Securely Attached - Why Relationship Patterns Matter

Transcript

Ellie Pike:
Think back to some of the most meaningful life moments. They might be your greatest hits or maybe devastating catastrophes. Regardless, I bet the one thing they all have in common is that a relationship to another human being was at the heart of that experience.

The truth is that nothing in life matters more to us than our close relationships. Yet keeping those relationships healthy is rarely easy. But what if I told you there's an entire field of research devoted to understanding how and why we connect the way we do, as well as pinpointing the best ways to heal and foster lasting relationships. Figuring all that out would be like getting the cheat codes to life, right? So that's why I invited a very special guest on today's show. Meet therapist, mama and author, Eli Harwood, or as she's known on the internet, Attachment Nerd. With a career spanning 17 years, Eli has devoted her efforts to the art and science of connecting, healing, and hoping. Her recent book, Securely Attached, is designed to help individuals forge lasting, loving relationships. She's here to open up the world of attachment theory and reveal some tips we can start using today to help us be better friends, parents, spouses, and beyond. You are listening to Mental Note Podcast. I'm Ellie Pike.

Eli Harwood:
Hi, I'm Eli Harwood. I'm a mama, I'm a therapist, I'm an author, and I am the creator of Attachment Nerd.

Ellie Pike:
Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm very excited to pick your brain, especially because attachment is not my realm. I have a lot of questions for you. First of all, I also want to highlight that you're not just an author. You did release a book recently, right?

Eli Harwood:
Yep, in November. My first book, Securely Attached, is out in the wild.

Ellie Pike:
Out in the wild. And even at Target, I saw one of your-

Eli Harwood:
Yeah.

Ellie Pike:
Well, I'm so excited. And before we dive into the basics of attachment styles and all sorts of other questions we're going to ask you, I'm curious, why do you even care about attachment theory research in the first place?

Eli Harwood:
Well, one of my favorite quotes from a professor of mine is that all research is me search. So for me, my journey into attachment is growing up in a family with insecure attachment patterns and the impact that those things had on me and my development. And then my process of beginning to recognize, "Oh, this is how my relational experiences have shaped me and affected me," and the healing work I needed to do, to be able to get to a place where I felt secure in myself and my relationships. And so hence cue the career in therapy.

Ellie Pike:
Can you talk a little bit about what that looked like and the impact?

Eli Harwood:
It looked like a whole bunch of different elements that added to the healing. So therapy was a big part of the healing process, as was beginning to tell my story in a way that helped make sense of my nervous system. Why do I feel these ways? Why do I think these things? What's going on in my perception of myself and others? That was a huge piece of the puzzle, and I worked with a particular therapist who introduced me to attachment theory, and as I started to understand the research, it was like all the light bulbs went on. "Oh, this is it. This is why it is so hard for me to really feel deeply connected and secure with people and not worry that at some point they're going to leave me, something's going to go wrong."

The other elements I would say are really good friends. I had friends that we raised each other. We got into the weeds with each other. We discussed every possible element of relationships that we were in and what we were feeling. We showed up for each other in such profound ways that it changed my nervous system. I had people who really wanted to know authentic me. All of the parts that were small and scared, but also the parts that were hopeful and bold and strong.

And then I would say the last part was meeting my husband. He had insecure attachment experiences also, and the way that our patterns kind of interlocked is what gave us the opportunity to heal. Healing and therapy, healing friendships, and then a healing relationship.

Ellie Pike:
Well, I think you're speaking the language of a lot of folks who want to know, okay, healing is possible. What does that actually look like? And it's going to look different for everyone, right? Even just starting with the recognition and the awareness around attachment styles seems like it would be beneficial for all of us, whether we're in the therapy world or not.

Eli Harwood:
Yes.

Ellie Pike:
So what are the basic attachment styles?

Eli Harwood:
Okay, what gets a little confusing about the attachment discussion is we actually have two different bodies of research. So we have a body of research that is built in developmental psychology. So it started in the 1950s and it has a very long trajectory. Then we have a body of research that was inspired by the research of the developmental psychologists, but it was grown and taken on by the social psychologists. And the reason I want to bring this up is because I care a lot about data. What does the science actually say? So I'm going to tell you right now that my expertise is in the developmental science of attachment. The way that that's a little bit different from social psychology is that social psychology talks about styles, just the way you did. Styles in terms of... It's sort of like which Harry Potter character are you?

And the two bodies of research, they don't correlate. And so I'm going to talk about why I think it's really important that we focus a little bit more on the developmental side of things. Even though I think this is interesting and helpful, I think it's a little more helpful when we talk about attachment in patterns instead of styles. And the reason for that is that we know that a child can have multiple different attachment figures, and in those relationships, the quality of connection can be different.

For instance, when I was a child, I had one attachment pattern with my mother and one attachment pattern with my father. And while we all sort of cultivate what I would call our default settings, which maybe correlates more with a style where it's like, okay, so this is my default setting, this is sort of the place I most tend to go when I am tender or in distress, or how I pattern in close relationships. It also depends on who we're with. So, a relationship is a dynamic, and if I have one pattern growing up, then I'm going to generally have that pattern in relationships, but I might be with someone who has a very significant entrenched pattern that actually shifts my pattern.

What we know from specifically the research from Mary Ainsworth and Ed Tronick is that when a child has a secure attachment pattern, they reach for their caregiver when they are in distress, they maintain contact with the caregiver until they soothe. And that soothing happens fairly quickly. And what we know that means is that this caregiver is predictably warm, predictably responsive, and predictably effective at helping to co-regulate with the child. So the child's brain has internalized, "When I'm upset, I can go to this caregiver and I will feel safe and soothed." The second category of pattern is what happens when a caregiver is only able to do that intermittently. So sometimes the caregiver is warm and attuned and feels safe and supportive, but sometimes they are unavailable. And what happens to the child is they reach, just like the secure kid, they reach, but instead of soothing, they protest. So instead of going, "You're here, I feel better." They go, "You're here. I hate that you left me. Why do you leave me? Don't leave me again." And that's adaptive because if you have a caregiver who is not able to show up consistently, not perfectly, consistently, then you have to keep your eye on them, keep your watch on them, make sure that they are getting their attention towards you because your survival is built on your proximity to them.

And this, in adulthood, we call it something different. We call it a preoccupied style. In childhood, we call it a resistance style. But in both spaces, the instinct is: I'm going to keep closeness to somebody by being hyper vigilant of their emotions, of their moves, of the things they say and do in order to try and stay as close as possible. The secure strategy is more, “I'm going to reach out when I need you. I'm going to receive what you give, and then I'm going to go back out into the world or into that space and I'm going to feel soothed.”

The third category, the third pattern, we call this an avoidant pattern in childhood, is what happens when a caregiver is consistently unable to soothe a child. And that might be as a result of the caregiver not knowing how to notice and articulate emotions, so they are not adept at picking up on feelings or they ignore feelings. Or it might be a caregiver who is so anxious that when the child is upset, they add anxiety to the moment. So either a child is upset and the parent ignores them, shuts them down, doesn't know what to say, gets awkward and uncomfortable, or the parent hovers and goes intensely in response to the child's emotions. "Are you okay? Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I failed you. I shouldn't have let that happen." And gives an intrusive response. So, dismissive consistently or intrusive consistently.

What the child learns is there is no reason to reach. Reaching will not lead to me feeling more soothed, settled and safe. So, instead of reaching, I'm going to avoid and distract. So, when emotions come into the room, when needs come into the room in my body or the body of someone else, I'm going to shut down and I'm going to find something else to focus on in order to try and endure the moment without exposing my emotional state to somebody else.

And some people will mistake avoidant for thinking, oh, this means this child's avoidant of attachment or this adult is avoidant of attachment. That's not the case. They're avoidant of tender and distressing moments and expressions of them as a way to maintain closeness. So this child's brain has learned the best way for all of us to stay calm and close is to show no feelings outwardly.

And then the fourth category or pattern is what happens when a child is unable to cultivate a pattern. Actually, we call it disorganized. So, these little people are growing up with caregivers that are so unwell that they are frightening. So, this caregiver might have an abusive attitude or they came from a legacy of abuse, and so they scare and frighten and threaten and even hurt their children. Or it might be a caregiver who has such severe mental illness, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, that the child is unable to make sense of the parents' thinking and behavior, and so they're frightening. Or they're on a drug that makes them erratic. Methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine, something that leads to a frenetic-ness that is frightening. They have to enter a primal survival state when they're in distress. So, think blowing up, shutting down, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. They have to act in ways that feel like a, “am I going to die” response. “I'm trying not to die.”

So, it's deeply disturbing and disruptive, and this is the hardest attachment pattern to heal because the nervous system finds close relationships triggering. By trying to be close to somebody, I feel like I'm in danger, but we're all wired for attachment. So my nervous system also says the best way to cope with danger is to try to be close to somebody. It's deeply painful and disorienting.

Ellie Pike:
Oh, the disorganized pattern does sound heartbreaking. I'm learning a lot as you explain the different patterns, and I have some questions. When you talk about proximity to the caregiver being really important and how patterns change as individuals age, what does proximity look like as someone ages from say a toddler to a teenager?

Eli Harwood:
Well, attachment evolves. So, as a caregiver of a very small child, they are going to seek us as a safe haven in a higher volume than they use us as a secure base. So, the attachment relationship is designed to be a place where kids can get that regulation and support when they're in distress or tenderness, but it's also designed to help bolster them with confidence to go out and explore the world. When they are babies and infants, it's all safe haven. It's no secure base. As they become toddlers, the secure base begins to activate.

So, now they're going to be using our relationship as a way to feel good and safe in the world so they can go and explore the other side of the room. And then as they grow more, they go to kindergarten. Now they're exploring school outside of our homes. And then as they become teenagers, what happens is actually they begin to transfer their attachment in terms of who is primary in their life.

So, in childhood, the caregiver is the primary attachment figure. In adolescence, it's evening out to being a little more 50-50. Caregivers are still in that role, especially in high, high stress moments for teenagers, but their peers are becoming core primary attachment figures as well. And then as our children go on throughout their lives, they build relationships with best friends and with sweethearts, and we sort of shift. It's not that we are no longer an attachment figure, but we shift out of that primary role. We're still a support network of attachment figures, but their spouse is usually the person who becomes the primary in their life. So, it is this evolution of I'm offering you as your attachment figure, a place to be held and supported and understood, and a place where you can grow out of and come back to, but it's like the leash gets a lot longer over time. Now you're going out beyond the living room and then beyond the schoolyard, and now you're not living in my house anymore and you are fully beyond me as your primary place of refuge.

Ellie Pike:
That just makes a lot of sense to me, and it feels really in line with the natural world, what I've learned through personal life and what others have learned. The one thing that comes up for me is that it seems like a lot of attachment patterns are really based on that initial relationship with the caregiver and then eventually relationships with others. Does it ever depend on any external factors? Like if someone moved around a whole lot in their childhood or had to change schools a lot, does that impact attachment styles or is it all still based on the personal relationships that are primary?

Eli Harwood:
It depends on what age and stage the child is being moved around a lot. It really is driven by is there someone, at least one person in my life who is able to be deeply attuned and connected with me? If I have that, my brain is going to shape around that.

But let's say you move around a lot when that attachment transfer is happening in that early adolescence period, that might make it hard for a child to continue to create bonds with their peers and transfer that attachment. However, if the caregiver is still able to be empathetic and supportive and understanding and that belonging is still existing in that core relationship, that is certainly going to reduce the amount of trauma that comes from moving around a lot.

However, there's also a benefit for moving around a lot. There's exposures, there's deeper connections that happen in terms of the world in general and knowing that there's adventure out there and there are lots of different ways of living and thinking. And so I think we don't want to look at anyone's particular lifestyle and say, like, “oh, this is the wrong choice” in attachment terms. In attachment terms, really the question is: Are you able to show up for your kids? Were your parents able to show up for you in whatever it was you all were facing?

Ellie Pike:
I really love that what you explained simplifies a lot of decisions that families might be focusing on and really hones in on that caregiver relationship. So how common is it for someone to experience various attachment patterns in different relationships? For example, could I feel secure in one relationship and then very avoidant in another one?

Eli Harwood:
It's incredibly common. I would say it is very rare for someone to say, "I had the exact same attachment pattern and experience with my mother as my father or my father as my other father or my other mother or my grandparents." There are nuances in every relationship. And when we take those nuances and we pattern how we're going to cope, we pattern differently with each person. I mean, how many people do you know who would be like, "I'm really close to my dad, but not my mom; my mom but not my dad." And there was an adaptation in each of those relationships based on what the caregiver was capable of in terms of connection and co-regulation. And this rings true also as we journey.

So, the other thing to note is that our attachment patterns are not set in stone. This is what's so hopeful about them. This is why my passion is I want as many people as possible to know they can learn a secure pattern of relating. So, no matter what happened in your childhood, no matter who you've dated and what they were like, you can process those experiences in such a way that allows you to grieve and then begin to locate what it is you need in relationships so that you can form more secure bonds with people and be more secure in the ways you form those bonds.

Let's say you grew up in a home and you had an avoidant pattern with one parent and a resistant or anxious pattern is another word we use with another parent. So, you have internalized this deep sense of, "Okay, with this parent, I don't show anything about what I feel because it's not worth it. But with this other parent, sometimes they can. And so I'm going to keep trying and I'm going to keep trying and I'm going to do this hypervigilant thing." Then you get out into the world and you're going to date different people potentially, or you're going to create different friendships. So, you might create a friendship with one person who activates your avoidance because just like the first caregiver, they aren't really comfortable with feelings. And then you have another friend who sometimes shows up for you in ways that makes you feel like you can lean on them, but then occasionally gets weird in front of other friends and doesn't want other people to know they're like that or something.

And then you journey a little further and you fall in love with someone who really is capable of responding to you. And slowly, little by little by little, you let more of who you are out and you let your guard down a little bit and you stop managing so much, whether or not they're there and they still love you. And you soothe, you move into a different space. Well now you have some secure skills. And those secure skills might help you choose friends more wisely, recognize, oh, this person's really avoidant and that doesn't work great for me in close friendships. We'll be kind, we could be pals, we can go to concerts together, whatnot. But yeah, probably not someone that I'm going to bond with or try to bond with.

Ellie Pike:
I know you already talked a little bit about your own healing journey as far as healing your own attachment scars. And I don't want to oversimplify the process, but I do think it's really helpful for someone to better understand what the first steps would be for them to seek healing for themselves. Is it to, for example, leave it behind, let's just focus on attachment right now? Or is it like, oh, really dig into those feelings and why all that happened and maybe even processing some trauma, if that was part of it? How would you advise someone who's trying to start their own journey of healing?

Eli Harwood:
I always go back to the data, and we have data on this. And the data says that what happens in childhood, it doesn't just stay in childhood, it gets wired into our nervous system, into our ways of thinking, into our beliefs about emotions and needs and into those relational patterns. Do we reach and receive? Do we reach and protest? Do we avoid and distract? Do we blow up and shut down? So the most effective way to move into a secure pattern is to reflect on what the impacts were of our childhood attachment relationships, and then allow ourselves to feel the emotion connected to those impacts. So we can't just go, "Okay, yeah, yeah, this is what happened," and kind of sit at it from a distance. We have to allow ourselves to feel the tenderness around having an avoidant experience or a resistant experience, the sorrow and potentially the pain that came with having insecure patterns.

There's so many nuances along the journey, but the key pieces – reflecting, grieving, and allowing other people to hold that story with you – because when we have compassionate and caring witnesses around our attachment stories, our stories transform. They're no longer stories of shame or of despair. They become stories that actually connect us to other people in the moment.

Ellie Pike:
I think that this is not only beautiful because it makes a lot of sense to me about how healing comes and how others get drawn into the process, but why I think this is so beautiful is the fact that there's actually data behind it to say this is really helpful. It's not just anecdotal. We know that this is really how folks can heal. So I am taking the words, reflect, grieve, and then allow others in, and the fact that you've created this great toolkit to help guide people. We'll certainly link to that in our show notes as well.

So a question I get often is about people pleasing and it comes out for us in so many different ways, whether you're a kid or an adult or in the professional setting, et cetera. And I'm wondering what role people pleasing plays in relationships and then subsequently attachment theory research?

Eli Harwood:
Well, recently in the trauma community, it's become more highly accepted that fawning is a trauma response. And I would say fawning and people pleasing are the same thing. So, fawning is I am going to cultivate a dynamic where I am positive towards you, towards your thoughts, your needs, your feelings, and I am doing this as a way to protect myself from what might happen if I don't. So, true people pleasing, and fawning, develops in relationship to caregivers that are pretty severely psychologically wounded. So, they're narcissistic. They may have a different personality disorder in some way, shape or form, that they require adoration or constant care from their children in order to feel regulated. So, the child becomes the regulator of the parent instead of the parent being the regulator of the child. And then that pattern of coping gets taken out into other relationships.

So, the child never gets to develop an authentic sense of relating or self because it's too terrifying to have a need or to feel annoyed or to disagree. And so instead of relating, which I mean my kids get annoyed with me, I get annoyed with them, it's part of life, but that doesn't feel safe if a caregiver is unable to tolerate dysregulation in other people. And so the child learns to swallow their dysregulation and cope with their dysregulation by keeping other people regulated.

Ellie Pike:
And it seems like that's a survival adaptive mechanism where it's not someone saying, "I am going to people please this person into being able to stay calm." But I'm picturing this parent who acts unpredictably to emotions and can't handle the child's emotions themselves. So then the child starts to people please so that they don't dysregulate their parent. Is that how you're saying? It plays out kind of in the cycle essentially?

Eli Harwood:
Yes. And the child is internalizing the parent's message, which is: “your needs are a burden or they are selfish or they are too much in some way that something's wrong with you.” So, the child's learning, "My needs are a problem. Your needs are the focus." And they enter into other relationships with that same pattern.

And the hard part is that people pleasing is incredibly adaptive in relationships with folks that are relationally unwell. And if you grow up with a people pleasing pattern with your caregiver that was adaptive and wise, it was the only way to get through that childhood without being psychologically annihilated. But now you're vulnerable to continuing to end up in close relationships with other people who cannot meet your needs. And what I often see is then now your needs have to come out sideways, like, “okay, I can't actually have a need, but so I'm going to fixate on having a perfect body. I'm going to fixate on orthorexia. I'm going to find ways to have control in my life that are unrelated to my actual needs.” And therefore I'm going to be sabotaging my own health and my own well-being while I try to maintain other people's wants and needs and wishes.

Ellie Pike:
Everything that you're saying really I think speaks to a lot of our listeners because these are some of the questions that I get and some of these patterns that folks describe. One thing I'd like to call out or maybe even just ask about is when that child receives that message like, "My emotions are too much," does that eventually turn into, for some folks this message of shame like, "I am too much"? And then-

Eli Harwood:
I mean, not just does it; it does and it does very early on and very young. And I think that's where a lot of what I was talking about is around the relationship to the body, a relationship to the body becomes, “my body is too much, my hunger is too much. How do I get rid of my feelings, they are too much?” I mean, addiction is just ripe for the taking in this type of a traumatic experience in attachment.

Ellie Pike:
Thank you so much for going there. I think that you're really creating a picture for how this plays out. So let's say someone's trying to develop secure attachment romantically with a partner or with their parent, even as they are both adults or with their friend, friend group, whether they're teenagers or adults. Is developing secure attachment all that different in those relationships, or are the practical steps pretty similar?

Eli Harwood:
Well, I would say they are similar in terms of your first step towards cultivating a secure attachment relationship is cultivating a secure attachment narrative in yourself. But I would say where they're different is in order to mutually cultivate that dynamic, both parties have to be equally invested in the process. And I would say most folks in partnerships are going to find it a little bit easier for that investment because there's a sense of, "Well, what else are we doing here if we're not trying to be close and together? We've chosen each other for this purpose."

But when you're trying to cultivate that with a parent in adulthood, that's a little trickier because often parents are pretty terrified that if they do the work with you, that they're going to have to face their own shame as a parent because here's the truth about parents. 99% of parents do the very best they can with what they have, and their intention is to give you everything you need and want in life. And the question is, “do they have screwed up ideas about how to do that or not?” But when it comes to trying to heal that parent dynamic, a lot of times parents are resistant because in order to do that, they have to acknowledge that they didn't give you the very thing they wished they had. So it really depends on that parent's capacity for growth and change and self-reflection.

I think a lot of people mistakenly think in order to heal my attachment traumas, I have to heal my attachment with my caregivers. And that's not true. You have to process your attachment with your caregivers, and then you get to decide what you want from them ongoing. Maybe what you want from them is just someone to play cards with once a month. Or maybe you do want to talk through…

With my mom, she has a high capacity for growth. She's the first one in our family who went to therapy. She actually cultivated a path for us to be healers and growers. And so when I was going through my process, it was really natural for me to call her and say, "I need to talk about this one memory I have in the basement of our house and what happened, and I need you to hold that sadness with me." And it was hard on her. She'll tell you it was the hardest thing she ever had to do, but she could do it.

Whereas my dad, he's just never done his full healing work. He has a long-term addiction. He's 70 something now, but at the time, he was already 30 years into pretty serious alcoholism. The ability to process with me was pretty futile. I attempted a couple of times and then I went, "Oh, he can't. This isn't something he's capable of." And then I had to grieve that. I had to grieve, “oh, he couldn't be secure for me in childhood and he can't be secure for me in adulthood,” but I have friends who can, and I have a partner who can, and that's okay, and my mother can. And so I'm going to focus on those places and that's where I'm going to cultivate my current attachment security, if that makes sense.

Ellie Pike:
It makes a lot of sense, and it really makes a lot of sense that it's a very fluid process where you figure it out as you go and then you adapt and then you grieve and then you try again, or you just shift expectations. But what really stands out to me is that you don't have to heal those relationships, but you do have to process those attachment patterns.

So, you already talked a lot about this, but maybe if I were to try to oversimplify it, actually, I would like to know for those parents out there, what's the key to parenting a kiddo? There's a narrative out there about, well, you're spoiling your kid if you're jumping to support them every time they ask for you or if they skin their knee or if they wake up in the night, a million narratives about how to parent, especially on social media. But if you wanted to provide even just that very base level, if you were to simplify it, what is one of the keys to parenting?

Eli Harwood:
Okay, I'm going to give you a few different little spiels, and so take the one that resonates the most with you. One of my most influential mentors was named Dr. Karyn Purvis, and she's a psychologist out of Texas, and she says, "High nurture, high structure." And I love this term because it helps us recognize the difference between coddling and comforting. So our job as parents is to be an emotional support. We are emotional scaffolding. We're literal scaffolding for them on tasks like when they learn how to walk, we stand around them, we let them use our hands and arms, and then slowly they don't need them, and they evolve in that growth process. That's the same thing with their emotional needs.

So, if our child skins their knee and they're crying and we respond with compassion and support, we're just holding their little hands while they learn how to walk. It will help them as they grow, to then be capable of processing pain in healthy ways without as much support. Although I would argue the goal is never that our children learn to process pain without any support. We don't want that for anybody. As adults, there's a lot of things we want to do independently and have the keys for independently, but processing deep distress and pain is not one of those things. It is healthy in adulthood to reach for other people when you're struggling. So that's actually not a thing that we're trying to create independence around.

However, what I see people confuse often is that they think by supporting their children, that means preventing their children from feeling pain or preventing their children from facing consequences. That actually is problematic to a child's development because they don't get to learn that they can handle the pain, they can move through the pain. The goal is to teach them, I am here for you in your pain and I'm going to help you learn how to move through it.

Brené Brown has a quote in her parenting manifesto where she says, "When fear and scarcity visit, I will want to take away your pain. Instead, I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it." So, the goal is not eliminating or rescuing or preventing pain. The goal is offering presence when our children are experiencing tenderness, distress, pain of any kind, because it helps their brain feel safe. And when their brains feel safe, their brain will allocate resources to the prefrontal cortex instead of the amygdala, which will give them an advantage as they develop because they will have a less reactionary nervous system, which will allow them to actually process pain with less meta pain.

So, if I have pain, but I feel shame about having pain, now I have to process the pain and the shame about the pain. That's a meta emotion. Or if I have pain, but I think I might be mocked or ignored or left alone with my pain, well, now I also have panic when I have pain. So now I'm not just processing pain, I'm processing panic and pain. So, our goal is to be a soothing, supportive space, not a rescuing space and not a dismissive space so that our children's nervous systems and relational systems can develop in such a way that they develop resilience as they go forward in their lives.

Ellie Pike:
This is so beautiful that there is structure, there's data, there's ways to really make it simpler to say you can support and you can normalize emotions, and pain is part of feeling, and suffering is part of feeling. And you don't have to feel shame about that because I really like how you talk about compiling. I see it stacking. The pain, the fear, the shame about not being able to feel the pain, and then processing all the complexity of multiple emotions at once. And I think some of our culture has really shifted where a lot of the narrative in TV shows or even some movies is really starting to teach kids about emotions and teach kids what that looks like to regulate emotions and not say that a certain emotion is "bad". So, it's neat to see how this is all aligning and that any of us, whether we're a parent or not, can continue to influence the way that we all experience emotions.

And so thank you for being here. You're a beautiful public speaker. I know that I learned a lot. I'm sure our listeners will learn a lot, and we will definitely direct folks to your book, Securely Attached. And then if anyone wanted to follow along with you, how would they do that?

Eli Harwood:
My handle on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, I am @attachmentnerd and I'm running my mouth on the internet with free information there. And if you are a parent and you are looking for more support, more in-depth resources, you can go to attachmentnerd.com and check out all of the things I have available there. Securely Attached is available wherever you buy books. And my next book, Raising Securely Attached Kids, will be out in the fall. So, if you're following me along on social media, you will definitely get notified when that is ready for purchase and launch.

Ellie Pike:
Well, thank you so much, Eli, for your time and your expertise, and also for just contributing amazing content to the world so that we can tap into it on an everyday basis. So I appreciate you and thank you so much.

Eli Harwood:
Thank you for having me. It was so lovely to be with you

Ellie Pike:
Y'all, we covered some ground with Eli today. I don't blame you if your head is spinning and you're not quite sure where to start. Let's think back to what Eli said. The first step to healing and becoming a more secure parent, friend and human is processing the origins of our own attachment patterns. That means making time for reflection. What were the dynamics of our childhood relationships with our primary caregivers? What emotions are connected to those relationships? Who can you process those feelings with, who will be a compassionate and caring witness to your story? Remember, healing is a process. I am rooting for you.

Our show notes have a long list of tools that can help you in your journey. We have links to all of Eli's work, including her book, free webinars, a quiz to figure out your attachment patterns, and even a curated collection of bite-sized coaching tips. I especially like the one about the three most effective ways to calm an upset kid. I'm telling you, the resources for today's episode are a gold mine.

Before we go, I just want to pause and thank you for listening to Mental Note Podcast. You make this show possible and I'm honored to host it. I also want to thank our show sponsors Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center. If you'd like to talk to a trained therapist to see if in-person or virtual treatment is right for you, please call them at 877-855-7199. If you need a free support group, check out eatingrecovery.com/support-groups or pathlightbh.com/support-groups. If you like our show, sign up for our e-newsletter and learn more about the people we interview at mentalnotepodcast.com. We'd also love it if you left us a review on iTunes. It helps others find our podcast. Mental Note is produced and hosted by me, Ellie Pike, and edited by Carrie Daniels, and directed by Sam Pike. Till next time.

Written by

Ellie Pike, MA, LPC

Ellie Pike is the Sr. Manager of Alumni/Family/Community Outreach at ERC & Pathlight Behavioral Health Centers. Over the years, she creatively combined her passions for clinical work with…

Presented by

Eli Harwood

Eli Harwood is a licensed therapist, author, and educator who has 17 years of clinical experience helping people heal from relational traumas and develop the skills they need to create secure…