Fresh Take: Trevor Hanson on Healing Our Attachment Styles

0:01At DSW, we ask the important questions like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an RSVP. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or DSW.com today and let us surprise you. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Amy. Today, I'm talking to Trevor Hansen. He is a coach and founder of The Art of Healing.

0:43It's The Art of Healing by Trevor on Instagram. Trevor teaches relationship and attachment skills through the Secure Self Club. Welcome, Trevor. Hey, thank you for having me. The first question I have from you is just starting in your bio, you say that you teach attachment skills. And from my understanding of attachment theory, it's pretty primal. It's pretty learned in our earliest parts of our lives. And yet you're saying it's also a skill, something we can do maybe more effectively. So tell us about that. Yeah. So when I think about the word attachment skills, really, it's not so much the idea of, oh, I'm learning a skill and I'm therefore behaving differently.

1:20So the way our attachment style is formed. And if someone's not familiar, attachment style basically describes how you feel a about yourself. Do I have confidence? Do I have that self-worth? Do I feel connected to myself to where generally, no matter what happens, like I know I'm okay and I'm safe. So it's that. And then it's also how we connect with other people. If we feel anxiety, like love is scarce or love has to be earned, or maybe we kind of shut down in the face of emotions because it feels like too much for us. That might be an indication of a certain kind of attachment style. It's like how our internal programming around love responds to other people.

1:58And particularly, I'm most helpful for those people who are in what we call the anxious attachment style camp. And the anxious attachment, they're the person who has fears of abandonment, fears of betrayal. They feel like they're not good enough. They rely on other people. They're the big time people pleaser that does everything for everybody else. And if they're dating, they're kind of a bit more pursuing and clingy in a committed relationship. They're the one to bring up the argument and chase their partner around the house until it gets resolved. And the way that those feelings were created or that program was created was through emotional experiences.

2:36Nobody logically sat you down and was like, all right, you got to be afraid of abandonment. Like this is important. You didn't read it from a book. You didn't learn it from anyone speaking to you. You learned it through emotional experiences where you felt maybe unsafe, unseen, that you didn't feel heard, you felt looked over or shame. And so, the attachment skills, the idea is that it's a skill or a practice that you can learn to give yourself the opposite experience, which is creating feelings of self-love, self-trust, self-compassion, hope, all the kind of things you want to feel in your heart if you're kind of aiming to be that securely attached person.

3:14And so I know it's a very long explanation, but essentially it's that idea of I want to teach you how to take this big old syringe full of all those good feelings and know how to inject it into your heart every single day. Because then you do that enough and wow, you start feeling differently about yourself. You start feeling differently about your relationships. You feel more secure and confident. So that's what we mean by attachment skills. And the attachment theory, this came from, I think, Bowlby in the 1950s. Is that right? Okay, so we've talked about him a little on the show. So take us all the way back to the beginning.

3:46What is attachment theory? Yeah, so all the way back to the beginning, we're kind of mentioning it here. But think of it as your internal programming. You know, a computer will respond or an algorithm will respond based on how it's written. And we have programming around the way we feel specifically in relationships. And to make it really simple, I'll describe kind of like three basic styles. There's more, but there's three. There's two that are insecure and one that is literally labeled secure. A secure attachment, that person has the programming where they walk around in the world feeling safe.

4:22They feel confident in themselves. They don't feel like they need to please other people to be loved. They know they have inherent worth. If their partner's upset, they're like, you know, that's a real bummer and it's sad, but like, I'm okay. I'm not freaking out, losing my mind. I'm good. because of that, they're probably going to show up more emotionally regulated too. They don't have fears, like deep-rooted fears around things like rejection or abandonment. I mean, they're still going to feel it when somebody rejects them because it's not fun, or if somebody betrays them, it's still going to be hurtful.

4:52But it's not this ongoing hypervigilance and fear that they might have. They generally are trusting and their relationships are a lot more healthy because they respond from this more calm, consistent, regulated place. They choose partners that are good for them, they stay with partners that are good for them, and they leave relationships that aren't good. So, that's the secure. So, the other two, we'll call them anxious and avoidant. There's like longer names and those sorts of stuff, but just for simplicity. And these are probably the names that you've heard if you're like scrolling on social media and whatnot.

5:24And so, it'll be familiar for some. The core of the two insecure attachment styles, both anxious and avoidant, they're nearly the same. It's usually that there's some sort of fear of abandonment or fear of rejection. The anxious will relate more to the abandonment word, and the avoidant will relate more to the rejection word. They're like, oh, yeah. It's kind of this undertone of anxiety and fear around those things. There's just some sensitivity there, right? And usually, it's not required, but it's also usually sprinkled in some sort of self-worth challenge, some sort of narrative that says, I'm not good enough.

5:59I don't measure up. Or there's a fear of not being good enough. So, it's fears of abandonment, rejection, fears of not being good enough, which you can see they're very overlapping. If you don't believe that you're good enough, you're going to be afraid that everyone's going to leave you. And so, like, okay, this is starting to make sense. They, like, work together. So, so far, you're like, well, what's the difference, like, between the anxious and the avoidant? The key difference is fight, flight freeze. We know that list of how we respond to fears. That's pretty common. And the anxious are more on the fight side of things, the fight and the fawn.

6:33They will be the ones in a relationship where they're the one always bringing up the issue. And because they have this fear of abandonment, they feel like they're not good enough. It's brought up with all this emotional energy and all this emotional energy and anxiety comes out as criticism. You never do this. Why do you always do that? What the hell is wrong with you? Like, they're just like coming after people. And their partners, most likely, are a little bit more on the avoidance side. They run from the discomfort. They're like, I don't want to be rejected. I don't want to be told that I'm not good enough.

7:05This is scary. I don't want to, you know, make things worse. So they duck and cover. They're the guy who's run into the garage to like work on something and totally avoid the whole conversation. Or they're just like, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. You're like, well, say something, man. Like, I'm talking about a brick wall here. Whatever I say, we'll make you mad. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. And the wild thing is, is that you can see in this pattern, the anxious, they trigger the avoidant. The avoidance fear is rejection. They come at them with this criticism. The avoidant feels rejected.

7:33You start shutting down. That shutdown triggers the anxious. That feels like abandonment to me. You're shutting down. You're not saying anything. Where did you go? And so they become more escalated. They become more fearful. And I describe that dynamic because it's really relatable to a lot of people where especially, and it doesn't have to be this way, Men tend to be a little bit more on the avoidant side. Women tend to be a little bit more on the anxious side. Not always true. I came from the anxious attachment and my wife is definitely more from the avoidant. And so it can be reversed. But it's a dynamic that really plays out a lot.

8:05And the goal or the key there is that at least one individual in the relationship, because if you're listening to this, you're probably listening to it alone. And so ideally, both people would be working on themselves. Both people are becoming secure. so they're no longer responding from that fearful, self-protected place. But you're probably solo, and so I'm just going to call out the individual and say, like, the goal for you would be to build to that place of security. So you're no longer responding from that anxiousness. You're responding from a place of groundedness and curiosity. And all the communication skills we hear about in this world are totally inaccessible to most people because they haven't healed their attachment style first.

8:43They're emotionally dysregulated. The boat is sinking. And you're like, well, will you please just use a healthy I statement? Go ahead. I can't use that right now. Well, where do these attachment styles come from? Because it sounds like you're acting out of this deep woundedness because your childhood was a terribly sad one, right? But it seems like these run deep for reasons that don't have to be, you didn't have to like grow up in a workhouse out of Charles Dickens to have an avoidant style. You could just have a parent who was a little this or a little that. It seems like a small shift can really send you one way or another.

9:17Totally. And there's a big long list of potential influential factors, right? Some of them are more egregious, like abuse and things like that. Obviously, if you hear this, and you had abusive background, you're like, Oh, man, this is clear. Like, of course, I feel this way. I was never meant to feel safe. Everybody abandoned me. Dad stepped out, like all that kind of stuff. That's the clear thing. But most people aren't sitting there relating to that. Most people are like, well, my childhood was like, it wasn't perfect. It was pretty decent. Like mom, dad tried, you know, I had food, like we were good.

9:47So like, what is the answer? People spend months and months and months in therapy trying to figure out what those are. We just give you a list. And we're like, just pick some. And then we get that done instantly. So we can move on and help you work through it. But I'll give you a few examples. Mine is very mild, right? I had very good parents, very connecting. I think one, I was built up to be this golden child, my brothers and everybody else would always be like, oh, you're the golden child. You're the this, you're the that. And I started to associate my worth with being perfect, essentially, being the golden child.

10:19It literally came from compliments is where mine came from. This is place of like, you're so awesome. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to be awesome. It combined with probably some other things, but it could be like having a mom who was really anxious herself and didn't give you as much eye contact or touch or wasn't able to respond emotionally to you when you needed it. Or maybe depressed dad, you felt like you had to do a song and dance just to get him to come back online. So the narrative there is I got to earn love. People aren't available for me. I got to really fight for it in order to get that attention.

10:53The list goes on. I mean, it can come from, you know, religious settings that have a lot of shame. And I'm not against religious settings at all. I mean, I'm a religious guy myself. But when shame is the kind of or a heavy obedience narrative gets mixed up with this idea of I'm not good enough and I got to earn God's love and all that. It can come from that. It doesn't have to be some big, crazy, egregious background at all. And explain why this is worth investigating. Because I think a certain kind of person might come to this being like, I'm good. My childhood was fine. I'm fine. And if I have a problem, it's that my partner, if they didn't bother me all the time, or if they didn't do this, then there's no problem here.

11:34Why is this worth investigating? Even if you don't think you have one of these attachment styles that swings one way or the other, if you think this doesn't apply to you, is it just because the conflict in your relationship has to come from this in some form? This is a little bit of a controversial take, but I believe that almost all relationship dysfunction on every level comes from insecurity. And this is what I mean, is that anytime you are defensive. That's mild, right? That's everyday like conflicts. That's the easy stuff. That comes from a place of protecting yourself. That comes from a place of fear.

12:07That doesn't come from a place of openness and curiosity and being able to remain close and consistent. You are protecting yourself on a deeper level than you ever even know when you're defensive. So if you're like, oh, well, man, I've been defensive. So, okay, check. You probably lean on one side of that spectrum or another. A little bit avoiding, a little bit anxious, and it could be a mixed bag and you can be generally secure, but sometimes you're definitely not, right? If you've ever been critical of your partner, really coming down on them with the you always or you nevers, especially if you use those absolutes in anything.

12:41And people will think that, well, I'm not critical. I just tell them how it is. I'm like, well, you don't actually tell them how it is. Like, for example, when people think that they're being honest or telling their partner how it is, they're usually pointing out the partner's behavior instead of pointing out what's more important, which is how you feel about it. Like, let's say your partner comes home late all the time. You want to have dinner with them and they just keep coming home late and it's really freaking annoying. And underneath annoying is that it hurts. And yet you show up to them and you say, you don't even care about me.

13:13I tell you this all the time. I've told you a thousand times and you just don't even seem to care. Like, whoa, you're accusing them of being uncaring. You're just pointing out the fact that they're late. The fact that they're late and then all of a sudden that, well, that puts them in a position where they got to get defensive and try to protect themselves. But really the truth is, hey, when you come home on time, I feel so loved. It's so fun to hang out with you. It's meaningful. And when you don't, it really hurts. And I want to figure out how to make this work together, right? That's the secure version.

13:45That's the honest version. And so if you find yourself getting critical, defensive, if you ever just shut down and you feel like you can't say anything during a conversation, you probably got a little bit of this. If you find yourself people pleasing in order to keep friendships, even agreeing to do stuff you don't really want to do. And there's a case where you can do that, right? That's called being just like a good human being. But if you're consistently doing it to where you're sacrificing your own needs and your values and then become resentful and your relationships aren't quite as fulfilling or you're over apologizing all the time.

14:17Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, I'm so sorry. You probably got a little bit of this in you. And so there's the other side of this that there is so much that gets unlocked when you move into that secure place. Just internal peace, better relationships, more authenticity. All of it starts to unlock for a person. So that's, in a very tight nutshell, I would say it's worth exploring. I'm talking to Trevor Hansen from the Secure Self Club. We'll be right back. Summer is not a time for a full face of makeup, but there are days I just still want to look awake and alive, maybe even healthy. And to do all that, really, I only need one thing.

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17:26Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Okay, so two things you said before the break, Trevor, that I wanted to follow up with you about. The first one is the silent treatment, which is something that if you have a partner who's avoidant, this is my understanding anyway, that's their default mechanism. They feel criticized either because you're actually criticizing them or because you bring up, you've been coming home a lot lately and it gets taken up to 11 and they do this anyway. And the silent treatment is what results. It can be very hard to be on the receiving side of that and very painful.

18:01And I thought in your work, you've reframed what the silent treatment is about in a way that I thought was pretty helpful. So can you tell us about that? Yeah. So I'm going to give you a framework and a tool that you can use to understand this and your own patterns for anybody who's listening. And it's easier to understand. So there's an acronym that I like to use to help us map out what we call any kind of attachment cycle, and specifically an anxious or an avoidant attachment cycle. And the cycle is where you get into your spiral, where you feel a trigger, where you're protecting yourself with shutting down or criticism.

18:37And it all feels chaotic and it's hard to keep track of what's going on. But if you can see it really clearly, you can break the cycle. And so I'm framing this before we get into your question too so that some people can understand the utility of it. When you can actually map out the steps and stages of your cycle, oh, you're so empowered to start breaking it. And so we're going to kind of get a two for one. One, we're going to reveal a little deeper understanding of the avoidant and why they shut down while giving you a framework that you can use to break your own cycles. It depersonalizes it, right?

19:06It seems like you just get one step above it and you say, oh, this is the cycle. I get it. Yes, exactly. Okay. Exactly. There's so many benefits to it. I could talk until I'm blue in the face about it, but we'll jump into each piece. Okay, yeah, tell us. Tempo, T-E-M-P-O, like tempo the beat to a music, right? And so T is trigger. And that's the moment, the circumstance that brings up uncomfortable feelings, negative beliefs, whatever it is. So let's go back to our example. The one partner criticizing the other for coming home late all the time. Okay, that can be our trigger. It can be anything though.

19:42It can be your partner not texting you back. It could be your partner going quiet. Maybe you're on the other side and they're shutting down. Like whatever it is, it's that moment where it's like, oh crap, this is not good. I'm feeling stuff and I'm about to get into this negative place. So the partner criticizes the other one. We'll say, we'll call them Jill and Jack just so we can keep track of everybody. So Jill, she criticizes Jack and she's like, hey, you're never home on time. And Jack, the E is the emotion that he feels. So the T is the trigger, the criticism. The E is the emotion. Emotion is maybe he starts to feel a little bit fearful.

20:18Crap, what's going to happen here? I don't know what to do. maybe he does feel a little bit frustrated or angry. Usually under frustration and anger though is something like hurt and fear or disappointment and then like it comes out as frustration and anger. It's always almost deeper. You know we call frustration a secondary or anger a secondary emotion and the primary is usually something much softer and much much deeper. So he's got fear, maybe hurt, maybe some anger, and the meaning that he's making in his head at that moment, or the belief that he's kind of running. And these are usually beliefs that he's probably had his whole life running in the background, such as, it's not safe to share how I feel.

21:02I'm not good enough. I will never be good enough for her. I'm just a disappointment. And especially for men, they have a lot of negative beliefs about their capacity to be that provider, that safe place, that good guy, this belief that she doesn't respect me, she doesn't see me for who I am. All sorts of beliefs could be going on in his head. We're not sure which one, but it's probably one of those, most likely. And from that place of meaning or the story he's telling himself in his head, it doesn't actually mean that it's true. It's just what's going on in his head. So if you were to map out your own cycle, the meaning that you make is usually catastrophic and it's usually not terribly true, which is totally fine.

21:41I'm not telling you to change it yet. I'm just telling you to note it. So we're noting down Jack's negative beliefs and meaning. And maybe another one is that he has a meaning that if I say anything else, it's going to get worse. It's going to make it way worse. I'm going to get more criticized. The night's going to be horrible. Everything's going to blow up. I don't want that. I want to ask a question about that because it seems to me that's the moment where your attachment style is coming into play. Like I can't say anything or this will get so much worse. That might be a story that you're bringing from an earlier place in your life to this.

22:13That may or may not be true, but you're applying that to this situation. Yeah. And that kind of leads us to the P of protection. And I'll kind of tie it all back through this. So Jack probably holds on to negative beliefs, like you said, from childhood, from early experiences, such as it's not safe to share how I feel. And so I'm not going to share how I feel. I'm afraid. The P of protection is what you do to protect yourself. He shuts down. That's his move. Jill's move might look like criticism, might look like fawning and trying to just really make him happy so that she can get love. There's all sorts of ways that you can protect yourself.

22:45But his protection comes from the negative belief that I can't say anything because things are going to get way worse. And I can't share my emotions because that's not okay. And that's not safe. It can be, I want to protect us, the relationship. I feel like if I say anything else, I'm going to say something hurtful because I'm feeling so much right now and I don't want to let it out. And so I want to protect us and our connection while to think that that's even what's going on in him, right? Most of the time we think, whoa, you're just doing this to punish me. No, it's all about fear. It's all about anxieties.