E111 - Why can Relationships be so Difficult? (Attachment, Aggression, Self-Love and more w/Adam Lane Smith)

Adam Lane Smith is a renowned Attachment Specialist with over 15 years of experience in psychology and relationships. Formerly a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he has dedicated his career to helping individuals and couples overcome attachment issues and build secure, meaningful connections. Adam has worked with a diverse clientele, including death row inmates and Fortune 500 executives. Adam has his own podcast and youtube channel with over 100k subscribers, though which he aims to educate as many people as possible about the art and science of attachment. 

Today we discuss:

Some of his more recent Tweets about the limits of self-love, the importance of health aggression and the danger of repeating unconcious childhood patterns in adulthood. 

Common attachment patterns and their fascinating underlying biology. 

The right and wrong reasons to pursue content creation, and how to ethically pursue content creation to augment your business. 

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training.

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com - 
Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

Transcript

Most of the clients who come in to me and fix their anxious attachment style with me, that fear that they're unlovable, that they're innately not good enough, they will put up the smallest boundary and say no to one person. And then they come in and say, Adam, I'm in my villain phase now. I am, I am in, I'm like a, I'm like one of those Disney villains now because they put up the tiniest little boundary. 

If you, if anybody out there feels like you are so pressed upon in your life that you can't say no, you're not allowed to say no, and then you find yourself repeatedly saying, dang, if I had only said no, I would have saved myself so much heartache. Start saying no. Start applying boundaries. Boundaries don't filter out healthy people. 

Boundaries filter out unhealthy people. 

Welcome back. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the quality of your life in large part can be dictated by the quality of your relationships. I think this is [00:01:00] something most people know to be true. We actually haven't discussed relationships in a little while on the podcast. With us to continue that conversation about relationships today is Adam Lane Smith. 

Adam is a renowned attachment specialist with over 15 years experience in psychology and relationships, formerly a licensed marriage and family therapist in the U. S. He's dedicated his career to helping individuals and couples overcome attachment issues and build secure, meaningful connections. Adam has worked with diverse clients, including death row inmates and fortune 500 executives. 

In addition, Adam has his own podcast and YouTube channel with over 100, 000 subscribers, through which he aims to educate as many people as possible about the art. and science of attachment. Today we discuss some of his more recent controversial tweets including those about the limits of self love, the importance of healthy aggression and the danger of repeating unconscious childhood patterns in adulthood. 

We also discuss some [00:02:00] of the nuances of attachment including common anxious avoidant and secure attachment patterns people fall into and some of the underlying biology which was really cool. And lastly, we discuss some of the principles of good content creation, the right and wrong reasons to pursue content creation, the common pitfalls, and how to ethically use content creation to augment your business. 

This is the Thinking Mind podcast, a podcast all about psychology, psychiatry, therapy and related topics. If you like it and want to support it, do check out some of the links in the description. As always, thank you for listening. And now here's today's conversation with Adam Lane Smith. Adam, thank you so much for joining me. 

Alex, it is good to be back and good to have this conversation with you again. Two things I definitely want to talk about today, attachment theory, but maybe going into some more depth than we did last time. I'll put a link in the description for anyone who wants to check out our last episode, which is a really nice overview of what attachment theory is. 

I [00:03:00] also want to talk a little bit about content creation and how a person can leverage that for their business, leverage it to monetize their creative work. I think that's really helpful. A lot of people get a lot of value from that. But first, I'd love to unpack a few of your tweets. You've got an amazing Twitter account. 

The thing about Twitter or X is that you are pretty much forced to be a little bit controversial. And that's obviously super interesting to start and maybe we can explore some of these tweets and unpack them and see some of the deeper ideas. In true, in true attachment style, you grow up with what you think is normal, and then you spread from there and learn it's not normal. 

I started my content creation journey on Twitter, and I learned to be very controversial and push, push, push. And that has got me into a little bit of trouble as we've branched out to some of the gentler platforms like Instagram. So I have, I've had to, uh, remodel some of my own communication and behaviors, just like anybody who grows up [00:04:00] in a challenging family has to remodel later as well. 

So let's get into a little bit of trouble with the Twitter crowd here. This will be good. Let's see how much trouble we can get into. I'm excited. So firstly, one of your tweets, people are afraid to come off like a jerk. But a lot of problems could be solved in advance by being more of a jerk. The only people who are afraid to come off like a jerk usually are people who are anxiously attached and insecure already. 

Avoidantly attached people are sometimes happy to be viewed as a jerk and securely attached people don't really worry what people think of them because if they're, if they're viewed as a jerk, it's a misunderstanding and you can clear that up pretty easily. So But that, that tweets a little bit of a trick. 

The people who are afraid of looking like a jerk need stronger boundaries. Anyway, most of the clients who come into me and fix their anxious attachment style with me, that fear that they're unlovable, that they're innately not good enough, they. Uh, they will put up the smallest boundary [00:05:00] and say no to one person. 

And then they come in and say, Adam, I'm in my villain phase. Now I am, I am in, I'm like a, I'm like one of those Disney villains now, because they put up the tiniest little boundary. So if you, if anybody out there feels like you are so pressed upon in your life, that you can't say no, you're not allowed to say no. 

And then you find yourself repeatedly saying, dang, if I had only said no, I would have saved myself so much heartache. Start saying no. Start applying boundaries. Boundaries don't filter out healthy people. Healthy people will talk to you about it. Boundaries filter out unhealthy people. So be a little bit more of a jerk. 

Be a little more in your villain phase and your life will get better. So I guess the misinterpretation of that tweet and why it may come across as controversial is because People may think, oh, you're supposed to come off like a jerk, but that's not really what you're saying. What you're saying is being okay with coming off like a jerk is a side effect of having [00:06:00] healthy integration of your aggression, of being able to say what you want, of being able to defend against what you don't want, having strong boundaries. 

So you kind of, this is a kind of a conversation I have with clients all the time. It's like, it's, it's not like getting people to like you as a good idea, but not directly. The way you get people to like you is by developing yourself and reacting in the way that's more according to your principles. And then you kind of, when it comes to people, let the chips fall where they may. 

And some people are going to like you and some are going to dislike you. And as you're saying, it's a filter. Even that tweet itself is an exact model for how to do it. The people that get mad at me and call me a jerk for telling people to act more like a jerk. They didn't want to learn from me anyway, but the people that want to learn from me will at least stop like you did and ask, Hey, what did you mean by this? 

What does it mean to come off as kind of a jerk? And then we can have a great conversation. So the tweet itself shows you what to do. When it comes to aggression [00:07:00] itself, do you worry that we very much live? In a culture that disincentivizes like healthy, uh, healthy acts of aggression. Yes. Yes, I was talking to a brilliant therapist just the other day, and he was talking to me about how most of his clients have an unhealthy relationship with anger. 

And that they're afraid to touch it or feel it. And they only, they, they bottle it up so deeply that they only feel their anger when it finally overflows as really bad aggression. And so then they're also afraid of aggressive feelings. And remember that, you know, we, we are very tactile creatures. We, we brush up against each other constantly. 

Men are meant to be wrestling and fighting and sparring and playing, even with our friends were meant to be. And. I think that aggression is a good thing when it's controlled and appropriate. Anger is a good thing when it's controlled and appropriate and not allowing anybody to feel any of those feelings at all. 

We have [00:08:00] to live in one giant kindergarten class now. I think that's, what's making a lot of people sick. What about you? Do you think so? I mean, I think so. A lot of my, a lot of people I encounter seem to think that aggression is a one or a zero, very black and white view of aggression. I'm either an angry jerk as is where, or I am how I am normally. 

You know, I'm either not expressing at all, expressing aggression at all, or I'm in a total rage. And what I tend to encourage people to do when I'm working with them is to think of aggression as a dimmer switch. And you might think, you know, as you're starting to build a relationship with aggression, you might think, okay, this situation, what level of aggression does it call for? 

Rarely would it call for 100%, but many situations call for more than 0%. So if you had to think of your aggression as a dimmer switch, rather than a normal switch, where would you put it? You know, would it be 10%? And if so, I would counsel them, like, what would 10 percent aggression look like in this situation? 

[00:09:00] Which is, I mean, this thought process I stole from a kind of therapy called dialectical behavior therapy. which for listeners was actually developed to help people with emotional volatility. And, uh, and through this process, you kind of get people to really regularly assess what their emotional reactions are in situations and how they can actually deploy an emotion like anger usefully because anger is, of course, so useful. 

We're so disabled without it. I agree. Think of this. In our society, you should have some anger available to you. Let's say you're walking through a grocery store, and someone is trying to give you free samples that you don't want. There's no cause for aggression. You say, hey, no thank you, I appreciate that. 

Let's say that you're walking through the store and there's someone Trying to pitch a product to you and they're following you and annoying you and continuing to tell you, Hey, you should buy it. You should buy it. You should try it. Come try it. Come try it. Then you need to get a little more aggressive to push them back because they're being [00:10:00] aggressive to you. 

Let's say that there's somebody who is doing that and then mixing insults in about how, Hey, come on, don't be a cheapskate. Don't be a jerk. Come try this product. They're being more aggressive. So you should be more aggressive. Let's say now you have your child with you and they're starting to kind of scare your child during this process. 

You're probably going to get more aggressive than extreme. The 100, let's say someone they're doing that. And then they try to snatch your child. Now, maximum aggression is responsible. There are progressions of regression even inside a relationship. Let's say your partner is really, really, really wanting to have bedroom time with you and you're just really not in the mood. 

And they ask. Well, there's not a point. There's no reason to be aggressive there. Now let's say that they're pressuring you more than normal and you, you could kind of push back a little bit more and maybe ask what's going on. Let's say they're getting manipulative about it and trying to push and pressure you into it. 

You should get a little more aggressive. Let's say they are like coming on and it's, it's, you don't get a [00:11:00] choice about like this. This is maximum aggression. Push them back. There should be levels of aggression. As appropriate, dictated based on what the other people in the situation are doing. Your aggression should match their aggression and it should be driven by your ethics, your goals, and your, and your well being. 

All of those three things should be driving your boundaries. Well being, goals, ethics. Those push your boundaries back. If you don't do those, you're not treating yourself like a human being. You're just treating yourself like an object that's there to, what, please other people? People please, eh? Yeah, as soon as you understand that aggression can be graded like that, you realize it's a, it's an instrument you can sharpen over time. 

You can sharpen the sword. I think all of our emotional impulses are like that. Do you think, do you think that, do you think this is why a lot of men who go join a martial art like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or whatever it might be, or Karate, do you think this is why they gain an understanding over those levels [00:12:00] of boundaries and disciplines? 

Yes, because they're getting used to confrontations, but because they now understand the gradations of aggression, do you think that might be why? It has to be because that's the secret source of martial arts, I suppose. It's the learning to be aggressive with the control and with, it's really the key is the proportionality. 

The ability to be aggressive in a way that's proportionate to your situation is a superpower. And there'll be people who fall on both sides of that problem. There's people who are too like narcissistic or aggressive. They don't take into account other people's needs at all. And there's people, of course, the opposite. 

And both people need to kind of not work towards the middle, but actually they need to expand their range so that, so that they can deal with all the different kinds. Cause I think the thing about the, the, the reason why personality growth is so important is because there's such a wide variety of situations to deal with in life. 

So one tool isn't going to cut it, like aggression can cut it in many situations, but not all. [00:13:00] Empathy can cut it in many situations, but not all. And so I really try and, I really like to try and advocate developing a personality toolkit to deal with different situations. Right, I've heard it said violence is never the answer, violence is the question, and the answer is yes or no, and you need to be tracking that in each circumstance to see is a violence appropriate, and what level of violence is appropriate, even the concept of peace versus violence, even that is really a false dichotomy, it's levels of responsiveness, and that's Maybe this is the key. 

Maybe X, Alex, maybe this is the key. I've been toying with this a lot as I work with my coaching clients, and I haven't talked about it much, but I'll talk about it with you. I'd love to get your insight on this. Um, there's, there's this framework of reactivity versus responsiveness. When you react, you are just fast reacting. 

You either stimulus hits and you. Boom, your emotions drive your reaction. This is what happens when we get frustrated, angry, [00:14:00] irritable, blah, blah, blah, scared, withdraw. But when we react, everybody else's trust in us goes down because it shows that we are not aligning to predictable principles or goals or, or well being or ethics. 

What we're doing is instantly responding and caving into the person who's, who's Driving that, that reaction. Now, instead, when we pause for a moment and breathe and think, and then choose how to respond in alignment with our principles, our ethics, our wellbeing, we become predictable and therefore people can establish a pattern around how we act and they know it's not based on whoever controls us. 

It's our own internal control. Their trust for us goes way up. So responsiveness is crucial, but never reacting. The reacting is what we want to cut to zero. What do you think of that? I mean, absolutely. Especially when it comes to difficult situations, people love consistency. So if we're going through a bad time, if the baby's been up all night [00:15:00] crying, if someone's lost their job, if there's an illness, people love consistency because of course by definition we know what to expect from that person. 

They're reliable, dependable. I think when it comes to fun situations, people love spontaneity. So again, thinking about expanding range, if you can become unpredictable when, when appropriate, when it's time to have fun, very predictable, dependable during the hard times, then I think that's a really amazing. 

combination. Obviously, the gap that you mentioned between reactivity and responsiveness is very useful. What I would add to that is the more you work on responsiveness, The more your automatic reaction becomes the response, I would be good. You kind of, when you react, you kind of fall back to the level of your training. 

Kind of like Jason Bourne style. So the more you, you like work on that responsiveness, then I think after a period of months to years of working on it, then actually your natural reaction will become better and better and better. [00:16:00] Hmm, I really like that. One thing to even flag in there is, yes, people say they want spontaneity, but women in particular say they want spontaneity in their relationship, and they're tracking that romantic experience the man is having. 

What she's trying to do is measure his oxytocin levels, which then compels him to do affectionate behaviors, what we call spontaneous displays of affection. Where he's thoughtful, he's engaged. He wants to do what he, you know, to, to care for her and, and, and give that warmth and affection to her. She's trying to measure that in him, but even in there, she doesn't want true spontaneity. 

She wants spontaneity in a narrow frame that is comfortable and good for her. Women want you to bring them a box of chocolates with a love letter or buy them something they've been thinking about or do something to make their life better and help them grow, help them feel supported. She probably doesn't want you to bring like the severed head of her enemy to you. 

Most likely most women like that's a little outside the range of what they want for [00:17:00] unpredictability. They, they don't want you usually to like buy them a new car. Most women would be a little horrified at that because that's way too extravagant of a gesture. And it seems to involve maybe not just unpredictability, but instability or people pleasing. 

So the, the extravagance of a gesture can be inappropriate within a frame, unpredictability within a frame, but that frame is still predictable as well. She needs to know that you will give love and affection within an appropriate frame. Does that make sense? Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Next tweet. There might be some discreements here. 

Please. You have to love yourself first is crap. If you believe you're unlovable, you can't magically love yourself. People need to experience love before they believe they're worth anything. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. What do you disagree with in that? I'm curious. So, I think the, what you are trying to communicate, which I do agree with, is that human beings are social creatures. 

There is a [00:18:00] strong, it's very invoked, talk about self compassion and loving yourself. It's very hard to love yourself in isolation. I think at some point, some kind of external validation, some kind of mutually beneficial relationship with another person is something that is a basic human need for the vast, vast majority of us. 

Where I disagree is I think Getting started, especially for a lot of people, you know, a lot of young people are very isolated now. Perhaps they've never had a romantic relationship, maybe they don't even have a lot of friendships. I think it's very important to cultivate a stance of positive self regard and self compassion. 

I think that's a very important foundation. And in parallel, you should be learning how to, and experimenting with forming, of course, relationships with other people. But usually, if you're getting started, there's a good chance you're going to be experiencing a lot of failure and rejection. And that's normal. 

I think that's [00:19:00] actually a really good thing. I think it really builds character. But maintaining that stance of self compassion, I think, is a kind of anchor that can really see you through those times. And of course, that develops even further once you develop relationships. So, I kind of think you do have to love yourself first, a little bit foundationally. 

So that's kind of where I agree or disagree. I think we're falling into the weeds here. Is that we have a tendency in the Western world to group self love or even just love in with so many other things, for example, positive regard, that's not necessarily love. That's something different. Compassion. 

That's something different. Respect. It's something different. Self love, interestingly, could be said to incorporate all of those pieces, but then where do we begin? I like to, I like to disentangle respect and love from each other, not because they don't correlate. I think they, they must. In most [00:20:00] cases correlate. 

Uh, I don't think for example, that, um, you should have a romantic love that is loving, but not respectful. I don't even, I don't know that that's necessarily possible, but I don't think that that means they're the same thing. I think that they're tied and they're, they're mutually necessary. Now I know that women can love. 

A man and even love a husband, for example, but not respect him. And then the love she feels for him usually downgrades to changes. We could call it downgrading, but it will become more of a child, a mother to child love or a pitying love where she is sad for him and wants better for him, but she feels no erotic desire for him and no trust in him, no respect for him. 

Respect is intimately tied there so she can still love him. So I think what I'd like to distinguish here is people who are struggling with this concept, it, they should be building self respect first, positive self regard. I loved that you said that [00:21:00] positive self regard is, is an even stronger way to put it, which most people will struggle to understand, but, but it's a, it's probably the best way to put it. 

I don't think that self love is positive self regard necessarily. It can be a facet of it. I think that we need, we need to experience. So maybe I could, if I could ask you like, what is the sort of negative aspect of loving yourself you would want to kind of remove from the equation? I think it's just too complicated. 

I think that, um, when we say I love myself, most people think that they're supposed to feel affection for themselves. Um, I think that most people it's most people think they're in a romantic relationship with themselves. Almost or like I have to look in the mirror and think like I'm a good person and I think that trips up a tremendous number of people and I don't think you can really reach that until you do a couple things. 

One, you must begin with self respect. You can't really get respect from other people. You have to begin [00:22:00] respecting yourself, which means Back to what our first conversation was, uh, being consistent around your values and your goals so that you can start measuring, am I an okay person? I think usually we're for it negatives. 

We have to go to zero first, which is I am good enough. And that begins the process of respect and then the process of compassion. I fall short sometimes, but I am trying as best as I can. And I'm mostly in the right direction. And that comes in as though as the respect and compassion to click in there's positive self regard. 

I love that you brought that up. And then from there, you may, you probably will connect to healthier people who will actually give you love and give you love and intimacy. And the chemical cocktail they foster again is oxytocin and serotonin in your brain, in your body. So you have the oxytocin hormone, that bonding hormone for intimacy, and you have the serotonin neurotransmitter flooding through you for contentment. 

And as you begin to [00:23:00] feel this, you can then apply those same sensations to yourself. I accept myself as I have learned to feel accepted by others through this physical chemical cocktail. I've never had now. I feel it now. I can apply the same feeling to myself. I've learned from others and now I can feel content within myself as well and perhaps even feel a warm, Positive regard for myself, not narcissistic. 

I'm so great. I'm so great, but this is a warm, positive regard based on my self respect, my positive regard, my trust for myself, me seeing myself with compassion and that other people love me. And now I know how to feel that. That's what I, what's what I mean there. Does that make sense to you? I think it does. 

I think it does. And some other messages, I think that's a good. Pieces of mental software to implant are things like, I deserve good things, I have a place in the world, I deserve to have a good relationship, and I also [00:24:00] think something about there being a kind of unconditionality, it's strangely paradoxical in the sense that you go through the self help space in a bookstore and you're going to encounter On one side, the books that are all like, you have to challenge yourself. 

It's all about hitting those targets, screw self love. It's about, you know, punch yourself in the face every single day, David Goggins style. And then the other half is all this self love and it kind of the unconditionality. And I think a lot of truth really resides in paradox. So if I had to summarize it for someone, I would say you have to kind of unconditionally love yourself. 

through the ups and downs and the successes and failures while at the same time challenging yourself. and setting a higher standard for yourself that you incrementally move towards. And they, they sound contradictory and yet I think you have to embrace them at the [00:25:00] same time and I think doing so it is extremely powerful because I, I have met a lot of people who definitely believe too much in themselves and haven't really set higher standards for themselves in different respects. 

I've met other people who have set extremely high standards. Worked really hard, accomplished a lot, but have very, very low self worth. So something about bringing together the two, I think, can be very helpful. My clients, mostly where that line lies for them, the beginning of the journey is self respect, where they at least can tag themselves as good enough. 

I am measuring myself and I'm good enough on this scale. My morals and my goals, am I following through on them? I have a practice where I tell them every morning, you realign with your principles in the morning for about 30 seconds. And your goals every night, you track your progress. Did I fall short anywhere today or did I succeed today? 

What did I do and where and why? And don't beat [00:26:00] yourself up. Guilt is pointless. Just say, what went wrong? What was the gap? How can I fix it for tomorrow so that I can now fix the gaps every single day until I'm trending consistently in the right direction? Then every night as you check in with yourself, you're like, yeah, I did today. 

I got my goals. I got my principles. I kept those. I had my healthy boundaries and other people responded well to me and it felt great. I respect myself. I'm good enough. And one thing you said that I'll, that I'll, I would just tweak the language on is I deserve good things when you say it. I know that you mean it from a place of You know what? 

I do deserve good things. I deserve a warm meal. I deserve a kind word from humans. I deserve dignity and respect. I think that a lot of times in the Western world, we've turned that around to, I deserve, and then laundry list of demands. I think I can deserve. I can deserve these things. [00:27:00] Is, is a good distinguisher. 

Um, the, the, if you don't even believe that you can deserve good things in, in certain circumstances, if you don't deserve that, you believe that you can deserve some good things sometimes and, and maybe more often and maybe all the time, but if, if the possibility is not there, that's where things are falling short. 

Mm-hmm. Do you see a lot of people in your. practice who have accomplished a lot. They know how to set goals and reach them. They're very accomplished, but they still struggle with self worth or self esteem issues. I call it the insecure overachiever archetype. Do you have a lot of clients like that? And if so, how do you work with them? 

I do. I do. I work with a lot of political figures around the world who have A lot of Hollywood figures, a lot of corporate, big corporate executives, big million dollar business owners. I work with a lot of them and usually they fall into two camps. One is that they are very avoidantly attached, so it's not a self esteem [00:28:00] issue. 

It's that they've been stuck in survival mode for so long that they've kept themselves out of any intimate relationships. And so by the time they hit 60, they are so terribly alone and so unfulfilled. And they think, is this all there is? And then they begin doubting themselves because they say no one has ever wanted to be close to me. 

And I, and I can't let people close to me either. What is the purpose of my life? And so they really start falling apart there. That's where they come to me. Um, or number two, the people who are more, what we call the disorganized type, usually what I've, I've returned, I, cause I've, I've redone the field of attachment theory that it's quiet disorganized, not the loud disorganized, that's explosive and in a new relationship every three weeks, a new soulmate every three weeks, but typically the quiet disorganized of. 

I don't know how to connect with other humans, so I will keep everybody at arm's length, but I don't want to because inside I don't believe I'm worthy of love. [00:29:00] They are massively self sufficient. They are massively quiet and good at just knuckling under and getting the work done. They can be amazing as solopreneurs and build huge companies. 

But they, they do not know how to connect with other people. They have a freeze response instead of a fight or flight. They just freeze and people assume that they're too arrogant or aloof to connect with them. But instead they are just frozen in fear because they don't know what to say so that they don't get hurt and they don't hurt other people. 

Those are honestly the two biggest groups I see getting stuck in this trap. The most highest performers. who have, you know, three mansions and a yacht and they've had a couple of high, high level relationships that have never worked out and they don't understand why. And they, it does, these questions eat them up. 

Before we move on to attachment and maybe actually tackle how we might work with someone like that, the last tweet I'd like to cover, do you worry everyone expects perfection from you? They don't. But your parents [00:30:00] probably did. You learned to survive by catering to unrealistic expectations. Now you project unrealistic expectations on other people who have no idea you feel that way. 

You're continuing the cycle. Why did this, why did this one speak to you in particular? So I don't, as a, in terms of my psychotherapy training, I'm training in the humanistic tradition, not psychoanalytic. But psychoanalysis was kind of my first love, so this, this tweet kind of spoke to that very psychoanalytic thinking, which is a very powerful idea, which is you, if you don't really examine your mental processes, your psychological life, you're doomed to repeat. 

your your past and the present. It's so subtle. It's so hard to realize when you're projecting relationship dynamics from parents or other caregivers onto your present. But when that happens, it is it can, I mean, it will affect how you even choose people that [00:31:00] you relate to, friendships you might form and who you might date. 

But even if it doesn't affect that, it will certainly affect how you relate to them. So I think I'm such a fan of starting to shine a light on your mental life to be like, what are your assumptions that you're putting onto this situation? What are your expectations? Do they bear any reality to the expectations? 

of the people that you're relating to. So that's why I found it to be a very powerful statement. I agree with you. Uh, I think that when we remember that attachment issues, essentially what they are is a trauma response to intimate human relationships that formed when you were a year old, maybe two years old. 

These are not frontal lobe logical decisions that you made. These are primitive brain decisions that a toddler or an infant made and didn't understand the complications, just knew that they couldn't feel safe in their relationships for whatever reason, [00:32:00] and then swore that you would never, ever, ever feel that scared again, even if you could never connect with anyone openly ever again. 

And now your behavior pattern has skewed to sort of play games manipulatively, but But I'm not necessarily conscious, not necessarily conscious. Most of them are not, uh, to play games where you do 10 nice things for them, hoping that they will be grateful and then decipher what you want in return and do one nice thing while you pretend that you didn't need it so that you have plausible deniability because you don't think you deserve love or care. 

So you have to give, give, give until you get pity in return or with avoid an attachment that no one will ever be safe enough and stable enough for you to trust. So you have to keep everyone out forever. Then you can never open up or ever reveal your heart to anyone ever for the rest of your life. But somehow you're going to get married, have children and live a fulfilling life with great relationships. 

[00:33:00] It's a raw survival mode. And until we even become aware that these are problems, we just think this is normal. We grew up in what we think is normal. And we carry on into our relationships, and we go meet somebody who has no idea what's going on in our head, or why we are traumatized, or even that we are traumatized. 

And then something hits during the relationship, and we react with trauma in an irrational way, and it hurts and scares them, and they don't know what to do. So they, they get hurt and scared and confused. Which sets us off even more and then sets them off. It sets us off. It sets them off. Then the relationship explodes in our face and we wonder what happened. 

When you examine these patterns, you can fix these patterns, but until then, you'll probably stay stuck in them. What are the red flags someone can. Identifying themselves that might tip them off that like, Hey, maybe I have an attachment, a problem with my attachment style. Do you feel lonely all the time? 

In fact, do you feel lonely, especially when you're around other people? Do [00:34:00] you not know how to engage in the early stages of a romantic relationship without overwhelming feelings or waiting for the other person to provoke overwhelming feelings in you? If you're avoidantly attached, does your desire for the other person drop off right around five to seven months when the novelty dopamine dies, and then you can't stay with someone even who's perfect on paper because you're not oxytocin bonding to them? 

Do you struggle with self esteem and think you are worthless so it's hard to ever say no or push back on anybody? Is it hard to even ask for your needs to get met, whether because you don't think you deserve it or because you don't think anyone will care? Do you think things are going to be used against you constantly in your closest relationship so you never open up or share? 

Do you, the biggest one, do you not believe that longterm relationships are really possible either because you think you're going to always mess them up or because you believe love just dies and it's inevitable and there's no hope. If those are [00:35:00] yeses to you, you probably have some attachment challenges. 

To what extent do you think if a person has attachment challenges, obviously the ideal generally that's spoken about is the idea of secure attachment, where you can form relationships, where you can trust. yourself and the other person and form a mutually beneficial relationship over time. To what extent do you think attachment issues filter out those people, those secure people, such that it becomes a, a self reinforcing or self fulfilling prophecy? 

For example, an avoidant might say, I don't like relationships because I'm worried people will get too close to me. They will habitually date anxious people because avoidant and anxiously attached people. My understanding is they could attract each other and then it becomes a prophecy which confirms itself. 

Is this a phenomenon you see happening a lot? Absolutely. It's two segregated populations. I call it blue fireflies and red fireflies and they can't see each other's color so they have no idea they're signaling. [00:36:00] All they know is that secure people And insecure people, their, their signals are almost abrasive to each other. 

They're either invisible or abrasive. The secure person is going to ask you some more personal questions, more directly earlier on than you normally experience, and you'll start wondering why they're pushing so hard. However, at the beginning, they're not going to push hard at all. They're going to ask some general questions and move forward and be calm and not emotionally bonded to you yet. 

In the dating process, a securely attached person is not going to try to rush into bed with you. They're not going to try to rush an intellectual conversation and push it on you. They're not going to try to love bomb you and saturate you with oxytocin. They're not interested in rushing forward into a dopamine binging experience. 

They're also not petrified of having conversations. They're going to have very intense personal relationship discussions and very intense expectation discussions and very clear, direct questions about you. As they move forward. And if, if you are not prepared for that, you will either [00:37:00] think that they're bored or boring and you'll leave and not be interested, or they will ghost you, or they will ask you questions that drive you away and give you a negative feeling. 

And in return, they'll think that you're disinterested. They'll think that you're evasive. They'll think that you're coming on way too strong, so they'll step back. The two populations really cannot interact in most ways because their signals are so vastly different. Opposites. So to form a secure bond, you need to be able to exhibit secure signs. 

Otherwise they will leave. They go exist behind their private, essentially almost gated communities socially where they, everybody knows each other and they have these interconnected relationships and everybody comes pre vetted through a network or you're a bunch of strangers out in the forest, jumping out from behind trees, trying to find a dating partner or a friend. 

Then you're lonely out in the world. And this is why honestly about 65 percent of people have insecure attachment. In America now and 65 percent of people report chronic everyday [00:38:00] loneliness, even if they have friends, even if they have a partner, it's, it's mapped out almost one for one. So do you find, I don't know if, um, sociology studies have been done to kind of look at this within a given generation as that generation gets older. 

Is it the case that Secure people tend to form relationships and marry somewhat earlier, leaving a progressively increasing pool of insecurely attached people who continue to serially date and have relationships amongst themselves. It's quite a bleak outcome, I know, but I don't know, has this been looked at or studied at all? 

Yeah, so this is unfortunately very true. And a lot of people know it and sense it. And so the marriage pools do become smaller and smaller and smaller as people age. Unfortunately, um, secure people have an exceedingly low rate of divorce. Very, very low and they have a very high rate typically of marriage and a happy marriage, especially the report happy marriages When you look at [00:39:00] all the the factors that go into happy marriages, all of them are securely attached behavior patterns So yes, they tend to pair up fairly quickly. 

They tend to get married and stay married And they tend to leave the dating pool. Now, not all of them, but it is the trend in their population. So you are less likely to find them. However, everybody listening right now, that's crying. Remember that every day people can work toward becoming secure. This is why I updated the field of attachment theory and created two types of secure. 

One is the secure that you grow up with. And one is remade secure because there are a tremendous number of people, my clients, Other people, people that are growing and learning and putting in the work that we're becoming securely attached, even if it's 80 to 90 percent secure, they're remade secure, they are ready to bond in secure relationships. 

And that's one of the three types of romantic chemistry that I teach to people is. Uh, attachment chemistry. I tell people it's [00:40:00] only got to be about 80 percent on both sides. If both of you can achieve about 80 percent success rate and responding securely to each other, and if you can overlap that where you're both being mostly secure when the other person's not. 

And if you can then come back and correct a problem after it's happened, you don't have to be perfect. You both just have to be using securely attached behavior patterns and things will work out and you actually will become more secure over time through that connection. Helpful with friends, helpful with family, crucial with partners. 

Yes, this is something I want to discuss next because I'm a psychiatrist by background so We've talked a lot recently on the podcast about diagnosis and really the limitations of categorical thinking i. e. putting someone in a particular category and obviously attachment theory does that and my inclination having criticized mental health diagnosis and things like that is to think well it's unlikely that someone is securely attached all the time or anxiously attached all the time [00:41:00] but It seems likelier that people might have a predominant state, but then perhaps under stress, they might be in a different state. 

So, as you say, someone might be secure 80 percent of the time, but perhaps under stress or in difficult circumstances, they might avoidant. And I also think people can fall into different habits, maybe at different stages of a relationship, like maybe anxious earlier on. avoidant later on. I think there's a lot of individual psychology at play here. 

What do you think about that? Sure. There's plenty of people who can be more secure when they're talking to the same sex cashier at the gas station and not have insecure flare ups versus when they are on a first date with someone they think is stunningly gorgeous and is going to dictate their value as a human being, whether they call you back or not. 

Yeah, those are going to be two very different states. So the perceived pressure to be accepted is crucial. I will also say, uh, and this [00:42:00] is based on the work of, of Dr. Sue Carter, the leading world expert on oxytocin and vasopressin bonding. Her research shows that when we don't have oxytocin bonding with anyone, and it's very low. 

And we don't essentially feel accepted or loved or cared for by anybody. Do you mean, do you mean because of their life history or because of more of a genetic predisposition or both? Life history, life history typically. Um, the, a mutation to not have oxytocin is exceedingly rare if it exists at all. Um, it's exceedingly rare among humans because mammals need oxytocin for a variety of reasons. 

Lactation is just one, contracting the uterus for birth is another. Um, it's just, oxytocin drives so much, so not having it at all would be a problem. But life circumstances, avoidantly attached people, for example, get all Get virtually almost no oxytocin and certainly not through their bonding relationships. 

So there's no association whatsoever, which is why they have low GABA, gamma aminobutyric acid, which is why they are more prone [00:43:00] to unregulated cortisol spikes, which is why they have insomnia because then they can't take their magnesium. and synthesize melatonin to sleep at night, which then they don't generate appropriate human growth hormone. 

Their wound hingling is low because they're chronically in a sympathetic nervous system activation state now because of all of this. They are not likely to be resilient at all against cancer, heart attack, stroke, sickness. Their body will degrade, which is why we see ACE scores. are correlated very strongly, unfortunately, with early cancer rates and things like this. 

So avoidantly attached people would be a great example of someone low on oxytocin bonding. If we do connect with one human being who has oxytocin, it actually gives us oxytocin. It actually increases our fear and anxiety spikes because now we feel that we have, In essence, this hormone we have missed all of our lives and now it fills us and it finally gives us GABA so then we can suppress cortisol, we can synthesize melatonin and sleep, we can get [00:44:00] human growth hormone, our estrogen or our testosterone improves so fertility goes up, our rest improves, our serotonin production from the parasympathetic nervous system, that activates so we can actually feel content And all of it is predicated upon this one human being. 

And we have never seen an example of a successful relationship before. So now there is this important drug that we are doomed to lose and we must be hypervigilant and guarded and paranoid. And so when you have one person at a time. And only one person at a time that you're bonded to through oxytocin, your fear rates go up and your nervousness and neuroticism goes up and then you're hypervigilant on that relationship. 

So instead of one relationship, we need to diversify that oxytocin portfolio so that we are having oxytocin appropriately with same sex friends, maybe with family members if appropriate, if they're healthy enough. And also with our partners so that we get it with two or three people, three people seems prime for most human beings. 

And again, that's [00:45:00] Dr. Sue Carter's work. I'll have to look into that, but it sounds like the cool thing about that is even though it sounds like there's a lot of underlying biology, what you're saying is. The biology is very responsive to the psychological and social situation that you put yourself through and I think a lot of people make the jump from biology to biological determinism far too quickly. 

It's biological, therefore it's permanent, whereas you're saying very, very much the opposite. Well, and another problem that comes in, again, remember that 65 percent of people now are estimated to have attachment issues and that was the last report about 10 years ago, so it could be 75%, uh, but if you look at that and then look at the medical model that we use that says you're depressed, your serotonin's low, we need to give you SSRIs to boost your serotonin, that's, you're jumping in here during this process when all of that that I just described is happening and saying, oh, the only problem is your serotonin, so we're going to give you a drug that's slightly Improves your serotonin level, but you're scraping the barrel. 

So really you're just [00:46:00] going to go numb and not have any feelings at all. Or you have high anxiety. We're going to give you something that floods you with GABA that synthesizes as if you felt loved. Well, the problem isn't that you need GABA. I mean, you do, but the problem is that you need to feel loved and cared for and safe in relationships, predictable ones back in the beginning, predictable, so that you can then synthesize appropriate GABA. 

Uh, uh, an animal that is traumatized and scared of other animals of its species and feels like it can never relax or bond with anybody ever, when it's scared all the time and not sleeping and hypervigilant, it's not acting inappropriately, it's actually acting appropriately. I call this the lone ape. If you are raised to believe all humans will hurt you and that you can't be close to anyone because it's doomed and nothing is going to feel okay again, you are not supposed to sleep deeply at night. 

You are not supposed to feel warm and content. You are not supposed to feel low stress and easy and relaxed. You are supposed to be hypervigilant because no one's watching [00:47:00] out for you. You are supposed to be scared because people could hurt you again. You're not supposed to be content because you'll starve and die instead of gathering food and resources to stay alive. 

So. The problem is that our brains are responding to the relationships and environments that we're in. And we then are trying to medicate our way out of a hard reality and say, all those symptoms, that's just, you just have a chemical issue. Take a drug, you'll be fine. In fact, take four drugs to help you manage some of the side effects of those drugs, and you're still not happy. 

You will then try this food, try this sugar, try this big gulp of 64 ounces of Mountain Dew, that'll help too. And you just medicate, medicate, medicate in so many bad coping skills. Instead, repair these relationship functions, repair the ape. Get the ape integrated again with a group of healthy apes that nurture it, that care for it, that protect it. 

All of a sudden it says, I don't have to feel scared. I'm in a safe group, [00:48:00] and there's safety in numbers, and they accept me. I can rest and sleep. I can relax. My stress can come down. I can bond. It's okay for me to feel content, and I've seen it a thousand times that that ape, that human, now, Blows up into a healthy biology, healthy brain chemicals, healthy hormones, healthy living, the mindset clears up, suicidal ideation drops and goes away. 

And then they actually begin not just hitting zero, but above that into contentment and growth and fulfillment, they start seeking opportunities to bond. They start feeling connected. And this is where we're thriving. That's the difference between surviving and thriving right there is the biochemistry mark. 

Don't worry, the apes that listen to this podcast will be well versed. on the critiques of biological or rather medical depression. We, um, we had Joanna Moncrief on the podcast a couple of weeks ago and she wrote the very much, uh, the very impactful serotonin paper that came out a couple of years ago, kind of undermining the so called [00:49:00] serotonin hypothesis of depression. 

But what she didn't do, which you expanded on really well there was, you know, if drugs don't work, then what? And it's clear that there's so many, what I actually enjoy about working with clients who have anxiety and depression is there's actually so much you can do, and you can really tailor a treatment plan to a person's preferences, like if you're depressed, you know, we could look at your work, we could look at your friends, your relationship, your hobby, where you live, your financial situation, there's like a million routes to depression and generally the ones that they prefer will be the best routes anyway, because it's probably more most likely to be contributing to their low mood. 

So I like what I did, what I didn't get across perhaps enough. In those podcasts critiquing, let's say, biomedical depression is how much you actually can do on the psychological and social end. It turns out that yes, some parts of our biology are tougher to manage or change, but by and large, our biology actually reflects the experiences we are in. 

[00:50:00] Even to, to the oxytocin receptors. If you don't get them during the course of your life, they shift and they accept vasopressin molecules instead because vasopressin is the bonding you do during stress. And so you're going to need that for survival. So it's tough to get back into oxytocin and flood with it as fast as possible. 

If you do get any at all. You have to grow those, not grow the receptors back, but shift them back over time through proper saturation. And that's why a person that learns to love gets, gets love for the first time. They have to learn to love over time. It's quite overwhelming when they feel it, but the more that they saturate in it, the more of a loving being they become and the more than that they begin expressing that back to our earlier conversation, a spontaneous displays of affection that they then give to other people. 

They're more likely to kiss someone on the forehead. They're more likely to reach out and touch someone. They're more likely to give a compliment or just a kindness, to be generous, to be loving. This is why the big world religions teach us that the more love you practice to those around you, the more capacity [00:51:00] they are likely to have to then give love to other people as well. 

Not always, but Love grows that way through receptors and hormones and even neurotransmitters so that we begin expressing and sharing and growing it across the world. Love itself is contagious because of our biology. Yeah. So I guess you're highlighting the fact that love is very much a practice and something to be cultivated, which I think is very important to understand because it's much more dynamic than we think. 

Before we, which is why, which is why we have to experience it with someone else before we could just give it to ourself because we don't know what to do. Yes. Um, before we wrap up, cause we're running out of time, I'd like, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about the content creation side of things for people who don't know you've, you have a successful podcast. 

You've built a YouTube channel with a hundred thousand prescribers. Congratulations on that, by the way. A lot of people, you know, really aspire to get into content creation, I think sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes perhaps the wrong reasons. Uh, I'd love to [00:52:00] ask you a little bit about that. 

Firstly, would you even, would you even recommend foraying into content creation? Oh, absolutely. I was just seeing a graphic this morning that, um, we talk about, it's a little distasteful, but they talk about OnlyFans as the biggest woo thing everyone, everyone should be doing. I don't think so, but, um, they shared last year that, Only fans creators made a total of 6. 

6 billion, uh, dollars and content creators made, I believe 200 billion last year. So it is a gigantic industry that is growing larger. However, the game is changing a little bit. Um, the biggest thing for content creators I'm going to tell you is three things. Number one, it's lonely. It's lonely for most people if you try to do it by yourself because very few people will understand you except other content creators. 

So you need to form relationships with other content creators and start building that so that you are not lonely because as we talked about here today, you're not supposed to be lonely. You're not a lone creature. Number two [00:53:00] is that most creators hit a really hard plateau. A couple of years in, and that's what breaks most creators, you must be working with somebody who helps you. 

I work with a fantastic agency called Veritas Creative Media. They help with so many aspects of the content creation game. It's not that they take over the content creation and you no longer do it. It's that they allow you to facilitate your vision in the purest way without hitting all those miserable drudge points that, that really start to grind on you through the years. 

Then it's very, very hard to consistently put out the same level or better level of content as you grow. And again, this is relationships. Make sure that you're having someone help you on that back end. And then the third thing I'll just tell you is this, it has to be something you are actually passionate about. 

If it's something you're jumping into just to try to play a game really quick. I've seen a lot of attachment specialist content creators come and go through the years as I've, as I've been teaching the world, how popular attachment can [00:54:00] be. And I will say most of them flame out after a year or two, because number one, they don't know much about it. 

They're not like you and I, Alex, where they have a real degree and information, education and training and professionalism. They're not like us in that aspect. They jump on a quick bandwagon to make a few bucks. And be, have something you're passionate about and that you want to learn about for your entire life. 

That is mandatory if you really, really, really want to show yourself and niche down in this process. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said. I think being passionate about being interested in it is so important because it's not a get rich quick scheme at all. It's a It's a long game. You need to really have sustainability at the forefront of your mind at the very outset. 

And then I think consistency, continual problem solving, continually. I think one problem that content creators get into is they tend to be creative by nature. Creative people have a lot of talents. One [00:55:00] talent they might not have is operationalizing things. getting them to be consistent and then once you reach a particular baseline, figuring out how do you then get to the next baseline, it's usually by building a system that can help you level up, as you said. 

Did, is that something you found to be true or what are some of the biggest obstacles you faced kind of when you were just starting out? Oh, like I just said, it was, it was hard. It was, it's lonely. Very few people know what you're doing. Very few people that you talk to in your daily life will understand. 

When your, when your grandma asks what do you do for a living and you explain, she says, whoa, sweetheart, you should go work in a factory instead. You know, no one will probably support you because no one gets it. They all think that it's a foolish endeavor. Uh, even as you're making 18 times what they're making in an average week, they'll still will tell you it's stupid and that you should quit and you should go to college and work at a factory or something, or, or be a lawyer. 

And, uh, it's a big one, but honestly, just how can [00:56:00] you, how can you take a passion? And then be consistent every single day for 10 years. It is impossible. You're sick. I got five kids. I'm traveling. I'm working. I'm doing 90 hours a week. I have my wife to take care of and connect with. How can I maintain constant creative, creative inspiration at all times? 

If you're an inspiration kind of person, it won't work. You have to be a systems person. And like you said, a lot of content creators are not operational focused. So you probably need to partner up with someone who is, maybe you, maybe you sign up with someone who's not a content creator, but they're your silent business partner and they run everything on the backend with you. 

Some, some, uh, some of the most successful creators, you know, they're, you know, their, their wife or husband is running operations on the backend. Maybe it's their best friend. Work together with people, and if you really need help, get some professional help like I have with Veritas, um, get, get some professional help because you, you probably won't make it to the ten [00:57:00] year mark. 

You're gonna burn out way too fast, and then you'll, the people will say, hey, remember that one person? Who? And that's, that's unfortunately what's gonna happen. You're gonna work in content creation for two years, then you really will go work in a factory because you just won't be able to take it anymore. 

Yes, and the last question I might ask before you go is, A lot of, you know, audiences come in every size from Zero to Joe Rogan and I think a lot of people labor under the misapprehension that the goal of content creation is to get an enormous audience and then from the enormous audience That's where all the rewards come, which based on my own experience, but also my research doesn't seem to be true, even small to medium audiences are incredibly valuable if you also have some kind of business, which I'm sure that's, that's a lot of what you did is integrating content creation into your business. 

What are the key principles of like leveraging the content you have to improve your business, do you think? On that point, um, [00:58:00] I've seen content creators with smaller audiences, massively outperformed, financially outperformed creators with millions and millions and millions of people. I, I myself value every single follower who comes in. 

I'm 50 million tomorrow because 50 million Who? People who follow me for a meme or for a funny video. They really like my beard. Like why? I am, I am so crucially thankful for every person who follows me because they want to fix a relationship. They want to fix their attachment because what I'm telling them is exactly what they're wanting to work on right now. 

And YouTube videos, I am happy for that. That is wonderful. If they want to read my book, that's great. Okay. If they want to step in and join my group coaching or buy a course, I'm thankful for that, that they've seen value enough to, to invest. If they want to go all the way and do coaching practices with me. 

[00:59:00] Amazing. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for having that trust in me. Monit, monetizing your audience, as people say, it's not going out there and. Thinking, okay, how can I get these people to put money in my hat every day? Hey, it's how can I offer so much value to everybody, but, but focused value. At all the levels, but focused value that people are coming to me to achieve a task so I can really, truly help them. 

And if they can't afford to work with me, how can I still offer them value and still take care of them? If they can afford a little bit, what am I offering there and how am I taking care of them? If they can afford to go all in, amazing. Can they, can I use that? To finance the rest of the model for the ladder, for everybody else to take care of people, the people that pay you the most make it possible to take care of all the other people who can't afford everything down at the bottom. 

And a lot of current content creators want to get in, make as much as they can, pull as [01:00:00] much cash as fast as possible, lock everything behind paywalls and offer nothing to the people who are suffering the most. And that's, that's not a model that's going to make you last a year or two. That's a model that's going to make you last a month or two. 

Get the hell out of our space is what they'll say. But when you offer real value and really want to help people and especially offer some kind of very professional service and you really take care of your audience, they will take care of you. There are so many good hearted people in this world who really want to improve themselves. 

But also really want to give back to somebody who has helped them. And these are the people you really want in your audience. I am so blessed to have so many of those people in my audience. I'm thankful for them every single day. And I would echo that. And one of the real strengths of the brand you've created and what you put out, I think is that the thing I'm kind of envious of in some sense is that it's very, very specialized. 

Like, people aren't coming to you for psychological help or psychotherapy or [01:01:00] some broad self improvement by some kind of vague definition, you're the attachment specialist and therefore people know why they're coming to you and they know what problem that, they know the problem they're trying to solve with you. 

My problem is, I love tackling different problems, I'm a bit of a novelty addict. So that's probably something I'll be thinking about over the next few years, but Adam, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you back. It's been wonderful to be back. 

Thank you.