202. 5 Ways to Form a Secure Attachment Style feat. Thais Gibson

Sep 27

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Today's guest is Thais Gibson—a best-selling author, counselor, speaker, and founder of The Personal Development School. Based on her scientific research, she created the Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory, which empowers individuals to heal different attachments in their lives and reprogram any limiting thoughts and behaviors.

In this episode, we discuss:

+ What the subconscious mind is & how our childhoods shape this

+ The four main attachment styles & what they say about us

+ Five steps you can take to form a more secure attachment style

+ Relationship needs & fears associated with each attachment style

+ Challenges we can face when healing our insecure attachment style

+ Navigating a relationship with someone who has an insecure attachment style

+ Codependent relationships & ways we can gain back our independence

+ Why conscious parenting can help teens form more secure attachments

+ Whether siblings form the same attachment styles & how birth order plays a role

+ How to find out your attachment style & other similar resources

+ so much more!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Attachment Style Quiz

+ The Personal Development School

+ The Personal Development School's Youtube

+ The Personal Development School's Instagram

+ Strange Situation Experiment

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

Episode Sponsors

📝 This week's episode is sponsored by Journey 180 Planner—the only planner that focuses on self-love, self-care, and productivity. Grab your own planner or affirmation cards at journey180planner.com & save 20% on your order of $15 and up using code SADIE20 at checkout.

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

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a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

Thais: I am a big believer that everybody's 100 percent responsible for their 50 percent of the relationship. I think that sometimes we have a lot of information on the internet that's like, be counterdependent, which means everybody should just take care of themselves and nobody should look out for each other.

And that's not healthy. . That's not how we evolved and survived as human beings. But we have to draw the line where we don't make ourselves responsible for that person's emotional state or well being.

Because that's where we go into codependency and then, we're not showing up for the relationship to ourselves, because we're so hyper fixated on others,

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of She Persisted. I'm so excited for this one. I think you guys are absolutely going to love it. We are talking about relationships and attachment theory. This is something that I think a lot of people identify really strongly with in hearing about attachment styles.

They're like, that's me. I am hearing these traits that I myself have, and so I think you guys are going to really have that experience when you're listening to this episode. Today's guest is Thais Gibson. She's a best selling author, counselor, speaker, and founder of the Personal Development School And we talk about so many different things, but we talk about what exactly the subconscious is, how our childhood experiences impact us, the four main attachment styles, and what they say about us. We talk about how you can form a more secure attachment style, different needs and fears that show up in relationships depending on your attachment style, and also some challenges that come up when you're specifically in that insecure attachment style bucket.

We talk about being on the other side of the the table. So if you're in a relationship with someone that has an insecure attachment style, how can you navigate that more effectively? We talk about codependent relationships, conscious parenting, how siblings play into this, which I think is really interesting, and also birth order, which is a hot topic.

And then lastly, how you can figure out your own attachment style and other resources. So I think you guys are going to absolutely love this. I cannot wait for you to listen. I hope you're having a good start to your semester. If you're student. If not, I hope you're having a good fall so far. It is busy, busy.

As I'm recording this, I'm taking the GRE tomorrow, and I have like 67 different assignments due for school, so it's a busy, busy week. But I hope you guys are doing well, and as always, make sure to leave a review, subscribe, share, send me a message about what you think about the episode. If you post about it on Instagram stories and tag me, you can be entered to win a A Starbucks gift card, so more information on that in the show notes, but I really hope you guys love this, and with that, let's dive in.

Sadie: Well, thank you so much for joining me today on She Persisted. I'm so excited to have you on the show and dive into this conversation. Thank you for having me. I think it's great

Thais: what you're doing.

Sadie: Thank you. So, to give people some background who are not familiar with your history and your work that you've done in your career, I would love to get into your context and how you got into this area of the mental health space.

You are someone that a lot of people look to for advice and guidance and experts that Speaks on so many things, whether it's family systems or CBT and attachment therapy, which I'm sure people have heard, whether they've been to therapy or they're on TikTok, because these are very hot topics at the moment.

, but to kind of go back, how did you get interested in this part of the mental health space, , and how did you get to this point?

Thais: Yeah, I think a big part of it was honestly just that I came from a household where there was a lot of chaos and a lot of ups and downs and like a bit of a roller coaster.

And so I was always really curious about the human experience and people and human behavior. And so from a very young age, I definitely, you know, wondered why people interact the way that they do. And then I think by the time I was a teenager, I was kind of going through my own yeah, just mentally, emotionally coming out of a household with so much chaos, just kind of trying to find my way in the world.

And I ended up doing a lot of like deep inner self work around a whole bunch of different things. And, , you know, eventually that led me to sort of revisit attachment theory. And I was in school for psychology. , but I was really understanding and learning a lot about not just attachment theory, but also the subconscious mind.

Because at one point I had somebody just, um,, Who said to me like your conscious mind can't outwill or overpower your subconscious mind. And so I was having this experience a lot of times in my own personal life of like telling myself I was going to change my behaviors, but not really seeing the change.

And that was very validating for me because I was like, Oh, it's because my conscious mind intends. to, to change my behaviors, but my subconscious mind has basically other motives. And what I learned is that your subconscious mind is actually responsible for 95 to 97 percent of all of our beliefs or thoughts or emotions or decisions.

And your conscious mind is just three to 5%. So basically when we get into this situation, Of having these like ups and downs or these push pull patterns and we want to change them so much of it is because of our own internal conditioning so really set out on a journey to understand like well what is mine what are my condition patterns what are my beliefs and my thoughts and my emotional patterns and what is serving me and what's not and how can I actually rewire or recondition what hasn't been serving me and then I found that that's fit very neatly into patterns of attachment styles and how we can really reshape those things too.

Sadie: I think what's really cool about the She Persisted audience is that a lot of people haven't done all that self work yet. They haven't completely explored, like, what their subconscious belief systems are, or what patterns have emerged from their family of origin. And if they're listening, they're really interested about understanding this more so they can approach this from a much more educated and informed perspective, and hopefully, less trial and error and more kind of going into it with more confidence and support.

And so for people that probably have heard of the subconscious or have heard about these patterns that we make but aren't necessarily being intentional about, can you explain that a little bit more? Like what kind of compiles that subconscious and then what experiences lead to that, whether it's our families of origins or relationships or certain age, , demographics that have a really big impact on that.

Can you kind of explain that for people that aren't

Thais: familiar? Absolutely. So basically what happens is our subconscious mind, you can think of as being like a giant warehouse. It stores all of your memories over time. Now it does consolidate those memories. So sometimes we can slightly misremember things or remember things more by emotional association.

Like if we think of times, we felt really frustrated or trapped. you may have all these sort of specific memories coming and flooding forward. And so, we'll store things often by association, but you can basically think of your conscious mind as being your logical thinking self, your part of you that you identify with most is your sense of self, the rational part, the one that thinks through things or sort of analyzes things, and your subconscious is basically your program self.

So if you get in your car every day, you know how to drive a car, you don't have to consciously think about it, like, okay, make sure I move the steering wheel left and right, or make sure I put the gas in the brakes, like these are programs, you've learned how to do things over time. Now, it's not just our programs for how to ride a bike or how to drive a car, it's like all of our programs ever about what we believe about relationships, for example, what we believe about ourselves as a person, what we believe about things like trust or connection or what we fear.

And so we have all of this, you know, huge, huge storage system of all of these different belief patterns and you can think of that subconscious mind is being the lens that you see and interact with the world through. So if you have a lot of like fear based beliefs, beliefs about relationships, because perhaps in your family of origin you had a lot of scary times in your household growing up, then you're going to see those same fears play out, or you're going to assume those fears onto your current environment.

And I'll give some like really concrete examples that people probably will relate to. If you ever had an experience where you felt like people weren't there for you enough or consistently enough and maybe you felt this kind of fear of being abandoned or felt feelings of abandonment, chances are very high that as an adult in your romantic relationships, you know, you're going to move into a space where you're like, Oh.

I'm going to be abandoned. And you're going to assume your past onto your present and future experiences. By the same token, if somebody's ever hurt you by really breaking your trust as a child, when you go into those early adult relationships as a teenager or in your early adult years, You're going to find yourself going, Oh, I can't trust people.

And assuming that onto relationships, or if you grew up feeling like you needed a lot of space and you didn't want to feel trapped, and that's how you felt. You felt smothered or engulfed or trapped as a child. Well, then you're going to fear that in your adult life. So. So, basically what happens is our subconscious mind is the big collector, the big warehouse of all of this information.

It's our programmed self, and it's all the things that we do without thinking, all the natural things that we'll project onto our environment, and whatever we were exposed to in our upbringing that was repetitive. And that also created an emotional output. So, you know, feelings of, of happiness repeatedly, or feelings of sadness or frustration repeatedly, whatever was repetitive and emotional are what fire and wire these neural networks in our mind that actually form this subconscious space that we.

Are programmed from that's literally how the programming forms as a whole. And so that's how we end up interacting with our environment and where we literally assume our future will be so much like our past.

Sadie: Yeah, it's so interesting, and especially how attachment styles play into this, because like you're saying, we have a lot of expectations for things, and then we also subconsciously follow similar patterns, so when people hear about attachment styles for the first time, they're like, oh my gosh, it's , describes me to a T, it's almost like, , astrology, where people are like, yes, I'm exactly that sign, or that's exactly what happens, but it's like you're saying, We're pulling so much from these past experiences that we fall into that familiar pattern, and there's less of that active choice happening.

That when we're in these situations, we're kind of just doing what we know. We're not necessarily trying new dynamics or putting ourselves in situations that are completely foreign, because as humans, that's not what's comfortable or what's like safe emotionally or physically. , so for people that, , Aren't aware of the attachment styles, especially from the subconscious perspective.

Can you explain that to the audience a little bit? Yeah,

Thais: definitely. So, so I love how you said all of that. So there, there are four major attachment styles. The first one is the secure attachment style, and basically they grow up with a very secure upbringing. In other words, there's a lot of healthy patterns modeled to them.

So a lot of their subconscious is secure. Storing these patterns in the way that they see relationships in a very healthy way. So you'll see, for example, that there's a lot of what we call approach oriented behaviors in childhood, which means all the way as a very, very young toddler, you, if you cry or express emotion or go through something difficult, you'll actually see that your caregivers approach you.

They come towards you, they try to figure out why you're upset, and they make an attempt to release you. with you and be there for you. And so what happens is the child grows up seeing those behaviors modeled to them. Thinking, Okay, I can trust people. It's safe to rely on people emotionally. It's safe to let my guard down to let people in.

My emotions are worthy of being heard. And when they are, people come in, they tend to me and it's safe and it's healthy. And so they basically have all of these healthy programs for how they're going to do relationships as an adult. Much less at this point of the population is actually securely attached.

Original reports looked like it was around 50%. It looks like that's on the decline. We have three other insecure attachment styles. Number one is the anxious attachment style. Anxious individuals tend to have feelings of loneliness in childhood, feelings of being unloved or abandoned. And it can be that they have very loving parents, but the parents are inconsistent.

Like they're not around all the time, they work a lot, or it could be that there's a real abandonment that takes place in childhood. So let's talk about that. A parent leaves and there's a divorce or separation and the parents not really in the child's life any longer in the same way. And so what happens is that kind of collection of things that will hold on to ends up being like Oh, I'm going to be abandoned.

And so what happens is as a young adult or going into adult years, when we start having relationships, we end up feeling like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be abandoned at any moment. And so again, we assume our past experiences onto our present and future. And the anxious attachment style will often present as needy or clinging in their adult life because they have a lot of these fears of people pulling away, but they tend to cope with these fears by holding on more tightly on the flip other end of the continuum is the dismissive avoidant attachment style and the dismissive avoidant usually grows up.

with childhood emotional neglect as the overarching theme. In other words, there's often a lot of, , you know, that, that child not having their emotions be able to be expressed and have it positively validated. So it could be even negatively validated. There could be shaming or like, don't be a cry baby.

get it together, be quiet, stop, you know, fussing so much like there could be a lot of this judgment or shaming of somebody's emotions. Or there could literally just be a dismissal of it, like it just gets ignored. And so basically this person grows up to feel like, I don't want emotional closeness to somebody because I'm not accepted when I'm vulnerable.

I'm not connected to anybody when I'm vulnerable. And in fact, having a lot more space from people makes me is actually what makes me feel more safe and more comfortable. And so this is our dismissive avoidant. And as adults, you'll see that these individuals tend to be very afraid of too much closeness and they can leave a relationship all of a sudden.

They can sometimes be emotionally unavailable. , and they can really want to pull away from somebody the moment things get too real or too serious. And then last but not least, there's a fearful avoidant. Fearful avoidance basically share in the anxious and avoidant side of the attachment continuum.

And why this actually happens is because fearful avoidant children grow up in households where there's a lot of extreme associations on either side of what's happening. So sometimes they'll feel like, okay, closeness is safe and it's a good thing and, and there's love. And so they'll fear that closeness being taken away because they've often had the polar part.

opposite end of that spectrum, but they'll fear abandonment as a result, and they can have that need to cling and hold on tight. But at the same time, they've often had really painful experiences around connection, so they also fear getting too close. And some really obvious examples or analogies would be something like having a parent who's an alcoholic, and maybe one day mom is drinking, and she's in a good mood, and she's nice, and you're like, oh, I want that closeness.

Another day she's drinking and she's had too much to drink and she's really mean or harsh or cruel. Other days she's sobering up and she's in a good mood. And other days she's sobering up and she's detoxing and it's really hard and scary. And so it's like you never know what you're gonna get. And this can also be things like having a family of origin that fights a lot, where there's a lot of extreme arguments, really bad divorce, children are parentified.

It can be things like a parent or parents having mental health issues. But basically there's going to be. this overarching theme of not being able to trust, not knowing what you're going to get, and also constantly feeling like you're in this push pull pattern of wanting closeness, but as soon as it gets real or too close, you want to pull it away.

And then when it's pushed away, all of a sudden it's like, wait, I want that closeness again. And so there can be a lot of this hot and cold intermittent reinforcement or really mixed messaging and relationships with a fearful avoidant adult.

Sadie: I think this is so interesting. And I think that people become.

really aware of their attachment styles as soon as they're more independent and going more into high school and college because instead of your Relationships being defined by like who your family is around or who you're Interacting with because of your environment that's largely defined for you You're kind of figuring out who you're attracted to like we know energies attract and so like you're saying These family of origin lived experiences really start to impact what our relationships and what our world looks like It can look really different really quickly and you also have so much more autonomy when it comes to building those Relationships and maybe reinforcing those patterns or making newer healthier ones depending on what your goals are So I would love to kind of get your thoughts on On what the next step is if you listen you're like, okay, maybe i'm anxious.

Maybe i'm avoidant Maybe you're like i'm secure. This is great. This is perfect. No more work to do. But is it about setting boundaries? Is it about filling your life with certain people? Is it more rewiring that subconscious? Where do you go from that initial starting point of being like this is my attachment style These were my lived experiences after you kind of cultivate that awareness

Thais: Yeah, that's a great question.

So there's basically five key pillars that if anybody's listening and they're like, okay, I'm insecurely attached I'm one of those three insecure ones. It doesn't it's not like this is like a formal diagnosis Like you have a personality disorder or something like that it's basically just a subconscious set of rules that you've learned about love that you're just storing like we talked about in that warehouse and reprojecting back out onto the world.

And so we cope from those big fears of those wounds. So basically the first thing we want to do is those big fears. So like the anxious attachment has the big abandonment fears. They also tend to fear being disliked, rejected, not good enough, excluded. , fearful avoidance have those abandonment fears, but also fear being trapped or not being able to trust or being in the wrong relationship with somebody and feeling unworthy or like they could be betrayed.

, dismissive avoidance, they fear being, , shamed or engulfed or criticized or being helpless or powerless. They fear being weak if they're vulnerable. So hopefully people can start to hear like, okay, those are my big relationship fears. And one of the first things that we do is we, , you actually rewire those fears because you're not born with these fears.

These fears get conditioned into your programming through repetition and emotion over time. As we established earlier, that's part of what programs the subconscious. And so what we want to be able to do is recondition. And I'm happy to share a tool. for how to do that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we need to learn to meet our own needs, especially when individuals are in high school, in, in university, it's such an important time for individuating.

It's such an important time to really learn who you are. And I think a lot of what happens is we have this society or this outside world that's constantly kind of pressuring us to be this mold of like what societal or cultural expectations exist. , And I actually think that high school and university are a very sacred time for taking the actual , time out of your day or week to plug into like, who am I and what do I really want?

And learning to make decisions from the inside out, I think is actually one of the antidotes to like, you know, I'm in my mid thirties and I have so many friends who, cause I know your audience is in high school or university. And, you know, I have so many friends who, at this point in their life are like, Oh, I want, I have to go back to school for a totally new career.

Cause I'm in a career that I'm really unhappy. And when we have honest conversations, they're like, I always knew I was never going to be in this career. I just didn't know what else to do. And I don't think that we don't know what else to do. I think that we don't take the time to actually like find those things out, to do that introspective work.

And so part of, you know, pillar number two of these five pillars is us learning who we are in regards to our needs. And every person has needs. Every person is run by those needs in a really big way. For some people, they need more reassurance or validation or acceptance. For other people, they need more freedom or autonomy.

But it's us actually tuning in to like what makes me feel like I'm in the most fulfilled version of my life. When which needs are met, do I feel the best? Okay? And so, Well, you can actually learn what our own needs are, you know, I'll, I'll share them by attachment style briefly, but, , anxious attachment styles tend to need a lot of that validation, encouragement, reassurance, certainty is really big.

, they need to work with people, collaborate, they need open communication. , so those tend to be really important there. Dismissive avoidance need that like freedom, autonomy, independence, but they actually also respond relationally really well to acknowledgement and appreciation, , for small things that they did, like, Hey, I noticed you took out the trash.

Thank you. Like just these sort of everyday things. , and they also respond really well to empathy, support, and acceptance. And fearful avoidance basically share in both sides of those. So you can sort of hear yourself in there, but they also need like depth or novelty. They need challenge and growth. , and they need that, that connection and intimacy as well.

So when we know our relational needs, we can start to understand well, these things really define the relationship we have to ourself. And so when we can sit down and be like, okay, Well, what do I need and how can I meet these needs in the relationship to myself first? Like if I need validation actually being more encouraging or kind to myself in my internal dialogue Like when we can start doing that work It's a really important form of self soothing and really building out a relationship to ourselves So we reprogram core wounds.

We learn our needs and how to meet them We regulate our nervous system, which is its own beast of a topic It's really about like Being able to spend less time in fight or flight mode and really make sure we feel comfortable being in our body. And a lot of that's through like meditation or breath work or nervous system regulation habits like light exercise, yoga, things that are actually going to anchor us into our body and attune us to like what it feels like to be with ourselves and be more present.

And then we go into having healthy boundaries and learning to communicate properly what our needs are to others. And if we can really do those five things, I know that sounds like a lot, but when we actually break them down into five sections, it's not that difficult to go through each one, but that's where we'll move the needle on going from insecurely attached to securely attached.

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Sadie: I'm curious, you've worked with so many people and obviously had this conversation with so many individuals and explained the attachment styles and I'm sure had back and forth discussions about this journey and this process. Are there certain parts of those five steps that people get really hung up on or find really challenging?

Whether it's like that initial awareness, maybe it's the self soothing, maybe it's moving from others meeting your needs to doing it yourself. What are those typical challenge and pitfalls that people kind of come up against when they try and go through this journey?

Thais: Yeah, I think the biggest one is depending on your attachment style.

So like a big part of healing. when it comes to needs is for anxious attachment styles to really learn to meet their own needs, which if you don't like spending time alone and you're terrified of being alone or not maybe terrified but don't love it, kind of find yourself having this aversion to it. So then that can feel really challenging at the beginning.

I think it's really important to note that it takes roughly 21 days to really recondition our programming. So it takes 21 days of firing and wiring new neural pathways over and over again until they actually start to feel comfortable and familiar and then we feel safe. So what you'll generally see is that for the first like 7, days for an anxious attachment style, when they sit down to start meeting their own needs, they're like, it doesn't feel good to validate myself or encourage myself or do these things.

But over time. When there's that repetition and emotion, they'll actually start to receive from themselves. They'll actually start to feel comfortable, safe, familiar, giving to themselves and filling their own cup. And it'll actually be associated with more positive emotions over time when we do that.

So, you know, part of it can be like, It's not going to feel comfortable because it goes against our initial programming. So we need that repetition for that 21 days. Dismissive avoidance, on the other hand, tend to be in a position where they don't like being vulnerable because that goes against their programming.

So much of their self protective mechanisms are like, keep people at arm's length to stay safe. But as we start communicating our needs, It's very consistently, slowly but surely. We don't have to tell everybody everything about our whole inner world all at once. But as we start opening up slowly but surely, chunk by chunk or piece by piece, what we'll start to find is like, Oh, it actually does feel nice to share with somebody else and to soothe with somebody else as needed or to open myself up to being seen more, being understood more by people around me.

And we may even find that it like gets positively reinforced in terms of, Oh, like people actually show up and they're kinder and more considerate than I realized. So a lot of it's based on attachment style, I guess the biggest overarching theme. hard or difficult part is just that like we're going against the protective measures we've built in relationships to begin with.

But if anybody can observe consciously and look at their relationship patterns and say, Hey, these have not been serving me. These are not the way I want to be for the whole rest of my life and experience. Then, you know, we can do that 21 day, , repetition to actually change and rewire. These old, outdated habits or patterns that are no longer serving.

Sadie: I am curious about how this shows up in relationships. Whether you have, like, a friend or partner or family member and you're like, they're definitely anxiously attached or they are avoidantly attached. Are there ways that we can support individuals that have these different attachment styles or is it better to Kind of come from that position of being securely attached as much as possible and not like cater to these Ineffective ways of of interacting.

What are your recommendations there?

And that's not healthy. That's not how we're wired. That's not how we evolved and survived as human beings. But what's also not healthy is the other extreme, which is like, I'm only ever going to look out for your needs and you're only ever going to look out for mine. And we're never going to care for our own.

And usually, unfortunately, when we're codependent, there's a lot of like, Something we call covert contracts, where we keep thinking, Oh, I'm going to do all these nice things. And then you're going to owe me and you're going to do them back. Or we have a lot of mind reading where we think like, if somebody loves me, they should know my needs.

But because we have such unique and different programming, those become extremely maladaptive strategies for connection and for healthy relationships. And so instead, what we really want to be able to do. Is have healthy interdependence, which is that middle ground. And that means that if you are sitting here listening, any of your listeners, , if they're listening and they're like, Oh, my friend is for sure anxiously attached, for example, you can know that your friend probably needs a lot of like certainty and inclusion and validation and encouragement.

And you can give those things to your friend because we talked about, Hey, that's the anxious attachment styles needs. And so you have this dynamic of being able to like. feed into that a little bit, which is great. And that's you being supportive. But we have to draw the line where we don't make ourselves responsible for that person's emotional state or well being.

Because that's where we go into codependency and then, if we're not showing up for the relationship to ourselves, because we're so hyper fixated on others, then we end up usually being resentful or then we go into that mind reading covert contract kind of forming. So I think it's great to have like, This ability to extend ourselves to people, but healthy interdependence really boils down to, I will contribute and I will extend myself to others, but I won't do it without also taking myself into consideration so that I'm never giving from an empty cup.

So I know what I can actually give and I can, you know, be validating or reassuring or all these different things, but in a place where I'm also centered and rooted in my own space and my own life. And that really becomes where we get into secure attachment because securely attached individuals. are interdependent.

They know how to look out for themselves, , and, and look out for others as well and really do their best to take both sides of that into equal consideration.

Sadie: We do have a lot of parents that listen to the podcast and I think what's really interesting about the attachment styles conversation is one of the most common examples people use is sleep training and they're like, okay So like the parents feel this way and it's challenging but like the child Never really knows what to expect and they're always distressed the entire time I feel like that's the most common example I've learned whether it's in social media videos or classes or whatever Whatever it is from a psychology perspective, but as you're describing the cycle of like emotions and response I think that those teenage years would be really impactful because you are having really intense emotions and you were talking about Individualization and that's a time when you're really trying to do that and build these new relationships and understand yourself But there still is that push and pull and kind of like more integration of the family system So I'm curious what you think What your thoughts are on navigating attachment styles from a parent's perspective, especially during that time period when it's not just kids and you're not just showing up with consistency and validation, but there is a little bit more nuance and open dialogue there.

Thais: Yeah, it's such a beautiful question. So I think to your point, like, people's teenage years is one of the most sensitive times. And I think that because And this is just really honest for if there are parents listening, I'm sorry in advance, but I think that there's a lot of parents who have their own attachment wounding.

And what ends up happening is when they see their children individuating at a subconscious level for those parents, sometimes they have their own fears that get projected onto the relationship with their child. And so sometimes it can be like, Oh, their child's becoming more of an individual or Rebelling in certain ways or trying to carve out time and space for themselves, and that can trigger a parent's own unresolved abandonment, wounds or fears of something bad happening to the child and child being unsafe.

Or, you know, there can be their their own fears that they project onto the relationship and There's this really, , wonderful body of work called conscious parenting, and it talks about how basically everything that triggers you In your relationship to your child is an opportunity for your own growth and healing.

Now it doesn't mean don't have boundaries with your children or don't, you know, make sure that you're accountable and protective and looking out for them and that it's very healthy to say, Hey, there's consequences to actions. And if you do these unhealthy things, there's going to be not great consequences.

And that's fine. But I think that honestly, when it comes to the parent child relationship, Each person has their inside job first to take care of. And I think that when that is being done effectively, then there's a lot more room for proper and secure connection to take place. Because if I'm connecting with a child, let's say he was a teenager.

And if I have, let's pretend I'm anxiously attached and I have my own unresolved abandonment wounds and that child's like trying to stay out every Friday, Saturday and do all these things, I might have my own fears. Like, oh, my gosh, my child's getting to that age where they're not going to be around as much.

And then I may find myself controlling or, you know, becoming too strict about their time because I actually have my own things to work on. So I really want to just highlight that first. I think that the relationship really exists in steps. And I think that when a parent is emotionally regulated themselves and they're in their happiest and best version, There are much more fun and open person to connect with, , when they're around their children.

And you'll usually see the connection stabilize in the parent child relationship when someone's a teenager, if that parent has really taken care of their own inner work first. I think the second piece is to keep that open channel of communication. And that can really happen by honestly, if you see that one of your children is insecurely attached by meeting their attachment needs.

, so if you know that your child's anxious. Like be a little more encouraging or validating. If you know that your child's dismissive avoidant, you know, have the time and space to respect their freedom or independence or autonomy, or to be acknowledging of the things that you see them doing, but that doesn't have to be at the expense of what number three is here, which is to also advocate for your own needs.

As your child becomes an adult, you start having an adult to adult relationship. And so. In that particular space and time, you are going to have your own needs. And while you may, like, let's say, for example, have a fear of your child growing up or leaving, and that could trigger the abandonment fear, as you work through that abandonment fear, that's not a call to say, like, Hey, just let your child run free and who cares?

It's a call to say, I'm going to approach my need for connection with my child from a regulated space. So I'm going to work through my own abandonment fears, but then I'm going to tell my child that Hey, I really care about this relationship. I know you're busy and you have a lot of things you want to do with your friends, but can we have like an every Sunday evening we do dinner together and we spend time together just being present or hanging out like you can still advocate for your needs in that relationship, but it's just going to be most effective to somebody going through their behavioral stages of individuation if you're doing that from a regulated place first.

Sadie: One more question I have about the family system side of things is siblings, which we talked a lot about, like, your family of origin really impacts these attachment styles and how those show up in adulthood, but can siblings have different attachment styles and how do things like emotional sensitivity or our, inner dialogue, will that also impact attachment styles or it's just like everyone in the same environment kind of developed the same style?

Thais: I hardly ever say See, , it's funny because it's such a good question. I wasn't laughing at your question. I was laughing at how it almost never works like that. Like I rarely see kids in the same household have the same attachment style. There are so many reasons to play into this. You could make an argument for birth order.

You could make an argument for, , genetic predispositions still being slightly different in certain ways. But honestly, what I've seen over the years, having been in private practice for a long time, and then through our programs is that what actually happens is. Children are just treated differently because the parents in a different headspace with each of their individual children, like generally the first child, parents are really overprotective.

They could be more controlling, a little bit more strict. And so you're probably going to actually see that there's a little more lack of freedom and autonomy. And then there actually can be like the overcompensation of that for that, that child as they grow up. You'll also see that like. , in the birth order context, not the way that we traditionally look at birth order, but like, if you have a child who is, let's say, two years old and the next sibling comes along, that can actually trigger the, the biggest times they see jealousy being an issue for people in their adult life is when they have siblings very close in age, In their early upbringing because literally jealousy is actually this survival mechanism that we feel like oh my god Our needs aren't going to be met How are we going to survive if this person is taken away from us who's meeting our needs?

And when there's another child that comes along right after that first child It can feel like almost this survival threat to the attention being split and especially if there's many children after or things of that nature but There's so many other things that play into it in a big family. You'll often see the elder children be parentified.

They may play a caretaker role for the younger siblings. Like, there's so many parts of it that affect our attachment styles. And it can even be things like, , you know, parents being in one head space when one child is born. And then four years later, if the next child's born, They've now saved some money, and they're less financially stressed, and one parent can be around more, be more present, or there can be the opposite end, which is, we see a dynamic where parents are quite loving, but unfortunately, one of the parents just lost their parent at the time of their child's birth, and so now they're emotionally unavailable in those early formative years, and they're going through their own grieving process in various ways.

So there can be so many different things that really play into this, but that overarching theme is that you're very actually Less likely to see that Children of the same household are all just the exact same attachment style. You'll generally see variations of it. Unless you have Children close in age, very chaotic household, very disorganized dynamics that are going to be more likely to produce a fearful avoidant attachment style because there are these extreme cases that those are always going to be the overarching themes.

Sadie: That's so interesting. , my last question for you is about resources that you recommend because there are so many different directions you can go off the edge of this conversation, whether you have a specific attachment style you're interested in or there's the parenting side of things, there's the psychology perspective.

So for people that are interested in learning more about attachment theory, what are your recommendations?

Thais: Yeah, I definitely think start by taking quiz. You can decide what your attachment style is. We have a free quiz on our website at personaldevelopmentschool. com. You can go in there and it will actually give you like a full report to your email that will say, this is your attachment style.

This is the percentage breakdown. This is , your most likely core wounds, your biggest needs and relationships, probably the ways you have boundaries and communicate or maybe lack thereof, , and it will help give a breakdown. And then, you know, we, we also have a lot of resources in terms of courses. We have a conscious parenting course.

We have, , an attachment style healing course. We have a lot of that, but there's a lot of things for anybody who's like not trying to go, , Fully, fully down that path. You can start by taking the quiz and then you can watch content. Like I put daily content out on YouTube at personaldevelopmentschool chaise gibson.

There's a lot of, , other great resources as well. Like the original work of like John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth is, is around. There's some interesting experiments you can watch on YouTube that are like the strange situation experiment to help you really see how a child feels. actually exhibits their attachment style at a very, very young age.

, so there's a lot out there, but I would definitely say just learn your attachment style first, and then that will give you a really clear picture of the things that you can work on next.

Sadie: I love it. It's so funny. I work in a lab at Penn and we have three and four year olds coming in and we're looking at relationships and attachment and we're mainly looking at Cal's traits but of course then you have a 50 50 breakdown so you can understand both sides of the picture and one of the things we do is the strain situation and so one of us comes in like with a mask on and a hat and we're like, hi, do you want to play with this toy?

And it's so funny to see how they react because the parents are in the corner and some kids are just like. Yes, I want the toy. And others are like, mom, there's a weird person in here. And so it's fun to see it from both sides. That's so cool that that's what you get to do. That's super interesting. It's really hard to not laugh, and I'm sure the kids are like, they don't find it funny, but from an adult's perspective, to like no emotion, because you have to like keep the variables consistent, so it's a funny position to be in for sure.

Thais: Oh, that's so interesting. Well, that's really cool that that's what you're studying

Sadie: and that's what you're doing. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, this was absolutely incredible. You mentioned your YouTube, but if people want to follow on Instagram as well, where can they find you? Yes. at personaldevelopment underscore school.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. This was absolutely incredible. Thank

Thais: you so much for having me. I appreciate you being here and

Sadie: hosting such a great podcast.

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