Stronger Marriage Connection
It's often said that marriage takes work. The Stronger Marriage Connection podcast wants to help because a happy marriage is worth the effort. USU Family Life Professor Dr. Dave Schramm and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Liz Hale talk with experts about the principles and practices that will enhance your commitment, compassion, and emotional connection.
More than ever before, marriages face obstacles, from the busyness of work and daily hassles to disagreements and digital distractions. It's no wonder couples sometimes drift apart, growing resentful, lonely, and isolated.
The Utah Marriage Commission invites you to listen and discover new ways to strengthen and protect your marriage connection today!
Stronger Marriage Connection
Understanding Your Attachment Style Can Change Every Relationship | Marc Cameron | #158
We talk with therapist and author Marc Cameron about how childhood bonds shape adult love and how anyone can “earn” secure attachment through story, skills, and practice. Practical tools like boundaries that invite connection and the Comfort Circle help couples move from reactivity to responsiveness.
• what avoidant, pleaser, vacillator, and disorganized styles look like in childhood and adulthood
• how a coherent narrative links emotions to needs
• why empathy, validation, and clear language reduce conflict
• boundaries as doors back into connection
• style-specific growth goals and daily practice
• co‑soothing before self‑soothing and nervous system regulation
• the Comfort Circle listener-speaker tool
• research roots from Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Main
• resources from How We Love and Marc’s new book
Marc Cameron's Resources and Links:
Free How We Love Attachment Style Quiz:
https://understandingyourattachmentstyle.com/
How We Love: https://howwelove.com/
Marc's Social Media:
https://m.facebook.com/marc.cameron.mft/
https://www.instagram.com/marc.cameron.mft/
How We Love Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/howwelovebook?mibextid=wwXIfr&mibextid=wwXIfr
https://www.instagram.com/howwelovebook?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
https://www.tiktok.com/@how.we.love.tikto
https://www.youtube.com/@HowWeLove
Visit our site for FREE relationship resources and regular giveaways:
Strongermarriage.org
Podcast.stongermarriage.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StrongerMarriageLife
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@strongermarriagelife
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strongermarriagelife/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strongermarriage/
Facebook Marriage Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/770019130329579
Dr. Dave Schramm:
Dr. Liz Hale:
On today's episode, Liz and I talk with marriage and family therapist Mark Cameron about all things attachment, what shapes our styles, why they matter, and how we can each move toward a secure style. Mark shares helpful real life tips from his new book, Understanding Your Attachment Style, including how shifting from reactivity to responsiveness can completely change the way we show up in relationships. Mark is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and his wife Amy is a licensed psychiatric nurse practitioner. Together they lead How We Love, an organization offering attachment-based resources for individuals, couples, churches, and therapists. How We Love was originally founded by Milan and Kay Yerkovich and inspired by their best-selling 2006 book, which has sold over 100,000 copies and introduced readers to how childhood attachment styles shape adult relationships. The How We Love website also features a free attachment style quiz used by more than 5,000 people each month. Mark is a regular co-host on the national radio program New Life Live and is the author of Understanding Your Attachment Style, releasing December 2nd. We hope you enjoy the show. Hey there, friends. Welcome to another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection Podcast. I'm Dr. Dave up here at Utah State University. Alongside Liz Hale, our psychologist and therapist, we're aiming to bring you the very best that we have in research and resources, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams. All right, Liz, have you ever wondered why some relationships feel so effortless while others seem stuck in the same patterns? Indeed. Well, our guest today, Mark Cameron, says the answer lies in your attachment style, and understanding it might just change everything. So we're excited to dive into the world, excuse me, of attachment today. And I look forward to our discussion. Welcome to the show, Mark. Thanks for having me. Excited to be with you guys. Yeah, we're we're thrilled to have you on, Mark, and talk about uh attachment today. Can we even start, Mark, with the basics? For those who are unfamiliar with our topic today, can you explain attachment and attachment styles?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so uh an attachment style is our bonding style. We all have one, and it that is formed from the bond that we uh that we form from our first caregivers, which is typically our mothers and our fathers. And so babies are designed to uh bond in a trusting way by parents being able to pick up on what the baby needs and supply that need. And if that happens well, then a baby learns to trust their mother and their father. And and there's particular styles called attachment styles. So that's how we attach. And so we either attach securely with our parents, or we develop different strategies which uh can be categorized into insecure attachment styles when that bonding gets interrupted.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting stuff.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, the first days, weeks, months of of life we're developing or not developing. Yeah, this attachment, this connection that we like to call it here on the podcast with other human beings. And that's fundamental and carries on then, yeah, throughout the rest of our lives and other relationships.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. So that bonding style that we create, it you know, it really forms um the programming that we have for relationships. And then AT is a research shows that we take that programming into our adult relationships and we tend to hold the same expectations, even though when we are an adult, our uh responsibilities and our power dynamic in relationships shifts because as we're growing up, we don't get to choose our parents, we don't get to choose the environment that we adapt. But in adult, we have more power, we have more responsibility, but we just carry on uh doing what we've learned how to do. And that those are our expectations of how others should meet our needs.
SPEAKER_00:I have not, I will admit, as marriage therapists, not always given credit to attachment styles, not nearly like I should. I'm trying to repent and move on from that, Mark. So we really would love more of your insights on how does this process look? And so the attachment styles form early, we understand that. And then how does it look in our adult relationships? Do you mind giving us giving us an example or two?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so well, let me explain a few of the insecure attachment styles and the childhood homes that those form in. Um, and I'm sure that the the the listeners will be able to hear probably their childhood home described here. So there is an avoidant attachment style. And so the avoidant attachment style um forms when a child grows up in a home where there's not a lot of talk about emotions and feelings. Okay, so this kid might fall over and hurt themselves, and the response from the parent might be like, Oh, come on, you're okay, you know, stop crying, be brave. Or there's no monsters under the bed, nothing to be scared, go to sleep, or don't worry about it. It's gonna turn out fine. It always does, right? So what's happening here is this kid is learning that, oh, okay, when I have, whenever I have these feelings on the inside, they're really unwanted by my parents. Um, and they're telling me that I'm okay. Now, usually what's valued by an avoidant parent is uh performance, task mastery, academics, athletics getting stuff done, right? And so this is where this kid gets their affirmations from. And so they really learn to turn the volume down on their emotions because that's the message that they're being taught. And then they lean into uh performing and independence. And uh they grow up and and they grow up with that uh performance type style. And usually in adulthood, that is reinforced because we love people in the working world who are proficient, who are efficient, who are productive, who just get on with it, and it's not personal, it's business. Um, and so that is really affirmed for them. But when it comes to relationships, the definition of empathy is I know what it feels like for you because I know what it feels like for me. But if I don't have any skills to go there with myself, then I'm not gonna be able to enter into someone else's emotions. And so avoiders try and fix problems for people because they really want the other person to stop emoting because they're uncomfortable with their emotions. And when they can't do that, they typically avoid avoid conversations, avoid the situation. And they just think, well, uh, the other person will get over it because I just get over it, and then we'll be fine. So that's what conflict looks like for them. Uh now there's two anxious attachment styles, and in my book, Understanding your attachment style, I use uh different uh vernacular for these. I really use the the language used in a book called How We Love. And um, I love that book, and I love the names for the attachment styles because sometimes dismissive avoidant or anxious ambivalent can be a little bit cumbersome for people to kind of wrap their head around. And so what Milan and Kay Yerkovich did, who wrote the book How We Love, they just kind of uh succinctly identified a main characteristic of each attachment style. So even though these are not the research words I'm using, there are actual attachment styles. So the first anxious attachment style I refer to in my book is called the pleaser. The pleaser kid grows up in a home where they learn the opposite. They learn to manage their parents' emotions. They typically have a parent who is angry and that anger scares them, or a parent who is highly critical or worried or uh depressed. And so they become the good kid, right? They learn to stay within the lines because they don't want to activate their parent. Because when their parent gets upset uh or anxious or worried, they feel anxious, they themselves feel anxious on the inside. So they learn to predict and calm other people down. Now, this this kid grows into adulthood, learning how to do that, and they'll do that in relationships. They'll check in with other people, they'll check emotional temperatures, like, how are you doing? Are you okay? Is everything okay? Um, and you ask this person, well, where do you want to go eat? And they'll say, I don't know. Where do you want to go eat? And they think, well, I just want other people to be happy. Um, and I don't really care. And that's not really true. Usually, and they don't really know this, usually it's because they don't really know their own likes and preferences, because in order to know our likes and preferences, we've got to explore them. Or they might say, I want you to be happy, but that's not true either. They don't want other people to be upset because when other people get upset, they feel that anxiety on the inside. So when it comes to uh relational rupture, they just want to please and appease and they can lose themselves or they can become codependent. Now there's another anxious attachment style, and this was identified by um uh a researcher, Mary Ainsworth. This is an anxious-resistant attachment style. And in the book, I refer to this as the vacillator attachment style. So this kid grows up in a home where they get some connection and attention from a parent, but then they get made to wait on it. And so that could be because the connection is dependent upon the parent's mood or the parents' physical availability. You know, if there's a divorce or a custody situation or the parent travels for work, so this kid gets connection and then they're made to wait on it and it's not on their timeline. And so they feel unseen, unknown, misunderstood, and they learn to pout, they learn to sulk, they learn what we call protest behavior. So when the parent comes back, they protest to show the parent that they're upset, wanting the parent to pick up on uh their needs and not do that again. Um, but you know, oftentimes the connection is outside the parent's control. And so this kid goes into adulthood with this longing turned on high for connection, and they are all in when they uh when they meet someone because dating is all about time, attention, and connection. Uh so they share too much too soon, but then real life sets in and they get made to wait, and all of those feelings come flooding back, and then they do this push-pour, like they learned in childhood. They do protest behavior, they you know, I like to say we we uh talk out our feelings or we act out our feelings, we verbalize or we dramatize, right? But when we dramatize, when we act them out, people have got to guess what's going on on the inside, and so they something out trying to get their needs met, but it's typically this push-poor, others don't get it, or others feel pushed away, they don't get their needs met, and then they can feel like this deep despair on the inside. And then here's the last the last attachment style is called disorganized attachment style. And that um, there's two that actually form from this that um identify in the book uh a controller and a victim. Now, these kids typically grow up in homes where they're dangerous, they're abusive, um, there's neglect, and so needs are really put down to survival. And uh these kids uh can leave home very, very early. Um, but generally they can they can either develop a mix of the attachment styles or they can go one or two other ways where they realize that relationships are like this they're one up, one down. Somebody is an abuser or a controller, and the other person gets abused or gets controlled. So the controller type attachment decides I'm gonna be in this role. And they uh control their environment for predictability to stay safe, but they do that by controlling others, and so they can become a very controlling type person. Or the victims decide or uh that you know, abuse is gonna happen and I can't escape this. So, you know, if I just try and stay under the radar, then the less it will happen to me. But they learn to be helpless, and then these two often find each other in adulthood, and then they end up in the cycle of abuse.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my goodness, yes, they do. Well, that's a lot of insecure attachments.
SPEAKER_01:There are sadly. But we don't realize this. We go into adulthood with the programming that we have, and then we end up repeating because this is our bonding style. But the good news about attachment research is we don't have to remain this way. We can actually change our bonding style, and it's called an errand secure attachment style.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so there is hope. Yeah, because I can see many of our listeners, Mark, being like, Man, yeah, that was me or my parent, or something like this. But but yeah, we can we can change. It takes work, I'm sure, and and a self-awareness and attunement and all of these, but and probably some outside help, some some experts, therapists that can help rec help us recognize and help us change, right?
SPEAKER_01:Correct, yeah. And so the the research shows that you can earn a secure attachment style by first developing a coherent narrative. So I like to break that phrase down because these are clinical terms so coherent is something that makes sense, and narrative is story. So by making sense of my story, by understanding how I got shaped to bond with others, then I can develop this awareness. And then if I can know and see what secure attachment looks like, being able to have language for what's going on on the inside and be able to express that to others and be able to link emotions to needs, because every emotion has a need to resolve it. If I feel misunderstood, then I need to be understood, and that resolves being misunderstood. If I go on her, then I need to be heard. And so when we develop language for what's happening on the inside and we can communicate that to other people, we more likely get our needs met. And so somebody who is securely attached has this language because that's what they learned when they were a kid. They had a parent who um made guesses and said and picked up on their behavior and said, Hey, you look sad today. Is everything okay? And they invited them into a conversation and said, Can you share with me what you're sad about? And then there was empathy, there was a validation, and then there was comfort. And that person felt relieved at the end. And that happened over and over and over again with all kinds of emotions. And so the securely attached uh individual learns that relationships can be safe, deep closeness can be achieved uh through being able to share our internal states. And so, if we can understand where we are starting from, our insecure attachments, we've developed one and what secure attachment style looks like, and then we work specific growth goals to lean into what secure attachment looks like. And then neuroscience tells us that the more often we practice something, the better we become at it. This neural pathway building, we develop, we eventually develop more into this way and our group.
SPEAKER_02:I love this. We'll be right back after this brief message. And we're back. Let's dive right in.
SPEAKER_00:Are there some practices for secure attachment, Mark? I mean, I understand the first we want to understand where we are insecure insecurely attached. It makes a lot of sense to know the truth. And then what do I practice to become more securely attached to my most intimate relationship? Telling the truth, I guess, to myself first, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. So uh good, I like to say good relationships happen on purpose. They don't happen by accident. You know, it generally people try and find a good relationship, you know, whether that's in a uh website algorithm or just dating around until I can find the right person, but we actually create good relationships. Nobody uh ever fell into a good relationship accidentally. It it happens. And so if we know what um the what the characteristics are of a securely attached individual, because it takes two secure attachments to have a securely attached relationship. You can't take two insecure attachment styles and put them together and think that they're gonna bond. They they don't mesh well, they don't bond well. There's only one way that we're designed to bond as human beings, and that's through a trusting relationship and being able to have self-control, being able to have impulse control, emotionally express what what we're feeling. And so each of the insecure attachment styles, they have deficits in different ways. So somebody is more avoidant, um, doesn't have language for what's happening on the inside. So they might need a list of emotions to start to lean into and they may need to practice empathy and validation statements. Whereas somebody who is more who's a pleaser, they may have more um words for emotions of what's going on on the ins inside, but they don't know how to confront someone. So they may need to lean into being able to say no and stop because they tend to be overcommitted because they want to please other people. And they somebody who's the vacillator attachment style who really kind of swings between ideal expectations and then the deep despair, you know, they need to learn how do I stop that swing and how do I recognize when I'm idealizing and recognize when I'm devaluing in a relationship and try and find that middle ground. And so every all the insecure attachment styles in growth, they want to get to the same place, but because they're coming from different directions, the individual growth goals look different for each of them because you know, the practicing to be secure, uh, they have different strengths or different abilities.
SPEAKER_00:Do you ever meet securely attached people? The majority, I imagine, is are insecurely attached or or not. Tell me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I think it's hard to really get an accurate um uh diagnosis on how many people are securely attached, because generally secure attachment style is uh self-report. And most people will say, Well, I feel pretty secure and they think I feel secure in myself, I'm a confident person. So a lot of times people don't realize they have relationship anxiety uh because they they reason, well, I'm a confident person, but you can be a confident person in your abilities, but have relationship anxiety. So I would guess that the majority of the people are insecurely attached, but uh attachment is rated on a spectrum. Okay, so there's a continuum. So we can be mildly, moderately, or very much like one of these attachment styles. And so secure attachment, all that means is that you are more secure than you're insecure. So if I am 51% of the way somewhere, somewhere, I still got a long way to go. So secure attachment, you know, is is really a lifelong journey that nobody is a perfect individual. We we all have flaws. So we continue to work towards secure attachment. And so it's really about the strategies that we're using to try and get our needs met or to deal with our needs going on that. And if we have language to explain our internal states and identify what we're feeling and what we need for those things to resolve, and and we can have conversations that take turns and explore. And if we do that more often than not, then we become securely attached. But it it is a lifelong journey.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, very good. Thank you for explaining that so well.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Mark, you talk about, I heard you say working toward the secure attachment. I'm curious, what if what if the other person isn't interested in growing with us on this on this journey? What happens then? Or what do you recommend for individuals when only one is is interested in this, uh, you know, working towards your security?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is a really good question because not everybody grows at the same time, at the same speed, the same rate, and people have different motivations and they have different levels of awareness and insight. And so uh, but there's a benefit to um earning your secure attachment because one, we have uh attachment relationships with everybody who we meet, right? We just have different levels of attachment, of course, with our spouse, with our kids, with our parents, it we have the strongest levels of attachment because we have the strongest, highest expectations with those folks to be able to see us and understand us and meet our needs. But as you learn to um work on your attachment insecurities and learn how to calm and settle and soothe your body system, you become less reactive to other people and you become more capable to be able to stay engaged and give different secure responses. So, for instance, if you're used to getting in arguments, which most people are, and just kind of going back and forth, um, batting the perceived facts for back and forth, which I like to say, right? But it's unproductive. As you become more secure, you learn different languages and you might say something like, Hey, I can see that this is important to you, but I'm not willing to argue about this or be yelled at. So I'm gonna take a few minutes and I'm gonna settle myself down, and then I'd love to come back and have a productive conversation with you if you're willing to try again. Well, that gives someone else something different to work with because you're not arguing with them anymore. You are you're setting up a boundary, but a healthy boundary that invites relationship doesn't hinder relationship. A lot of times people think boundaries are, I'm not putting up with this anymore. Okay, but healthy boundaries actually invite a relational connection. I like to say it's almost like building a wall, but it but then there's a doorway back in. So this is the way back into relationship. And that get and that lets the other person see that if they're not willing to have a productive conversation, if they want to argue, if they want to yell, then they end up being the one limiting the connection and the interaction. And most people will understand that yelling is not a great form of communication.
SPEAKER_00:Not typically. Hasn't gone well for me.
SPEAKER_01:No, we can keep trying the experiment if we want to, but current evidence shows it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Or we could try a new experiment. I love that. It's always an experiment, right? It's I I live by that. It's we can always try something different. We can always go back to the old way.
SPEAKER_01:You can if you want to. But how's the old way working out for you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. How's that working out for you, as Dr. Phil might say? Yeah, yeah. And many others, and Mark as well. You mentioned a healing process that happens. How what does the healing process look like? How long does it take? What are you referring to exactly?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the healing process is the process of earn secure attachment. And so that's really the practical work. So in my book, Understanding Your Attachment Style, um, I I separate into three segments. So the first segment is uh develop insight. So, really is what is attachment and how does that form? How are we designed as human beings to connect with one another? And then the second section is become more aware, which is a description of the attachment styles. Um, so you know, where do I fall within this design? And then the last step is short to practice. Okay, we all know that diet and exercise uh builds physical health, but how many of us actually short to practice? I mean, we we sign up January 1st for the gym, but most people have dropped at least 50% by the end of February, right? And so and that's the hard part. The hard part is doing the thing over and over again. But we but we have to practice the thing that we want to become. And so showing up to practice, that's the hard part. That's where the healing occurs, but it is discomfort, right? The nature of growth is pain. When you go to the gym and you really have a good workout, usually you'll come back and your muscles will be sore. Well, why is that? That's because it's not because you necessarily did something wrong, but your muscles had to tear so that they can remodel and they can grow stronger, and then you can, you know, push a little bit further or you can bench a little bit more. But so there's pain either way. But there's you but pain on staying the same keeps you stuck. Pain of growth leads to freedom. So you have to pick your pain in the healing process. But uh as you do, as I mentioned, you will your triggers will lose their magnetic pull over you.
SPEAKER_00:That's really cool. So, pain, what what leads to growth? Pain, not just pain for the sake of pain. Say that last part again.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I said you gotta pick your pain.
SPEAKER_00:I got that.
SPEAKER_01:Growth, but uh, the pain of growth, but the pain of growth leads to freedom.
SPEAKER_00:There we go.
SPEAKER_01:And that's what leads to healing of these attachment wounds because we we we actually we have to have a reparative experience, right? We can't just say, oh, okay, well, that's what happened to me. And a lot of people do. A lot of people can recognize that their childhood has shaped them in a certain way, or that they didn't like their parents' strategies. And and they may reason, well, you know what, I I'm just not gonna do things like my parents. I I see that they got it wrong. I'm gonna be different. The the problem with just reasoning like that is one, everything that we know that we've we've learned, right? And everything we've learned, we've been taught. Okay. And so you you have to be taught something new. You can't just, you know, if I tell you the wrong way to do a math problem and then you realize it's the wrong way, you don't know the right way to do it necessarily. You just know one wrong way, and that doesn't work. You, I need to show you the right way to do it in order for you to be able to solve it. Uh and you need to then learn how to reason through this. And so we need to have a reparative experience with someone else. Um, and so if we can have a partner who we practice secure attachment with, right, then we learn to bond with somebody who's secure and that heals us. And so, in order to do this work, you either need to have a willing partner or a willing spouse, or you need to have a friend who's securely attached or a who's securely attached. And and the research of attachment shows that as babies grow and they have a secure parent, that secure parent becomes what we call a secure base for them, that they they leave and they go off and explore, and then they can come back to the secure base, whether that is, you know, physically, you know, toddlers run outside of the room and then they run back in to check on mom to see if she's she's there or not. If you have somebody who you can come back to when you get distressed too, and they can soothe and comfort you, right? That's how our body systems, our autonomic uh system learns how to soothe, right? We need to learn how to be first co-soothed before we can self-soothe. And so that's right. When babies come out of the womb, how many times do they cry to get their needs met, and then they get soothed and comforted? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. And if that happens well, babies learn how to self-soothe eventually and calm their systems. And if it doesn't happen well, then we grow up and we become this dysregulated adults with our system being easily uh disturbed when uh things happen to us.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. That's quite a powerful healing process. And it does feel so good on the other side of it, right? To be soothed and comforted or to offer that to a partner.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and we actually feel closer to someone. If you the the healthiest relationships are not necessarily relationships that don't ever have conflict, right? Because a relationship needs to be tested in order for you to be able to see how strong it is. You know, can I make a mistake? And I can I come back to you and be forgiven, be offered grace, and you accept me in my flaws. You know, as long as I'm I'm growing and I'm making efforts to to improve, of course. Uh only until we have rupture with someone can we know the strength of our relationship. But when we can be uh but when we can be forgiven and be accepted and be and know that we're loved, we actually feel closer to someone after that event. And so as that happens over and over again, healing, healing occurs.
SPEAKER_02:You're right.
SPEAKER_03:Mark, you mentioned you've written a book titled Understanding Your Attachment Spot Style: The Path to Overcoming Unhelpful Patterns and Building Healthy, Secure Relationships. I'm curious, you just finished talking about how there it is, there it is. Um how we need to learn, right? This if we haven't been we haven't been taught and we just know how to you know do it the wrong way. Uh can listeners, you know, can they expect if they get they get your book, can they expect then to to, hey, this is the new way, this these are things for first awareness and then to learn anew in a better way, is my first question. And second, do you recommend couples um read this together? One, you know, one reads it and they they both read it together. How does that work?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, well, this works, even though it's sometimes called attachment theory. There's you know, there's been 80 years of research in this that we know this is true. Everybody has an attachment style, and you can actually identify uh an infant's attachment style from less than one year of age. You can see it occurring from that. So we all have an attachment style. This is our design, this is the way that we're all designed to be. I know some people will, you know, who are more avoidant might say, Well, I'm just kind of I'm not a hugger, but have you ever seen a come out of the womb who's not a hugger? No, that doesn't work, right? It's only when we we don't get what we need that we learn, okay, it's not coming. And so we build a strategy to it. So this is how human beings are designed. Attachment is really the number one predictor of how our relationships will go. So once we can learn this and we can understand this, then we kind of get that hack of like, oh, this is what's been going on for me my whole life. And so I explain the different patterns of each of the insecure attachment styles so people can start to identify, self-identify with what's going on. But yes, if you are in a relationship, um romantic relationship, you're married, like if you can both do this work together, then you can become a secure base for one another. Of course, there's no perfect person out there. But so it's almost like this kind of coat or this uh outfit that we put on. We put on security for a time being, right? And then we react again, and then we put on security and then we react again. But the more you continue putting on security, the longer you can stay in that position. And as you learn to do That for one another, you can heal in a relationship, you can heal in a marriage. And of course, because attachment, you know, first it's programming, right? It gets formed this way from a parent to a child, and that's how we get that. And then when we go into we get married, it goes kind of this way with our new attachment figure. And then when we have children, now it goes from us to them. You cannot pass on a secure attachment to your child if you yourself don't have a secure attachment. Okay, they will learn to react to you in certain ways. And so as we learn this about ourselves, we'll be able to pass this on to others. And so this is important work, whether you are in a romantic relationship or not, because attachment is affecting all of your relationships. We'll be right back after this brief message.
SPEAKER_02:And we're back.
SPEAKER_00:So you have a beautiful site, Mark, by the way, how we love.com. Please tell our listeners what they can expect going to that rich plethora of resource.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so how we love.com is uh was birthed from a book of the same name. And uh I mentioned uh the author earlier on, Milan and Kay Yerkovic. So they wrote a book called How We Love uh back in 2006. And they explain attachment styles, but their book is really more um centered toward a couple, and they talk about this couple dynamic, what happens when uh two different attachment styles come together, or two of the same attachment styles come together, it actually creates a predictable core pattern, uh, a way that conflict occurs between two people. Because when you put somebody who's avoidant and somebody who's uh uh an anxious pleaser or somebody who's avoidant and someone who's an anxious resistor, like the vacillator, you know, they react to one another in different ways. And when you can understand um your attachment style and how you're reacting to your spouse and you can see the core pattern, it becomes predictable. And things that are predictable and identifiable can then be overcome. And so at How We Love, we have a free attachment style quiz. Uh people can take. We have uh between five, depending on the month, we have between five to seven thousand people who take that free quiz.
SPEAKER_00:Ah wow.
SPEAKER_01:Three months.
SPEAKER_00:That's so exciting. I can't believe I didn't take it. Dave, you know I love free quizzes. I can't believe I didn't get to that before today. Trust me, I'm going to.
SPEAKER_01:And so, and then on that website, we explain uh the attachment stars. We call them love stars because in their book, when they first wrote their book, there wasn't a lot of books out about attachment at that time. So their publisher said, Well, let's call them love stars because people are are more likely to look up a book on on love. I like that. So that's where they came up, and then that's how they also came up with these different names for them because uh the publisher said, Well, these are kind of cumbersome names. We need a name that people connect with and resonate with. But I find people resonate with these names. People, people who are people pleasers, they get it. I'm a pleaser. People who are avoidants, they they get it. I'm I'm an avoider. So they understand and they resonate with this. And so on this site, we uh have like the how we love journey, which is basically, you know, what is your love style? What does that look like when you know you and your spouse come together in a core pattern? And then what's the way out of it? What is are the growth goals that each attachment style has? And then in their book, Mile and Kay talk about something called the comfort circle, which is learning to be able to do this listener-speaker role, where you split, you know, instead of having conflict and arguing back and forth, you just take that same amount of time and probably less time when you when you factor in all the sulking that happened or the disconnection afterwards. You say, okay, I'm gonna be a listener and you'll be the speaker. And I'm gonna listen to you, and I'm gonna listen with empathy and validation and understanding and try and understand what's going on in you. And then if I can do that for you, you're more likely to be able to do that for me. We're less likely to kind of fight for airtime and say hurtful things to grab the other person's attention. We're more likely to have a productive conversation. And if we can learn also to kind of look back and ask a historical question of, well, where in your childhood have you felt that before? I do this comfort circle. I specialize in couples therapy and I do the comfort circle with every couple and I do it, you know, second session onwards after the discovery session. And you would not believe the insights that people have about, oh my gosh, I am reacting to you in the same way that I learned how to react to a parent or a sibling. And so it just turns the light bulbs on and it and it depersonalizes the reaction. And people are also able to realize, well, I'm being triggered. People will say that often I'm being triggered. And what they mean by that is I'm getting mad and I'm about to blow. But they don't stop and pause long enough to say what actually is being triggered in me. A trigger is an association in the present to something significant from the past. And when you can identify that, build coherent narrative. And then you're able to, this is the neuroscience behind it, is you integrate both sides of the brain. Because the right side of the brain is, we know, primarily emotions and feelings, and the left side of the brain is primarily logic and reasoning. And so if you can put language and a historical event to your emotions and your feelings, you create understanding, and you're more likely to be regulated because your whole brain is working together, all the different parts are working together. And that helps us stay engaged and create connection.
SPEAKER_00:That is so fascinating. Um, Bowlby was the one who wrote about attachment, right? James Bullby? Is that right?
SPEAKER_01:John Bowl from England, where I'm from, um, he he first discovered attachment when he was working with uh uh juvenile boys, and and and and and he realized that all of these boys had some type of disconnection with their mothers. Oh really where his observations start to come from. And and then so he identified an anxious and an avoidant spectrum. And then later on, he worked with Mary Ainsworth, and she identified then the anxious resistant that I talked about, uh where the kid can't be, they get upset when the parent leaves, but then when the parent returns, they kind of flail back and they resist the comfort, and so that's the vacillator. And then later on, Mary Main, who was one of Mary Ainsworth's uh students, she identified the disorganized attachment style where the child uh doesn't know what to do, they run toward the parent because our attachment systems, when we're in distress, says say, run towards someone who cares or or who should protect you. But then our safety system says run away from danger. So when the person who's supposed to be our protector is also the person who's the dangerous person, we get stuck. And that's where the term disorganized attachment comes from. So there's lots of research about this longitudinal, like you said. The thing is that researchers write to researchers in medical journals, and the the average person doesn't go and buy a medical journal to read in the bathroom.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. No need to do it. And so this is just people like you writing about it and speaking about it, they're just putting it into everyday language.
SPEAKER_01:And when people start to I identify this and understand it, they the light bulbs come and they're like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what is going on. So we do workshops. We have on on the website, we have audio, we have video, um, uh, we do work, we do workshops and speaking events, and we'll have people who come and they'll say, I've been married for 30 years and no one has ever explained this to me. But this is exactly what happens between my husband and I. Why has no one explained this?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's a shame, isn't it? Ah, darn it. Yep, I wish I had kind of noticed the pertinence of it. You're also on a national call-in radio program, Mark. New life live that reaches two million listeners. Just tell us a little bit about what you do there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so that radio show has been going on for uh 30 plus years. First started with the host was Steve Auterburn. He's written he's co-authored over 120 books, and and uh Dr. Uh Henry Cloud and Dr. Doc Dr. John Townsend, if you heard of them.
SPEAKER_00:They of course, yeah. Boundaries, boundaries, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They were the original ones on the show, and occasionally they'll they'll be on the show too. Um, but the sh it's a call call-in uh radio show, so people can call in. It airs every day uh for an hour long. People call in with their problems with their questions, and there's two co-hosts, two licensed individuals on there who answer the questions. And so it's really, it's almost like it's not really therapy, but it's almost like seven-minute therapy here per person where we try and help people um, you know, under, you know, understand what the pattern that they're in and a path out of that too. So it's a call-in radio show, it reaches over two million listeners, it's nationwide, it's even international. You know, it's it's streamed, so people can uh uh access it from from different countries. And sometimes we'll have people from different countries calling in live with a question.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, how cool is that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Mark, man, we're gonna we're gonna spread these resources uh far and wide, my friend. This is uh yeah, it's something that we have not had on the on the show. And uh so glad that we have had you. Hey, before we let you go, we we like to ask all of our uh guests a couple of questions. And the first one in honor of the name of our podcast, Stronger Marriage Connection, is your thoughts on what what is a key? What is uh a key to a stronger marriage connection?
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh as you've heard me talk about this, this is our design. So it's so a key to stronger marriage connection is our attachment style. If we can understand that, if we can work and grow towards secure attachment, we know how to invite other people in. We know how to comfort one another, we know how to express our internal states, we know how to listen well, we we learn uh um impulse control, emotion regulation. But we also learn how to set healthy boundaries, as I said, that invite connection in. And that that really is the key because that's the design. The neuroscience backs all of this up, and this is the way our brain is designed. And so and the good news is we don't have to stay this way. We can grow toward a secure attachment style. And so that I believe is the key to a stronger marriage connection.
SPEAKER_03:Love it, my friend. Uh, this next question is we call it a takeaway of the day, uh a take-home message that you hope our listeners remember. What would it be?
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, you can grow. Don't stay stuck, don't stay this way. There's hope, there's help that you can make sense of this and you can grow and you can heal. So you don't don't stay stuck in uh dysfunctional relational patterns. Do your own work, and as you grow, you'll give the other person different responses to work with.
SPEAKER_03:Love that. Yeah. Liz, what about you? What's your takeaway of the day today with Mark Cameron?
SPEAKER_00:So many, Dave. But you know, I love this reminder of how how crucial healthy relationships are, right? That's that that Harvard study discovered that it's all about the health of the relationships that determines longevity, health, and happiness. So I I I had never thought about this before, just like infancy, infancy, you have to be co-soothed to be a self-soother, right? You have to allow yourself to be soothed by others first. I got that right, Mark? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, you got that 100% right.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. So we really do have to be, so it's really our relationships that help heal us.
SPEAKER_01:You have to have a reparative healing relationship. You can't heal and we're hurt in relationships and we are healed in relationships.
SPEAKER_00:Reparative healing relationship. Yeah, I love that. Love that. Okay, uh, what about you? What's your golden nugget takeaway with our time with Mark Cameron today?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so insightful, uh, Mark. Thank you. I love this idea of this journey towards secure attachment. And I think I wrote it down, I think you said we become less reactive to other people. And in my mind, we come become less reactive and more responsive, more more compassion um to other people, to other situations, even. We don't, you know, lose it as much, we don't snap or reactive, but we become, yeah, more soft, I guess, and kind and understanding, compassion, all of that. So I love that journey towards secure attachment. It doesn't just all of a sudden, you know, uh, it's not like okay, now I'm secure, but we we become better, we become different, we become um I don't know, more more kind and gentle and and patient. And I love that that that journey. And and as you mentioned, that anyone, yeah, we don't have to stay there. We can we can grow and become uh we can become better, who we really want to become. So that really resonated with me, Mark.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, growth is a journey, and it's a continual journey. And you use two key concepts in there, reactive and responsive, right? To react means the Latin is reactio. It means to act back, it means just to do what we know how to do. But to respond means to assess the situation and take the most adaptive uh course of action. We we call them first responders, we don't call them first reactors, right? Right. How many of us are a first reactor when a crisis happens? That's clever. But we want to learn how do I respond to a situation rather than react. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's clever. We're not first reactors, first responders.
SPEAKER_03:That is great. Well, Mark, we appreciate you coming on. Thank you for your time, for your wisdom. Uh, your new book we're going to uh promote again for our listeners. We're gonna put that in the links. You can take the attachment style quiz. There's there's yeah, great picture of the book right there. We will put links to that, uh, these wonderful resources. Mark, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:It has been. Just a joy. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Sure has. All right, friends, that does it for us. We will see you next time on another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection Podcast. We'll see ya.
SPEAKER_00:And remember, it's the small and simple things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take good care of yourself and each other. Bye-bye now.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a second to subscribe to our podcast and the Utah Marriage Commission YouTube channel at Utah Marriage Commission, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. Be sure to smash the like button, leave a comment, and share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and interact with us on Instagram at Stronger MarriageLife and Facebook at Stronger Marriage. So be sure to share with us which topics you loved or which guests we should have on the show next. If you want even more resources to improve your marriage or relationship connection, visit strongermarriage.org, where you'll find free workshops, e-courses, in-depth webinars, relationship surveys, and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, Rex Polanis, and the team at Utah State University, and you, our audience. You make this show possible. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Utah Marriage Commission.