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Title: Understanding and Shifting Attachment Styles for Alienated Parents ---

Introduction

 

Alienation is a painful experience for many parents, leaving profound emotional scars. In episode 154 of *Beyond the High Road*, hosted by Shelby Milford, we delve deep into the concept of attachment styles and how they impact the experience of alienation. Shelby, a certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth, provides comprehensive insights that aim to help parents understand, heal, and ultimately foster healthier relationships with their children.

 

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Exploring Attachment Styles

 

Shelby begins by drawing attention to the often-overlooked influence of attachment styles in the dynamics of alienation. She emphasizes that understanding our own attachment style is crucial for healing: “The more that you know about your individual attachment style, you can really fine-tune and customize your whole experience through this walk of alienation.”

 

Shelby breaks down the four main attachment styles: 

- Secure Attachment: Characterized by comfort with intimacy and a balance of dependence and independence.

- Anxious Attachment: Described as craving intimacy and having issues with dependence and fear of abandonment.

- Avoidant Attachment: Involves self-sufficiency and emotional distance due to a fear of dependence.

- Fearful/Disorganized Attachment: A mix of the above styles, often leading to unpredictable behavior and confusion about self and others.

 

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Shifting Towards Secure Attachment

 

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around ways to develop healthier attachment patterns. Shelby outlines several steps alienated parents can take:

 

1. Develop Self-Awareness: Trace your patterns in relationships and notice how you respond in moments of stress or rejection.

   

2. Practice Self-Compassion: Recognize that your attachment styles are adaptations to your environment and that you are not at fault for how they developed.

 

3. Engage in Therapy or Coaching: Seek professional guidance to dismantle old belief systems and rebuild them in a way that aligns with your values and goals.

 

4. Repair Self-Beliefs: Challenge narratives of not being enough or unlovable, which often lie at the root of anxious or avoidant patterns.

 

5. Focus on Attunement: Rather than perfection, aim for genuine presence and connection in your relationships, whether through written messages or visualizing positive interactions with your child.

 

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Practical Steps for Alienated Parents

 

Throughout the podcast, Shelby encourages alienated parents to build emotional regulation skills, engage in mindfulness, and prepare to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively to triggers associated with alienation. She stresses the importance of having a toolbox ready: “Stock your toolbox with all of the helpful tools that you can use in the moments of stress.”

 

Additionally, she emphasizes seeking corrective relationships—surrounding oneself with supportive and understanding individuals, whether family, friends, or professionals, who can help foster a healthier attachment style.

 

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Quotes to Reflect On

- "Understanding your own attachment style provides tools for healing and reconnecting, regardless of your child's current status or readiness."

- "Secure attachment is about being good enough no matter what. It provides safety, predictability, and openness to repair."

- "Focus on shifting your inner narratives and emotional patterns, which will ripple out into all the parent-child interactions, even when contact is limited."

 

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Conclusion

 

Alienated parents navigating the painful journey of estrangement can find solace and guidance in understanding their attachment styles. By focusing on self-awareness, self-compassion, and engaging in corrective relationships, they can begin to forge a path toward healing, both for themselves and their children. Shelby Milford’s insights remind us that change is always possible and that it's never too late to work towards a secure attachment style that benefits everyone involved.

 

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To explore more about this topic and gain deeper insights, consider listening to the full episode of *Beyond the High Road* with Shelby Milford.

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Episode transcript

 

 You are listening to The Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 154. Stay tuned.

  📍 📍 Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Mulford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you.

Stay tuned.

 So how we doing today, y'all? We've broken our streak. um, , For the Apple reviews, we went I have to go back and look, but like three or four weeks in a row where we got all these reviews in and then  last week we broke our streak.  And this week we've made a new streak and no new reviews.

So I would love, love, love it. If outta the kindness of your heart you would go and if this show has been. Helping you or you look forward to it each week, or maybe sometimes you don't look forward to it, but you still leave with something to having taken something out of it. I would really, really love for you to go head over to Apple Podcast and find that little baby.

Write a review down at the bottom of the show page, um, and click on that. If you're not an Apple person product owner, that's okay. You could just go to the Apple Podcast web player, you know, the, their webpage, and then you go up in the right hand corner and create an apple id and you can do the same thing.

The whole process though, it's kind of annoying and you gotta figure it out, it really is. Um, even with creating a new Apple Id takes about five minutes, so I would love, love, love that. I know , the real thing is it's not doing me a favor, although I love it. You all know that. It makes me so happy to know that, this show and all of my efforts are going to good use, you know, like that, the love that I pour into this show is resonating with y'all.

that is so, so helpful. But really, the reason I would love for you guys to do it is so that this can reach other alienated parents so that they, you essentially by writing a review are helping another alienated parent to find the show. So, with that said today, thank you in advance.

Um, today we're gonna be talking about attachment styles. Uh, this is another one of those episodes that I've, I, you know, I told you a few weeks back that I have all of the scheduled. , Topics for like the next, back then it was like eight weeks. I, it's actually since added on. I've got a good list, working list going, but it's, another one of those, , topics that I was like, am I sure that I haven't done an episode on this?

, Not one has really been dedicated that I can remember anyway, and I did a quick sweep through the episode titles, but not one of them has been fully dedicated to this. And here's the thing is that our attachment styles and the attachment theory in general is so integral in the whole dynamic of alienation.

It really all is about family systems, like the, the dynamic, right? Our attachment styles understanding how. Our children's attachment with us became interrupted, It really all revolves around this. And the more that you know about your individual attachment style, You can really fine tune and customize your whole experience through this walk of alienation and also how you relate to not only your, partners and your friends, but your children, even from afar. attachment attachment theory. But an attachment is basically the expectations. I guess I'm getting into it right now. I just started, I'm haven't even pulled my notes up.

Yeah. But attachment is in a nutshell, expectations that we develop. Um, yes. Starting in early,, infancy really about relationships in our own life, like how people behave. With us, the expectations we develop on caregivers, let's say for our base attachment style, depending on how they responded to our needs, emotional, uh, physical, all the needs as babies, determines the skillset that we develop in order to get those needs met. 

And I know that a lot of you, let me just say, I know that many of you are already probably very well versed in this, but I just wanna go over a little bit of the basics real quick. That way we're all up to speed the same, and then we can continue on with the episode.  So it's patterns of relating basically to, and bonding that you develop early on in life, like from your first moments, interactions with your mom or dad or whoever raised you. 

How they responded to you in moments, your moments of need determined, your, ability to feel safe, secure, comforted, um, nurtured and all the things, right? And if you didn't get what you needed in the way that you tried, then you would learned over time to adapt to that caregiver's style, if you will. And so then you would try different ways to try to get those needs met. 

Right. just like with anything else, I mean, in the past when I've brought this topic up,  in different words, I, I talked about it as having like a, developing a skillset. From a really early age that we carried with us. Sometimes we carry those skill sets with us all the way through until today, right?

And don't realize that that's what we've done. We kind of just think that,  oh, that's just who I am. I'm just a needy person. I'm just a, an anxious person. I'm just, um, insecure or whatever it is. If that's, if you have an anxious, attachment style, then that might be something that you would say, right? We think of it more like it's me, right?

I'm the one that's at fault, and this is just characteristics my parents gave me and now I, it's unchangeable,  but it's not, it's not true at all.  Like, you can absolutely. The first of course is the awareness and then if you're really truly committed to, wanting to change, to maybe like, for instance, go to a secure attachment style, which I think.

Is goals for all of us really. once you have the awareness, then you can incorporate tools and mindset skills, to change that over time. And that's really what I've done over the last, I don't know, however many years since I've been on this healing journey, though, in the beginning when I started doing this, in fact, throughout really it wasn't in my mind that I was working to change my attachment style.

I'm more focused and you can do it however you want, but I'm more focused on. My own beliefs about myself and then my beliefs about the world, right? And those close to me and my beliefs about my daughter individually just worked all of that out. And I still to this day question all of those beliefs as they come up for me.

And that helps me to move towards even more, um, a secure, um, attachment style. So lemme just go over real quick, the four different styles of attachment basically is first off   📍 📍 📍 secure attachment, , securely attached people are usually comfortable with intimacy and they can balance their own dependence and independence in relationships, right?

They're trusting, trustworthy, and don't typically have the ups and down rollercoasters that you might experience with those that are anxious or avoidant, right? Or a mix of the two. A lot of times for those of us that lean towards or have kind of grown up with other attachment styles, a secure attachment style feels very foreign to you and almost sometimes boring or like they come off maybe uninterested or uninteresting to you.

, If you are another attachment style.   📍 📍 📍 the next attachment style is. Anxious or preoccupied, some people call it an anxious attachment styles, , crave intimacy. I'm just gonna give you the basic overview. I'm not gonna go full into it, but crave, overall, crave intimacy and can be

overly, overly, I don't know if I wanna use that word, but dependent, really default towards dependence on somebody, codependent, if you will, and a bit demanding like their needs feel can come off as demanding in relationships, especially in romantic partner relationships, right? They worry about being abandoned.

They crave closeness may seem needy. Um, and really with a preoccupied or anxious attachment, call it whatever you want. I'm just gonna call it anxious attachment. 'cause it's easier, it gets confusing with all the words,  but with an anxious attachment, the underlying belief is that I'm not okay. the person who's anxious is worried that they're not worthy, that they're not enough, , for whoever they're in relationship with.  📍 📍 📍

Dismissive attachment, or actually avoidant attachment. I'm just gonna call it avoidant from here forward. With this, the characteristics are self-sufficient. I don't need anybody. I'm fine. The loner attitude, right?

Like I can do this by myself. often to the point where you maybe appear detached , uninterested maybe. People with the avoidant attachment style, usually? Really value their own independence and fear being like engulfed or enmeshed with somebody else and they don't like that, you know, they don't want to have to rely or be de become dependent on a partner or anybody for that matter.

It's a sign of weakness to them. that's more coming from the outside, like the, take from an onlooker. But on the inside avoidant people, generally minimize their own emotional needs, right? 

Like, I don't need to, don't worry about me. I'm fine, sort of thing. And it often comes off as distant. I know recently I've been talking with you about how I've done that. More in adult life, um, than anything. But I will not share my life with even people I want to actually share that my life with. But I feel like I'm being, um, like it's too much.

And also I don't want them to get too close to me, is really the underlying fear there is like, ooh, I need to keep my distance because at least there I, here I feel safe over, you know? Um, so yeah, it appears distant, maybe closed off, um, unavailable, you know,   📍 📍 📍 and then the fearful attachment style or sometimes called disorganized Desires, closeness, like really, really craves the closeness, but they fear like, almost like dun dun don death. Intimacy vulnerability cannot stand up. Like the fear of being

humiliated or embarrassed or like, put on display overwhelms the, so much that they end up locking themselves sort of away and they send a lot of mis mixed messages. Um, maybe they display unpredictable behavior

they're just hard to read, They're hard to get a feel for like what's really going on. And depending, like usually disorganized attachment style is.  People relate it to, and I really had to do a deep dive on this earlier this week too, because it was my impression for a long time that if you had the fearful attachment or disorganized attachment that you must be BPD.

Those two are related. Like people with PBPD, there's a strong tie to the fact that most of them have a disorganized, or maybe all of them, I don't even know, have a disorganized attachment style. Right. That definitely is related, but it doesn't mean that if you have a disorganized attachment style that you are BPD.

So that's just important I think to it spoke to me anyway, and you'll hear why in a few minutes. But, um, yeah, so that's that. so with anxious attachment style, You have a negative view of yourself. The problem is with me and an overly high, view positive model of others, right? Everybody else is great. I'm the problem, With avoidant types. Avoidant. Why can't I talk right now with avoidant?

  📍 📍 📍 📍 So what I didn't mention is that with a secure attachment style, you have a positive model of others, and you also have a positive model of your own self, right? The way that you see your world and relating to others. Everybody is good, fine. It's nobody is a problem in the secure attachment style.  📍 📍 📍 📍

When you're in the anxious attachment style, you have a, I'm the problem, a negative view of yourself yet. Other people are goals. Everybody else is fantastic. I need to work to better myself so that I can be with them so that they will like me, what have you, right?

So negative view of yourself, overly positive view of everybody else that you wanna be in relationship with.  📍 📍 📍 📍 if you are avoidant, you have a positive model of yourself, but a negative view of the world. So it's always there. The problem. Okay, so it's not me, it's them. It's whatever they're doing.

It's the people that you usually find that are avoidant are always the ones that are like, I always have bad roommates. I always just end up with the bad roommates. It's not me. I'm perfect. People should love to come and live with me, right? It's them. That's the problem. I've got the worst lock. That is usually the model that we're working with, with avoidant, right?  📍 📍 📍 📍

And then with a disorganized attachment style, or fearful, however you want to say it, you have a negative model of yourself. Like, I'm the problem and they're a problem. It's both. Like, that's what keeps you confused. And second guessing yourself and walking in circles to the point where you feel so isolated from the world because you can't trust yourself and you can't trust others.

You desperately wanna be close to others and probably to yourself too, but you feel like it's impossible because they're gonna hurt you and you know that you hurt yourself.  Because in the, uh, disorganized attachment too, self-sabotage is really, really high. Not that it's not, another ones too, even in a secure, uh, attachment style, you can still be a self-sabotaging secure attachment style anyway.

Um, but that's the basic view of all of it. Understanding where you fit in to each one of these four styles can be so helpful for your healing and also restoring connection with your kid or kiddos and your view of that connection. Because as you guys know, when I talk with you, that   📍 📍 connection exists up in your own brain, not in some magical place in between you and your kid, not in your kid.

Your kid doesn't dictate it. You, the connection that you feel to somebody is all generated by the thoughts that you think.  And so you attachment style though your expectations on yourself and on the world and how everybody you relate to them and to the world and they relate to you is really important to know.

Many of us like walk through life not even thinking about how it is, but the expectations that we. By default on default half of the world. We just take each circumstance or each relationship that we're in, we take it like, happenstance, right? It's all isolated incidents that just make up one big conglomeration of whatever your experience is. But it's not, how you view the world and how you view yourself in it really determines , who you choose, how you choose, how you show up in each of those relationships, in each of those instances.  📍 📍

So it's really important to understand what's fueling you, toward or away from any relationship that you are in, throughout your life.  And though it's not necessarily super duper important, I mean, I think it can always be useful, but it's not like essential that you go back and uncover all of your childhood, patterns and all, all that.

Like, I don't think that you need to spend, gobs of time really going back and uncovering and locating where attachment style started for you. Why this, it doesn't really matter that much, so long as you get an idea of what makes you tick. And that's why I just broke it down into like what drives each attachment style, right?

Is it that I feel inadequate, other people are inadequate? A mix of both Or overall, do you really just believe that

everybody's lovable, intrinsically good, and so I have here in my notes, and I kind of just went over it, but I'm gonna go through the parts that I didn't bring up. Why it's super important that us as alienated parents should understand our attachment styles. Is that. First off, y'all, we grapple with some profound feelings of loss, rejection also, and identity shifts, right?

Just by the nature of this dynamic of alienation, right? Just, just for the fact that it's happened, that another person is acting to stand as a barrier between you and your kiddo. This is, it's profound feelings of loss and rejection, right? And you're, and the, especially when it goes to like the, a custody decision and your child not being in your care on an everyday basis, it also, of course, is going to affect your identity, who you, the roles that you play on a day-to-day basis, right?

This is just common knowledge. But because of that, like, because of the trauma that we have already experienced and are continuing, ongoing experiencing, um, it can, the attachment styles directly. That. Oh my God, Shelby,

  📍 📍 understanding your attachment style can really help to shine a light on your emotional reactions to alienation, right?  Such as like when you're feeling rejected, when you're feeling hopeless or angry or whatever it is, like you are in the moment. Reactions to whatever happens to come up throughout your day, your week, your months, whatever.

As a result of alienation, not only alienation as a whole, but all the little daily things that come up as a result, you know, of the alienation as the whole. Becoming aware of them will help you to fine tune and decide if that's the experience you wanna have, like continuing on, or whether or not you wanna.

Shift, right? Understanding your attachment style can really help you to, find some clarity around that.   📍 📍 attachment styles also dictate the coping mechanisms that you currently have,  like whether you're likely to persist when being rejected, whether you withdraw, when you're being rejected, whether you lash out or whether you oscillate between the two.

Like one second you're like, no, I'm going for it. I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna persist. I'm going to keep showing up, dripping log, blah, blah, blah. Like, this isn't gonna bother me. No sweat. , Brush your shoulders off, keep going. And then other days when you're feeling like down in the dumps, instead you freak out and wanna move away from it and wanna throw your hands up and say, forget it.

Which I see a lot of alienated parents oscillating between these two. A lot, like sometimes within the same sitting in our calls together. and it's so, by the way, this is, there's nothing wrong with this response. This is expected, I guess, coming from the trauma that we have. You know, even if you had no other, traumatic events that happened in your life, let's say alienation happens to be the first real trauma that you've experienced.

Right. Which I doubt, but I mean, like, it, it could be right? There's always little traumas that we experienced throughout the way, but for the most part, if you had like a great upbringing in your mind, like things were fine. Um, you felt like maybe you had a secure, you have a secure attachment style, um, and then alienation happened and now you notice that you have developed tendencies to lean towards anxious or avoidant or both.

That is, uh, also, um, normal, if you will, or like common, um, major life events or ongoing trauma, like what we've experienced will absolutely change, um, can absolutely change your attachment, the expectations that you place on your relationships, it makes sense.  📍 📍 attachment styles can also affect your approaches to your, the way that you communicate, basically,  the way that you communicate, whether or not you attempt to reunify like any sort of reunification efforts on your part.

Um, and also boundary setting with your child when you, I mean, we can go into the, the. Details on that. But if you are an avoidant, let's just say, and your approach to communication is to really not have it or only like sort of fear it because, oh, I mean, I didn't say this too with the avoidant, especially with the avoidant attachment style, it's not that you don't want closeness.

Like it's clear that anxious attachment style, really craves the attention, needs it, and wants reassurance and validation. Right. But also,  so does the avoidant. They really crave, and that's why it's the, all three of the not secure attachment styles are considered insecure.

They really crave, because all of us as humans crave connection and closeness.  But when you're avoidant, you just learned as a kid that your calls or your needs to be, emotionally supported, and connect with somebody on deeper levels, like maybe a parent. They, they didn't work, they weren't answering when you, , displayed more needy, , tendencies or tactics,

. the easiest way to explain this is just to say it from my experience, because if not, then I start getting all abstract and it gets lost in translation, I think actually I could be a really good example for this because I had a complicated, upbringing, and I'm sure that a lot of you have too, but I had a father who was avoidant, he's is avoidant, it's through no fault of his, he just did, never got the tools himself, right.

So in his world, when he grew up, he probably got the message from his father that we don't talk about emotions, right? And just his era, , his parents were in the depression and all that. It, I think this is very common, and so he, in turn to this day, when I mention anything deeper than the weather, and you guys have heard me talk about this.

They've been listening for a while, he. He doesn't know what to do with himself. He really becomes uncomfortable and he doesn't know how to relate. Like his brain doesn't go there deep like that. And when I say deep, I'm just talking about like, I'm feeling a little anxious today or something. Like, he, he doesn't know what to do with that.

And so when I needed that growing up, especially early, early years, he would turn away. It wasn't that he didn't love me, he just didn't know how to handle it. So he would walk away. And so I learned with my father that in order for me to receive love from him, I needed to avoid talking about my feelings, my emotions.

That wasn't attractive. What was attractive and what brought him to me was me telling jokes, being funny, making fun of people who needed emotional support. My brother, Was needy in that way. And I knew I could get further with my father if I made fun of that. And it always worked. And I was always like the, the, the prized kid, the favorite from my dad.

But with my mom, my mom was disorganized and she was, in my opinion, the type of, in my experience, actually the type of disorganized that was scary and very unpredictable. And because you can be disorganized or like display traits of both anxious and, um, avoidant and not fly off the handle at any given second and have.

Reactions that are disproportionate to the situation at hand. Does that make sense? But with my mom, that was our experience growing up. I say our just meaning my dad's mine and probably my brother's too, you know, is that we didn't know what was gonna make her fly off. I didn't know. And so I also knew that, her love came the same way.

she would withhold love in order to make a point or to punish, you know where I know. Well, I'll go into me later. So anyway, what was I saying about that?

that was my base model of attachment, right? Was mom being, disorganized and dad being avoidant. And so, that's what I was working with when I entered into , teen years, and then adulthood. And then I chose people based on this is everybody probably chose people based on my experiences in childhood.

Sometimes I chose away from like what my mom displayed or my dad displayed, and sometimes I chose in, in alignment with, right? As a result, I actually developed both sides. I have anxious and avoidant both. , And it really depends on the relationship. Like when I had my daughter  even though then I was not necessarily fully consciously living, I was very intentional about the love that I showed her because I didn't want her to have the experience that I had growing up.  Right. So I was very, mindful with how consistent I was in the love that I showed her, right?

And I just didn't ever want to turn out like my mom. That was like a fear of mine from before. And so I really worked hard to monitor the way that I showed up in my relationship with her. Now, that's the, my relationship with my daughter was completely separate from the relationships that I obviously, that I had with like romantic partners.

Like even while I was momming my, my kiddo, that , she never, she herself never actually activated any sort of insecurity or, avoidance in me because I . Decided otherwise intentionally that I was gonna behave how I was gonna show up, you know, moving forward, right? Where relationships , I chose different.

And so I acted in different ways for that. Okay.  The reason I'm tell talking about me so much is, like I said, it's easier for me to, um, explain. And since I do have a tendency to go to kind of all of them, like really all of them, because today I know I have a more of a secure attachment style. It's, I, I don't mean to say that I'm a good example for this, but I think I kind of, at least I can talk about it in a way that seems full, full anyway.

, Full dimensional,  back to where I was all the way back to where I was. Another way that your attachment style affects your relationship with your kiddo and your just experience of your relationship with your kiddo is in the ability that you possess, or the capacity really that you possess currently to provide stable emotional regulation for your child, right?

Even from a distance. So if you are aware of your attachment style and are either working to change it or even if you're okay with it, just knowing where you're coming from, what your motivation is, can really inform the way that you provide stability, emotional stability for your child, even from afar because of energies and because of whatever they do see of you.

Like the evidence that you're creating for yourself on a daily basis, like the, the. Prints that you're leaving throughout your day and anybody that you interact with, those all add up. And at some point some of that information will get back and the, like I said, the energies, . So if you are stable , and can regulate your own emotions, you are also modeling that to your child, So your attachment style really does, motor you or steer you throughout every interaction that you have in your world and with yourself too, because, like I was talking about before, and those like the four quadrants, if you display any sort of anxious, Attachment traits, it's all gonna be about you and how you're not good enough.

And on the other side of things, if you're avoidant, it's never you and it's everybody else. Right. And then the mix is, is, is, is both. But, so it's really helpful to   📍 📍 determine, where you land there so that you can

better understand your triggers, and strategically choose responses or, behaviors. that support and advocate healing rather than perpetuate pain.  Okay. alright, so let me just go over those 'cause I got all like down a little rabbit hole of what my history is. Just to summarize that last little section there, understanding your attachment style can help you to, or.

So to recap that last little section there, since I went into my whole explanation of my experience with it, um, attachment styles can directly, not just can they do directly influence your emotional reactions to alienation on the whole right to feeling rejected, feeling hopeless, feeling angry, and also your emotional reactions throughout every hour of the day.

That your emotional responses, when you're sleeping, even like your dreams, it affects everything really emotionally for you. your attachment style directly influences your coping mechanisms also your communication style. Reunification attempts, right? Whether or not you try to keep that up. And also boundary setting with your child, which if you are anxious, this is a, or lean towards the anxious attachment.

This is a very difficult task for you. I know 'cause I speak from experience too, because why? Because from anxious attachment style, who's not enough? We are . We're the problem. And if we're scared, if we set a boundary. That what's gonna happen to this relationship? Are they just gonna say, forget it and leave us?

And what, even those boundaries that we're gonna set, what's the motivation for them? Are we setting a boundary in order to get a response and get them, bring them back? It's called an activating behavior. Like you do something, they move away from you, and you employ an activating behavior in order to hopefully draw them back to you.

Sometimes it works, and , most of the time it doesn't work. So anyway. And also, attachment styles directly influence your ability to provide stable emotional regulation for yourself and for your child. Right? Even from a distance.

 So whether it is that you are an anxious parent and that you repeatedly reach out and feel the intense rejection each time that they don't answer your, attempt to connect, or you're an avoidant where you disengage and protect yourself and move away from and pretend like it's not happening, or maybe you're a mix of both, like me, when you can recognize your own patterns, then you can better understand all of your triggers. All of Your default tendencies and then strategize and plan out choose and execute responses that you know will work to your benefit in the long run.

This is basically, actually, now that I just said it, like that, your approach to your current attachment style and also where you wanna be headed with your attachment style can directly affect your whole, reunification process or the status of y'all's relationship, at least in the way that you view y'all's connection.

Immensely like this can make or break your whole experience of alienation and of your life moving forward. Also, your partners, if you have one currently, or your future partners and your future, you will want to reach out and give you a huge hug and thank you profusely when you take this approach of understanding where you currently are at with your attachment style and where you wanna be, and start taking steps to execute the goals attachment style.

it can change everything. Like if you are needy with your partner and that's getting old for them and also for you too. 'cause it's not fun when you are an anxious and you're needing your partner constantly wanting and desperately needing your partner to need you back that it's, it's an awful place to be.

it's not only just a burden on the other person, it's a, really, a burden is on you, you know? and I know again, 'cause I speak from experience. So, and the same thing with the avoidance. Avoidance, although they're pushing people away. They really, all they really crave is intimacy and connection.

It's just too much for them. Not because, okay. This is another thing too. So for me, I'm hope maybe I'm hoping some of you can relate to this and then maybe piece together what's going on for you by the examples that I'm giving about me today. But I know for me, , I'm a mixed bag like I was talking about earlier.

, My dad was one way, my mom was another. I grew up kind of confused about how love was received by. People in general. And then by me, I was really genuinely confused by that. I had so many mixed messages growing up and then of course my own story of sexual abuse when I was younger. Really confused things terribly for a long time, I'm just now really being able to separate all that stuff out. But then also, my relationships moving forward because my father was the avoidant. Now still to this day, this is something I'm working on. If I am dating somebody or there's somebody there that I could possibly date.  📍 📍 📍 📍

I can get the ick really quick with somebody like bad to the point where I'm repulsed by them and have come to realize in the last few years that the reason that I get that ick. Maybe some of you know this, . But it was like a light bulb moment for me when I realized the reason I get that it isn't because their behavior is actually repulsive or they're too needy or weak or something.

It's because as a kid, my father, my view of what a man should be was no feelings. Right? That's what a man should be. And so now, not just the ideals , but because that was repressed in me as a kid and also from my mom too. 'cause my mom was, you know, very sporadic with the way that she gave love and the really, it depended on how I was needing it to come from her.

She would shut me out too, which caused a lot of shame for me. But now when anybody needs the love for me, still to this day, I can get the ick because of my experience as a child. And maybe for you too. That's why I'm bringing this up, you know? Um, so if you can easily be turned off by somebody and be like, Nope, they're not for me.

That's it. You know, it might be because your nervous system, your whole internal, like your emotions on the inside, because you got shut down as a kid, your body learned to adapt and not show , the hurt anymore from you being rejected by your parents or like turned down for love. So instead you develop this, adversity, this, this hatred towards that kind of behavior.

But really what that's hiding is the, the deep, profound feelings of loss and non-reciprocal emotional give and take. You know what I'm saying? I just was redundant, but like somebody else giving you love when you were asking for it. Hopefully that makes sense.

So the, the, the itch came from not me actually truly being repulsed by the person, though it feels like at the moment the feelings came from unfulfilled love back in the day in order for me to cope, and most people that are this way, that have either avoidant or a mixed bag is instead of feeling, compassionate or understanding, empathetic towards the person who need to you like, are, acting more emotional to you, you instead

shut that part of you down and want to punish that because it wasn't accepted in you. So why should it be accepted by this person? It's you just learned, nope, that's not how we do things. And so the more that people need you, the more ick you get with them because it was never modeled to you. 

Where was I? 'cause I keep going off my notes today.   📍 📍 📍 📍 so now I'm gonna go to how the attachment, your attachment style shapes your parent child relationship like with your, your kiddo, okay?   📍 📍 📍 And so if you are a secure parent, you're most likely to see your child as a separate person, right?

You like that they're able to regulate their own emotions and that you can maintain like attunement or, uh, presence like, um, understanding and being there for them, right? Even under stress you're able to model to them. love, unconditional love and constant reciprocal acceptance and being aware of what they need even in the middle of stress, 

📍 📍 📍 anxious parents may seek, and this is what I see a lot of my alienated parent, like my clients come to me with, especially in the beginning, is that anxious parents seek constant reassurance from their child. Or maybe not constant, but it's like this intermittent, like, I need something back from them.

I need to know that they care still too. That they didn't mean that things that they said to me, I need to feel it. Somebody validate. Right.  There's nothing wrong with the fact that you're like this. I wanna continue to say this because this episode, anything I say is never intended to shame or to say that what you're doing is wrong or that you need your child, and that's not right.

There's a reason why you're this way,  and really, we don't even have to go back into your childhood. We could just say that alienation, the attempts to alienate are enough for you to have developed some anxious attachment, um, tendencies. Okay? So there's that.  But anyway, so you can interpret back to if you do have the anxious, traits in you, then you may interpret their absence as catastrophe, or you may struggle to tolerate any sort of uncertainty.

Like you need to know all the answers like now because it's too much for you to handle. Um, anxious parents are obviously tend to. Default more towards the overwhelm and like, ooh, I don't know. This is too much confusion. Self-doubt. Doubt that they'll ever wanna come back to you because are you even good enough anyway?

Oh, maybe the other parent is all good, Maybe it was me. , If you're anxious, then this is likely hitting home for you and is, ,

representative or represents your experience, right? Okay. So avoidant parents   📍 📍 📍 if you're avoidant, you might minimize contact. You might be the one that first moves away. Like maybe things have been, depending on when your kid. Y'all's relationship started to get interrupted. You may to save your own,, like regulate your own self.

Emotionally. You may have been like, okay, well obviously they don't want me, forget it. There are, I I also have a lot of parents that come to me this way. I wouldn't say equal amount. I think I see more anxious, tendency to parents than I do avoid it. But that, or a mix, But many parents will just be like, mm-hmm.

Forget it. They rejected me. I'm done. that's because you are not as comfortable with vulnerability and intimacy, And you may unintentionally communicate emotional distance because of your body language or responses, reactions, actually, um, under stress or under attack, if you will. You're like, forget it.

I'll just save us all the trouble and I'll go over here and wait for them to contact me. That is a very safe behavior for somebody who's avoidant. I'm here, they know where I am. They'll, if they need me, I'll be here. I see, um, a lot of parents like this. I was about to say, I notice this happen more with dads.

I think that's just a, a result of how we're conditioned though from like an early age, like all of us. So I don't know. Anyway, but,  📍 📍 📍 disorganized parents. You may alternate between clinging and rejecting behaviors. May not rejecting behaviors, but like self-protecting behaviors, You may struggle with boundaries. You may find it hard to regulate your own behaviors or emotions.  Where you're up, down, it's more of a roller coaster. Again, this doesn't always have to be indicative of BPD or any sort of personality disorder,  though it may be. And that's okay too. ,

I think the key to all of this is becoming aware and then learning how to regulate yourself so that you can use even your quote unquote negative tendencies if you will, to your benefit and start to use it all for you. all of this is just data. You collecting data about your life, like your past, your early childhood.

That was through no fault of yours that it happened, we're all just victims. Of victims of victims, right? It's we can learn how to interrupt the cycle  of being victims. Of victims of victims, and instead be survivors. Start the whole survivor. pattern right for us and for generations to come if we like, or maybe you don't like the word survivor, it can be something else, overcomers, whatever. But it's really just data that you can use in order to uplevel your whole experience and your level of connection with all the people in your life, and also up level, your capacity capability.

Two different things, but capability to model effectively to your child from afar. ,  📍 📍 📍 📍 So

how can we shift towards a secure attachment? And after this y'all, if you're tempted to be like, okay, I know all about this. I'm gonna do this section, which is how can you start to shift towards secure attachment? And then last I'm gonna talk about, I think it'll be last, I'm gonna give you , three actual like actionable behaviors

 so right now I'm just gonna talk to, shifting your whole mindset towards the secure one. And then there's action behaviors.

  📍 📍 So the first one is obvious because I've been saying it throughout, is to develop self-awareness, Learn your attachment style, trace the patterns that you have displayed in relationships, and observe your responses, especially in the moments of stress or rejection. That's super important  because listen.

Like I said earlier, I know, I think I mentioned that, you could have had a secure attachment all the way up to even the relationship, the dysfunctional relationship you have with your ex or whatever that was with your ex. You could have carried a secure attachment, but then the second that your , child or children became alienated or that threat was there, you could have developed anxious or avoidant tendencies.

Right? that could have shifted, like started the shift of sort of a new chapter for you. And that could have actually. Metastasized, is that the word I wanna use? Sort of like, yeah. reproduced into other areas of your life as a result of the anxiety and the not enoughness you might feel because of the alienation.

Okay. So really observe , the responses you've had in the past in the moments of stress or rejection. Okay. Um,   📍 📍 also practice self-compassion. Recognize that your attachment styles are adaptations to like whatever your environment was in early, early on. Like, so you had that base model that you've been working with and you still probably are working with. 

We all kind of are, I think, I don't know, maybe you've completely departed from it, but, um, the base model is of your parents or who, your early caregivers. Right. And then your working model is this model that you've developed and you're still developing. Every day, every moment of your life moving forward  in the way that you choose to think, like the thoughts that you choose to carry with you about each and every tiny little experience you have in each one of your days. 

How you speak to somebody at the gas station, how they speak to you, how, you interpret that in your brain and how you file that away that is going to contribute to your attachment style. Even those kinds of, um, interactions, well, the seemingly like trivial interactions, how you, ,

Interacted early life like with teachers and your first job and whatever. And of course your first romantic partner. And then how that's evolved. Maybe you can look at just a slight overview. This doesn't need to take more than, I mean, a few minutes really, but you could, it will probably be going on in the background of your mind once you've now listened to this episode.

And if you're really committed to looking at your attachment style, then it'll probably be working in the background of your mind for however long until you've figured it all out for yourself, you know? But this may be, hopefully since we, this is the first time we've talked about it, depending on what else you've got going on now, it'll, , you'll put a, like a pin it's like you've dropped a pin in this area of your healing, so that you can start to notice any patterns moving forward. But really what I want to drive home to you guys is give yourself some grace and practice the self-compassion for, for your whole experience moving forward. You didn't know up until whenever it is that you did know that, Your behaviors were developing and reinforcing certain habits and tendencies and your attachment style, really. Okay. So   📍 📍 engage in therapy or coaching that is centered on your attachment based approaches. . this is what I work , with my clients all throughout , their time with me is we're working on becoming aware of the patterns, the responses that you have, and your idea , your beliefs of who you are as, a parent of, as a productive member of society as a Human being.  , we become aware of, dismantle your whole belief system,, and then, put it back together in a way that works for you moving forward, right? You get to decide that. So you're choosing your future reactions to all these given scenarios and the way that you think about yourself so that you can use those as responses for yourself in your default thinking like you're unconscious subconscious thinking while you're in your day.

Unhelpful thought about yourself comes up and an anxious reaction happens right for you. And you can now then be like, oh, I recognize it. This comes from my anxious beliefs based, and I'm not enough. But now I have this new thought already ready to put in place of this other old unhelpful thought.

It's really a thought error now I have a new belief ready. Anyway, , this is what my coaching is centered on basically, is that I help my clients to really become securely attached in their whole to and in their whole world that they're living.

So that you know that not only are you enough, but you can handle whatever comes your way. There's no anxiety about the anxiety or low anxiety about the anxiety if any at all. And that you can handle anything and everything that comes your way. You know, many of you have that belief or you wanna have that belief like it's there up in the, a lot of us work this way where we have these baby beliefs, if you will, these like young beliefs that in our higher thinking has either come up with or we've adopted or wanna adopt from other people.

We're like, yeah, I really, maybe you have that with some of the things that I've said either today or, uh, some other day, right? Where it's like, I know that that's where I wanna be headed, from my higher thinking executive functions.

That's the belief I really want. But, and though, like if you were to answer. Like on a questionnaire, you would go with this higher thinking belief. When it comes to your day to day, you're not using your higher thinking in your defaults. immediate reactions, you're working from your subconscious, but deeper beliefs.

What do they say? Like, 97% of your life is lived from Your instant reactions, what you think about how you fit into the world, really . It's the subconscious. So you, we have to, especially coming from what we have, the trauma that we have, the ongoing trauma, like injuries that we have.

At some point when you, when you're doing the work with me, those ongoing injuries they stop becoming injuries. They stop becoming. Dashes. Not that you aren't hurt by them, but they're easily recoverable or just, bounce right back off of you like for me, most of the stuff that happens, um, I had a new client actually ask me after that episode that I did, two weeks ago about being blocked from my daughter.

She was really, uh, disappointed for me and said, I mean, I just want more for you. Are you okay with the fact that she blocked you? And for me, I was like, oh, yeah, it's not a problem. Like it actually,  I love my daughter and I wish that she didn't, and I was disappointed in the moment, you know, when it happened and probably for couple days past that.

But I wasn't taking it personally, right? It wasn't a personal attack and I didn't have a gaping wound from her blocking me or from any of the words that she. Where my default used to be, how could they have done that? Why am I blocked? And I would've taken that to mean something about me, right?

Um, where today I know that that is just one more step on the way to our reunification. It's just a necessary step that had to happen. It's okay no matter what. It's totally fine with me because my belief truly, ID don't even consider that. It could be any other way that I'm the problem or that on the other side, if I was avoidant, leaning into avoidant behaviors, then I would think that she was the problem or they were, well we all know what the alienation, somebody was acting to stand between us and our kids.

Right? So, sure. But I'm not focusing on anybody being the problem here. I'm just focusing on the steps and the necessary actions that need to happen in order for us to get there. That's where my belief lies. Right? And that's what happens as a result of doing this work.  Okay? So I'm really talking today and I hope that, um, this doesn't come out all focused on me.

'cause that's not really what I'm doing. It's just the easiest way to talk about things sometimes is to just say it with my own experience anyway. So that was all from my, one thing says engage in therapy or coaching centered on attachment based approaches.   📍 📍 The next one is actually everything I was just talking about is to repair yourself beliefs.

Cultivate a sense of worthiness  and challenge the narratives of not enough or unlovable, . Which I was basically just talking about right there. Right? Which are the root of your anxious or avoidant patterns, is like feeling like either that you are not enough or they're unlovable, somebody's the problem.

It's more of a punitive, um, way of viewing relationships, interactions in the world, both on both sides, on anxious and avoidant. They're both,, punitive. Like somebody's gotta be the problem here, you know? Or some action has to be the problem. It's, it's blame based, I think. so repair yourself beliefs.  📍 📍

Focus on attunement instead of aiming for perfect parenting, Or some reunion. Aim for moments of genuine presence, which I was again, just touched on with this whole process with me and my daughter. This was just another step. The process to reunification, but it's not that I need that to happen now or that anything short of reunification is a fail. 

That's definitely not the case. You know, this is all just, my desire to connect with her and connect also with myself to my deeper the role that I, I, I know that I am here to play for her. Right? For, and, and that's to benefit me and her and whoever, right? Um, is to like, each one of these little actions that we take are interactions that we have,

these are all just responses that I have pre-planned out that align with my purpose to be present, find ways to be present for her and for myself, so aim for moments of genuine presence, whether through like written messages, in-person contact, visualizing po positive connection, which is something that I'm actually having one of my, that same client, I'm having her do, mock connection, uh, experiences basically, with herself for her kids, right?

I'm having her do, it's a, an exercise that I'm having her do where she's not actually connecting or reaching out, but she's doing that with herself, pretending like her kid is there. Practice rounds, of her visualizing positive connection, how she can show up and model to them. Um, coming from a positive, secure role.

Her, her role and what we all, I think naturally, from a time of birth really do have, is that secure love and role. Right? We all do have it there. It's just that things happen and it, they take us off our path, you know, along the way. And so that's our responsibility for our way back. But now I'm getting into the weeds again.

So, um Right. Aim for moments of genuine presence,  📍 📍

build on emotional regulation skills, right? Learn and implement grounding mindfulness and even somatic exercise or practices that's help you to stay anchored, especially when triggered by experiences that happen as a result of alienation. Okay?  Basically it's just get your toolbox, stock your toolbox with all of the, responses and helpful things to, to be redundant tools that you can use in the moments of stress.

You know, but don't just know the tools, like because you read them or you heard them without practicing them. You really want to practice these tools so that they become second nature become very familiar with them because in the moments of high stress, you're not gonna recall those things that you've just heard them once or you tell yourself you're gonna remember them.

You really need to make this, this whole process, each one of these episodes that I do, it's all a practice. It is a way of life that you, I I really think that, I mean, I guess it can't hurt if you are just wanna, you know, cherry pick ideas. I mean, I think that that can be helpful a lot of times. Like, take what you like, leave the rest.

But if you're not fully committed to making a practice out of your healing and using, utilizing the tools that you want, that you decide if you're not fully committed to that, you're gonna have a harder time, finding, uh, lasting relief, um, and finding. look, even being able to emotionally regulate if you're only dipping your foot in here and there and just having the tools because you've heard them or somebody told you about something. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know some stuff to do. A lot of people do that. I used to do that too. Oh, I know some stuff.

And I would be well versed on that stuff, but did I practice it every day? And the difference was, is maybe I could be well versed and I could go share it with somebody else. Right. But the way that I felt on the daily, the way that I experienced my world was there was a, was a huge departure. Like there were, there was huge gap in between what I knew and what of course I had the wisdom from because I did all the practice.

Okay. Alright. I don't wanna be standing on my soap box here, but it is really helpful too. build on the emotional regulation skills, not just have them sitting in your back pocket or like in a corner somewhere. Okay?   📍 📍 Seek corrective relationships is the last one. And I worded that this way on purpose because you wanna strengthen and really mindfully look at, maybe take like a little audit or an assessment of your current relationships and are they supportive or are they not? 

Um, and it doesn't always have to be the other person's fault. It isn't really about fault, but do I feel supported around in this relationship or do I not feel supported in this relationship? , And whatever you determine, would I feel more supported outside of this relationship? How do I feel when I'm away from that person?

Do I feel. More supported things are more flowy, or are they not? And that can help you to decide whether you wanna stay with those, have those relationships in your life, you wanna spend less time with them or whatever. But it's really important to look at the support who you're surrounding yourself with, right?

Um, also not just with your, significant other relationship or your friendships, your family, and also the professionals that you choose to put yourself around, those bonds, if you're choosing on purpose, like you're choosing, not coming from anxious attachment or, or avoided attachment, but you're choosing coming from what can I do to. Create the most supportive environment for myself moving forward. The most supportive relationships, the corrective relationships, the ones that go to the opposite way of maybe that like if you had a relationship that really pulled out the anxious in you.

Like I, I can look back on my life and like the last guy he really pulled out, the anxious attachment that I had in me really pulled it out. He was avoidant and so I became anxious in that relationship. Not all of my relationships are like that, you know? In fact, a lot of, anyway, it doesn't matter. But in that one, it really did.

And it was a awful experience the whole time we were together. I mean, agonizing experience. 'cause in my mind he activated this part of me like, no, I can change him. I can help him. Even saying that I would, anyway. When you now choose secure attachment styles or an attachment style that does not decompensate or does not undermine your attempts to heal yourself and does not undermine , your intentions, you will find that the, that those healthy relationships could really heal your attachment style moving forward.

Like let's say you're anxious and you get with a secure person. Don't go for, for an avoidant person. If you're anxious, okay. It will, it will cause you a special kind of hell on top of already experiencing alienation. And that's another point I wanted to mention is that your attachment style is so important to understand about yourself.

Not only like yes, with your kiddo and the way that you show up with, for , your relationship with your kiddo, even from afar, the way that you experience your relationship with your kiddo, even from afar. Right. We have a lot of alone time being alienated parents and the way that you experience yourself and them in this whole mess will literally make or break the way that you see life.

If you feel like life is very dark hopeless and the only way you'll be happy is if they come back to you. That is really something to look at because in that place I would. Just given that information there, it would, it's more of an anxious at, uh, attachment style that's going to affect that. But then if you are, , then with a partner who is avoidant on top of this rejection situation that you're in, it's only going to compound your feelings of worthlessness because now nobody wants to be with you.

. And that can also, the relationship that you have with a significant other, even if it's what, whatever it is going on there, even other relationships where somebody else is avoiding you and you're going and chasing them, it's going to reinforce the tendency to be anxious and then you're going to transfer that sort of project that onto your kid.

So I, I really, I wish I actually would've said that in the beginning, because that's really important for y'all if you're, if you are there to understand about yourself and the way that you can heal yourself is kind of, .

Counterintuitive to what you would probably choose otherwise. Especially for us as alienated parents, letting go, having the courage to let go of the relationships where, , somebody is avoiding you, like in your adult relationships, And then replacing , that avoidant relationship with your own love for you. Like really learning how to love yourself and be there for yourself and sort of heal. I know this is gonna sound kind of woo and whatever, but like, heal the emotional wounds that you had from your needs.

Not being met as a kiddo, not for a way for you to look back and wo was me and my needs weren't met, but more like really now take the proactive, approach to your healing by really providing for you re-parenting yourself, like providing for yourself what you did not receive Then is number one in repairing the relationship with yourself and also with your kids eventually.

Right? But two is to now choose relationships where the other person is either secure. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're an anxious, , attachment style, then choosing a secure partner would really help you to heal those wounds that you've had. To heal your view and your expectations on the world.

Because if you're choosing avoidant, then you're constantly feeling disappointed and disappointing yourself. They're disappointed you, and so,, though you may have learned as a child that in order for it to be love, this is where I was. And I've talked about this. And, um, I, you know, if you haven't listened or watched that episode back, not this last spring, but the spring before it, I was talking about childhood, I have to maybe link it, but how your   📍 📍 childhood trauma, informed all of your decisions leading up to alienation.

Um, it was May, like 24. That would be a good one for you to go back to.  And listen, I cannot remember it. I'll link it below. I promise. I will.  Neurons that fire together, wire together. And Basically if , your parent, one of your parents provided love, right? But they were mixed messages and also provided or, instilled a sense of fear in you or like that you weren't gonna be taken care of,, like needs not being met.

The chances are high that in today's world, if you haven't done the work to heal that, that now you still are attracted to people who aren't there for you and won't be there for you. And you can actually only see or feel love, or that's what you identify as love from people who are also causing fear causing insecurity and maybe even danger in your life.

Like that feels like love for you to have love and fear coming from the same source. then it's going to be difficult for you to shift over to a secure, like if it's a romantic relationship, secure partner because it's gonna feel boring you're, might even feel like they're not interested in me.

there's not that rev, that spark that you might have felt. In previous relationships that clearly were dysfunctional or weren't good for you, maybe good for the both of you. Who knows?  You know? It's an adjustment and it's because we, me meaning, but probably you two , tend towards the hypervigilance.

Like me, because of my mom, I always had to be on alert because her style was chaotic, you know, where she would give love and then she wouldn't, and then she would, it wasn't just wouldn't give love and ignore me. She would go the opposite way, you know?

I learned to be hypervigilant growing up. I'm constantly like on edge about like what? And so now to this day, like if you, without even trying to pay attention, you notice when people have their hair cut, you notice when something's slightly different where other people don't notice it.

You're just highly attuned to how other people show up, It's likely because it's goes back to hyper vigilance from early years or previous years, let's just say. 'cause it could have happened in adulthood too.

You could have had a secure relationship and then ended up, even by luck of the draw, it happens. Isolated sort of incidents, living up there spurts where you have a secure attachment and end up with. A partner who is not and is in fact highly dysfunctional, but if you ended up staying with them, it's because you kept giving them chances.

Because in your mind, everybody deserves a second chance or a third chance. And you just keep giving them a chance because of your commitment to the relationship because you are securely attached.

You're like, it's okay, I can carry us both. Right? There's so much to talk about and that's why I said today is just like a day that we're opening the conversation. And that's why today I, I'm actually recording on the day that I'm releasing and I'm gonna have to go edit it. And I've been talking for so long that I probably should shut up. But, so right now what I'm gonna do, I talked about seeking corrective relationships.  📍 📍 📍 📍

I'm going to give you those three behaviors that can help you to move towards secure attachment. Okay?  By the way, I wanna say too, that I need to give, acknowledgement or respect or just say that a lot of the information that I know today, and I'd have to go back because it's been so long, but the same counselor that introduced me to the term parental alienation back in the day, it was right when I was going through that breakup with the other guy, she suggested the book attached. And I tell you, it was like somebody turned the light on in a very otherwise dark existence when I read that book. And so I definitely need to say that much of what I'm sharing with you here is probably based off of some version of that book, along with all of the classes that I took and education that I had  But the three behaviors that move you towards secure attachment, I got this from that book. and I wrote it in my notes from like, a long time ago, and I found them. And reinterpreted it to be for our kids, the three behaviors that move you towards secured hatch man are,  📍 📍 to be present and supportive.

Available, be available by responding lovingly and sensitively. ?  Check in with them for time to time if that's an option for you, and provide comfort when things go wrong. The reason I point this out, and this seems like duh, like intuitive, this is what a parent's job is, but when we're coming from something like what we are, the tendency is to lean towards self-protection or neediness, right?

depending on what your style is. Instead, you really wanna be mindful about whatever interactions that you do have with them. Even if that's only in your head, you want to replace neediness, not ignore neediness, but just mindfully interrupt and replace neediness or avoidance with being present and supportive for them of them, being available for them no matter what because we are the parents,

so responding in a loving and sensitive way, right, for their experience. Again, I know this is all intuitive, but I think it's different when you're applying these behaviors intentionally in order to heal your attachment, um, wounds, if you will. There's possibly,   📍 📍 allow them to be dependent on you when they need.

And so what I mean here is that many parents will be like, well, they're only coming to me for when they need something. , They only come and get money from me and go away, or whatever it is that you might be saying.  If, if you are here, just live by this rule of I'm gonna allow them to be dependent on me when they need, I'm gonna be there for them.

To the, to the extent of course that you can, of course, with boundaries, , I wouldn't give everything up for them. And so that you have nothing, but obviously just be as present and supportive as you possibly can and know that they will be coming in and out because the natural, oh my gosh, I have so much to say about this, because the natural, parent-child relationship, it should be, and I heard this somewhere too.

you hear about helicopter parents or like, I don't know, they have all these different nicknames for the styles where, but like usually in today's world, the way that I think that coming from the anxious part of me, I thought that I needed to be like a helicopter parent and that I always needed to be overseeing or making sure that I knew all the things.

I think that also came from Alienations, like the tactics started really early on, right? Right. When we split and we were, she was young, but, so there was that insecurity that was there because I was, like I said, I was really intentionally trying to be a secure presence for her, right. Grounding presence for her.

But because of that, uh, of my role being threatened, I would go on high alert to parent her and my overcompensation, I guess, in my role as parent. Had me drawn to her And hovering over. And what they say instead the comparison is like a bee to a flower, and so we, I was in the B roll, right?

Like hovering over her being the flower, right? Watching her every move to see if she was hurt or it's gonna fall or she needed anything. Are you okay? Are you okay? How can I help you? Blah blah blah. Right? Hands, all, hands on. Instead, what they say about a healthy model for a parent-child relationship is that you are the flower and the child is the bee.

They will come in and need love and then they will go out and they will go explore, and then they will come in. And because you are the grounding presence, they, they keep coming back to you. They will always come back when you're there. This is when they're little and they're not being alienated, right?

They will always come back because this is where the, nectar is or whatever, because you're always providing that love, They will come back anytime they need and that's how it's supposed to be. But the hovering ends up going into the enmeshment and insecurity you needing them.

Hopefully that makes sense. Okay. So be available, be present, be supportive.   📍 📍 The other behavior, next behavior is don't interfere. you offer them behind the scenes support. Okay? Offer them, a handful of solutions for them to choose from, Instead of micromanaging and, undermining their abilities their autonomy.  Really it, at, at any age, you can start this even as toddlers, you just do it with smaller things obviously, and then move on up. But really, as you guys all know, the whole point of parenting is to bring them up so that they can be self-reliant and go out into the world and be productive member of society, obviously.

But

a lot of times we, because of our insecure or anxious attachments or whatever it is that's going on for us, we. End up reversing that without even knowing. And we're already dealing with that, with the alien, with alienation as a whole, but then we're needing them and so we're not supporting them even though we say we're supporting them, we're actually looking for validation and things get further reversed as as if they already aren't with the alienation.

Right. So instead, try not to interfere with them becoming individuals. Right. To having their autonomy. That's the whole point of this whole parenting thing anyway, bring them up so that they can go out and flourish. So . Allow them to make the mistakes, allow them to, fall.

Right. And yeah, That's that. And then the last one is encouragement. Always be there to be their biggest cheerleader, the biggest fan, right? Be accepting of their goals and help to boost their self-esteem. Be there to help them get accomplished what they want, you know, whatever that is. Be a resource for them to help them get to where they're going, wherever that is.

Even if you see that where they want to go isn't right or useful or a good purpose in your mind. Whatever it is that you're saying to yourself, help them to be more of who they are, even in their, .

Journey to find themselves, you know, or even in their mistake making

yeah. So just be, be, just be the encourager, their source for renewing their energy. Right. Be refreshing to them and supportive. . All right. With alienation. 'cause you guys always all know, like, think about it with you. Would you rather, like, let's say you have a goal or something's going on and maybe you're not on the best terms with one of your parents, but wouldn't you rather going to one of your parents and having them be excited for you about some goal that they really don't care about for you and really they have other ideas for you.

Maybe you know that, but with you, you coming to them , with whatever you're doing and them responding in the moment to you for you with excitement and support and how can I help you? What's next for you? What else can I help you with? I'm so excited for this new. Project that you're starting no matter what, even if you think it's gonna fail.

So what, what really is going to help them is them, feeling your support in the moment. Even for the things that you know may fail, don't worry about that. The real failure is one, them even not trying or you not, showing up in a way that feels good for the both of you. In the end, you know, the real fail is you avoiding the whole thing or working against what they think is gonna make them happy. You know, especially going through what they have. Like, if you can be that source, if they're not, especially if they're not getting it from the other side, then um, it's gonna be one more thing that's gonna draw them to you, you know? Okay. I have to go.

Um, oh, let me just, just recap. Main point to this whole episode is that number one, attachment is not some destiny of yours. It's always possible , to change and adapt and work towards having a different attachment style. Okay? So it's not the end all be all. You're not always gonna be anxious or you're not always gonna be avoidant or the mix between the two.

It's okay. No matter what you are, you developed the way that you developed in order to, , get your needs met in the most efficient way for you back when you did develop the traits that you have today.

Understanding your own attachment style provides tools for healing and reconnecting, especially regardless of your child's current status or readiness. I'm gonna repeat that. Understanding your own style provides all that you need for healing and reconnection regardless of their readiness.

And what I mean is you're not gonna force the reconnection on them, but when you are already there at reconnection, let's say that's your destination, I'm, I wanna eventually reconnect with my child. And hopefully you'd also want to create a good experience for you along the way, right? You can already get there and feel connected to your child even from afar.

Being so open to receiving and you already believing that connection is, is uninterrupted. Maybe the experiences your exchanges have been interrupted, but that connection will always be there and it's stronger than ever. Then when they do come, they're gonna be, that It's gonna feel that much more welcoming and open and doable for them and for you, right?

But when you are seeing that there's a barrier in between you and them, and you're focusing on that barrier, that's all you will see. You know? So focus on your style and developing tools and,

practices that support your healing and y'all's healing. Okay? Secure attachment is about being good enough no matter what. Everybody is good enough, right? It provides safety, predictability, and openness to repair. It's not about perfect responses. It's not about being a perfect human you know, it's not about right or wrong.

It's about how you experience your world from today moving forward. It's about feeling enough and feeling that whoever you choose to be in relationship with is also enough, and it's not about anybody falling short, but about you learning how to connect and,

work together, focus on shifting your inner narratives and emotional patterns, which will ripple out into all the parent child interactions, even when contact is limited. So really that's where all the focus should be. And I know that you guys get this from every single one of the sessions.

episodes that I've done thus far, it's . Your focus needs to be mostly centered on you and your attempts and your goals, what's right for you, predecided, right? And aligning your core values, which you've pre decided. If you work with me, then you do.

Aligning your all of your actions up with your core values moving forward. Does this align? Does it not align the way that we go about it , simplifies all of this so that your work moving forward isn't confusing and your choices moving forward aren't confus., You're just following, a very intuitive, , plan for yourself so that you're not feeling like you have to rely on me or anybody else to make your decisions once our time's done together.

Or if you're not even working with me and you, you're just doing this. Just pre decide what your core values are and then each time some something comes up in your day, decide how you wanna behave based on your current core values that you want to be displaying and feeling and showing in your life.

Right. Does this align with my core value of being present or does it move work against being present? Right. Like if, let's say you wanted to like not contact them or no, they said I'll just wait for them to contact me. Does that align with me being present? No, it probably doesn't. Easy choice, you know?

. So. This whole roadmap encourages your purpose, a sense of agency and practical self-reflection, empowering you

To heal yourselves first, and have that be a foundation for repairing and supporting y'all's parent-child relationship. Right? So all of this is all the work that you do in order to create a foundation for repairing the work that you and your kiddos will do. You have to have this work done first, in my opinion.

Okay. I gotta go because I gotta go edit that. It's already three o'clock. I will talk to you next week. Bye.