150: Attachment Styles and Relationship Repair - with Stan Tatkin

What’s the best way to overcome conflict in your relationship? How does it change based on your attachment style? And can you use what we know about our biology, and our memory, to keep a relationship from getting past the point of no return? In today’s episode, we’re blessed with a return visit from Stan Tatkin. Along with training couples therapists and conducting workshops for couples all over the world, Stan is the author of Wired for Love, Wired for Dating, and the recent audio program from SoundsTrue - RelationshipRx: Insights and Practices to Overcome Chronic Fighting and Return to Love. Stan’s work blends Attachment Theory with Interpersonal Neurobiology, helping couples leverage science to succeed in long term relationships. It’s always a treat to have him here on the show, and our conversation today will give you fresh insights into how to fight, how to repair, and how to transform conflict into something that helps you and your partner grow closer together. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Also, see below for links to our other episodes with Stan Tatkin. Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode has two amazing sponsors. Each has put together a special offer for you as a Relationship Alive listener. Please visit them to take advantage of their offer and show appreciation for their support of the Relationship Alive podcast! First are the folks at TakeCareOf.com. Through a unique online quiz, they help you figure out exactly what vitamins and herbal supplements you need to achieve your optimal health. They use high-quality ingredients, and can save you as much as 20% over comparable store-bought brands. On top of all that, they are offering you 25% OFF your first month if you visit takecareof.com and use the coupon code “ALIVE” at checkout. This week is also being sponsored by Hungryroot.com. Hungryroot.com is a service that sends healthy, delicious, plant-based and gluten-free foods to you, each week. They're easy to prepare (either ready-to-eat or ready in less than 10 MINUTES). And - special shoutout to their cookie dough - which you can eat raw (or bake for a healthy dessert). This is by far the best prepared food delivery service that we've experienced. And you can get $25 off your first TWO orders if you use the coupon code "ALIVE" at checkout - at Hungryroot.com. Resources: Check out Stan Tatkin's website Listen to Stan Tatkin’s new release, RelationshipRx, offered through SoundsTrue. Read Stan Tatkin’s books FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict... Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) www.neilsattin.com/wired3 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Stan Tatkin. Here are links to our other episodes with Stan Tatkin (prior to this one): Episode 19: Recipe for a Secure, Healthy Relationship Episode 50: Wired for Dating and Love - Psychobiology Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin, and we are coming to you in full Technicolor today, which is a first for Relationship Alive, not a first for our illustrious and lovely guest, Stan Tatkin, who's back on the show. He was here in episode 19 way back when we started, talking about a recipe for a secure and healthy relationship. He was also here talking about his book Wired For Dating and Love and talking about psychobiology, which we'll address a little bit in today's episode, back in episode 50. And you can listen to either of those episodes by visiting neilsattin.com/wired or neilsattin.com/wired2. We'll make this one neilsattin.com/wired3, so you can download. We'll have a transcript for this episode and any related links that we talk about over the course of our conversation. Neil Sattin: So we're here to talk about a couple of things like when we dive in to the work as a couple and that work involves how you maintain your connection, how you maintain your safety, while at the same time keeping things exciting, but not too exciting because you're collapsing into fights and distress. It's a balancing act and it requires a level of skill that we are just now really coming to grips with, like what skills are required when it comes to relational excellence in long term relationships. And Stan is one of today's leading experts in how to navigate that well. And one thing that I loved, Stan, in listening to your recent recording that you did for Sounds True called Relationship Rx, which is all about overcoming chronic fights in a relationship, I love that you were right upfront by saying, "Hey, if you're in a real relationship, you're gonna be dealing with this. I deal with this." I deal with this with my wife, with my children. And so there's not this halo that somehow because we're relationship experts that we're not affected by things like getting triggered and getting knocked off balance and having to come back and repair. I'm excited to have you here to get real about this art of how we stay safe and secure and there are also a few specific questions that I have for you along the way that have come in from listeners to the Relationship Alive podcast. Stan Tatkin: Sure. Neil Sattin: It's a pleasure to have you back, so thanks for joining me today. Stan Tatkin: Thank you, Neil. It's good to be back. Neil Sattin: Awesome. Awesome. I would like to just... Let's just have a nutshell summary of psychobiology. What do you mean by that since your approach is a psychobiological approach to couple's therapy, which is the PACT that we see behind you here for those of you who are watching. Stan Tatkin: Well, think of it as study of the brain and the body. We could say it's psycho-neurobiology or neurobiology, but psychobiology is basically taking a developmental approach to the human primate lifespan and in particular pair bonding with and between humans. This is basically a capacity model, meaning we're looking at social-emotional development from even in utero. But postnatally, we're looking at the networking of these structures and the function of these structures that allow us to be effective human beings with each other, particularly when it comes to attraction and when it comes to distress. Those are the two areas that encompasses the burden placed on people who are and are not socially-emotionally intelligent. Neil Sattin: Right, so this question of how we as organisms, like what generates attraction in us on a physiological level as well as a psychological level and then also how do we manage the problem states that come up. Stan Tatkin: Yes. Neil Sattin: On a physiological and psychological level. Stan Tatkin: Yes. And a lot of what we see between human beings is psychological to be sure, but not in the traditional sense. A lot of what happens between people is involving automatic systems that are recognition based and not thought based. They're recognition based because we're fundamentally memory. That's how we operate. Everything we do is based on memory. There is, on balance, very little that we do that requires the kind of cognition, predicting, rotating objects in three dimensions in our head, planning. All of these things contingent kinds of processing. We don't do that at any given time during the day, very much compared to how much we are automated and how much we are using these very lightning-fast recognition systems. And so we're talking here about the human condition, not about individuals, per se. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I loved in Relationship Rx where you talked about how when we first meet someone, we experience them, it's this amazing novel, new thing, a new person in our lives. But that very quickly, you use the phrase, "we automate them", we push them back into the rote memory that allows us to just function automatically with that person. Stan Tatkin: Yes, nature has built in energy conserving functions in our brain and in our body. If we didn't have these, we wouldn't survive, we wouldn't be here. So we can only perceive so much, hear so much, feel, taste, smell so much. We only have so many neurons for those things. And because there's so much sensory motor information that we have to process at every moment, the brain has to gate or limit that information. And especially limit the amount of information that floats up to consciousness or awareness. So most of the time we are doing things on a level where we're not being told, we don't get permission or give permission to some of the things that we do by these primitive areas that are recognition memory based that allow us to go through the day and do the many, many things that we do and still conserve energy. So, this is not a bug, it's a feature. But in relationships it can also be a bug. Neil Sattin: Yeah, right, exactly. Because then you could be stuck in painful memories of what's happened either in your relationship or the things that happened long ago that your relationship evokes, right? Stan Tatkin: Well, yes. In the love relationship in particular, a relationship I think of as the hardest one on the planet. The reason it's so difficult is... Interested in reading the transcript for the rest of this episode with Stan Tatkin?  Visit neilsattin.com/wired3 to download the full transcript of this episode!