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Welcome to the Stay Orgo podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Hi, y'all. I'm back. So the last month and a half, um, I have been so deeply in some personal um, just my personal journey. And, you know, I'd really say I've been going through what I would call an awakening for the last probably two and a half years now, and part of that awakening has been just these really deep dives trying to figure out how the world works for me, why I'm here. And there is this whole other journey that I've been on that I've really only shared with a few other of my like very, very closest friends because it's just such a intimate, vulnerable journey for me to be on. But I just have to say, what's so beautiful about this journey is knowing a part of me knows deeply, eventually I will get to share it with all of you. And the the premise of this journey that I've been on is like how to live a very soul-led life. A life that is rather than being led by your mind, it's led by your deepest soul calls. And I will tell you, it is intense and it is really, you have to be really brave, which is why I think right now, because it's so raw and I'm in the middle of the process of so much of it, it doesn't feel necessarily like the right timing to just bring it out and share it with everybody. But I wanted to explain a little bit where I am when I'm gone. Um, because being a business owner, especially I, you know, I don't know if it's different in other cultures, but here in America, there is this pressure and this feeling of like needing to always be producing, creating, giving. And um the reality for me is that I have these ebbs and flows. And actually, um, for those of you that have this deck, if you don't, I'll link it because I cannot recommend it enough. This is one of my favorite Oracle decks of all time. So gorgeous. Um it's called the Wild Unknown Archetypes deck by Kim Cranz. And um I've started this practice probably over the last year where I listen on the pattern. It's an app that I've also talked about that I just adore. They have these new moon and full moon audios, and I'll listen to them each new moon, full moon. I'll set intentions, you know, just kind of leaning into that space for the next two weeks, and then I pull a spread from the wild archetype deck. And these this recent new moon, the archetype that was representing me is called the mystic. And y'all, I just can't with this card. It's so beautiful. And it was just so touching after, you know, the month and a half I've been through, which has been very mystical, very deep. Um, to have this card just reassure me and to feel so deeply connected to it. You know, in the card it talks about how the mystic is always leaning into those unanswerable questions and being willing to sit with the the dark and um this beautiful like analogy of Shiva swallowing um poison and holding it in his mouth to transmute it into light. And that is so much, has so much been, and I think will be probably for my the majority of my life, a big piece of my journey has been understanding deep pain, deep trauma, and through holding and staying with it, being able to transmute it into light. So I wanted to share a little bit of that with y'all, just so you know what's kind of going on behind the scenes, because sometime in the future it will feel right for me to really get to just take you all into this deep dive of that beautiful other work that I'm doing. But for right now, it's really been me embracing and loving and giving myself permission to let my energy and my creation flow naturally instead of forcing it. And the mystic that I am just needs periods of time where I'm not outwardly creating or sharing. Of course, you know, even in those moments, I the beautiful thing is I'm still working with my clients, I'm still engaged with the people in my life, but just know, yeah, when I when I disappear for periods of time, that's where I am. And thank you all for understanding. And hopefully, um, I was thinking about it yesterday. I was like, actually, I think this is such a beautiful way to kind of break out of the mold of what I feel like a lot of podcasts what is expected of you of like, yeah, you've got to like launch an episode every week. That is like oh just you know, guys, that is like a fuck ton of content. And um I really like producing content when I'm excited and there's energy and I want to talk about something rather than just putting it out so that I can check a box. And actually, I feel um kind of proud to be adding a voice to this space that I think as each one of us honors our own cycles and chooses to live lives that are um at the speed that each of us needs, which for me is typically a lot slower. I find the world is way too fast. I like to slow things down a lot. Um, I think it gives others permission to do that as well. So I'm hoping that taking this, sharing that this is gonna be my approach with the podcast, that it'll also give y'all permission to check in with where you're feeling your ebbs and flows and when you're in your ebbs, being gentle and not continuing to just push, push, push. So um, with that beautifully shared, I feel so good to just like update y'all and say hello, and I'm so happy to be back for a little bit for this next flow that's coming through me. I had an incredible coaching session on Monday. It was really, really fucking hard. I had a lot of um intense emotions that had just like kind of culminated on Monday. But in feeling and acknowledging those and really like bravely showing up for myself, I had this like big somatic opening in my body. Just kind of felt like walking across a threshold. Like I've been walking towards this threshold for a month and a half now, and it finally kind of just released, and we moved through it. And since then, there has been this gorgeous flow, just you know, the universe just coming through me and lots of new ideas and things that I want to be talking about. So to start us off, where I felt the most drawn was this book that I read probably two, maybe three years ago. It's called Attached by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller. And y'all, I think this book should be required reading in middle school. That is how important understanding attachment theory is to all of your relationships. We're gonna focus mainly on, of course, the romantic relationship, the relationship with your spouse in this episode. But oh, it's just it's huge. So um, I'm gonna give you a lot. I'm actually gonna give you quite a bit of content in this episode explaining stuff, but there is loads in the book. So I'm gonna link it in the show notes. Definitely give it a read. It's amazing. So, why one of the things that the book was so groundbreaking for when I read it the first time was because at the time I was dating, and goodness, this was probably yeah, two or three years ago. So I just kind of started dating after being divorced, and I was like, what is going on? I am this like smart, confident, gorgeous. I would have it together for the most part when I was single, and then depending on the partner, I would start dating. I would move into these like crazy spaces, and you know, even looking back on my marriage, ultimately like ended up losing my sense of self completely. And this book explains a lot, especially for anxious attachment styles, which I would say the majority of my clients are, and I definitely am, why that happens to you. And um, I think they even say later on something about like you're only as stable as the relationship you're in. And for those of you like me that feel, at least when I was in my marriage, I felt super crazy. I felt like my partner was the stable one, I was the crazy one. When you start understanding it through the lens of attachment, it relieves so much of the shame and guilt that you might have around why am I acting this way? Why am I reacting this way? Why do I feel completely out of control? It probably comes down to attachment and possibly mismatched attachment styles in your marriage. So I want to start us off by talking about the three different types of attachment styles. So there is anxious, avoidant, and secure. And while I go through each of these, I really want you to be introspective and to notice which one you think you might be and which one you think your spouse might be. So with each of those different types, they have these great little phrases that kind of encapsulate each one of them in the book. And for anxious attachment, the phrase is living with a sixth sense of danger. Yeah. So accurate. So from personal experience, I definitely like anxious attachment is my factory setting from childhood. So the other thing to understand is your attachment style comes out of your relationships with your parents in childhood and how you um felt loved or not loved, seen or not seen by them. So growing up for me with a narcissistic mom, it was super important to always be subconsciously taking the emotional temperature of the home and her, especially, because I just I never knew when I was gonna be in trouble. It could, it could come just out of the blue. And I remember actually one evening where I'd had um a bunch of friends over, like guys, girls, we were all hanging out, and I had my girlfriends were kind of just like in a bit of a mood and kind of and I was like, okay, cool, and went off and hung out with my guy friends and just flirted and had fun. And so the evening ends, all of them leave, and I am so excited to go like share how much fun I've had with my mom, and of course, my mom was there, it was at our home, so she was around watching everything. And so imagine this feeling of like like you're gonna go talk to your best friend, and you are so excited to just be like, Oh my god, this was so much fun. And as I come into her room, just straight out the gate, she looks at me and she's like it was something I can't remember the exact words, but it was basically like you are a slut. And I remember feeling just I mean, utter, like you go from happy, safe to utter, oh my god, how did I get this so wrong kind of feeling? And uh obviously instant like terror, fear, I must have, you know, I've obviously done something wrong. I didn't know that I did. Now I've gotta now I've gotta manage this person who's really, really upset with me. And although my, you know, although in that instance my mom did not hit me physically, she was absolutely backhanding me to the face emotionally. And what it taught me, like experiences like this where she seemed to have some kind of interior intel on me and who I really was, it it began to really teach me that I couldn't trust my interpretations of the world or myself, and that I always needed to be trying to read deeper into what hidden meanings might be or the external perspective of the people around me. And actually, while I was researching and writing this episode, um I was so happy to realize previous to this, for most of my life, I have lived it through an external perspective, like always seeing myself from the outside and always thinking, you know, what's somebody else thinking about me? And it's really only been in the last two to three years that that has like gone away. I really don't have this out-of-body watching myself and kind of critiquing myself anymore. And the biggest, I just have to share because this was such a huge win. The biggest example I had of this recently was when I went to Burning Man last year. And, you know, I'm I'm getting to wear these like very like sexy and fun and you know, just very out there for me outfits. I really stretched my and uh the beautiful thing was it wasn't a stretch for me at the time. That's what was so wild, but um got to wear these just gorgeous sexy outfits that I didn't once while I was wearing them have any kind of like, oh, do I look good? What is somebody thinking? I didn't even really like wasn't even noticing the people looking at me because I was just so present and in my experience and enjoying what I was doing. So just so you all know, and we'll talk about this a little bit later, these things can change, right? Even if it, if it, even if it's that way for you right now, through learning about ourselves, through understanding our trauma, our history, our past, and you know, especially if we have CPTSD right now, learning how to manage those things, we can live very different lives than we have been currently. Okay, so I want you in in talking about that and why I shared that example for my mom, it's because I want you to notice as well if you had a narcissistic parent growing up that you may tend towards a more anxious attachment style. So some of the things that anxious attachments can do more than others is they're able to read facial cues much faster and they jump to conclusions more quickly. So for me, this has looked like when I've been dating, I can pick up on habits and patterns really early in the relationship. And it's once again, it's not happening on a conscious level, it's just what I'm doing. So this looks like knowing how often do they text me? How often are we talking, seeing each other, how much are they initiating, wanting to see me versus me initiating? And I'll kind of get this like baseline level. And then if any of that changes, we're talking like, you know, he's been texting me every morning, and then there's a morning where it takes him like three or four hours to text me, immediately my anxious attachment picks up on it, and my brain will start to analyze like, okay, what's going on? Where is he? Has something changed? Did I do something wrong? Um it doesn't do that as much anymore, but definitely when I first started dating, holy crap, y'all. My anxious attachment was so, so aggressive. And actually, I take that back. It it does do it. The difference is I don't date as many avoidant partners anymore that trigger it. But this is this can also look like knowing when someone sends like you're calling them and knowing when someone sends your call to voicemail based on the number of rings you hear. Like this is the amazingness of how sixth sense we are as anxious attachment. And also, you know, for those of you, I want you to realize too, as I'm describing a lot of this, some of you may not, because you've been in a marriage for maybe, you know, five, 10, 15 years, notice that these may not be hitting as strongly because it's sometimes easier to see it when you're dating someone in the very beginning. So I'm gonna explain this a little bit more in just a second. But I want you to realize that one of the things that happens when you have this anxious attachment and you go into this really quick reading of facial cues, jumping to conclusions, is you then struggle with effective communication because you're kind of like flooding all the time. And by flooding, I mean you're getting dysregulated, you're emotionally activated pretty quickly. And the way anxious attachments handle that is instead of effectively communicating about it, they use things called protest behaviors instead. So let me explain what protest behaviors are. In the book, it says protest behaviors are any action that tries to reestablish contact with your partner and get their attention. So this can look like calling, emailing, texting excessively, driving past their home or workplace, hoping to run into them, keeping score, acting hostile, like when you get up and you leave while they're talking. And this is the piece where I want you to realize so when you're dating somebody, these protest behaviors might be a little more obvious, right? The whole like driving past their work. I have totally done that, y'all, when I was dating in high school for sure. But once you get married, that may not be happening as much. Well, why I want you to realize is in some cases when your protest behavior is no longer working, and not that it really worked, even probably from the beginning, especially if you're dating an avoidant, you can get to a point where you just stop protesting at all. So I definitely saw this in my marriage. I would use protest behaviors, and then eventually I just became so discouraged by how little it was helping. And I've watched this in a lot of my clients too. They will protest, they will protest, they will protest, and then eventually you just get to a point where you're like, well, fuck, this isn't working. And it makes me think of you know research that I've heard around, you know, children who babies, when they're crying, if if they are left long enough without being soothed, without someone coming when they cry, eventually they can get to a point where they just stop crying. And that does not mean they are not still distressed and like hurting. And wanting connection, but they are so discouraged by the lack of any kind of empathic response to their cries that they will just stop crying. So notice some of you may definitely be at that point. Perhaps you've you've, you know, you were fighting in your marriage for a lot, trying to speak up, trying to have, and it was not fixing anything, your partner's not changing, there's no movement forward, and you may just get to a point where it's like, okay, we're just gonna survive this. Some of the other protest behaviors can be rolling your eyes, threatening to leave while hoping that they'll actually stop you. So, you know, you're threatening it, but you're not actually planning on acting on it, acting busy or unapproachable, making plans to try and create jealousy, or telling your partner about someone who hit on you that day. These are all little ways that as an anxious attachment, you're you're seeking intimacy. Unfortunately, you know, depending on the type of partner that you have, um especially if you have an avoidant partner, this will create the opposite effect. Um and I'm gonna talk later about, you know, okay, so if you're going, oh shit, I'm an anxious attachment, don't worry, I gotcha. We're gonna talk about it later on, what we do to heal this. So next type though, we are gonna talk about avoidance. And the catchphrase for them is keeping love at arm's length. So with avoidance, they tend to idealize self-sufficiency and really look down on dependency. So they will have a very kind of free spirit type. I actually spoke with someone yesterday who was talking about how, you know, her husband when she met him was a what did she say, like a confirmed bachelor or something, like just very set in like his bachelor ways. And as soon as she said that, I was like, oh, I bet he's probably an avoidant attachment. They tend to repress rather than express their emotions. So anxious attachment, you know, we tend to like they're gonna pull back, repress what they're feeling. They tend to think really negatively about their partners and and can see them as like needy or overly dependent, but deep down they're doing that to ignore their own needs and fears in the relationship. So where anxious attachments have more of a protesting behavior that they use, avoidance use what are called deactivating strategies. And this is where they're creating distance in the relationship. So some of these would be staying with someone, even though you're not ready to commit to them focusing on really small imperfections that you're noticing, like, oh, I hate the way he eats, or that's really annoying, the way he laughs like that. Avoidance will fantasize about past partners. They will pull away when things are going well. This is where, you know, if you were dating someone like you'd have this really amazing connected fun date, and then they wouldn't call for several days after. And avoidants tend to want to form relationships with improbable futures, which would be, you know, dating someone who's already married. I know a friend of mine who probably at that time had a very avoidant attachment style and like specifically wanted to date women who were married because it meant that wasn't going anywhere. And that felt really safe for him. So I'm gonna talk about this more coming up, but I just want to input here. I definitely have also been an avoidant. What? Yeah, so you can also be mixes of both of these styles. And um, I have absolutely, especially coming out of my divorce, I moved into much more of an avoidant attachment style. You know, coming off the trauma of being in my marriage for 12 years, feeling super disconnected. Like I said, that that trauma of like having all these protest behaviors and not having them be met, I way moved into a like self-sufficient, I don't need anybody, I'm gonna do it on my own. I only want a partner to like, you know, be some fun in my life. I'm a free spirit, and definitely repressing emotions of you know, loneliness or or desiring connection or desiring to be held and pushing kind of more into a I've got this, I'm fine kind of feeling. So just keeping that in mind that you can experience both. Now, the final type, which there's part of me that's like, man, I wish I could hear from all of you right now. I'd love to like know how many of you resonate as each of these different types. But the final piece is secure attachment, and the little catchphrase for it is getting comfortably close. So secure partners are, and I love this, I'm gonna read it right from the book, they are attuned to their partner's emotional and physical cues, and they know how to respond to them. Their emotional system doesn't get too riled up in the face of a threat, as with the anxious, but it doesn't get shut down either, as with an avoidant. So secures are gonna blow your mind, y'all. If you are an anxious or an avoidant, I am like, what? Who are these people? Because this is not definitely how I was raised or what I saw, you know, modeled in my parents, my grandparents. Secures are programmed to expect their partners to be loving and responsive, and they don't worry very much about losing their partner's love. So they are not, you know, we're we're us as an anxious, we're expecting our partners to be critical or judgmental, and we're worried that they're gonna leave us at any time. This is not the case for secures. They're like, yeah, of course my partner loves me. Of course my partner's gonna respond when I need them. And I'm not worried about them leaving. They are extremely comfortable with intimacy and closeness, and have an uncanny ability to communicate their needs and respond to their partner's needs. And you'll find this section in the book. If you're wanting to look back over these, highly recommend pulling this section up in the book. They aren't as sensitive to negative cues in the world. Do you remember how our anxious are like we pick up on facial cues really fast? They actually talk about research in the book that secures, they just aren't, their brains are just not as quick to pick up negative cues. During fights, they don't feel the need to act defensively or to injure or punish their partner, which helps prevent escalating. So, also while I'm listing these, you know, maybe check in with your partner and noticing if your partner has any of these qualities or not, they are not threatened by criticism. They're mentally flexible, they don't play games and they want closeness and believe others do as well. They're quick to forgive because they assume their partner's intentions are good. They're inclined to view sex and emotional intimacy as one. They treat their partners with love and respect. They expect others to be responsive and loving towards them, and so they are responsive and loving with their partners, and they can sensitively, empathically, and coherently discuss their emotions with you. Right, y'all? I'm like, oh my god, this sounds amazing. And as you might guess, the ideal partner to be paired with is a secure. And in the book, it actually talks about how it's like the most painful pairing for an anxious attachment is to end up dating an avoidant. And you'll even, if you get the book on page 93, there's this beautiful list that talks about like why it's such a bad fit for you as an anxious to be paired with an avoidant, because basically everything you want is the very thing that triggers and pushes them away. You want emotional intimacy, they want emotional distance, versus an anxious with a secure, where you have a partner who right, wants all these things, like doesn't feel the need to act defensively, doesn't want to play games, wants closeness. With those three types now kind of in your brain, I want to tell you about one of the most fascinating things I learned in the book. Like this was what stood out to me the most. And it was that your attachment can change. So for 70 to 75% of the population, their original attachment style from childhood will remain consistent throughout their entire life. But the remaining 30 to 25% of the population can change. Y'all, that means you can go from being an anxious attachment to a secure. And they say that that change is attributed to romantic relationships in adulthood that are so powerful, they actually revise our most basic beliefs and attitudes toward connectedness. Y'all say, What? I mean, come on! As someone who came from a pretty messed up family dynamic and as, you know, as the last has finally in the last couple months learned about CPTSD, acknowledged and admitted that I have it, knowing that this is possible is huge. They are saying I can change my attachment style through secure partnerships. Like, sign me up. I am in. I want it. I let's go. And I mean, really, I do think, although I didn't have, you know, the research in the books to back it up, that was a huge piece of why I got divorced was this feeling of I just think there's someone else out there that I could heal in the ways I need to with. And some part of me knew it was not my spouse. To illustrate how this all works, how these different dynamics of being anxiously attached, dating an avoidant, or being anxiously attached and dating another anxious attachment, how they all work, I'm going to share some of my personal journey and my stories over the past four years of dating. Because if you guys are like me, I love stories. I love getting to hear about other people's experiences. And obviously, this is just going to be like a very tiny snapshot of these dynamics in my own life. But I do think it's going to help you be able to take what I've just been saying and actually see the applications and how it can help you in looking at your relationship with your spouse, understanding how those dynamics affect your ability to heal. And of course, understanding all of this, gaining this knowledge helps you while you're considering divorce. Because you have to know, you it's so important to understand these pieces to be able to make a really solid, well-informed decision. So, to start with, as I've said previously, I have overwhelmingly, like, if you look at all the people I've dated, statistically over my lifetime, I have been an anxious attachment in the majority of my previous relationships. And I definitely think there is some element, I haven't fully worked it out just yet, but it does seem to be an element where those who seem to have anxious attachment do tend to be more codependent. And those who have avoidant attachment can tend to have a greater pool of people who would be on the narcissistic personality disorder spectrum. So keep that in mind. I haven't seen research that actually like completely correlates those, but that's what I have seen and kind of put together for myself. So, you know, going back, I was thinking while I was doing this episode, like, when have I really have I ever really dated someone secure? And I could only think, you know, out of the like four relationships I had in high school, there was one boyfriend that I dated who I dated for the longest I'd ever dated anybody at the time. It was like nine months. And I was surprised, I was like, oh my God. Looking back over those months, those were seriously like the best months of my teenage life. I was so much more confident, so much happier, just in love with myself and life. I felt safe. And that was in my junior year, and then my senior year was a shit show. After he left, oh my God, it was tough. It was really tough for me. Felt very, very lonely. Once I got into college, once again, it also was just a lot of dating avoidance looking back. I'm like, yep, that's what that was. Lots of triggering of my anxious attachment. And actually, the one guy that was probably the most secure, I remember dating him and just feeling really good. And then I sent a picture to my mom, and she did not think he was attractive enough for me and was basically like, you need to dump him. And then, y'all, I got married the summer after my freshman year. So I did not have a ton of dating experience, especially really hardly any dating experience with secures and especially no dating experience understanding what I was looking for and that I was looking for a secure. And actually, with my ex-husband and I, I think we kind of traded off being anxious or avoidantly attached in the marriage. Probably in the beginning of that marriage, I would say he was probably more securely attached, and I was more of an anxious, and then, but then we would vacillate. We were just all over the place. As far as once we really got further into the marriage, I would say we just would trade off being anxious and avoidant until finally by the end of the relationship, I would say I had become more of the avoidant and he was more of the anxious, which is really I'm sharing that because I want you guys to realize it can vacillate quite a bit in your marriage. You can find that in the beginning, you might have been the one with all the protest behaviors, seeking intimacy, asking for a connection, wanting more time with him, wanting to, you know, come on, come on, come on, I need more. And over the years may have shifted into more of the avoidant, like, I'm just done. I don't want to be near you. I'm just gonna get through this, kind of more of like a parallel marriage situation. And now that I know about my CPTSD and my childhood abuse, and even his own family's trauma as well, I really don't fault either of us. It's like we were trying to build a skyscraper together, which is what a marriage is. Like you're trying to build something pretty technical and beautiful and all these different pieces. It's like we were trying to build that with explosive landmines on the property every two to three feet. Like looking back, the amount of emotional flashbacks I'm having, the amount of triggers, the lack of resources and tools he had to it all help me through those. That's you know, it's just it's really hard to build something when there are triggers everywhere and you're spending the majority of the relationship dysregulated. So yeah, looking back, I'm like, that was always kind of gonna be a steep uphill climb for both of us. So fast forwarding into coming off my divorce in 2020, I was so beautifully just wide open and eager to learn more about myself and to just play and explore in dating. And little did I know what I was gonna get out of that was so much coaching around my anxious attachment because that's that's really what that first like year to year and a half of dating was. So the the scenario for me was like dating would go well for the first two months, and then something would happen. And looking back, I would get activated and I would use protest behaviors, I would seek to re-establish connection, or I'd want more, or maybe you know, something wouldn't happen, but I would just be looking for more intimacy and connection. And because I was predominantly dating avoidance without knowing it, which if you go read the book, it's so fascinating. They'll talk about why avoidance are actually like they are the highest percentage of people you're gonna end up meeting in the dating pool because they tend to break things off, they go back into the dating pool more easily. Whereas securers tend to be in relationships and very rarely leave them, or if they do, they usually get back into another relationship. So here I am not realizing I am dating a lot of avoidance, and when this whole little scenario would play out, they would either, you know, leave or they wouldn't respond. It was a lot. And I remember at that time having to do so much coaching, and I'm so proud of myself for doing it around owning who I was, because the tendency when someone keeps leaving you is to think there's something wrong with you and to want to get smaller and to want to change for them. I know a lot of you are gonna be resonating with this right now in your marriages, but I really didn't want that. I wanted to be with somebody who loved me for me. So the work in dating all these avoidance when they would leave was to not abandon myself, was to not shame or judge myself. Like, oh, I shouldn't have said that because it made them leave. It was to keep coming back to like if me being vulnerable and asking for more intimacy or looking for more open communication means they leave, that's okay. They're not for me. And it just keeps showing up as me. So what I noticed as I was dating is with each person that I dated and fell in love with, each next person was better than the last. So really looking back over, I'm like, I was, you know, moving from each partner was getting less and less avoidant until in 2022, I had a relationship where the partner that I had, I would say had a more I would say when we first started dating, we came into the relationship very secure because I've noticed for myself that when I'm single, I've and and when I'm single and really leaning into taking care of loving myself, I get more securely attached, just in general. And then usually at that point, I'll meet someone, right? Because when you're totally in love with yourself, that's when somebody shows up. And through that relationship is where I'll watch my attachment style kind of change. So in this dynamic, I think we were both pretty secure at the beginning. Then through the relationship, he moved into a more anxious attachment style than me. And this is the first time I dated someone that was more anxiously attached than I was. And what I saw was that over the span of that relationship, I ended up heavily. In avoidant attachment by the end. Wild, right? So I want to kind of break that down. So the other crazy thing is like that relationship started out so good. I mean, I was, I can't tell you how lovely it is to date someone who is, you know, more of an anxious when you've been dating as when you've been an anxious dating avoidance for so long, and then you get to date someone who's more of an anxious like you, and you both want intimacy and you both want closeness and you both want to be together all the time. Oh, it is the best. And I was like, I was really all in on this and experiencing these levels of love and trust and just like fill your heart up. I'm so crazy in love, I can't think straight, kind of vibes. That I really thought, okay, if you love someone this much, it's all gonna work out. Like it's it's got to. And we made it past the three-month mark, and we did actually end up dating for an entire year. But looking back now, I can see really clearly how what ultimately sunk us was our attachment styles and having undiagnosed CPTSD. So to expound, because you all may be having these patterns happening in your marriages as well. In CPTSD, as I've explained, I have emotional flashbacks happening. And when I say an emotional flashback, this is not like I'm being flashed back into a specific memory of my childhood. That's not what's happening. What it means is I'm experiencing a trigger that flashes me back into feeling the way I felt as a child, which is like overwhelmed, completely flooded, catastrophizing, super terrified, unable to really function. So imagine, you know, I'm having these emotional flashbacks happening when you have CPTSD, you have this happening and they're dysregulating your nervous system. So pretty regularly, you are almost always in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. Now, if you don't know what's happening and how to manage and re-regulate your nervous system through those emotional flashbacks, you can get so flashbacked that you end up in a state of regression, which for me feels like being completely like I'm out of my body, I feel really fuzzy most of the time, I'm dissociated, I'm overwhelmed. This is when I'll have the suicidal ideations that we talked about in the CBTS uh D episode come in. I'll need to buffer a lot. So I'll see myself scrolling a lot on Instagram or wanting to sleep all the time because it just feels so uncomfortable being in your body. And I will tell you guys, regression is really pretty miserable and very terrifying because if you get deep enough into it, you can forget what you were like previously. And it's really hard because I can't show up like I want to with my kids or in my bit, like my business suffers. I tend to isolate, I get really in my head. So, with that in mind, now imagine you're experiencing all of that without knowing that's actually what's going on while trying to be in a relationship with someone. Y'all, it is so overwhelming. And looking back now, what I saw happening in this previous relationship is that because we didn't know that to be honest, I think we each probably have CPTSD because he has his own trauma with loss. What we didn't know is that we we were just ending up triggering the fuck out of each other over and over and over. And that's creating trauma. That is real-time trauma that's happening, which heads up is probably happening for a lot of you in your marriages if you have these same patterns. And so, what would happen is when he'd go into his anxious attachment protesting behaviors of like excessively calling or texting me or getting really angry and kind of hostile, I would react by using avoidant deactivating strategies to keep him at arm's length by pulling away and distancing, or you know, just it was too much, didn't want to deal with it, need my space. And at the time, I I knew I was not showing up in the ways I most wanted, and he could feel my pulling away, which of course only activates him more, which I get because I know what it's like to be in anxious attachment. But without understanding these dynamics, we just did not have the tools to be able to work through it together. And um actually, you know, in admitting to myself that I have CPTSD in the last couple of months, it actually I've I've realized, I've made kind of a decision for myself that moving forward, where previously I was kind of like, I'll date anybody, everybody, like universe send it in. I want all the experiences. I have decided to be more intentional moving forward and only date partners that are secure because I've gotten more clear about like what is my goal in relationship. And my goal in relationship is to heal. I want to know and learn how to have secure, healthy, really connected, attached relationships. And to do that, I need a partner who is already from the beginning of the relationship more securely attached than I am. And, you know, they'll talk, I think in the CPTSD book, he talks about that. These are partners who, you know, either through being raised in more securely attached households or through doing their own work have gotten to a place of secure attachment. So one of the other really interesting dynamics I'm gonna talk about. Oh no, so wait. So first, first I want to tell you guys. So, so in thinking back over this, I was like, oh my God, okay, so now we know I'm one of the 30% that changes my attachment style depending on who I'm dating. Because here I dated all these avoidance, was very anxious. I go and date somebody who's more anxiously attached, and I go avoidant. And this was reconfirmed this last year in 2023. So I had broken up with the partner I dated for a year, and in the fall of last year, I met a couple other partners, both of who I would say have a more avoidant attachment style than me. And with one of those partners, I dated him for a few months, and y'all, I was shocked. I mean, I hadn't been in anxious attachment for a couple years by that point. Because, you know, I'd dated this partner where I was more avoidant, and then I'd had a good six months of not really dating anybody. I was floored to see how quickly my anxious attachment came back. I mean, the first like month and a half were awesome, and then by the second month, it was starting to like aggressively overwhelm me. And I was turning from this resilient, confident, like babe that had totally crushed it at Burning Man. Because remember, at Burning Man, I had not been dating anybody. I I went to Burning Man singles, so I had this like remember this reservoir. Told you when I'm single, I tend to be able to become more securely attached. I was going from that into this over-analyzing, highly emotional, and second-guessing everything person. And in rereading the book for this episode, I was so relieved to have them mention this. They said in the book over and over that that happens. And that goes back to that statement I said earlier: this whole like you're only as troubled as the relationship you're in. And it was wild. I was losing my shit over a week. Like at the very end, there was this week where his communication just dropped off drastically, and my mind was all over the place. I could, it was really hard to function. I was really stressed and dysregulated. Lots of big flashbacks to how I'd felt with guys that I dated early on after my divorce. And one of the things I'm most proud of is that where in the past I would have tried to work through it previously with an avoidant partner, and even like as much as I loved and still adore this human so much. Cause that's the crazy thing, right? Even if somebody's got more of an avoidant attachment style, it doesn't mean you don't still have deep feelings for this person. Like I was talking to a client yesterday who's definitely in the same dynamic. She's more anxious, he's more avoidant. And she's like, I deeply love him. And I was like, Yeah, I get it. I do. I still deeply love the partner that I dated for a year. It doesn't mean you don't love this person. But loving someone and whether they're actually healthy for your nervous system are two different things. I'm just so grateful because thank God at that point, you know, I'd watched myself for a week just become really dysregulated. And I just a part of me knew, like, no, no, no. And I made this very sound call to end it and to let both of us find just matches that were better, you know, just naturally, organically better for us. Neither one of us was wrong. I just realized at that point that what was happening with me was me shifting back into anxious attachment. And instead of, oh, we can work through this, I knew, no, I just need to call it. So with this in mind, right, like what is an anxious attachment gal to do then? We've got all these avoidance in the dating pool. And in the book, it says, and I'm gonna quote it being anxious means that she thrives on intimate, supportive relationships that are stable and long-lasting, and that uncertainty and emotional unavailability get her activated and preoccupied, or in a word, miserable. She would also have known that certain people, namely avoidance, intensify her worries and feelings of inadequacy, while others secures pacify them. So I've got you all the way up to this beautiful cliffhanger, and I'm going to leave you guys here until next week because I'm gonna use a whole other episode. This next episode I'm going to record. I'm going to go into depth talking about this idea that I've had for a long time that through learning about CPTSD and learning about attachment theory, I've had confirmed that there are certain people that you can heal more easily with. Hint hint secures. And sometimes your spouse isn't one of them. So next week I'll be diving into that and I'll be um definitely sharing. I'm really excited to talk more about my recent experience with a new partner that I'm dating and getting to date someone who I feel like for the first time is more securely attached for me. It is mind-blowing, y'all. So that's all I got for you this week. Uh oh, also super exciting. I'm so delighted to announce this for those of you that have been considering coaching with me. Previously, the only offer I had, which is still my favorite offer, and as many of my clients who've gone through it can tell you, it's phenomenal. My coaching package of coaching with me for three months. I have now added, though, 90-minute coaching intensives. And I'm so excited to be offering this because for a while I've wanted to find a way to have, you know, those of you that maybe can't commit to a three-month program still being able to get help. So these 90-minute intensives are so awesome. I built them, I no longer offer like free mini sessions. Some of you may have experienced those with me back when I first started coaching, but they're an expanded form of that, where over that 90 minutes, we really talk about where you're at in your marriage right now, what's not working. We talk about where you want to be instead, what's that future you most desire. And then we identify what are the obstacles that are blocking you from moving from where you're at now into what you most want. And I, no joke, have watched this format just get incredible in one session kind of breakthroughs for women. Um, I actually did one. Somebody, uh, it was so much fun yesterday. She must have found a link to my mini session, I believe, probably through Instagram. In fact, I need to reach back out to her and find out where she found it because I've shut down those mini session links. I thought I'd shut them down pretty thoroughly, but she came through on my calendar and we did this exact format. Of course, it was shorter because we're only doing it in the 30, 30 to you know 45 minutes. But at the end of that session, she was like, Oh my god, I feel so much better. And it was really amazing because she had shared stuff. She ended up telling me she'd shared stuff with me that she's never told anybody else in her life. I was like, oh my fuck, this is so this is complete and utter magic. So I'm really happy that I've finally realized I can also be offering this, that I don't just have to work with somebody, you know, ideally, it takes at least three plus months to be able to get someone to a really confident place of being able to say yes or no and make that decision. But in these sessions, they give you just a lot of clarity and a lot of overview for where you're at at this exact moment. So um I will link those in the show notes as well. I'm really excited to get to start meeting more of you that are listening through those. I just highly recommend them. I think they're just a great opportunity to come to a like safe open space for those 90 minutes with someone who has no skin in the game. I mean, you guys know me. If you've listened to my podcast long enough, like I am so here for you owning your truth. That's all I really want for you. And a place where you can just download it all, speak it all out, hear it all out. And then the gift is with my incredible, I'm so proud of my coach brain and the work I've done to be able to just see and identify patterns and what's blocking you. By the end of it, we know pretty clearly like where your work is going forward. So take a take a look at those, and I will see you all next week. Till then,