If you’ve ever wondered whether your attachment style is fixed, good news: it’s not. In this conversation with therapist and author Jessica Baum, LMHC, we unpack practical, step-by-step ways to heal attachment wounds, shift anxious attachment and avoidant patterns, and build secure attachment—in real relationships, not just in your head.
This is a transcript of my conversation with Jessica Baum.
An Introduction to Attachment and Relationship Blueprints
Emma McAdam (00:00)
Hey everyone, today we have a special guest. We’re going to be talking about how to build secure attachment. Now a lot of people think your attachment style, like whether you’re anxious or avoidant or secure, is like a permanent feature of your personality, that it’s unchangeable, but it’s not true. There’s a lot you can do about it. And today, Jessica Baum is a licensed mental health counselor and she’s the author of two books on attachment. The first one is Anxiously Attached and the new one is called SAFE, An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships.
Today we’re going be talking about practical step-by-step ways that you can come to know your own attachment style, be more aware of your attachment patterns, and how you can take small actions to heal yourself within your relationships so you can be more securely attached. And of course, I end up crying in this session because I start talking about me, and that’s great.
I do love to do my own work as well. So if you want to see me talk about my attachment wounds, let’s go. Let’s jump in.
Emma McAdam (01:03)
Well Jessica, thank you so much for being here today. I really am looking forward to talking with you.
Jessica Baum (01:07)
I’m excited for this conversation as well.
Emma McAdam (01:09)
Cool, okay, can we just dive into attachment styles? Like I don’t talk about this very much on my channel, but could you give us like the nutshell version of what’s an attachment style and how’s it formed?
Exploring the 4 Attachment Styles: Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganized
Jessica Baum (01:21)
Sure, attachment styles have been around since the 1950s and it’s a really well studied science. Attachment styles is the studying of how we attach when we’re small, and there’s four styles and I’ll go over them, and how we adapt to our primary caregivers in our attachment lens and patterns stays in our system as a blueprint and usually shows up later in our romantic lives.
There’s securely attached people who tend to not have as much problems with intimacy, don’t have as big abandonment issues, don’t feel like they’re gonna lose themselves in relationships. Not that they don’t have issues, but they tend to adjust pretty well. They also tend to attract people who are more secure. And then we have three insecure types. So we have anxious, which I wrote the book Anxiously Attached On. We have avoidant and we have, disorganized, some people refer to it as fearful. ⁓ But essentially, those are the three insecure types. And so they all adapt differently. So anxious people who have a lot of anxious embedded patterns. Typically, the primary caregiver was inconsistent. So they have a conscious fear of abandonment. I don’t like to use this word, but they can fall into the quote unquote codependency bracket of losing themselves.
Primarily leaving themselves or abandoning themselves to co-regulate or to take care of their primary caregivers needs and then later in relationship, those are people who self-abandon in romantic relationships. wrote a whole book on that type that is a big part of our population. They love to work on themselves. The other extreme is avoidant attachment style. And these two tend to attract each other, which I also unpack in my first book.
Emma McAdam (03:07)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (03:10)
Typically, people with very much a lot of avoidance, they’re very, very independent and their caregiver showed up for them physically but emotionally didn’t connect. So these people tend to be very successful, be very independent. They struggle with empathy because they didn’t get enough emotional connection. So anxious and avoidant tend to attract.
So we can relate to all of these different attachment styles. so Disorganized, they were scared as babies. Maybe there was abuse or extreme neglect, but it’s a state of I need connection to survive, but I’m also scared of the person I’m connecting with. So they get trapped in a feeling of disorganization. I don’t know where to land.
And I explain in Safe, I talk about the wheel of attachment, we can move along the wheel and attachment is a two-person process. So my embedded patterns, are gonna show up in combination with your embedded patterns.
So if you show up a certain way, that might bring up certain patterns within me. Having said that, we all kind of can say, I really identify with avoidant or really identify with anxious. We can have like a default setting, but typically we don’t have one, just one attachment pattern. We have many and they come out in different relationships under different circumstances. And it’s really, really good to know where your patterns are so you can start to heal them.
Emma McAdam (04:31)
Yeah, okay, that’s such a good explanation. And I think a lot of times when people hear about attachment styles, and then they’ll identify with an attachment style, say, I’m an anxious attachment style, or I’m an avoidant attachment style. They’ll feel like they’re kind of like locked in, like this is who they are. Do you feel like attachment styles are permanent?
Beyond Anxious Attachment: Healing Through Neuroplasticity
Jessica Baum (04:50)
No, absolutely not. They’re not locked in. mean, I know it sounds weird as the person who wrote anxiously attached. We’re always shifting due to neuroplasticity and due to healing your attachment styles, you can go towards earned security. And like I hope and pray I show up more secure in my life. And I really think I’ve done the inner work and I have a lot of inner security now. But if someone’s really avoidant, my anxious parts might come up. If someone’s really anxious, my avoidant parts might come up.
But you can show up different in different situations, but as you heal your capacity to stay regulated with certain behaviors changes and what you feel drawn to, like I talk about in safe feeling drawn towards our familiar, which people call it our unconscious, but it’s our implicit world. It’s not really unconscious at all, but it’s like this magnetic pole.
Emma McAdam (05:32)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (05:38)
So we’ll be drawn to certain people and their embedded patterns based on what we’ve experienced when we’re young. And unfortunately, and I dive deep into this, we tend to be drawn to what’s familiar and what might have hurt us in the past. And we recreate the same pattern in our adult life. And I think this is where people can really get the information and start to break free from that paradigm and start to heal. So they’re not always repeating the same painful trauma bond or pattern in their life.
Emma McAdam (06:08)
Do you think we repeat those patterns because it’s comfortable or familiar? Or do think there’s another reason? Like, is that your take on it?
Jessica Baum (06:17)
So like really if we have a core wound, it’s something that something is embedded in us, right? It can be embedded in our body, but there’s usually like, you know, a charge, I’m unlovable, I’m gonna be left. There are these charges around these core wounds that live in our body. And ironically, we are so scared of re-experiencing our core wound again that we manifest and re-experience our core wound again because of the fear of not wanting to feel it, we ironically set up situations where like, here I am again. they’re not so much about what’s happening in the here and now, but it’s like the here and now is really connecting to something much deeper. And until we heal at the root, we tend to recreate our biggest fears.
Emma McAdam (07:02)
I could think of that in my life. Like I could think of of times where I have… like recreated these negative patterns in my life. And I can also think of how like in my early 20s, I definitely saw these relationships that like, I don’t know the word for this, like vibrated at the same level I was vibrating at, right? Like, I mean, because I was so insecure, and because I was so fearful, I would seek these… relationships with people that were really emotionally intense, like even just friendships or roommates or best friends that were just like so emotionally intense and like so dramatic. We were always talking about really intense emotional stuff. And now as I’m a little older, like in my close friendships, I’m less likely to seek that intensity and more likely to seek balanced relationships with hope healthier boundaries. I don’t know.
Jessica Baum (07:51)
sense. Like in chapter seven in safe, I talk about when to stay and when to leave and intensity often gets mistaken for love. And, you know, there’s a certain kind of intensity, whirlwind kind of experience that we can have. And often that’s trauma over laying somebody else’s trauma and it feels so familiar and it becomes so intense. And we can get stuck in those relationships for a really long time.
Emma McAdam (07:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (08:17)
and not like evolve out of them and they can create a lot of chaos, especially if chaos was familiar in our childhood. So intensity is one thing that we really wanna look out for and make sure that the relationship isn’t built on intensity, because that can come with highs and lows and that impacts our brain and all our neurochemicals up there and we can really get, stuck.
Emma McAdam (08:38)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (08:38)
I know
I have definitely gotten stuck. I’m sure your listener is listening. I’m sure many of them can identify if you’re listening that you have gotten stuck in something like that before.
Emma McAdam (08:48)
For sure, for sure. So it’s really common to repeat these patterns. I think sometimes we’re trying to like heal our old patterns by recreating them again over and over again. But like, yeah.
Jessica Baum (09:02)
Well, I try to be positive and say we’re recreating them so we can become conscious. And once we become conscious, we heal, we evolve past them. But without the right support and tools and knowledge, unfortunately, we stay unconscious and then it repeats.
The Path to Earned Security and Secure Attachment
Emma McAdam (09:18)
So what’s the process like? Like how can you start? you mentioned earned security. how could we go from being anxious and maybe having these really unhealthy or toxic or repeating our old patterns in our relationships? Like are there baby steps? Like what do we start doing? how, teach us, let’s go.
Jessica Baum (09:35)
Yeah,
I actually like I unpack this in safe in my new book and I talk about healing insecure attachment styles in relationship. So when you study interpersonal neurobiology, you start to understand that healing attachment wounds, what’s wounded in relationship needs to be healed in relationship. So I dive into like neuroception and safety and what kinds of like therapeutic or coaching I call them anchors because it can be a friend too.
Emma McAdam (09:39)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Baum (10:04)
but it’s a quality of holding space for each other where we can get vulnerable and we can start to be with the core wounds together and start holding the original wound. Once we start doing that, and I unpack the science, like there’s a lot around like, know, neuro nets opening and how the body keeps the score and where attachment wounds are stored in the body. So it’s a process to heal your insecure attachments, but I put it out there in this book so that you’re not walking in the dark.
Emma McAdam (10:04)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (10:32)
and you have a companion, but I’m not gonna say you’re gonna read a book and you’re gonna heal your attachment wounds. You’re gonna have the tools, you’re gonna have a path, you’re gonna have hopefully a sense of where your wounds live in your body. You’re gonna have a sense of what kind of people you need in your life to hold deep space for you and how to start moving in this process towards earned security, which is very possible. Humbly, when my first book came out, I thought I had it, but let me tell you, life has a way of just humbling the out of you and I earned my security slowly and through relationships that you know weren’t romantic and I feel like I have inner space and inner peace through somatics and through the work that I have and I feel very proud of it but it very much felt earned for me and that’s probably why I wanted to write this book is I want other people to be able to have the option to earn it as well.
Emma McAdam (11:02)
Yes.
So we can’t just like do the work on our own? Like we can’t just meditate ourselves into being secure? Is that what you’re saying?
Jessica Baum (11:38)
Yeah, no. And this is like probably one of the biggest, I think, messages that come into my book. Like I’m your companion, I am there with you, but if you really study interpersonal neurobiology and attachment, the earlier the wound, the more adult anchoring we need. So in order to move a wound out of your body, you need to be witnessed and held, and it moves actually from your body through your right hemisphere up through streams.
You’re re-experiencing it in a way. You’re getting what you didn’t get at the original wound and you’re integrating it into your left hemisphere. So there’s actually a science that if the wound is early, you cannot heal it on your own. And I don’t want people wasting years of their life sitting in their apartment isolated thinking I’m gonna read a self-help book and I’m gonna heal. No, that’s not what the science shows us. That’s not how to heal. I want people to really have this information because I would have wasted years of my life. I thought being independent and self-sufficient and self-regulating was like the way to go. And the truth is interdependency, finding the right help, finding safe environments, understanding neuro-oception and what safety is and what we need from each other to like biologically thrive based on how we’re actually wired.
Polyvagal Theory and the Science of Safety
Emma McAdam (12:54)
Well, makes so much sense to me and I was interviewing Arielle Schwartz the other day and we were talking about polyvagal theory, which is this science of feeling safe. And she reminded me, which is an area that I often forget about, with the tiered level in our nervous system, you go from when you’re in your sense of safety, when you’re in your like ventral vagal state,
That’s a connected state where we’re like making eye contact, we’re like co-regulating with each other’s breathing and nervous system and we’re able to feel relaxed around people. And then as soon as we experience a threat, the very first place we go is not like the sympathetic state, it goes through a like seeking, like looking around for like social engagement, looking around for someone to help you, looking around for someone to keep you safe, looking around for someone to protect you.
And then we go into this like sympathetic state and then once we’re overwhelmed in the sympathetic state, we can revert to like this shut down depression state. Yeah, the dorsal vagal state. And so as we talk about moving back up the polyvagal ladder or moving toward the safety in the polyvagal model, if you’re stuck in dorsal vagal, you have to move through sympathetic usually toward like social engagement and then social safety. And that’s the only way, like you can’t have safety without
Jessica Baum (13:50)
dorsal.
Emma McAdam (14:10)
having social safety, right?
Jessica Baum (14:12)
Yeah, I mean, yes. you know, Stephen Porges is like the godfather and my book, Safe is like, it’s all a lot of based on his work. And yet safety is the treatment. And the social engagement system is like the highest that we evolved. So like our highest evolution as humans is to be in social connection with each other. But it’s also very important to honor these other states.
Some people drop down into dorsal very fast. They don’t float up. So it’s not always that, it’s not always like a ladder. it’s very complicated and nuanced and, you know, when we’re having sex, can mix states. Like when we’re in play, we mix states, you know? you know, people wanna really kind of categorize it and make it very accessible and layman, but like,
Emma McAdam (14:43)
That’s a good point.
Mm-hmm.
That’s true.
Jessica Baum (15:05)
These states are all intermixed, but absolutely. Ventral state, which I call a state of safety, is when we’re in the social engagement system and my nervous system is literally telepathic to your nervous system. Come here. I am here. I’m welcoming you. I pull you in. And it’s also what we want in an anchor, which I talk about is my system has to feel safe, which can’t be faked. And Stephen Poor just talks about this. can’t fake safety.
Emma McAdam (15:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Baum (15:33)
in order to do the deeper work of healing. There must be a quality of safety relationally between my nervous system and your nervous system. And as we work together, as you become my anchor, as I explore these things, we actually combine nervous systems and your nervous system of safety helps my nervous system when I regress or to get dysregulated. And that’s how we have co-regulation and that’s how we start healing. And
He very much explains that and he’s one of the mentors that has influenced my book for sure.
Emma McAdam (16:04)
Like it’s not just as simple as moving up through the levels, but in the long run, co-regulation is a really powerful way to restore safety. Yeah.
Jessica Baum (16:11)
I think it’s the best way healing happens in relational bonds. so we can have tools, you can extend your exhales, you can trick your body back into safety, but co-regulation is really like, we need each other and we need to be able to call a few people and we need to know that those people are here for us and.
If you’re listening, is the healthiest, most thriving way we can be is to be interdependent.
How Attachment Wounds Trigger Relationship Explosions
Emma McAdam (16:37)
So if my audience out there is experiencing forms of anxious attachment, or maybe they’ve had a lot of trauma, and they want to start moving toward healthier attachments, but they start to engage in relationships and it just seems to blow up. Like it doesn’t seem to work out, or it makes them very anxious, or they feel constantly worried, oh did I say the wrong thing? Or they get too close too fast? I mean this is too big of a question I guess.
But are there steps to building earned security? if you just keep blowing things up, what do do?
Jessica Baum (17:13)
Like I wrote this line in safe and it’s kind of a harsh line. But until we heal our abandonment wound, we tend to recreate it. And I think that if you’re listening and you keep like having these dating experiences or you have these experiences that blow up on you and you’re back at that place of here I am again, it’s important to go to the root of the wound of when did you originally start to feel this? Where do you feel this in your body?
Let’s go there because you’re just recreating that pattern or that feeling or that sensation over and over again. And part of becoming conscious is to know what’s happening in the here and now is actually awakening something much younger in you that really needs tending to. with the right awareness, going there in your body, starting to understand your original wound, and many people are like, I had great parents. This isn’t about great parents or not great parents. If a parent didn’t have enough of a neuroception of safety and eventual state and attuned enough of the time, which isn’t all of the time, not a perfect parent, we internalize that we’re not safe and that lives in our nervous system. So it doesn’t have to be that your parent abused you or wasn’t available. Like if they were anxious there can be so many nuances where you’ve internalized something. Where you need to go back and understand, okay, I have this anxiety within me. And it started when I was really young. And when it shows up in my body, I need to interact. I need to build a relationship with it, have some compassion for this younger part of me, have some compassion for this anxiety, start to understand where its roots are, because you’re actually forming a relationship within yourself. And once you start to do that, you start to talk to yourself differently. You start to relate to yourself differently. I even talk about in safe, I talk about
Changing the word trigger to awakened or activated. So anytime you feel triggered, just say oh a younger part of me is being awakened right now. We can now start to change the relationship to what’s going on in our body. And this is how we start to shift our awareness and we start to change how we are relating to ourselves, which eventually starts to shift how we are relating to others.
Emma McAdam (19:14)
Mm-hmm.
lot to think about. I’m thinking of like a personal example right now because well one like you said earlier our relationships our current relationships are our best teachers right there are mentors the interactions I’m having now I’ve been married 12 years and it’s like ⁓ all this stuff comes up right like it comes up and I’m learning I can see myself growing through my marriage, really grateful for the commitment we have because sometimes this growing stuff is not very fun. And now I’ve got this, daughter who’s 10 going on 16 basically. She thinks she’s practically an adult. And one of the things that’s coming up for her a lot right now is she feels like I’m always yelling at her. and I’m like, I don’t yell, what is this? And then I realized what she really means is I’m criticizing her.
Today I caught myself at breakfast. her and her sister were… Her sister was really tired. They share a room. We forced them to share a room so that they, like, learn skills to get along with people. And last night, my 10-year-old wanted to have the audiobook on later so she could… fall asleep listening to a book.
My eight-year-old can’t fall asleep listening to a book. So at breakfast I was like, hey, like it seems like what you really wanted was to listen to your book but maybe you weren’t really paying attention to your sister and what she wanted, like you could be more considerate basically, right? There you go, there I am. And I’m, and I said something else to her, she like brushed it off and so then I got more critical of her. I was like, well you didn’t even pay attention, like
two nights ago you were screaming at her about her dirty floor like you’re not being very considerate you 10 year old and ⁓ then she goes into this place of you’re always yelling at me last week like I had this experience where she’s like screaming at me like I hate you you always yell at me and I just like flashed back to me as a seventh grader being like my parents always yell at me I hate them so much
and me feeling like ⁓ so sad and lonely for like probably five years inside ⁓ of my family and inside of my home. And I think, so as I look at this and I see this pattern being repeated, I’m like, okay, like this is a chance for me to learn about.
criticism and I am really like perfectionistic toward myself and it shows up in my kids. So how do I relate to this like perfectionistic tendency that comes out in a critical way towards myself and towards my daughter without repeating this pattern?
Jessica Baum (22:16)
Yeah, I mean, this is such a good question and I do unpack this. ⁓ So to heal this, your daughter is bringing up your wound. So in order to show up differently for your daughter, what you really wanna do is go back to that little girl who was being criticized in your home, because we tend to repeat what we don’t heal, right? And that critical voice is also a protector.
Emma McAdam (22:25)
Yeah.
Healing Attachment Wounds to Break the Cycle of Criticism
Jessica Baum (22:42)
has helped you succeed in life. We get that, but we want to put that a little bit on the shelf right now. And we want to be with that little girl who was so lonely in your home, who got criticized so much. And we want to start to heal her because until we hold, her emotional experience enough so that you kind of work through that. So you’re not repeating the same kind of behaviors.
Emma McAdam (22:42)
Absolutely.
Jessica Baum (23:06)
I also am a couples counselor and I can’t tell you how many parents come into my office and they’re like, I swore I would never do this to my kids. And I’m like, it’s not your fault. You internalized those behaviors. We internalize our parents. And until we heal that younger part of us who received those behaviors, we tend to repeat those behaviors. I mean, I’ll take it to the extreme, but this is how sometimes pedophiles become pedophiles.
This is how intergenerational trauma gets passed down. If your parents were hypercritical to you, you’ve internalized it. And the next thing you know, you have that voice inside and you’re spitting that voice out at your kid. So you have to go back to the little girl in you, Emma, slowly and start to be with all the loneliness and all the criticism and all the shutting down and all of those experience with support enough. So we start to heal your original wound and then
Emma McAdam (23:34)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (24:02)
you will have a different experience with your own daughter.
Understanding Sensitivity to Foster a Secure Attachment
Emma McAdam (24:05)
Yeah. So what? I should go to more therapy? Is that the answer? Yeah.
Jessica Baum (24:09)
Well, you should ask your therapist to go
to this space with you and you start to visit with this very lonely girl enough so that we hold her enough so that the memory starts to change. The neuro net opens. She gets what she needs from an adult, which is presence and unconditional acceptance and holding what she needed as a little girl. She actually needs to receive now.
Emma McAdam (24:14)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (24:37)
and then we heal the original wounds. So part of healing attachment wounds is going back to the original event. If you were ashamed, if you were frightened, if you were alone, being with that memory and in real time receiving what you didn’t get then, now, and also validating that this little girl Emma was really alone. She was really criticized. It was really hard. Like we need to validate our real experience and our parents often are doing the best they can.
Emma McAdam (25:07)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (25:07)
But they can’t provide us with that kind of repair. So we have to go back and kind of re-experience all of that.
Emma McAdam (25:15)
Yeah, and I don’t think, like my parents were not horrifically critical. I mean, my mom was somewhat perfectionistic and somewhat insecure, right? And I think I also, not to blame myself, but was an exceptionally sensitive human.
Jessica Baum (25:24)
Yeah.
Well, and
I want you to be really careful with that because you were probably just a really amazing, naturally born human and didn’t have parents that had or were equipped to be with you in a way that supported that. So that was really not about you.
Emma McAdam (25:50)
I don’t use the word sensitive in a negative way. Like, I really, I truly see this as like a superpower that also I didn’t know what to do with, still working on what to do with this, but it’s like a beautiful thing. It’s like, ⁓ it’s a beautiful part of me that also didn’t know how to respond to like mild criticism, like to my daughter, same thing, right? Like, hey, you could have been more considerate to your sister about the audio book. I wasn’t like, you were so awful to her, right?
Jessica Baum (25:54)
Yes.
Emma McAdam (26:19)
But for her, she felt that in a really intense way. Because she cares what I think, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica Baum (26:22)
Yeah, and you can hold out and you can hold out with her. You know, I would sit her down and say, when you feel really criticized, what does it feel like in your body? And of course it feels that way. And you start to be with her differently. my mom’s a model. Like she’s still a successful model. And I grew up in New York City and all I heard was you’re too sensitive, you’re too sensitive, you’re too sensitive. And she has like such a thick skin. And I joke with her now. I’m like, mom,
Emma McAdam (26:45)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (26:48)
All that sensitivity in me really paid off. I’m really good at my job. it’s like that joke, you know, but.
Emma McAdam (26:53)
yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, I see sensitivity as a wonderful thing, but at the time, mild forms of criticism, like stabbed me, right? ⁓ And you know what you’re describing this process, which is like a process I’m in progress on, right? Like I’ll tell, I’ll talk to my husband about my, my lonely self or my, lonely little inner child and he’ll, he’ll listen and he’ll support me.
And he’ll be empathetic and and you know I’m also like practicing more IFS and I’m like looking at myself from self-energy and doing some of that healing and and seeing like every interaction with my children as like ⁓ this is a this is a chance we we work on this journey together there’s something
I’m having a very tender day. ⁓ But I I cry really easily anyway, and I’m cool with that like usually cool with that. So here I am. Let’s go. But like just seeing videos of children make me cry these days. I think it’s partly menopause perimenopause, but I’m like, this is also part of neuroplasticity. Like during perimenopause, our body and our hormones change. We become more secure in some areas and we become
more resilient in some areas and I just see this as like it’s all a growth opportunity and this chance with my daughter is like wow what a cool experience for me to like see myself work on myself work with her on myself try to support her in a way that she needs and also with my husband I mean this whole external family internal family stuff I don’t know it’s just a work in progress that’s kind of how I see it like ⁓ Dick Schwartz talks about our tormentors, the people who bother us or are difficult for us are our mentors. And I’m like, okay, that’s where my 10-year-old is not my tormentor, but she’s my mentor. We constantly clash and have opportunities to work on stuff.
Parenting and Attachment: Breaking Intergenerational Cycles
Jessica Baum (28:57)
Yeah, I know. And I love IFS. Those of you who are listening, Internal Family Systems, that’s actually a big backbone of the book, Safe. The only difference between IFS and my work is there’s more meeting. So there’s more of the therapist or the anchor going in and meeting these parts and connecting. So it’s slightly different, but it’s so great to understand that we are not constant. We have all these parts within ourselves.
Emma McAdam (29:02)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Baum (29:20)
Also for your listeners, I think another great resource that’s totally unrelated, but if you’re a parent and you’re identifying a lot with Emma, Conscious Parenting. There’s like a lot of programs around how when our kids are going through stuff and their wounds show up, we are also becoming conscious through those relationships as well. And so your daughter, Emma, is bringing up your wound and you will have enough awareness to understand, I gotta tend to this part within me, right?
Emma McAdam (29:40)
Yeah.
You
Jessica Baum (29:50)
All deep relationships bring up different aspects and it’s a constantly an evolution and it can be a beautiful evolution with the right support.
Emma McAdam (30:00)
Yeah, yeah. One of the patterns that I see as well, both in like therapy and in my own life, is sometimes people repeat the wound by doing the exact same thing, right? Like so I would maybe I was criticized so I criticize. But then sometimes we repeat these wounds by trying to be the opposite. So let’s say I grew up in a really criticizing or controlling family, then I would have it like I definitely have moments where I flip-flop to being like okay I’m not gonna control anything my kids do, I’m not ever gonna say anything, I’m being like way too permissive. I saw this with families too where it’s like a mom grew up in a home where no one ever talked about feelings. So then she was like, we’re always gonna talk about everything. overcompensating, like this over dramatic, like always yelling. If you’re mad, you yell, you know, if you’re upset, you tell someone, it became kind of an opposite and then her daughter, the third generation, was like, I’m never talking about anything, right? So it’s like, compensate, overcompensate, overcompensate, and it just like cycles.
The Vital Role of Rupture and Repair
Jessica Baum (30:57)
If you see, that’s also trying to avoid the original wound. So if the original wound is let’s say criticism. The original wound is I was criticized a lot in my home. So in order to protect myself and my kid from feeling my original wound, I’m gonna swing the pendulum. But that’s also an avoidance of I have to be with the part of me that was sensitive and criticized.
Emma McAdam (31:02)
That’s right. Yep.
Jessica Baum (31:23)
and work through that enough to find a middle path so that I can be in the middle with my kids too, right? We don’t wanna be so permissive that we’re not teaching them boundaries or anything like that. you know, a lot of people try to avoid their wounds by compensating in the other direction, but essentially you’re still really kind of avoiding the core of what’s really driving that behavior. And I think a lot of the work, is being compassionate around our human behavior.
Emma McAdam (31:32)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (31:50)
and starting to understand what’s underneath the behavior. So what’s driving the behavior to be this way from like an interpersonal neurobiology lens, from a Steven Porges, a need to feel safe, from our early experiences, when we start to really understand what’s driving our behavior, we just form more compassion for ourselves and each other.
Emma McAdam (32:10)
Yeah.
So do you feel like compassion is the true healer?
Jessica Baum (32:17)
I feel like ⁓ emotional presence is the true healer. And I think through really beautiful emotional presence from one to another, we start to understand each other and from that comes a layer of compassion.
Emma McAdam (32:35)
So we show emotional presence to others and to ourselves and our own wounds.
Jessica Baum (32:41)
Yeah, and if you didn’t have emotional presence as a little one, you might be listening to me like, is that? I explain in Safe that finding someone who can offer you emotional attunement can be terrifying at first if we have never experienced it. But out of all the attachment styles, right? And out of everything we can give our kids, you would think love would be the number one thing that makes secure attachment. The actual
Emma McAdam (32:54)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (33:07)
Science says the number one predictor of secure attachment is emotional presence.
Emma McAdam (33:15)
So can you go more into detail on that? Like what does that look like? ⁓
Jessica Baum (33:21)
Well, here’s like, it’s complicated because our parents can love us, but if they have unhealed wounds and their nervous system is constantly getting dysregulated or if they’re in survival world or they live in a culture, let’s face it, where you want to teach your kids to be successful and independent, so we’re going to focus on tasks and all of that. ⁓ They’re leaving that neuroception of safety. They’re not providing enough of that safety. So, and if they didn’t get that from their parents,
Emma McAdam (33:44)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (33:50)
they’re not able to really offer that to us. And I’m finding that more and more, it’s that parents really love their kids, but listen, my grandparents on my father’s side were Holocaust survivors, right? So there’s been terror that’s been passed down intergenerationally. And this gets passed down through nervous systems. So if your parent loves you, my mom loves the hell out of me, but she has a lot of anxious attachment, right? Like I wrote the book on it and…
So we give that to our kids. So the only way to not pass that on is to slow down, get the emotional presence now to start to be with what’s going on inside of us, to widen our window of tolerance, to change our internal landscape so that we can offer more emotional ⁓ presence, not just to them, but since I’ve done the work, I can offer emotional presence to just about anyone I’m sitting down with most days. I mean, not every day, you know, I still get dysregulated, but like,
I’m so much more available, right?
Emma McAdam (34:48)
Yeah, I hear that. I hear that totally. And I found myself like with my daughter at the table this morning. At first I was like, ⁓ I’m not criticizing you. I’m not yelling at you. Right. And so that’s me like trying to fix it. And then maybe like, okay, okay, look, like let me teach you how to handle constructive feedback. Right. And that’s like the opposite of emotional connection. And then I saw her get more and more shut down, of course. Like who wants to listen to their parent lecture them after being criticized. Right.
Jessica Baum (35:16)
Totally.
Applying Rupture and Repair in Parenting and Attachment
Emma McAdam (35:16)
And I stopped and I said, that probably really hurts when I tell you what you’re doing wrong or what I think you could do better, right? That probably really hurts. And then I said, I think I have a sense for like how that feels. And I said something wrong. Like I also, like when I get criticized, it really hurts me. And for her…
She didn’t say much. She just kind of was like, she stopped slumping as much. And then a minute later, she was like, okay. And she was good again, right? Like she was like upright again, like her body was upright and she was like interacting and laughing and joking again.
Jessica Baum (35:59)
Two things are so important here. One, that’s an example of rupture and repair. And you know, rupture, I made a mistake. I understand that I impacted you. I can name it. I don’t have that much shame. can, you know, validate your experience and I can repair. And guess what? That actually deepens intimacy. That actually deepens a, it’s not that we don’t do it perfectly as parents or partners is that we have rupture and repair.
Emma McAdam (36:04)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (36:25)
And the other thing that’s, you know, we can go back to Stephen Porges and Polyvagal theory is these ⁓ things that can set our nervous system into a state of defense or shame or whatever happen in nanoseconds. And it could be the tone of your voice or a look in your eye that is literally so nuanced and small.
But that she is registering and automatically sends her into a defensive place. So we don’t even mean to be doing these things, but Stephen Porges would say, it’s the slightest shift. It’s your partner picking up their cell phone when you’re trying to connect with them. It’s a blank stare. It’s someone getting too drunk. Like these slight shifts in someone’s being actually can shift our sense of safety.
Emma McAdam (37:05)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Baum (37:16)
and shift us into a place of defensiveness or fight or flight or shut down. And so those are all what happens in connection. And it’s, they’re supposed to happen. They’re gonna happen, but it’s how we communicate about them, how we come back into repair, which you did beautifully with your daughter. So rupture and repair, which I dive deep in, is necessary for deepening in all relationships. And it’s really important to be able to make, miss the mark, make a mistake, and then come back into connection by repairing.
Emma McAdam (37:45)
I feel like the more and more I look at families and the more and more I mess up in my own, despite my best efforts, the more and more I just think, this is what I cling to. If I’m not perfect at saying the right thing, I’m not perfect at connecting with my child, if I’m not perfect at setting boundaries clearly the first time or whatever, it’s like, can I be humble? Can I make repairs? Can I reconnect?
And I feel like if that’s the only thing I can do as a parent, then it might be okay. I don’t know.
Cultivating Secure Attachment Through Emotional Presence
Jessica Baum (38:20)
And yeah, and secure attachment doesn’t get built on perfect parenting. It’s when the kid internalizes the felt sense of you, Emma, that my mom might mess up, but she cares about me. And she definitely cares about me enough to repair. And that’s what builds security, right? We don’t want to become adults and be like, we have to be perfect. We can never mess up or our boss can never yell at us or our partner can never get upset. It’s like my partner can get upset with me, but I know that…
Emma McAdam (38:25)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (38:47)
that will come back into repair. I know that I have a felt sense in my body that they deeply love me and care about me. And we’re gonna figure this out and come back, into a place of connection.
Emma McAdam (38:58)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so. And it’s like this idea of care about me, like if you ask, do you love your kids? It’s like 100 out of 100. But it’s like, am I connected to my kids? And sometimes I feel really disconnected to them. And repair is like the reconnector. I don’t know. Like, yeah, like it’s not just love. isn’t just love. It’s like,
Jessica Baum (39:19)
Absolutely.
Emma McAdam (39:24)
resonate on their level, it just sounds like so woo woo, but it’s like, can I sit with their emotions, right? Emotional attunement, that’s what you’re saying.
Jessica Baum (39:30)
Yeah, I mean the feeling of can I connect with them and can they feel like I am with them That’s the magic as soon as we start to feel like you’re on your team. I’m on my team. We get defensive. We shift into our left hemisphere when we shift into our right hemisphere and I go into the hemisphere is a lot in my new book.
Emma McAdam (39:40)
Yeah.
Jessica Baum (39:48)
but the right hemisphere is very relational and it’s a sense of we, we-ness. Can we be together? Can we share the space? Can I be empathic to your experience? it’s very relational.
Emma McAdam (40:01)
Yeah. Well, and when I was like trying to teach her about like how to take feedback, that’s like left hemisphere, right? Like let’s let’s like the details of this are you were not doing it right and you should have been doing it right and let me teach you. And it’s like that was like no wonder she didn’t want to connect on that, right? Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Jessica Baum (40:22)
Disconnected already. She’s on her side of the fence. You’re on your side of the fence. You’ve lost her completely.
Emma McAdam (40:29)
And then I’m guessing this is what it just felt like to you. All of a sudden she’s like, we’re on the same, like we’re a little bit aligned on the same team again.
Jessica Baum (40:38)
Yep. And you shifted right into the right hemisphere and you connected with her and offered a beautiful repair. And like that literally is it. That is the goal. Do you want to keep trying to do that?
Emma McAdam (40:40)
Huh.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, aren’t families great? We get the chance to do this like 600 times a day. Yeah. ⁓ but what about my perfectionist part that says that’s not allowed? Come on.
Jessica Baum (40:52)
Yes, and you get to do it wrong and you get to keep learning.
Well, We need to sit with a part of you that has some shame around not being perfect. And she’s very small and we need to be with her a little bit more too.
Practical Steps: Polyvagal Safety, Co-regulation, and Earned Security
Emma McAdam (41:09)
That’s a good point. I’ll go do some more practicing. So do you have any practices or anything practical that you’d recommend as we wrap things up? Do have any practices or places to start?
Jessica Baum (41:20)
well, maybe after listening to this podcast and I have a free attachment informed guide that goes through the wheel of attachment, like starting to understand your patterns, How did you relate in your childhood home? How are you relating in your intimate bonds and your work relational bonds with your kids?
Starting to have some compassion for yourself and starting to understand that these are deeply rooted patterns, ⁓ that’s the beginning of it. if you’re listening, a lot of people already know what attachment theory is. And it’s like a buzzword. And I’m so grateful that it’s out in the mainstream because I know that when I discovered Anxiously Attached, it’s like, my God, more than codependency, this gives me something to grab onto to explain my behaviors.
And have evolved since then. And I don’t want you to just stay stuck on the behavior, but I do have for your audience specifically, you’re gonna get the link, the Wheel of Attachment that explains all of the attachment styles and like how you can move along the wheel. So it’s a special new way of looking at attachment. And I also have a private video of me and my mentor talking about what inner security feels like, the journey towards inner security, because it is a journey.
I provide those things for free for people who pre-order the book as like, get this now, you have some resources and you can start right away.
Emma McAdam (42:42)
Awesome! Thank in the show notes if you’re listening to this on the podcast so thank you
I’m wondering if you want to walk through the wheel of attachment with us
Jessica Baum (42:56)
Let’s see if I can do it, like picture kind of a circle, but it’s like a square circle. Securities on the bottom and disorganizes on the top. Anxiousness on the right and avoidance on the left. So let’s say you’re in security here and your parent is secure. We’ll talk about parents here. And sometimes your parent is anxious. You start to slide up.
And you can go from anxious to secure, right? And if they become very angry or aggressive, you keep moving up to disorganized. So disorganized is on the top. with secure being on the bottom, avoidance, maybe they get detached, they’re emotionally unavailable to complete ignoring or blank stare, you start to move to disorganized. So you can move along this wheel, typically one parent upside one and have different experiences.
But the important thing is security and disorganized are at the opposite and anxious and avoidant are on both those sides. with my mom, I could have, some secure moments, a lot of security. And then when she was really stressed out, a lot of anxiety. or my dad had some substance abuse issues. So I had some very, like almost no security and a lot of disorganized because he was
checked out. So that scared my nervous system. So it’s kind of cool to start to look at attachment just not as patterns and labels, but now we’re going to get like a holistic point of view. if you’re listening, you know nothing about attachment and you’re about to get a lot. If you know a lot about of attachment, you’re going to get something very different in terms of how to start thinking about it.
Emma McAdam (44:28)
Okay, I’ll make sure to share that in the description as well.
Emma McAdam (44:33)
So if someone wants to build their internal sense of security, is there a practical exercise they can do now that’s gonna help them do that?
Jessica Baum (44:46)
I talk about this in safe. Like I talk about the neuroscience of how we internalize people through mirror neurons and resident circuits. So for you, though, guys are listening and this might seem woo woo, but it’s not. We literally take in all important relationships through our mirror neurons and our circuits. We are internalizing people.
So when I talk about safe people and resourcing, we can actually go back to an animal, a place in nature, a grandparent, an aunt, we can go back to the felt sense of what it felt like to be in their presence and cultivate a sense of safety based on that because they are still with us. We internalize them so we can start to access people, places, and things. And of course we access.
the not pleasant ones for healing too. They’re inside of us. Unfortunately, we internalize the good and the bad, right? If you wanna call it that. But so we can access things and cultivate the felt sense of, my God, for me, it was my grandmother. What did it feel like to be around my grandmother? Can I imagine her in the room? Can I bring in the memory of her more? And our soma will recognize that. And we can actually start to use that as part of building inner security. So there’s one tip.
Emma McAdam (46:03)
I love it. Okay, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today. Appreciate you writing those books. I’m definitely gonna pick up your first book now and read it too. So thank you.
Jessica Baum (46:11)
Yes, thank you so much for having me. This is such a great conversation and thank you for being so vulnerable and being a parent that’s doing the work, that’s so important.
Emma McAdam (46:16)
you
Yeah, I think parenting is ⁓ the best and really it’s also beautiful place to learn more because it’s given me more ⁓ appreciation of my own parents and what they’ve done and how hard it is to do it well.
Jessica Baum (46:29)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Safe: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships
Emma McAdam (46:40)
Well, thank you so much for your time. And again, check out her book. Can you tell us the title and the subtitles so that people can look it up on Amazon too if they’re just listening? Yes, please.
Jessica Baum (46:48)
Sure, and I can show it too. So it’s Safe: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships. And it’s orange and it’s got some hearts on it. ⁓ And this is my other book, Anxiously Attached, which has been out there for three years and is selling off the charts. I’m so grateful. But this takes it a level deeper. Safe goes even a level deeper. And I’m on Instagram, Jessica Baum, LMHC. And if you do the buy the book and you have an experience with it, like reach out to me. Like I wanna know, like I, like that’s what helps me go. Like if you buy the book and it moves you or whatever comes up for you, like I respond. So just let me know what your experience is. It really, helps me, you know, learn and keep moving forward. And I’m actually really grateful for anyone who reaches out.
Emma McAdam (47:40)
Awesome, that sounds so good. thank you, thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it and hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
Jessica Baum (47:47)
Thanks Emma. Thanks.
