.jpg)
Overcomers Approach
“The Overcomers Approach” podcast showcases stories of resilience, where individuals transcend challenges to achieve personal and professional success. With a focus on spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and financial growth, the podcast inspires listeners to embrace their potential and thrive in all areas of life. Join us to learn how overcoming adversity can lead to evolution, healing, and lasting success.
Overcomers Approach
The Foundation of Love: Self-Worth and Relationships
Explore the transformative power of self-love in relationships with our latest episode featuring Tzara Attwater, a renowned relationship development coach. Delving deep into the concept of anxious attachment styles, Zara shares how early experiences can affect adult relationships. She illustrates the impact of self-worth on love, emphasizing that true intimacy starts from within.
Listeners learn practical strategies for nurturing self-love and combating anxious attachment traits. Discussing the importance of mindfulness, Zara encourages self-reflection and challenges listeners to question their thoughts. One key takeaway from the episode is the significance of emotional honesty. Being open about feelings—both for oneself and in communication with partners—can lead to deeper intimacy and understanding.
Moreover, Tzara highlights the need for individuals to be proactive in their relationships. She reminds us that seeking out emotional connection may sometimes require stepping outside of our comfort zones. Her newfound strategies extend beyond romantic relationships, impacting friendships and professional interactions as well. Fostering secure attachments can create a ripple effect, leading to a more fulfilling personal and professional life.
Throughout their conversation, both Tzara and Nichol tie back to the idea that personal growth is an ongoing journey. No matter where we are in life, embracing self-love and healing from past experiences is crucial for our well-being and the well-being of those around us. By sharing heartfelt stories and actionable advice, Zara inspires both men and women to embark on their journeys toward better relationships. This rich episode is packed with wisdom, and serves as a valuable resource for anyone seeking deeper connections and a clearer understanding of themselves.
More about Tzara and her coaching services at https://myconfidencecoach.com.au/
Thank you for sharing and listening!
Nichol Ellis-McGregor, MHS | LinkedIn
Facebook
Mrs. Nichol (@mrs.nichol_7) | TikTok
Nichol Ellis-McGregor (@mrs_nichol) • Instagram photos and videos
HOME | Nichol-Empowerment Life Coach (nicholkellis-mcgregor.com)
Thank you for listening!
This is Nicole Ellis McGregor, the founders of the Overcomers Approach podcast, where I meet with people from different experiences, different life's walks, different lived experiences, different journeys, different experiences. I meet with helpers, people that are helping people on their journey of self-love, of full development to live in their fullest purpose, and all that starts with self-love. I love the fact that I have Zara Atwater here today, and she's a relationship development coach. She helps men and women be successful in their relationships, from broken to moving into confidence, meaningful and fully engaged, both personally and professionally, specifically with a focus on anxious attachment styles and attachment theory. She has a message which is simple Real, lasting love begins with a solid foundation of self-love and self-worth.
Speaker 1:Zara, thank you for being here today. I'm sure there was so much more that I could put in there, but the key components is self-love and living to our fullest purpose and potential, and I know that you have a focus on anxious attachment styles and attachment theory. That falls in line with that. But tell me a little bit about how you got on this journey today. Was it a personal experience or what brought you? I think it's wonderful, thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you and it's lovely to be here, nicole. Yeah, I really honor this space and time and really respect the heartbeats that we're sharing with each other now and your listeners. So thank you so much for this opportunity. Yeah, I guess in a nutshell that anxious attachment style is something that really resonated with me and I'm not sure if your listeners are familiar with the.
Speaker 2:Mary Ainsworth did a study on attachment styles. It was called the Strange Situation Study, which was quite interesting. She got just a highlight. She got caregivers, mothers in particular, to bring their toddlers into a controlled environment with some toys, got the toddlers to play with the toys and then had the mother leave the room and they studied what the reactions were like. So out of that three kind of styles came three basic styles the secure, the anxious and the avoidant. And so from that early learning we transition into our adult relationships and those kind of traits, those kind of understandings, and when I started to really become aware that I was an anxious attached person but didn't realise it at the time and it took a massive trauma for me to become aware of that, and you know, I guess this isn't easy to share, but I walked in on my partner and my best friend in bed with each other.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a big one. I'm here to talk about it and you're free. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know it's also to just recognize I'm not the first person this has happened to and I probably won't be the last, and I'm sure there's your listeners that have potentially experienced that or at least know someone that's been through that. So for me, that you know the kind of if I was on an airplane going to my ideal destination with my relationship with his partner, it was like all of a sudden, you know, we just lost cabin pressure. I was free, falling down. It was just really, really, really bad for me on so many different levels. But ironically, looking back on it now, it was one of the most profoundly grateful experiences because it helped me understand a lot more about myself.
Speaker 2:I was able to own and take responsibility for my part in that, but also recognise it wasn't all my fault.
Speaker 2:You know there were two people here, two people that could take responsibility, and one of those people was very selfish in my opinion, but it was definitely a learning curve, and so I started to look at the patterns that I was exhibiting and fundamentally it was a fear of being rejected, a fear of being abandoned, and that, in my relationships, made me hold on really, really tightly, becoming hyper vigilant to any kind of changes or any kind of any kind of suggestion that I wasn't going to be loved, I wasn't good enough, I wasn't doing something, that was the perfect partner, and so that made me.
Speaker 2:You know, my partner might send me a message to say, oh, he's going to be working late or he can't get there, and I'd be sending maybe five or ten messages wanting to understand why in the in the space of maybe half an hour, and that that's a real anxious attachment kind of trait, right. So having worked through all of that and recognizing that for myself that was the trauma and the catalyst for me, I now help women and men particularly going through the same kind of anxious attachment, because if it's showing up in one area of your life, there's a highly guaranteed it's going to be showing up in other areas at work, in your relationships with family, and it'll show up in other areas of your life. So I've really dedicated my life to helping people overcome that.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank you for sharing that story. I can most definitely identify with that. I'm very familiar with the study that you're talking about. I have an eye in human services and family studies and that was one of the studies we looked at and that childhood wound or that experience carries on really for the rest of our lives until it's resolved, until we address it or until we walk through our healing, and so I can definitely relate to that personally to my mother and father were teen parents, so my grandparents raised me.
Speaker 1:So, I was just a child, I thought I did something, or why did my primary parents leave me? So yeah, I had to walk that journey and had a couple of tough relationships in the early part of my life. But I went. You know I got therapy. I did a lot of personal development I did. I went. You know I got therapy. I did a lot of personal development. I did, you know, healing work to get to where I'm at today. And then I lost my first husband to cancer. So I've been married 12 years now but I constantly still really have to do the work because it still comes up periodically, sure, sure.
Speaker 2:It's a process, right. It's like I say I'm a self-development junkie. It's got to be something I can continually work on, because when you get an awareness about something, you're then applying that and it will get to a point where you then have more and greater awareness about that. And so we are wired for self-development. We are wired for that, right, we can't help but keep learning. It's wired into us.
Speaker 2:But I love what you shared about being brought up by your grandparents and really having to reconcile that within yourself as an adult, because at a young enough age all children can only see in first-person perspective. Right, they only can see. It's my perspective. So you know that if something happens they they blame themselves. It's it's got to be their fault because they don't have the cognition to see a second person at a young enough age. So when that happens to us children, you know, go through experience, divorce, you know their parents divorcing or any kind of abandonment issues they tend to blame themselves, and so it takes a lot of work of all the things that we were gifted as children by our parents. It's then up to us to kind of recognize that what's working, you know, hold on to what's working and let go of what isn't working and that can be a lifelong journey for a lot of people. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I agree. What do you feel like the men and women that you're helping? What do you feel like is their biggest challenge in relationships or with themselves today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, and I think this isn't this isn't to exclude men from this, because I think it's a trait that shows up for them, but particularly for women this idea of people-pleasing and wanting some, you know, it's that nurture that mothering nature inside a woman to be able to do the people-pleasing. And it could be, you know, just from conditioning, from growing up, and so what I there's three core aspects that I tend to work with, and the first is to stop mind reading. What I mean by that is, you know, um, let's say, let's say you're at work, and your boss says to you uh, nicole, I want to, I want to talk to you. Can you come into my office?
Speaker 2:for the anxious, attached person. They immediately go to the worst case scenario and start going what did I do wrong?
Speaker 2:they're going to berate me, I'm going to get fired, and it's that constant mind reading that occurs that um is is basically going to the worst case scenario and making it about me when the reality could be um, you know, the boss wants to congratulate you on the project that you've just done, or give you a pay rise or any number of things, so that mind reading creates a behavior pattern that is often unresourceful, and so looking at the mind reading is the first thing, and for any of your listeners that are experiencing this, my, my offer would be to ask yourself what am I telling myself? That's not true. What am I telling myself? That's not true? And just check in with yourself. What are the actual facts that you know of? And in the example I've just given, you know, the only facts that you know is that your boss wants to talk to you that's it.
Speaker 1:You don't know anything else?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, I could definitely relate to the mind reading and the people pleasing and how to really shift, like our mindset to really deal with the facts versus what we're assuming, cause we can end up down a deep slope, you know, just thinking the worst. I love the fact that you said that because that's definitely something I'm sure my listeners can identify with. You know, I have identified with in periods of my life and, like I said, it's still a process and I think we as women, because we're nurturers, you know most by nature it's just we want to please. You know we want to take care of everything, or we've been trained that way or that's just how we were raised, and just, you know really. You know dealing with the logical, factual stuff and you know balancing that out, whatever that looks like. So I love the fact that you said that because I'm sure that's something that many people could identify with.
Speaker 1:What do you think that men deal with? I have adult sons, you know, and I'm always interested about their lives, and one of my sons, he definitely wants to be married in a relationship, but he's kind of like he's having a rough time. He's just like he wants to meet that person. But I just told him to get the practice in, get the practice in, but he's tired of the practice and he just wants to meet the person.
Speaker 2:I think it's just as hard for men, I think and this is not necessarily the case as we move, you know, as we become generational in this approach, but definitely on older men they have this idea.
Speaker 2:You know, real men don't cry and I think that that's such a heartbreaking metaphor or a statement for men to have been growing up in. It's almost as if your emotions don't matter. You can't show your emotions, and I think a lot of men that I work with anyway it's about. It's about trying to get them in touch with their emotions, and a lot of men don't even know what emotions are, you know. They've suppressed them for so long.
Speaker 2:I think, then, it might not be necessarily the case for the younger generation these days, but definitely being being given permission to tap into your own emotions, that you are valid, um, and and by doing that, they'll be able to communicate more so with women, who, you know, love the emotions. We really tap into our own emotions, right, and so being able to, just, you know, stick a big toe into that area of being able to be emotional and not to be afraid of it. And then I think this is really a call out to women as well. It doesn't have to the onus doesn't have to be on men to approach us. You know, women, you can pick on your big girl pants and, if you like that guy, go and tell him.
Speaker 2:It will just make his day. You know what it feels like for a guy to come up to you and tell you how beautiful you are, but it takes some big courage to do that, and so put on their shoes, go over to that guy, tell them that you think they're gorgeous, because that doesn't happen to them that often, and so it really helps them. You know, to support them, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that as we transition and I'm going to want to be respectful of time and so I'm making sure we're okay with the time here. I have a few more questions. Another question I have is self-love. Self-love in order to really have that relationship, you know, with a significant other or boyfriend or spouse or a friend like. I think that is just so important that we have that foundation. What, what advice or what recommendations do you give your clients or what have you seen for them to really grow and develop in self-love?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is. This is a really big one because it takes for. For me, it's about trusting yourself right, and it starts with if you can be your own best friend, if you can love yourself, then the cogs in that wheel just start to click into place. You can start to. It's about having that integrity. So, for me, my own personal journey was I'm not sure if you know this, but I built a motor home during covid and then I traveled around australia by myself, falling into holes, getting into all sorts of trouble, but having the resilience to trust myself and knowing that I'm making my choices.
Speaker 2:If this doesn't work, I'm fully okay with taking responsibility for that.
Speaker 2:Not looking to someone else to save me or rescue me and being completely okay to ask for help when it's needed. And so, yeah, I think that in this day and age, when people are dating and they're trying to find a match, it can be it can feel like a minefield. It can feel like you're you know, excuse my language but potentially swimming in a load of gunk and just, yes, hard right. And so what? What I have done to try and help people meet people in real life is I've created a little an e-book and I'm more than happy to share this with your listeners, but it's 52 Ways to Meet Someone in Real Life, which is one date, if you like, for every week of the year.
Speaker 2:I love that 52 date ideas and all of the photos that are in the book have been taken from my trip around Australia. So if any of your listeners are keen to see what Australia landscape looks like, this is the book for you. And it's also just to help spice things up if you're already in a relationship and you want some creative ideas. So you know, it's not just a coffee in a cafe or a, you know, a movie and a meal kind of thing. This is some really interesting ways to just spice things up in your relationship and I'm more than happy to share that with you.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, I'm sure myself and my listeners would love that. I mean because with my husband, I think I'm always looking for different and unique things to do, because you can get caught up in just like kind of repetition and just the same experiences. So trying to figure out whether those new experiences and I love the fact, you know, being a single person you know going out on those spaces and dates and exploring and trusting yourself. And I did that before I got married because I just I wasn't, I didn't want to be out there in the dating pool, I just went to places that interested me and people who were like-minded and I took myself on dates and I love myself and I and I trusted it.
Speaker 1:And people were like, why are you getting dressed up? I'm like I'm getting dressed up for myself, like I like I just love that. That's fine. You know, I put them. I'd go on dates, I went to the movies, I went to dinner and I loved it, and I still do that now as a married woman, you know. And so, yeah, because I really value that and I love seeing people flourish and grow and live, you know, in their purpose, whatever that looks like. And so I have, you know, some girlfriends that are kind of frustrated with the dating pool, and you know, and so I love the idea of the book, because my recommendations may not be for them, but you have 52 different ideas that they can explore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you're going to find something in there. And I think in the dating is yes, we have a list, yes, we have a little tick box. Especially the older we get, we know what we don't want. But then my offer would be, when you go on dates, to To park that list and just take it on face value and have the awareness of going on a second date with this person, because when we all show up you know there could be a plethora of things happening. There could be nerves happening, they might have had some bad news, there might be something stressing them out. You don't know what's happening. And to take a snapshot of time in that moment is not to really honor the person. And so I always say try and go on another date with them, just see them for a second time. Yeah and um, not to, not to remove your checklist, but just to park it and just to see what would happen. Step out of your comfort zone and try one of these dates and see what happens.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it. Um, I'm down to my last two questions. Another question I have is what has been one of your success stories from one of your clients? Like what have you seen like a good outcome? Like, what did that look like?
Speaker 2:Yes. So the one that springs to mind is a client that was on what I call a misery go round. She was dating the same guy over a period of two or three years, but they kept breaking up, kept going back together, kept breaking up, going back together. She knew in her heart of hearts that it wasn't right, and so it was really to acknowledge that people pleasing in her. She wanted to save him and he was playing off of that like he needed her, and so it was about bringing awareness to that. It was about setting some boundaries, and it was also working on space. Now, what I mean by that is, um, not just physical space, but um, mental space, emotional space, and allowing her to feel comfortable with that.
Speaker 2:Once we worked on all of that, she left him once and for all, sorry spoiler alert but she left him once and for all and within three months met a guy and the last I heard that they were engaged to be married. So that was just a beautiful turnaround and and it's all possible. It doesn't matter what stage you're at within your dating world. It's possible to change it when you change your mindset and your attitude.
Speaker 1:I completely agree with you and I love the fact that you put in boundaries in there, not just physical space, but boundaries, but mental, emotional and what that looks like. And then she probably realized that that was no longer for her and she attracted what she deserved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the wounding that she had learned to associate with love from a child. Yeah, chasing the love and prove that I'm good enough. And that was creating that push pull dance. That just wasn't working, totally unhealthy for her. Yes.
Speaker 1:Well, last questions, and then I want to make sure that you leave your website and so that if people want to get in touch with you for services or any things that you've authored or any other information you have, I want to make sure we have that Out of all these relationships, as you help people on their journey of self-discovery and healing and self-love, and working on that attachment, those attachment issues from childhood wounds, what gives you hope in this space and how do you fill your cup as you pour into other people?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a beautiful question because we touched on the three different attachment styles, right? So we've touched on the anxious, and then there's the avoidant, and then there's the avoidant, and then there's secure. Now, a little-known stat is that 50% of the general population are securely attached which leaves 25% anxious and 25% avoidant.
Speaker 2:And what tends to happen in the dating pool is that the anxious and the avoidant are constantly looping and triggering each other, and if you're either of those types, it might feel like a securely attached person is like the golden goose or the unicorn dating world, right, like you're never going to catch them. And so this, my offer, is that, um, it's high, it's, it's completely possible to go from being a particular attachment style to becoming more secure. And that's what I work with my clients on to help them become more secure, Because the more secure people we are in the dating pool, the healthier and better our lives personally and in all other areas are.
Speaker 1:I agree. I agree. Where can people reach out to you? What is your web link for services or any products that you may have?
Speaker 2:Beautiful. So I've dropped a link in the chat for us. But which is my website, is my confidence coach. So, my confidence coachcomau, because I'm coming to you from Australia. Yes, yeah, all one word. And also I've put a link in there for the ebook for your listeners to download.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I so appreciate it, zara. This has been wonderful. I know there's so much more that can come from this conversation, but I want to direct my listeners to the two web links that you have given me. When I edit the video and the podcast, I'll make sure those links are also in the description. Zara, I greatly appreciate it. Thank you from over the waters connecting with me. I was just in Australia with my husband back in March of 2020. Yeah, we went to Melbourne, but he went to all the like main Gold Coast and all that, but we just met in Melbourne because he travels for work. So it was a beautiful experience and so I just love the culture of Australia. So, thank you, I'm just so happy that you were able to connect with me and have a wonderful rest of the day. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, nicole, you too Thank you so much. Bye-bye, Bye.