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Hello, and welcome to Speak Honest.
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I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble.
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It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal.
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What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve?
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Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face?
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Then you have found the right podcast, my friend.
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Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations.
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Now, let's dive in.
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Hello, ladies, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest.
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I'm Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach and author of the best-selling book, Dance of Attachment, and we are in week three of our four-part October series on how the four attachment stances show up in the way we communicate.
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Now, so far, we have covered anxious attachment and the, oh my goodness, are we okay communication that shows up.
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And then last week we actually talked about avoidant attachment and kind of their famous line of always saying, I'm fine, everything's fine, I don't need you.
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But this week we're going to be talking about disorganized attachment.
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And this is the one so many of you have messaged me about because it's the one that can feel most confusing, especially from the inside and when you're looking at your partner trying to figure out, oh, I wonder what their attachment style might be.
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So I want to take this slow and I want to really be gentle with this one because it can bring up a lot of emotions.
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So go ahead, grab yourself a cup of tea, you know, put your headphones in, go for a nice walk outside so that way you can regulate your nervous system as we are walking along.
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So before we go any further, I want to remind you that if you have any questions around these topics, then I would love for you to go ahead and join our free community inside of the Speak Honest Facebook group.
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The link is in the show notes, so you can just scroll on down right now in the middle of this episode and click on the link, do it at the end.
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Or let's say you're just on Facebook, go to the search engine, type in Speak Honest, Secure Communication for Women.
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You answer a couple questions, you leave your email address if you want some more additional information, like where to find the attachment quiz, just stuff like that.
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And you
Load full transcript
will be added into our free Facebook community.
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So it's a place where you get to bring your messy questions, your confusing questions.
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I love questions.
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Ask any of the ladies in my academy.
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Questions are my favorite things in the whole world.
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And nobody is going to be there to judge you for them.
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If anybody in the community ever judges you, if you ever feel unsafe, you tell me, you tell my team, they will not be in that group anymore.
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This is a judgment-free zone for you to heal at your pace.
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So what I want you to do as you're listening today is I want you to think about these three things.
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Number one, the moments you want closeness and distance at the exact same time.
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Number two, how fast a conversation can flip from calm to chaos or from calm to completely blank.
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And number three, where you might be bracing for betrayal before anything has actually happened.
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All right, now let's dive in.
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Alright, so let's start with the push-pull.
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Disorganized attachment is one of the three non-secure attachment stances that we often talk about.
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Researchers Mary Main and Judith Solomon were the first to describe it when they noticed some of the little babies that they were looking at in the strange situation experiment, which we talked about in one of the previous episodes.
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Those babies, those little toddlers, they didn't quite fit the anxious or the avoidant patterning.
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They'd move towards their caregiver and then freeze, or turn away mid-step.
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And that makes heartbreaking sense when the person who was supposed to be your safe place was also, sometimes, your scary place.
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And the body gets two instructions at once.
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Go towards them, they will help you, and get away from them, they will hurt you.
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Now, in adult communication, what this might sound like is something like this I miss you so much, please come over.
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Followed 40 minutes later by actually I'm really tired, never mind.
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Now, it sounds like asking for a deep conversation and then picking a fight the moment it gets deep.
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It sounds like a text you write, then delete, then rewrite, then delete again, then rewrite it, then send it, and then immediately regret having sent it.
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And this makes sense, it really does.
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I don't want you to beat yourself
up over it if this sounds like you as you're listening to today's episode.
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This doesn't come out of nowhere.
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It's not just you.
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Your system learned that closeness and danger could live within the same person.
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So of course, it reaches and retreats at the exact same time.
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Here's where things do get tricky, though.
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Your partner receives both messages and has no idea which one to believe.
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See, they are not the parent that both hurt you and kept shelter over your head at the same time.
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So when you're giving them this push-pull, reaching, retreating messaging, they get really confused.
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They might even get frustrated.
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They start feeling like they're walking on eggshells, and you feel confused too.
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Plus, a big heavy layer of shame on top of all of this, thinking, why am I like this?
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But I want you to think about it this way.
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It's like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.
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The engine is roaring and you're burning so much energy, and the car isn't really going anywhere.
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Also, if you're gonna really do this, something might smell like it's on fire.
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So the inward work is naming both parts out loud with compassion.
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Because both parts, they're just trying to protect you.
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I would love it if we could get away from thinking of self-sabotaging effects as this terrible thing when really they're just self-protection effects.
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Now, this might sound like saying, okay, a part of me wants to be close to you tonight, and a part of me is scared.
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Can we take this slow?
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That sentence, there's bravery behind it, right?
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There's vulnerability.
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It lets the other person meet both of you instead of chasing whichever one showed up last.
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Key point number two here is that for a lot of women with disorganized attachment, conflict doesn't escalate gradually.
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It flips a switch fast.
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One minute you're having a totally normal conversation about who forgot to call the plumber, and then he says something in just that exact certain tone, maybe his eyebrow furrows just slightly, gives you a kind of look, and suddenly you are either yelling or girl, you are gone.
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You are blank.
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You can't even find a single word.
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You have slammed the door and you have walked out.
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Now you can maybe hear him talking on the other side, but it's like you're underwater.
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Now, for most of the clients inside of my academy, they are actually incredibly capable in nearly all the other aspects of their lives, right?
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I have a client and she can run her own business.
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This other client over here can run meetings like nobody's business.
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Uh, another one handles emergencies at the drop of a hat.
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And then one tone of voice from her husband or her boyfriend or her partner at the kitchen table takes her completely offline.
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But this is how your nervous system works because your body is reacting to an old threat that it recognizes in a new moment.
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Now, a lot of neuroscientists like to use this phrasing where they say the neurons that fire together wire together.
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But basically, what this means is if a raised voice and danger fired together enough times when you were little, that pathway got paved into a superhighway in your mind.
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Your body is taking the fastest road it knows.
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This is learned.
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And anything learned can be relearned.
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But I want us to make sure we understand that there are costs, right?
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Because when conflict flips this fast, nothing ever actually gets resolved.
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The plumber never gets called, the hurt never gets repaired, and both people start to feel like conflict itself is dangerous and going to cause the relationship to end.
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It's a bit like a phone that goes from 40% battery to completely dead with zero warning.
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You'd love to finish the call, but you just can't.
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The battery wasn't built for that load yet.
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So the inner work here is learning your early warning signs, learning when you are about to drop out of battery, learning when you need to plug in.
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Maybe there's a heat in your face, maybe there's a buzzing in your ear or a burning sensation in your hands.
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And then I want you to have a plan ready before you need it.
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This is where you practice.
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Maybe you ground by putting your feet on the floor.
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Maybe you name five things you can see.
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Maybe you do some box breathing.
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You can agree with your partner on a pause word ahead of time when everyone's calm.
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This is how you work together to help
this part of you that is still there.
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We don't want to shame that part of you that goes from zero to 60.
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We do want to ease it over time, yes.
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But with you can't change your zero to 60 mentality from zero to 60, right?
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It's gonna take time.
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And this looks like working with your partner.
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This looks like proactively working with yourself.
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And of course, you can always come inside of the Speak Honest Academy if you need help with grounding techniques.
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But in this moment, when you're grounded, maybe you can say something like, Okay, listen, I'm starting to go blank.
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I'm starting to feel the heat rise in my face.
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This conversation matters a lot to me, but my body needs 20 minutes to come back to it.
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Can we pick this up later?
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But that's how you communicate when you need space when you're in the middle of a trigger and you want to pause before you react.
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Now let's talk about key point number three, which is bracing for betrayal.
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See, when your system learned that people you love can also be the very people who hurt you, it gets very, very good at bracing.
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So you might read threat into something usually pretty neutral, or he's quiet at dinner, and your brain goes straight into there's something wrong.
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I did something to mess up, he doesn't like the dinner I have, I didn't clean up well enough, oh no, he's done with me.
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Now, you might test people to see if they'll stay.
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This is a very classic, disorganized, attached way of communicating, which is protest behavior.
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You might even end things first because leaving hurts less than being left, but sometimes when you end things, what you're really doing is hoping that they chase you and thus this big cycle continues.
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And then often comes the whiplash, the shame, the big apology, the desperate repair.
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And this makes sense because bracing was your protection strategy.
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If you expect the worse, at least it can't surprise you.
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All right, but and that makes a lot of sense, but bracing for betrayal can accidentally create the very distance that you're afraid of in the first place.
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If you're afraid that people are gonna get tired of you, and then you keep testing them in a way to see if they get tired of you, girl, they're gonna get tired of you.
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Like that's just how this works.
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The prophecy starts fulfilling itself, and then your nervous system says, see, I told you so.
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That's your body just looking for certainty.
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That's your body bracing for the familiar.
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But think about it like reading the last page of a book first.
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Uh it's horrif, horrible, horrible people who do this, but some people out there do do this.
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They read the last page of the book first.
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So the ending can't catch you off guard.
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Sure, you're protected from the surprise at the end, but you also don't get to enjoy the story.
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And what I love teaching the women in my academy is how to enjoy their story, how to enjoy their life, how to enjoy the relationship and stop looking and bracing so much as to oh no, when is the other shoe going to drop?
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So the inner work here is one powerful tiny little question.
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But is this happening now or is this old?
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I love asking this question.
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I I love it when I'm getting triggered that instead of asking myself, oh my god, what's wrong with me?
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I'd love to ask myself, what does this remind me of?
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What am I noticing that I'm expecting the worst right now?
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And then checking the actual evidence in front of you.
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This is where we can start poking holes in the stories that come up in our minds where we are afraid he doesn't love me, he doesn't care about me, I'm not important to him.
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And we stop ourselves, we say, wait a second, whoa, what does this remind me of?
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And is it true?
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No, I do know he loves me.
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I do know I'm very important to him.
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Okay, great.
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Now let's start there.
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Because then once you get to that space, you can bring this to your partner in that process.
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So you can say something to him like, hey, I'm noticing I'm expecting the worst right now.
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Can you help me check what's actually going on between us?
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Can you please reassure me?
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That's an okay question to ask your safe partner.
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That's an invitation to be on the same team against the old fear together.
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So disorganized attachment communicates in this push-pull type dynamic.
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It's fast and it's flips and it's bracing because your body learned that love and fear
could come from the same place.
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And that's a really sad thing when you really stop and think about it.
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And it also makes so much sense why, as adults, we still have that same love and that same fear, that same push, that same pull, and so much to carry.
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But I want to encourage you that it's not a life sentence, it's not a forever thing that has to keep happening.
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Researchers call it earned security.
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When someone moves from an adapted pattern towards a secure pattern, and I see it happen with women all of the time inside of the Speak Honest Academy.
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Hell, it happened to me before I even created the Academy.
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It's why my passion is in helping you now.
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We do this slowly, we do this gently, one regulated moment at a time.
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We're going to name both parts in our body as they show up.
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We're going to know your warning signs, and we're going to be able to ask now, what does this remind me of?
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Is this a now feeling or is this an old feeling?
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Because here's the thing I want you to remember.
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Your body learned to brace, but it can also learn to rest.
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All right, ladies, thank you so much for being here this week with us and for listening to today's episode.
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Next week is our series finale, where we will be talking about secure attachment and what it actually sounds like when two people communicate from a safe, secure space.
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And if you have any questions, remember to head over to our free Facebook community.
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You can just click on the link in the show notes right now, or you can go to the little search engine on Facebook and type in speak on us, secure communication for women.
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In that group, we get together, we spend time together, I answer your questions.
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You can ask me anything in there, you can ask the other ladies' questions in there, you can find out more information about the academy.
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You can even learn more information on how you can be coached right here live on the podcast with me.
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If that is something you are interested in, if you're listening to today's episode and you're thinking, Jen, this sounds great, but my situation is unique.
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I love unique.
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Reach out to me.
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I have a form you fill out.
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We see if you're a good fit, and then you can get some coaching right here on the podcast.
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All right, ladies, I hope you all have a beautiful day.
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I will speak with you all next week.
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Take care.
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As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination.
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And it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey.
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If you want to dig deeper into the topics we cover today, be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there.
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And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast.
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Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast.
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Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.