Episode 36. The Art of Healing Anxious Attachment with Trevor Hanson
In this enlightening episode of Marriage iQ, we explore the intricate world of anxious attachment and its profound impact on relationships. Our special guest, Trevor Hansen from the Art of Healing, brings his expertise to shed light on this often misunderstood aspect of human connection.
Trevor, with his master's degree in marriage and family therapy and extensive experience helping thousands of clients worldwide, offers invaluable insights into the roots and manifestations of anxious attachment. As we delve into his personal journey from struggle to healing, we uncover the transformative power of understanding and addressing our attachment styles.
Join us on this episode as we explore the concept of anxious attachment, explaining the underlying fears and beliefs that drive anxious behaviors, how childhood experiences shape our attachment styles, and the impact of anxious attachment on marital relationships.
Discover the telltale signs of anxious attachment, such as an intense fear of abandonment, constant need for reassurance, frequent conflict, and the tendency to often prioritize others' needs over one's own.
Whether you're struggling with anxious attachment or simply want to deepen your understanding of relationship dynamics, Trevor's insights in this episode of Marriage IQ provide a roadmap for creating more secure, fulfilling connections.
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Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse.[00:00:08 - 00:00:10]
I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings.[00:00:10 - 00:00:12]
And I'm Dr. Scott Hastings.[00:00:13 - 00:00:30]
We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose. To transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed.[00:00:30 - 00:00:31]
With a little fun.[00:00:35 - 00:01:21]
Hello, intelligent lovers, and welcome to another exciting episode of Marriage IQ. Today, we're really excited to have with us a very special guest, Trevor Hansen from the Art of Healing, to talk with us about anxious attachment. And this is a topic that Scott and I don't know a ton about. And so we're really excited to learn from you, Trevor. Trevor has a master's degree in marriage and family therapy, advanced training with some of the world's top experts in attachment styles, specifically anxious attachment. He's helped thousands of clients around the world. He has a really big Instagram following, and he's been featured by the Gottman Institute. So we're really excited to have you with us today and welcome you to Marriage IQ.[00:01:21 - 00:01:22]
Welcome on.[00:01:22 - 00:01:24]
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited.[00:01:25 - 00:01:31]
Trevor, go ahead and tell us just a little bit about yourself beyond the introduction that we gave.[00:01:31 - 00:02:33]
Yeah, well, I appreciate the introduction. I. It's funny, that question, like, tell me about yourself. That's like, oh, man, which piece? But I guess I'll tell you the parts that I like the most about my life. I've got a little son, and he's just like my world right now. He's a year old. And, you know, my work is all about helping people build this sense of internal peace, internal trust in yourself, confidence, underlying beliefs that the world is full of love and that people are gonna be there for you and all that kind of stuff. And I think about him all of the time in that context, too. Cause it's like my opportunity where a lot of our attachment is shaped. And if you're not familiar with that word, it's basically like our set of beliefs about ourselves and about the availability of love. And it's like a lot of that's shaped as you're really little, his age and so on. So that's probably the biggest and best thing happening in my life right now is my little one year old. He's just. He's the best. That's kind of my big focus right now is just hanging out with him as much as possible.[00:02:34 - 00:02:39]
Well, wait till he's two and then we'll have this discussion again, you're saying.[00:02:39 - 00:02:40]
Yeah. Yeah.[00:02:41 - 00:02:49]
So, Scott, Trevor's had a Pretty exciting life, if I recall. Tell me if I'm right. Trevor, he broke his jaw, his eye socket.[00:02:49 - 00:02:50]
Yep.[00:02:50 - 00:02:52]
In a skiing accident, is that right?[00:02:52 - 00:02:59]
Yeah, all skiing, different accidents. But yes, unfortunately my face decides that it wants to be the piece that's injured the most.[00:02:59 - 00:03:00]
Hopefully you ski better now.[00:03:00 - 00:03:04]
You know I will. I don't say I will, but yeah.[00:03:04 - 00:03:26]
And you've also had some anxious attachment issues of your own that you've battled and going through severe adversities as well as in a toxic relationship and even a career working with Tesla. All of these things pointed him to his area that he works with specifically. So quite, quite an exciting life.[00:03:27 - 00:03:33]
Sounds like you had an aha moment. Right? At some point it's like, oh, major life trajectory change.[00:03:33 - 00:03:36]
Maybe, maybe a hit rock bottom.[00:03:36 - 00:06:15]
Yeah, definitely. So it's kind of like this culmination of, you know, I think I grew up feeling this sense of like not enoughness quite a bit. And it, it's funny because I'll describe this and a lot of people say, yeah, that's me too. Like I totally feel that way. Where there's a part of my mind that would recognize, like if you could call it my resume, what you would write down on paper about Trevor was pretty good. And I knew it was pretty good, right. I was like respectful, I was nice to people, I had some skills, I, you know, was doing pretty well in my career and so on. And especially this kind of intersected when, you know, my, my real healing when it comes to like attachment related things happened during kind of the phase of like dating and courtship and whatnot. And so at the time though, there was also this emotional piece that simply didn't believe the resume was quite enough or I would see evidence that it wasn't enough where I wasn't able to maintain good relationships or attract relationships or like dating partners to get a little overwhelmed by me somehow. And I didn't realize that that's what was happening. But no, they would pull away and reject and so really the underlying piece of it all. And when we talk about anxious attachment, there's kind of two parts. There's one, there's this lack of belief in yourself, just this negative view of self. I'm not good enough. And kind of an accompanying real, real fear of like rejection or abandonment. And I lived with both, I think for a long time. And it didn't quite realized that that was what was going on. I think if somebody talked to me and slowed me down, I probably been like, yeah, yeah, for sure. Like that's It. But I don't know, I thought that was just kind of the way I was wired. And I didn't know you could be doing anything about it until I got laid off for my career at Tesla. Big corporate changes and I was kicked out. I had broken my jaw. And around the same time I was engaged in that engagement fell apart. Luckily, it was not a good situation. And. And all those things made me go, huh, I need to figure out what's going on here. So I went to therapy for the first time, found some amazing resources and found a lot of healing. And it took a long time. There was a lot of struggle. And so now my goal is to shorten that timeframe, make it a lot easier for those who are in the stage of recognizing. Oh, man. Like, I have this fear of abandonment. I kind of don't feel like I'm good enough. And maybe I cope with those fears in ways that aren't healthy, like people pleasing or staying in bad relationships too long or the list goes on. So that's kind of in a nutshell, very small nutshell, like how this came to be that I'm hanging out with you here, talking about these things around this fancy word, attachment.[00:06:16 - 00:06:37]
So tell us a little bit more about what anxious attachment is. You told us some, but dive in just a little bit, especially for our listeners who may not be familiar with that term. And what does it look like in a person, besides not feeling like you're good enough and the fear of being abandoned? Are there any other signs that you might be anxiously attached?[00:06:37 - 00:13:11]
Yeah. So anxious attachment isn't an official diagnosis. Your therapist isn't going to sit there and be like, okay, here's the diagnostic code and this is what you got. That's not it. It's kind of like this kind of pop culture word. But it's also based in research. The original research was done by like, John Bowlby. He kind of was the. One of the leaders in this field. And it comes down to this. I, I like to think of it as your programming. Like if you were to program a software for a computer, you tell it how to operate within its world, and its world is your computer. Right. And so we all have, we all have our own software essentially kind of encoded into us through early childhood experiences primarily. But that encoding can also happen on repeat through other experiences. It comes down to you feel something, which then changes the way you feel in the future, or you see the world in the future. Like if you had a parent who was emotionally unavailable or a parent who. And it doesn't even have to be that they were like that or horrible or any, anything like that. No abuse. It might be just like maybe your mom was super depressed and you didn't get that sign of affection, which is like smiles and touch and, and eye contact without first making mom happy. And so as a kid, your programming, one line of your programming might read something like, I need to make others happy in order to be loved, in order to get attention, right? And that line of programming can come with a lot of fear, this anxiety of like, wow, I gotta, I gotta qualify for love. Especially as a child where love is so important, where it's not just the, the feel goods, it's quite literally life and death. Like if you don't have love and intention, you can't fend for yourself as a child. And so there's, there's even this, you know, it goes deeper, it goes into like biological needs and everything. So if we, if we simplify this down, if we say, what's your attachment style as we label them in the world? It's usually falls into kind of one of three for the most part. There is a fourth, but generally it's one of three. There's secure, which is on its kind of own island. People who are secure had emotional experiences that then in the future leave them with programming that sounds like, I believe that others are going to be there for me. I believe that I'm worthy of being loved. I think love is plentiful. If I don't find it in one place, I'll find it in another. And there's just a general hopefulness about love, closeness. You trust others to be there for you. And it's kind of the, the word that we talk about there is secure. It's like safe, secure. You feel really solid in your connections with others, your connection with yourself, and even your connection with God. Like how you see that relationship that all overlaps. And confidence is another great word to describe that. Then there's the insecure attachments, and there's three in that bundle, but we'll focus on one for sake of time. And the one we're talking about right now is anxious attachment. And anxious attachment programming sounds more like I had experiences that programmed into me the belief that I'm not quite good enough, right? Maybe I have to be doing my little song and dance to make mom happy or others are going to leave me. Maybe dad worked all the time and was emotionally unavailable and didn't know when he was there and when he was gonna leave. And so I have this underlying sense that people are just gonna leave and I don't know if I can trust them. Love is scarce. It's not plentiful. If I don't find it with this one person, then it may never come back. Right? That's where I was. I would find someone, idealize them in my mind, you know, have visions of marriage and everything else with almost everyone that I met who like, seemed half decent. And it's that desperation, right? Believing that it's scarce and that you have to take that option or you have to pursue and. And you might need more signals of validation from your partner if you have that anxiousness or that anxious attachment because you don't believe you're good enough, you're afraid they're going to leave you. And so you cope with this fear, these underlying fears and anxieties in ways that are negative, that usually impact your relationship in. In ways that actually make your anxious attachment work. And this is where it gets kind of crazy. So, for example, my example, I would feel this fear that I wasn't going to find anybody in dating. And because of that, maybe I'd come on a little too strong in relationships. And because I would come on too strong, it'd be a little too much for those who has dating and they would pull away. And they're pulling away only made it feel like, oh, it's true, like I'm not good enough and they were going to leave me, right? Or in a marriage relationship, which is much more your focused, it might look like the anxiously attached will have this underlying fear of not being enough or not having enough love from their partner, needing that reassurance. And when their partner doesn't meet their needs, sometimes that fear can escalate into anger. Anger can look like criticism, and criticism is going to push your partner away. That's when you get the withdrawing, the avoidant attachment that says, whoa, I'm going to cope with my fears by running away, by shutting down. And you watch them shut down and you just feel more and more alone. And again, it reinforces this negative fear that others are going to leave you and that you're not good enough. And so if we look at conflict in a relationship, people might think that, wow, we're just like, incompatible, or we're not right for each other because we fight all the time. But I always tell people, no, no, no, no. It most likely just means that there's this subconscious part of you that we could call the. Maybe the inner child. Your inner child is fighting with their inner child. It's your underlying programming triggering their underlying programming. And it creates this kind of spiraling, negative cycle. And so the real solution that I help drive people towards is healing that core programming, see if we can rewrite that program so that you show up in relationships feeling confident, feeling safe, feeling like there's plenty of love to go around. And when you reduce fear, you reduce anger, you reduce conflict, and so on. And so that's a big, big, long answer to your question of, like, what is anxious attachment and how does it look? We can dive more into any of those details as you want, but that's kind of a generalized overview of what it is, how it becomes a problem and part of the solution as far as this anxious attachment stuff goes.[00:13:11 - 00:13:23]
And that was really good. Do you find often that people with anxious attachment are pairing with people who have avoidant attachment then?[00:13:23 - 00:14:04]
Yeah, totally. Totally. Yes. First of all, and it's not always this way, because in my relationship, I'm more prone to anxious attachment. Right. Much more secure now, but prone. Right. We all kind of lean one way or another. Even if you are in that category of secure. It's a spectrum like anything. And the anxiously attached are kind of naturally attracted to the behaviors of the avoidant in the very beginning of relationships because the avoidant, they tend to kind of exude some sort of confidence. There's a little bit of aloofness. There's kind of some detachment from some of the emotional aspects.[00:14:04 - 00:14:05]
And.[00:14:05 - 00:14:28]
And it. And to an anxious. It looks really confident and kind of independent. And they admire those. Those attributes. And so they might actually be actively attracted to somebody who's a bit more avoidant. There also tends to be, and it's not always the case, a differentiator. Women tend to be more on the anxious side. Men tend to be more on the avoidant.[00:14:29 - 00:14:36]
Right. Which I found it interesting when you were saying you are more on the anxious side, because that's not as typical in what.[00:14:37 - 00:14:43]
It's not. It's not, but it's still. It still happens quite a bit. I work with a lot of anxious men.[00:14:44 - 00:14:53]
Can I go back just a moment? You were talking about. It typically has to do with the childhood experience that we've had.[00:14:53 - 00:14:54]
Yeah.[00:14:54 - 00:15:56]
And yet in my research, I've interviewed women who are struggling with a partner's sexual betrayal, either through pornography or through other kinds of compulsive sexual behaviors. And a lot of the behaviors that they described actually sound like anxious attachment. Like things were going well, and then their husband starts pulling away from them and they start panicking and Trying to overcorrect by submitting power to them by sexually making decisions or career wise or spiritually making decisions where they're just giving up their own agency or their own power to try to pull their husband back in. But it sounds to me like there, there may be an element of anxious attachment there, first of all. And second of all, is it possible that this is because of childhood issues or could it just be what's happening at the moment? Did they possibly grow up with a great childhood?[00:15:56 - 00:16:56]
Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's like any other answer from a therapist. This is horrible, but the word is, uh, it depends, right? Um, and we'll, we'll talk about some of those nuances because, yes, what you're describing, and specifically I heard you kind of talk about one of the symptoms of, we'll call it betrayal or betrayal trauma, right. When you are on the betrayed side of a partnership where someone has stepped out in some kind of way, whether it's, you know, pornography use or another partner or whatever the, this betrayal type symptoms of the betrayed. One of them is kind of the fawning symptoms that you're describing or the people pleasing, the overcorrecting and, you know, whatever it is, there's a big long list. I got to make my partner happy so that they'll come back and they'll love me. There's other symptoms, right, that you know of, I'm sure, such as maybe added hypervigilance where you try to control everything and you want to make sure that, you know, there's no ghosts in the closet and you're going to do everything you can to make sure that's the.[00:16:56 - 00:17:01]
Case, you know, and isolation, Isolation is another big one.[00:17:01 - 00:19:06]
Yes, totally, totally. So we'll take one of them so we don't get terribly complex. But the idea of people pleasing. So the question is, where does this come from? For me, if a person's sitting there identifying, okay, my issue, the behavioral issue is people pleasing. And it screws things up in my relationship. Is that fawning? Is that giving up what I want, I build resentment. There's so many things that are problematic about, you know, just giving up your own needs all the time. But the, the question you're asking is, well, where does that come from? And in some cases I will say that, well, I don't know, maybe this is. There's no specific research that I know to totally back this up, but from anecdotal personal experience is usually the betrayed. It is that they may already actually have some sort of anxious Attachment, they might be a little anxious leaning. That might be their propensity. And the betrayal will really heighten it. They'll really, really heighten it. They might have also been pretty dang secure before the betrayal. And that is also a possibility. And the betrayal does create the same kind of symptoms. But here's, here's the thing. It's like you might feel overwhelmed, like, well, which one is it and how do I decide? And if I decide wrong, like, am I not going to get better? And I would say, well, we'll kind of slow that down for a minute. Because at the core of this, it's a trauma related challenge, right? It's, you know, whether you have that it's underlying programming, that programming came from early childhood experiences, okay, we need to rewrite that programming, or it came through adult experiences. The healing process is honestly pretty similar. There are some nuanced differences. And I oftentimes work with people who have been betrayed and are also trying to overcome these kind of anxious attachment challenges that maybe have been there from before they even met their partner. And so, yeah, it's, it's very similar presentation. And it doesn't ha. You don't, it doesn't have to be that there's one or the other.[00:19:06 - 00:19:27]
And yeah, so betrayal aside for couples, that, that's not part of their history. But they're starting to hear some of the things you're saying and feel like, oh, I could have some elements of that. How does this impact marriages when one of the partners is anxiously attached?[00:19:27 - 00:22:18]
Yeah, yeah. Well, where you really see it is in a handful of places. One that's probably the most prominent is just how it and manifests itself in conflict. And we kind of hinted towards this earlier, but if you live in a world where there's a big part of you, and I say part of you because not all of you believes this. Right. You might look at your negative beliefs and like, oh, that's a little bit silly. Like, I don't know if I fully believe that I'm unlovable and that everyone's gonna leave me and that I'm not good enough and all of the list of fears that we've talked about. But if you live in a world where a big part of you believes those things, that you're not good enough, that others are gonna leave, that you can't trust it when people tell you that they love you or you've got to have a lot of evidence to feel okay. And even if you do have that evidence, maybe you still feel a Little bit fearful or doubtful what's going to happen. What we need to look at there is the behavior that comes from what I call protective behavior. You're trying to protect yourself from all these fearful, negative outcomes. My partner's going to leave me. You know, he's going to realize that I'm not good enough. He's gonna betray me. He's gonna this or that or. I just don't wanna feel that feeling of not being good enough. And so the way you protect yourself might look like people pleasing that we've talked about. It might also look like. Well, we'll go with that one. People pleasing usually leads to sacrificing your own needs and wants, which leads to resentment, which is then gonna lead to more conflict. You're gonna be much more sensitive to things that happen in the relationship because you're already resentful. You've been giving up everything you need to try to keep them close. Another one is that fear so easily turns into anger in the human being. It's just how we work, right? Anger makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. It's protective. Anger's not always bad. You know, Mother Bear is the perfect example of, like, righteous anger where you're like, oh, I'm in here to protect and I'm going to save the day. And, you know, swoop in and there's parts of you, like wounded parts of you that are fearful that others are going to leave you. And sometimes that escalates into anger or a form of protection. This might look like criticizing your partner when they're not meeting your needs. Like, you're always home late. You never consider me. You don't even love me. Right? And your partner just hears all this and is like, what? What? None of that is true. And all they're going to want to do is defend themselves, or they're gonna be like, whoa, that's too much. I'm just out of here. I'm gonna go to the garage and like, I don't know, work on something like, get out of. Right. This is a bad news, right? And so I would say it creates a lot of conflict. And at the heart of almost all conflict or all failed human interaction is insecurity or fear. It all stems from fear.[00:22:19 - 00:23:40]
This sounds a little bit like a few episodes ago we talked about collusion and the just colluding a wife against a husband, husband against the wife, all using the same things that you talked about, the same principles. It's interesting hearing just different perspectives on a common theme. Very fascinating. Perspective. The thing that is interesting to me the most is that I, I'm. I'm going back to your story, and you had to at some point realize that there was something wrong. And without that realization, you would. I mean, because you, you clearly appear very secure in how you're communicating with this. You've learned a lot. I could tell. Like, like, and you're teaching, you know, and you speak it very well, very fluently. Very impressive. I'm just wondering for people who want to get better, recognizing the problem, is it. Some. Sometimes it never happens. Right. They just go throughout their life where you recognize that you're able to change. But there are a lot of people who just, they. They can't see it.[00:23:40 - 00:23:40]
Yeah.[00:23:40 - 00:23:59]
What's going on? They. They lack that insight, which is also one of our four cornerstones. It just. I think learning how to have insight is going to help a lot of people learn about this anxious attachment, because it makes total sense what you're saying.[00:23:59 - 00:24:00]
Yeah, yeah.[00:24:01 - 00:24:03]
And it's kind of a new, fresh way of looking at it.[00:24:03 - 00:24:14]
Well, perhaps this episode will help people gain a little insight. Just educating them on. I. I'm seeing a little of that in myself, let's be honest. As we're talking, I'm like, oh, yeah, right.[00:24:14 - 00:24:17]
Totally. Well, I think not only all of.[00:24:17 - 00:24:34]
Us to some degree have anxious attachment. And I wanted to go back to a little bit too about. You say that childhood experiences. How much does genetics play into this? Are you inherited traits, epigenetics, things like that?[00:24:34 - 00:24:35]
Yeah.[00:24:35 - 00:24:37]
So what do you think about that?[00:24:37 - 00:26:53]
This is an area where I'll upfront say, like, I don't have a ton of background on it, but when we look at this from like a systemic perspective and intergenerational, whether it's genetics or it's just patterns and conditioning, something like an anxious or insecure attachment style will look as if it's genetic because it's like, well, mom and dad had it and Grandma and Grandpa, they. They perform in the same way. And most people that I work with, there's kind of this really fun moment where they're like, oh, man, like, I'm breaking this pattern. And, you know, we're. We're getting out of conflict and I'm feeling secure and like, we're kind of celebrating wins. And my favorite thing to do is go, has anybody in your family ever done this? And I'm like, think about Grandma and Grandpa. Think for as far back as you can go. And usually it's like grandma and Grandpa's like, as Far as they know. Right. Um, and even then they don't know because Grandma, grandpa might have hidden their conflict or their challenges. But I go, do you think anybody has ever been able to accomplish what you've done since the dawn of time in your family history? And they go, I don't know. I don't think so. And like, wow, so what does that mean for everyone that comes after you? Like, what if you model a different behavior instead of, you know, for the anxiously attached, Instead of criticizing your partner and coming down on them real hard when you feel this fear that they're not good enough and you feel this deep longing to spend time with them, but they're home late again, and instead of doing that, you approach them with vulnerability and let them know, you mean so much to me and I love our time when we get to spend, you know, having dinner together. Do you mind, you know, trying to come home earlier or are there barriers to coming home that I can help you remove? Right. Collaborating. You know, what would happen if you did this continually? What's going to happen for your children? And they start to go, wow, like, look at this. Like, they're going to have a totally different frame of reference. And it's just simply modeling the behavior. And so whether it's genetic or, you know, nurturing, I think nurturing definitely has a big influence on that. Either way, you change it. You don't just change it for you, but you quite literally change your entire legacy for anybody after you. And to me, that gets me. That gets me pumped up. I get excited about that.[00:26:53 - 00:26:54]
Yeah, that is really a great.[00:26:54 - 00:27:14]
I'm pumped up just hearing you getting pumped up about it. You say more women have this, so are I trying to put the pieces together. This is definitely more female oriented. Is it just their childhood experiences or women tend to be more anxiously attached? Well, you know, rule.[00:27:14 - 00:29:32]
It's interesting to think about, like, why that is. And here's the thing, I don't know. And there's a bit of a debate out there on whether that's, like, fully true or that women are more likely to seek out help or treatment for it versus men. And so I, you know, in my experience, anecdotally, just working with clients and working with other therapists in the field, we have a similar experience where it tends to be, you know, female presentation more than male. Obviously, I'm different than that. Like, I'm anxiously attached or have been, and. And I fit in that male category. But one of the factors might be, is that at the heart of an avoidant attachment and an anxious attachment. Really, the nature of the fears are very, very similar. It's something around the big questions of, are people going to be there for me when I need them? Do people actually value me? Am I valuable? Those are the things that are in question. For a secure person, those aren't in question. But for both the anxious and the avoidant, it's in question. And the way they deal with the subsequent fears of not having answers to those big, really important questions, they just cope differently. And, you know, people could argue with me on this one, but I feel like anxious and avoidant attachment almost the same thing. At their core, it's those fears, those questions, and the way they cope with it's different. And so we raise boys, we tend to, at least in this Western culture, which is, you know, go to your room, don't come out until you're done crying. Well, he's going to learn to hide his emotions. He's never going to cry. He's never going to show that. And so he learns that independence, shutting down, pulling away, not showing any emotion is how he stays safe. And so, you know, and maybe we don't emphasize that quite as much for females, maybe it is a little bit different. There's. There's some more room for that, that emotional presentation, the one that might be a little bit more pursuant rather than avoidant. And so, again, it's. It's a little bit of a tricky question as to why there's a difference. Um, but the real thing that I feel like is so important is like, okay, whether you're anxious or avoidant, how do we, how do we reprogram what's under. Yes.[00:29:32 - 00:29:36]
Why don't you tell us about your model? About what have you come up with?[00:29:36 - 00:33:39]
Yeah, so what I realized in, in my work is that there, you know, I had a few challenges along my own healing journey. And what I hear from a lot of people who come to me, they. They say, you know, I feel like I go to therapy and I just kind of talk about my week and my challenges, but there's no real consistency. There's no one plan, like start to finish, and I. I don't know where I'm going. And I need more accountability and I need a bit more structure and I need someone who can help me through this. And so what I've done is, and I've kind of meshed together what I consider the best from multiple bodies of research. I was trained as an EFT therapist or emotionally focused therapist. And EFT is, is very attachment Based primarily, it's become known for taking an attachment related view on couples conflict and helping them solve conflict. So I borrowed from there. I borrowed from, you know, some kind of trauma theory. I borrowed from models such as like inter family systems and whatnot. But in general we created kind of after borrowing from a bunch of different models and kind of ordering them in the right way that we find to be most helpful. It's a journey from first becoming aware of the challenge, becoming aware of where did this come from for me, um, and what are the negative patterns that it creates in my life. Once you have that awareness, you have a bit of a solid foundation to start going into the next phases. And the next phase is all about compassion. You have to meet that awareness with a lot of love and compassion. Because if you just get a bunch of awareness and no compassion, then you just think that you're broken and stuck and horrible and, and whatever else. And it's like, well, that's the end of the road. You're not going to heal unless you, you see it properly, which is you have a wound and it needs to be healed. And maybe we can, we can love and nurture and take care of that wound instead of shaming yourself for the fact that you have this problem or this challenge and then the next is kind of the healing phase. And a lot of the healing phase in my approach really leverages emotional experiences are the ones that heal you. I say you were, you have to heal the same way you were hurt. And it's not through logic, it's not through another good advice or another podcast or another book, which are great because those, I think, help you find the right resources. But healing comes through feeling. And so we utilize a lot of visualization. We get in contact with the wounded part of self, which usually takes on the image of a younger self, a child, you know, version of you. It's gaining. And this is a little bit challenging to describe with the time that we have, but there's, there's a part of almost everybody who is loving and nurturing and wise and does trust people and does realize that, hey, my negative belief about myself doesn't quite make sense, right? I described that there was a part of me that felt that way. That part of you, in a sense, needs to gain trust of the other part of you that's wounded, that doesn't believe that you're worthy, that doesn't believe you're lovable. And so there's a lot of, you know, building that internal trust with self. Internal, what I call Leadership, where you're kind of reparenting that version of you that's hurt and wounded. And it sounds a little like identity, but yeah. So that's the healing phase. And then once you're feeling much more secure, you need skills to navigate relationships in new and healthy ways. And so we focus on giving skills around boundary setting, healthy communication, navigating conflict negotiating, all the things that we got to do in relationships. And by the way, those become really easy when you have that secure attachment in place. Because it's the natural behavior of a secure person is just to show up healthy in relationships. There's people in this world that never think about like, oh, how should I set this boundary? They just do it. And they do it well because they feel really secure deep down. And then fifth phase in our journey or our process, it was all about maintenance. Well, now you got it. Now you got this, you know, more security. Let's help you keep it forever.[00:33:40 - 00:33:42]
That sounds like a really awesome model.[00:33:43 - 00:33:45]
Really fast version of the whole thing.[00:33:45 - 00:33:48]
Well, that is a. That, that sounds really awesome.[00:33:48 - 00:33:49]
Yeah.[00:33:49 - 00:34:00]
So if people want. Not the fast version, if they want to learn more about your approach to healing anxious attachment, where would they go? Where would they find you?[00:34:00 - 00:35:15]
Yeah, you know what? I think the best places to start are places that are free. And so I'll give you one of those. So going to Instagram, I would say go there and. Or you can go to my website, either way. But Instagram is where I interact with most people. And you go to the Art of Healing by Trevor. That's my handle. And on any of my posts, you'll probably find some sort of call to action to either type in the word seminar or healer and it'll send you a link to a free seminar. You can also go to the link there, there in my bio, or you just go to TheArtOfHealingbyTrevor.com and there's a free workshop or seminar called From Anxious to Secure. It's exactly what it sounds like. And we go through there. Four essential elements that you need if you want to go from anxious to secure. That quite frankly, you're probably missing one or all four of these. Even if you're in therapy, even if you're reading all the books, even if you're doing all the podcasts, you're missing one of these elements. And it doesn't mean that you're going to have to go and do a bunch of extra work. It just comes down to, hey, let's give you one of these four elements and you'll probably start feeling better. It's a really hopeful, hopeful little seminar that I think is a great place to start.[00:35:15 - 00:35:16]
That's great.[00:35:16 - 00:35:17]
That was really helpful.[00:35:17 - 00:35:38]
Yeah. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing, and it can really bless families and marriages. We really appreciate your taking the time to explain this to us. And we may have to have you back on again to talk in further depth about some of them another time. But we're so grateful for the time that you spent with us today.[00:35:38 - 00:35:39]
Thanks so much, Trevor.[00:35:39 - 00:35:40]
Thank you. Very important.[00:35:41 - 00:35:44]
And we'll see you next week on Marriage IQ.[00:35:46 - 00:35:54]
And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves.[00:35:55 - 00:36:23]
Thank you all for tuning in to Marriage IQ. We hope today's episode has sparked some valuable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't end here. If you get the chance, we'd love to have you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. It really helps us get the word out about Marriage IQ. And we appreciate your support. Keep exploring and we'll catch you next time on another exciting episode of Marriage IQ.
