A Word To The Wise
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A Word To The Wise
145. Attachment Theory and Romantic Relationships Ft. Thomas Westenholz
We're peeling back the layers of the four attachment styles—secure, anxious, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant—to discover the profound ways in which they shape our interactions with those closest to us.
We navigate the delicate interplay of attachment patterns in romantic partnerships, uncovering strategies to foster true intimacy without falling prey to misguided dating advice. Learn how a securely attached partner can be a cornerstone for an anxious individual's journey towards stability, and the remarkable shifts in self-awareness that can lead to healthier relationship choices.
As we wrap up our enriching dialogue, we shine a spotlight on the emerging field of psychedelic therapy and its role in mental health and relationship healing. With a focus on harm reduction, we discuss the therapeutic potentials and risks of substances like MDMA, psilocybin, and DMT.
Where to find Thomas Westenholz:
https://coupletherapy.earth/
https://open.spotify.com/show/0k8tq88A7oy2CNBxgaLi0z?si=Kti_XWNdT4OMEeQL8fOI9g&nd=1&dlsi=91670c935ab94747
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the A Word to the Wise podcast, a space where we curate conversations around mind, body, spirit and personal development. I'm your host, jumi Moses. On the show today, we take a deep dive into attachment theory. Now, I'm sure a lot of you have heard this concept before, especially on social media. I know I've heard about avoidant attachment versus anxious attachment or secure attachment, for example. However, I've heard about avoidant attachment versus anxious attachment or secure attachment, for example. However, I've never fully understood the power in understanding attachment theory and how understanding attachment theory can make us more self-aware and show up better in our relationships, especially our romantic relationships, especially our romantic relationships. In short, attachment theory is a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people. These relationship bonds often start in childhood and we're going to get deep into all of that. There are four types of attachment styles secure attachment, anxious attachment, dismissive, avoidant and fearful avoidant, and some people fall on the extreme end of some of these. You know styles and a lot of us tend to be kind of in the middle and might change attachment styles depending on who we're dating or the circumstances. On the show today to help me dissect these different attachment styles and how they show up in relationships is Thomas Westenhals. Thomas is a couples therapist specializing in attachment theory. He is also an author facilitator in psychedelics, breathwork and ecstatic dance. His expertise bridges the gap between traditional therapy and alternative healing practices and in our conversation we discuss attachment theory, how we develop our specific types of attachment styles, how each attachment styles play out in relationships and how psychedelics can help couples understand each other better.
Speaker 1:I learned so much in this episode and I believe you will too. Let's get into the show, thomas. Welcome to A Word to the Wise. Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to speak with you. I've been looking to get a couple of therapists on the show for a while to talk about attachment styles and attachment theory, so I feel like this is a well-overdue conversation on the podcast. But thank you so much for being here today. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm really well and I'm really excited about this conversation, also because I feel, you know, when I look online, there's so much different advice going around that isn't really grounded in science and things that actually work that often, I think, confuse people more than it helps them. And what is amazing about emotional focus couple therapy it's really well researched and it kind of gives us a framework for how to navigate and create self safe, flourishing relationships, and that's quite exciting that we actually have that nowadays.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is so exciting and speaking about so much information out there and getting confused. I know attachment theory is something that people talk about a lot. They tend to talk about the anxious versus avoidant and I'm going to ask you what the different attachment styles are in a little bit. But yes, I'm looking for some more grounded, science-based information and discussion around this topic. Now I want to ask you what sparked your interest in couples therapy and specializing in attachment theory?
Speaker 2:That's a good question and I think it came from the fact that I messed up my own 12-year relationship and I remember, literally the day after my partner had moved out, I bought this book by Sue Johnson called Hold Me Tight, and I was lying there in the evening reading this book because I wanted to understand what has happened.
Speaker 2:And as I started to read about the attachment styles and the different dynamics she called them dances that we get into I could literally see, like imagine being in a movie Matrix.
Speaker 2:It was like this. I could see everything that has gone wrong and in that moment my anger and resentment got replaced with this huge sense of compassion, both towards my partner or ex-partner, but also towards myself, because it was no longer about her being the enemy or me self-blaming and say I was wrong. I could suddenly see these old dances that we brought with us from a very, very young nervous system that we unconsciously have continued to play out, and how they didn't interact well together and how that got us off track right. And it was so incredible to just have that moment of complete clarity and then also be able to move forward and actually implement that to create very, very different dynamics, because there now was an actual structure, and you could also now easily see, when you went out of that, why we were now out of balance, right, and there was a template for how do we get back into balance again.
Speaker 1:I always find it very interesting when someone's profession is spurred out of a personal moment or something you know significant happens in their life, that completely shifts their perspective or brings them to a new subject matter. That illuminates what the problem was. And now it's like this narrow focus to better understand it and to in some ways teach it and offer help to couples who are struggling with understanding one another. Looking at each other, it's you versus me, because that's how a lot of couples look at themselves. It's not. Oh, we're a team. We need to figure this out together. So what are the different types of attachment styles?
Speaker 2:So the literature kind of defines four key attachment styles. And again, I think what I just want to say before this is because often people hear this and then they go to their partner and say, oh, I heard this, you are X, y and Z. This is not something that's meant to be used to blame other people. Actually, it's meant to be able to help us have compassion for other people and understand why their primal nervous system respond in certain ways to try and restore safety right. And also, we're not defined. Our attachment styles is not who we are and they're even changeable, which is very fascinating. So over time, exposed to a secure, safe dynamic, we know that the nervous system actually changes. So I just want to say that before so people don't think oh my God, this is me. It's not a definition of who you are. So the four attachment styles that you mentioned obviously anxious and avoidant, but let's start with secure attachment. So we have a framework for what a balanced individual actually look like, right? Because for some people, what does that even look like? So somebody with secure attachment definitely haven't had perfect parenting. We even know securely attached adults had parents who missed the tune about 70% of the time. So it's not about perfection. You don't have to hit yourself if you're a parent and say, oh, I've been a bad parent, but what they had is they tend to have parents who responded to their needs and distress, who respected their boundaries, and in that they formed a model of the world that was people are going to respect me, people are safe, people are going to respond to my needs, it's safe to get close to someone and I'm also fine on my own, meaning they much, much, much faster restore balance, they have a much wider what we call window of tolerance where they can move with stress much more before they lose control and can't bring themselves back, while people who haven't had that responsiveness, they don't have that flexibility in their nervous system, they don't anticipate that somebody is going to respond to them. So they need defensive strategies to keep themselves safe. Right, and this is where we come into all the other three, which all are actually anxious attachment styles, even though we don't have that label for all of them.
Speaker 2:But let's start with anxious attachment. Anxious attachment is someone who might have had, let's say, somebody who might have abandonment, a father who maybe suddenly have left, or there has been something that had created that nervous system to fear a sense of abandonment, to feel that they had to let go of a sense of self to appease others, to get what they want. It's often associated with what we call the people pleaser, right, very classical. The anxious attachment is a person who will ruminate a lot, so when things don't go wrong, they will keep thinking what if I had done this? Or what if I'd done this? Maybe my relationship would have worked out. That's the anxiously attached. Yeah, the avoidant doesn't do that at all, right, so they tend to get very anxious and they need you know, often a lot.
Speaker 2:I don't like the word needy we use that a lot in our culture, but that's again because we don't understand what's below. There's a child that didn't have that responsiveness. They had somebody who was not consistent in that right and that made the nervous system of a small child feel really anxious, right, which is very, very normal adaptive behavior. And for that they tried to please this other person to make sure they would continue to get their needs. And as a child, you need that because if your parents don't attend to you, well, you actually die. So it is life or death and this nervous system is with us even through adulthood to the day we die.
Speaker 2:Then we have avoidant attachment, which is somebody who often had parents who didn't respond, who ignored their needs, and it was all classical. Remember when they said let the babies cry, you know, because otherwise they won't learn to be independent? We now know from science this is nonsense and it's very, very harmful. Because what happened is a baby, unlike an adult, can't regulate. The part of the brain that regulates emotion isn't developed yet. It only started around age eight and finished around mid-twenties. So a young baby have no way of regulating emotion. Okay, so when they start getting dysregulated and cry because they need food, they're tired, they're cold, whatever it is, and nobody comes to respond, their body start becoming so dysregulated that it's actually dangerous. Yeah, they can even die from it, they can go into a shock. So the only way for the organism to restore safety is to shut down all these emotions. And that now learn nobody will come when I need it.
Speaker 2:And these are the avoidant people that don't like intimacy. When things get too close, they panic, they run away. They tend to prefer to deal with stress on their own, because they learn to self-regulate really well because they only had themselves to, so they don't like to depend on others. They will constantly talk about independent. I'm so independent, I'm so proud of our independent. I achieved all this myself.
Speaker 2:That's often a very avoidant person, right, but the anxious tend to need co-regulation from other people. They can't do that very well themselves, right, right. And the secure can do both. They can both regulate self and with others. The last one is disorganized, and disorganized is the attachments that are closely related to very severe trauma, and it is a very extreme form of anxious and avoidant attachment put together in one. And what tend to happen was that the caregiver that was meant to provide comfort would do that sometimes, and at other times it would cause severe trauma. That meant that child completely had to disassociate and get away and disengage from all emotion, get close really quickly.
Speaker 2:That's the extreme side of their anxious attachment. They want. They're very intense. They'll be like I love you after a few weeks and you're the most amazing person. It's very, very intense, right, and they almost create an artificial intensity to get you close, to soothe their anxiety, right. But then, when you come close, the panic steps in because the people that were close to them also harmed them. Now they become the extreme spectrum of avoidant, which is they suddenly disengage, they suddenly completely numb out, and for most balanced people this will be so confusing. It will be like what? What happened? They wanted close, then I came close. Now they panic, they don't want to talk to me for two weeks and then they will then come back again and be very anxious and this is a attachment style that's very difficult to be an intimate relationship with.
Speaker 1:And again, that doesn't mean they don't deserve intimate relationships, but they certainly hopefully can also get individual therapy on the side, which will definitely be necessary to be able to create a safe, secure dynamic that was an amazing breakdown, especially the last one kind of sounds like what people talk about love bombing, where they meet someone and it's oh my God, this person is so into me and then the person switches up and they're thinking what just happened? You said I was the love of your life. Now you're not picking up my calls. So in you talking about all of these different attachment styles, one thing that keeps coming up is this talk about childhood and how that affects people's attachment styles. So is attachment theory based on how a person grows up? Is it really heavily tied to someone's childhood?
Speaker 2:Yes, it is, and it's primarily where these neurons are formed in the brain and the nervous system. So they become, they operate what we call the unconscious limbic system, below awareness, and actually everything that comes through is processed through this neural network before you become aware of it. This is why people make interpretations of what happened based on what happened previously, right, that's why if suddenly, let's say, your partner is late and you're very anxious, you might straight away come to the conclusion they don't care about me. Yeah, and that's because it's always been filtered through this old network before you even become aware. So you're not often even aware that these presumptions can very highly be incorrect, because we have to think about the organism, and especially the brain was actually designed as a predictive organism, meaning its main purpose is to use all data to predict what might happen in the future, to ensure safety, right, which is a very effective strategy, because if every time we go to a door, we have to figure out how does the door open and is this safe to touch or not? That would require a lot of processing power, right? So this is really an effective system. However, it's also faulty, because if those early experiences created a lack of safety, then now we interpret everything that's happening around us through this lens and we're also the slowest mammal to grow up.
Speaker 2:If you look at every other mammal, many animals are ready for full function in a couple of weeks, couple of months, maximum a couple of years. They can function on their own without parents. You know we take 18, sometimes even longer before we are mammals who can actually go out and function ourselves and take care of ourselves right. That's because we were the mammal that was most created to be adaptable to our environment. So we come with a much more blank slate, meaning that we can adapt much better to what is, and we even know now attachment starts even before we are born. If a mother has high levels of cortisol, stress hormone and adrenaline in the bloodstream, we know that the amygdala, which is part of the fear response, is more primed and grow larger already at birth, meaning that's already priming that child to say I'm coming into a stressful and dangerous world, which is why we need to look out for pregnant women a lot more. We need to provide much more place for them to be able to have support right, because the more stressed they are, the more likely we get children that have a hard time functioning in society.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, this forms really early and unless we become really aware and can then intervene with things like attachment theory and emotional focus couple therapy, we tend to relive through these again and again and we tend to seek out partners that create what's called a reenactment. So let's say you had a very avoidant dad, right, and it's so typical, I get very anxious women. It doesn't mean that it's only women that could have anxious attachment, but it's very typical coming in and they continue to seek out avoidant men again and again and they're like I don't know why I'm doing this, it's not good for me, but I'm attracted to them and that's because, on an unconscious level, they're going through what's called a reenactment. Their brain is trying to get a resolution by replaying the same scenario, hoping this time it can create a different ending.
Speaker 1:That was so good, you know. The first thing that I want to touch on that you said is the notion of you know even how it starts from birth, right how the mother's emotions could affect the baby. And it made me think about something that I read from the newest book by Dr Gabor sorry, dr Gabor, mate, I think I have it here the Myth of Normal. I just wanted to make sure I got the title correct and he talked about big trauma versus little trauma, right, and he was saying how, when he was younger, his mom had to send him away with relatives for his safety and even though he was a child and she was doing that for his safety, he kind of I think he was like less than one or about one years old that was kind of the catalyst to feeling like people were not reliable or people that love him weren't going to be there for him. Just feeling alone, right, feeling very lonely, right, feeling very lonely. And then obviously that had, you know, ripple effects throughout his life.
Speaker 1:But it's just so interesting how deep these things can be and how, you know, attachment theory, I feel like, is kind of that red light blinking signal that's saying something's wrong here.
Speaker 1:This is, you're acting out something deeper that needs to be looked at. And the attachment, your attachment style is not necessarily it's the effects of a larger, of larger symptoms, I should say. So it's very, very interesting, and it's interesting how you talked about the anxious versus avoided relationship dance, because that's the one that I see a lot online and I want to, you know, go deeper into that. But before I even go deeper into that, I know that again, it was a lot of it is focused on how someone grew up and a lot of the stuff that was ingrained or programmed in their brain that they're not even aware of. But could someone's attachment styles change after dating someone? So, for example, let's say a secure person enters a relationship with an avoidant person, can they come out of that relationship either anxious or disorganized, meaning you know they're open to love, but then they also have this fear of love when it becomes too close, based on the experience that they had in a specific relationship, or is it typically just from childhood?
Speaker 2:So these attachment styles definitely change, but also depending on who we're with, and so it's very unlikely that somebody with a secure attachment style would develop a disorganized attachment style, because if they already have that foundation they are much more likely to be able to come back, and disorganized usually is very early trauma. Of course somebody with a secure attachment can have trauma later in life, but even then we know that they're much less likely to get PTSD or complex PTSD from that trauma. So people who have more of these anxious attachments are also much more likely to be affected much worse, we know, by trauma. They're much more likely to end up in prison etc, etc. So you know there's a whole range of this and we can even see it from a cultural perspective too, because people that have more access to resources they're more likely to be able to give their children that attention, to create secure attachment right, which is why there's disproportional of some people in prison etc. But anyway, that wasn't your main question. So, yes, can it change Absolutely? So the typical example that you mentioned, I think, was the anxious avoidant and it's a good example of if we take somebody with anxious attachment and again, this operates at a spectrum right, it's not that everybody with anxious are the same level of anxiety or everybody with avoidant are the same level of avoidance. But if we take someone who's slightly anxious, put them together with somebody very avoidant, they will obviously come and try and get somebody to respond. They need the closeness. The avoidant will pull away because they feel very uncomfortable. That will make the anxious feel more anxious, so they will now chase more and that will make the other one pull away even more. And then you get this cycle where they create more and more anxiety, more and more avoidance, so they make each other worse, which is why that is probably the most difficult dynamic. They try to find their repair and their reenactment in each other. Basically right. So it's a very classical example, very common, but it tend to be very, very difficult to make these work.
Speaker 2:If you take a anxious one and put together with a securely attached, you will see that the anxious will slowly start becoming more and more secure, because when they suddenly say, oh, I felt really, you know so. So also also the secure can listen much more to underlying needs than other people can. So if suddenly this anxious person were criticizing them and oh, I can't believe you're out so late and you didn't call me. The secure attachment is much less likely to become defensive because they feel safe in themselves. They're much more likely to say, oh so you didn't feel safe that I was out and didn't contact you, and then what do you need? And then, oh, I need you to check in with me when you're out. Okay, I can do that. So they're much more likely to respond to the underlying need and in that you start creating safety for the other person.
Speaker 2:And what happens when you create safety? Then all these behaviors and I don't like the word needy, but we often call it that right, but I think it's a very judgmental word but that what people call neediness become less and less. I call it a request for responsiveness, because that's really what it is that become less and less and the criticism become less and less, because the anxiety comes down right. And then you will see them start forming a more secure bond. Start forming a more secure bond. But again, if you have two people in therapy, two people that are very aware and one is avoidant, one anxious, it's always going to be harder, but they can together create a secure dynamic even though neither of them have a secure attachment style, because they can choose to spot their own pattern, they can choose not to engage in those automatic responses, and they can choose to then communicate their underlying attachment needs, and then they can learn how to become more responsive to each other which is what we do in couples therapy, essentially and then they start feeling more safe.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that, because it always seems, like you know, whenever I hear about the anxious and avoidant dance, I'm like, how can this work? But so many people have come out and say that they are able to make it work. But, like you said, I think it requires a heavy sense of self-awareness to understand. Oh, these are my patterns of self-awareness, to understand. Oh, these are my patterns. I'm actually acting in avoidant ways or I'm actually acting in anxious ways. And if I'm recognizing these are my patterns, then when they flare up I can be like, oh, I'm doing this again and, like you said, be able to create that more secure dynamic.
Speaker 1:And I also like the example that you gave with the secure person versus the anxious person. If they were to be in a relationship, the anxious person becoming more secure because the secure person is able to pull them in. Is that the same for, like, a secure, avoidant person? Or do you feel that people who tend to be secure aren't necessarily drawn to avoidant people because they can recognize that being a pretty difficult situation to be in?
Speaker 2:It's a really interesting question. Yes, attachment style also very much define who we find attractive, right. And this is why it's super fascinating when people say, oh, but I know these people are not good for me, but they're the only people I'm attracted to. What we see is that when people come into therapy and they start feeling a more sense of security and safety and secure attachment in themselves because they at least have a therapy who is very responsive to them right, which is what they need, their nervous system needs Then they start slowly becoming attracted to different people, exactly so. You know, I've seen plenty of people who came in and maybe had a quite anxious attachment style and as they started feeling more and more securely attached, they weren't so attractive anymore to very avoidant partners. They started becoming much more attractive to people that were actually responsive to them right.
Speaker 2:And I think again, there's a lot of these dating fallacies by so-called dating experts without any actual qualification who will teach you all these different games that you have to play right. And they're completely missing the cue, because what they're doing is they're actually reinforcing, staying in defensive strategies where there can't be intimacy. So what they're doing is they're staying in the survival. I'm in danger. I need survival strategies, right, and in that you can't actually have intimacy, you can't create safety, so that reinforce insecurity, that reinforce instability, right, which is why they don't tend to be able to maintain relationship, even though they give a lot of advice. So, yeah, I think that's important to be aware of and also just be mindful, because, you're right, it's about having self-awareness and people can make something work. I'm not saying that nobody can work because they're anxious and avoidant.
Speaker 2:Together, we have to just be mindful and know that this predictive brain that we have often is very faulty in its prediction, and especially if we didn't have good frameworks growing up. So it's being able to say, oh, I feel, I think he doesn't care about me because he didn't call me, right, he's out with his friend and he didn't, he doesn't care about me. Oh, this is what my brain initially predict. It doesn't mean it's true right, because often I know that this prediction is incorrect. So it's starting to pick up these incorrect predictions of the future that the brain is trying to do to help us. But they're no longer correct right, because they're based on an old model and then we can widen the gap between when we feel something and think something, and when we respond, because if we respond straight away we will go on autopilot, which is the old responses. So we need to learn how do I regulate enough to not respond straight away, because then I can start building new patterns and something.
Speaker 1:There are two things that I wanted to um, quickly touch on and to your point about. You know, the more secure you become, the more your desire or attraction to certain people change, and I think that makes a whole lot of sense. And then the second thing I was thinking about, too, is that I've seen situations that look like someone who is typically avoidant will get into a relationship and then all of a sudden they're super anxious because they're dating another avoidant. Have you run into situations like that and why do you think that is? If you have run into that?
Speaker 2:situations like that and why do you think that is if you have run into that? Yeah, I think we also have to remember that a lot of us walk around and don't really show what's actually going on. So people can maybe appear to be quite avoidant on the outside because they want to appear confident but actually feel very anxious right on the inside. And, as you said, if two avoidance are with each other, they tend to actually get on quite well in the main, that none of them have a big need for intimacy. They tend to mainly base their relationship on things like physical gratification, having sex together, you know, doing their careers independently. So they tend to be able to actually get on in that way. They don't feel very close or connected, but they tend to be able to actually get on in that way. They don't feel very close or connected, but they tend to be able to just function because none of them really crave that intimacy, right, it only seemed to become a problem when there's somebody who want that intimacy, which someone to cure anxious, who really crave that and that can't be given. But yes, somebody who's a bit avoidant can certainly become anxious, for sure, and we have to remember that avoidant attachment is also an anxious attachment style. Right? When they actually measured the neurological response, people who avoidant feel equally amount of anxiety internally. Right, they have just come up with different coping strategies. So it's important to know that these attachment styles does not say much about how we feel. It says something about how we have learned to respond.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's quite important because we can tend to presume that, oh, someone with avoidant doesn't experience pain, they're not anxious. That's not true at all. We know that that's very opposite. They can be very dysregulated, they can experience a lot of anxiety, but they don't tend to go out and ask for help. They don't go out and share. They're the people that when they're stressed or anxious or depressed, they pull away. They don't come and say I need your help, right? While the anxious tend to reach out to anyone who wants to listen, right? So these are just different coping strategies. So it doesn't mean that somebody who's avoidant does not experience anxiety internally.
Speaker 1:And I would assume as well that you know, like you said, all of these things are a spectrum and someone might be super secure in a relationship but when it comes to their work, attachment styles, depending on the situationships or situation that we're in, because I assume this is not just for romantic relationships.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you're spot on, and we do so. We tend to have a default, which is the primary strategy that we have, but you're absolutely right, of course it's dependent on context. So I'll give you an example. So I am lucky because I had very stable parents growing up. So I was growing up and I got a secure base from them, right. So I have trust that I'll be okay on my own and I also am very happy to be intimate and get close to someone and I trust that most people will respect my boundaries and my needs and in that is a general secure base when I relate. However, that doesn't mean I can't be knocked out of balance, and I know so.
Speaker 2:I have a son which is how I got into psychedelic assisted therapy who's got a life limit condition and sometimes he has to spend extensive time in hospital and go through lots of surgeries, Like the last two months he had five surgeries, right. He just came out yesterday and in that period my nervous system become more anxious and I know I need more reassurance from my partner, right. So there's no doubt that my nervous system was much less in balance and it normally is. I found it harder to regulate. I would get more triggered by small things that normally wouldn't trigger me at all, Like her going to the cinema with her friend normally would not bother me the slightest but because I was in hospital with a screaming child and she was out and that suddenly bothered me, right, and I started feeling anxious and stressed.
Speaker 2:But the difference is because I have a secure base I could communicate that underlying need, and avoidant would hardly ever probably go and say listen, this is happening and therefore I feel insecurity and my need is for a bit more reassurance for you while my son is in hospital, right? But that's what I said to my partner and the reason I did that and an avoidant wouldn't do that or very unlikely to do it is because I have trust that there will be responsiveness. So it feels safe to to say that right, and because I do that, I'm more likely now to actually get what I need, right. So she said oh, of course I didn't realize that, but I'll make sure to do that and that totally makes sense. And then you readjust right and you reestablish safety. So that's an example that certain circumstances can definitely knock us out of balance, but it's easy again to come back to balance if we have this baseline.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that example, and I want to talk about the psychedelic part of your expertise a little bit later, because I know you just mentioned that with your son, so I'm excited to kind of dig deeper into that.
Speaker 1:But I also wanted to talk about how really understanding attachment theory and attachment styles can really benefit couples. Obviously, we've alluded to it throughout the whole conversation, but there was something that you said that I wanted to respond to but forgot to was this notion of you know dating experts or people talking about how to play games when you're getting to know someone, and I always kind of thought that was silly, because if you start off playing games, then where's the opportunity to create real intimacy and get to know this person? And then your relationship is predicated on games, and a lot of times I think that couples are still playing games with each other even though they're married and they've been together for 10, 20 years. It becomes this like ego war, right? So I just wanted to kind of really highlight how understanding attachment theory and different attachment styles can really help couples communicate better and create better intimacy.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course, and it certainly can. And I think, when we talk about playing games, why do people play games? They play games to have a felt sense of control over the environment, right? Why do they have the need? When do we need to control our environment? When we feel anxious, when the fear response is firing up in our brain, then we need to control our environment more, right? So that's essentially what it is.
Speaker 2:People who try to play games are actually people who are in a survival mode because they feel highly unsafe. So people that feel safe don't tend to play games. They don't need to, right, because they don't think that there is a threat in their environment. They feel safe in that environment. So it's a big indicator as well of somebody's internal state when they play a lot of games, right? Or if they don't play games and you're spot on, it's impossible to get intimacy from that place if you try and play games, and we actually know that secure, safe attachment is the best and most effective survival strategy. And we know that when a child feels safe, they don't become less independent. They become more independent, actually, because the children that are most likely to go out and explore, most likely to be willing to take risk are the ones that have a secure base. They go out and they know I can explore the world, but if I fall down from a tree, I can go back and mommy and daddy will help me, right, and because they trust that they can go explore. And that relates to when we become adults, the same patterns you see. The people that are more comfortable with risk, with uncertainty, are people that had that secure base, and it makes it easier for them to go explore. And yes, couples can change this together. And this is what's so beautiful about emotional focus, couple therapy, which is obviously what I do, and also the most well-researched couple therapy practice, and it's the only one that has consistent research backing up that it works, also long term. There's no other couples therapy that actually have that, and the reason it works is that it functions on some very simple steps. That is based on the very core human needs we have for survival, which is a sense of belonging. We all have a sense of belonging from the day we are born till the day we die.
Speaker 2:Right, we are social creatures at heart and therefore the first part when people come in is to identify what is a dance that we got stuck in. Right, we call it a dance, because a relationship is kind of like a dance. Right, we come in, we fall for each other. We're listening to the same tune, we are having a good time, we're jamming, and then, over time, we don't realize we're listening now to two different songs and the beat doesn't match. And I start stepping on your feet and you're like, oh, why are you doing that for? And I'm like, oh, why are you not stepping right in rhythm to get the analogy. So this is what happens.
Speaker 2:Right, we're no longer listening to the same tune, but when we realize that it's not the partner that's the enemy, because when people come in, we live in a culture that always want to blame somebody, that means either it's my fault and I have to feel blame and bad about myself, or it's your fault and I can blame somebody else. I don't have to feel blame. However, what if there was nobody to blame? What if there were just two people trying to find safety in the best way that the organism learned to do? Because that's really what it is?
Speaker 2:And when people can see these core dancers, they realize it's a dance, that's enemy, it's not my partner. And when we can externalize it. We know from human psychology we tend to come together against the common enemy. Right now, they see the dance as the enemy, not the other person and not themselves. That creates a possibility of change, right. So now they can spot and say, oh, we are going into whatever they choose to call this dance that they identified right, and now they can instead say, okay, what is the underlying needs that I actually need?
Speaker 2:What are the attachments? Because people never separate because the husband didn't take out the bin. That's what they come and tell you right, oh, he never helped with this. What is actually being said underneath this is when somebody say, oh, he didn't help with this, he didn't help with this. I hear human beings saying I felt alone. Yeah, I felt alone, I felt unsupported. It wasn't about the bin, it wasn't about somebody forgetting the dishes. Nobody separate or argue or destroy their marriage and separate from their kids because of that. It's because they felt alone.
Speaker 2:So when we can get to the attachment need and we can express that to the partner, suddenly their defenses go down, because when we're blaming and attacking, they have no other choice than going to fight a flight too, or collapse, and we can never get anywhere. Good when we're in that state, right. But now, by expressing vulnerably these attachment needs, the other person actually goes into compassion instead. Right, and of course it might take a few times because it's new and in the beginning there might be what the heck is happening here. And with a few times they start feeling safe enough to hear it and then you start helping them responding and look what are you creating?
Speaker 2:Right now You're creating a secure attachment dynamic, which is responsiveness. You know, expression of need and responsiveness. You're basically restructuring what they didn't have as a child. So you're recreating a safe dynamic. We call it restructuring emotional experience. We're giving them a new emotional experience, but where they got the responsiveness that they needed and in that the nervous system starts feeling safe. And guess what? All the practical issues people come in with are so easy to solve once a nervous system is calm and they're impossible to solve when they're inflated and in fight or flight response.
Speaker 1:That was so good. I loved the dance analogy. I love dancing just for fun, fun story. When I was 13, I told my sister I'm going to run away to Hollywood and become a professional dancer. So I love dance and moving the body and I really love the analogy about you know, when it comes to couples, it's about being on the same tune. You know, being in rhythm with each other. You know, doing the steps in sync. It's not, you know, you versus me. And when the steps start to become out of sync with each other, that's when you need to kind of pay attention to what's going on, because I think that's the part that a lot of couples miss Like. When did we start being unaligned? Right? And I really love what you said about you know, it's not about taking the trash out, it's about the feelings underneath that, the emotions underneath that.
Speaker 1:And there was this show that I watched a couple months ago. It's called Couples Therapy, and every time a couple had a breakthrough, it was because at some point, they realized all of their reactions, all of the things that they were doing, all of the feelings that they had. They were able to pinpoint the emotion behind those actions and those feelings right, I remember this one woman. She was just so harsh towards her partner. He wanted intimacy, he wanted connection, but she could only see what was wrong with it. She felt like she was being stifled and underneath all of that there was this fear that he was lying right. And she felt that because of what happened to her in her childhood, her father and the men in her life kind of abandoning her. So there was this like constant fear of abandonment and that was kind of those emotions were the reason why she was acting out and doing whatever she was doing. And once she realized that, it was kind of like a light bulb moment for both of them.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think the cool thing about attachment theory is, if you're in couples therapy and you have a therapist who's kind of walking you through this, it's like, hey, give me your glasses. Let me put this on. What is your vision like? What are you seeing? How are you seeing the world? How are you interacting with the world? And, to your point about that, being able to create that compassion and empathy for your partner, and it's like, again, we're not enemies, there's a common problem here and we can solve it together. You have two imperfect people who've had a story, who've had a history, coming together trying to make it work. Obviously, it takes two to tangle. Two people have to want to make it work for it to work. But in those settings, when you have two people who want to make it work, I do think it's possible to have those breakthroughs. So, yes, that was a lot, but it was beautiful how you said that.
Speaker 2:And you know you're spot on and, like you said, it takes two people to dance, which is important. Most people want to do that and make it work, because otherwise it's like one dancing and the other one is standing still and you're dragging their feet around on the floor. It's never going to be a great dance, right? It's just not, and eventually the person dragging the other one around is going to get exhausted, right and disillusioned. So you're right, it does take two people to dance and want to do it. But the beautiful is now we have a structure of understanding and we can also easily spot what has gone on, because there's a slow cycle like I described maybe anxious, trying to get avoidant, pulling away, then more anxious would become criticism and blame. Then the other one pulling away more the avoidant tend to say things like I can never get it right or I'm gonna fail. That's typical words of an avoidant right and and then they get into this slowly.
Speaker 2:But there there's also attachment injuries, and attachment injuries are really significant and important to understand, because that an attachment injury was if one of the partners were in a key moment of distress. He had a surgery. He almost died on doing surgery right, and I'm obviously in a lot of distress because they don't know what to do. I can see he's suddenly deteriorating Now in this moment. Is my partner able to respond? And there could be a million reasons why they can't. Maybe they're overwhelmed, but the nervous system doesn't care In these instances, which is what the organism perceives as life and death, survival, there's only black and white meaning is this person there for me or not? And if the person is not able to be there, it could be a wife coming home saying I have cancer and the husband is overwhelmed so he just walks away, right, and she feels so alone in a critical moment of attachment need that it creates these injuries that basically color the whole relationship. And even though everything else is good and they kind of moved on, something lingers and just isn't right.
Speaker 2:And when we find these attachment injuries, we tend to be able to go back and repair them and then everything suddenly feels back to good again, right.
Speaker 2:And people often are very confused because they will come in and say well, we get on so well and we have a lot of fun and we share all these interests, and yet we don't feel connected. And what we tend to find is, when we go back that at some point in a relationship there was an attachment injury where one person really needed the other and, for whatever reason, the others couldn't show up right. And we have to go back and acknowledge that the person have to take responsibility. They might not have meant to hurt, they might have had a reason, but they still have to take responsibility for how their action impacted the other person. And then they need to discuss how they can prevent that from happening so trust can be restored again. Right, and it's beautiful to see that, because suddenly again you kind of see all these problems just disappear. It's almost like magic and suddenly people are back in a flow again.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I love that term. Attachment injury. Yes, because there are moments in life that happen that are really really critical, life-changing moments and if your partner doesn't respond the way you expect them to respond, that does cause this heaviness within the heart or this injury that you're talking about. Because you said a secure attachment style within a relationship is someone expressing their needs and there's a response to that right. So if someone has tremendous need at a very critical time and it's not being responded to appropriately or the person doesn't acknowledge like oh, I dropped the ball here, that could just continue to fester. So I think that's really good, because I've never thought about it that way. But you just saying that now just was another light bulb moment for me and I hope it's another light bulb moment for me and I hope it's a lot of it's another light bulb moment for people who are listening to this, thinking my relationship is good, but there's this part that I have some sort of like animosity for or something here that's a little bit misaligned and thinking like, oh, this might have been like some sort of attachment injury or feeling injured or let down by the response of my partner and kind of attacking that head on.
Speaker 1:That was really good. That was really good. Okay, so just really quickly, before we pivot into the psychedelics portion of this conversation, someone who's listening to this and they recognize that, oh, I think I might be kind of anxious or avoidant, right, because we can't go back into the past and relive our childhood. How can an adult learn to be more secure, right? And how much does personal individual therapy help to supplement couples therapy? Because I think you know, the individual also has to have some level of self-awareness in order to properly engage in couples therapy.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a really good question and I think individual therapy has a place. However, I think we have to think about all these injuries were relational injuries. So somehow I've often seen that traditional therapy and I am a therapist too but I've often seen and have to say that it fails a lot of people Because coming in one hour a week and having that does not change the nervous system right. So couples therapy allows us, with somebody who is already close to us, a real close attachment, meaning they also have much more impact than a therapist has, right, and you spend a lot more time with them and if you can help them start creating it, they can really restructure these experiences. But what do people do if they're not in a relationship? Of course they can do. Therapy is one way of doing it.
Speaker 2:There's also quite recent research now since we're going to start talking about psychedelics anyway that has showed that certain psychedelics can actually have a huge impact on restructuring attachment styles, especially anxious attachment Not so much avoidant attachment but anxious attachment in particular seem to be able to benefit quite hugely by potential psychedelic experiences done in the right set and setting and safe environment, which is very exciting because it's hopefully something we'll have more research into and then we also can start thinking about if you're a single person or if you're not, is what are the people you spend a large amount of time with? Because they are the people that had a huge impact on your attachment. If you spend a lot of time on people that are not available, that are not responsive to you, then that's going to reinforce anxiety and it's going to reinforce the old narrative people aren't going to respond to me, I'm not worthy, or blah, blah, blah, whatever. These narratives are within form around that right to make sense of it. So it's really important to start looking at choosing people, friends and whether it's family members and spending time around people that can give us that responsiveness. It doesn't mean that they always can give us what we want. You know, a child also can't always have what they want.
Speaker 2:My kids would love to have chocolate all the time. I don't give them that right Because it's not good for them. So there's also a place for us to then acknowledge. But even if I can't give them chocolate, I say I really get. You want chocolate because it's so tasty. I can't give it to you because X, y and Z Meaning I'm still responsive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not ignoring them, I'm not dismissing it, I'm not blaming them. I'm not saying you're stupid, why would you want chocolate? I'm saying, of course you want chocolate, it's sweet and tastes nice, but we can't always have chocolate. It could be your partner who wants to do something sexually you don't want, and it's totally okay, but then we can still acknowledge them right? So there's a huge difference in saying oh, I can't believe you want to do that, which is shaming and create distance right, and now they will pull away. They don't want to get shamed again. They probably won't express their needs to you honestly, going forward or what they like sexually, instead of saying that's really beautiful, you want that. I can totally imagine how that could be a turn on. However, it's not something I can do with you, and in that now they're not alone anymore because there's somebody who's willing to at least hear them, someone who's willing to acknowledge them Right.
Speaker 1:And that can actually create closeness, even when we can't give them what they want. Thank you so much for that, because I something I wanted to ask but almost forgot to is do you think we put too much pressure on romantic relationships? Because I know you talked about, for example, for a single person. You know they can start working on having better attachment styles based on like the like, the friends and family they choose to interact with. But it made me think of do you think we put too much pressure on romantic relationships for our partners to be everything to us all the time?
Speaker 2:yes, it's the answer. We definitely do, and the fact is, again, it has something to do with a more structural issue around how modern Western societies are structured, which is that we live often further away from family, from different friends. We are often more isolated in that way, so we tend to not have communal communities around that provide different roles, which is originally we were meant to live, and the brain is designed to live and relate to 200 people approximately at max right and now we're in cities. I'm in as close to london where there's 8.5 million. This is why people shut down, because literally, we were not designed to relate to that many different people. Right, and we can seem very cold in that, because the nervous system just said this is too much overwhelm. Shut down.
Speaker 2:So, yes, we do, because you know the partner can't be the person you find funny, the support, the sexy person, the person you share all your interest with, the one you found safety with. So we do need to have different resources, right, and actually women are much better than this, also cultural, than men are. We know that in breakups, women tend to deal much better with it than men do, because women tend to have maintained other relationships while they're in a relationship, while a lot of men have the tendency to negate a lot of friends when they're in a relationship and put everything on the relationship and suddenly, when it's not there, they're like, oh my God, I don't have anyone here and they feel very, very alone, right? So it's absolutely critical to have these different elements outside the relationship so you can get support from different people, so you can laugh with different people, so you have these different resources available, right, it's definitely your partner cannot supply all that, because it was meant to be a community and not one person who gave us this.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I think we need to lean more on other types of community outside of our romantic relationship, though I do think the person you choose to be with in a romantic sense somewhat plays a heavier role in influencing your life in certain ways. But to your point, I do think that we're not just meant to put all of that on one person. So thank you for explaining that, but, to your point, I do think that we're not just meant to put all of that on one person.
Speaker 1:So thank you for explaining that. Okay, so I know that in your expertise you bridge the gap between traditional therapy and alternative healing practices and you do that through facilitating psychedelic exploration. Is that correct? Yes, so I support people in their journeys facilitating psychedelic exploration. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I support people in their journeys and again, I just because this is a very sensitive topic I just have to say you know, people obviously have to follow whatever laws that are in their jurisdictions and their country. So this is not me telling people that they should do psychedelics, but I think I create awareness around potential harm reduction but also the potential benefit of something that is coming out a lot of very exciting and very, very encouraging research at the moment that seem to have a lot of application, and they're even doing research into how psychedelics can be used in couples therapy and the initial research is very, very optimistic yes, and you know, I've been hearing a lot about psychedelics now for a couple of years and I know very little about it.
Speaker 1:So how would you explain what psychedelics are?
Speaker 2:So this is a really good question because there's so much misunderstanding around this. Psychedelics is what's called a neurological enhancer, and that might, for a lot of people, be. What is he talking about? So, basically, it does a couple of things, or most psychedelics does this, which is why they have so incredible potential. So there's one part of your brain referred to as a default mode network, and what this is is your sense of ego, but also your construct of identity, and this is a part that decides what it allowed to come through to your awareness.
Speaker 2:What is not allowed right, and basically what happens is pretty much every mental health condition, from depression, from anxiety, from OCD, etc. Etc. Addiction is that become a rigidity of the mind. The mind become very rigid in how it can see the world right Because of these construct of this is who I am, this idea that I am, this, I'm a man, I'm this color, all these identities right, can keep us very, very stuck, and it tends to also be what's caused conflict.
Speaker 2:Actually, a really interesting research study was done with Israelis and Palestinians and they gave them an awaska ceremony and in the beginning these people couldn't stand each other. At the end of it, afterwards, all that monosity has gone away because this construct of you're Israeli, I am Jew, etc. Or Palestinian, all these identities of countries, of race, of religion just disappeared because they are formed in this part of the brain and held there. So when that shuts down, we can suddenly see new flexibilities, new options. We can interpret ourself and other people in a new way. So all these fearful constructs we talked about, with attachment, styles that we interpret the world through, they can be shut down for a while and suddenly we can see maybe he didn't mean to do this, maybe he didn't do this because he doesn't care.
Speaker 2:It opens up the mind and then the rest of the brain have this emotional interconnectedness that we don't see.
Speaker 2:That allow us to access new possibilities right, which is incredible, and it also lower the fear response in the brain. But what it does at the same time is it create neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, and what that means is it actually create new cell growths in the brain and new connections between cells very, very rapidly, and we have a lot of this as children, and then it becomes less and less with age, but for a period, after taking psychedelics, this growth in the brain is really exponentially and it's almost, I say, like imagine being a child for a little while, which is also why it's super important when doing this that people don't just do it at random places somewhere, because that can be harmful and if they don't know how to integrate it it can be very overwhelming. But done with the right person in the right setting and with the right integration, this allows us almost to restructure the brain right and reconstruct some of these things that weren't integrated well if people had trauma or other things, which is why it's showing so promising results.
Speaker 1:Have you worked with couples who have taken psychedelics together? And when you're taking a psychedelic, do you have to set an intention of what you want to work through, or is it more spontaneous?
Speaker 2:so I, because it's not legal in the uk, I haven't been able to work where I was doing it administrated to couples. But yes, I had couples that have taken mdma um, obviously at their own risk, etc. And I can obviously try and advise them of ways to you can do testing and other things to try and make sure it's as safe as possible, right and ways to do it, things you have to go through checks beforehand, how you prepare a certain setting. But yes, and I have seen how it can be so profound, because especially MDMA, which is slightly different actually to the other psychedelics, because while the psychedelic experience we talked about primarily are things that happen with magic mushrooms, with lsd, with ayahuasca, but these ego dissolutions or where suddenly that default mode network shut down and you can see everything totally different. It's not necessarily what happened on mdma and you don't tend to have hallucinations or anything like that. You're more present with MDMA, which is why it can be good in that context, as people can then still actually communicate, which can be very difficult. If you're on psilocybin, magic mushrooms, right, you're normally not in a state where you can communicate well with others. On MDMA you can.
Speaker 2:What MDMA does is that when couples come in and they're really struggling, their fear response is heightened.
Speaker 2:They're now seeing their partner as a threat, right, meaning it's very difficult to get through to each other. When you're perceiving the other one as being a threat, right, it's very hard to hear each other. What MDMA does is it lower the amygdala. It really shuts down that response, which is the fear response, right, and suddenly it becomes possible to hear each other in a way that has almost been impossible to. For suddenly somebody who a very avoidant person, who'd never been able to say anything vulnerable can suddenly express their emotions, really vulnerable, and suddenly what it does is it doesn't fix everything, but it suddenly give people a felt experience again, not a cognitive thought, but a felt experience. This is too, and we did this and we were okay, and that creates a framework for how they can do things differently. It doesn't mean people should continue to take MDMA right, it shouldn't be a substitute to make the relationship work, but it's just a gateway where the mind again has been so stuck right To see, actually this is possible too.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that, and can you just you know talk about some of the risks and what people need to think about or consider before embarking on a psychedelic experience?
Speaker 2:And this is a great question and, of course, the different compounds have different safety profiles. I think, overall, psychedelics are really really safe and that's what the research has shown us, done in the right way, the right set and setting. However, that doesn't mean harm can't happen. So MDMA, like we talked about before, can cause change in temperature, for example. But it's important to say that the people who tend to be harmed are primarily either they mix things up, meaning they mix with different compounds that shouldn't be mixed, maybe they're out taking alcohol and then take mdma. So there are certain mixtures that certainly can be dangerous, right, and and we have had people dying from that it's very rare, but it has happened so it's when people do these things very not carefully, right. So there's a physiological risk in people taking MDMA. They might go out, they dance again. When people do it not in a very conscious way and they forget to drink water, that has also caused, again, not many, but a few deaths, right. Or people drink too much. So this is again tend to be when people do it in an unsafe setting, right. These are not meant to be taken as something that you go out and just do a party with, even though that's primarily where they become used and that's also what then happened when they became illegal. Right, even though they can have huge potential therapeutic benefits, but done in a safe setting, it's extremely risk or safe. So if we look at magic mushroom psilocybin, there had not been a single reported case of people dying from taking psilocybin. It's almost impossible to overdose. You'll get sick just from eating before you can overdose. However, there's a risk of psychological harm, right, and that is definitely real. So you know, with some very strong, strong compounds, like what part of the active ingredients in ayahuasca is called dmt. People smoke dmt and it can literally in 15 seconds so quickly skyrocket into a different universe, almost like you are god in in right, and that can be so overwhelming for people and especially done in an unsafe setting, like out in a party and you have no integration, you don't know what to expect. That can be harmful and that can take. Sometimes I heard stories and even a friend who took years to come back, but it's because it's done in frankly stupid ways. It is really stupid to do it in this way. It's not done in a safe way. Psilocybin again very safe if done in the right way. In the research studies. I think out of was it 25 000, but however many, there's been thousands of participants and there was one person one person who had a very adverse psychological, but the other ones showed, you know, fantastic benefits. And that's because it's done in a really safe way.
Speaker 2:There's a preparation phase. They tell people what to expect. They build trust with the therapists that are going to be there. Normally there's a preparation phase. They tell people what to expect. They build trust with the therapists that are going to be there. Normally there's two therapists present, a man and a woman of each gender. Right, they prepare specific music. It's not done with any other people around or unsafe elements. Right, they make sure that everything is there snacks, water, everything that's required. Right, they're literally sitting there just to help you. That's their only task.
Speaker 2:And also, psilocybin comes on a bit slower, so it takes about. It's not like smoking DMT. It takes about half an hour to an hour. So that means it's a slow, gradual. It doesn't just send you in to complete obliviation, right. And again then they provide therapy as well afterwards, right, so afterwards you're not left alone, maybe struggling to make sense of what happened, because it can be overwhelming on higher doses to suddenly lose a sense of identity. That can certainly be scary. Right, it has a possibility to restructure your personality.
Speaker 2:And I think people should always ask is the benefit bigger than the potential risk with anything they do? Right, and I would always say even in places where it's legal and people can do that, ask yourself first is there other ways I could do that? I remember I had someone, a friend, a female friend come and say oh Thomas, I had this breakup, I'm feeling really bad. He just broke up a week ago. I'm feeling a bit sad. Should I take psychedelics? I said absolutely not.
Speaker 2:Grieving a long-term partner is a healthy response and it's a natural process. Psychedelic isn't meant to be used to disassociate or not feel right or not go through natural processes. So that was not an adequate place to use psychedelics. And I would normally say have you tried other things? Have you tried therapy? Have you tried X, y and Z? And if people come to a place where they really haven't, there is no other way out for them and they're in severe distress, then it might be something worth considering. Right, because the benefit probably is much higher at that stage than the potential risk at that stage and the potential risk.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I feel like that was a great barometer that you set out there. You know, do the risks outweigh the benefits or the benefits outweigh the risks? Doing research, making sure you're in the right environment with the right practitioner and also, you know, not just taking it to numb yourself, because you're probably going to feel a lot more when you take psychedelics. So thank you for that. That's very interesting. I want to ask you about your podcast Exploring Humanity. Why did you create it and what is it about?
Speaker 2:So the podcast is primarily about well, I guess in the title, exploring the human experience, right is primarily about, well, I guess, in the title, exploring the human experience, right, and it's looking at the different elements of how we experience a world and, more importantly, how we as humans process what we experience, because that had always really really fascinated me. Because we never experience what is. We experience the interpretation of what is, even the construct of color. They're just different spectrum of light. But color only exists and happens when it gets interpreted right For the lens of your eye and for your brain. Your visual spectrum then creates it into different colors, right, same with smell. So it's a brain that create the construct of what this is, but it's also the brain that limits what we can experience in this construct right, because we are only allowed to experience with the the limitation of the senses that we have.
Speaker 2:So I think once we understand how we process the world, it becomes much easier to not be so rigid in how we interpret the world and actually recognizing that the way we see the world might not be the correct way. And that's also a beautiful way that I've seen through psychedelics and that I explore on the podcast is this flexibility of mind what they categorize. They call it openness Meaning I noticed after my psychedelic experience I became so much more open to other people's perspective before I would get quite oh, I know better, I'm the expert and I didn't like when people didn't have the same opinion. Now it doesn't bother me anymore. Right, and that's something I really noticed changed after my psychedelic experience, this sense of openness. So I think the podcast is really about that understanding. How do we process this experience?
Speaker 1:we call life, and what impact does that have on us? That's beautiful. I think you're definitely speaking my language and you know I'm really a big believer that we all have a piece to the puzzle, a piece of the truth, but not the whole truth. And to your point about the different color spectrums and how we see it and how our brain interprets it, someone could be looking at the same type of blue but see a completely different shade, or a shade that we may not have any sort of perception of. So it's very interesting to kind of see how everyone else is viewing their own reality right, because we're all on the same earth but we have different perceptions of our day-to-day lives, which is very fascinating and kind of takes me out of this black and white sort of thinking.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's so much gray, and the gray is in the shared experiences other people have that we are not able to, or the experiences other people have that we are not able to, or the experiences other people have that we're not able to perceive. So that's really amazing. That's beautiful. You've dropped so much wisdom throughout the podcast, but I always have to ask for final words of wisdom to the listeners. It could be about everything we've been talking about. It could be related to that or something completely different that you kind of keep in your back pocket.
Speaker 2:I think it would be the acknowledgement and acceptance that we need other humans. We live in a world that glorify individuality, but it's not how we were meant to function and that's why so many people are not functioning well and struggling, accepting that it's okay to need others and it's actually how we are wired.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about your work, if they want to work with you or if they want to listen to your podcast?
Speaker 2:Of course, we can probably put the links in the description, because there's a few different ones right. So I do so much. I do my ecstatic dances, I do my therapy, couples therapy that's a podcast. There's psychedelicmedicineearth, which is if people want information around that. So you know, maybe we put the links and people can just go to check out whatever they're interested in.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm going to put all of the links to your websites and social media handles in the show notes for people to check out. But, thomas, thank you so much for stopping by the show. This was an amazing conversation.
Speaker 1:It's been my pleasure and great questions that you asked, by the way, at A Word to the Wise Pod, we're also on YouTube at A Word to the Wise Podcast. Please be sure to subscribe If you are enjoying the show. Please rate, leave a review, share and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Till next time, peace and love, always, always, always.