Unlocking Your Relationship Blueprint: Understanding Attachment Theory with Bev Mitelman

Welcome to the Real Life Momz podcast. It is time to take a break from all our to-do's and carve out this time to focus on ourselves. I'm Lisa Foster, your host, and today I am here with fellow mom and attachment practitioner, Bev Middleman, and she is here to help discuss attachment theory, which I'm excited to learn about and how it affects us and our relationships with others.

So hi Bev. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you and your audience. I'm happy to have you. I have to say I don't know a lot about the attachment theory, but I'm very curious. So maybe you could just start with telling us what exactly it is and why do we need to know it?

Yeah, that's a great place to start. So attachment theory or attachment styles is really, , the way in which we form an emotional bond. , this is generally formed really early on our styles. Everyone has [00:01:00] a primary style. From, early on in our life, like zero to five, we start to experience and learn and feel things which set .

Pattern in our mind for how we believe that love is to be given and received. So it becomes almost like a filter for how we perceive how we're going to be interacting with other people. And this is all stored in our subconscious mind, right? So it becomes like a set of rules almost. And most people are unaware of this, but it really does color our perception in terms lots of things our personality needs in terms of our communication style, our emotional patterns, our relationship to boundaries.

And also our coping mechanisms, right? So our coping behaviors are all very much tied to the attachment style that we developed [00:02:00] early in our lifetime. Wow, you said that so perfectly. Okay, so you, thank you. You know what I'm gonna ask you though? Okay, so now I'm like, what's my attachment style?

Can you maybe talk us through a little bit of what the attachment style is? I know that you give a lot of presentations that are like days long. Of course this is a podcast where we're podcast, we're condensing it. But can you tell us a little bit about what the different styles are and then maybe even how we figure ours out?

Yeah, so I'll definitely dive into sort of the broad categories and, I think as I go through this, most people have an aha moment and they go. Oh, that's me. So I suspect, or I'm hoping that you'll have a similar moment and, some of what I describe will resonate with you and with your audience.

So in, in general terms, we have two broad categories, those that are securely attached and those that are insecurely attached. Okay. And in North America we have different statistics about, [00:03:00] populations, but we estimate that about, let's say 40% of the population has a secure attachment, and the rest of the population, let's say about 60% approximately, has an insecure attachment.

So what does this mean? A secure attachment is something that we see generally from a child who grew up in a home whereby there was consistent and predictable emotional attunement from their caregiver. So what that means is when the child cried, they were comforted. They were taught about their emotions.

They were given space to learn how to communicate, and they could reasonably predict the emotional state and pattern of their caregiver. And so what this does is it teaches the individual to trust themselves. So I trust that, you know what, I can identify when I'm happy, I'm [00:04:00] sad, I'm angry, I'm frustrated.

And it also teaches them that I trust that others. So when I'm gonna communicate, like even as a young child, I'm angry, someone will respond in a healthy way. So that sets out a beautiful pattern or set of rules for how that individual then grows up and enters into the world. And generally they do very well in long-term relationships.

They generally have very few relational distress issues. They are. Pretty self-aware, generally well connected to their own emotions. They're comfortable being in partnership and they're comfortable with their own independence. They're comfortable with their own boundaries. They generally have pretty good communication styles.

And so this is the person that is usually pretty emotionally stable, right? And you're shaking your [00:05:00] head. You probably have some of those people in your life. And it's oh, who doesn't wanna be that person? That sounds amazing, right? It does. And it's because really they were taught that at a very young age.

The people that were caring for them were emotionally stable and modeled it for them. So in their mind, this is how I am to behave. It makes a lot of sense. That is like our optimal. When we talk about attachment issues, we talk about moving towards being securely attached.

Okay? So I'm gonna flip the conversation to that other sort of 60% now, because this is where we spend a lot of our time. So in the grouping of those that are insecurely attached, we have a spectrum, right? We have three subcategories in this insecurely attached. You've probably heard that there are four attachment styles securely attached, and then these three subcategories of [00:06:00] insecurely attached.

So there's four. So the first subcategory of insecurely attached is anxious, preoccupied, also known as anxiously attached. The second category, which is totally on the other end of the spectrum, is dismissive, avoidant, also known as avoidantly attached. And then you have a small category in the middle with traits of the anxious attacher and the avoidant attacher known as the fearful avoidance.

Okay? And that's like the smallest category of people. Okay, so what does all of this mean? We talked about how our attachment style affects our emotional patterns. It affects our communication style, relationship to boundaries, communication. Coping mechanisms and all of that. So someone who is [00:07:00] anxiously attached, let's start with the anxious, preoccupied.

This is the individual that is often called needy in a relationship. I don't like the term, 'cause we all have needs and we all go about trying to get our needs, served in different ways. But they're often called needing. What that means is that this individual is very externally focused.

They do not have a lot of trust in themselves. They cannot or never learn to that point how to self-soothe. And so they're heavily reliant on other people, especially their romantic partners, to help them emotionally regulate. So they need a lot of validation, a lot of reassurance, a lot of attention from external sources.

They often feel very sad, lonely. They are, [00:08:00] very quickly will catastrophize any level of conflict. Like conflict to them feels very threatening because their core wound is I will be abandoned. So a core wound, and we all carry core wounds, right? These are triggers or things from our early childhood, right?

That, that stay with us. And so we develop all of these. Strategies to deal with what we perceive as these threats, right? These core wounds. What we see in the anxious attacher is again, the primary is I will be abandoned, I will be alone. I am bad. I am not good enough.

I am unlikable all of those types of. Or wounds or stories, right? We call them stories because they're not true, but people are so good at [00:09:00] convincing themselves that things are.

Does this sound like someone you know in, in your world? Some parts of it, not me, but yeah, some parts like, and I wanna hear some of the other ones. 'cause this is so fascinating, but my questions that come up in my head not to divert us, 'cause I wanna go back around is, can you be more than one thing?

Excellent question. So everyone, by the way, everyone has an attachment style. Okay. So this affects everyone. Yeah. This, and we're not talking about mental illness, personality disorders, that's not what we're talking about. We all have a way in which we connect. So we all have a primary style.

Some of us have more of a pronounced pro primary style. And then usually there's a secondary, which means that you can be, for example, securely attached, but leaning, anxious. Which means that you have some of the traits that come in some of the time, right? Yeah. Just like it's not full blown.

So that's why I say it's a spectrum. Nobody ever falls in a [00:10:00] exact box. Yep. That totally makes sense. We're humans, we're nuanced. But if we were to look at a true, anxious, preoccupied, those are some of the characteristics that they find that we find there.

They really have a hard time being alone. Being alone to them feels very threatening. And what's so interesting is that if we take a look at some of the career choices that these individuals make, we see a high proponent of. Folks who are anxiously pre preoccupied becoming, for example, teachers, they love to be surrounded by people.

Yeah. All the time, right? And this goes back to their personality needs, right? What they need in order to feel satiated and happy and content. But that's not everyone. I'm, no, there are some people who much prefer to be alone. Yeah. Which brings us nicely into those who are avoidantly attached. I had a feeling you were gonna say that.

Yeah. I was like, okay. [00:11:00] Yeah. So it's I talk about them being on the either end of the spectrum because their coping behaviors could not be more different. Now they come from a similar place in that both the anxious attacher and the avoidant attacher feel unsafe. That's their core wound that they share, and so these coping strategies are to help them emotionally regulate and to feel safe.

So I'm not sure I mentioned this, but the anxious attacher actually comes out of a home generally, where the love and attention that they received from their primary caregiver was inconsistent. For example, a mother who's an alcoholic one day, she's really happy the next day, she's passed out. The next day she is, I.

In withdrawal the next day, it's something else. The child cannot predict a consistent level of healthy response. [00:12:00] So this is very damaging to the child. The child receives just enough love to know that they really love it, but it seems to get taken away from them. They are abandoned often enough where they end up chasing after their parents love, and you probably have friends that as adults are still chasing after the approval of their parents.

And what happens is they then use the this framework to end up chasing after the love typically of romantic partners too. Yeah. Because that's what they know love to be. That's their pattern. So that's what we're talking about here, right? Is that their behavior, they learned that they had to chase.

Okay, so the avoidance de attacher really spent most of their childhood in a home likely where they [00:13:00] were emotionally neglected, or they were overwhelmed, over consumed, oftentimes by an overbearing parent. So they felt suffocated. Which is a form of emotional neglect, right? If you're not giving someone the space to, to really to authentically feel their emotions.

And so the way in which they dealt with that is they retreat into themselves. They've got a high degree of trust for themselves and a very low degree of trust for people around them. Completely opposite from the anxious attacher. And they really will regulate their emotions when they are alone.

They can, they do find it hard to be vulnerable around people. Intimacy feels a little bit threatening to them because it wasn't modeled for them. In [00:14:00] childhood, think about a home for example, where a child grew up and the parents were very stoic. Emotions were not discussed.

Something happened and we just swept it under the rug and pretended like it never happened. How does that child learn to actually process emotions? The answer is they don't. Yes. They don't, they start avoiding is what they do. It's exactly it. They start pushing everything down.

Yeah. Because they learn to just sweep it under the rug. So it didn't really happen. We just push it everything down and they start avoiding not only their feelings, but everyone else's too. And so it is difficult for them as they get older to get into romantic relationships. Which sometimes we can be very hard on this group of people.

Especially the internet, talks about how difficult it is to date an avoidant person. I tend to have a lot of sympathy for this group. [00:15:00] I think that they just didn't learn the skills that they needed to in order to interrelate in a healthy way. But they were left on their own growing up, which means that.

It's like they're the type of person like that. They won't ask for help. Like they will try to move a couch on their own. They'll never ask for help because it's like, why bother? No one's gonna help me. Yeah. I'm on my own. I can only rely on myself. Yeah. And so when there's that type of a.

Patterning. You could imagine that this would be difficult for them to enter into a relationship because their model says, I'm responsible for my emotions, and my romantic partner is responsible for their emotions. Don't rely on me. You do your thing and come to me when you feel better. They don't even understand the concept of co-regulation.

And so it's [00:16:00] just, it's again, things that they should have learned in childhood, but they didn't. And I always like to say, some kids grew up in a home where they learned how to cook, a life skill. And some kids grew up in a home where they didn't and it's the same with emotional regulation.

Some kids were taught how to identify their feelings, how to give words to them, how to respond in a healthy way, how to communicate in a healthy way, and some kids were not. Can we learn this later in life? A hundred percent. Yeah. And I'm also just stepping in here is. Getting it from somewhere else.

So if you're in a family that maybe showed no emotion or whatever, you didn't learn it there, but you had a best friend that you spent a lot of time at their house or a grandparent or someone who did show you that, does it change things? It helps. It helps. So the primary patterning comes in those earliest years, zero to five, [00:17:00] because that's when our brain is most suggestible.

So we, we absorb everything in those early years. And so you're really taking the patterning primarily from the person that you're spending the most face to face time with. So maybe it is a grandmother, maybe, right? Like lots of different family dynamics. Now as we go through life, all of us experience good and not so good things.

And so that does of course impact us, especially if we have, trauma. And what happens is that you start off with this like original pattern and then yes, it can shift, the needle can move a little bit more towards secure, or it can move a little bit more towards insecure, depending on your starting point and what you're living in the moment.

But the initial patterns or forms. Think of it like like a computer software program. I always say like the initial, program was written 30 years ago. And as we [00:18:00] move into adults, sometimes we have, we find some adults that have never run an update on the iOS. They're still running the same program that they installed 30 years ago.

It's okay. So that's where we're at. But the mind, just like the rest of our physical body, I is really beautifully malleable, which means that we can program new patterns into our mind in the same way that they initially got programs. Right through imagery, emotion, and repetition.

It's the things that we heard, we saw, we felt repeatedly that carried an emotional charge, that created those neural pathways. We can hack the mind to create new neural pathways that will serve us better as adults. So the fourth category is what we call the fearful avoidance. Now the [00:19:00] literature also calls them the disorganized de attacher, , the disorganized Detach has both.

High anxiety and fly avoidance, which is a whole other ball of wax, right? And they oscillate between the two. And in a romantic sense, they're often called the hot and the cold partner. So they crave closeness as most humans do but they're very afraid of intimacy. Just like the avoidance attacher, right?

So they wanna be close, like the anxious attacher really always seeks closeness, but they're really fearful of intimacy, like the avoidance attacher. And so they've got both at the same time. And this patterning generally comes when we see a child again, had very. Highly chaotic environments.

They grew up in a highly chaotic environment, highly [00:20:00] unpredictable and oftentimes abusive. Which means that the child does their best to understand and make sense of, , let's say it's the mother, in this case, the child, as all children will do when they're feeling sad or lonely or angry, they will seek comfort right from their source of love.

But the child is also very aware of the fact that. That source of love is also harming them. So it could be emotionally, mentally, it could be physically, maybe the mother's slapping them across the face. It could be sexual abuse, it could be any type of harm. So the child becomes split disorganized in that I want their love, but when I get too close to them, they harm me.

And so I'll take two steps forward and one step back and that pattern is what follows them into adulthood. And so this is a [00:21:00] difficult one. The fearful avoidant. And this is the pattern that I grew up with. So I know it intimately. And it's, you certainly can. Get past this.

But it's not necessarily an it's a little more complex than the others. It has the most core wounds and there's some complexities there, depending on the type of abuse and trauma that a child may have experienced. But that's what we're looking at. We're looking at people who have this, trust in themselves and others. That's secure attachments. Then we have those that are anxious. They don't trust themselves, but they afford everyone else trust. Then you have the avoidantly attached that trust themselves, but doesn't trust others, and then you have me fearful, avoiding who doesn't trust themselves and doesn't trust others at all.

That's that's where you're at. Yeah. And so you can see how [00:22:00] that would create a real filter for how people are going to interrelate to others when they move into their teenage years, their adult years and when they become parents. Yeah. I loved how you described all those, by the way.

And I think, honestly, I think I. Now mostly secure with a side of avoidance.

Very good. What is it that I said? If you don't mind, if you're not comfortable sharing, please say, but what is it that I said about the avoidance that made you go, oh, that sounds like me. Oh, the whole trust yourself, not others. Like hands down. Yeah. I also like my first go-to is if I am feeling like raw alone, I want everyone away.

Don't come. I don't care if I'm in the hospital. Do not come no, like just go away. That's how I, that's and that's still, I think you probably always go back to your [00:23:00] core, right? Even if I feel like my secure piece. I probably had a secure home. I'm not saying that I didn't, we all have our issues.

But I think my secure piece probably also developed even more over time. So I feel like I'm more secure now, but I do think that, yeah, that avoidance piece is probably my core and when I'm feeling ruffled, it is probably the thing that comes into me first. And that's the protection mode.

Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. I think you're right on. So one of the easiest ways you asked this question earlier to identify your attachment style is really to take a look at your behavior your coping mechanisms when you feel stressed or vis-a-vis conflict.

So someone who's anxiously attached will always activate and come closer to their partner. They will not be able, for example, they're the person that says. We have to work this out Now. I can't sleep if you're angry at me. Whereas a person who's avoidantly attached usually likes, needs, [00:24:00] needs to take space away to process, to regulate, to think about it.

And then maybe a day or two later we'll come back and go, okay, I thought about what you said. So the way in which they handle conflict is significantly different. And some of the life skills that I teach folks is, it's okay to need. Space, for example, it's okay to ask your partner for space, but what people do is if they're not aware of their patterns, they tend to do things that are very damaging to their partner.

Or to their kids. So if they're feeling overwhelmed in a moment they may just walk out of a room. Yeah. Like to them they feel a threat and they're fleeing. It's a trauma, it's a trauma response. But if it to their kid, it would feel like you're abandoning them. You're dismissing them.

You're avoiding them. You're invalidating them right now. [00:25:00] So what I teach people is it's okay to recognize your pattern, but just communicate it so you know, if you're speaking to your child and you feel yourself getting really frustrated, it's almost like our emotions.

Are, there's like a meter, right? It's seven outta 10, eight outta 10. Now you can feel it escalating. So you know, if you feel it above a five and you know that you're starting to really feel it, you can say to your child or your partner or whoever you're speaking to, I could feel myself getting really emotional.

I'd rather just take an hour to myself. Can we continue this conversation after dinner? And then circle back, right? You gotta keep to your word instead of just, , you're in some sort of conflict with someone and you decide to, I'm just gonna not answer the phone. I'm gonna just, I'm just gonna avoid that text.

I'm not answering any text. That's the stuff that really, especially if you're dealing with someone who's [00:26:00] anxiously attached, it will trigger them. Yeah, so you can really see clearly why it's important to know your own and your partners or other people around you, right? Because then you can actually have more communication.

Yeah, if I know my husband isn't necessarily the needy one, but let's just say he is, but I'm the avoidant, right? We're not, this is not gonna be good because I'm gonna be leaving and he is gonna be following, and then there we're just gonna have lots of fights, right? Yeah, I can see how important that could be in any situation or relationship to know each other so that there could be an understanding.

If someone's pulling closer, I could just be like, oh yeah, that's their attachment style. It's okay. This is what they need in the moment, and I can be okay with that. Yeah. You can be okay with that. You could also not be okay with it. I love that you can like, but because you need to honor yourself too.

But you can say, I know this is really uncomfortable for you because conflict is hard. I promise you, we'll work [00:27:00] it out. Just gimme an hour to calm down. So I don't accidentally say something that I really don't wanna say. Yeah. Yeah, that great. That is such a good point. So what other types of tips do you give people to.

Work with this, besides that, taking a break and, we'll talk about it later 'cause that's huge, but are there other little snippets that we can just know and have in our pocket if we need 'em? Yeah. A lot of the work that I do with adults is. The realm of emotional regulation and God, I wish they taught this in school, like it's a life skill.

And so I think there are some schools that are starting to teach this a little bit, and they call it mindfulness, but to be able to identify your emotions again put a name to it, communicated. This is all really important stuff. And if you. Can identifying yourself that most of the time you're not emotionally regulated.

Like for [00:28:00] example, I'll speak about myself. I used to wake up on any given day and my anxiety level was an eight outta 10. I just woke up and I was revving. Yeah, so what happens is that when we live in a state of like chronic stress. We go into fight or flight mode, we're no longer in rest and digest, right?

And so we're constantly in this reactive mode that will transmit to our kids. It means that, we'll be more irritable, we'll be less communicative, we'll be less patient, we'll be and our kids will feel this. So the best thing that we can do it, if, if being a good parent is something we all strive for.

And I say good because I have two sons too. They're both away at college now, there's no such thing as perfect. I made hundreds of mistakes that I wish I could undo. You strive to be the best you can in the moment, right? Yeah. But learning how to [00:29:00] emotionally regulate yourself is so important because you will become a better parent.

And then you're also modeling this. For your child because they themselves need that skill as they get older as well. It'll only serve them, serve them well in their lifetime, right? So what we're trying to do is, not sometimes inadvertently what we're doing is we're modeling that high emotional volatility.

And I've seen some parents say to me things like, my kid is so unpredictable but the behavior comes from somewhere. It comes from somewhere. If you pay attention, for example, when you're in a grocery store and there's a child who's upset that they're not getting the box of cereal that they want, and they launch themselves onto the ground and they have a whole tantrum and.

The way in which the parent handles that moment is so critical. [00:30:00] If the child is given free reign to just act that way, I promise you that's the child that grows into an adult that when they're frustrated and they don't get their way, they flip you. The bird, while they're driving, they rage text you, they yell at you.

They, that's how they learn to cope. And so you see these behaviors. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I'm gonna have a tantrum when I'm a child. I'm gonna have a tantrum when I'm an adult. And I'm gonna keep yelling louder and sending you more Rachel texts until you do exactly what I say. So we learn this stuff young.

Yeah. So going back to at self like kind of emotional regulation piece, is there stuff to do for yourself that you can regulate so you're not showing up as that, losing it, parent. I, and I do [00:31:00] remember those moments. Like I remember the moments where it was like the kids came home from school and I'm trying to make dinner and the dog is barking and the doorbell's going, and my kid is crying and I've got I'm stirring the pot and and I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Like I remember those days. They're long gone for me. But, yeah, listen, I think that there's a beautiful body of work on somatic body techniques. So these are things that we do with the body, understanding the physicality of your body to help relieve stress and anxiety. So there's movements that we can do specifically with vagal nerve here.

Like you tilt your head in a certain way or. There's things that we can do. Breathing is a big one. Taking a quick walk. I tell my clients, you know what, if you really feel like you're about to explode, go take five minutes to yourself. Tell someone you're going to the bathroom and go, do, 10 to 20 [00:32:00] pushups?

Just release the energy from your body because emotions, your emotions, actually emotions when they pass through us. This is gonna surprise you. They only last about 90 seconds. Yeah, I've heard that. 90 seconds. Yeah. And so if you feel this wave of like anger and you wanna help move it through your body.

So you do a couple of jumping jacks, you take a five minute walk it passes through your body. You don't keep it trapped in your body and your mind and you ruminate about it for the next. Three hours or the next three days, or the next three weeks. That's why these sentiments stay with us because we end up storing it in our body and our mind.

So again there's such a beautiful body of literature, but like somatic techniques to just allow yourself to feel Yeah. And to release it so that you can bring yourself quickly back [00:33:00] down to baseline and go. Okay. I feel better now. That passed through me. That's fine. So what I'm hearing is if that we allow this, emotion, like out within that 90 seconds, letting that 90 seconds go of that emotion, that it's not stored in us.

So we'll no longer have be angry at it. Is that what you're saying? Almost. That's part of it. That's part of it. That's like step one. Now you need to start. If you see that it's like it's continuing a little bit. Ask yourself. What am I telling myself? What are my thoughts? So part of this is becoming aware, consciously aware of the thoughts in your subconscious mind.

That's a whole other exercise to start bringing awareness to what you're telling yourself, right? So oftentimes we tell ourselves stories, things that aren't true, but we believe to be true. [00:34:00] That causes us a great deal of suffering. So for example, if I am angry in the moment because I feel disrespected by my kids, let's say I said It's time to do your homework, and no, I'm not doing my homework.

Maybe I get a little angry because I feel disrespected. If I let that go and I can process that and I focus on just what's in front of me versus. Going into a cycle of, I'm always disrespected, they never listen to me. Nobody respects me. I mean nothing to anyone. So you can see how you're now you're magnifying the suffering tremendously and all of these things.

If we were to find evidence, I'm always disrespected. Is that true? So what I work with my clients is didn't you tell me that your kids woke up in the [00:35:00] morning and gave you a great big bear hug and said, I loved you. That's not disrespecting you. So what we have to do is actually counter some of these thoughts because these thoughts, we're not aware of them.

So we have to make them part of our awareness. So there, there's a difference between sort of that initial. Like trigger and then the suffering that we self-imposed by giving it all sorts of false narratives. Yeah. So what do you want moms to do today after listening to all these attachment styles and some tips on how to deal with them, like what would you like them to start doing?

If you're interested in learning about attachment styles, there is a free attachment quiz on my website at securely loved.com. That'll take about 10 minutes. It, it's a starting point. It's a point of awareness to give you an idea of where you [00:36:00] fall. And again, I think that learning about attachment styles, because it has such a big impact on you as an individual, it's critically important.

But then also understanding, are you starting to see some of these behaviors of insecurely attached in your kids? If you have a child that, for example, has a very hard time leaving your side, you drop 'em off in nursery and it really is very difficult to separate the child from you.

That's generally a sign of a child who's anxiously attached. They're afraid you're not coming back. Now, this is not to put blame at all the child. Doesn't have the ability to apply critical thought when they're very young, that gets developed later. So they tend to self-blame. They tend to think, oh, I must have done something.

So their ability to understand a situation is limited. So when we say abandoned, they could [00:37:00] perceive that they're being abandoned, right? So you could be, for example, dropping them off at, at Grandma's house because you have to go to work, but they feel like Mommy keeps leaving me.

So where is this coming from? If you understand that, they're probably feeling some level of abandonment, then you can address it, right? If the child is having such an emotional reaction to you separating from them, it's usually because they're afraid you're not coming back.

Predictability and consistency. That's what gives them a sense of safety. So if the child is having these strong emotional, outbursts, what that usually indicates is emotionally, they feel unsafe. So yeah, I think it's our work as parents to say, okay, how am I contributing to this dynamic?

It's not a blame thing. It's [00:38:00] really, it's not like I, again, I'm a mother and I certainly didn't do everything right. I did it but, how am I contributing? And, I'll share with you that I've had conversations with my children now that they're older. My, my older son's almost 21 now.

And. I've said to him, I know I made mistakes when we were, when I, you were much younger and I was raising you. And I said I know, like I, I really, I tried my best. Like I but I know I made mistakes and I'm sorry. And he said to me, it was so revealing. He said to me, that was your problem, mom.

I said, what? He goes, you tried too hard. You didn't need to try so hard. You didn't need to bake me such a perfect cake for my birthday. You didn't. I would've been happy with cupcakes. Yeah, so sweet. And I was like, wow. Okay. So the two days that I would take. Baking him a three layer cake and frosting [00:39:00] it and making it perfect.

And that's two days that he really needed my attention. And I realized that I was giving him love in a way that he like that's not how he needed to receive it. Yeah, and so it was so revealing to me because I think most parents. They do try their best, but sometimes we miss the mark. Oh, a hundred percent.

Because as you're saying it, like I, I like love languages too, which probably, fall into this a little bit. Yes. And when my daughter was younger, I took her to the mall and we had the whole day together. I bought her things, I did all these things, quality time, gifts, like it, all of it.

And I was like, great mom. She comes home and she says, I don't feel loved. And goes storming upstairs, like I was like, what? And what I realized her love language is touch, and I did not hug her, hold her hand, or touch her the whole time. And it was just that one thing that I didn't give

and so [00:40:00] from then on I was like, screw the screw. Everything else I'm not spending money in all this time and said, I'm just gonna hug you all the time. Hold you and call it a day. Yeah. You just need to sit next to her on the couch and hold her hat and then go, what are we watching? Exactly.

Exactly. So revealing moments important to know. It's important to know what people need. I think we always give what we need. Not always what they need. Yeah. Yeah. And so what a beautifully important revealing moment. And I also love, love languages and love languages are very much connected to attachment styles, like for, it won't surprise you that someone that's who is Avoidantly attached will typically as their as their love language will typically gravitate towards things that are less emotionally based. So gifts. And acts of service. Acts of service is mine and me too. Like avoidance, right? Totally.

That is mine all the way, [00:41:00] right? Yeah. It's quite funny. I was just laughing about this with my boyfriend because he, he's very much about quality time and touch and this, and I'm acts of service, which means it's I, I'm not really I'll come pick you up from the airport when you come home from a business trip.

Yeah, but all this other mushy stuff is not really my thing. So this matters, and it is very connected to attachments, those, yes. Yes. I love it. This is so great. All right you are amazing. So where can the listeners find you and tell us what you offer? Excellent, thank you. So our website is securely loved.com.

We have individual counseling. We also do couples counseling, which is very popular. There is a free quiz on my website to, like I mentioned, to identify your attachment style. We're also on, on Instagram and I have a YouTube channel that I'm trying to grow at the moment. I've got all these [00:42:00] videos that I'm trying to.

Educate people on attachment style because I found it so helpful for my life. And yeah, so on YouTube, we're at Securely Loved. Yeah, that's it. We'd love for you to visit. . Thank you so much for just talking us through in such an easy way.

Honestly, you did such an amazing job. It was so easy to understand and I can really connect to it. So thank you so much for sharing. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you for joining me for this episode. Oh my gosh, Bev was so much fun. She had so much knowledge to tell us and I learned a ton, and I can't wait to start working with my own attachment style.

If you wanna learn more about Bev and everything that she offers, just click on the link in the show notes. And until next week, keep carving out time for yourself and keep putting yourself on top of your to-do list.