I love that how it's, that's just, how we can oscillate. Of course, we do. We all do. We oscillate between those three states. But if you can spend most like the majority of your time, or let's say, the greater percentage of your time, in the self-full state, you'll have more satisfying relationships, even with your with yourself, obviously, and with others. So let's go through the different ways that you, to become more self-full, so that we are living more in that place. And so one of the first is the heart intelligence work. This was good stuff, right? Because there's science behind this, you say, Our heart is our third brain in our body. This, I loved this. About 80% of the communication flows upwards, and only 20% downwards from the brain in our skull. Wow. I thought that was so amazing. 80 and 20 like wow! I guess I believe that but it's like if there's science behind that, that's that's that's way better. A big part of healing ourselves and our emotional lives, including our romantic relationships. It's about being able to listen to our heart’s messages. Can you talk about the new science around the importance of heart intelligence?

Jessica | Yeah. Us psychotherapists refer to it as bottom-up theory. So that's why changing your thoughts alone just doesn't work. So, our body through neuro ception, again, is scanning for safety and threat. And our body also stores memory. So we have cellular memory being stored in our cells in our heart, our gut, as well or stomach. And these information centers are much faster to pick up cues and are sensing all the time. And they're sending information to our skull brain. So we refer to it as the embodied brain is really the skull, the heart, the belly, and even the tissues, our tissues, our muscles, store memory. So what happens is we can be in a relationship and something can kind of set us off, and our gut could fall through the floor or our heart could hurt. And then it shoots the information up to our brain. And then the brain which is much slower in responding is making up a story about what we might be feeling. And sometimes it's embedded trauma that's being shot up or touched or awakened. And then our brain is like, in the moment you're doing this to me, it's like no, this is surfacing for you right now. So our body holds the wisdom. And the more work you do, the more embodied you become. It requires slowing down and really, it's about going inward and being with different parts of your body and the memories, the embedded memories as they come up. And it's not always about being in a self-full place. But it's about honoring look at my system is shifting and that's okay. We can't control our nervous system. It's going to shift but the safer we feel, the more the embedded trauma will come up. That's why sometimes healing is hard. So the safer I feel with you, Robin, if I see you every week and you're my therapist, my system starts to recognize that you're in what we call a ventral state but a place of attunement and being there for me and I start to feel safe with you. my nervous system is picking up on that you can't fake safety. And over a period of time, more and more embedded trauma, more and more memories and more of our, what needs to be healed will surface when we feel consistent safety in the presence of another. And that's why a lot of people consciously or unconsciously, don't want to do the work. Because when you sit there and you slow down and you do the work, sometimes more and more surfaces, it's kind of like an onion.

Robin | Yes. Another way you talk about healing is the importance of validating our feelings. And I love this quote, it's a simple one, but you say where it hurts is where the healing is. Make sense, right? And so you teach people the importance of learning how to recognize and validate their own feelings, and you have, like I said, before, your book is so full of like, step-by-step guidance, and processes for doing this work. It's really important deep work. But can you talk about how the importance of validating your feelings?

Jessica | Yeah, I see, since I'm a couples counselor, I see this happen all the time. But all your feelings make sense. You never really want to tell someone know, you're not feeling that or that's not a correct thing, right? Like, if you're feeling sadness, and maybe it doesn't make sense from the outside, you're still feeling sadness. And so you always want to honor what is the feeling that's coming up. And that's totally okay. And your feelings always make sense. And you know, Dan Siegel was a big influence on this book, and my work too. And I think I say something like name entertainment, which is him just honoring little me or just honoring your internal experience and saying, I am feeling sad right now. And that's okay. Right? Like, we're a society that like runs away from sadness or says go shopping, or here's a cookie or have a glass of wine. It's like, No, when I can sit with this and be like, well it makes sense, then I'm sad. This just happened. This is a sad thing, when you can give that to yourself, giving yourself the space and the permission to be in those feelings, you are essentially healing perhaps a part of you that no one else could be like, Oh, you're sad, right now, let me sit next to you. Let me be in your sadness. And sometimes you do, you need an external person to help you kind of navigate some of those harder feelings, too. But it's really important that you never shame yourself for your feelings. Because all your feelings make sense. None of them are wrong.

Robin | Yes. And then the third thing you can do, like we've already talked about, is become the observer. Right? Like you're, you're following your heart's wisdom and the intelligence of your heart. And you're validating your feelings. And if you're able to learn how to become the observer of those feelings, and those thoughts you're having, and almost come at it like okay, this is my child, this is my inner me, my little me, I'm trying to bring it all back into, like, the recent part of it, my little me is feeling really upset right now. And maybe you don't know the reason why. And you can have compassion for that part of you, then you could start being more aware and come at this from more of like an adult, an adult consciousness, is that correct, Jessica?

Jessica | Yeah, I call it well, inner community or inner nurture. So you know, if you have the experience of being nurturered, held, loved at any point in your life, you can access that you don't learn. Self love isn't something you just wake up one day and learn. It's something you've experienced through loving relationships that you internalize as an ego state, that becomes part of your way of handling your emotional experiences when they come up. So if you have someone if you're listening, could be an aunt, it could be a teacher, it could be a parent, it could be a friend right now. But if you have someone that genuinely you trust, and cares a lot about you, and you can sense into that and feel that when you're feeling sad. You can say, Okay, what would this person say to me right now? How would it feel to have this person next to me, and you can start to hold the sadness. So it's almost like you're blending the sadness with a nurturing energy of how do I hold this because that's really what you didn't get as a child at some point. So you kind of want to re experience it as an experience that's nurturing as an adult, whether you have to do that through an actual person, or you can internalize that person, like you said, as an observer, but it's really an observer that's coming in to support and kind of cradle the amygdala so to speak. When you're in that state, it's accessing another loving state in the middle of all your pain. It's an amazing experience to go through. I have gone through it personally where I've felt my abandonment wound and at the same time, also felt all the people who love me. And so the the feeling of the abandonment wound isn't as severe because it's now being held by the safety of people who really have your back on people who really care for you. So you're able, you're not that you get rid of those things, it's that you start to hold those experiences differently.

Robin | The last chapters of your book are all about like, learning a new way of love, you say the relationship only really happens once the honeymoon phase is over. And the dopamine rush has worn off. It's so true, right? The honeymoon phase, it's a great phase. But it's not like you're not really in like that, that that deep connection yet. This is the time that each individual's little me's will start to come out, it will bring its challenges. And you say conflict doesn't have to mean breaking up. And I think that that is something that for instance, I'm married, and I'm learning how to get beyond this, like trigger thought that if we get in a big fight, okay, it's gonna be over. Like, that's it. You know, my parents got divorced. And, and I have gone through a divorce myself. So my first mental thought, is like, Oh, this is it, like this is it, right. It's like this fear. Like, it's just like, That's it, divorce. And I think there's a lot of people in our community that have asked this question before around, like, I just go to that place, if I'm fighting with my partner, it's like it's over. But you're saying conflict obviously doesn't have to mean breaking up. And that's a big message for both the anxious and the avoidant to learn.

Jessica | Absolutely, in fact, conflict, which we refer to as rupture and repair needs to happen in order for the relationship to deepen. But if you had, you know, a felt sense, or a pattern of inconsistency, when conflict comes up, the fear of it ending will come up as well. And so the hope is that you can have conflict or fights or whatever you want to call it with your partner. And you can come back and you can deeply repair it by understanding what the other person's going through. And so the last part of my book is about having a more conscious relationship, and learning how to repair conflict in a way that helps bring you closer. And so that's, that's something that you can do when you and I'm an Imago therapist was, which is Harville Hendrix's work, which is learning how to get conscious of your fight so that you can start to have different conversations, it's like no one you miss date night or didn't take the garbage out, it's really hitting, I don't feel worthy, or you're not showing up for me, which is something that lives inside of me. And when your partner can really start to step into your world and you can step into their world. And it's not about who's right or wrong. But it's more about look at the lens in which we come to this to, then you can deepen your connection. And there's a more fulfilling relationship on the other side of that, but it's hard. I think relationships will bring up subconscious wounds. And you can tell someone this all day long, when those wounds come up, it's hard work to get conscious, it is scary hard work, and you need two pretty willing people in order to do the deeper work and usually wounding if wounding is really deep on both sides, it can be very dysregulating. And I talk about co-dysregulation in the book, where two people are constantly being dysregulated. And then you need another person's nervous system and wisdom to help come in and regulate the system. But it's sad when relationships don't work, when there's just a lot of wounding that's coming up, and then couples aren't getting the support that they truly need to get kind of conscious and grow deeper, because on the other side of that is an even deeper bond.

Robin | Yes, I would say that, um, so many, most of our listeners are dedicated to a life and with relationships that, you know, they want to grow themselves and heal, so that they can have better, more nurturing relationships. But you know, I think the reality also is that there are people that you might be in relationship with that aren't willing to do that work. That could be the case, right? Like, it does require, like you said, in order to get to that place of having a conscious partnership, that you have to be with somebody that is willing to do that work with you.

Jessica | Yes and no. So like I wrote the book for people in relationship, but also people who are single, because if you don't have a partner who's willing to do the work with you what's coming up in your relationship, bring it to a therapist, or coach and heal it anyway. And when you start to heal, what's surfacing for you in your partnership, the system changes. Now sometimes the system changes and you decide you don't want to be with the other person. But sometimes the system changes enough where the other person decides to do healing as well. We often get into this happens all the time where it's like, you need to heal with me. And that's a setup as well. It's really great when couples. I have a couple this afternoon and I love it. They're both really committed and the avoidant person is so committed, which isn't always the case. It's usually the anxious person that wants to come in and fix everything. But I think if you start your healing work, no matter what, you're gonna start to heal what's going on. within you, and if you can do that with a therapist, or a really skilled coach who knows about Cymatics and trauma, you're going to heal that. And it's going to change the system and the dynamic, it could potentially lead to changing the system for the better as well. And that person could lead to some healing as well. Or it could lead you to say, okay, these, this other person is really not willing to look within and even though I can work on myself all day long, this might not be something that I want to still engage in. But the inherent knowing of that will come through with the more and more work, so you're they're going to change the system and decide to grow together at some point, are you gonna change the system and decide to walk away because it's just really not giving you what you need.

Robin | Yep, points back to how if we change this, like you said, the whole system change, the whole dynamic will change. without you even. It's not, you can't change somebody else. But if you change yourself, that dynamic will change, so that's, that's that's such a powerful thing.

Well, Jessica, I just want to thank you so much for the really incredible healing work that you're doing. I learned a lot and I learned a lot, even just in the last, this conversation we just had. So I thank you so very much.

Jessica | I thank you so much for having me. It means a lot that you read it and you love it. And it's getting out there in the world and I'm able to get this information out there. So people start healing and start getting out of misery and start to really have more fulfilling relationships. So thank you for the opportunity.

Robin | Please mark your calendars for April 15, 2023. When we at Real Love Ready, will be hosting an in-person relationship summit held in Vancouver, British Columbia. With world-renowned experts who will spend a full day teaching us how to love better and build stronger loving relationships. Buy your tickets at realloveready.com. We will see you there.

Robin | Please visit realloveready.com to become a member of our community. Submit your relationship questions for our podcast experts. At reallovereadypodcast@gmail.com We read everything you send. Be sure to rate and review this podcast. Your feedback helps us get you the relationship advice and guidance you need. The Real Love Ready Podcast is recorded and edited by Maia Anstey. Transcriptions by otter.ai and edited by Maia Anstey. We at Real Love Ready, acknowledge and express gratitude for the Coast Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play, and encourage everyone listening to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded and continue to steward the land that you live on as well.

Transcription by https://otter.ai & edited by Maia Anstey