Why Knowing Your Attachment Style Isn’t Enough, With Psychologist Miriam Brait

About This Episode

You have read the attachment books. You can name your style at a dinner party. You can spot anxious-avoidant dynamics in your friends, your colleagues, your last three relationships. And you are still living the pattern. If that sounds familiar, this episode was made for you.

Miriam Brait is a licensed psychologist in Romania and an attachment-focused, trauma-informed coach who works with high-functioning women all over the world. She writes the Substack Past the Past, where she explores attachment, complex trauma, and the long arc of relational healing at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and lived experience. Her practice is for the woman who looks fine, sounds fine, and is exhausted from holding it all together.

Miriam is 31. Jenn is 52. They live an ocean apart. And what they discovered in this conversation is that the gap between them is exactly the point. The high-functioning trap, the way attachment quietly wires who we end up attracted to, the slow erosion of self-trust we mistake for destiny: these patterns do not care about generation. They show up in a young psychologist in Bucharest and in a midlife reinvention coach who walked away from a 30-year career nine months ago. And the work to get free from them looks remarkably similar, no matter where you are in the timeline.

What You’ll Hear

Why we’ve turned ourselves into "human doings" instead of human beings, and how even our free time has become a performance

The clinical difference between conditional and unconditional self-worth, and why high-achieving women keep mistaking one for the other

Why leaving a job you are good at is so much harder than leaving one you are bad at, and what actually makes the difference between the woman who walks away and the woman who keeps saying "just one more year"

The one insight about attachment that breaks most listeners open: it doesn’t just shape how you behave inside a relationship, it shapes who you’re attracted to in the first place

Why women keep calling the same painful pattern "destiny," and what it actually takes to see the pattern instead of living inside it

How midlife transitions (divorce, empty nest, career pivots) reach back and surface attachment wounds you thought were dealt with 20 years ago

The four trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) in plain English, and the specific path out for the chronic fawner

Why the goal isn’t a perfectly safe environment, and what to build instead so you can meet life when it isn’t safe

When to work with a therapist or psychologist versus a coach, and the single question that helps you figure out which you actually need

Key Takeaway

I think it’s far more powerful to allow people to love you as you are instead of fighting for the love of people who don’t love you as you are.

— Miriam Brait

Timestamps

00:00 Across Generations Intro

00:53 Meet Miriam Brait

02:00 Miriam’s Breakthrough Story

04:41 Healing Beyond Quick Fixes

06:08 Therapy vs Coaching

09:42 High Functioning Trap

13:28 Productivity as Self Worth

19:08 Why It’s Hard to Quit

26:16 Attachment Theory Basics

31:00 Patterns That Feel Like Destiny

35:00 Can Attachment Change

37:53 Transitions and Old Wounds

40:29 Fight Flight Freeze Fawn

44:58 Escaping the Fawn Response

46:49 Building Inner Safety

48:49 Find Miriam and Next Steps

51:44 One Message to Remember

53:39 Final Wrap and Goodbye

Connect with Miriam Brait

Substack: pasthepast.com

Free 15-minute coaching call: Book here

Threads: @gettingpastyourpast

Email: helpwithmiriam@gmail.com

Connect with Jenn Fast

The Self-Trust Reset Challenge: Join the free challenge — if this episode landed for you, this is your next step. A short, guided reset designed to help you start trusting yourself again.

Newsletter: The Comeback Letter on Substack

Instagram: @itsjennfast

Email: info@reinventionwithjennfast.com

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