How to Overcome Attachment Issues and Build Meaningful Relationships with Adam Lane Smith

How to Overcome Attachment Issues and Build Meaningful Relationships with Adam Lane Smith – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX3c1M9Xm6o

Transcript:
(00:00) most people have only heard the word attachment through emails or through Buddhism which is why I get confused looks when I talk about attachment attachment Theory something invented back in the 50s by John Bowlby attachment says how do you attach to another human being how does an infant attached to their caregiver do they attach securely where they say my needs will be met and I will be loved and I will be cared for and it will be fair and it will be predictable and it will be understandable or am I going to
(00:28) attach insecurely in one of three ways insecurely where they will be unpredictable I have to navigate it carefully I have to I’m in danger people might abandon me or hurt me people might not care about me people might be too selfish people might blame me I could have something wrong with me something has gone wrong and I am insecurely attached it is the way a baby attaches to their caregivers which then carries forth into all your relationships throughout your adult life because you learned that lesson early on about how
(00:56) you expect other people to act and you never question it again hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up
(01:34) let’s get started hello everyone and welcome to flow over fear I am so glad you’re here because today we are going to talk about relationships our relationships are the things that can create a lot of fear in our lives but also a lot of Joy they can sometimes be traumatic or they can be tremendous so how do we approach them correctly well that’s where my guest today comes in Adam Lane Smith is known as attachment Adam and he has worked for years as a like licensed psychotherapist and now focuses his specialty as an
(02:08) attachment specialist through his new role Adam helps people to build a new foundation for their life fixing attachment issues as their core means you can transform your relationships and marriage dating work friendships and family by showing his clients how to repair their attachment wounds Adam teaches people to open up to others to find their Voice receive the love they’ve always wanted and live without fear which is what we are all about here today so I think this is going to be a great episode thanks for joining me Adam
(02:41) thank you for having me here I’m excited for this one it’s not often I get to talk to another person named Adam and also I love teaching people about relationships and attachments so this is gonna be a great conversation okay well we’re already off to a good start having the simple and easy name Adam I know you can probably share in that in that uh excitement that we both don’t have a lot of problems getting our names wrong or other people don’t and really simple to write all that good stuff so I’ve never
(03:07) had someone ask me how to spell my name the hardest thing is that people don’t with a name like Adam Smith people don’t believe it’s my real name and then when I decided to publish books you might remember that there’s about 400 million books from a guy named Adam Smith so you got to go by Adam Lane Smith that’s the origin of using my middle name for all of this by the way is because there was this old Scottish dead guy who got my way first so yeah yeah that that is the problem with having a common name is you
(03:33) getting the websites getting all that stuff in the books and yeah we won’t talk in the economics today so don’t worry that’s all right that’s right but it’s uh no I I I’m excited and I’d love to kind of before we jump in I know that there’s a lot of people that are probably listening to this that struggle with their relationships with attachment issues and all sorts of things like that because it’s a common common problem but I’d love to hear how you kind of got started how you came to be attachment
(03:58) Adam and uh and why how attachment became the thing for you so number one thing that you need to know about me is that I grew up with attachment issues I was attachment issue Adam when I was a little kid when I was a teen when I was a very young man and I grew up in a pretty hard area pretty hard town and a pretty bad part of town and my entire extended family also typically had attachment issues so Not only was the area I was in the city I would say the family I was in with attachment but me too I grew up thinking
(04:30) that stuff was normal knowing it was awful and thinking it was normal to be insecure to be afraid to not know how to connect to people so I feel like you can’t trust anyone to feel like there might be some someone wrong with you and you don’t know what it is to be afraid to just relax into your life I grew up thinking that was normal and at a certain point I said this is awful I never want to feel this way again there’s got to be some way not to feel this and through grueling trial and error I managed to figure it out and fix it in
(05:00) myself and make myself fix it with some friends and some people I cared about and I said what on Earth did I just do and it was like a lightning Moment Like lightning bolt struck my brain kind of moment of this is amazing what if everybody I grew up with and everybody I knew could also fix this and the only place I knew how to do that was to become a therapist so I went to school six years got my Master’s Degree and then went through three more years of apprenticeship for licensure so it took nine years to become a therapist here in
(05:30) the United States by nine years plus four thousand worked hours plus all kinds of supervision plus 100 grand out of your pocket kind of thing and I became a therapist and during therapy school as I call it grad school they taught us something called attachment Theory and they skipped over it and said this is not important to know you don’t need to learn this unless you’re going to work with little babies there’s only a couple diagnoses in the book that matter for this and hard to diagnose it anyway so unless you’re testing babies
(05:58) do not worry about attachment Theory that was what they told us and I said okay well I guess that’s not that thing I was looking for it kind of sounded pretty good but I guess not and so we went out into the world and I talked to other therapists about the same thing but attachment was in my head I started digging I started learning Fringe people had studied it you know the weirdo types who live under a Berea therapist who live under a bridge and no one else will speak to them kind of thing you know black van
(06:23) therapist kind of they would talk about attachment but it was nobody would really talk about it much and every everything that I learned about it just told me more and more this was so important this isn’t the core of so many of the diagnoses we were treating when we go through therapy school and they tell us you know these are the diagnoses we don’t really know what causes them but we’re going to have to try to somehow fix them with therapy so just get out there manage the symptoms and hopefully your patients will fix
(06:50) themselves and that’s very humanistic therapy kind of approach and it’s just well micro changes in their life could help just manage the symptoms of this disease that they will probably have forever and that was that’s the approach I’ve traveled around I’ve taught I’ve I’ve educated other therapists I teach a lot of healthcare providers now I’ve done seminars and I keep hearing doing the same thing that every healthcare provider just about out there that I’ve worked with the United States Canada and
(07:14) Europe is taught that attachment Theory doesn’t matter unless you’re working with little babies and even then it’s barely going to be anything just work on work on the diagnoses and so as I studied attachment it became so apparent that this was the core of so many problems this is the reason so many diagnoses are out there when I treated people and and when I was working as a licensed therapist for years I treated people with bipolar disorder one and two and they would respond to attachment treatment even if they didn’t respond to
(07:42) any other kind of treatment a lot we could get their their manic episodes down from three a month to one a year and it was a small controlled manageable one that was barely barely a blip on their daily radar they’d have to take a day off of work and then just chill at home for a day down from the disabled due to severe manic episodes and hospitalizations when we worked on their attachment it wasn’t it was phenomenal and I started teaching other therapists and I I started teaching online and people when they hear about it they
(08:12) freak out because it’s the missing piece the research shows that a generation ago about 20 20 30 years ago only about 35 percent of American adults probably had an attachment issue that we were able to figure out but the research shows today is that up to 65 percent of American adults now most likely have an attachment issue and it’s getting worse as the generations go on and this was this was my light bulb moment of this is my life this is my focus so there are people online who sort of teach attachment
(08:45) but there was no one willing to go all in and say this is the thing guys this is what we need to fix so I have pioneered it as a specialty I have made it my life’s work because I know it is this important and I keep hearing from people thousands and thousands of people all over the world saying this is the piece I’ve been missing I’ve been through five other therapists and none of them could help me you finally told me the pace that I know has been missing so I know that this is it well this is fascinating and and thank you for
(09:14) sharing all of that because that just like dinged a lot of light bulbs in in my head of just different areas or different you know situations I’ve been in that that well maybe that’s something you know to lean into and you know it so that 65 percent of people who have attachment issues is that just because we’re learning about it now or is that because it’s actually just been growing it’s because it’s been growing so the research I’ve been doing over the last 100 years or so since World War one here
(09:41) in the west are generational attachment has got worse and worse and worse we lost a generation just about during during World War One they called him silent when they came home if they came home they were the silent generation right they were a mass they the broken Generation The Lost Generation shell shock was what it was called back then they didn’t even know what PTSD was um but just men checking out I’m thinking of back during that time you have um Tennessee Williams writing plays about men just destroying their lives
(10:12) walking out on their families because there’s no purpose they want to die they just give up through alcoholism you had all kinds of horrible crashes then you had the Roaring Twenties and you had let’s forget our problems Let’s Escape into and everything else everything else then you have the terrible economic crash and then you had Family Farms lost you have the conversion of most Americans and and Canadians at that point are living in or cities instead of farms because you have the Dust Bowl you
(10:38) have the Great Depression you have the absolute destruction of the family Village the family neighborhood the family far arm shoved into cities shoved into factory jobs families separated instead of generational connections where people would catch you and help you and bond with you if something went wrong no you were shoved into these these awful little Urban conditions with nobody and mom was worked to death and they invented around the 40s and 50s into invented Valium they give to Mom I was a little help Little Pill it was
(11:09) called mom’s Little Helper because women were separated now from the rest of the women their families so every woman became the sole servant of her household expected to carry every burden in the entire household and Men became the soul Breadwinner to feed everybody by working 16 to 18 hour days and that was that was it so the greatest Generation came along they fought the Nazis they survived the Dust Bowl they did all these awful things and the silent generation the greatest Generation survived and fought
(11:36) and then gave birth to the Baby Boomers and it was you know most some baby boomers got it my most many did not of my parents barely managed to survive so keeping us alive is how they show us love but they don’t tell us they love us they’re not soft they’re not gentle they don’t have talks with me they don’t share with me they don’t teach me much it’s I’m gonna work 18 hours a week six days or 18 hours a day six days a week and barely be here on Sunday and that’s how I love you half of Boomers got it
(12:04) half of them didn’t roughly in there somewhere and they’re now tripling the divorce rates in their 70s and 80s continuing to get divorced in their 80s and just tearing it apart because so many of them learned love is not enough no one will ever love me so screw everyone else and they they either split became very insecure within themselves and approval seeking a lot of a lot of Boomer moms were this way or very avoidant and disconnected from relationships and then they would show love through those other mechanisms but
(12:33) then control you through them more of a avoid an attachment kind of style father and that gave birth to the Generation Y in Generation X who basically have lived like deer in a headlights their entire life since birth and the Boomers hated them because they just sat there like a lump being scared all the time so then the Boomers got divorced then in their second marriage they had the Millennials that they said we will make these kids tougher more like us more not like our first batch of kids who are failures so
(12:59) they set up their second batch of family and the Millennials and Boomers hate each other but the Millennials have never seen a functioning family system ever because the grandpa were dead by that time so the Millennials have no comprehension of what a healthy family system looks like and they’re part of a second marriage and that that gets divorced in a third marriage so they have no comprehension of a working family or a working marriage or working anything and now you have generation what is it Z and generation Alpha have
(13:25) come along they’re in the the ruins of a greater civilization at this point with no model for a functioning family no model for functioning relationships they actually show that all of the hookup culture and everything is down sex is down unmarried sex is down marriage rates are down divorce rates are down but only because people aren’t getting married and tons of people aren’t even having sex they’re just living alone in a little apartment free from the world feeling like they have freedom from people looking at them
(13:53) because they’re so petrified of other human beings they don’t know how to bond they don’t know how to get love they don’t think they’re worthy of Love they don’t believe other people are capable of Love they don’t know how to open up I don’t know how to make friends they don’t know how to do anything the research now shows that 30 percent of Millennials age 24 to 42 every single day are chronically crushingly alone agonizingly alone not just a little bit every single day horribly alone 30 30
(14:22) that’s that’s the attachment issues are getting worse they’re getting so much worse and the corporations come along and they have Escapist entertainment and they have dopamine binges and they’re not the ones driving the problem but they are definitely vultures circling around enabling the problem and then making the problem much worse why why would you go home to your family and fix problems if you didn’t have to if you could be in an apartment with Netflix with with Mountain Dew give up bottles
(14:47) chugging them down and energy drinks chugging them down playing video games watching porn why would you ever leave your your apartment your little pod if you did your pleasure pod if you will if you never ever have to if the outside world is scary and you’ve never seen a functioning relationship before in your life yeah that’s where we’re at now that’s where the suicide rates up and the drug rates are up and everything is up the bad things are up that’s why that’s what we’re going through yeah fears up yeah
(15:13) it’s it’s that’s uh that’s that’s such a powerful uh summary of of where we’ve come from and kind of where we’re going and can you help us to understand kind of what what you mean by attachment there so are we looking to to find attachment are we looking to avoid attachment what’s the what’s the goal question most people have only heard the word attachment through emails or through Buddhism which is why I get confused looks when I talk about attachment attachment Theory something
(15:38) invented back in the 50s by John Bowlby attachment says how do you attach to another human being how does an infant attached to their caregiver do they attach securely where they say my needs will be met and I will be loved and I will be cared for and it will be fair and it will be predictable and it will be understandable or am I going to attach in securely in one of three ways in securely where they will be unpredictable I have to navigate carefully I have to I’m in danger people might abandon me or hurt me people might
(16:09) not care about me people might be too selfish people might blame me I could have something wrong with me something has gone wrong and I am insecurely attached it is the way a baby attaches to their caregivers which then carries forth into all your relationships throughout your adult life because you learned that lesson early on about how you expect other people to act and you never question it again wow gotcha so that’s um so as far so we’re looking for healthy attachment I mean so attachment could be bad it could
(16:39) be unhealthy or healthy and in your own life so you mentioned that you know you grew up as kind of unhealthy attachment or attachment issue Adam so how how did you how did you see the light how did you change what what did that look like what did that transformation look like for you for me I’ve always been fascinated by systems and how things work I always wanted to know why is it the way it is why is it working like that why isn’t it working and I looked around and the little light bulb went off in my brain when I said
(17:10) I believed in evolution at the time and I still do to a large extent and I was looking around thinking Evolution says the best adaptation is going to keep the survival of the fittest and I looked around and said how is this the best family Dynamic that our species could have evolved make sicilated alone crushingly miserable why are teens suicide and depression rates up right now 11 year olds are committing suicide at an astounding rate we’ve never seen before pediatricians I’m trying to sound the alarm no one’s much listening to it but
(17:41) 11 year old suicide rates are up if you can imagine that how can this be a good evolutionary adaptation how could we work like this this doesn’t seem right and I said there’s got to be another way that we can exist that is actually in line with our biology so I looked and and and through the research what I found was this concept that pain is nothing more than information that you’re in a non-optimized state if you’re in pain if you’re an emotional pain or physical pain there’s a way of
(18:10) getting to be where you are not in pain anymore so if I said if we’re all an emotional and physical and mental pain what’s the state that wouldn’t be pain well I look back at hunter-gatherer societies right so the research shows that homo sapiens have been on this planet for about 200 to 300 000 years with a Neolithic Revolution about 12 000 years ago where we realized that if I eat seeds and poop them out then I come back then there’s plants there I can plant crops I could build a village so
(18:35) for the majority of our human species on this planet our time they were hunter-gatherers what was that like well survival of the fittest meant actual Harmony in your family caring about each other the research shows they didn’t have harsh brutal structural Dynamics and hierarchies quite like we do now of I will beat the crap out of you and sue you and put you in prison it was okay let me work with you let me work with you on this let’s work in good faith let’s solve the problems right the tyrants got ousted
(19:03) and the weak leaders also got ousted and it was people who cared and led by by Care by Love by by strength but by by actually nurturing human beings and nurturing the relationships around them and our relationships mattered and we had very little privacy so if something went wrong someone else would catch it well how do we act now well you know it’s popular to say every father on Earth has always beaten every child he’s owned and and always molested his daughters and fathers are horrible well no wait a minute what man do I know now
(19:33) who actually would want to do that well none they would literally give their blood and organs and their life for their child okay well where does that come in so I start doing all the research and all the chemicals back this up all the chemicals in your brain and everything backs this up is that when your relationships are healthy when you are open with other people when you are trusted when you have no secrets when you trust them when you feel that your needs are going to be met when you have some power in your life in your
(19:59) relationships like the power to stop your pain the power to affect some change the power to help other people when you have that bonding in that connection especially with about three people the it seems to seems to indicate about three people when you have that connection your brain says I’m safe I don’t have to earn approval I don’t have to run frantically from moment to moment I’m not going to fall down and die I’m not going to get sick and die people will care for me I will care for them I have a purpose I have a
(20:27) connection I have a family to give to I have a legacy to build and help when we have good human connection everything gets better our biology is designed around it our biology is designed to suffer and die if we feel alienated and to thrive if we feel loved and accepted and that’s attachment yeah people are listening to this and they’re wretchedly miserable look to your relationships right now so how did I figure out how to do that I started testing with the people in my life I said I am horribly miserable hi I’m Adam and I’m miserable
(21:03) in life because I have all these secrets and I think are bad about me right I was smoking two packs a day of cigarettes I didn’t want anyone to know of course you smell like cigarettes everybody knows right I was you know I was drinking alcohol at the time I was doing this I was doing that and I was running all and I had things I thought might be wrong with me I suspected something was wrong if you had anxious attachment I didn’t know what it was I just thought I was unlovable and when I opened up and told
(21:29) other people that two things happened number one they said well I don’t see anything unlovable but thanks for telling me I’m glad you trust me and I went oh I’m not in love you see everything like right you see everything right what about this what about this mole I have is this unlovable like show them everything and test it it’s called reality testing tested through reality and found out no I’m not unlovable I’m actually not then when you have two or three people you could either that see
(21:54) you and say that you can either say you’re all liars or you’re all idiots or I’m wrong one person you can write off two people maybe three people you start to realize it’s you that you’re wrong and you start to overwrite your brain then you say shoot I don’t have to be afraid anymore but here’s the second thing that happened is when I started telling people how I felt they said me too I didn’t know anyone else in the world felt that way yeah well people yeah when people hear it they freak out so there’s two kinds
(22:25) of people that hear this message one is people who are primarily what we call the anxious attachment style these are the approval Seekers the ones who turn inward and say I am the problem it’s not that nobody else has anxiety it’s that they are anxiously attached because they’re fearful all the time of being abandoned they think that they don’t deserve love so they’ll be abandoned so they have to earn approval so people will stay with them and their adult relationships this is nice guys this is
(22:49) girls who sleep with you on the first date because they think that’s all they have to offer and if they ever say no that you’re going to abandon them and they’ll you’ll tell them that they’re garbage this is women who put up with endless Affairs and mistreatment in their relationships for 20 years this is guys who try to earn their wife’s approval through chores they call it chore play right of trying to get her in the mood by by vacuuming the living room um and then they but the nice people
(23:12) nice guys nice girls get resentful when they do 10 nice things for you and you don’t reciprocate they get resentful that you didn’t figure out their their needs and meet them over over the years they get resentful and it’s not fair to other people either and then there’s avoidant people the the anxious people are like they hear this and they sell fit God there’s a reason I could I could get fixed oh please fix me and they rush into my door begging for anything I show all my books laying your
(23:38) fear right up there if they read this book it will fix you right my attachment boot camp course watch this course it will fix you and they thank you Adam thank you for telling me it’s not my fault and they’re just relieved then there’s the second Camp of people who listen who are avoidantly attached they don’t believe other people are capable of Love they think everyone is innately selfish they’ve been hurt they’ve had other people hurt each other they’ve watched people be crazy and say
(24:02) something’s wrong with these Meat Puppets on this planet they are crazy they don’t care about each other their morals go out the window and they get stressed I’m not opening up and trusting anybody so they try to make other people like them through approval seeking behaviors but not to prevent being abandoned is to manage other people with good feelings so that other people will then act appropriately yeah it’s to keep a safe balance between you and other people and they hear me talk about this
(24:26) and they say what is this guy smoking there is nothing on this planet that’s going to make me open up to somebody else people are just going to ruin me who how much is this guy charging per hour right now because he’s going to scam me this guy is a scammer there’s no such thing as real love then they start thinking about it and I start describing them like this and they say well I don’t know we’ll see and they go on my YouTube channel and they Scout me out for about three months sometimes a year and they
(24:50) Scout me out to see if I’m a liar and then they say well he’s actually kind of consistent and then they’ll email me or contact me and I’m like hey nice to talk to you how you doing well you know this and this oh hey tell me about you oh you sound like you’re kind of avoiding the attached have you ever heard about that before here’s some information on it and then I’ll then they’ll run away because they’ve exposed themselves The Runaway for about two or three months and escape
(25:10) from me so they don’t have to because they’re afraid of being being seen and being heard then they’ll sneak back in head I’m sorry it’s been a couple months since I talked to you hey it’s okay you’re avoiding I get it it’s all good man and I talk to them and then they they find one human being they can trust and then they want to learn but they must believe First that it’s even possible to have love in this life most that’s the problem most of them don’t believe it’s possible it’s harder to fix
(25:34) that just because it takes longer so once you once you show them that love is possible they only have to find a couple people to open up to and it changes their entire world believing it’s the hardest part for them the anxious person is all too happy to believe that it may not be them so everybody listening to this if you’ve been divided into one of those two camps I see you I hear you yes I have been there I’ve been watching you through cameras your entire life um no this can be fixed yeah in that
(26:01) that this can be fixed and that’s that’s uh that’s big because I mean I can relate definitely to the uh anxious attachment side of it where I I did you know I I did feel that way that it was just not not worthy of of love in in that way and that uh um that I was afraid of being abandoned and it wasn’t clear to me when I was younger of why that was why that was coming up but the one thing I want the audience to hear here too is and it’s a theme that comes up with every guest we’ve had and here
(26:29) we have an expert on you know relationships and attachment community building that that trusted Community around you is so so vital so vital yeah so uh so that that and that’s that’s such a big part of it and so you when you got into that and you know you’d mentioned kind of go getting into school and starting to learn about this this stuff and and hearing like the attachment stuff kind of pushed under the rug yeah you don’t want to learn about that you don’t need to learn about that are you finding that that’s getting
(26:57) better because I I graduated with a witch with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and so I’m not by no means an expert but I remember learning about the sexy stuff like oh abnormal psychology this was in the 90s and so like you know I I didn’t learn what an anxiety disorder was we didn’t talk about depression we didn’t talk about those things we didn’t talk about attachment is that getting better or is it is it how’s that look today or and how are you changing that world so I’ve
(27:27) got the DSM-5 right up here yeah and what most people don’t realize is when they make what goes into making the Diagnostics and statistic manual that says what is this order what is a disorder and what is not is that all the various parts of psychology have to come together the med providers the therapists the researchers everybody has to come together and then they build a board of people who are going to Define it and then they fight tooth and nail to figure out which ones are going to be disorders and which ones insurance
(27:53) companies will cover and how much criteria they need to cover and there were almost fist fights during that part because the psychology they were it almost the field of psychology in half in the United States because of some of the major changes they made in DSM-5 so if we tried to get in there and create new diet disorders that said you are an adult who has this attachment issue it’s at the heart of all your other your other issues fix this it would be so hard to get that into the book and get people to acknowledge it and it’s hard
(28:22) to medicate that it’s good to treat it but it’s hard to medicate we have the disease model here in America we have U of A disease here’s a pill here’s some therapy to manage it you will need therapy throughout the course of your life and probably meds for most of your life you’ll have relapses it is an autoimmune disease of the mind that’s how we treat mental health here in America instead of you have faulty beliefs about your relationships and it’s leading you to be wretchedly miserable let’s fix those beliefs and
(28:50) everything else starts to get better let’s just fix them and that’s not as sexy you’re right it’s not it’s not quite as sexy as the other stuff you don’t get to learn all of the hearing voices no well that’s boring you know you don’t get all the fun all the fun symptoms aren’t there um but no it’s you and when you gotta churn out psychology Majors as fast as possible like you heard it’s a nine year process and here in the United States they’re pumping out therapists as fast as they
(29:16) can and they’re still not enough and they’re some of their trainings are not great in some of the states I happen to be licensed to one of the strictest states in the United States it’s brutal and and rightly so to make sure they were pumping out quality but there were there were only 3 500 of us for the entire state for my license at all with millions and millions and millions and millions of people in the state there was there’s 3 500 with my license that was it yeah which state is that that was
(29:43) in Minnesota where I was licensed there um there’s also three different therapy licenses more than that actually now um they also have social workers doing therapy now because there’s just not enough therapists out there and everyone goes back to this book of what’s the code what’s the number what’s the symptoms slap it on there manage it through Insurance throw it through Insurance see if they’ll actually cover it and attachment is is so hard to cover is it getting better well with the rise of the internet it is
(30:12) right I’ve got almost 400 000 followers I blast out attachment information every single day 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year I’m talking about attachment all over the internet on YouTube I’m on I’m on Tick Tock of all places Tick Tock I’m on Instagram Facebook now my Facebook blew up from 300 followers to 15 000 followers in just a couple of months because people are hungry for it over there fantastic everywhere every yeah everywhere everyone’s learning about it the the
(30:38) Atlantic finally ran an article not too long ago about attachment Styles and how they can change and I was cheering when I saw that but people are still nervous and there’s no license out there I had to give up my therapy license so that I could go teach internationally and Coach people because my licensing board says Adam if you coach it will be treated as therapy and all the rules will apply well I can’t do therapy outside of my state I can’t do therapy outside of my nation so I can only do therapy in one
(31:05) state or that’s it I’d be slapping fines all kinds of problems so I had to give up my license so I’m a coach I qualify as a coach now which is cool I get to coach everybody I love the word but we need more than that we need more people focused on attachment as the core of the problem because black people come into my coaching they say Adam I’ve been through five therapists it’s been 20 years I have spent thirty thousand dollars and I don’t have much hope that this is going to help me and we do it
(31:35) about four to six sessions we accomplish we fix the problem in four to six sessions that’s four to six weeks man six weeks instead of 20 years we need more people specializing like this so that they can fix this we need more people understanding that this can get better this can get so much better it’s not managing a disease it’s fixing a problem and everything else after that flows more easily flows better relationships are better despair goes down drug addictions go down I’ve seen porn addictions and Drug addictions
(32:06) wiped away I have worked with people they come in they are addicted to heroin I’ve had people that come in that just got out of the hospital for suicide attempts I’ve got all kinds of people coming in and it’s extreme sexual trauma cases coming in and I work with them and just a few sessions if they’re willing to do the work a few sessions and it overhauls a lifetime of fear and pain it’s just doing it man yeah so it’s I just want people to know that it can be fixed don’t live like that anymore don’t
(32:38) give up don’t let the system tell you you have a disease just fix the problem and you’ll be so much better yeah yeah so so you’re and and walking through that process so um you know because you talked about a few things and one of the things that kind of caught my attention to was you know attachment treatment for things like bipolar disorder of being able to reduce the amount of things like that so like kind of moving from from uh I guess more of the traditional cases to those more extreme cases how if someone
(33:09) walks in with an anxious anxiety an anxious uh attachment uh or that’s how they’re appearing for you how um what what is the process like to get them from from feeling that that that toxic attachment to that more uh healthy attachment good question it looks like this so the first session they come in we do a deep dive assessment what is your attachment style how is it presenting how do you act toward other people how do you get your needs met how do you lie to people how do you hide from people what do you do to make sure
(33:40) you feel safe what are you doing in your relationships how are you sabotaging your relationships how are you sabotaging yourself where are you unhappy and through that we find the gaps we find them the wrong beliefs we find the lies that they believe and then we build a plan immediately you are going to have to do this you’re going to learn this and I tell them you’re going to learn this skill you’re going to learn to manage your anxiety so that’s not up at seven out of ten every day it’s gonna be down at one or two out of
(34:04) ten here’s some techniques to do that then you’re going to have some key conversations with two to three people in your life we will identify the right people I will give you the phrasing to say but you’re going to open up and have the what I call I’m an anxious person speech where you go to them and say you may not know this about me but you probably do I’m an anxious person I try to earn approval from people I’m always scared that I’m going to mess relationships up I’m always
(34:27) scared I’m going to be abandoned and I never have known what to do about it but I hate it and I never gonna do it again so I’m telling you now so that I can actually be honest with you from now on is that okay and can we build that relationship from now on and it sounds like the stupidest silliest most childish thing on earth and when you say it you will wish you were dead as you’re trying to have the conversation and then sure you will have the conversation and be your heart’s beating in your throat
(34:50) and the other person says yeah that’s great I love that let’s have an honest relationship yeah I kind of knew that about you I didn’t realize it was that bad but thanks for telling me cool what do you need from me or I feel that way sometimes too hey that’s great to hear yeah let’s do this and you say whoa someone actually accepts me and you do this with two to three people it’s great now you’ve got to start it opens the door for more important conversations down the road this is this
(35:14) is good for anxious attachment and avoiding attachment to identify the good people in your life who live with consistent values that are good solid people that you can then trust even reasonably then you test after that something goes wrong and you call them on it or you ask them for help or you open up to them about how you feel or you have a problem and you open up and ask them for advice and you reveal more and more of yourself to them and risk it a bit by step by step by step and as you do every time it rewrites those Pathways
(35:41) in your brain that says no one ever wants to hear from me no one cares about me no one loves me I’m not worth their time they will abandon me they will hurt me they will betray me every time you open up to those people it does that So eventually you rewrite enough of your brain and those beliefs to say I don’t have to be scared anymore it’s a process called systematic desensitization which is a fancy way of saying doing something over and over that your brain is scared of so you teach your brain it’s not
(36:04) scary and it’s not dangerous if you do that in a couple key conversations and I’ve seen lives turn around in about three to four weeks of having those conversations for three to four weeks it’s amazing how fast your brain will rewrite itself and say I’m not worthless I’m not active there’s not something wrong with me people are evil and horrible on the outside out west side world people are actually okay I have a few people I love and a few people I can trust maybe I’m not a hundred percent
(36:32) comfortable all the time but I feel so much better and I’m not scared then people can go to work and not be terrified at work and have think their boss is going to fire them every single day they can run a business and not say yes yes yes to employees or to customers and lose every dollar they make they can talk to their spouse and a wife can always just ask her husband hey I’m really lonely can we spend more time together can you talk to me more about how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking so I feel safer because I’ll
(36:58) understand how you feel and what you need my husband could just say hi wife would you like to have sex instead of trying to earn the sex and earn the approval and he can just say hey you know what I just I just need some time with you too can we just spend some time it’s everybody being on the table verbally on the table and sharing their needs and communicating and being clear and being honest and just giving each other what they need and getting what they need from each other in a circle like that it sounds idyllic and utopian
(37:27) and that’s not quite it’s not that way but it’s the majority of people just able to be honest and just say I need this can you do it yep sure hey I also need this can you do that yeah sure I’ll do that for you too I can just take care of each other that openly and when you do that fear drops to darn near zero yeah because you don’t have to be petrified paranoid terrified watch your back Safeguard yourself all the time because you’ve got people that care about you you’ve got people who tell you
(37:55) if something’s wrong you don’t have to play that’s that self-defense and that and that damage control all the time you just have great relationships that feel good and then you have a marriage that lasts because you solve problems way in advance then you’ve got kids who don’t get crushingly depressed and use drugs and yeah and you commit suicide when they’re 12 or whatever you don’t have that because you raise them with better attachment better needs and better honesty and better connection it’s not
(38:22) about a utopian world it is about just making it livable for everybody through honesty and through a lack of fear that’s all it is yeah wow that’s so uh and and then and so that that’s powerful because I mean it’s it’s something that a lot of people neglect is this idea that they have to they could tell somebody and build that trust with them right so how how do you but I know there’s also I mean there’s even in marriages I mean like there’s there’s this idea of rejection though and I I
(38:52) grew up with a big fear of rejection like I didn’t ask girls out or anything like that because I was just afraid of getting rejection even even to this day it’s hard to you know it’s hard to ask for something for fear of that rejection like you know intimate time or whatever it may be my um how how do you manage that dynamic in a relationship where there is times where somebody might be in the mood somebody might not be in the mood or or or those kinds of things how do you manage those boundaries well
(39:21) they’re gone you threaten them no um that’s what I thought yeah no that’s the avoidant answer no it’s what you do is you learn that sharing your needs with the other person is a gift if you have somebody who never tells you what they want from you they expect you to figure it out if you have someone who only does nice things for you because they’re trying to get you to figure out what they need and do and reciprocate if you have someone who never tells you when you do something wrong until it’s
(39:49) been three or four months in and then they blow up at you because they’ve had a bad day and then they expose everything you’ve ever done wrong and they can’t stand it if you have a person who is never honest with you you feel unsafe you feel worried you feel scared when you tell somebody point blank or if someone tells you hey I like this could you do this for me it’s so helpful when you say hey you know what you did this thing but it’s okay you didn’t know I’m going to tell you right now how to fix
(40:15) it and this is what I’d rather you do could you do this instead you tell me right up front when they tell you what they do like and say thank you so much that was awesome I appreciate you thank you they don’t treat your gifts or your kindness is like a burden they have to pay back they’re just glad when you have someone who treats you that point blank and that on the table and that clear it makes your life so much better and so much easier and so much more relaxed other people want the same thing from
(40:39) you so recognizing you have the power to give that kindness and that safety and stability and pain and warmth and all of that to the other person that’s a gift so sharing your needs with the other person is a gift not doing it is a burden not sharing your needs as a burden people get that wrong they think not sharing their needs is preventing a burden no you’re creating one a big one right so sharing your needs as a gift number one and number two then sharing your need and not saying I demand and like you
(41:09) feel you are but saying hi you know I have a need I have a need how can we help that happen how can we make that happen you know I’m lonely lately I’d really like to spend time with you how can we make that happen hi babe I’d really like to have some bedroom time with you how can we make that happen right the wife doesn’t have to just say well I’ll just close my eyes and think of England no she should probably say I would love to have more bedroom time with you but for me to be more in the
(41:36) mood I really need for us to spend more quality time together outside the bedroom when was the last time you had a date when was the last time we just sat and talked when was the last time you rubbed my back and didn’t expect something out of it when was the last time we just walked around the neighborhood holding hands and spent some time together like a couple emotional intimacy is usually what women need to get back into the mood that’s usually what it is when the oxytocin chemical is high then her mood is
(41:59) usually pretty high too it’s just kind of how the science of the female sex drive tends to work especially after first year talk about those needs that you have and then just say how can we make this happen and the other person will give you their quote unquote price whatever it might be probably time together or just they’ll give you a scheduled date they’ll say hey not today but maybe this evening or tonight or tomorrow and you just work on it together as a couple you share your needs and then you meet each
(42:24) other’s needs that’s it if you don’t ask though it’s not that they go away it’s that you get resentful yeah right yeah that and that’s that’s kind of where I I see that that challenge is that you know some people just might not ask and other people might just not be interested and there might be some misalignment there and so how how do you set the boundaries and or how how do you fix that Dynamic of getting that and it sounds like honesty but um but getting to that Honesty takes a lot of Courage so that’s
(42:58) that’s a really difficult part yeah it does um so in my attachment boot camp video course that I put together website Adam Lane smith.com one of the modules in there talks to you about identifying your own needs and then taking those needs and identifying how they fit together with your values and your goals you don’t just have needs that are just out there that you have to stomp your foot and demand to get they accomplish something meeting your needs accomplishes something if you’re in a partnership and a couple and married or
(43:26) whatever whatever fancy words people use nowadays for for the thing as old as time itself whatever relationship you’re in there you should have a goal it’s not so that both of you give each other good feelings till one of you dies and that one’s the winner because now the loser has to live alone that’s not the point of a marriage and that’s not commitment you’re not committing to feelings you’re committing to building something together a life a legacy something of worth and value for many people that’s
(43:53) kids or adopted kids or a cause or a business or a non-profit organization a charity or something in this world that matters to them building a legacy together so then you have to ask yourself do just starving myself of my needs into the ground help me meet that Legacy or does it hurt that Legacy well it would hurt your legacy and no one really wants that to happen so I got four kids myself if I my wife and I are at constant odds never meeting each other’s needs grinding ourselves into the dirt miserable all the time can’t
(44:23) communicate well shoot I’m gonna have four kids who grow up and do the same yeah I don’t want them to do that I want them to have love so I have to build that and model that with my wife first then sharing your needs becomes part of a legacy it is demanded of you in fact so is it it so really people just if they want to get through these attachment issues or if they want if they want to make them healthier and they’re already in a relationship is it safe to say that they that that those the people that are wanting to take that
(44:54) step should take the lead on it so being honest first is that a right approach no oh no because you’re just gonna happen if you jump into the relationship and just bluntly start being frantically honest as much as you can you are going to freak out the other person because if you have attachment issues in a relationship odds are good you picked someone else with attachment issues who’s never going to get too close to you to see what’s wrong with you or to hurt you so avoiding people and anxious people tend to pair up a lot which is
(45:24) why divorce rates are Sky High um they pair up very very well and very then very poorly over time so if you will jump in and just start being brutally honest it’s gonna just freak the other person out because they won’t know what’s going on right this is why so many couples take my attachment boot camp course together but first they start off with some of my YouTube Channel videos they watch a couple YouTube videos and they learn from me they read my book maybe they take my course they email me and I say look
(45:50) watch a couple of my YouTube videos with your partner have you educated them at all about attachment do they know what you’re gonna add no no I think I’m just gonna do it I’m just gonna jump in and start doing it and see how they respond well that’s a disaster they’re only going to respond by freaking out because now you’ve changed and change scares them and they’re going to try to figure out what you’re doing differently and why and their assumption is going to be bad it’s gonna be bad they’re gonna think
(46:13) you’re having an affair or that you’re going to get divorced that’s what they’re going to think and they’re going to do everything they can not to change and to punish you for changing and to stop the change from happening so don’t do that and guys will tell me I’m gonna do it anyway okay I’ll see you in a month and they say Adam it’s so much worse and I said well yeah you scared your wife to death what’d you think was gonna happen so talking with them hey you know I’ve
(46:37) learned something about myself I think I have this thing called this attachment issue you know I’m insecure I do this thing where I hide I don’t share my needs and I thought that was normal and I hate it and I think we do that together and I hate that I don’t hate you I just think that we don’t share we don’t talk we don’t connect and it might sound like I’m just you know being a hippie here smoking pot but I really want to share more with you and talk more with you and have a better
(47:04) relationship and I know that doesn’t sound like we can’t right now but there’s this dude online he’s got a red beard I need socks all the time about feelings can we watch a couple of his videos that I’ve picked out and sometimes couples email me and say pick me a couple of videos and I say okay I’ll pick a couple videos and watch a couple videos and tell me what you think and couples will watch it and the avoiding partner will say well that’s stupid and then they’ll think about it
(47:26) then that the next day they’ll come back and say Well about what that guy was saying then they’ll open up a little bit yeah and it takes some time and then they want to learn and then I say go take my course together watch all seven hours of my video course and by the end of that they’re they’re learning how to meet their needs and talk about their needs and share and why and they’ve learned this is not just me that there’s something wrong here there’s something different we can change it it’s a
(47:50) process but you have to get them to go on that Journey with you you can’t tie them up and drag them on the journey and honestly as you fix it yeah honestly as you fix your attachment together either you will grow together or it will split you up permanently it’s going to be one of the other based on if they’re willing to do the work or not gotcha that’s that’s uh that’s super helpful because as you see I got it wrong and uh it’s mostly yeah so so it’s a slower slow drip of of trying to ease them or or get
(48:20) them into willingness rather than giving them the fire hoses this is the Newbie gotcha um Daniel Tiger with my kids the other day and they were he was going to the dentist yeah and they said before we do something new we’ll talk about what what before we do something new let’s talk about what we’ll do that’s what it was thank you Daniel Tiger those songs are in my head forever right talk about what you’re gonna do different and why because then they won’t be scared as much they’ll be scared still but they’ll
(48:50) understand why you’re walking in that new Direction and they’ll bear with you and they’ll listen and they’ll understand and then when they try to overreact they’ll stop and go wait a minute they told me what to expect okay well now I know what they’re trying to do and they don’t have to assume the problem with it with attachment problems like this is the assumptions are so wrong the less you can leave them to assume or guess the better it’s gonna be gotcha excellent and if if someone is is
(49:17) you know TR when you’re guiding people to try and find those people to have the key conversations with what are they um what are they looking for in those people like uh are they um because you I I’d imagine you don’t want to give them the fire hose either not so much not yet yeah right here’s what you do as you identify your Three core values that are most important to you that you probably violate all the time for the sake of earning approval from other people for me it’s honesty integrity and compassion those are the
(49:49) three things I have to live by all the time if I don’t I hate myself most of us who hate ourselves out in this world it’s because we have that honor code built into us but we violate it all the time because we are scared yeah we need to earn approval we’re afraid we’re gonna get hurt so we violate our our code of beliefs and that we hate ourselves and it reconfirms for us oh I really am the scum of the earth because look at me I’m a bad person who violates these core things you pick your core values they’re
(50:15) most important to you and then you look for other people who match those core values and live to them when it matters that tells you who the moral people in this world are that you can actually trust and then you go to them and you say here’s what I’m about to tell you here’s why and then you tell them you give them all the front loaded information up front instead of what we call trauma dumping you know trauma dump on them about your bad feelings you say I’m about to share something painful with you because I want to be
(50:45) close to you and I am also looking for your feedback so you give them that you give them and at the end of it you say what do you think about this can we still be friends can we still have a relationship and would you like to engage in this kind of relationship so they know exactly what to do they’re not overwhelmed they’re not confused it’s not the fire hose it’s a cup that they can sip out of and then ask you some questions about that’s how you hand it to them that’s how you package it up
(51:07) that’s fantastic that’s fantastic and and for the more extreme examples like uh when you mention the bipolar people who might be struggling with other kind of issues bipolar or anything like that is the approach is approach the same is it do you do anything different on those kinds of things is it more wanna is it more like a uh depends on the situation kind of thing here’s what I see with bipolar and I’ve had doctors back me up on this doctors I’ve worked with over the years when you have attachment issues as a
(51:37) child really severe ones especially with abuse especially with sexual trauma your brain says there’s something wrong with me that everybody else can see or there’s something wrong with everybody else that they’re unlovable with bipolar it’s usually self-blame though yeah something wrong with me everyone else can see I have to be perfect all the time and never let anyone see my imperfections or I will be ruined and they will hate me and drive me away and everything will be awful so these are your little kids who are perfectionists
(52:01) at coloring at drawing and standing Little Critters up they’re perfectionists at everything you don’t know why you’re just oh how funny no it’s not funny it’s ruining their life and then they develop generalized anxiety disorder very early because they are chronically anxious all the time because their brain says I keep screwing up and no one’s ever going to help me because I’m not worth helping so all I can do is be more scared all the time and it turns up the anxiety turns up the
(52:25) anxiety turns up the anxiety so they live at seven or eight out of ten anxiety all the time chronically constantly anxious then they hit teenage years and they say like I can’t do this anymore so many bad things have happened people don’t like me I’m never gonna fit in I’m starting to have romantic feelings for other people not things going to work no one will ever want me they crash into depression sometimes at 13 sometimes it’s 16 sometimes at 18.
(52:48) but they usually crash into teenage depression there’s the origins of a lot of teenage depression right there people with bipolar sometimes will go up into panic attacks and freaking out like massive amounts but it then starts to happen as their brain says I am so red line all the time on terror that I can either have either kill myself or I can have seizures or I can release a chemical cocktail it will temporarily per not turn off my prefrontal cortex the Judgment center of my brain that says I can’t ever do anything ever that
(53:18) makes me feel good because it’s scary and horrible I have to constantly be a slave of everyone around me to make them like me and be perfect all the time even though I know I can’t be so it’s always doomed Endeavor so I’m going to die eventually yeah and it turns off the Judgment side of the brain says let’s just dopamine binge for a while so they stay up for days they don’t sleep they do everything fun they eat and sleep or don’t sleep they don’t sleep or don’t eat or they have sex or they spend money
(53:43) or they paint or they get a little delusional or they do all kinds of crazy stuff that feels good and then they come out of it and say oh no what have I done and everyone’s mad at them or they’re in a hospital or they’ve just wrecked a ton of things they cheat on their boyfriend with three other dudes and all kinds of awful stuff that can happen and the worst part of it is they have revealed other people that they’re unstable and everyone is upset or confused and they go I have revealed myself to the world
(54:08) I’m about to be ruined and destroyed no one will ever love me because they see how bad I am and they plug tangent of depression and then they say the only thing our only way out of this is to be perfect for the rest of my life and they try and try and try and all that does is ratchet up the stress again until it hits a point of either a seizure suicide or manic episode and then crash into another manic episode and it turns it off again this is why fixing the attachment often does with all the lithium and all the other medications
(54:35) often can’t do which is disarm that’s that Rising cycle in the Panic cycle by showing them and helping them understand that people love them they’re not unlovable they’re not garbage and their life does not have to be run on Perfection or death it is not Perfection or death it is be who I am and beloved by a few people and then I only see them go up into manic episode or hypomanic episodes ever again when they’re under extreme stress that they can’t control and they have forgotten to go to other
(55:02) people to get help then it’s a day or so of hypomanic low-level manic or they can’t sleep they’re stressed out they’re driving themselves crazy and then they say oh wait I was supposed to talk to someone and get help okay yeah and then they go to it and that’s what that’s the rising cycle I have seen of fixing bipolar disorder through attachment issues not I’m not saying never take medication for it but I am saying that is the cycle I have seen when I’ve worked with people who have bipolar
(55:26) issues in the past well that’s that’s the mechanism and that’s how it all fits together and very few people know that pattern right there yeah no that’s uh that’s powerful and it’s a good reminder too that ladies and gentlemen this is just a podcast and a conversation with someone who is an expert so don’t don’t use this as the be all end-all of medical advice get the medical treatment reach out to Adam get the get the right kind of treatment to get this done but but uh um but yes this it’s it’s hugely
(55:52) valuable and it shows that that uh that there’s that there’s a path for people to find help and find treatment and that’s so important now and um and you’re doing such good work you’ve even got you’ve got a few books out um and uh and you have this uh this attachment boot camp that you have that you kind of mentioned earlier uh can you share a little bit about that and how people can access it yeah so I compiled my 15 years of education training and experience into one video course that you can watch
(56:23) over and over again or you can watch it with your spouse you partner you can watch it with your kids and you watch it and as you watch it the information in it changes you there are activities in it to do there are quizzes for comprehension but it changes you as you watch it and if you watch it with somebody it provokes conversations that you must have it tells you step by step exactly how to fix these attachment issues so that you get better relationships and stop being tormented by fear that’s what that course is
(56:52) designed to do that’s incredible and people can find that at adamlanesmith.com is that correct that’s right everything’s on there awesome so uh ladies and gentlemen um Adam it can be found at adamlanesmith.com he drops so much value on his social channels as well and on YouTube so please please look him up there Adam anywhere else anybody who can find you that you’d like to send people to oh I’m everywhere now if you type Adam Lane Smith attachment you will find me everywhere best place right now
(57:21) though is YouTube it’s really blowing up I put uh I’ve got something like 300 YouTube videos over there right now for people so if you’re hungry for more information go binge me on YouTube I’m Adam Lane Smith over on YouTube you’ll find me over there and Instagram is blowing up right now too I’ve got a lot of high visual carousels and reels and stuff there at attachment Adam that’s a good place and you can DM me there if you want to contact me Instagram DMS is one of the best ways that’s fantastic
(57:46) this so there’s been so much value in this episode Adam thank you so much for all of that I know we could go on in a number of different direction just to pick your brain and I hope we get that chance again um but uh uh I I thank you so much for being here and uh to everyone else out there thanks for joining us uh seek out Adam online and on the socials and until next time we’ll talk to you soon thanks again thank you hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting
(58:18) into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordill.com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new trainings that pop up on YouTube thanks again for
(58:51) joining us