Amir Levine (on attachment theory)

Welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi.

Hi. We have the author of an incredibly popular book. Yes. Read by millions.

Millions, indeed. His first book was Attached, Amir Levine. He is a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, and, of course, a best-selling author. And he has a new book out, kind of answering as he talks about Attached, outlining these different attachment styles, and then people were naturally curious, can I change mine?

So his new book is to address that exact question, Secure, the Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life. Please enjoy Dr. Amir Levine. This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple TV, the new U.S.

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Hi, Moni. How are you? I'm good. Did you have a good weekend?

I did have a good weekend. Anything spectacular happen? Nothing spectacular, which is a good weekend. Oh, hi.

You know, relaxing weekend. I'm moving this week. Friday? I'm sleeping on Friday.

Oh, my God. Mine has been building a house across the street for, what, five, six years? It'll be six years. Wow.

Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a long time coming, so I am very excited.

So this week is a big week because there's a lot of, like, moving parts and doing this stuff over. I wonder if any of your attachment theory stuff is coming up. Oh, I hope. I'm so obsessed with attachment theory.

I'm so glad you're here because I'm obsessed with it, and I don't think I really understand it. And I think a lot of people feel that way. Like, they reference attachment theory a lot, but I don't know if we're all doing it correctly. There's a lot of myths and misconceptions, for sure.

Okay, great. Well, we're going to go. Where are you from, Amir? Originally, I grew up in Jerusalem.

Okay. Do you find this to be true that the Israelis, they took up highest on the disagreeability category? We've had a lot of experts talk about that. Oh, the Israelis disagree a lot?

Oh, yeah. It's part of our culture. Yeah, yeah. I like it.

It took me time where Americans would consider being rude. Yeah. It's actually just a normal way of speaking. Like, they go like that.

She's like, no, I don't agree with you. I'm just missing. It's so rude. You're very comfortable in the disagreeability.

I'd say I'm high on the disagreeability. Not only that, I think that's how I got into Columbia to do my residency there. Really? Yeah.

I went to medical school in Jerusalem, and they said, don't bother. They don't take foreign medical graduates. And I said, okay, I'll just go, and at least I'll get to talk to all these interesting researchers. And I read about the research, and then some of the people I knew about the research.

Because usually you go and you go to Grand Rounds, you spend a day on the wards, and I said, no, I want to meet with the researchers. Yeah. So then I met with one guy who seemed kind of like old and very non-threatening. And I knew about his work.

So I told him how much I left his work, but I could have improved. There's all these different shortcomings in his methodology, and it sort of went on and on. I was like, what did I do? You had nothing to lose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at the end of it, he said, okay, I want you to meet with a few more people. He called a few more people around. He was the Department of Epidemiology.

And they all got together and wrote a letter on my behalf to the head of the residency program. Oh, kidding. And that's why I got in. That's great.

Oh, I love that. Well, am I right, or at least to believe from this book, that you were originally definitely aiming at being a therapist of some variety? I still am a therapist. Yes, yes.

But the original site was set up. I was going to be a psychoanalyst. That's how I basically ended up where I am today, in a completely unexpected way, because back then, in order to become a psychoanalyst, you had to do a year of analysis before going to an expert. I love this.

Personal analysis? Your own analysis. Oh. Like four times a week on the couch, talking whatever condition is behind you, you don't see that.

Oh, wow. Yeah, we've had numerous. In fact, we just had someone on who they themselves were a therapist, and they got to a point in their life where they had to return to therapy. And how much there can be a resistance to that, even from therapists.

Yeah, Freud said that there's always resistance. It's kind of like built into the treatment. Yeah. It's always all that part of the work as a therapist is working through those resistances.

Yeah, so during this year of therapy, you came to realize in some free association that you really still yearn for the biological. So I was going to do potentially epidemiological research, but then during that time, I was looking for the kind of research that I wanted to do. And I got some advice, and they said, you know, a researcher's life is a really hard life. A scientist's life is really hard.

So you better do something that you're really interested in, because it's going to be a rough ride. And so I looked to see what I really liked, and I've always had an affinity to basic science and to molecular research, but I didn't really pursue molecular, I didn't have a PhD, but I really liked it. And it was the analyst who said, well, maybe you should give it a try. But he didn't really know what it means.

I didn't really know how to hold it by a pet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I found this one paper that I really, really liked about long-term memory and how long-term memory is conserved and epigenetic changes in the neurons in a plesia, which is a sea slug. That has enormous neurons?

Yes, huge neurons. And then I went, and again, I guess that theme of going and talking. So I went, and I talked to the last author on that paper, but he wasn't the one who masterminded it. So he listened to me for two minutes, and it was Eric Kandel, and then he basically said, let's go up the floor.

And we went, that's where I met James Schwartz, Jimmy, my first mentor. I basically talked to him a little bit about my thoughts again, the same thing about the research and the ideas that I had. Then he said, okay, we'll give you a try for three months and see how you fare, and then we'll see what happens after that. So there I was, going into the lab, which I've never imagined that I would do, behind the bench, studying all these molecular experiments.

Yeah. Now, do you think you had a primary question about life in humans that you thought was going to be answered in psychoanalysis or the pursuit of it and the practice of it, and that you saw in this epigenome work, well, maybe the answer lies over here, or had not even occurred to you yet. Do you think you had like a driving curiosity, like a primary question? I really did want to understand what makes a human tick, and I really wanted to understand the brain better, but I don't think that at the time I had a specific idea.

I've always had this thirst for knowledge, which maybe will explain why I did what I did, because at that time I was almost done with my residency. It's been many years going to medical school, and then coming here and doing another year of internship, so I had to do tears, I had to repeat a year of internship, then I did adult psychiatry, and then child psychiatry all together another five years. So after doing all that training, you're 71 years old. Seriously, you're aging back.

And one would think, okay, it's time to make money, right? Yeah. You have to open up your private practice and start making money, and then, oh, wait a second, I still really want to learn more, and I'm going to take a salary, which maybe is like a tenth of the amount, and just continue with my education and learning, but I didn't even think about it that way at the time. Now, looking back, I can see, whoa, these are important years where you could have saved money for retirement, and it didn't occur to me at all.

I just really wanted a pursuit of knowledge. That's what I did. I went to the lab, and then for many, many years, I did a lot of molecular biology work. Okay, so I'll overshare with you.

So I ended up doing anthro, and I really think about why I did anthropology. I think I was immediately drawn to the fact that, oh, there's a lot of different ways you can live. And I think that was comforting, because I felt like with a single mom and all these other things, that we didn't clip so well with the culture I inherited. And so I was quite critical of the culture I inherited, and I wanted to know, do we have any basis to think that this is the way we should do things?

So I guess I'm wondering for you, can you think of any kind of primary angst? Definitely the pursuit of knowledge is a huge one, and I grew up in that environment. I had a very unusual upbringing. My mom had an even more unusual upbringing.

The education that she received was very, very progressive. They didn't care about grades at all. They didn't have exams. They just would give them comments about what they did.

Yeah, and so she lived in a community, so it was like a commune, so they had to work a lot also agriculturally. They didn't live with their parents, so they wanted everyone to be equal, so they sort of separated. So I could actually stay home whenever I wanted from school, and I did. I stayed home a lot and had this huge library, and I would read a lot.

It was completely uncensored. Seven, I would read the commasutra. I would try to make sense of it. Different books that I read at the time that I could barely understand, but I just read them anyway, and especially on days when we had exams, I didn't have to go because she didn't delete an exam.

It's crazy. It was very unusual. And whenever we would come home, so we would read together. It was a very rich intellectual environment, and my mom, she was the editor of the equivalent of Scientific American.

Oh, wow. So there's also a lot of talk about science and popular science, so here's why I ended up also writing popular science and popular psychology. I really grew up with it. And by the way, I would say in probably the best motivated way possible is just intrinsically.

It's not about getting the good grade. It's not about getting the test right. Just for betterment. Also, to think about something original, something that can make people think differently or look at things differently.

Were your parents divorced? They're not divorced. Very, very long relationship. So you're asking because I didn't mention my dad yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're asking about a motivation to understand human behavior, they're completely opposites. My mom and my dad. My mom was a single child who came from an Ashkenazi European ancestry, Jewish ancestry.

My dad was a Sephardic Jew. They had 10 siblings. Came from a very poor family, and he never even finished the fifth grade. Wow.

Yeah, he had horrible ADHD. He was bouncing whenever the teacher would come into the classroom. He was like, you out. Get off your desk and leave the classroom.

By the fifth grade, he was done with a formal education. But he was a very smart person and a very, very unusual person also. Exactly the opposite of this progressive. Even high on the disagreeability scale within?

Completely high on the disagreeability scale. Like, off the target. Can I tell you what he did once we were at the hotel? I don't remember who the president was.

The president of the United States was visiting. He was there with all of his entourage and everyone surrounding him. They're all wearing suits. And I got nervous.

So I kind of clutched onto my dad's hand. And he said, you have nothing to be afraid of. Here, they're all humans, just like you. Let me show you something.

And he took out a quarter and he flipped it in the air and he fell on the marble floor and he made it like this little sound. And they're all looking down to see what had fell. It was like an instinct. And you see, you see, we're all the same.

Oh, I love that example. I thought he was going to be something watching. The one's at the president? Yeah.

This is a weird question. But were you embarrassed by him? Because he was so different? We were so different.

I think it took me many, many years to now really more understand what was going on in that relationship. It was not an easy relationship. For many, many years, I saw it from really my point of view of like he was really difficult, stubborn. Everything had to be done his way.

So like the opposite of what my mom was. Yeah, yeah. Like with him, if I didn't make it to school, that was a big deal. Thankfully, he wasn't around a lot and that's how I was able to get away with it.

But if you were around, eventually he let my mom do whatever she wanted to do. Yeah, yeah. But he was very, very difficult later on. And actually, that's part of why I even wrote this notebook secure because all of my understanding and everything that I understood about a relationship really shifted and I see it now from a more secure place.

Because he was more an avoidant. Oh, gosh. He was definitely somewhat avoidant and I think also somewhat fearful avoidance. Sort of like a mixture of it.

Now that we know a lot more about ADHD, the rigidity in the game plan, how much different that is for his experience and your mom's or other people's. Definitely. Maybe a little compassion. I have so much more compassion to him now and then because of this whole process that I went through and understanding how to look at the world more securely and that has helped me so much because, yes, he was difficult, but I was not easy either.

And I was a smart-ass kid who was really highly educated, was reading all these books. Belittled him. Yes. Yeah.

And corrected his language and was like, do all these things. Triggered his insecurities. Yes, constantly. Yeah.

Isn't it so sad that we realized this all, is your dad gone? He's gone, yeah. Yeah, mine too. And I'm like, I just hate that I now have all this compassion for him because I was the great challenger of him as well.

Kids, that's almost part of their role. They are their challenge. It's normal. I know.

But he can get vicious. I know. He can. Trust me.

I know. For me, it's just sad. It's like, here's this man on earth that had this boy he clearly loved and I could have adored him more and that would have filled him up more. And that was on the table for me to do and I didn't for all my many reasons.

That's a bummer. It's not like karma gets you eventually. So now I have this little dog who's really, really cute. But he likes me, but he always growls at me.

He has a contentious relationship with me. And I'm like, yeah, my dad really loved me because even though I was mean to him, I know that he did. But then I had this idea, like, how do you feel about me when I was behaving towards him from that way? And now I know because I can feel it inside.

Yeah, yeah. I don't even think it's ever anger. It's just kind of hurt. It's just even sad.

You know what I mean? It's just angry about. Okay, so at some point in your 65 years in academia, residency and all this stuff, you yourself come across attachment theory. And you're learning about it.

So just give us a brief as possible explanation of attachment theory, which started maybe in the 50s or something. Yes. I came across adult attachment theory by chance when you learn to become a psychiatrist, psychologist, you know about childhood attachment. And at the time I was going through a breakup and it explained so much.

It felt like a light bulb running in my head. I'm like, wow, now I understand what went down in this relationship, why it didn't work out and what also happened in other relationships. And so basically, do we really need to understand about these attachment? Yeah, let's start with the children.

So with children, the way that he works, Bowlby is the founder of attachment theory. And he had this idea that wasn't prevalent at the time because Freud always thought that we attach to our mothers and fathers. We attach to the mother because she gives us sustenance and food and it's a byproduct of that. But then Bowlby, who actually worked with children because Freud didn't really work with children.

He actually said, no, I beg to differ because he saw what happens when children get all of their material needs met, but they were not giving the attachment that they needed. And so he said, no, attachment is a basic need. Just like food and water, it's not a byproduct. It's something that we need.

And then there's the hard little experiments that show even in monkeys how much they really need. These poor little monkeys clinging to a cloth. Instead of the wired mother versus the cloth mother. The wired mother gave food and the cloth mother, it was just a piece of cloth.

Gave intimacy. Yeah, but it was cold, the metal, but it was cloth and the monkeys went to the cloth. Oh, no. At the expensive food.

They would eat a little bit and then it would go to the cloth. But remember what he said because we don't really understand it so much in adulthood. And Bowlby did say that attachment starts in birth, actually starts before, and then goes in something that's called the strange situation test. Ooh, tell us.

Tell us. So the strange situation test is basically you bring the toddler and their caregiver into a room full of toys and you watch them through a one-way mirror. You can see it on YouTube. It's really remarkable.

You bring them in. The child sees the toys. Immediately, I want to play, I want to play. Starts pointing at things.

They rush over, stop playing, and then they ask the caregiver to leave the room. Immediately, they drop what they're doing. They sort of run to the door. They start banging on the door crying.

And then they ask the mother and the caregiver to come back to the room. And it's in that reunion, that moment, where Mary and Mary identify the three attachments file, the anxious, aborted and secure. And it's remarkable to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So basically. the secure bond the mother picks them up and immediately just like magic they just come down right away and then start pointing the toys wanting to engage again anxious not so much what happens what do they do it takes a long time to calm them down sometimes they come down and then start crying again told the common calm paradigm so the bond is not as effective in regulating their emotions and the avoidant sometimes they don't even cry or even they do a little bit they stay limp in the mother's hands is it fair to say they're pissed at the caregiver so you think oh sometimes they look like i don't care whatever but when you look at their blood pressure or their pulse it's through the roof so they're blocking their attachment needs but at the same time they're alone in trying to regulate the emotions they don't know how to utilize the bond to regulate their emotions it all has to do with how good are people children and adults in using others to regulate their feelings and emotions do we know what the contributing factors are that end up in an anxious attachment versus the avoidant attachment are there patterns within the parenting style that produce that outcome that's a very good question and we do know a little bit it's kind of the wild field because apparently there's something called the adult attachment interview to say that's in adulthood but they have nothing to do with the other attachment style the more romantic ones or other relationships it has more to do how we remember our childhood not so much the memories themselves but how we narrate our childhood there's the adult attachment interview it gets forward by psychologists and that can predict to some degree the attachment style of the child so how well if you're very structured in your narration of your past then the child will be more secure in a strange situation test if the parent is oh wow yes it's pretty wild so if they have a pretty coherent chronological story of their own life that makes sense that's coherent makes sense odds are they're going to have a more secure yeah there's better chances again nothing in this is like one to one ever yeah yeah but that's predicted to some degree the child attachment style and then if you're avoidant then if you're like oh my god the most amazing childhood but then actually when you talk about the memories there's a discrepancy yeah then the other child is more avoidant and the anxious jump around from one topic to another but i still don't really know what to make of it yeah right this is very hard so now tell me how you you're going through a breakup you're learning about this long behold adults also have these attachment styles anxious avoidance insecure only we don't play with toys like that anymore but it has to do with our attitudes towards closeness and intimacy on one hand and then on the other hand how sensitive of a radar do we have for infractions in a relationship and what i mean from an attachment perspective is when all of a sudden we feel that the other person is not available to us because attachment is really a radar of availability of other people it's a safety system people think it's such a deep thing about bonding it really is a very rudimentary safety system it's how we feel safe in the world and so we survey the environment and you kind of have an idea in our mind and you two probably also have an idea in your mind where your loved ones are and they're okay but if i were to tell you that god forbid and i'm saying that there's something bad happens somewhere you won't be able to continue to have this conversation you'd have to stop and immediately check to see that they're okay so we have this surveillance system going in the back of our head all the time people with an anxious attachment style their surveillance system can pick up on very subtle changes of that availability on potential threats but the research also shows that it's not the only thing they're very good at picking up they're picking up on picking a lot of different social cues there's a downside to it but it also comes with a huge upside let's say if you're and i've seen it so many times with patients and just in people in the world like if you're better at day trading instead of really see subtle changes that other people won't be able to detect they're just very very good at detecting and then also one then questions and that's what i really started doing this book is turn around the whole causality thing because oftentimes people blame their parents for their adult attachment style and it's completely wrong but think about how hard it is to raise a child that has that level of ability really superpowers to pick up gears from the environment it can be a little stressful for all parties yeah yeah i gave an example in the chapter because i really was trying to look for an example that people understand no it's not only about danger it's not only about sort of bad things true they can also identify danger but in the book i give an example about a woman who has an adopted daughter and she takes her to the first day of school she starts playing with another girl there that she also finds out he's adopted and then all of a sudden she stops and like i can't believe i'm seeing this these girls are sisters and she saw like in their facial expression they weren't exactly the same but she could sort of detect the similarities and their sort of facial structure and the way that they smile the way that they move and she started talking to other people and said no way no one believes her the answer right exactly but she kept at it and long and old they actually are sisters wow and what did she do with that information these two sisters are bonded she found her daughter her sister i think years later and they're as close as ever so it's a really good story yeah you're right though we tend to pathologist every single thing that we know about and it's like all these things are trade-offs they all come with some benefit or you wouldn't have gotten to this point i'm glad that you said that because i would say that my biggest mission in this book for people to realize that attachment and that's one of the biggest misconceptions and when you look on social media that people equate anxious and avoidant with pathology that's why i'm so drawn to the science because attachment it doesn't come from the medical model of pathology and healing and curing pathology it actually comes from social psychology and the neurodevelopmental model so the question is not about what's wrong and how we can cure it or heal it it's more about is it effective or is it not effective is the bond effective in regulating the emotions is it working for you is it servicing your goals or not and from an attachment perspective specifically are you able to use this as something called a secure base is it giving you a secure base because the point of view of relationships from an attachment perspective remember it's a safety mechanism it's for you actually to fit into the background so you know the strange situation when the child wants to play with all these toys and every once in a while looks back to see if the mother is there that's the point of a relationship so we can kind of like check to see if they're there but not to think about you that much so you'll be in the background so we don't play with toys but we have hobbies we have careers we parents we have all these different things so attachment is really linked to our exploratory drive when we feel safe we can explore so it's more related to that okay so you wrote with helen attached which was applying this attachment theory to adults and specifically romantic right because that's what he was initially about yeah and so this book is enormously successful and it also has a very peculiar trajectory as a book in that it's kind of hockey shaped in its distribution didn't just continue to swell over time and there were some interesting catalysts like covid and tiktok initially when you wrote a book where this running joke between us that it's only going to sell one copy to the library of congress i went through this breakup and she's my childhood friend and so instead of just you know how you talk about breakups incessantly so i said you know instead of wasting all that energy about talking about the breakup let's make something good about it can i ask what your style was was it anxious with this person yes yeah it wasn't so much anxious i didn't understand what was going on and then that goes through this idea like all these myths that we have if you don't know about attachment theory we have this idea that everybody loves the same but science doesn't show that everybody loves the same we love very differently if we're anxious avoidant insecure we haven't even gotten to it yet we'll get to it in a moment but we love very very differently so for me i was more like the anxious secure part and then it was certainly driven more towards anxious when the other person stopped responding and said you know when i really like someone i actually think about getting on a plane and moving away to the west coast and for me it didn't make any sense because why would you want to do that if you really like someone don't you want to see a future together and think about being together but avoidance they don't like too much closeness and oftentimes when they feel too much closeness they want to bulk they want to run away but i didn know that but that's 25 percent of the population that it's scary for them that it means that they feel a lot of like independence oh i'll add a layer because i think when i was younger i probably you'll be the first to acknowledge it but like these are all spectrum categories and also we are very fluid and context dependent so i'm relationship dependent yeah i'm one way here i'm one way there but if i had to say what i lean more towards zero fear of intimacy being close that felt wonderful but i would be immediately overwhelmed with the responsibility of that and then this fear almost an ocd wave well if i have to break up with this person this is going to be so painful and i'm now so afraid of this responsibility of potentially hurting this person that now i'm starting to feel a little trapped by it so yeah it's a version of avoidance there's these hues of it it is yeah exactly you weren't afraid by the physical closeness or even the emotional you weren't afraid by none of it scared me somehow i felt like whoa this is a big responsibility definitely a hint of avoidance there and also i listened to some of your podcasts i saw there were moments of change and i really put a lot of emphasis in this book of those small moments of change i think monica you brought it up in one of the podcasts about sort of the glass of water story that you used to have oh yeah yeah yes but it's like why should i get her like no she's not sitting here yes exactly no i should do that and then i was like potentially what does he mean what pattern am i setting up so the rest of my life i'll be waiting on this person right exactly or i'm gonna take advantage of that type of thing and then the leap of faith of no actually hold on do i think this person is someone who will exploit and take advantage of me because i'm nice this one time and then that was kind of the breakthrough was like no i don't think this person is that way i don't need to have this fear and that moment that shift that's exactly how our brain changes towards greater security i love that example that's why i thought i would bring it up because it's such an important it's like oh yeah it's really it's a major shift for our brain so you're able to use what we call metacognition which is like thinking about our thoughts and hopefully you got up and got the glass of water yeah i haven't minded but then it starts all over again when you have kids am i setting up for a pattern that i think is untenable for their life i heard that maybe you mentioned something about when they call from the kitchen yeah like they follow something up in the kitchen like oh i don't want to get up and then eventually no but maybe i should and sometimes you do and sometimes you don't but you be both stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare thank you to our presenting sponsor apple tv the new u.s home of formula one you can now watch complete all access live coverage of every grand prix including practice qualifying and sprints all in one place i will be consuming all those things monica i know you will i kill for friday to start watching practice one following in on a sprint weekend oh my gosh two races and this season brings a ton of new energy to the sport new teams like cadillac and audi just joining the grid new drivers stepping into major seats lando norris defending his first world drivers championship and all eyes on lewis hamilton in the second season with ferrari and a brand new circuit in 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it's both the human expertise with smart modern tech you drop off your stuff go about your day and get real-time updates as your expert works through everything that's the upgrade head to turbo tax.com to find a store location near you and get matched with a turbo tax expert with real-time updates and ios app as i always say it's like my life now is stepping over the many bad thoughts i have in route to who i want to be but they're going to come up every time it's like oh that's that thing that's that the thing what i'm trying to really show in this book is that it's not necessarily a bad thought it's more like this belief that every person should take care of themselves and it's not a bad belief it's just a belief we then assign it lame or bad or sort of even give it a potential causal mechanism but if you just examine it phenomenologically for what it is it's a belief and then you say that is it working for me or is it not working for me but some people could be in that exact same situation and probably have an anxious attachment oh yeah you know it's like it's not like one equals this a different person in that exact same environment oh yeah of course usually in the mix there's so many different parameters that go into this mix so you're right some people will actually say well because i didn't have a mother that doted on me now i have these issues and now i can detect threat when someone tries to pull away because i can identify right i'm so familiar i know what this looks like i think i have anxious i wasn't going to self-diagnose you but yeah i mean look we would pray for your family members a lot of fear superstitious if i miss this prayer they're going to die but that's not really attachment or is it i think it's more about how effective is the bond between you like if you reach out to them how quickly can you calm down anxious attachment is not necessarily just having separation attachment it's more about being afraid that the bond that you're not going to be loved as much as you want to be loved that other people will leave you that other people will fail you i do have that it's more peer-derived than parental yeah it's weird because i don't have that at all with my parents but her other in her peer group so that's the beauty and that's why i really wanted to i mean look 15 years has passed in my last book and a lot of new information was discovered about attachment and i really found that there's a potential here to help people flourish and actually after i finished writing the book then all these people started coming to me asking okay help me become more secure but i didn't have an immediate answer for that because we never really learned about it in the clinical world basically originally i took it from papers and tried to breathe clinical life into it but i didn't have an immediate answer to how you become more secure and then the answer came over time from the lab actually not from my work from understanding the brain not from cocaine use in your brain yes exactly really from understanding the brain yeah so the first book helped you understand your attachment style and then people want to know how do i change it right right and now this book secure is going to help us change into a secure attachment as a neuroscientist is the kind of therapy i wish i could go into with people know more about the brain because most therapies haven't been updated somebody's not to blame on the therapies because NIH doesn't really sponsor them on studies about new therapies but there's so much more that we know about the brain it's kind of like the kind of therapy that me as a neuroscientist would want to have but it didn't exist and so over time i didn't have this grandiose idea i'm going to create it but it just over time just happened on its own and i created these tools and the whole idea is if you know that a part of your life is much more secure than others that certain relationships are much more secure then why not then really increase the volume on that part of your life and just like shift the attention and the focus to sort of create a more secure life and that really changes the brain on such a fundamental level what you do is you merge together three different fields you're kind of you've all horary this you're like you're doing the neuroscience you're doing the clinical psychology you're doing the attachment the attachment and you're creating what you would call now the secure priming therapy but it's not only therapy and coaching but it's also the way i started creating it actually i started creating a course for high school anybody could learn i had a student and she wanted to do some sort of a science exhibit on the social brain and she asked me what would be the most important lessons and i came up with five and then actually like three of them made it into the book and these were the things that i thought would be the most beneficial for people to know and then i thought oh i can actually make a course out of this where people can actually learn if you really believe that you should only count on yourself that's not a bad thought necessarily or it's not pathology but it's really more to explain about how the brain responds to exclusion our brain hates exclusion and i call it the cyber effect and then i develop an antidote to it how do we sort of then create the opposite because our brain loves hyperinclusion or hyperconnectedness how do we then orchestrate that in our everyday life so these are the three lessons that i started to book with yeah so you talk about the science of the brain in part one so what do we need to understand about how the brain works so our brain loads exclusion that was like the most important thing i would start with i call it the cyber effect the biggest thing is safety because we're not descendants of eagles or elephants so a book and importantly so it's baiting your brain so it's like a bridge and it's like you know oh yeah yeah basically i think you know i'm wanting to first let me know about if you know if sort of like exist or provide uh.." we're not we're like these primates who lived for a long time in the middle of the food chain and it was only when I was in a safari in Africa you realize how fucking vulnerable we are because we went most of the time we were in those vehicles and you feel like it's okay even though one time we walked outside in the wild but they had a guy with a rifle behind us and a guy with a rifle in front of us and we had to keep a single file and at no point could we have actually opened the gap and if we did they would tell us to immediately close the gap and then I realized well when we were there there's no people with rifles in the front and then it's not about just like oh I like being hyper included it's so nice I love it we have a 360 degree view right now between our combined perspectives we can alert each other we can use all of our senses to help each other which happens and you see it in so many different social animals even you see it in social birds peck peck peck all the time and every once in a while they swoop out they look for food and then to look to see are they going to be prey but then if they have more birds around they will swoop out they will look up a lot less their brain computes it into the mix and our brains also compute it into the mix you're not in New York but like walking into an empty subway car in the middle of the night I don't know if I would do that I would go to the subway car there's more people or like in the alley we instinctively feel it it's a safety thing you intuitively do that math the birds know like oh there's three of us I should be looking up a third of the time even though they don't know that yeah exactly and there's a hundred so it's like oh I only got to look up one percent of the time because it was hugely advantageous to do that and those who didn't get that social monitoring sort of upgrade they couldn't really compete there was such a huge advantage they got picked off because they were constantly looking up they were only eating while they were looking up and then we get into so much fun stuff it's like the birth of lying comes from this there are calls for chimpanzees to say leopard and this and that and they would make a fake call so they could go fuck the high status female while the alpha yeah it becomes very intricate in humans and also in other social and also even in some birds we have an upgrade to the system because we compare ourselves to others and there's a whole chapter involved in why we compare and why we can't help it but part of our ability to compare it's really about assessing the other are they stronger than me or are they not stronger than me but also we have this upgrade that we can determine are they going to work well with me or not and that ability to compare to evaluate it's key for us this is theory of mind stuff I can think about how you're thinking I can assess your thoughts and are you going to beat it for me yeah I can get her a cup of water because she probably has my back and she'll also get me a cup of water later it'll be reciprocal so we have that ability to assess and that's a key part in becoming more secure and I even have a questionnaire there's like oh assess how good is your collaboration and then also rate how close you are to different people and then see are those really good collaborations also the people that are closest to you because if not maybe you want to think about changing your priorities your relationship priorities and the process of becoming more secure yeah interesting yeah cyberball effect right so the cyberball effect is based on the cyberball experiment and basically what happens you're playing a game of catch with two other people on a video game very rudimentary video game two dimensional and all of a sudden they stop throwing the ball in your direction and the brain hates it and psychologically we hate it you see areas of like pain, distress, self-scrutiny in the brain they all sort of like light up the amygdala's on fire is that what's happening parts of the amygdala other areas of self-scrutiny it's all like threat and what's happening and why is it happening potentially also pain not too different from physical pain it's very very distressing and psychologically they looked and they found that certain domains are being affected but I personally was very surprised by it like we feel that life is less meaningful less in control of our life and less self-esteem oh yeah and less self-esteem yes the things that I always thought my self-esteem is not related to or how much control I have over my life or that life is meaningful why does it matter to who is interacting with me things that come from within they don't come from within and they found the opposite of this valuable effect when you actually put the person in the middle and now I'm in the middle and I'm talking about to you you'll throw it back to me I'm talking about to you you'll throw it back to me I'm hyper-included now so basically you see the opposite you feel that life is more meaningful you feel more self-esteem and you feel greater control in your life so these are amazing things that you can create by hyper-inclusion but then the question is how do you create that how do you create that so that's when I came up with these five pillars yes the CARP the five pillars of secure life which consists of consistency, availability, responsiveness and then you also have to make sure it's not enough it's like oh I'm consistent available and responsive you have to make sure that the other person experiences you as reliable and predictable and that creates CARP it's like a two-factor authentication it's something that happens in a relationship so if you learn to be CARP and you can also teach others to be CARP with you then you can really create that hyper-included and it's not that hard it's actually pretty easy that's what I'm trying to explain to people attachment is not a very sophisticated system it's a monitoring system like if you give it what it needs remember I told you you are supposed to disappear into the background you just have to learn how to strategically give that so you don't wait until a child is super hungry to feed them or super tired to put them to sleep you kind of like try to anticipate what they need and so give it to them and then you can sort of coast yeah it is funny because I'm sure all the listeners can think about people in their lives who they don't have to think about the fact that they're there they're not worried about that relationship it's just there it's constantly you and Aaron there's people like that and then you have people that you're like do I need to check in on them or maybe that's just me because I'm anxious but people who are more on the fence of are they there yeah they're not CARP so what happens is for being CARP sometimes in some relationships and then what happened in the course of writing this book in the course of this work I really learned to fall in love with the secrets of this world because there's just so good relationships and so what I really try to teach my patients and my students and when I supervise is to really shift the focus and find those people because we really ignore them instead of like why is this person not texting me oh but this person texts me all the time why shouldn't I text them right more energy there yes exactly and so you create that shift and then what happens is we come to the final tool which is when you start to pay attention and it's not in the big things it's in what I come to call the seemingly insignificant minor interactions it's also short for skimmies of everyday life it's in those little moments like that glass of water moment that a lot of major change can happen because it re-challenges your brain you get this belief yes I really have to work hard for people to interact with me I need to get their attention otherwise they wouldn't want to be with me they wouldn't want to necessarily reach out to me that's more of the anxious thing instead you get all these experiences all these skimmies that are counteracting that world belief because really attachment styles are basically kind of a world belief which is set in some ways and then our brains sift information based on that world belief what I'm asking you to do is don't sift information based on your world belief look here to your right or to your left and there's additional information that can change your brain with those little thingies so one of my issues with like all this stuff again is straight outs there's positives there's negatives but in the mass top psychology genre of social media what I seem to see the most of is identifying somebody you know everything's about another person's problem you know if you're with a narcissist and then also from childhood yeah so either childhood's to blame or these other people are to blame or they have terrible pathology I don't find a ton of it about how about you make yourself the thing that you think you deserve and then just kind of see what happens down river from that for this is priority number one to make sure you're a car I'm so glad you asked that one of the reasons it was so important for me to write this book because it's just like I don't see things that way anymore instead of going back to this idea as a child just like no but you can see things differently so here maybe try to look at it from a different angle these are little tricks to fool your biology that wants to go in a certain way and make it see things a little bit differently so the brain can see well things can look different so I'm not even saying you have to take accountability I'm not even going there I'm just saying look but the thing is anxious and avoidant have to use those tools very differently and that's when it gets a little bit more tricky well this is where we get into one of my favorite AA things which is like it's easier to act your way into thinking different than think your way into acting different so maybe explain a little bit what's happening biochemically and with neurons and why does this work with neuroelasticity and our pathways what's happening yeah exactly because we have this surveillance system that was in some way maybe very sensitive and maybe the opposite I'm constantly suppressing it and then it starts ruling our life if we get triggered then two different things happen for anxious and avoidant for secure the thing is they don't really get triggered that often they just don't see a lot of threats so even maybe I think they'll be the last people to know someone cheated on them they always see the signs it's just like not something that they'll see or even at work they can give you so many different scenarios the other day someone emailed me and they said hey when do you have time to talk and then my sister said oh my god she probably got fired and then more research recently has shown that it also affects how we interact with our hospital providers and even if we have a chronic illness like fibromyalgia how much pain we're going to be in and then it affects how we shop secure people don't care so much about they don't care so much about logos why are you laughing I just love shopping so much but you can love fashion but it may be less about status and more about maybe it also about status I don't want it to be but it is in the mix you're such a good girl but it's fine I think I said it from the beginning about 25% of the population are avoidant about 20% are anxious and about 50% are secure and a very small percentage are fearful avoidant these are just like variations on the norm there's different studies that show the amazing advantage to have that variability within the population they had one study where they had like a little smoke come out of a computer and a group of people and the anxious ones were the first to notice it and the avoidance were the first out the door and a lot of people followed but if you consider it to be an advantage it's like you know what fuck you I'm out of here but I want to go back to what you said about this whole thing on social media we're pointing at others I just think that it's the wrong conversation or the wrong way of looking at it because there's this whole potential and that's the beauty of the science that we all have these secure people in our lives and secure experiences from our own childhood that we can tap into and become more secure and the opportunity and the advantages I just stumbled upon this chatting with my brother in New York we took a trip for three days before Christmas and we were discussing there's a lot of good social science behind although I don't believe in the secret the book I do believe in an aspect of it right which is your focus and attention can create a bit of confirmation bias so if you're looking towards the future and you're thinking of only the ways you're going to fail those are the ones you're going to focus on and you're going to see proof of that more often then you'll see proof of a different theory that you're trying to serve so I was talking to my brother I was telling him honestly I'm like you know I'm writing this memoir and I feel a bit guilty because it's really the highlights real of the bad stuff because that's drama that's everything that's a good book and I said but when I'm being honest that probably in all your and I's combined stuff that might have maybe been 0.2% of our overall waking experience that's amazing actually and you know why wouldn't the same premise apply to looking backwards as it does forward like you and I could construct any story we want we have enough info back there to come up with any story and perhaps by us focusing on these things that were no doubt gnarly we're kind of excluding all the other stuff that would come from now we actually had a very blessed lucky childhood the way I just described it here is a big part of the essence of the secure priming therapy is really recasting your past from a more secure place and really looking at the other influences of the other people and gave me attention and that moment when we were in the hotel lobby when he threw the coin and actually that shift is huge for our brain and it can really help us it really changes also who we are in the here and now remember that narrative and how we create the narrative it's richer and it's more true it's more true and weirdly I'm dealing with it now it's really crazy that I can intellectually understand that and yet I do have this fear of letting that go I know I think it's so interwoven in my identity that to let go of it would be threatening to my identity and we live in a world that's really ruled by Freudian psychology but everything is because of these things happen to us in childhood but actually the science shows that the attachment styles that we have in his children predicts less than 10% of the attachment styles that we have in adults and a lot of what really changes our attachment style will happen later well that's mind blowing it's counterintuitive and it's encouraging completely encouraging because you can change your attachment style and you can evolve and that's why actually I thought that it was fair to write this book because the science shows that you can change it yeah I want to know a little bit about neural pathways what happens when you dwell on those five you know for me I had two terrible stepdance I had four great teachers why didn't I look at four great teachers I was actually going to agree with that example because I did my homework such a good student I feel like he used AI though to scan all of them it was in 2,000 hours no no actually it was fascinating I have to say and I love the story of the math teacher who recognized it was geometry yeah yeah yeah we had little blocks and then he asked to teach other students changed my life something that happened in a moment someone did something really good about my brain he changed my brain to a different trajectory and made me really see myself differently and think about things differently is the muscle analogy not good or is it good when we use certain thoughts that embolden certain pathways oh definitely it describes it really really well because what happens our current belief is that our memories lie in our synapses in the structure of the synapses usually LTD is like electrophysiology that we strengthen memories the synapses get tighter and there's more even there's actin growing in the synapses to kind of like build a structure so that's why the analogy of the muscles the actual molecules some of them are the same molecules and then when memories weaken which is a very important part because we also have to forget and forgetting is an active process in the brain an active molecular process synapses actually weaken they get further apart that's why I brought up the whole synies thing because people when go to therapy they have to talk about my childhood really difficult events that happen to me but really the avenue for change in the brain are through those synies because every interaction gives you a moment a chance to rewrite something to strengthen those synapses or weaken those synapses and that's basically the synaptic plasticity idea it's such an empowering way to look at it all because you have absolutely no sway over what happened to you 30 years ago that's done but also I mean if you think about it we're a social species we're not particularly strong animals we're actually pretty weak we live in every niche on this planet just because our ability to sort of collaborate and cooperate so well so it doesn't really make sense that we'll stay like stuck in something that happened to us really early on what advantage is there in that at all it's just like it doesn't make sense to me we need to be socially versatile and we are extremely socially versatile much much more than we give us credit for because of that Freudian biology you're so right when it hits me the most I'll be watching some documentary on chimpanzees and you know they're probably our closest thing to look at oh yeah they are and these little babies they get fucked up these elephant males will come through and they'll be thrashing the jungle and they'll throw 130 feet and everything and I just have watching that and I'm like it's curious to me that they're so resilient they go through what we call capital T trauma almost daily oh yeah their lives are vicious they still persevere right and I look at that and I'll go as much as I do like honoring what has happened to us we also have forgotten how fucking resilient we are you can't live with this many members of a group and not be traumatized so that's what brings me to that chapter 10 about causality yes I circled that one I wanted to talk about that and you want to tell a story of Ann a woman who was a child had terrible separation anxiety but unfortunately for her her dad had to travel a lot for business and so whenever he would travel she would sort of cry and really sort of hold on to his leg and like really don't go don't go and then she would have a hard time falling asleep they would try to reassure her but he had to go for work but they didn't know she had separation anxiety there's actually good treatment for separation anxiety in children you said like 46% maybe have that yeah it's very prevalent eventually she learned he's not going to work and I'm just going to bottle it up they thought he was over because he was fine in many cases he does go away so it wasn't unreasonable to think that but she really kept that fear inside for many many years and she couldn't fall asleep she just kept a brave face and then when she was an adult she had a really hard time in relationships she would be in a relationship but she would always want to leave every day was like should I stay or should I leave should I stay and she would keep eating in boxes pack because no no i shouldn't pack them because i'm gonna leave and that happened in several relationships she was afraid they were gonna leave like she was trying to get ahead of it no this doesn't feel right to me i don't know what's gonna happen here this doesn't feel right to me i don't know if i belong here is this the right thing for me or is not the right thing for me and so as someone who learned psychology and learned to do therapy then you said well because as a child even though your parents were loving and cared about you still there was a basic experience that relationships are dangerous relationships are a source of pain and anguish so i'm going to be very careful i'm going to approach this relationship and the truth is i would have given this explanation and i would have stood that explanation until i became a scientist and once i became a scientist i said wait a second when you're a scientist finding causality that's the holy grail of scientific discovery that's so hard to do do you want to explain the difference between correlation and causality i think people think they're experiencing causality we think in causality but oftentimes people find things actually correlate or confound the best example because i love that example when you talked about how you came from a family of little means so you have to sort of fend for yourself and you have to sort of make sure that you're taking what you need and so the best example is that marshmallow test that has been disproven oh whoa whoa whoa who did marshmallow oh no i don't know they tried to replicate it and it was completely disproved come on this is an exclusive what tell everyone yeah so the marshmallow test they took children and they put a marshmallow in front of them and they told them if you wait for a certain time then uh when we get back you'll get two and so they wait a certain time and some kids were able to wait you can see them like sitting on their hands singing trying to distract themselves and then they found that those kids who didn't have that impulse control then they didn't wait they didn't stare as well later in life as the kids who had better impulse control there was a whole theory about impulse control and how good it is and all of that lo and behold they did a larger study with a larger cohort and they didn't find any of that effect and not only that they found that the original studies were confounded by socioeconomic status oh so of course it would make sense yeah there ain't no two coming back yes exactly yeah that's right everybody know that socioeconomic status is the biggest predictor yes oh my god i've been lying that this whole time there are thousands of books written on the shoulders of the marshmallow that's the beauty of science when i work with single molecule i can give you astounding example i worked with mice and palesia much simpler animals even those when you think we found quality at some point they thought pkmz is like a molecule that's the reason why we have long-term memory it's responsible for long-term memory there's a big splash in science paper and everybody believed that and they gave this medication that inhibited pkmz they could erase memories prevent them from happening amazing and it's all done in mice very simple fear memory stuff several years later another study came out in nature sort of science rival it's like no sorry we actually were able to knock out pkmz for mice they remember perfectly well and not only that we gave them the medication that you thought and they don't have pkmz which they thought was specific it did disrupt their memory and that medication is not specific it actually completely i'll just say it in a way that'll make it it's more simple it completely fucks up the brain so that's why they would not have to say collapse of which memory is apart yes exactly something like oh wow yeah like we hit them in the head with a club it connects us to memory exactly so even a single molecule in simple animals it's so hard to establish reality how can i really stand behind such causal inferences like in mice even if you take them if you expose them to a bully i don't know how long they put them there and they beat them up and then sometimes some of them i think maybe 50 percent will really suffer and develop symptoms of depression anxiety another 50 percent will completely like nothing happen right so we don't know that's a simpler animal in a much more controlled environment you still don't know my therapist actively does not like talking about the past because a lot of the evidence-based therapies really focus on the here and now they really evidence-based therapies for depression or anxiety and i really try to create something that will help people become more secure while focusing on the here and now while creating these small interactions that gives your brain another chance yeah exactly stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare okay so let's talk about secure mode and what life actually looks like daily oh we didn't finish and what did we figure out yeah when i became a scientist like yeah i mean i can get that story and it's good but it's not fact i mean you can think about it as a narrative that can potentially help people and i can say you know maybe there are echoes from the past which is fine but the truth is we can work into here now to really instill meaningful changes that will really help you and that's what we did luckily she had a very secure partner that's always good because that's not like the change because they're like i told you i fell in love with the secures of this world because they're like having a built-in relationship coach in a relationship it can be friendships and romantic relationships it can be at work can be so many different areas of our life so those relationships are really really important and then you can take it personally and it's easier for secures not to take things personally because they don't sense danger so it's like it's easier and so yeah i understand it's something that comes up and so she was able to learn to open up to him and talk to him about her fears and then slowly to unpack the boxes all the angst that prevented her started to sort of melt away and it worked really well but it worked in the here and now and it really didn't depend so much on understanding the past yeah but there is something to be said about recalling past events in therapy or in general with even with friends what actually does happen is an opportunity to rewrite your memories you're recalling something and what we now know is that from a neuroscience perspective when we recall a memory we suddenly disrupt it we know like in animal models when they recall memory you can prevent the new protein synthesis and maybe getting too technical but the new protein synthesis in order for the memory to resolidify you need new protein synthesis you completely erase their memories so basically by recalling something you disrupt the memory and you have a chance to not just create a causal connection i think it's actually more powerful to change the actual memory to edit it to suit you more now to where you are now that's why everyone's memories of the same experience are very different because over time they're thinking about it and they're changing constantly editing it constantly can be affected by how other people talk to you about it how you recall it memory is very vulnerable in a good way i think i'm with you and i am concerned about modern pop psychology for all the reasons we're listening one thing i found about going through my past when i actually did real therapy starting five years ago i guess i was telling these stories that i had told a million times but in this context with this man i do believe i was feeling the emotions attached to those feelings that i had never let myself feel and i feel like i got to actually cry when i was telling the story for the first time and i felt like i was allowing myself to experience and grieve for something i just never made space for because i thought it might have killed me so for me i felt like there was utility and then i had delayed the emotional response to some of these things for so long in that once i had the emotional response they got smaller i knew somehow on the other side that door was crying and i was just not gonna go there and then once i did that part i did feel like it liberated me to go forward completely so that's the second the first part is the sort of re-editing those memories and the second part is that when you sit together with someone that you trust and how often we get to talk about those really difficult moments or intimate moments and we call them with someone that you fully trust that you have a very unique therapeutic relationship is unlike any other relationship in the world that you can open up and they're there just to listen and to help you and to understand you and if you feel that connection they give you the secure base to be able to process some of the information and really change it in a way that now actually feels more secure so that's the thing and actually a lot of studies show that it doesn't really matter so much the modality of the treatment you know there's cbt there's ibt there's all these different types of treatments but actually it's more about the fit with the therapist so again we come back to that exactly how well do you feel that you connect with someone and how much attachment is powerful i like to say that attachment is both at the base of suffering and healing from suffering because remember the strange situation how effective it can be in regulating our emotions so we have an attachment hierarchy in our head we all have it and i know that if something bad happens to me i know exactly who's number one i'm gonna go to who's number two you see you're all nodding because you know too i know exactly who to go to and that's very important for our brain and then if i'm securely attached to them most of the time a single word from them or a sentence or even a hug will calm me down immediately there's just no xanax or clonopin in this world that can be as powerful and no wonder because it works on so many different neurotransmitters all together like opiates oxytocin dopamine you name it he works on those and other things that we haven't discovered yet it's so powerful but the opposite is also true insecure attachments can be the most powerful instigator of emotional distress so attachment is the basis of both suffering and healing from suffering and part of the reason why i wrote this book is kind of like to really try to shift people towards getting better and making things work for you better than being stuck in that place where your brain constantly surveying and feels that danger so interesting another part of the book talks about biological diversity and hidden sparks of talent please tell us about that when you become a molecular scientist you see the enormity of molecular diversity that we all possess and how different it is and we know because we all look a little bit different and we all have these different abilities even just in the way that we can flip our tongue or like even with everything all these different things but also it goes way way further than that evolution loves diversity it's really one of the best survival mechanisms but we don't really fully appreciate how diverse we are and also in our talents and not only that oftentimes especially people with insecure attachment sometimes their biggest talents they perceive as entitlement but here like a hidden spark of talent that someone actually identified was your math ability and so when you lean into that ability how it can really profoundly change your world those dominoes if i'm actually good at math maybe i can be good at other things right and so i find that when people can learn to identify both theirs and other people's hidden sparks of talent it really changes the way that they look at others and themselves so for example if someone is actually very very generous but they give to everyone but his wife doesn't like that he gives to everyone but he also gives to you also a lot too you can't just decide oh i want him to be generous to me instead of mean to everybody else it doesn't work that way it's almost like a hidden spark of talent so when you learn to look at things that way you say oh wow actually i see that i don't have to resent that he gives and gives and gives i'm also the recipient of that giving so i can see that as a hidden spark of biological talent as you said it's a system that's standing now available so you can misread that as a lack of availability because they're available for other people yes exactly now you're like talking from the attachment logic because that oh am i being left out scarcity but that's where we can really learn to transcend our biology using metacognition basically so metacognition we think about our thoughts so it's like wait a second yeah i mean i have that valuable effect am i feeling but hey look at and that's where also it's good to have i call that secure people in your life a secure buddy where like if you get upset and that's what i do like in the secure therapy i just sort of real time sometimes with text you're also the recipient of it and it actually doesn't take away from you and you teach them a secure way of looking at things that secure love is actually bountiful and not scarce remember secure relationships are not about being attached to the hip all it needs is like a little bit more acknowledgement so a little bit more texting the other thing is it's actually say well i wish you were here well i say also remember that hyperconnectedness to always give an opportunity if possible to include oh it's too bad you can't come everybody talked about you everybody mentioned you so there's a psychological way of including people even if they're not there yeah everybody talks about you oh my god everybody's like how come and then even in the middle of dinner hey this food you would have loved it so like you include it even if you're not there it's easy to do it yeah i feel like just telling people you miss them is so huge because i'm thinking about you i know you're not here i'm thinking about you exactly a lovely way to include yeah was there anything i left out that you would want to cover i don't know if i actually actually really defined i should have done it i always tell myself like i should define the attachment styles early on yeah let's do it yeah hang up so it all has to do with how comfortable we feel with intimacy and closeness but also how sensitive radar we have to potential danger in your relationship so if we have an anxious attachment style we love closeness and intimacy but we also have a very sensitive radar to a potential danger if someone doesn't become available we notice it right away and that can lead to thoughts of like being rejected take things personally so that's the anxious attachment then secure attachments are people who are warm and loving and they love a lot of closeness as much as you can give them but they're also not sensitive to danger in your relationship so if you don't give them that much closeness they're fine with it too they just don't see oh my god something's wrong they don't like me anymore no it just goes over their head so that's secure attachment and people who haven't avoided the attachment style they also want relationships because we're social species but they just don't feel too comfortable with too much closeness they want you but they want you from a little bit of distance and so they find ways of creating that distance so they can feel more comfortable what would that look like because when you say the anxious attachment i immediately i think we all can you can think of like your big friendship group and you can think of the ones that are like really upset monitoring when they've been invited when they've not and i mean this is a brag but it's like i don't notice that right like i don't notice on instagram this group was at dinner it doesn't even cross my mind so to me that's a very obvious example so what does the avoidant one look like i'm glad that you said that you don't notice that because secures don't notice it oftentimes but if they're asked to do it they will do it yeah avoidance they have a hard time with it because they have this worldview that you have to be independent you have to be self-reliant and they are to themselves but they don't understand like we said they the population they don't understand that they're the minority they're not the majority most people need other people to help in their time of need when they come to you so when you come to them in time of need it's like what do you want from me take care of it but then it actually triggers you even more no no now you become the center of their problem i'm coming for help and you're not helping me they forget about the bad thing that happens to them and now you're the bad thing that's happening to them so they're falling through these constant traps unknowingly often not knowing how to manage like no you're the minority report you need to understand that when people come to you they can't deal with it on their own but that's one thing the other thing sometimes they create a lot of closeness well this is really amazing we come together everything is very intense and fun and then comes monday and they need their time okay we've had enough right they have this idea that they can carry forward like credit but attachment doesn't work that way it's a radar and so they actually disappear they do the opposite of what they intended to do they actually increase the change now you're actually even more what's happening why you're not answering it feels like love bombing yeah they don't understand what's happening yeah like why are you disappearing all of a sudden so remember the consistency available they don't even understand what's happening they're like yeah don't you feel filled up yeah and then the last thing that happens is that sometimes they get too close too quickly they don't pace themselves because they're like no i want this to happen i want it to work now i've looked for all these people and it doesn't work and now and so they get very close real fast because they think all the other people that i met they weren't the one this person number one i made just swoop in and going like full force to make it work but that's exactly what they don't need to do because the problem is not that they weren't into that person they were into all these other people the problem is that there's too much closeness for comfort and then they have these deactivating strategies like oh i like this person i don't like how they chew i like these are all these little things the toenails yeah there's these deactivating strategies they have to learn to pace themselves and they have to learn not to get i call it the closeness overdose because then they're going to feel like no this is suffocating i don't want you anymore and then again they create this sort of push pull so you can teach them how to sort of engage in more carp steamies basically yeah did you once say that one of your criticisms of your own book attached would be that you didn't necessarily give the avoidant oh i'm glad you brought that up yeah the avoidant grew as much compassion as maybe this is my like amends but it's not entirely my fault this book is definitely my amends to the avoidance and that is mine i have to say also just the research in general because research is also biased and the questions that people ask are biased and i feel that in this book i really present a much more biological explanation of avoidance not necessarily you know again blaming the mothers like that your parents were not responsive to you i don't think that's the case and i really make it a strong case of it but i really think that we presented the data the science and they show they have a wondering eye they don't take care of you so well if you're sick and so we just wrote it out there but then over the years working with avoidance they laughing at me yeah yeah yeah just laughing at me when someone gets sick i'm like just go deal with it man i do yeah we all get sick i was sick too but i didn't fucking bother you with it yeah exactly because they don't bother people yeah i'm so guilty of it what's happening biological with me so biologically i give an example in the book of the elegance which is like a tiny worm that neuroscientists love because they have again huge neurons and they can be manipulated and experimented on so in c elegance they found that they have two types of feeding behaviors solitary behavior and uh social eating behavior and so they eat e coli thank god we don't want i know so when the social ones they detect e coli you see like a whole pile of worms and then i'm sorry but it's important because the solitary one they swim in that direction they swim the other way they're chemically repelled by the other worms and it's a change in a single amino acid in a single protein they can switch solitary to social and vice versa so the case that i'm trying to make is that this preference for closeness and distance a lot of it is also biologically driven and we can see it everywhere around us like even you can see pets some people say some dogs are like cats they don't like to be that close they actually will stay away like okay i like you from a distance some cats will stick to you and they actually are not that separate as you would think you can see it in birds and you can see it in people some people feel more comfortable with more closeness and there's a big big big spectrum but if you can also focus on the here now make these changes that can really lead us to be in secure mode it's a way to flourish in the world to feel safe do not worry all the time it's so much so and that's kind of like chapter four in the book i write about energy in the brain because you really have to understand that the brain is a huge energy guzzler it can't really get reinforcements it can only deal with the amount of energy that it gets it can't increase the blood flow all of a sudden like our muscle scanner when we eat that's not possible for the brain because it's encased in the skull and the pressure will mount and we'll have a bleed so you get the amount of energy that you get which is 20 which is a huge amount the brain is 2 but you're taking 20 and children even more like five year olds it's like 50 it's not crazy and then all that you can do is you can divert energy from one area to the brain to the other so if you feel safer and especially those prefrontal areas that we think and abstract and create these are the ones that are most energy heavy so when you create a safer like a secure mode environment for yourself you can free out that energy to sort of be diverted more to thinking like the child in a strange situation like playing doing things it's not just about oh this is nice to me i don't really have to worry about what the other person is doing it's really more about this frees up energy to actually achieve more yeah and then the last thing and this is now stemming from immediate defensiveness obviously it's also i think tempting for us to label ourselves one thing across all domains right so it's like i could be avoidant in caregiving and illness and then if you call me for a a i've got unlimited time for you i think that's the promising part of this whole book our versatility and our ability to love to change to understand to accept certain things and also knowing so if you're not such a great person when you get sick then why should i call someone else no i'm serious why does one person have to do everything right right it doesn't make any sense yeah yeah okay great amir this is awesome please everyone check out secure the revolutionary guide to creating a secure life this is just so encouraging and hopeful and i really appreciate it thanks so much for coming yeah thanks yeah it was fun actually i was a little nervous about it i enjoyed it came to be fun all right we hope you enjoyed this episode unfortunately they make some mistakes when's mom and dad arrive they land at like 3 40 okay like 5 5 30 lax there's no good burbank which is sad we gotta expand burbank i know but only tell the destinations we want yeah because then it's gonna become the same situation which we don't i will support an atlanta route if you support a nashville route yeah there is a nashville they had one flight one time to atlanta out of burbank the single flight in history yes cali and i took it home for christmas was it air kmart no it was delta yeah it was like a lot of years ago they tried it i guess they decided it i'm not gonna call them out but i am gonna say what is really weird is how much these airlines jockey for quality like if i go back 15 years ago what i would have listed is like the best quality airline like the cleanest most up-to-date everything that has shuffled dramatically and i don't really understand that i don't know what forces make these ones that were kind of good just tumble yeah i guess it's management like i'll just say someone at delta has turned that thing into a real wonderful airline it's a great airline i used to fly it non-stop they absorb northwest right and i always had to fly northwest because that was detroit was a hub for northwest basically the northwest love to fly anywhere where you might get snowed in and have to get a hotel room yeah but you know it was just it wasn't you know whatever well delta probably is they took it and they're like we're making it good i just want to tip my hat they're not a sponsor i want to tip my hat they've really upped their game i think they're not a sponsor but they are my preferred airline except we did fly emirates um to india and that that was nice was really nice that was nice really really nice are you excited about anything it's a very exciting time for me oh go ahead moto gp returned last weekend so we had our first race of the year after four months layoff and formula one's been gone for three and a half months they've been in their winter break right and that returns this weekend oh so i have i'm coming out of my three or four month fast of racing and i'm pretty excited about it that's fun knowing that you don't have something like this right where it's multiple events over the course of a weekend and i may or may not partake in all them but just knowing if i wanted there's a lot of stuff on friday i could check in with saturday's a big day and of course the race on sunday yeah that is the power of having something to look forward to is gigantic yes that's huge speaking of that we really dropped the ball on the olympics this year we didn't watch it we didn't talk about it we didn't do anything that's upsetting and you know it was i read a thing that it was the most viewed olympics in like um 16 years or something what i was a little shocked to see that no it was a hugely successful and watched olympics i'm surprised by that too because i don't not because i wasn't interested but because no one i knew was talking about it at all um and even on podcasts i wasn't like hearing about it i tried right i was in miami when they kicked off erin and i were excited to consume some olympics and do some napping while we did that because it's good napping material because there's a lot of times like someone doesn't run and you're like waiting for scores whatever and so when i this is terrible but when i checked in i was having this feeling of like because i was watching on youtube tv so i can see every single thing that's happening it's all there and i'm like did they take some events out of the winter olympics like what is it i like i like snowboarding aka sean white i loved watching him perform every year that was an exciting thing okay but i'm watching like the first thing i watched was people cross-country skiing for like three hours yeah i was on my face i was like i don't know and another one's like they're kind of cross-country skiing but there's a little bit of downhill like still not very hair-raising and i was like what is my i don't know i've got confused and then i just never went back sure i like ice skating right a lot but i kind of even forgot about ice skating i think the main one for me yeah i did watch a couple clips and there was a whole story about this this olympian who was in the olympics maybe a couple olympics ago and then she was really really young and was mistreated and i was like you know what i'm like not doing this anymore she'll light back into her own hand yeah good personal story yeah and then she's back on her own like you know with two feet on this ice yes and she won oh great and it's like great and normally i'd be so into all of that but yeah i don't know what happened i don't either but i was i was i was saddened that i wasn't interested in hockey was fun this year there we go rob thanks yeah that's what i should have been watching hockey was men and women u.s won yeah that's right i did hear about that boys and girls in overtime the first time ufc canada since yeah all that's cool and like i didn't i take away everything i just said well no you can't you can't take away that you didn't care and like either did i i don't know why my critique would have been the start day one was some more exciting stuff in the cross-country thing for three hours maybe but i bet there are people riveted by cross-country skiing of course there are and there's people that watch the competitive walking yeah there's people there's a live for every pot yeah i forgot to tell you the other day that something weird happened i almost got in another person's car oh tell me it was strange i was leaving a place with jess it was at night and i had eyes and i was a little sick i don't know if that has anything to do with it but we're walking and i start to get in his car and he was like that's not mine and i was like oh silly me yeah silly me and then i'm walking up further and you know there's his car with the light like he had on slashing the way yeah he had unlocked it so that the lights come on it's like go to get in the car and then there's a man standing there he says that's my car and i'm like oh oh oh my i'm so sorry and i look over two wrong cars yeah i look over and just across the street you're on the wrong side of the street monica well we were both on the wrong side and then in that interim time when i saw the flashing lights and thought that was his he had crossed were you tipsy i it was not that it was really not that i was like what's going on yeah because i you lost me at wrong side of the street well i think like you should have your bearings of which side of the street you guys parked on i get i mean i'm not very good at that i don't know we were both walking on that side okay for a while like down the sidewalk and then he just crossed in the middle uh-huh where the car was i guess nope nope this he dropped me off to get in line okay see i knew there was an explanation if you never remember what side of the street you parked on that's that's alarming okay that is something that might happen to me just fyi i'm not good directions i'm not paying that much attention if i'm not driving right right um but he did drop me off to get in line so i did not muscle memory know where the car was parked that type of thing well that explains that yeah but it was otherwise you're in strokeville right right right right well anyway the man it's just he was right there he's like um that's my car i was like oh my god i'm so sorry it's yours at your car at the second night oh nice it needs a wash is that what you were thinking nope okay it really needs a wash i just thought look at these two handsome cars yeah great very beautiful car what are your plans on mom and dad yeah my parents are coming today i'm doing a tour of the rape treatment center it's not funny okay well you're laughing pretty hard it's not i'm not just for the record it's not funny at all right but i am i had planned to do that for a while okay and i was like oh i can't cancel it like that's one bad and two i want to do it and but it's like i don't know that my parents that might not be for them yeah it's like fun you're on vacation let's go to let's go to the rape treatment center right yeah i don't is it psychological treatment that's what they're offering or no they offer physical like it's like great kits yeah like it's kind of like instead of going to a hospital you can go to the rape treatment center oh great yeah yeah and get your exam and and there is like psychological resources and legal resources and things and it's um it's a really cool thing so uh i i'm gonna do that but i think i'll probably leave them at home for that yeah let them you know lounge around the house a little bit maybe that's when i'll take your dad out for a beer and ask him about his previous girlfriends i just forgot my objective for this trip i know about past lovers for your parents right i was gonna ask them yeah i'm not sure we're gonna have time for that um yeah so i think that's really we're just gonna like be there's they're very very excited to see the house and stay in the house because normally my apartment was so small you know they stayed in a hotel when they came to visit you know just come in you get ready and y'all leave to go somewhere yeah exactly now you're not gonna watch her youtube should she will yeah i wonder what she's got her bangs into right now i wonder is there any trials going on uh i mean i'm sure she is very knowledgeable on everything that's going on with epstein sure sure so that's probably the main the main thing she's consuming right now would be my guest but i don't really know i will find out um and yeah and they'll get to like go make their coffees and stuff and it'll be really nice it'll be really nice to have them i did my final walk through the apartment today to turn it back over yeah what's that experience like um it was good i mean it was good it was sad it's sad to say bye to something and the chapter yeah it's also weird it's empty and i haven't seen it like that since i got it oh yeah like i was i remember going to see it and um lincoln came with me i remember oh for the first walk through yeah to go check it out um and that was a long time ago i thought i know you already know this but um i was sad to leave our old house yeah and i thought i was gonna be really sad and then we laughed and i've never thought about it again i've been shocked with the fact that i don't think about it at all yeah because it held a very it's like the epicenter of some of my favorite memories and experiences yeah i have such warm feelings about it but i don't at all miss it and i thought i was going to but don't you think that's kind of in keeping with my personality yeah um because like same thing with relationships like you still have an affinity you like love the time and the people but you're not like you're not missing them i mean you told me that maybe that's incorrect but elaborate but give me an example uh i guess that's just something you told me that like you don't yearn for any past relationship that i don't yearn to be romantically involved romantically involved with any of my exes but i still love being friends with them yeah that's what i just said you still love the people i thought you were saying that when i walk away that they're dead to me and i don't ever think no but that you you still have an affinity and a fondness and there's like all these positive associations and you love them as people but yeah you're not like oh you don't miss them kiss well no i miss them as friends but i don't want to kiss them i was always saying this in reference to a lot of people have a pattern of hooking up with exes right which is great i don't care about i'm not suggesting i have a moral position on it i just have not had that i've not had a pattern of hooking up with my ex-girlfriends yeah that part to me when we sever has it's over yes the romantic part but the friendship part and the missing them and wanting to connect with them for sure i still have that right i'll randomly carrie will find carrie my girlfriend in high school i was for like five years um she will she knows what she and i love the same kind of music she'll find a new album she'll send it to me yeah and i love it and we'll have like seven exchanges about it and i go oh carrie's still so fun and so engaged in devouring life and finding new things and i'm proud of her she's maintained the essence of who she was when i met her that i found so appealing about her yeah and then i'll talk to breen she's on fire for innumerable things i don't want to say innumerable which is questionable maybe it's her new work i hope not and i get this swell of excitement that she is um still held on to that spark of curiosity yeah and uh but that's different like that's different than what i'm than what a lot of people feel like that there's but i do have what you're saying about objects which kind of shocks me because i have coveted objects so much my whole life uh-huh um and then when i don't have them i don't think about them anymore right which is a little shocking to me because i wanted them so bad or i coveted them so bad and when they're gone i'm like i don't even really remember that i cared a lot of objects that house is a big big object it is and it's like it's it's symbolic it's a marker of your life and in your accomplishments and it can represent so much it does and then i see videos of the kids playing in that little area we have between the kitchen and the living room yeah like their zone yeah and i go oh yeah i love sitting on the couch and watching them be little babies yeah but i don't need to walk back in there that's the weird part yeah it wasn't like i wasn't like oh it wasn't like devastated but i was like yeah this is like the end of the era and that's happy and and sad yeah um just when new things started like yeah there's no going back like there's no it's just it's just a reminder that like time keeps moving and you can't pause it you can't go back um and that's you know we have a guest today after this fact check whose book is about consciousness yeah and so i'm really locked into this book and thinking about life and consciousness and yeah many of the experts that he interviewed for this book try to explain that like Like thought is, there was a traditional way of thinking, which is like Renata's cart, which is like, I think therefore I am in thoughts are one thought built atop another. And it's kind of one thing leads to another. And there's other people who think more like it's a stream.

There's no marker of this thought led to this thought. There's just this, and you'll never have the same thought or consciousness ever again is a fascinating thing. And it's what you're saying. It's like life's moving forward and it's taking with it everything that preceded it.

And so it can't ever be the same because more things are preceding it. And the way we rewrite memories every time we think of them, like your brain's evolving nonstop. Your experience on earth is evolving nonstop. And that can feel scary and maybe untethered.

But it is the nature and facts of life. And I think the discomfort when you're fighting that. Right. I think it's, it's, you can feel untethered, but you're also just reminded of mortality.

It's like, oh yeah, like that phase is over. Now I'm in this phase. There'll be another. How many more do I have?

Who knows? We know the ultimate phase. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. So, um, but, and then sort of ding, ding, ding with relationships, probably like people who do hook up with their exes and stuff. Like it's probably more about that, like wanting to go back in time as opposed to like, I miss this person. I mean, maybe obviously there's a million reasons why, but I bet a lot of it is like, I, I miss me then.

I miss that time of my life and that person is connected to that time. So I want to like click into that. Yeah. And I think, yes, that's the Esther thing, which I love is like, people are cheating on you with themselves.

They want to visit a version of themselves from the past. But I think the easy cycle to get into with going back to exes is with some time away, when you come back, you can revisit the initial easy, uncomplicated phase of it. And that is very pleasurable, but the complications arise immediately after. But I think you succumb to the joy of getting to relive the part that was easy, the falling in love part.

And then I just think quickly it ends up exactly what it always is. And I think that's the cycle that's appealing. It's like, oh, I want to go back to the original moment. We fell in love and it was so easy.

And yeah. Yeah. Complicated. Complicated.

Should we do some facts? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Okay. Amir, Attachment.

Had you read this book? I mean, this book was wildly popular. So popular. The original book.

I had not read it. I just heard so much about it. You had. And I looked into the theories and stuff.

I wasn't aware of the book. I was aware that people were talking about attachment theory a lot. Yeah. But I just assume that's in the same way people are talking about ADHD or whatever.

That was just the thing we were. It was like ADHD. But I didn't realize there was such a specific origin for it all. Yeah.

I find it very intriguing. You do? Yes. Yeah, I talked about it.

Yeah. I found myself talking about it a bit. It's just interesting that we all do have ways of relating to others that are kind of predictable and well-worn. I thought the thing that I was most interested in is anything that's counterintuitive, which is your attachment style has nothing to do with your attachment style at all.

Yeah. I would have thought it just led into your permanent, this attachment style. Totally. Yes.

Yeah. I thought that too. It made me think about a couple of people in my life that have very secure attachments. Uh-huh.

And I was like, huh, yeah, they don't, they're not threatened. They're totally chill. Not taking stuff personal. Yeah.

Yeah. It was pretty admirable. Yeah. Okay.

Now, he told the story of his dad, like, you know, throwing a penny or the coin when the president was in town. Oh, uh-huh. And I was trying to figure out which president it was, and I can't figure out Amir's age. That's not known on the internet?

I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't see it on the internet. Maybe, Rob, maybe you'll see it, but I didn't see it. So my guess is going to be it was in the 90s. Yeah, no public information.

Well, how on earth could you be alive in the era of the internet and your age not be known? Is he 50 around there, I think? Because there's Amir Levine born on April 22nd, 1975. So he would have probably been talking about Reagan or Carter.

If it was in the 80s, but if it was in the 90s, it could have been Clinton. But he would have been more a teenager. Right. Versus a little boy.

Yeah, I couldn't tell exactly. I mean, I guess he was small enough that he was a little anxious. Uh-huh. Carter visited in 79.

So four years old. Yeah, four years old if he was born in 75. Maybe. Maybe.

Clinton started his visits in 94. Where was he visiting? Israel. Oh, Israel.

The 1980s, a high level of diplomatic tension, particularly under Reagan, but key meetings occurring in D.C. rather than Israel. Oh, okay. So maybe he didn't really go there.

Right. I'm sure Carter went there. Yeah, he did. He visited in 79.

Yeah. He went to a bunch of places presidents hadn't gone in a long time. He was known for that. Right.

In Georgia. Peanut farmer. Yeah. This is no U.S.

president made an official state visit to Israel during the 1980s. It's at Carter 79 and then Clinton in 94. Oh, boy. Yeah, 14 years.

Yeah. We're going to go with Carter. We're sticking with Carter. That's our final guess.

Yeah. Primates, middle of the food chain. Primates generally occupy the middle of the food chain, acting as both consumers of plants, insects, and as prey or larger predators. I wanted to figure out top of the food chain.

If it goes to my continent, I'd like to guess. Okay. We can do environment. Okay.

You can also do apex predators and other search. Apex predators are at the top of the food chain is the first thing it says. Okay. Yeah.

So in Africa, that continent, I think it's the lion. And then in the subcontinent, India, I think it's the tiger. In fact, I think it's the tiger through all of Asia. Okay.

And into Russia, except for the polar bear in the Arctic, I think is the apex predator. And then I think in the Americas, it's the grizzly bear. Okay. Okay.

Although we also have polar bears in the Americas. But so this. And then in South America, I would say it's the jaguar. All right.

Well, this is apex predators are at the top of the food chain, acting as the highest trophic level. Trophic. Level with no natural predators. Both affecting or being the absolute peak of many food chains.

Now, this also breaks it down by environment. Land, lions, tigers, wolves, polar bears, and grizzly bears. Grizzlies. Ocean, orcas, great white sharks, and leopard seals.

Air, bald eagles, golden eagles, and other large raptors. Yeah, raptors. I love raptors. Raptiles, saltwater crocodiles, and Komodo dragons.

Oh, Komodo dragons. Oh, my God. Tell me about them. I guess they were the salivas of Natalie.

Komodo. Oh. Komodo. He loves her stinky mouth.

Oh, I guess you can smell them from quite a distance. Komodo dragons. Foul. Bacteriolating jaws become poison.

Speaking of that, have you noticed that there's somebody in your life who has not good breath? As we've discussed, I'm very sensitive, hypersensitive to bad breath. But it's like, it's bad, but it's not like, it's not. Objectively offensive?

Yeah. And so it's like, I kind of think I'm the only one who notices this. And it's an unexpected person. I'm not going to say.

Okay. I don't think anyone else thinks this. I've never been. No one's ever said it.

Cossessed about it. Exactly. No one's ever said anything to me, alluding to the fact that that's the case. Yeah.

But yet, it is repetitive for me. It's rough. I mean, I had a friend who I could stop going to movies with. Just sitting next to them at the movies, all I could smell was their breath.

And I just was like, I can't do it. I blame me, but I couldn't do it. I know. And I just wonder, is it pheromones?

Because why can't you guys smell what I'm smelling? I think obviously we all smell different things. And we're sensitive to different odors. I mean, again, I see people who are in relationships with people who I think have wretched breath.

And I think, well, they can't smell it. Right. There's no way. I know.

Because they're kissing and loving. I know. Yeah. I don't think, or they're just not sensitive to smell, period.

Yeah. Because I just think, like, I just can't deal right with me. At the same. Yeah.

But I just wonder also if it's actually more, is breath actually, I mean, maybe there's obviously palatosis. There's some objective stuff. But maybe the rest of it is just pheromones. Well, I also think there's certain medical conditions that give you kind of a predictable outcome.

And I'm going to leave it at that. Well, yeah. I just, I just, I was, I was somewhere and I'd already thought it. And then it was happening again.

What kind of activities do you do with the person? Because there's certain things where it's not an issue. Yeah. And there are others where, like, again, the movies, you're sitting like, your mouths and noses are, what, 18 inches apart.

Right. And so that might be a non-starter. Like, I love this person, but I'm just not going to go to movies with them. That's my decision.

Yeah. That's interesting. I, um. And then there's also, there's the case too, where someone's, they have that.

And then they also tend to talk close and you're constantly trying to keep your distance. And then you wonder if it's obvious. I think the only one I'm unsympathetic to or unforgiving of is, um, I think when you're a dentist, you've got to be on it. Like no one's ever been on their breath.

Yes. We've talked about this. Because they're in your nose. They work in your nose.

But they don't like, they often, the hygienic's often have masks on them. That doesn't fucking do a goddamn thing. If you have shit breath and you got a little paper between there, forgive it. That's not, no way.

Have your friend wear a mask. Just make up a reason why it's cute if they wear a mask and see. You're still going to smell it. It's not that strong.

That's the thing. It's not like. You're making them out of a molehill? No, I just, I just noticed it many times.

And I just wonder if anyone else has noticed it. And I don't think they have, which has just led me to believe, oh, this is something like pheromonal. It's me. You're like, it's me.

Yeah. Which again, it's possible. Well, it's not me. It's the way I, it's the way, yeah, my nose perceives.

Yeah. I'm smelling an odor here that other people don't smell. In which case I'm saying it's you. Well, right.

I mean. Like you're the anomaly. I'm the anomaly. I think.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't actually know. Maybe I'm not.

Maybe. You could ask around. I could ask around. It feels really good to do that.

Oh man. I couldn't feel worse for someone who just can't help it. I mean, my God, I really feel terrible. It's also because it's a specific, it is a specific smell.

A note. Yeah. It's a note. So I know in that case it is, it is a little pheromonal because it's not like, oh, this person ate something the second ago or something.

They don't smell like a hot dog. They smell like their body. Yeah. Yeah.

It's interesting. It's very interesting. You should ask if you can smell their armpits and their groin. It's consistent everywhere.

I mean, this is a very. Do you think people with better, more secure attachment styles don't smell as much? Maybe. Maybe.

I think everything just ticks up. Sure. When you were listening to all this stuff, did you self-assess as being any part of this spectrum? Oh yeah.

We talked about it in the episode. I definitely feel like I have an anxious attachment. Anxious attachment. And you were saying you felt like you did lean a little avoidant.

Oh, when I was young. But the more I read about it, I was like, I think I'm secure attachment. Active like the Instagram stuff. All this kind of stuff that drives people nuts.

Right. That I know that just, I don't even think about. Yeah. Or getting invited to things or all that kind of stuff.

I don't. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we can find out.

Is there a test? Yes. I know I can count on my friends to be there for me if I'm going through a rough time. And we got our normals.

Agree, strongly. Agree, neutral. Disagree. Strongly disagree.

I sometimes feel like I'm not good enough for my loved ones. Strongly disagree. I feel uncomfortable when my friends or family act like they rely on me. What's the middle?

Neutral. Yeah. And then there's disagree and agree. And then strongly.

I would say neutral. Okay. Again, that has evolved. Right.

I used to feel burdened by that. Yeah. And now I feel lucky as much as I feel burdened. So that puts me in neutral.

Okay. I always make the first move but usually become disinterested after I get what I want. I disagree. Disagree.

Yeah. I know I can be my true self in relationships once I have enough time to get comfortable. 100%. I sometimes hold back on relationships because I feel that if I share too much about myself, I might get hurt.

I wish. Strongly disagree. I tend to worry that my loved ones don't love me as much as I love them. Strongly disagree.

I consider myself a good friend and a good partner. Strongly agree. I stay away from long-term relationships. And Lincoln had a play date.

So first I was like, cool. I had my whole night to myself. And I watched like three episodes of Fallout in a row. And I was like, I want to be with somebody.

I was like, I'm bored with just myself watching the show. Yeah. I was like, I am tragically social. Yeah.

I like going out with friends and family, but I still value my personal time and space. I mean, I prefer being out with people than I do by myself, but I'm not afraid to be by myself. I don't know. What does that mean?

You do value your personal time and space. You're always like, why are there so many people here? Oh, space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. What does that mean? I agree? I think you agree.

Oh, that just happened Saturday night. Agreed. Oh, never. Strongly disagree.

Strongly agree. Oh, strongly agree. Strongly disagree. Disagree.

The people that love me? Agreed. The people I love want what's best for me. Agreed.

I much prefer being alone, but I'll attend social engagements if I'm required to. Disagree. Even when things get tough, I feel confident that my partner will support me and we'll work through challenges together. Strongly agree.

I often find myself overanalyzing interactions with my partner, wondering if they truly understand my feelings and intentions. Disagree. Sometimes I push people away when they get too close, even though deep down I crave connection and intimacy. Strongly disagree.

It's hard for me to relax in relationships because I'm always worrying about whether my loved ones truly care about me. Strongly disagree. I prefer to keep my emotions to myself, believing that vulnerability only leads to unnecessary complications and potential disappointment. Kind of neutral on that one.

I enjoy spending time with my friends and family knowing that we can share both good times and bad times with each other. Strongly agree. It's really funny to answer these questions in my mind because I have like two different families. Which one are we talking about?

Are we talking about the family I created or the one I was born into? Right. I feel uncomfortable when people get too emotionally close to me. I value my independence and personal space.

Emotionally dependent on me? That was part of the question? I feel uncomfortable when people get too emotionally close to me. I value my independence and personal space.

I'm not close. Okay. I disagree. Knowing that I have a strong support system of friends and family gives me the confidence to tackle life's challenges with optimism and resilience.

I disagree. I agree that if I show vulnerability or express my needs in relationships, I'll end up being rejected or abandoned. I'll go neutral. I appreciate the balance between independence and closeness in my relationships, allowing me to pursue my own interests while still feeling connected to others.

Strongly agree. I often find myself feeling anxious about the state of my relationships, constantly seeking reassurance from my partner or friends to alleviate my doubts. Strongly disagree. I prefer to handle my problems on my own rather than relying on others for support or advice.

Agree. Maybe size. Yeah. My mind often raises with thoughts about potential conflicts and misunderstandings in my relationships, making it difficult to fully enjoy moments of connection without worrying about the future.

Strongly disagree. When I face challenges, I feel reassured knowing that my friends will offer their support and encouragement without judgment. Neutral. I tend to seek constant validation from my friends and romantic partners to reassure myself of their love and commitment.

Well, that's a tricky one because I definitely like endless validation, but it's not to reassure myself that they like me. So I'm going to go neutral. I just enjoy validation. I tend to downplay the importance of romantic relationships in my life, focusing on my individual goals and interests.

Disagree. Despite craving intimacy and connection, I struggle to fully trust others and often find myself holding back out of fear of being hurt or abandoned. strongly disagree i value the mutual trust and respect in my relationships which allows me to be my authentic self without fear of rejection strongly spending quality time with loved ones fills me with a sense of warmth and security knowing that we have each other's backs no matter what strongly i have a tendency to push people away when they try to get close to me fearing that allowing them in will only lead to disappointment or betrayal strongly disagree despite my efforts i struggle to shake off the feeling of insecurity that lingers in my mind questioning whether i'm truly valued and loved by those closest to me disagree i find it challenging to open up to others about my innermost thoughts and feelings preferring to maintain a sense of distance to protect myself from potential rejection disagree the fear of rejection or betrayal sometimes prevents me from fully investing in relationships leaving me feeling stuck in a cycle of longing for connection while simultaneously fearing it strongly disagree independence is important to me and i prioritize maintaining autonomy in my relationships often avoiding becoming too relying on others for emotional support validation agree i have to pay i'm gonna do it don't do it it's 195 just a one-off they're tricky that was smart they let you do the whole thing i know that's a few of a trade is it his website i don't think so oh no american express is not supported yeah but people shit i have to get another my other card wow yeah we have to know i think we know you don't think we know okay oh secure your attachment style is secure secondary fearful oh the secure attachment style serves as the bedrock for healthy and fulfilling relationships characterized by strong sense of trust emotional security and a balanced approach both intimacy and independence individuals with a secure attachment style typically experience consistent and responsive care giving during their early years fostering a foundational belief in the availability and reliability of letters and times of need okay i guess myself this time my self-assessment was right that's right yours goes 57.5 secure 18.2 fearful 16.7 dismissive 7.6 preoccupied okay interesting interesting well that was fun um who did the marshmallow test walter michelle there's another one i've been repeating finding out that the marshmallow test isn't real yeah it's a real test but the conclusions aren't that's right yeah it's incredible i think how much work has been built on the shoulders of that i know that's not right scary a little bit the human brain consumes roughly 20 percent of the body's total resting energy about 260 to 300 calories per day despite representing only 2 percent of body weight that's it that's it yes well i enjoyed him here i will die with a great mystery of how old he is yeah um it was great love you you you you