How To Deal With Being Anxiously Attached - Jessica Baum

1. 0:00 – 0:32

   Intro

   1. JBJessica Baum0:00

      When you've been wounded or when you've been hurt, the natural defense is, "I don't wanna go there anymore. That is painful." And so the narrative that comes out is, "I don't need anyone." And that is a form of protection. It is very lonely on that side of the coin.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:15

      (wind blowing) Jessica Palm, welcome to the show.

   3. JBJessica Baum0:19

      Thank you for having me.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:21

      You are a relationship expert, so given that this is the week that Love Island is restarting in the UK, I wanted to speak to you about something that I noticed online I thought was quite interesting.

2. 0:32 – 5:55

   How Social Media Misrepresents People

   1. CWChris Williamson0:32

      So there's a student news publication called The Tab, and they've got a trash page which is kind of celebrity gossip and, and sort of trashy news and stuff like that. They put a tweet out the other day that said, "The Love Island promo pics are always so bad, so here's actually what the Love Islanders from 2022 look like in real life." So what they were saying is that the promo pictures that are done by an entire team, (clicking sound) a huge team, right? There's a hair and makeup army, there's stylists, there's professional lighting, there's a guy with a huge long-lens DSLR, and it's not like they just take one. They take tons and tons of photos on this photo shoot. And they had a problem with the fact that those were unrepresentative, and what they were using as the benchmark for why it was unrepresentative were their Instagram photos. So they went on and said, "Look at them on Instagram, and then look at what they're doing." So if you dig into the actual article it says, "There is one simple fact on this earth, and that is that the Love Island photographer always does everyone so dirty year after year. It never changes and the promo pics get, if anything, worse. So ahead of the launch next week of Love Island 2022, here's everything you need to know about the new Islanders, their Instagram handles, age-s jobs, and what they actually look like in real life." So what we've done now is we've entered a world where the hyperreal has become more real than reality. So photos from Instagram, which is a social media platform known for enhanced and airbrushed images, is being used as the benchmark against which everything else should be measured. Instagram is what the cast actually look like in real life, despite the fact it's taken by this huge army of, of people that are behind the UK's biggest reality TV show. They're doing them so dirty. So I think it's ... It was just really interesting to me that kind of the bastille's been turned upside-down, that people are so used to spending time online with others that they see the online world as more accurate than the physical one. And the closer that we can fit real life to a digital existence, the more comfortable people feel.

   2. JBJessica Baum2:37

      Yeah, that's very interesting, especially because usually on Instagram everything is filtered and so orchestrated that you're not really getting the reality (laughs) of the person.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:48

      But that's what they see. They're like, "Look, this is what people really look like in real life," and somehow these photos and videos ... Remember they do this huge, big intro. "Hi, my name's Jessica. I'm 19 and a hairdresser from Wigan," or whatever. Uh, what ... Like, what are you, what are you trying to say? You're trying to say that somehow the Instagram is more real than the photos and the videos that have been taken, and that they should be retrofitted to make people feel more comfortable, or to better represent the real them which comes from Instagram. It just seems so backwards. Like, the most blatant social media life representation that I think I've ever seen. And this is the lead-up to Love Island which is, i- in the UK is kind of like a, uh, I guess a national ritual now. I did the first season. I was the first person through the doors of season one, which is why I know the, the process and the army of hair and makeup people that go on behind it. Um, but it does make me feel a little bit better, 'cause I got did quite dirty by my stylist as well. But I don't know, I, I didn't ever think that it was unrepresentative. I just thought that I got put in a shitty pair of swim shorts.

   4. JBJessica Baum3:55

      (laughs) Yeah, I mean, whoever is working on that end is deciding what I guess everybody should look like. Um, I think that happens with dating too. We put out what we should look like, and then we meet the person in real life and it's like we get a much accurate picture of them.

   5. CWChris Williamson4:11

      Yeah.

   6. JBJessica Baum4:12

      Uh, being more accurate, I think, sets you up for more success.

   7. CWChris Williamson4:17

      Yeah. Well, I mean, if you pitch yourself ... We were talking about this before, that, um, I would love to see, um, people that are in relationships that maybe met online, on Tinder or whatever, go back and look at their profile, the profile of their partner when they first met, and play a game where you said, "Okay, just how accurate was this person when they were trying to show themselves online?" You know, was their Hinge or Tinder profile accurately representing them? And based on what you know now, after five years of being together and maybe marriage and kids or whatever, um, w- just how truthful was that? And h- how important is it ... I- is there a success correlated between people that are accurate and realistic with the way that they portray themselves on online dating and success long term in relationships? Or can you kind of fake it until you make it and claim that you're six foot five and whatever you want to be in the world, and then once you've got people through the door, sort of change that around? I thought that would be a really interesting thing to do.

   8. JBJessica Baum5:15

      I happen to think that the more you put accurate pictures of yourself online when you're dating, and then when you meet the person and they see how amazing you are in person, it only adds to your success rather than someone being disappointed 'cause you misrepresented yourself online.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:31

      Well, Love Island are going to be disappointed with everything that they do, unfortunately-

   10. JBJessica Baum5:35

       (sighs)

   11. CWChris Williamson5:35

       ... it would seem. Apparently everybody's going to be misrepresented. But i- i- like I say, it's a ... People get super passionate. There's an entire subculture online now of people doing Twitter threads comparing the photos from the press tour media team with people's actual Instagrams, and again, I can't believe how d- how they've done them dirty. But I ... Moving on from

3. 5:55 – 9:35

   Jessica’s Work Background

   1. CWChris Williamson5:55

      Love Island, what's your background? We're talking about anxious attachment styles today. How are you an authority in the world of attachment styles?

   2. JBJessica Baum6:05

      Yeah, sure. So I'm a psychotherapist, and I specialize in relationships. So I, I'm an Imago therapist, which we can get into, and I, um, I really study the dynamics, energy, nervous systems, the types of relationships that work well versus what doesn't work well, and what people don't really understand that's under the surface in terms of how the dynamics play out. And finding a partner that fits your needs is about knowing your attachment needs and knowing what you're looking for. I often say it's more important than knowing your horoscope, because when you really understand that about yourself, you can also find a partner that isn't going to re-injure your needs, but actually be able to meet more of your needs. And knowing that up front really kinda can set you up for success.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:52

      How common is it for a relationship therapist/coach to look at stuff like the biology or the neuroscience? I, I don't hear a massive amount of work coming out of the relationship coaching space talking about the neuroscience of different people's attachment styles and stuff like that.

   4. JBJessica Baum7:12

      Yeah, I think dating apps should include it. The only thing is, is... certain attachment styles attract each other, and, um, unfortunately or fortunately, sometimes the ones that really have explosive relationships tend to attract each other more. So, you know, trying to understand attraction and why you might be attracted to a certain person, and getting really clear on that, and looking for healthy ways in which you can attract people who might be more fitted for your attachment style will set you up for success versus chemistry from a wounded place. That's the best way I can explain it, or a place that might reinforce your, your core wounds already.

   5. CWChris Williamson7:54

      What's the science behind attachment styles?

   6. JBJessica Baum7:57

      So when you're born, (laughs) and you're co-regulating with your mother and/or primary caregiver, there's a whole dance of interactions that go on between you and your primary caregiver as to how they're attending to you and how they are seeing you and how you learn to trust your needs are going to get met. And depending on your parent, and this is not about blame, but your parent could be stuck in a stress response or maybe not at... that doesn't have the emotional IQ that is attending to you in the way that you truly need, you develop a- adaptations when you're really young in your embedded nervous system responses in terms of how you get your needs met, and a belief system around relationships. You develop that felt sense, so inside your body, early on. And what the research shows, and it's actually really proven, it's like 80 to 90%, is that those embedded patterns and adaptations show up later in your romantic life. So when you're struggling in a romantic life or when you're in a partnership and you hit bumps and everything like that, the adapted patterns and the core beliefs that you had early on actually replay themselves in your romantic relationships later on. So knowing that ahead of time and knowing what your needs are ahead of time and knowing how your partner handles conflicts and where they stand in terms of how they see relationships can set you up for a safer place to play out your patterns and heal them versus repeat and re-injure the same patterns.

4. 9:35 – 20:46

   Impact on Upbringing on Attachment

   1. JBJessica Baum9:35

   2. CWChris Williamson9:35

      What was the studies that looked at, uh, comparing child up- upbringing with attachment styles later in life? How did they do that?

   3. JBJessica Baum9:45

      Um, it's attachment theory, and... God, there's been so much science. I, I can't even... Specifically, there's an attachment assessment that's like 80% accurate. Um, there's so much science, and not only... The science is so accurate, so how you developed these adaptations highly correlates to how you show up in your romantic relationships. And there's just been countless studies around it. I mean, every therapist really understands at the root there's an attachment kind of wound or theory behind how you show up in your romantic life. So we, we really do work with attachment, and then part of therapy is attaching to your therapist and kind of replaying some of these things so you re-experience things and kind of, kind of re-heal them in that therapeutic relationship.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:35

      Interesting. I didn't know if it was complete bro science or something very, very legit. The first time that I ever heard about different attachment styles was James Smith, who's a buddy of mine. He was telling me about it on this show. He was explaining that he was, uh, avoidant, and th- this is the way that it works, and I was like, oh, well, this just sounds like, I don't know, a cute framework that perhaps someone's put together. What you're saying is that it's a very robust body of knowledge that's been replicated and is now kind of relied on heavily in the coaching and therapy space?

   5. JBJessica Baum11:03

      Yeah. Everything from addiction, to how you show up in your romantic life, to where you have problems in the world, it can all go back to the developmental years. And a lot of people are detached from that because things don't look like trauma, but developmental trauma and how you received what was acceptable and what wasn't acceptable and your emotion- how your parents de- dealt with your emotional responses, and really co-regulation, which we can get into, but how well your parents attuned to you, saw you, and attended to you. You develop a trust there, and that inherent trust shows up in your relationships later. But if you didn't develop a trust there, that distrust also shows up in your relationships later. And it's a spectrum, of course, but there's a very, very high correlation between early developmental years and your romantic relationships now.

   6. CWChris Williamson11:56

      Even though the memories that you've got from then are well beyond something perhaps that you may even be able to recall, if it's stuff that during developmental years... I...I, I think my earliest memory is maybe four years old, and it's me slipping on some ice. I don't remember the way that I was brought up for the first four years that I existed. I was there. But you're saying that even though this perhaps isn't something we can consciously recall, it's embodied. How is that working?

   7. JBJessica Baum12:23

      Yeah. It's like a felt sense. So I mean, our nervous system, and a lot of what my book talks about, is the automatic nervous system is still being developed in womb until about 18 months out of womb. So, we don't have something called the parasympathetic nervous sys- part of our nervous system fully developed. Our primary caregiver is a stand-in. So for those that are listening, our ability to self-regulate comes from our ability for our parent to help us co-regulate, self-soothe us early on.

   8. CWChris Williamson12:52

      You outsource your regulation to the caregiver for the first 18 months of life?

   9. JBJessica Baum12:58

      Yes.

   10. CWChris Williamson12:58

       That's wild.

   11. JBJessica Baum12:58

       And if they... Yeah. The more they can attune and help soothe you, the more you build the brain waves or the pathways for self-regulation later on, and the more you learn to trust that person. It's, it's like a paradox. It's like the more you can depend on your primary caregiver in a healthy way, the more you can develop inter-dependency as an adult, the more you have self-regulation as adult, the more that you can trust your partner as an adult. The less you can depend and, and again, this happens subconsciously, and this happens really early on, you might feel like the, the shoe is gonna drop, or that, you know, you're not gonna get your needs met, or you might become hypervigilant, or like you said, your friend becomes avoidant, and their core belief is that their needs aren't gonna get met for whatever reason, that relationships aren't really as important, or they can't trust as easier. And it does come down to trust on both sides of, um, insecure attachment, because if you didn't develop that inherent trust early on, your trust in getting your needs met in your relationships later on can be very challenging.

   12. CWChris Williamson14:08

       What age does imprinting of attachment style start to, uh, drop off?

   13. JBJessica Baum14:17

       So there's, (sighs) there's different wounding or different stages at every level, and I would say that you can have an experience later on that still impang- impacts you, but the earlier the experience, the bigger the impact.

   14. CWChris Williamson14:32

       No way.

   15. JBJessica Baum14:33

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson14:34

       That's cool.

   17. JBJessica Baum14:35

       Yeah. So those formative, like, moments (laughs) of womb. You, you're, you're building your nervous system while you're in womb with your prim- with your mother. So depending on her nervous system and how stressed out she is, you're still developing parts of your body. Your brain, your system is still developing. And then when you come out, you're not fully developed yet either, so you're still developing those systems. And so if she's... Like my mother, um, struggled from postpartum depression and a little bit of anxiety, and she was constantly worried about me, and my father was a little bit more absent. So I... You internalize those systems and the... And when I say a felt sense, you internalize this felt sense of your primary caregivers, and they live embedded in your body. And so when you meet someone who reminds you of a primary caregiver, there can be a familiarity there that's actually an attraction. And so, imago or some people think you can be drawn to these people, um, trying to resolve your attachment issues through people who represent some qualities that are similar from your primary caregivers. And unconsciously what happens is sometimes you re-injure things because you pick people who can't provide you the safety, or their ability to regulate isn't an ability to help you regulate because there's a familiarity there.

   18. CWChris Williamson16:00

       Yeah.

   19. JBJessica Baum16:00

       Does that make sense?

   20. CWChris Williamson16:01

       A- absolutely. I mean, the fact that when you grow up, you look for patterns of love that are familiar to you from when you were a kid and-

   21. JBJessica Baum16:09

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson16:11

       Is that wrong?

   23. JBJessica Baum16:11

       The pat- the patterns don't even show up until you, the attachment really takes place, which is not always in the beginning of the relationship. But if you grew up without a lot of attunement and co-regulation and not feeling that special, when you meet someone who "love bombs" you or makes you feel really special, the neurochemicals that are released early on in the relationship are extra potent, because your brain didn't receive them as a baby. So now you're really like, "Oh, I, I feel really special. I'm getting my needs met." And then the relationship evolves and attachment takes place and, um, fear comes up and core wounds come up and dysregulation comes up, and then that's where we can get into a little bit of trouble with our partners as, as the relationship kind of evolves. People always say, "Oh, I started out and it was perfect and it was wonderful." And relationships are supposed to bring up our wounding, and they do get... We have something called rupture and repair, so we're supposed to get into conflict. And how we get into conflict and how we get back into connection, it's not that conflict doesn't happen. And with our primary caregiver, it's not that conflict doesn't happen. We cry for help. We cry for our needs. If our partner or parent can attune to that, we learn then our needs can get met. But if they aren't really attuned to that, then we start to learn that our needs aren't gonna me- get met all the time or not at all, and so we start to form these nervous system responses that then repeat themselves in our romantic relationships.

   24. CWChris Williamson17:45

       Have you looked at whether or not attachment style is heritable, whether there's a genetic component in here?

   25. JBJessica Baum17:51

       I think there is a genetic d- uh, component for sure. Um, it's very hard, nature versus nurture, because-

   26. CWChris Williamson17:59

       Well, especially seeing as whatever is the heritable gene is probably behaviorally showing up in the parent.

   27. JBJessica Baum18:05

       Exactly.

   28. CWChris Williamson18:05

       So how are you going to separate out what is gene from... You would need to find a parent that had the gene for anxious but was behaving, uh, secure-... in order to then be able to say, "Okay, well, how much gets passed on and then what's our brain..." Yeah. I imagine this is a particularly difficult, um, study to do.

   29. JBJessica Baum18:25

       Well, and, and it's intergenerational. So if your parent was a little bit more anxious, there was a good chance that their parent was a little bit more anxious because our brain mirrors and is developed by our parents. So in those, it's called mirror neurons and residency circuits. So our brain is developing and, and mirroring our primary caregiver. So it, yeah, it's intergenerational in that it gets passed down that way, and that way, it's not our parents' fault either. They are showing up in the way that they can show up, and they have stressors, and they have things that happen in their life that cause them to not be attuning in a way that we need because they didn't get proper attunement, or maybe something major was going on in their life. Like my mom was going through a divorce, so I'm sure her system was locked up in a couple of different, you know, nervous system responses that my system was picking up. If a baby senses fear in another, they absorb that 'cause we're one energetic unit. So we take in our parents, we internalize them, for better or worse. We also internalize the good things too. It's not just the fear responses. We take on the good things too. So sometimes when we attract a partner, it's not just, it's the positive and negative qualities of that person that pull us in. So there can be a lot of positive qualities too that remind us of our primary caregivers that we're attracted to as well.

   30. CWChris Williamson19:47

       How conscious or subconscious is this? Can you think your way out of an attachment style?
5. 20:46 – 29:56

   Beginning to Understand Attachment

   1. JBJessica Baum20:46

   2. CWChris Williamson20:46

      What's the big red pill that everybody needs to understand about anxious attachment? And how, let's say that somebody hasn't heard of attachment styles before, they don't know what they are, they don't know what they are in terms of categories and stuff like that, how does someone know if they're anxiously attached?

   3. JBJessica Baum21:02

      So, I mean, codependency is like a buzzword. So, uh, someone who is hypervigilant of their partner's needs and they're, um, able to track their partner more than they track themselves, they tend to self-abandon. Um, someone who fears disconnection or feels uncomfortable when their partner pulls away. Um, if their partner shuts down, it can activate an avalanche inside of them because that form of disconnection is so painful. Um, someone who sometimes is insecure or has a d- a sense of not good enough inside 'cause there's, that secure base is not there, so I'm not enough, and tends to jump to the conclusion that I did something wrong. Someone who overextends themselves in a relationship to get love, like meaning I have to do something or I have to make this person happy in order to get them to love me. These are all ways in which you can tell you have a more anxious base. I think most importantly, when your partner shuts down, how do you respond? Anxious people's energy tends to expand. So when you're a baby, when you're not getting your needs met, you cry. And then when you're not getting your needs met again, you cry, and et cetera, et cetera, until full-blown rage happens. And this is actually a very normal response to getting our needs met, is that we, we go down this ladder. Then when you're an adult and you're not getting your needs met in this relationship, you're either scared of conflict, so you're suffering deep inside 'cause you don't wanna upset this person because abandonment could be around the corner, or you slip into rage because you try to connect and you try to connect and you try to connect and that person is just not available because they're locked in some kind of response that's making them kind of frozen or stuck or, or avoidant. And so what happens in your body is, is pretty intense. And so I really explain the nervous system and what happens in your body is actually your body's survival mechanisms acting up in terms of trying to get you back into connection, 'cause our biological imperative is to be in connection. And when we're in disconnection, we sense it in our bodies. Depending on the degree of it, like if a, if a partner goes blank on you or frozen, it can feel really, really scary. Um, a- an example is that my dad struggled with some substance abuse growing up. So if my partner checks out at all, and it's not his fault, I, my whole system lights up, and I know that he's not doing this to me. I know there's a parter, a part of me, a younger part of me that's sensing this is not safe 'cause he's gone. And that's what I felt as a child. Like, he's just not there. There's something called the blank stare where you can look at someone and they're just not attuning to you and they're not really connecting to you, they're just kinda checked out. That's a very painful experience, and they've done numerous studies on that. That's actually as painful as physical pain. When you feel like your primary caregiver is not there, you're literally scared or terrified. And then when your partner checks out, the same terror can come up in those sensations in your body. So starting to notice, you know, what happens inside of me when my partner shuts down or goes away, and is it explosive in my body is letting you know there are some developmental things that need to be healed.

   4. CWChris Williamson24:24

      What's going on, uh, biologically or neurologically in an anxious person versus someone else? Like, what's the cascade that's happening that's causing that to occur?

   5. JBJessica Baum24:34

      Sympathetic arousal. So, you know, it's like fight, flight, freeze, fawn, even a dorsal shutdown. So it's when your heart ... Usually, you go into fight 'cause usually an anxious person learns, "If I get louder or if I try to connect ..." They're always trying to connect. "I wanna get my partner closer so I can feel safe. If I can get them closer, then I feel safe. If they go further away, then the abandonment gets, um, kicked up." Sometimes we're not even conscious of this. But, um, if you notice that you're trying to get your partner closer or you're always trying to get back into connection, you're always saying you're sorry, you're starting to try to ... Not manipulate. That's the wrong word because it's an adaptive strategy. But you're trying to keep your partner close so that you don't have to feel those painful feelings of disconnection. And by the way, you don't have to be anxious. If your partner disconnects, it's painful. It can be very painful. And so the varying degree will let you know, is this something that happened really young or is it just really painful because the person I love is shutting down on me and I don't know why and I wanna know why. And can I respect that they're shutting down and they will come back? Or when they shut down, do I feel like they're abandoning me forever and they're, they're never coming back? And so that's where you can kind of see the fear can get so escalated.

   6. CWChris Williamson25:55

      Have you considered why this is adaptive? Why is it that the attachment style that you learn from your caregiver during infancy or when you grow up, why is it that that would be something that would be useful or evolutionarily adaptive for you to then try and replicate in later life? Is this because our tribe is going to be sufficiently small that this might be a culture that's going on over? Have you, have you thought about w- why this might happen adaptively?

   7. JBJessica Baum26:26

      It h- Well, adaptively, it's, it's all about our nervous system. And our nervous system adapts, um, fight, flight, f- r- ... W- So we have something called neuroreception. And so, um-

   8. CWChris Williamson26:38

      What's that?

   9. JBJessica Baum26:38

      ... it's even ... So it's like... Okay, it's like if you and I were in a relationship and, um, I cared deeply about you. And you ... We have inner and outer cues that are constantly scanning our environment for safety or threat. And your cues might be different than my cues, but depending on our earlier experiences, this happens on a subconscious level. If you roll your eyes or pick up your phone right now or do something, it can cue me that this isn't safe or my partner is not with me. We're always looking for, are you with me? Will you not judge me? Will you, you know, be attuned to me? And so these neuroreception, this neuroreception of safety and threat and danger, we're doing on a subconscious level. We're constantly scanning our environment. Is this safe? And so our partner who we attach to very, very deeply can do something very, very small that can cue our nervous system like, "Uh-oh, this is familiar. I don't know what about it is familiar, but this feels familiar and this feels very scary." And so our system shifts into survival mode. Um, and for a lot of anxious people, this is a sympathetic response. Not always. Sometimes it's a shutdown response. But more often than not, it's an expansion of energy of like, "I need to get to, I need to get back into connection." And whatever that means, if it's apologizing or getting angry, we expand our energy. And so we try to get back into connection because that cue, and it can be such a small cue. And this is where couples get into trouble because it can literally be, pick up my phone and I'm looking at my phone and I'm not connecting with you. That can cue so much pain inside the other person. And maybe the person is just picking up their phone and it's no big deal, or maybe that person's actually avoiding you and they're not able to connect for their own reasons of fear of intimacy or what's going on for them or what's being pulled a- them, pulling them outside of the relationship. But how you are cued on this neuroreception level can lead to the cascade of survival, um, strategies to get back into connection.

   10. CWChris Williamson28:51

       And anxiously attached people are ... Th- they have more neuroreception? Is that right to say? M- more, the higher degree of neuroreception?

   11. JBJessica Baum28:59

       I would say their amygdala is primed for abandonment. So they're gonna get cued if the wind blows in the direction of abandonment. And this is not their fault. They really don't wanna really experience that again. So little things, and some of the cues are off. That's the thing, is sometimes your partner's just doing something but the as- assumption sometimes from someone who is anxiously attached is the negative. Like, "Oh, they don't love me. They must not care." Right? So the cue then ... The body responds way faster than the brain. 80% of the information is sent up. So our body picks up on these cues and then our brain makes up a story of why this person doesn't care. Why are they not with me? They don't love me. We can go down this whole avalanche of, um, you know, making up a story because our body is feeling these sensa- these intense sensations in that moment.

6. 29:56 – 39:29

   Attachment Differences in Men & Women

   1. CWChris Williamson29:56

      What's the difference between dealing with men and dealing with women when it comes to anxious attachment?

   2. JBJessica Baum30:05

      That's a good question. Um, I would say, uh, that there's a stereotype that women might be more anxiously attached and that men might be more avoidant, but that's not true. There might be a higher percentage of women, um, that are more anxious, and then ... And there is a higher percentage that women struggle with this, but men struggle with it too. Um-I think women, it's more okay for us to be emotionally expressive. So, we're gonna expand the energy and show it emotionally. Men might expand the energy and show it in anger. So, they might show up, if they have anxious attachment, in even more anger or struggle with any kind of vulnerability when it comes to really addressing, "I'm scared right now," or, "I'm feeling lonely in this relationship." It might be harder for them to express that because of the culture, the, you know, the- the way in which we're taught as- the way men are taught to express their feelings is- is not allowed as much as the way that women are. But it happens on both side of the street. And I'm a couples counselor, and there are plenty of th- where the dynamic is the- the woman is a little bit more on the avoidant side and the man is a little bit more anxious. So, yes, it leans more towards women, but it's really not the case.

   3. CWChris Williamson31:28

      Rob Henderson, one of my friends, did this really cool analysis where he looked at, um, typical traits of masculinity in literature. Um, w- what is it that the culture sees as a man, right? And kind of, that's what we imbibe. Like, masculinity isn't a thing. It's- i- it correlates with men being men, but what does being a man mean? So, he looked at what the culture was telling men that they were supposed to be, and one of the most important things that came up throughout all of these different examples was control over one's emotions. The fact that you weren't supposed to be at the mercy of your emotions, this sort of stiff-upper-lip, stoic, protect, preside, provide. Right? That was kind of the- the view that you had. And, um, uh, thinking about the differences in anxious attachment, you're right. I- it's kind of seen that women are more e- the culture tells them that they're more emotional, that they are the ones that are more vulnerable, for sure, at least physically, um, but also emotionally. And then if you flip that and you see a man that has that sort of anxious style, you think, "Well, that's somehow him being less of a man. That's somehow him being deficient or, uh, defective." And that's something that he very well may feel shame and guilt around, that he's probably going to try and hide away. And I guess, as well, that this is how it can show up in anger and perhaps even, like, physical violence sometimes, that they don't want to show the vulnerability of how they're actually feeling. So, that gets changed into something that they think does fit their preexisting model of what a man's supposed to be. You know, protect, provide, preside isn't far away from be strong and let this anxious emotion out through aggression instead of through vulnerability.

   4. JBJessica Baum33:12

      Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think, you know, when you're talking about anxious and avoidant pairing, 'cause that happens a lot, um, anxious people are attracted to what they're missing, which appears to be s- stability and independence. So, they tend to be a little bit more dependent because of their nervous system. And, um, what's lacking is co-regulation and self-regulation, and so they tend to be attracted to very stoic, um, independent men, maybe alpha, you know. And so these men appear calm on the outside, but they're not actually calm. If they're avoidant, they actually have a lot of anxiety in the inside. They're just not expressing it. And, um, avoidant people tend to be attracted to anxious people because we're so lively and we're pretty vulnerable and we're expressive, and so we're kind of attracted to the lost parts of each other. The problem is anxious people need to depend on their partner for co-regulation a little bit more, and avoidant people tend to self-regulate a little too much and they don't depend on their partner as much. So, when one is feeling scared, they're reaching out for connection and co-regulation and safety, and when the other is feeling scared, they're pulling away and trying to self-regulate and shutting down to manage their nervous system. So, the very thing that attracted them almost reinforce the belief system underneath. So, the belief system of an anxious person is, "I'm gonna be left alone. I'm gonna be abandoned." And so when their avoidant person pulls away and needs to self-regulate, that confirms that- that- that belief system 'cause when they need them the most, that person is really in a fear response too and can't provide that safety. And then the avoidant person says, "Oh, my God. This anxious person is too much for me. I can't handle all this emotion," because they haven't dealt with that w- inside and th- they haven't experienced it, and their system is freaked out, and so they pull away. So, both systems are stuck in, like, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it's really the automatic nervous system is, "I need connection to feel safe, and I need separation in order to cool down my system." So, and it gets even more complicated than that, but, uh, um, an anxious person needs to learn how to self-regulate or co-regulate with many people in order to develop the neuroplasticity to self-soothe. And the avoidant person needs to learn how to be vulnerable and start to co-regulate in healthy ways and let people in. So, they're very much opposites in terms of how they adapted to survive, yet they're very drawn to each other, and there happens to be a lot of chemistry in these types of, um, relationships. And they are a lot of wounding because of the very nature in h- in terms of how they adapted to survive. So, it's very interesting when you start to understand it. And I go through a lot of how you can work through these relationships in my book because I think once you start to understand the nervous system on a deeper level, you stop personalizing that your person is getting really explosive or upset, and you can see they're just scared and they want connection. And you stop personalizing, "Oh, this person's shutting down," you start realizing, "Their system really can't be in connection right now." They- this is how they adapted. And so when you start to understand this on a deeper level and you stop personalizing it, you start to communicate a little bit differently in your relationship, and you can actually-... work through this dance. Um, it's just, it's a little bit harder.

   5. CWChris Williamson36:37

      Isn't it funny how culture kind of sh- sees the avoidant person, like, uh, there's so much romanticism that's put around aloofness. You know, somebody who isn't always forthcoming is kind of seen as a little bit more mysterious and, and, and cool, whereas the anxious person is the one that's overbearing, and the one that's too much and too keen. You know, there's a million Twitter threads about guys that come, or girls that come on too strong, too soon, and, "How long should I wait until I text him back?" And stuff like that. There, there does seem to be, at least in terms of how it's seen from the outside, even if it's equally sort of tumultuous internally, that the avoidant person comes across as the cool one, and the anxious person comes across as the keen, desperate one.

   6. JBJessica Baum37:23

      Yes, and the needy one. But if an anxious person partners with someone who's a little bit more secure, the reassurance and the connection is they're given, and actually the needs go down and the anxiety goes down. But if they partner with someone who's very avoidant, they're just shamed around their needs, and it's, like, happening unconsciously. And you're absolutely right. I think, I think both people are really struggling, and avoidant people are really struggling on their side of the street too, and they can be seen as the bad one or the narcissistic one, which is not the case at all. Narcissism and avoidant attachment are two very different things. But because they can withdraw and disconnect, and at times feel cold, they can get labeled as narcissistic when in s- in reality, they're suffering and that's how they're dealing, but they really want connection as well. (laughs) And they're struggling with that just as much, and so they get a bad rap on both sides. And I think the anxious person seems as too needy, and I can't stand that word, but it's tr- truly not the case. If they can feel safe in getting their needs met, the need for connection or the neediness, quote-unquote, neediness, can't stand that word, but it goes down.

   7. CWChris Williamson38:39

      (laughs) What do you not like, what do you not like about needy?

   8. JBJessica Baum38:41

      It goes down. Because we all have needs, and a lot of the neediness is you're seeing the fear that their needs aren't gonna get met. It's not even that they're needy, it's that they're scared. There's a little bit of fear and they just need a little bit of reassurance. You give an anxious person just a little reassurance, and their whole system calms down. And that, that quote-unquote needy energy shifts to a calmer place if you can kind of just help them a little in those scared moments, 'cause they've worked so hard to maintain connection, and they live in this sense that the shoe's gonna drop all the time. So, the more reassurance you can give them, the more they have permission to be themselves and the less of that drive and that fear goes down. So, it's like we wanna meet them rather than shame them.

7. 39:29 – 48:34

   Healing Attachment Issues

   1. JBJessica Baum39:29

   2. CWChris Williamson39:29

      Rather than trying to fix your anxious attachment, should people not just get a partner that fixes the attachment style on their behalf? Like, can't anxiously attached people just find someone very loving and compassionate and reassuring, and then the anxious attachment doesn't matter anymore?

   3. JBJessica Baum39:44

      I love that question. So, yes and no. Um, your patterns are gonna show up with anyone, but they'll be more forgiving relationships for you to work through your patterns than others. So, if you pick someone who's a little bit more secure, yes, your patterns are gonna show up, but they're gonna get, more likely get healed because that, your anxiety isn't gonna set an avalanche off in their nervous system, and they're gonna be able to meet you. If you pick someone who's really anxious where you're in, you're, you're, like, so basically, if I'm in a sympathetic state, I'm gonna signal that to you unconsciously and you're gonna read that in your system. And if you're more avoidant, that's gonna scare you. Unconsciously, you're gonna run in the other direction, you're gonna flee. So, if you pick someone who's less likely to flee and can be in your anxiety with you, there's more opportunity to heal. But it's not that your patterns go away, it's that i- um, attachment is a two-way street, and depending on who you attach with and how the patterns play out between the two of you in that relationship gives you more of a safe haven to work through your patterns. It's not that your patterns go away. Does that make sense?

   4. CWChris Williamson40:54

      Yeah. Yeah, it does. It's very interesting. Um, okay, so, uh, you've mentioned now the fact that being in a relationship allows you to heal some of the wounds. Are you, uh, does that mean that it's very difficult to heal attachment styles on your own? Is this something that can't be done in isolation?

   5. JBJessica Baum41:14

      That's another really great question. Um, uh, healing happens in relationship, but the relationship doesn't have to be a romantic partner. So, let's say you are experiencing a lot of pain in your romantic partner. You can bring that pain to a therapist or a coach or even a non-judgmental friend. Stop projecting it all onto your partner and start to trace the sensations back and start to see that this is earlier wounding inside of you, and so you don't need to heal in your partnership, but you do need to bring the pain to someone that c- can help you understand its deeper roots, hold it with you, you know, make sense of it. Uh, a l- a lot of what I see is that people get angry in their relationship and hurt it in a relationship and then they call a friend and then that friend pours more gasoline on the relationship by saying, "Oh, this person's a bad person, and look what they're doing to you," rather than saying, "I wonder what they're bringing up inside of you?" If the sensations are big, we know it's developmental trauma. Have you felt this way before? And maybe you're not even connected to the way that you might have felt this before, but if your nervous system is responding in a fight-flight-freeze response, there's a good chance you've felt this way before and you're not even conscious of it.

   6. CWChris Williamson42:27

      Let's say that someone has a friend that keeps on ringing them and saying that their relationship is causing them to feel in this anxious way, and you're that friend. What are some of the things that you should tell the person that's ringing you when they ring you up?... or questions that you should ask them?

   7. JBJessica Baum42:45

      Uh, and questions or just validate, "Okay, I understand this is really, really scary for you. I wanna hold this space. Let's breathe together. Let's co-regulate. Let's not talk about how bad your partner is. Let me just have my system recognize that I'm here with you in this-"

   8. CWChris Williamson43:04

      Is it best to do this in person if you're a friend that's trying to calm somebody else down, or, uh, can this effectively be done over the phone?

   9. JBJessica Baum43:11

      Um, so when we talk about co-regulation, the best is in person because eye contact is really great. But co-regulation happens in tone and a felt sense that, "This person is here with me. I'm not alone." And a lot of what we wanna do as a society is fix that person. We don't wanna see someone we care about suffering. But it's not in the fixing, 'cause if we fix that person or come up with a solution, we're not being with the anxiety. Anxiety is a protector. We wanna hold space for our friend and say, "Oh, I see that you're really uncomfortable right now. This must be really hard for you. I'm here for you right now." The truth is if we're in a dysregulated place, the only system that we have control over in that moment is our respiratory system. So, if we can breathe a little bit deeper, particularly on the exhales, we can trick our brine- brain back into safety. And if our friend can say, "Okay, our partner is not completely doing this to us, but it's reacting or causing a reaction inside of our body. How do I help my friend just calm down and get back into a safe place?" Which is not focusing on the story, just focusing on, "Hey, I'm with you. I hear this is really scary. Let's be in this together. I'm not gonna try to fix you." It's about being with that anxiety in a new way, 'cause remember that big dysregulation is primal. So, there's a good chance a primary caregiver wasn't there to soothe. So, really soothing is about being with. It's about holding the sensation rather than fixing the sensation.

   10. CWChris Williamson44:46

       That's how you would deal with a friend. Let's say that you're in a relationship with somebody and you're arguing about something that's going on, and you're dealing with anxious attachment yourself. What are some of the ways that you should communicate more effectively if it's you and your partner?

   11. JBJessica Baum45:01

       So, if your partner is okay with your anxiety, instead of getting angry with them, you start to verbalize that you're feeling really dysregulated and that you don't wanna fight.

   12. CWChris Williamson45:12

       Is there- is there a way that you can say that without saying dysregulated? Th- they might not know what you're talking about.

   13. JBJessica Baum45:17

       Um, "You're feeling really anxious and scared. And you're feeling, um, you're not really sure why, maybe because you're out of connection and you just need them to sit down if they're capable." If they're avoidant, they might not be capable. "Sit down and- and be next to you so that you can get your system back into what we call ventral, a ventral state of connection."

   14. CWChris Williamson45:38

       What's that?

   15. JBJessica Baum45:40

       So, when I talk about evolution, there is, um, dorsal shutdown is when you freeze, and really your system shuts down and prepares for- for death. It's like a reptilian way of dealing with fear. And then there's sympathetic which is fight, flight, run, you're activated. And then our highest form of evolution, and Stephen Porges, um, coined this in Polyvagal, is ventral, ventral connection, and that's when you and I are making eye contact and we're open and we feel safe. And we're in this, you know, we're cued towards each other, which we are right now, and we're really attuning. That's really where, um, we wanna be, and that's our highest evolution in terms of social connection, and that's where the best things happen. But throughout the day and throughout our relationships, we shift into different states. We're just not even aware of it. But if we can and we realize we're not in this open place, and sometimes our thoughts can tell us. All of a sudden, our partner becomes our enemy, and, "Look at what they're doing." I call it case building. We're case building against them. Okay, we've shifted into sympathetic fight mode. We're not feeling safety anymore. We need to feel safe in our relationships. So, we might not be aware of what cued us, but if our partner can sit down and just be with us, you know, attune to us and just kind of hold us or be next to us, our system might go back into a ventral place, and that's when we can get back into connection. Sometimes if our partner is causing us the pain, we need to separate ourselves and call another who's not gonna pour gasoline on it or find other ways of self-soothing. Not everybody... You know, the best, I think, is co-regulation. But there might be, "Hey, my partner is on the same team, but my system is being activated, and I'm case building right now. How can I pull myself away and remind myself that my partner does love me and come back to the table where I'm calmer and I can start to explain to my partner what's going on inside of me versus what they did to me?" 'Cause our partners bring up our own work, and it's not... Uh, many people get stuck in the blame and, um, myself included. "Look at what you did to me," or, you know, "You're abandoning me," or, "You don't care about me." You wanna get out of that kind of black and white thinking and start to explain, "Wow, my system is feeling really unsafe right now," or, "I'm feeling escalated. I wanna fight, and I know that's my nervous system in response, and so I wanna try to deescalate my nervous system back into, like, a place of safety and connection so we can talk about what's going on inside of ourselves, reach some empathy and understanding that, um, we can get back into connection," 'cause essentially that's all, what we want. Our biological imperative is to get back into connection. So, if you know that you're escalating, you wanna find ways to either pull away, um, self-soothe, or co-regulate with someone who'll help you calm down rather than pouring more gasoline onto this feeling of sensation that can be unbearable going on inside of you.

8. 48:34 – 56:52

   Practical Strategies to Calm Anxiety

   1. JBJessica Baum48:34

   2. CWChris Williamson48:34

      What are some of the practical ways that somebody that deals with anxious attachment and may have this sort of flood of emotions due to something that's occurred, maybe they can remember what it was that happened, or maybe it's something that's subconscious that they just happen to have noticed. You mentioned breathwork practices earlier on-... what are those, and what are any of the other strategies that you could give someone to try and bring themselves back online?

   3. JBJessica Baum48:57

      I mean, I think the most important thing is awareness, first. First and foremost, I think most people aren't even aware that they're in an activated state. So you can tell what your heart rate's, you're starting to... I mean, I can, you can go zero to 100 pretty fast. And so, you, and it's very easy to engage 'cause you want to fight to get back into connection. Ironically, the fighting will put you in more disconnection. But you, we wanna sense, start to become really aware of your nervous system. So, that's the first step. Then there's several different things. I mean, like I said, breathing, and I hate to be the cliché therapist who's like, "Oh, breathing," but it's actually the escalations 'cause your brain is now thinking, like, a saber-toothed bear is coming at you, or that you're in danger, right? And we live in these states all the time. But your respiratory system, your bra- your body is much smarter than your brain. Your brain's gonna make up a story of the here and now that's pretty probably not accurate. But your respiratory system can cue your brain back into safety. So, you know, box breathing, extending your exhales, having a mantra. Like I like to say, "Inhale, exhale," to get out of the story and give my mind something to do. So-

   4. CWChris Williamson50:04

      When you say box breathing, you mean, uh, inhale for a count, hold for a count, exhale for a count, and hold at the bottom for a count, and that all stays the same?

   5. JBJessica Baum50:15

      Yeah. And I... Really extending your exhale, um, is more of a cue to safety. So, 'cause when we're anxious, our breathing changes, and when we're sympathetic it becomes shorter and more, uh, erratic. And so if you can start to extend the exhale part of your breathing, I know it sounds crazy, but you're gonna down-regulate your system. And so, breathing is a great tool. Um-

   6. CWChris Williamson50:41

      How long would you say-

   7. JBJessica Baum50:42

      Don't quit-

   8. CWChris Williamson50:42

      ... would be a, a good sort of effective dose for somebody to do if they wanted to have a little routine to rely on?

   9. JBJessica Baum50:48

      You know, honestly, a few minutes of that breathing, you can check in with your system, you're already gonna see. I also say, like, if you're in a committed relationship, having a mantra. "My partner is on the same team as me. They're hurting as well. They're not trying to cause this hurt on me, even if I wanna believe that." And again, going back to inhale and exhale, don't feed the story. Whatever you do-

   10. CWChris Williamson51:11

       Right.

   11. JBJessica Baum51:11

       ... don't feed the story at that time.

   12. CWChris Williamson51:14

       What's that mean?

   13. JBJessica Baum51:14

       Like, "Oh, my partner doesn't care about me," or, "Look what they did." Get out of the story if you're in an activated state and get your body back into a calm place, and try to remember that you're on the same team. You're on the same team, you know? 'Cause it's very easy to get into that fight mode. And I think everyone's guilty of it, myself included. And there'll be days when you're more resourced, and you're like, "Oh, I'm in an activated state. Let me pull myself away and get myself to deactivate myself." And if you're with someone who's able to say to you, "This is really important. Let's take a little bit of space and come back to the table at this time," 'cause remember, anxious people feel like in that moment, they'll never get back into connection. So giving them a time and place as to, you know, right after dinner, or give it, "Let's take a break for an hour. Remember I love you. Let's, let's cool down." Or you tell your partner that, and you take the space, and you come back and you share from a place of what's going on inside of you. You share from a vulnerable place. Not like, "You did this. You did th-" Not, not from blame or projection, but from a place of, "I got really scared," or, "My heart rate started to escalate," or, "I really wanted to fight with you, and so my defense mechanisms were up. And so that's my nervous system, my ARC, you know, my sense of survival was feeling threatened in that moment." So it really comes down to awareness and some of those tools. Sometimes you can call a friend, but again, or a therapist, but you need to know that that person isn't on one side of the relationship. They're more there holding space for your nervous system and helping you just get back to a place of calm rather than... O-often people take on anger for you, 'cause they don't wanna see you a- you know, hurting. But really, you want that friend to be like, "I know you love your partner, and I know this feels horrible right now, but let's just be with this horribleness for a while. You're not alone in it." Call a friend and help you de- deescalate. And if your partner has the ability to help you in those moments, your partner is a great resource if they are capable of being that person for you. More often than not, they're also struggling, which is why you're in the fight.

   14. CWChris Williamson53:22

       What about longer term deprogramming of anxious attachment styles? This is how we deal with it in the moment. Something's arisen. We've got box breathing, extended exhales. We've got call somebody that's just gonna hold space. We've got don't continue to feed the narrative, don't pour gasoline on the fire, and, uh, create certainty around the next point at which we're perhaps gonna sort of readdress this or come back to the conversation with our partner. W- how does this fix anxious attachment over the longer term? Or what are the ways to fix an- anxious attachment over the longer term?

   15. JBJessica Baum53:57

       Well, that's a, that's a very good question, and it's probably a pretty deep question. But, um, and I do go over a lot of different ways in which you can work towards earned security in the book. When you are young, you internalize your primary caregivers. And so if they were anxious or absent, there is a part of your psyche that is going to that resource. When you become an adult, you can internalize healthy people, healthier, more nurturing people into your inner community. So if you were my therapist, and you were tuning to me, and you seem loving and caring and kind and I can show more of my parts to you, when I'm not around you, I can start to access your essence anyway. And so this is what a baby does. When they're secure and they're not around their primary caregivers, they still feel an inherent sense of their parents within them. They s- they feel the essence of security.So, if you didn't get that, that's picking people now in your life as an adult that you can spend enough time with, and your nervous system starts to recognize, "They are attuning to me. They do care. They're not judgmental. They're accepting me for who I am." And when I experience that enough, I internalize that person inside, and I also can tell when this is happening with a client 'cause they'll be going through a really hard time. And sometimes they'll need to call me in the moment 'cause I'm that person, or sometimes they can be like, "If Jessica was in the room, what would that feel like? What would she say to me?" And, like, my amazing experience of that recently, and this is how you can tell you're really wor- lurk- working your way towards earned security, is that when you're really digressing, you can start to think about all the people who care about you and all the people who love you, and can actually access that in a regressed state. And you can start to say, "This is an ego state of mine that is regressing and it's old and it's a wound, but there's so many people who care about me right now. I'm not alone." And you can feel into that, and you can access those people as an internal resource. And again, this is a missing link in your developmental years. So, it's a very... I mean, if you're listening, it might be a hard concept to grasp, but if you can think of the one most nurturing person in your life, if you had one, if you can access that memory and the felt sense of being around that person, when you become an adult, you can start to access that more and more and more and more. And that's where you're building neuroplasticity. It's actually in the re-internalization of healthy people and the re-experiencing of these dysregulated moments in the presence of safety and healthy people that we rewire our brain towards more earned security.

9. 56:52 – 1:10:46

   Exploring Past Traumas

   1. JBJessica Baum56:52

   2. CWChris Williamson56:53

      How much of this inv- is... Uh, uh, how important is it to go back through past traumas versus just moving forward and going through things that are good for us now? 'Cause it seems like, uh, I'm... Not right now, I'm in the UK, but I'm going back to Austin in two days time, and the word trauma is-

   3. JBJessica Baum57:10

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson57:10

      ... like, the buzzword of every sauna chat that I hear at some of the sort of psychedelic-y places that I go to, and everyone's a trauma healer. Everybody's accessing past trauma through psychedelic drugs or through breath work or through somatic practices or sound baths or ketamine psychotherapy or whatever. Um, how important, in your experience, is it for people to revisit old traumas versus looking forward and doing things with new situations and trying to create new patterns?

   5. JBJessica Baum57:40

      You know, it's a- it's a good question 'cause I don't want the listeners to think that they have to relive all their past traumas, and it's- it's not a black and white answer. If things are coming up, we wanna get in touch with the origin of it. And if things aren't coming up, we don't need to get in touch with the origin of it. And things unfold as they should unfold, but I think it's about the awareness of if this intensity is coming up inside of my body, there's a history here. And the more I c- connect it back to the origin, the more integration in my brain happens. So, there's no f- quick fix, but... And there's no- You don't need to dive in to all your quote unquote trauma. You need to meet yourself moment to moment with what's showing up with tenderness and care and awareness that this might be a little bit older than you think, and only that. You don't need to meet the moments of your life, and your- the safety in which you feel things and the safety or the way in which things show up in your life is what needs to be met in that moment. So, it's- it's, you know, a lot of people wanna heal their trauma overnight, but it's really a slowing down and meeting what is somatically and being more conscious of what is in the moment here and now in a som- in your body in- in a tender, compassionate way that leads to integration in your brain. I don't know if that answers your question, but I know everybody's-

   6. CWChris Williamson59:13

      I'm always... What I've got in my head is, I'm always a little bit... I've always got a little bit of ick or just distrust, I think, when people harp on too much about trauma, about past trauma. And I- I've really been trying to work out what it is. I think it feels to me a little bit like, um, people that have got an injury saying that the chiropractor that can, like, snap their back or crack their bones and that's going to fix the misalignment into place. It's like, that's a very acute solution to a problem which is systemic and ingrained. It's ingrained in the way you move. It's ingrained in the posture. It's in the way that your bones that sit around the structure, the- or muscles that sit around the structure that is your bones. It's the way that they've learned to move over time, and it's just always felt a little bit to me like one, uh- uh, significant moment that fixes trauma seems really unrealistic because I- I understand how myelin gets laid down in the brain. It's tons and tons and tons of different pathways. So, what are you telling me? That you- you- you've managed to turn all of those pathways off? You don't get to cut off pathways. That's not a thing. Those pathways are there for life. You just get to lay new pathways that are going to be more easy for you to access than those ones. And I think that's why people that have said that one amazing psychedelic trip or one very meaningful meditation session or whatever sort of healed and fixed my trauma, um, i- it might be placebo, but it doesn't seem to me like it can actually structurally be making those sorts of changes in the brain. I think that's why I've got a little bit of hesitation around the trauma stuff.

   7. JBJessica Baum1:00:52

      Yeah, let me, let me explain that a little bit better. Um, so a- a- a plant medicine or something like that, i- it could be a doorway in.And what I mean is, it could get you out of some of your thinking and give you a new, um, observer of your own mind. But the way neuropathways are formed in our brain, it's like if your house was across the street from me, and it snowed a lot, and anxiety was my protector, I'm gonna have a well-worn path to your house. I'm gonna walk to your house every day, and that path is gonna be well-worn, and that might be anxiety. As I start to heal and expand my window of tolerance, I learn there might be other paths, and I start to take other paths which are harder 'cause they're not as well-worn. And-

   8. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

      More effortful, more deliberate, more intentional.

   9. JBJessica Baum1:01:45

      Yeah. And maybe a lightbulb moment went off where I found out, "Oh, my God. There's a possibility of another pathway." It doesn't mean that that pathway is easier, and it doesn't mean that that's the pathway we're gonna choose every day. It means the more we practice that pathway, the more that becomes an option. If enough stressors happen in my life, I might go to anxiety because that's the most well-worn pathway. But over time and with nurturing and care... And, and I think some of these more, these bigger experiences using plant medicine, which I actually haven't personally really experienced myself, but I think they open the door to possibility. But they're not the solution. They're just opening the door to possibility, and people tend to go back and b- back and back and not integrate it at all, in my experience. Um, but if they can open the possibility that I've been using this one pathway and there is another pathway, or there is another experience that I did experience, so I know there's another reality out there that exists, we can start to form the new neuropathways. But we have to practice those pathways, and we also have to give ourselves compassion when we use the old pathways because they're well-worn. So, building new plasticity is, is about... And those, some of those things are about learning new possibilities and then practicing those new pr- possibilities with an ob- observer mind if we are resourced in that moment. If we're too regressed or too much stress has come into our life, we will go to our default, which is a protection, and we will go to the pathway of least resistance. But if we continue to wa- learn new ways to get to that person's house, that maybe the snow... And eventually, those pathways get... That's the best way I can describe it. Does that make sense?

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:31

       You nailed it. You absolutely nailed it. I think that one of the problems that I had was that it was so... Uh, i- it sounds like when people talk about healing trauma, uh, not, like, it showed me that there is another alternative to this particular pattern of behavior that I can do that may be better for me than that one. The way that it's put across, or the way that a lot of people talk about it is that that trauma's now gone. Uh, I had this sort of single formative experience which has completely fa- y- you understand what I mean, right? Like, that's the sort of language-

   11. JBJessica Baum1:04:01

       I do.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:04:01

       ... that people use around it, and I think that that's where the ick came from, that I knew inherently that, look, it's repetition.

   13. JBJessica Baum1:04:08

       I'd be very careful with that. I'd be very, very careful with that. Listen, I can't speak on that because I haven't experienced that myself in my own-

   14. CWChris Williamson1:04:15

       Mayb- uh, me neither. Maybe, maybe we're both talking out of our ass, and maybe you take the right dose of ayahuasca in the right situation and it completely fixes everything. And I don't know, but it doesn't seem likely.

   15. JBJessica Baum1:04:24

       I think, I think the one thing it could do is open your mind to other possibilities, that your mind was so stuck in these repetitive pathways. And now you know there's another way to experience the world, but you gotta access that naturally. Because if your only way to access it is through, like, these, m- you know, ayahuasca things-

   16. CWChris Williamson1:04:43

       Spend the rest of your life on drugs-

   17. JBJessica Baum1:04:45

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:04:45

       ... in a desperate attempt to try and have-

   19. JBJessica Baum1:04:46

       Like-

   20. CWChris Williamson1:04:46

       ... a good attachment style.

   21. JBJessica Baum1:04:47

       I'm not against them. I'm agai- I'm for them showing you possibilities, but true healing, or in my opinion, healing happens slowly, organically, meeting things moment to moment with the right support, l- being curious about your system. And I always say, like, we talk about somatic work. Somatic work is a sen- sensation in your body. When you can meet what is and slow down, you create space. And when you create space, you are being more and more with yourself in a new way. And I feel like you don't wanna flood your system by creating so much space that you don't know what to do. It's about meeting what is and tending to that. And as you start to meet what is in the safety of others, more and more implicit memories, more and more, quote-unquote, trauma surfaces. And we can meet more and more of it, but it happens organically. And it happens, in my opinion, in an, in a way that unfolds where your system can handle it. And so y- it's a process that I wish we could snap our fingers. Who wants to live through uncomfortable sensations again? But it's actually being with those uncomfortable sensations in new ways that prevents you from avoiding or having behaviors that have you c- unconsciously avoid those sensations in the first place. So, for an anxious person, it's about being with the sensations of feeling left or abandoned in the presence of safety more and more so that those sensations don't freak you out as much. And your system is building what we call a window of tolerance for them. And you can tell this is happening when you're going through an experience that's incredibly painful and you have the awareness of what you're actually going through rather than being in the experience. You become more and more an observer. And when you're an observer, the possibilities of how you respond to those scary things that are happening in your body expand, and now we have different choices when we're in really scary situations. And that, to me, is healing. And I can tell when people are healing because it's not that the sensations stop. It's because they have more of a tenderness towards what's going on with them, they have more of an understanding what's going on with them, they have more choices. They're not as reactive in those situations. So-... yes, those could be doorways into other possibilities, but I don't believe they're the end solution. But listen, I've seen some people use ketamine and, and, and other things, and it's helped move the needle, but it, it is not the end-all solution. It's like, if that's a tool for you, now you need to be using this tool sober and starting to understand how the needle got moved, and starting to integrate that experience, sober, (laughs) so that you can start to understand how to access and what's really going on in your brain and your body, not keep going back to that same thing and thinking that that's actually the solution. It's just maybe a lens in which helps you see your own process differently.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:07:56

       Yeah, the fact that that's a gateway drug or, um, a, a, sort of pebble at the top of an avalanche or whatever that cascades down and says, "Look, from here, if you go and do the work, if you iterate, if you're very deliberate and intentional about the way that you move forward, and you do the integration..." There's a term I learned, um, called spiritual bypass, uh-

   23. JBJessica Baum1:08:17

       Oh, God. Don't get me started on that.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:08:19

       Okay, or spiritual tourism.

   25. JBJessica Baum1:08:21

       (laughs) .

   26. CWChris Williamson1:08:21

       Um, and, uh, I, I, that's one of the things that I fear about, about sort of the, the current sort of psychedelic movement, that people are going to have these sort of mystical peak re- quasi-religious experiences and then coming back, and then going away again. It's like, literally like going on holiday to, I don't know, some other brain state. You go, "Well, I'm not convinced that that's any more awakened than somebody that hasn't done it at all." Like, you're not actually changing your day-to-day experience.

   27. JBJessica Baum1:08:50

       There's two ways to think of this. If you go to a candy store (laughs) and you experience the best candy in the whole world and then you come out of it, you're gonna try to get back into that candy store. But if you're slowly, slowly opening yourself in, in like an organic way, you're not tr- trying to get to some state that was th- that got you there with an- like a medicine. But if you can... I mean, and so there's positive and negatives. If you can say, "I was in this candy store, and it was amazing, and I know that's possible, and I'm gonna integrate that and work towards accessing more and more of that state," you might be able to use it as a way to just expand your mind that there's more to reality than in the ingrained ways that you lived. But I think, you know, in my book I have meditations, um, somatic meditations, and a big part of the meditations is not to infuse gratitude and infuse love into yourself, it's to bring in your felt experience of positive times and to meet your body where it's at. What's that mean? Not to... So, to be with your heart space, where is, where, it's a heart brain, it's where we store all the pain of disconnection and all the joy from connection in our heart brain. And it's actually a very intricate brain there. And our belly brain scor- stores all the fear, and our muscles and our fascia and our body stores a lot of memories in the tissue. So by meeting them without directing them, without trying to fix them, but with meeting yourself where you're at, that's where the, the sensations and the history and the stored things come to the surface, and that's what you tend to. It's not about fixing or changing. It's about a being with more and more of yourself.

10. 1:10:46 – 1:22:48

    Harsh Truth of Attachment Anxiety

    1. JBJessica Baum1:10:47

    2. CWChris Williamson1:10:47

       One of the things I've realized having had this chat with you is, it feels like anxious attachment is a particularly sort of torturous or ugly, um, problem to have, because it was caused by somebody that wasn't you in a period, a lot of the time before you can perhaps even remember it, or certainly before you were, you know, a sovereign individual that could have some sort of major influence over your own life. And then when it gets to adulthood, the vast majority of the work that you need to do is also reliant on other people. Like, it seems-

    3. JBJessica Baum1:11:22

       (laughs) .

    4. CWChris Williamson1:11:22

       ... if you're a, a person that likes to be a solo ranger, type A, go-getter, solitary, you know, like workhorse, this, this doesn't really lend itself to your, your skill set tremendously well. And there's a, a blog post that I really, really love. It's called Monk Mode by Illimitable Man, and it basically talks about how, um, sometimes men, it's a blog for men, men need to go away and, and just work on themselves, and it's built on three Is. It's like isolation, introspection, and something else. And I was thinking-

    5. JBJessica Baum1:11:55

       Fantastic.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:11:55

       ... I, I really like the, I really like the process of it. I really like the fact that it's talking about becoming a sovereign individual, working on yourself, developing yourself, virtues, and working on you. And yet, it plays into a narrative that I'm seeing more and more online, which is, "I don't need anybody else. I'm gonna do this completely on my own."

    7. JBJessica Baum1:12:15

       Perfect.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:12:15

       "I am able to hoist the entire world on my shoulders," you know, like Sisyphus, we have to imagine him happy, or Atlas holding up the world. Like, these are typical masculine archetypes that we're talking about here, and it seems like there are a big chunk of things that you just can't do like that. You can't do this on your own. The lift is just too heavy.

    9. JBJessica Baum1:12:36

       I have such an important thing to say about that, because, well, and, and men, yeah, Atlas, and, and this whole idea, and as someone who's suffered from what I call co-dependency, which is why I wrote the book in the first place, um, I thought I had to become super independent and do it on my own. And for many years, I felt that way, and it actually was causing me so much harm, because wounding happens in relationship, healing happens in relationship. We need community to heal. We need mirrors to heal. And I'm not saying there isn't a part of this that's self-reflective. There is. But the truth is, we want interdependency, which means our goal is, "I can depend on you. You can depend on me."You can be inherently yourself, your full self. I can be inherently my full self. I trust that you're gonna respond if you care about me, and I'm gonna respond to the best of our ability, but the trust is there. And that if, you know, and, and I'm not saying people don't go on their hero's journey. Um, when I first wrote this book, I was kind of like, "How do I help people self-help?" When really every therapist and all the science proves that we are meant to be in community. Um, we heal in our relationship experiences. We get wounded and heal in that. And that our relationship with self is a relationship in itself, but we can't form a healthier relationship with self without experiencing a healthy relationship with another on the outside in order to internalize what a nice, healthy voice inside will be. So, I think there is a place to go out and be introspective and go inside and be a hermit, absolutely. But community and connection is how we thrive. It's biologically how we're wired. We're wired. And so in America, there is this whole, like, culture of you gotta be independent and you gotta be self-sufficient. And I, I, I, my mom was super independent and super successful, and I bought into that. And it only hurt me. It really, really only hurt me. It wasn't until I depended on the right people that I became more interdependent, more self-sufficient (laughs) . And it was more able to be myself, more accepting of myself. And it was letting in that support that actually let me feel less alone and more myself, uniquely and autonomously myself. So, the paradox here is we actually need people. We need community. We need much more community than our community offers. And this whole, like, you, success and you gotta be on your own and put your na- you know, this whole independent culture is hurting. And, and I can go into brain development, because that's really a left brain way of being. It's very left mode. Do this, do that. You, y- y- you're gonna be successful on your own. It's very linear, it's very, um... Our right brain, which we don't live enough by, is the felt sense of interconnectedness. It's the felt sense of seeing the wholeness, seeing how we are all interconnected and connected on a spiritual level, but on a nervous system level. We're connected to our environment, we're connected to trees, we're connected to each other. We don't live in a world that supports that at all. But inherently, if you look at evolution, that's how, that's how we're designed. That's where ventral connection comes. It's in the safety of others. It's i- in the safety of having the right community around us. It's not that we're dependent in a bad way on them. It's that, that healthy dependency that I got, this community, that helps me be more myself. So, you know, I'm not knocking going away. There have been periods in my life where I've had to go away and really go inward. But if you're really struggling with these types of things, the truth is, pulling in the right support is actually what's gonna help you become more and more yourself and more accepting of yourself. So, it's a little hard to watch those messages go out, because I was, I wanna say I was imprinted with them too. You gotta be successful, you gotta be on your own, you gotta be a badass, you gotta be selfish. I coin the word self-full. No, you gotta learn how to meet your own needs, and know that you can meet your needs and the meets, needs of another safely in the same universe (laughs) . It's not one or the other.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:17:09

        It's really interesting. I see on the YouTube comments, there will be comments on this video that say, um, "I don't need anybody. Relationships are for suckers. Uh, tried it, failed, not bothered about trying again." Like, this is a very-

    11. JBJessica Baum1:17:21

        Protectors. Those are protectors.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:17:23

        This is a very, very, very common trope that's happening on the internet at the moment. A lot of, it's almost exclusively amongst guys. You've got the MGTOW movement, black pill, incel culture, which probably isn't a part of that. But at the very least, the men going their own way thing. Like for me, i- it's guys that have, you know, got fears and have been hurt. And, uh, you know, we've just seen this Amber Heard case, which is, you know, it's right in front of your face that you can have an incredibly terrifying relationship from both sides. Like, both the guys did wrong things. But she's obviously one of those, uh, the sort of girl that a thread on r/MensRights would be written about, right? You know, she's tried to take the kids away. She's lied about how he was supporting them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that, so I'm not saying that those things don't exist. My point is that, like, that is a really, really prevalent subculture online at the moment. And I want, I want to find a way to speak to those guys and say, look, my experience having met, I've met over a million people in my life, right? Running nightclubs. A million people. Uh, n- very few people that are alive on the planet right now will have met more people than I have. That's not been my experience. Having spent time around so many other humans, your experience that you have seen based on, uh, highlights of the most viral Twit- Twitter and Reddit threads from a very specific type of, of narrative doesn't reflect what I've seen. And there's this kind of heroic narrative around being able to do it on your own, about being a solo ranger that's a sovereign individual that doesn't need anybody else, whether that's on, uh, for girls or for guys, you know? Like, I don't need no man, strong, independent boss babe, or the, uh, solo monk modes entrepreneur that's gonna go and, you know, Sisyphus his way to the end of his life. Those don't seem like particularly heroic narratives to me. Like, when you actually look at it, you go, well, hang on, is it more heroic for you to just care about you for the rest of your life? Like, is that really the pinnacle of what you've got to deliver to the world, this like very selfish...... fast car, big house, but nobody else in it except for me existence? Is that really what you're, w- what you're here to deliver to the world? Or is there a more heroic narrative which allows you to face the things that you're the most scared of, that allows you to enter into a, a relationship with somebody, either as a friendship or as a partner, fully knowing that this could end with you becoming hurt? Like, that e- that is the heroic narrative as far as I can see, but that's not the one that gets pushed online.

    13. JBJessica Baum1:19:53

        No. And I, you know, there are people who need less relationships than others. A, a very avoidant person doesn't need relationships or doesn't value relationships in the same way. But we're biologically wired to be in connection, and I can s- say as a co-dependent survivor or someone who has been wounded in relationship, the pendulum is, "I can do this on my own." Because when you've been wounded or when you've been hurt, the natural defense is, "I don't wanna go there anymore. That is painful." And so the narrative that comes out is, "I don't need anyone," and that is a form of protection. It is very lonely on that side of the coin. And so it's okay if you're there, but once you get there and you're at the top and you realize how lonely, lonely you are, you realize that, in my personal belief, life is about heartfelt connections, and the meaning in life and the quality of your life comes down to the relationships in your life. And neuroscience actually proves this, and our human biology shows us that we are wired to be in community and connection, and that we'll thrive more in human n- in, in connection. And it doesn't mean that you have to have a romantic partner per se, but that the need for connection is inherently in us.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:21:09

        Mm-hmm.

    15. JBJessica Baum1:21:09

        And we will th- we will actually gravitate towards warm, safe connection. Neuroscience shows that we gravitate towards this. So, if someone's really pushing this away, I believe that they're very wounded and something happened and hurt them so much that it's too scary for them to go back into connection. And for me, it makes me very sad because success is not a measure of how big your house is or what you have accumulated. Success, or how about this, meaning comes from how we connect to others and what we, how we deepen in our life, and how we experience that. And so, I just think it's a narrative that helps people deal with pain that they might not even be conscious of, that they're pushing people away, and there's a reason behind that. And you kinda wanna get curious. And some people need to get to the top of the mountain of success and realize it's kind of lonely up there. Sometimes that's your path. But biologically speaking, neurobiologically speaking, how we've developed as humans all point to we need connection. Connection is a biological imperative. We thrive the most as an individual when we're supported in community. And so, for whatever that's worth, you know, I hope that more people, uh, move towards the right felt sense of interconnectedness, and that, that we all need each other, and that we're all more alike than we are different, and move in the direction of community and the importance of community and having that deep connection with another, because I really, truly believe that's what gives meaning to life.

11. 1:22:48 – 1:22:49

    Where to Find Jessica

    1. JBJessica Baum1:22:48

Episode duration: 1:23:50