Why You Feel Insecure in Relationships (And It’s NOT Your Fault) | Dr. Amir Levine

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   What is a secure life, and why are you so confident that we can all live one at any stage in life?

2. ALDr. Amir Levine0:08

   So the idea of a secure life really comes from attachment theory. Um, it was Mary Ainsworth who first discovered the three attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, and secure. She did an experiment called a strange situation test, where you have the, the child come with a, with a mother, typically a, a toddler, to a room full of toys, and they get so excited and start pointing at toys and playing. And then they tell the, the caregiver to leave the room. And immediately they drop... You can watch it on Y- on, like, on YouTube. They have so many of them. They just literally just drop what they have. [laughs] They don't care. They just start crying, banging on the door. You'll try to interest them with a toy, they'll throw it in your face until they ask the caregiver to come back. And it's in that moment when, during the reunion, that she recognizes three attachment styles, anxious, avoidant, and secure, and it all has to do with how good the bond is in helping the child, uh, regulate their emotions and affect. So in a secure child, they, uh, immediately calm down. The, the caregiver embraces them, they immediately calm down, and then they start pointing at the toys, wanting to play again. The anxious attachment, it's very hard to calm them down. They calm down for a few minutes, start crying again. So it's just, like, harder for them to use the bond to regulate their affect. And, uh, the avoidant, they either don't cry even that much, or they, when the mother or the caregiver li- uh, uh, hugs them, they kind of stay limp. Um, but inside, when you look at research, their blood pressure is through the roof, and so they kind of, like, block it, but they're also not as good as utilizing the bond to regulate their affect. So then later studies discovered that we have those same attachment styles in adulthood. Uh, Hazan and Shaver first discovered that in roma- in the context of roman- romantic relationships. So basically, we use our relationships, and now I would argue even beyond that, to regulate our affect. So if we want to create a secure life, it basically talks about how do we go about making sure that our relationships, the ones that we create, are actually good in, uh, helping us, uh, calm down and feel supported rather than the opposite.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:30

   It's such an interesting topic, and I guess one of the key things I got from reading your book is hope. There's a continuous theme of empowerment with you basically telling the reader that it doesn't matter, to a degree, your attachment style or what's happened in your past. It is still possible to live, you know, what you call a secure life. And you make the very strong case in the book that when we're living a secure life, we're healthier. We have better relationships. When we're sick, we have fewer symptoms. We're less susceptible to consumerism. We can navigate social media better. All of these benefits, which made me think when we truly feel secure in who we are and that we don't have to achieve in order to be worthy, let's say, then we go around the world almost with a resilient bubble around us. You know, this whole thing that we're less susceptible to consumerism, it makes so much sense to me because advertising only works, really, or most of modern advertising only works when you feel insecure because it's all designed to hit that Achilles heel in you. Whereas if you actually feel secure, it's like, "Yeah, I, I don't know why they're trying to sell me that. I, I don't need that."

4. ALDr. Amir Levine4:00

   [laughs]

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:00

   "I don't, I don't have a hole in my heart that needs filling with that." It, it's, it's, it's very empowering, isn't it?

6. ALDr. Amir Levine4:07

   Yeah, I think so. You know, once I was in the New York City subway, and I saw an ad saying, "Self-help books help, uh, one person, the writer." And I looked at it and I said, "That's not entirely wrong." I mean, a lot of the stuff that I write, it definitely helped me, helped my patients, and helped my immediate circle. And the way it came about is, you know, I wrote this book, it's called Attached, 15 years ago, and when I w- I wrote it with my childhood friend. Basically, I was, like, um, I was going through a break-up at the time, and that's where I came across these attachment styles in adulthood, and I didn't... We never learned about it in, I never learned about it in medical school or in my psychiatry residency. We never really used those attachment styles in, in learning how to do treatment and therapy with people. Uh, so it was such a revelation, and I remember calling my friend Rachel, and was like, "Oh my God, this is so helpful," because it explained to me so much about the break-up and what went on in that relationship and the different attachment styles and how we respond in adulthood. And so we decided, instead of, like, you know, the way that one does when you go through a break-up and you talk about it endlessly, we decided to actually use that energy to write this book about these attachment styles. Um, and we'd always had this running joke that it's only gonna sell one copy to the Library of Congress 'cause we just wrote it to ourselves. Uh, and then it kind of, like, took a life of its own because I guess the same concepts that helped me so much, we were able to translate it into something that will help others. But then people came to me in therapy, and they asked me, "Okay, now I want to become more secure. How do I become more secure?" And I didn't have an immediate answer to that. And I actually found the answer in a way that I least expected it. I'm also a molecular neuroscientist, and I study the molecular mechanism of emotional memories, and I find myself in therapy with my patients sort of veering off the usual therapeutic techniques and starting to explain to them about the brain and how the brain works, because if you think about it, it's really, that's our motherboard. That's what dictates how we respond-

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:10

   Mm

8. ALDr. Amir Levine6:10

   ... to things and how we, if we understand that, we can really, uh, find a way to become more secure, and I can give you a few examples of how that works, really.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:20

   Yeah.

10. ALDr. Amir Levine6:20

    And so, yeah.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:21

    Uh, there's a, there's a bit towards the end of the book which I really liked, which kind of resonated with-The way I often view the human body a- and human health, you, you say, "One of the reasons that I'm drawn towards attachment science is that it's not based on the medical model of fixing pathologies, but rather on normal behavior traits that are common in everyone. The question then becomes not whether a particular trait or way of looking at things is sick or healthy, but rather is it effective or ineffective? In other words, is it working for you in your life or not, and if not, how can it be changed?"

12. ALDr. Amir Levine7:09

    I love that you read that sentence because it really, it rings so true, and it's so important, but people are so used to looking at themselves from the medical model that now there's a whole... If you look online about adult attachment styles, it's all, uh, uh, it's all about they sort of veer it back into the medical model. Heal your anxious attachment style. Heal your avoidant attachment style. But it's not a sickness. Having... It's, it's a, it's a variation in the population. It's very, very important to understand it from the get-go. These are variations on the, on the norm. I think a- around 50-something percent are secure, which is such good news, g- and you'll see soon why.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:47

    So 50% of the adult population-

14. ALDr. Amir Levine7:49

    The majority of population are secure. I know it's hard to believe. 25% are avoidant. Around 20% are, uh, anxious, and very few are fearful avoidant. So it's a variation on the norm, like, like, like I told you, like being tall or short.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:04

    So, so is it genetic then? Is it something we're born with? Or, you know, 'cause a lot of us would say that, and I know you kind of address this towards the end of the book about causation and where it's very hard to prove where this stuff comes from or whether it was your childhood trauma that led to you having a certain attachment style. But what do you think, based upon your reading of the research? Is it genetic, or is it a combination of genes plus environment, particularly when we're children?

16. ALDr. Amir Levine8:32

    I think not even when we're children. That's kinda like, that's the case that I'm trying to make in the book. It's we are so, such deeply social creatures, and really, our ability to collaborate with others is our superpower as, as a species. I mean, if you think about it, we're not particularly strong animals.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:52

    Mm-hmm.

18. ALDr. Amir Levine8:52

    Uh, we're very vulnerable, but yet we can live in the North Pole. We can go to, we can make it to the moon, all because... And we rose up, and we, we're not in the middle of the food chain anymore. We're kinda like the top of the food chain. We did all that because of our ability to collaborate and form really cohesive societies. So our brain is really adapt. It, it wouldn't make sense that we would fix it on a certain way in childhood and then remain the same through the rest of our lives. We are so much more, um, adaptable socially than people let, like are led to believe, and that's part of this whole message in the book. And I actually use that in order to help the people become more secure. And so in, in childhood, we can actually form several different models of attachment because it's not only the mother or the father that we form attachments to, and then later on in life also. Attachment basically in childhood explains, it's a correlation coefficient of .2 to .3, which means that, like 90, around 95% of adult attachment cannot be explained by childhood attachment.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:02

    Really?

20. ALDr. Amir Levine10:02

    Yes, and that's what the f- that's what the findings show, basically.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:05

    Well, that really surprises me.

22. ALDr. Amir Levine10:07

    It does, because it doesn't surprise me 'cause that's the research, but people have a hard time accepting that. But I find it hopeful because it means that we are so, we, there's so much potential for change.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:20

    Well, that, that message of hope is something I'm gonna keep reiterating because that's the big, big message I got from reading your book, and even to the degree that later on you, you sort of made the case that it's not always necessary to excavate our past.

24. ALDr. Amir Levine10:38

    Right. So that's why, that's wh- that's the point that I love about that whole... 'Cause attachment, the whole, this whole s- uh, adult attachment, the science, it doesn't come from the medical, uh, research. It comes from social psychology and also from developmental psychology. So the whole preface of what's, uh, sick or not sick is not there. But I have to say, I mean, about, like childhood memories, there's a whole chapter in the book about causality.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:02

    Yeah.

26. ALDr. Amir Levine11:02

    And as a scientist, to establish causa- uh, for sci- for scientists, causality is the holy grail. It's, like they're so hard to, to sort of, to discover and find, and sometimes even one molecule you think is doing one thing, and then you discover that it's completely, it's y- it's really, really hard to establish causality. Yet in, in, uh, in treatment and in psychology, we often say, "Oh, because this and this happened to you in childhood, then now you're this way." But I've, like even when you look in behaviors in mice that are all genetically identical, and let's say you expose them-

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:37

    Mm-hmm

28. ALDr. Amir Levine11:37

    ... like in adolescence, like in early childhood to a bully, uh, a part of them will become really depressed and anxious later in life, and some of them will show complete resilience. You wouldn't even tell what happened to them. So it's very, very hard to establish causality.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:51

    Yeah. That's the thing with stress though, isn't it? Right? Because if you think about it, or the way I think about it, you can't really say that X or Y is a stressful event because, you know, that event will be seen differently by different people, right? So-

30. ALDr. Amir Levine12:14

    They process differently. Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:47:56