[Music] hey fellow Gian teers those of us like our spirituality with a Twist so we are in the middle of a series of episodes on Karma mudra uh and uh that's one of the goals for 2025 to talk a lot about karmamudra which is the use of uh sexuality and then Argo relationship love in the spiritual path and in doing that we like to also talk a little bit about psychology around these different spiritual questions and today our goal is to talk about this thing called attachment Theory so the way we're looking at is maybe just go over the general theory today give you kind of like a like a overview of what it's about and then ultimately we'll talk about how we think that applies to spiritual stuff like Buddhism and DSM and all the other isms that we're interested in yeah yeah and with and and with the the understanding that it's these are tangible these are Tang discussions right as as we're talking about Karma mudra and then you know karma sutra and you know we've been do this this series on attachment here it's it's using the psychology of relationships in in all the various forms to to help illuminate different aspects of our life and of our own awareness I think that's been the big thing in like doing these episodes that we've been working on in the time we've been doing this podcast was it give a chance to pull together like more of the psychological stuff and the spiritual stuff which is what we're trying to do so get people different tools to work with so I know but this one is kind of funny I'll go through kind of the idea of the theory Daniel and uh you know we'll talk I guess about the bits and pieces as we go so yeah full props I'm using um this book poly secure is one of the starting places for this to give like credit to the author it's a lady named Jessica Jessica Fern F yeah I think she does a really good job of like just going over attachment Theory overall she's doing it in the context of like polyamory but I think anyone can read the book and get something out of it yeah because the greater part of it is really just about attachment Theory and there's parts that are about things that are like polyamory uh focused but a lot of it really isn't a lot of it's just you know just general stuff about love and relationships and attachment Theory and so I think it's good yeah yeah the book is unique in that it's it's broken up into third into like thirds right and the first third specifically is just on attachment Theory period so like even if you only read the first third it's it it it's it was well I mean I was doing some you know you sent the notes over and I was looking up the book and reading some reviews of it and and reading some Snippets to it and has it's very positively reviewed across multiple spectrums not just people who are in like a polyamorous Community but just in like in the psychological Community relationship discussion community in general so yeah so like you we like to use the word uniqueness for the poly folks so know it has like a unique that's from eser paral right yes it has this uniqueness vibe to it but like big sections even when it's talking about relationship advice and stuff it's really like stuff anybody could really use yeah you know not specifically poly stuff so he good book so I want to give a prop uh props to her you know as being kind of one of the sources for this she has some like charts and diagram things I sent those over to you Daniel probably while I'll do later on is I'll pop them up on to Instagram yeah for people want to look at those things to kind of accompany the accompany the episode you know so we'll talk it through but you can get the little visuals on that you know um I'll do that probably tomorrow or something but they'll be I'm sure when by the time the episode goes up yeah so all right like in doing this I wanted to give a little bit of the background to the people who responsible for this just because we like to be educational Contra so the guy this is associated with is a guy named John bulby you know I have like a psych degree I mean I must have heard of him but he's not like a big name person like some of the other psychologists we've talked about but still a dude and uh his big thing was partially being like a psychoanalyst and you know paying attention to like early life traumas and those kind of things which then got him into the area of looking more at um this attachment Theory idea so still the idea of like things that happen to people early in life that affect their adult world so yeah like a freid thing and stuff like that but you know maybe in some ways I think he was looking at as a bit more concrete and maybe even a little bit more like evolutionary psychology in a way right so he was kind of influenced by like uh there's this thing you learn back in any site class of like Conrad the Rens uh who's like you see the pictures and there's like a bunch of geese following this guy around oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know some Swedish guy or wherever he's from I forget but they're all following him the whole point is like the Ducks will imprint on the first caretaker that the imprints on so he kind of went like yeah that is that is a premise of a movie called The Wild robot which I can recommend actually I never heard of the wild robot when did that come out uh maybe like October oh it's out like recent 2024 yeah it's cute who's in that one it's a it's a cartoon kind of movie you know oh okay okay but but it's it's totally cute and and totally worthwhile if you have kids or you just like a nice fun hearted movie but yeah uh yeah I won't go any further than that but it's worth watching okay no spoilers right all right so I I haven't heard of it actually which is funny you know yeah but um for my kids Circle stuff anyway so he got I think he was really affected by this idea like look at those geese for example yeah there must be some whole mechanism in living things that that do this right so that was part of it I think he also did some things he's a British guy and uh I think he comes from kind of a wealthy family too so he sort of has an interesting backstory have to talk about all of it but you know um he ended up working with troubled kids and as he was working with troubled kids he realized like well a lot of these kids as I trace back their history seem to have these early life what he would eventually call like attachment issues right things went wrong with them on their Primary Care Akers so that's sort of where he comes from with this um the other person who's a big person on this is a guy name is a woman named Mary anworth give the props to the names of the people yeah and she was a student of this bulby um she's kind of an interesting little backstory too as far as attachment Theory goes um she got married um like in the 50s into the 60s and she traveled around the world with her husband and apparently she was she spent time like in different cultures looking at how they handled child rearing and then also how they handled like changes in the kid's life like when you wean the kid off from breastfeeding and things like that so she was just seeing different cultures I guess and thinking about these questions so by the time that she was working with this bulby guy John Balby on attachment stuff you know she had had these different cross-cultural experiences yeah so that's kind of interesting for our podcast too because we think about you know different culturist and how they handle stuff obviously you know I got an article maybe I'll like dig it up for an episode we'll do in the future but just about how weird American child rearing practices are relative to other cultures you know yeah and especially during the you know the the the 1900s really in the the vast and I'm not a child psychologist you know or or even a historian but from uh from a couple books that I've read one of which was the one that we talked about uh I think at the beginning of last year which was a healing in a toxic culture which is the gabra mate book and so he talks he talks a lot about this in particular and the failures of the you know really like modern American psychologist Dr Spock in particular the kind of intentional um he would call I mean gabber would call it neglect you know like letting your kids cry it out you know and like Oh They'll be they you got to toughen them up but like in he gives example after example of traditional cultures where that is never the case because a you're living in a communal setting you your baby can't be crying you there's a lot of kids you're not you're not going to let your kid cry all night because you're keeping the your neighbor up you know now that we're kind of isolated we feel like we could do that but the and and you know we're going to I'll go I'll I'll come back to this over and over again throughout this conversation because it comes up so regularly and and maybe this will be a good lead in for where you're you're going to go soon is that like the the child doesn't have a fully regulated nervous system and therefore it has to use its parents nervous system to kind of moderate itself number one but then also to be that buffer between the external world and the home right at some point they know that like there's an outside world as a child grows obviously right I'm not talking about an infant um but that that parent is there to do the regulation for the child that the child is unable to do or let's say learning to do maybe more specifically right and so when you allow someone to um somebody who doesn't have capabilities to soothe themselves like get up and change their own diaper or go get themselves something to eat because they're hungry you know that they're kind of stuck in these states and not coming to their aid you're leaving them in these places of of discomfort for long periods and they're wailing and wailing and wailing and wailing and wailing they are going to do something cognitively in order to self soothe and you are going to go over a couple of those mechanisms here in a little bit so we'll we'll SE that I me that kind of language is there though right all that stuff about like self soothing and like these kinds of things that is attachment Theory language like for sure right yeah and how kids learn how to do that and then you know our goal is to kind of trace this partially into like what's useful for everybody like how do you think about that in terms of how do you interact with people as an adult yes and then also like what does this have to do with like things like uh spirituality and Tantra and whatever you know yeah yeah but like realistically speaking if we're going to do these things in our culture you know you're going to be dealing with people who have these issues correct well right or we're going to have these issues and have to learn how to deal with them in with our in ourselves so we can have spiritually edifying relationships with other people right right I mean you're going to have to figure it out within yourself but then if you're in community with every with someone which we all are in some way shape or form um that you're going to have to deal with it with someone else because they probably haven't dealt with it or I'm not going to say probably but they might not have you know so you're going to have to help them and it's just you know you don't have to help them but you know it's going to be it's a there it's a thing for sure yeah so hence like presenting this is hopefully like a tool for people to be able to use understand ourselves understand potential Partners exactly understand spiritual Partners understand romantic Partners understand coor the combo of all of these coworkers too yeah you're right because you're spend a lot of time I mean you're GNA spend probably if you're at a job for a long period forget it if you're at any job ever you're going to spend more time with your co-workers than you probably are with your family for sure yeah so like also like you know I've been thinking a lot about like the tantric parenting angle too like how do you raise kids to be doist Buddhist tantri in the cultural setting and like that raises questions of like how do you support kids and how do you develop these positive attachment things and kids yeah yeah as far as Mary answorth the person who was the student of this John bulby yeah I think I was also interesting because I just did a little research on these two people didn't know too much about them but the other part that was from the Detachment Theory thing and I don't know what she thought about this in the end but apparently she went through like a vicious divorce in like 1960 you know I start Wonder yeah it was more rare back then right I think like you know John lennin famously The Beatles divorced in like 65 or 66 or something like that you know but a huge deal maybe a little bit later but anyways mid-60s is you know the whole Yoko and that's like I think was shocking for people right that you get divorced right oh yeah so I don't know what this was like for her but I just thought well that's ironic because you know this this lady who's studying attachment Theory and you know whatever went wrong in her relationship and her life it was it was bad enough where they had to separate in that way which a lot of people wouldn't so anyways irony of the situation but okay so this Mary anworth is the person who's really responsible for like the research side of this we'll give the the whole big picture of the whole big Theory and it's a thing what they call the strange situation and the strange situation experimental setup is there there it's really testing kids in their relationships with their caretakers I think a lot of these were probably moms but whoever the care primary caretakers were for these kids in these studies and the gist of the study would go the kid would be there in a room where there was lots of stuff potentially to do that kids would like toys and stuff to explore in the room sure there would be the caretaker and then eventually a stranger would come into the room and you would see how the kid would react under these different settings kid there kid with the uh the caretaker The Stranger and then also what would happen when the kid was just left alone or when the kid was there with the stranger and then especially what would happen when the kid was reunited with the caretaker so it's sort of this playing around these different situations right with this kid I suppose in Psychology call those variables but in any case you know psych research stuff you'd go and you'd see how the kid would respond and so they watched variations again especially how the kid handled exploring the room how the kid inter interacted with the caretaker and how the kid felt secure or insecure in the situations where the kid might be either alone or with some stranger they weren't didn't know very well right and then watching this they came up with like initially three styles that they saw kids acting in eventually gonna end a fourth one and then we'll try to trace that through to adult life right so we can see how maybe this impacts people in their adult lives I don't know how you thought about with this Daniel but as we were as I was looking at it and I read the Jessica Fern book they referenced the beginning a bit ago and I was like this is interesting to think about because I definitely came from an environment that was promoting of like not a good attachment style you know so you know we can all maybe think about ourselves too we happen to be posting the podcast I don't mind talking about my own experience with this because I can definitely say there were things that were off for sure right and then you know everyone listening we can all kind of like do the calculus on our own heads yeah how this was but anyways to describe the kids so they they really came up with like what was sort of a secure Style of kids and I'll get to that in a second but they really talked about initially two kind of insecure Styles eventually three where they thought okay there's something there's something the kid is struggling with this right so one they called insecure avoidant and it was kind of interesting when they describe it it was kids who were very kind of like in internally kind of contained when you brought them into this environment that they didn't know they really wouldn't explore it or interact with it it very much and that was true whether or not the parent or caraker taker was there right the caregiver was there the kid was still you know avoidant in interacting with environment and even when the caretaker would leave the kid wouldn't freak out or anything but still would stay very much contained within themselves and when the caretaker came back they wouldn't even like reunite with the caretaker and necessarily reconnect so kids who were very like they eventually Ed the term insecure avoidant the weird part was the kids looked okay on the outside but when you went to go like actually measure like indicators of stress they were really super high stressed heart rate things eventually they were looking at things like cortisol levels and stress hormones and things like that so it was sort of an interesting finding that the kids felt like stressed out you wouldn't be able to tell from the outside you know but when you actually looked at their stress response it was there and what was really happening with them was that they didn't seem to connect to their caretakers and they didn't seem to connect with the environment very well so that's the first style of this so you would say that like the these are people who have maybe difficulty in new scenarios new situations unfamiliar surroundings yeah and I think also that there's something off with how they're bonded with their caretaker too as part of the idea of this sure I guess I was looking for more like as we grow you know because people who are listening to this are going to think about this but you can you can only go back so far in your mind but you could think about now you know these are and I'm just thinking like if th it seems like it's the environment that is they're bond with the person but also the kind of like uneasiness with their surroundings also has a yeah when you get to the adult version of this they talk about this as being like avoidant or dismissive so you know we'll kind of get to the whole deal with it yeah um anyways that's like version number one that would happen yeah and then the other one they called SEC insecure anxious and these are kids who were kind of like clingy to the caregiver even before you know the situation got a little bit more uncomfortable you know before the stranger came in and all that they were just clingy they wouldn't necessarily like explore the room either and then when the the caretaker would leave the kids would like get really nervous anxious some of them would just kind of freak out a little bit and then the funny part was when the caretaker would return they still wouldn't be able to reattach the caretaker so the person who was the primary care person would come back and they would either like still stay withdrawn and pulled away or they would like seem to be like what they would described as kind of like resentful of the caretaker person or something sure yeah so they were very like emotionally kind of like a little bit more all over the place yeah you could totally imagine like a young kid whose like Mom has to leave the room or something or has to go away for a minute and then they she comes back after maybe a night out or whatever and you know the kids like go away from me you know even though they were like hysterical when the mom left or the dad or whatever you know uh and now they don't want to be touched you know and they're edgy and the way back yeah yeah so then uh the last of these they kind of added a little bit later on and uh it was sort of a grand student of this Mary answorth lady named Mary M I never heard of her before but anyways continuing the bio of the story but yeah last one is they call insecure disorganized and we'll kind of talk about like what kind of families tend to what kind of family situations tend to promote these different kinds of things and kids because that's part of the idea too but for this one in like the general study thing it was sort of like really confused behaviors from the kids where some of the time it would seem like they wanted to withdraw from whoever the people were around them the caretaker other times they would kind of approach and then like run away um so they would approach and Retreat sometimes they would just you know withdraw and kind of freeze other times they might like even like hit the parent it was like all over the place so it was sort of like the last of these groups where the kids Behavior seemed like really chaotic yeah and the weird part there's a couple things that are interesting about this I think one part was they found that these kids had like the highest cortisol and stress home levels of all gr that was going to be my guess their behavior got super erratic right yeah yeah and then when that they were kind of putting together the idea of this whole notion of attachment it was like they kind of got described as like having no stable approach so the other ones at least are kind of stable the kids will do repetitive behaviors these are kind of like unstable all over the place and then the way they'll talk about it is that kid has come up with no like consistent strategy of trying to deal with this that there's a sort of a chaoticness in this and they have some ideas of like why this happens to kids so yeah the last of these is secure attachment and like this is just stuff that's good right yeah so okay what are you gonna say about them but they kind of give a description so you know it's kids who were securely attached to the mother you know and while the mother was present they would go out and kind of like explore the room and kind of do their thing and then um when the parent or the mother or the caregiver would go away they would get a little upset you know yeah when the caretaker was there they could interact with the stranger when it was just them alone with the caretaker or when uh alone with the stranger or when the caregiver was kind of gone they would be a little bit freaked out but when the caretaker came back they would be happy to see car Bond again so kind of like the little geese they go back to like the the dude and everything seems fine again this would be normal this would be kind of the the secure attachment kind of thing and it raises like some interesting questions that I think maybe can throw around as the episode goes forward but they kind of say there's like these different features of what attachment stuff is about if we want to say it's a biological mechanism or however you want to frame this you know one of it is like the proximity aspect they call proximity maintenance that people want to be close to the people they're bonded with yeah makes sense another part of it was well some separation distress but the ability to kind of repair this afterwards right and how that'll affect people in their adult relationships and then the other part was which I think is really important for our psychospiritual stuff was um one the idea of a safe haven like a safe place to go back to so even if you have some distress with separation you can find your way back to this Safe Haven you know and how that works for adult relationships too and eventually we'll talk about psychos spiritual ones right but they have that feeling of connection with someone could be kind of like a home base for you place where you feel secure but then the other side of that which they actually call like a secure base is the idea that you're you have like some like home base and you're comfortable going out and exploring the world from that so for this bulby guy he said basically there's kind of two instincts then one is sort of the security Instinct I have some kind of safe space for myself a spa a safe haven and the other part is like what you call like an exploratory set of instincts or something you want to go out into the world and move around and explore things and so you sort of need both of those things the safe haven and the secure base right and then the idea is like how does this develop for kids do they develop like healthy versions of this or does this not develop so healthy and then you'll have trouble with like whether or not you feel like you can feel secure when you need to feel secure but also you can feel free to go out in the world there's kind of a yinyang to that too isn't there right yeah in yinyang theory like Chinese culture right you know us being Chinese medical people sometimes we do it like this too you know the safe space and then the aspect of like I'm gonna go out and explore the world and like do stuff so anyway that's yeah it's like a kite you know like if you have a good grip on a kite um you can let it go up into the sky you know quite quite far yeah yeah but if you don't have a firm grip this sky is gonna win you know you know it's funny I was just listening to like uh these Stephen King books and I was Rel listening to like pet cemetery oh and he uses like the image like the kite in that way like spoilers but the book's been out since the [...] 80s but it's not going to end well for this family it's a Stephen King book okay but like the last happy moments he remembers you know the main character in this right now listening to it as an audiobook and it's if you like audiobooks it's the guy who plays Dexter on the TV show right you know the yeah the serial killer guy yeah yeah who only kills bad people of course so he does like the read for this book but that you know that it's like he uses the kite as sort of that metaphor right yeah King does in the book right like the father's teaching the son like hey you can like hold on to the kite but you can also let it go and they're exploring that kind of thing like I just was listening to it like two weeks ago or something he does the exact same thing with the kite yeah pet cemetery yeah did you ever read any of those things when you were younger no you not like Stephen King or you're like indifferent don't care one way the other I don't like it pretty much that one yeah don't I don't really care oh you froze on me for a second did you like him or not like him no big deal you're not to do it one way or the other all right give the Rel listen so anyway so two sets of mechanisms right one which is the more like Yin one and the one that's the more young one and then you know we'll look at it like an adulthood yeah so maybe one of the other big ideas of this is like how does this stuff happen like what goes wrong and I think the idea with the attachment mechanism thing is like this thing kicks in when people feel stress yeah whether you're an adult or a child a child of course you're in that special role where you're kind of reliant on your adult caretakers so kind of what you're saying earlier Daniel it's a kind of a maybe a bi biological evolved thing definitely or a psychospiritual thing however you want to frame that right where um the kid is then you know activates under duress or stress anyways but the kid is sort of learn learning these different techniques one would be like how do I make healthy attachment you know how do I connect with people uh the other being like what you were talking about sort of the self-regulating aspect of this right how do I handle stressors and how do I learn how to handle that in myself and they use that kind of like phraseology of like self soothing if you feel more like secure you can learn how to talk yourself down even as a kid you know you can use some of your own internal language with yourself and kind of learn how to handle your own emotions and your own thoughts and still feel good within yourself or uh you know that's one side and then I think if you get really into the child psychology of it you also learn something about what they call object constancy which is this ability to like be able to know like okay my this person I love isn't here now but I'll see them again and I'm not gonna feel so freaked out right and then we get to adult stuff which we're going to be going through in a second but in the adult world like am I okay when my partner isn't there that freak my [...] out well yeah but it it go it goes back to like you know if I can put my own you know like put it in a put it in a bow real quick you have the the external perspective and the internal perspective external as in like you are regulating not you're you're uh learning to be in communion with your environment that's the barrier around you and so how much can you attach to something versus how much can you let it go right as your protect protective layer around you right like the like the paric cardium protects the heart but then you have right protects the emotions yeah it protects emotions but it's also it's a cover on the western anatomical you know on your anatomical heart the pericardium covers the heart yeah yeah yeah yeah okay yeah but then so so you have this kind of barrier around you and then on the internal perspective it is your ability to like you said regulate work with yourself but if you don't have a place to do that in meaning if your barrier is not strong enough or we'll maybe say Supple enough maybe that's a better way of putting it if it's not Supple enough to give you the opportunity to do your own internal regulation you're not going to be able to do that and so there is this like very clear need of having you know we can call it like healthy boundaries which doesn't mean healthy doesn't mean like uh impermeable it means that you can open and close the door in order to let things in and out in a healthy way so that people can go and come back and you're not you know you're not freaking your [...] out the entire time but that when they do go if you do feel some way about it whether it's your parents as a child or your partner or as an adult that you have the capability to in to to give yourself the opportunity to walk yourself through the steps of accepting right that this situation is temporary or maybe it's for the best or whatever the case might be and the difference would be as a child or maybe as an infant or a toddler you don't have the the second part you don't have the internal uh wherewithal to take yourself through it and then simultaneously if you're incapable of uh attaining what you require to fulfill your needs I.E diaper food uncomfortable scared whatever the case might be you're not even going to be you're not even going to have the opportunity to do the second one because you cannot allow yourself to be in a vulnerable state where you're doing some kind of self reflection if you feel physically threatened I think like you know like the idea is you have this like innate mechanism right that's going to kick in anyways right correct but you also have to learn how to like deal with it somehow and if like kids aren't given the opportunity to learn because the situation isn't stable however it's unstable then you're not going to learn how to handle these things and you're G to De these negative patterns that you'll carry into adulthood or something right yes yes yeah you're working with something really like deep I was like in Chinese medicine sometimes we use this uh word called the poe which is like part of the spirit of the person that's the most vulnerable or something right most like feeling insecure right yeah it's the most like it's the part of the spirit that is associated with the physical body and what I I've heard this talked about before in this way so I'll share it now the you know so in Chinese medicine there's like five it's not a it's not a unified Soul it's like a five it's like a rainbow in your spirit you know your spirit's not just one thing it's multiple things and they they go from more material to less material and the poe is the most material of this part of the spirit and because it's the most material it has an innate knowledge of its own finite nature and thereby letting go of anything is a reminder that it is that is eventually it's not going to cross over to the other side whereas like some other parts of your Shen that are dreaming or visionary or you know the most I don't know the most refined Parts they're going to be fine they're going to get absorbed back into the great white light and you know and be part of the sky or wherever wherever we're part of but this part the PO is like yeah but not me guys no no no no no no kind of [...] I'm gonna be I'm gonna be worm food sooner than later so you know I'm not letting go of anything ever yeah yeah yeah that's like the like sometimes they talk about with the metal phase and the Worley soll or something right part it feels vulnerable or something right like it has to do with like vulnerability and that's thing is like like how do you learn how to deal with like mechanisms of like vulnerability in yourself right yeah yeah yeah all right so on the different styles of how this can play out then they kind of go um you know like here's the different sort of Parental situations carak given situations that sort of tend to produce these kinds of patterns in kids right sure so you know know they talk about you know the secure one okay well that's just kind of obvious [...] right fine you feel protected you feel emotional apparent feels emotionally available they're responsive they're attuned to your needs and so on yeah these other ones something's going to go fishy uh the avoidant one um uh the situation the way to describe it is like there's this attachment mechanism and the kid just can't get those needs met and eventually the kid sort of like just gives up so they still feel all the stress inside but they just aren't really even doing behaviors that would reflect like okay I need attention I need concern I need love I need whatever this is the kid just has already given up so they would draw inside and they don't even really try to get that kind of behavior the child sort of in a certain sense sees the situation as like hopeless and has already sort of like given up on getting this attachment needs kind of met and the idea is that the the parental situations with or the caregiving situations whatever this is is where people were sort of like unavailable they weren't responsive they weren't able to attune to the kid they didn't sort of understand what the kid needed so they were never able to sort of like meet the emotional needs of what the kid you know um required in the moment or something the parent isn't able to do that or maybe situations where the parent is just sort of rejecting so all these kinds of things are supposed to like kind of turn uh you know just turn the kid off and the kid sort of gives up on something some level right and it's interesting because I suppose like for a lot of us if we look back we can kind of go okay was that the kind of household I was from you know and that's where I think this ends up being like psychos spiritually useful for us right get the idea that of how the thing is supposed to work but then go okay well was was that my situation then you can kind of see whether or not you have these patterns in yourself and your adult life right um I was listening to Jessica Fern stuff on this and she had some additional little kind of like tidbits on what thought were things that led kids to sort of develop these patterns right and so she said like uh parenting that was very like goal driven parents are only interacting with the kids to like okay we're going to educate you or we're going to learn some task or whatever but it was all like goal goal driven there weren't times when you're just bonding and bullshitting and whatever yeah I thought about that a lot with you know my son's 12 now and we spend a certain amount of time like he's interested in chess there's this chess [...] behind us yeah little room but you know we do that together but other times we're just bullshitting around yeah and we're just bullshitting and uh you know I was like that's important time you know the just bullshitting time yeah you know and I I realized like other parents I know don't like that stuff actually they always think that there should be some scheduled activity but a lot of times it's just like let's watch the highlights of the Lions lose to the commanders and he likes Jaden Daniels the quarterback for the commanders this is when we're recording this yeah yeah yeah because he has his like rookie card or something yeah like just [...] you know and it's [...] around and joking and whatever right and that's how you Bond I was like that's really important stuff yeah I sometimes I feel like it might be you know because we all have friends and whatnot who have kids I I think it's hard sometimes for people to relate you know like it's a struggle actually for parents to relate to their kids and you know I don't have any children so I can't really say but I don't I don't know just this is what I this is what I get you know so it becomes a having things scheduled um is easier to to do yeah that right so on one level and I'm not disparaging those who do that you know what I'm saying on the other hand there is also a cultural and we got to tie it in a little bit right there's a cultural pressure to be productive yeah yeah you know what I'm saying and so this kind of pressure as an adult from your work then trickles down to the influence on your children and they have to be in this and this and you know all these things in order to create uh I don't know what they're trying to create particularly you know but they're trying to create something and so when they're not involved in that there has that muscle of connection between you and somebody who is significantly younger and has absolutely zero interest that you do you have to relate to them they're not going to relate to you yeah she does talk about that I laugh a little bit because it's it's true right you know like sometimes there is that cultural pressure and then I don't know it's interesting you know it's like okay there's that weird vbec ramaswami thing that came out a few weeks ago I'm not gonna talk about it too much but you know it was all thing like productivity productivity productivity right yeah and I was just thinking like you know I was prepping this lecture here right yeah and uh or this conversation we were going to have but I was putting the notes by startor the notes together and I was like hanging out with my son in the afternoon and we just have like our inside jokes and they were just [...] around and I was thinking yeah that's what I'm trying to do it's that and I it as far as like having a label on stuff it sort of helped because it was like oh yeah what what am I trying to do with this kid now yeah go driven in a way but it's gold driven like this is just our [...] bonding time yeah totally right and he's laughing and whatever you know so yeah she also does mention the idea of like bad fit where the parents don't seem to understand the kid and you're bringing that point up too right yeah there's that Bond maybe all parents can feel a little bit separated from the kids on some level yeah right but like you know specifically where she brings up like how this kid's so different I don't get this kid yeah it's know I'm really extroverted this kid's super introverted I don't get it I'm super introverted this kid's really all over the place and kind of wild I don't get it yeah stuff like that yeah you have to be uh you have to be very engaged in their interests in order to genu genuinely connect with them you have to find you have to you know come down to where they are and some of this might relate back to like people's own childhood and maybe their parents didn't relate to them which would be my guess you know um because it is a skill you know and you know we talked about this on um the previous episode that I did with fedra um and it's going to be different so I'm not sexualizing it but she brought up the idea of compersion you know oh yeah yeah yeah having pleasure in seeing in someone else getting pleasure now we were talking about it in terms of like you know uh probably a relational you know adult relationship type situation um but it really does lend itself to this uh conversation that you really have to be able to do that so you have to get joy out of seeing some seeing your in this case your child you know enjoy themselves and whatever it is that they're doing and so it's a selfless kind of thing and uh I I think that might be difficult for some people not that they don't want to see their kid happy or whatever but like you kind of have to bring yourself to to see the world through their eyes and you know put that kind of put those childlike lenses back on yourself and things might be a little bit more shiny but you know I digress yeah I mean like something obviously goes wrong with this because the statistics go that like of the people who are in these insecure Styles it's like half the people wow so it's like not a small I mean she was throwing that number out we could kind of look at different statistics from different studies or something but like a lot of time it goes wrong so something is happening funny did was there a in in in that particular one was there a I don't know was there a questionnaire given to the parents that talked about their uh their childhood rearing I mean the theory goes that there something went wrong for the parents that it went intergenerationally intergenerationally but I don't well honestly I don't know how all of that was put together okay but that is part of the theory that would be my that would be my I mean I would bet a thousand yeah so on the avoidant thing though I I try to go through and listen to like you know you can kind of imagine what would make someone avoidant if you can't get your needs met you kind of just give up yeah is idea and but she had like these interesting little additional things like the go driven parenting uh overly strict parents was another example of something like this and then the last thing she brought up which I thought was really interesting was like when the parent is like kind of like disconnected inside of them elv where their outer expression doesn't seem to match their actual inner emotions and this like [...] with the kid's head that they can't like read what's actually going on with that parent so almost like the parent is smiling but underneath they feel hostile or something or whatever the the behaviors don't fit together right sort of more like troubled parents and like I've always been interested in that idea you know one of my psychologists I liked back when I was in undergrad learning all this stuff was a guy Ry Lang and he would talk about that that mismatch in people in congruence right where things don't fit together and how much it [...] with other people's heads like adults but even worse for kids right yeah well kids kids are even more sensitive than adults they're they're far more in their feeling sensation you know different brain waves they operate at so they feel things much more deeply and if you are presenting with one particular energy on the outside but the inside one is not matching they're going to visually recognize you know a smile or a frown or whatever but then they're going to feel something different and that in congruence is going to be something that they're going to have to wrestle with in the moment but that's kind of like a internal process that they might not have bandwidth for you know so be very off-putting or they're learning something weird like it just doesn't like the the statistics don't add up or something of how this person's behaving and it like yeah discombobulates them yeah yeah yeah so on the anxious one these are the kids who were you know super nervous to begin with and when the parent came back they're they're kind of unconsolable right yeah and the the general idea of this one is pretty interesting like the whole idea is that the kids learn that and there's I guess there's an irony or Paradox on this on some level but they sort of learn like okay my parent won't meet my needs but if I turn up the volume really high maybe they will so if I just really make it obvious like I'm in dist stress if I really make it obvious maybe they'll respond to me right they learn some weird pattern like that they kind of learn if they act out they might get these needs met some of the time so they call it like sort of like a hyper activeness of this attachment system it gets like super revved up the person feels all kinds of anxiety inside and you know um if they get into this like again this kind of hyper revved up kind of a space then maybe they'll get needs met something like that called a tantrum something like that and uh so the parenting situation with this is sort of like paren thing parenting that's kind of like um inconsistent in some ways sometimes the parents there sometimes they're not sometimes they're available sometimes they're not the parents will put sort of uh they'll be maybe intrusive on the kids at times right and won't give the kids space but other times they won't be there um and especially idea of like putting par parental needs above the kids needs where you know the parent the kid almost seems like they have to somehow like take care of the parent or something like that yeah kind of roll talked with people about this yeah this roll thing I've talked with multiple people about this yeah I felt some of this as a kid too and we'll do that I'll you know we'll have to call it in a minute or two unfortunately be able to finish it to be continued yeah but when we get to like the the self-con fessional part that we like to do on Jin and oh I'll I'll wear what is what are those little collars called again here Eric the oh the little Priestly collars yeah that's right Pap papal gear I don't know what they're called yeah yeah yeah well I don't know there special name for it but anyways when we get to that part because I think it's maybe something we can talk through you know okay here's how we can think about this and uh you know for each of us if we want to do it I don't mind doing it so I won't put you on the spot all good I don't mind it I'll wear my my Roman collar or they call it a cleer they call the Roman collar yes I'll wear my Roman collar and we'll we'll open G make me say like Hail Mary's at the end of an all that just just a few I'm not gonna say him bro I never said them when I was like eight years old in the confession with monor day I'm not gonna say him now um no any Cas you know it was one of these things and I certainly feel like there was part of that with you know like one of my primary care people growing up where I felt like okay I'm taking care of this person yeah um so she has a couple interesting things just I guess to rev this one up and then we'll Boogie but um you know kids who have to meet the needs of the parents was a big one that she added she said interesting thing I know you would appreciate Dan Daniel which is just like over stimulation in general yes that people feel like the environment is just overly stimulating just period you know and we live in a culturally just over stimulating space all kinds of stuff coming at people all the time even to young kids and it like overwhelms them on some level right there is no doubt that the um amount of iPad time or tablet time or phone time on children is not detrimental there is I I there no one is going to convince me otherwise than that I realize that like we are more and more uh a screen culture you know what I'm saying like that's yeah yeah yeah we're at Max Capacity however the human attention span is only going down and that is being reflected in the media that is also being created which is you know moving that along that that degradation along and when you overstimulate people it doesn't really give them the opportunity to regulate because they're expecting everything to be as quick as what they're used to being seen so the mind is active but the body is relaxed but then the body can't be that relaxed if the mind is active so there's always this kind of like interesting level of Buzz that's go that's occurring constantly so yeah I mean PE kids are basically just like yes I know it's an obvious statement kids are young adults but they're young adults in far more ways than just being uh previous to their older selves you know yeah yeah and like I I so I knew you would like that part you know again this is the Jessica Fern thing as we wrapped the whole episode of but she was just talking about that whole problem you know and I thought oh this is definitely in Daniel's wheelhouse because you've been like since the very first episodes we started doing these things you know in the pandemic and all that you know you were just like yeah this is like a major cultural problem right you know so yeah so she talks about that um and then I guess the general gist is parents who can be hovering invasive or undermine sort of the independence of the kid yeah on level right and they end up very popular now anxious and like uh you know they're not really quite sure how to get this emotional connection and attachment meant it's like an interesting take and then eventually they the response is just to turn up the the amps up to 11 if you want to be like old school spinal tap stuff if you get the reference yeah from the amps up to 11 and maybe I'll get some attention out of this yeah well there's the there's the other part that that that kind of relationship for the parent is unhealthy and it's unhealthy for the parent in terms of their their romantic partnership you know which maybe we can get to at a different point but when you are so overly um bonded or engaged with your child you don't need your your needs you know sexually or physically or whatever are being met because you're getting so much contact from this other being that it could be detrimental to your your relationship outside of that with your child you know and so without having you know appropriate kind of like cooldown time if you will you too can be over stimulated usually that's you know mothers new mothers in particular but there's a you know there's a lot of new mothers and that that can affect the dynamic between them and their partner the partner can then be a little bit jealous of the child and so you have these like right the complexes that then come into play all like frean [...] then right now you start to go into there but it but that the Freudian ideology comes about as the mother's psychology of the bond between her and the infant and so then you have and so then everything else comes into you know arises from that I guess yeah like previewing for next week and then we got it bounce but you know like I know like with my mom there were definitely times where was like okay her relationship with my dad is bad yeah and like the person who's providing this attachment needs for her but this is awkward and weird and you know and uh so to be continued I suppose we can talk about these things honestly but I've talked to a number of different you know people that I know in their lives and I thought well you know how common is this experience and I definitely have had conversations even in the past year some I know was going back and like kind of doing psychology around their youth and seeing somebody it was like yeah he felt very similar I was like in this role of taking care of my mom all the time and imagine imagine Eric if your parents had you know one both or whatever have a substance abuse issue she brings those things up too yeah you know it it's uh not to mention psychological not to mention these they were probably a child they're they probably were the child that they are now raising because that's how they know how to do it and you were imprinted that by what you were given you know genetically so yeah the cycle repeats itself so the cycle of suffering must be broken and the first way is to be aware of what's happening and then you the knowledge part right which is why we're doing the episode right hopefully people you can start to go like oh maybe I got some of this stuff going on yeah continue Daniel thanks so much yeah as always Eric thanks for uh thanks for doing this audience thank you so much for listening uh we really appreciate you uh liking commenting and subscribing or just just subscribe really it helps us out in the ma in the algorithm it doesn't cost you anything we don't ask anybody for any kind of donations or or subscriptions or anything like that but um sharing our work subscribing definitely helps us grow helps us to reach more people and ultimately that is the goal so uh yeah share our stuff and appreciate it all the input from everybody uh hit us up Jin and Tantra gmail.com the Jin and Tantra podcast on Instagram or if you know us personally Daniel Eric uh we're on Facebook feel free to send us a message or leave a comment in this video for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace