← Rena Malik, MD Podcast
Rena Malik, MD Podcast
Moment: Is It Love or Trauma Bonding? How to Tell the Difference in Your Body
00:27:54
In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik and Jessica Baum discuss how attachment styles influence intimacy, emotional responses, and healing in relationships. They share insights on recognizing personal patterns, the importance of safe connections, and practical steps toward building more secure and fulfilling partnerships.
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, what's up, y'?
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B
All?
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A
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C
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A
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- [00:30]
C
If you're a secure attachment style and you're with someone, you're starting to notice, like, hey, this. There's this erratic behavior, or maybe they're overly jealous or insecure, or maybe they're just shutting down every time there's an issue. So they're displaying signs of these attachment styles. Is there hope? Can you help them sort of start feeling more secure? I think you alluded to yes earlier, but I kind of wanted to get a sense of, like, what can that person do?
- [00:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, if there's a lot of disorganization, they might need professional holding and. And healing. But absolutely, we all heal in relationships. So what was wounded in early infancy essentially gets healed in healthy relationships when we get older. But I think the lack of awareness and true understanding of what's really happening for the person and maybe as some projection that, like, you're doing this to me rather than this is living inside of me or this is awakening trauma in me. I talk about implicit memory a lot, like, and how that gets awakened. So when we don't have that awareness, we usually blame our partner and we get stuck in, like, a lot of conflicts rather than, oh, my God, this is also some terror that has lived in my body that is showing up when you're doing this behavior. And I need to start to be more compassionate and get some help around it.
- [01:46]
C
Yeah. You said implicit memory. What exactly is that?
- [01:50]
B
Yeah, so when we're born, we don't have explicit, explicit memory. So memory we think of, like, oh, you know, when I was six, I went to Disneyland. We think of it as like a movie kind of like moving through our head. We don't have that memory when we're really little. Like, that part of our brain isn't fully developed. So we have sensational memory. We're taking in implicit mem. Like, way more, you and I, right now. Streams of implicit information are being filtered than explicit. You're sitting in the chair right now. So when we're in womb to about four, we only store sensation. So it's so important when your partner doesn't text you back or when they turn their back on you, or when you like and your gut falls to the floor, your heart starts to race. It's like what's happening in the here and now is also waking up sensational memory and just the awareness that like oh my God, this is memory too shifts your relationship with what's going on in your body and starts healing process.
- [02:48]
C
Interesting. The other thing I, I find that like how do people with certain attachment styles, how do they show up differently when it comes to sex? Do some people use sex as sort of a buffer? Do like a way to sort of cope? Do other people avoid it? Like how do, how do you see that?
- [03:05]
B
I think that secure people are curious and open and it can evolve slowly and have more intimacy. I think avoidant people tend to probably get fear physical faster and so do anxious people. So they're like faster to move into like intimacy. I think the anxious avoidant cycle can actually be a relationship full of a lot of intense intensity and a lot of sex, but maybe not a lot of intimacy. So the abandonment wound is getting like triggered one way or another. And sex is being used as a way to feel soothe rather than being truly intimate, if that makes sense.
- [03:42]
C
So they're using it, they're self soothing essentially through sex. But it's not actually a way for them to connect with their partner.
- [03:49]
B
You know, not everything is that black and white. Yeah, but I think that sex is used as a way to stay close for an anxious person. And I think an avoidant person gets their needs met and sometimes it's lacking deeper intimacy or it's used to regulate the system in that way. But I don't, I like stay away from like stuff statements that are like sure, all that way or all this way. Because I many anxious avoidant combinations do have intimacy and do have fulfilling parts of their relationships.
- [04:18]
C
But can you sort of like, I guess if you're in this situation and like you're having a lot of intense sex, is there a way to sort of like step back and like what, like is there some intimacy missing? Do you know what I mean?
- [04:33]
B
Well, I always think of intimacy as something as like am I sharing with my partner what's going on inside of me, like into me? I'm seeing like am I sitting with my partner and I'm, and am I sharing things that are coming up with them? That's that's activating or touching something inside of me. Are we having these deeper conversations together, or we just acting out our needs? And I think that that can kind of give you a gauge as to how to develop deeper intimacy in terms of safety.
- [05:00]
C
Right. How does this all play into just that feeling of safety? And, like, so sort of finding a place where you do feel safe and you can sort of heal with your partner.
- [05:12]
B
Yeah. I mean, this is a huge topic.
- [05:14]
C
That's why you have a whole book on it.
- [05:16]
B
I have a whole book on it. So when we're born, I take a lot of Stephen Porges work and we develop an ability to scan the environment we're constantly scanning. And I'm scanning it right now. You're scanning it right now. Am I safe or am I not safe? And a lot of that has to do with connection. So when we're born, we're developing kind of like the framework for am I safe? So if our parents were connected well enough and attuned, we internalize that sense of my needs are going to be met. Even when I'm crying as a baby and my needs aren't being met, my parents take the time to figure it out, and then my nervous system calms. So it's not about perfect. It's about learning to trust that even when I'm in dysregulation, they're gonna meet me, and we're gonna get back to regulation and calmness together. So we're kind of building a blueprint from our earliest experiences whether we are safe or not safe in the world. So if we had pretty secure parents, through mirror neurons and resonance circuits, we're internalizing that security. So we're gonna walk around the world. We're not gonna feel abandoned. We're gonna feel them with us. We're gonna feel a little bit more secure.
- [06:26]
C
We're.
- [06:26]
B
We're actually going to attract more secure people. We'll have the ability. It's not manifestation, but it's a sense of my needs are going to get met, and I'm actually going to meet someone who's going to meet my needs, because that's my familiar pattern. If we had parents who are more avoidant, more stressed out, more workaholic, more anxious, more insecure, we're going to internalize those parents. And our sense of inherent safety isn't as stable, isn't as secure. I mean, this is how we build secure attachment. So as an adult, we struggle more, and we need to relearn to internalize people to gain a new sense of inner security. Does that make sense?
- [07:06]
C
Yeah, if it does make sense. So if you're single, though, let's say, like, you're out in the world looking for a partner, is there a way for you to begin healing?
- [07:17]
B
Absolutely. I did a lot of my work not in. In romantic relationship, but also out of romantic relations. I think that I call them anchors in the book, But I think finding safe people who have what we call, like a ventral. Like, they're in a ventral state a lot, so they're in a state of safety more often than not, and leaning on them and building intimacy with them and doing the attachment work with them, we start to internalize them. These can be friends. These can be people. And I kind of go through what, what, what you need in another person to start healing. And I mean, for me, a lot of my healing happened in a romantic relationship, and a lot of it happened through relationships that were not primary romantic relationships. And I think for anxious people, that's important too, to learn how to depend on people who aren't your primary romantic relationship. So you can heal in a lot of different relationships. It does not have to be your romantic relationship. There's so much agency in that as well.
- [08:15]
C
So when you, I mean, you said sort of you're attracted. Like, there's a little bit of attraction between anxious and avoidant personalities. So how can you sort of, like, recognize that and be like, yo, look, I need to look for someone who doesn't have these characteristics. Or how do you, as an individual who's sort of dysregulated, almost find, know what to look for.
- [08:33]
B
Yeah.
- [08:33]
C
In a friend or a romantic partner.
- [08:35]
B
You have to heal. So if you don't heal your abandonment wound, you're likely to play it out. We are like magnets to the familiar. And so if you keep being pulled towards a similar kind of woman or man, there's deeper healing that needs to happen. It's not necessarily like, yes, you need to pick someone different, and your nervous system needs to be different. You need to know what part of you is picking this person. Is it the part of you that is wants these unmet needs, or does this person feel like home and very familiar to you? You know, you want to dig a little bit deeper into what parts of you are being attracted in this relationship. I mean, I talk about it like, who hasn't been attracted to the bad boy? Right. Like, there are things from your childhood and things from, like, how you develop that might make you more attracted to the lost parts of yourself or familiar parent pattern. You know, going on like that.
- [09:28]
C
It's very abstract, I think, to heal yourself. In my mind, it's like, okay, what exactly can you do? You know what? I think that some of the times you're attracted to someone and it's so all consuming, right? You just. And you meet them and you're like, wow, we get along so great. And there's not a lot of, like, you're just like, the attraction is so intense. And then obviously in some cases, maybe the sex might be intense too, that you're like, well, this is great. Like, how could this be wrong, right? Because you're like, oh, your body's like. There's all these signals telling you this is the right person. Whether it's your faulty neural, you know, network or your, you know, the way you feel about them when you're having sex or whatever it is, right? And so, like, how do you actually, like, really start. Like, what is the. What are some, like, tangible things that you can do sitting at home right now?
- [10:11]
B
So. So a lot of things that you just said, like I write about in chapter seven, like mistaking intensity for love. I've been there. If someone is consuming you and it's all consuming like that, like, that's intensity, that's not intimacy. So for starters, slow down, because are we really getting to know this person? Are we dropping everything to spend every second with them? Just because it feels like a lot of neurochemicals are being released in our brain, we, which is adaptive and brilliant, doesn't mean that this person is the right person for us. I mean, and there are usually some signs in the beginning we might be blind to them because of the neurochemicals. These chemicals are trying to get us to mate, trying to get us to attach, you know? So I think intensity sometimes, and I talk about this in the book, leads to trauma bonding. And so we can have these really intense relationships and they can feel like the one, but really our traumas are actually matching up perfectly. And if you're listening, it's not necessarily about picking the right person. It's about getting conscious about what this person is actually waking up inside of you. You know, because once you become conscious of, oh, I'm attracted to this person and I'm getting dysregulated and this is getting wakened up and, oh, my God, it's living in my body and this is actually memory, we can start to attend to that differently rather than making it about this person.
- [11:32]
C
So how can you get conscious of what's inside you?
- [11:35]
B
Yeah, I mean, and so a lot of the implicit memory that I talked about, the sensations going off in your body, just starting right there and understanding, like, this is infant or young trauma being activated in my body. It needs to be held by another nervous system in order to heal. But I think just having that awareness alone makes you feel like you're not crazy. And I also think you need to bring it to safe people who actually know what they're doing, and it really. When it starts to show up for you in relationship. And I think with safe people, these relationships can be portals into your own healing.
- [12:08]
C
So I think when I'm trying that, what I think I'm getting, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that, like, your body will react in certain ways that you can actually take note of. Right. Like, maybe your heart is racing, maybe you're breathing a little heavier, maybe you're feeling some tension in your muscles. Right. There's. There's sort of these subtle suggestions that maybe you're getting activated. Right. And maybe you can pay attention to those and realize, like, okay, something is going on here. Maybe I should take note. And then when you meet someone who's maybe more secure, you might not have those same sort of intense feelings.
- [12:41]
B
You might still get them. Yeah, yeah. But that person might respond to them differently. And over time, you might build security with that person. So if you have anxious or avoidant, like, you still probably will get activated, but the response will be better. So if you're really anxious and you get activated with an avoidant person, they're gonna pull away and then the two of you are off track. But if you get anxious and you partner with someone more of a secure base, they actually might have a more loving, connected response. And then over time, that might be healing in itself.
- [13:12]
C
Also, I think that sometimes, I mean, especially with texting and, like, the way we communicate now, a lot can get lost in translation. So can you also find yourself sort of interpreting, like, normal behavior as something more pathologic? Like, go. Someone just tells you, hey, I'm busy. I'll call you back. And then you're like, oh, no, they're. They're ignoring me. And everything's like. It's tragic and it's horrible.
- [13:36]
B
Yeah. I think when we meet someone, it's happened to me recently, actually. We start to. Especially with someone who have a more. I consider myself more secure these days, but I, you know, I. I wrote the book on anxiously attached, but we start to track people's patterns, so we start to learn our patterns a lot of it happens unconsciously. So if, like, you're my bestie and we text every day and we miss here and there. I kind of know your pattern. And if one day your pattern really changes, my system's gonna recognize that. And if I'm anxious automatically, I'm gonna feel a lot of intensity in my body, and I might think you're mad at me, and I might go down a spiral that way. So it's also about learning people's patterns and how we learn people's patterns. I. I know, like, on an energetic level, we can feel each other and we can feel the connection. So you're not crazy if you feel the person just drop off and the connection go away. I think there's some truth to that. But if our neuroception is wired. So much for abandonment, sometimes we can think that we're being abandoned when we're not. So it's tricky. It's tricky. It's not like we can't always. So our nervous system is built on what we've experienced. I hate to use this analogy, but like a Rolodex there, Right. And if you stop texting me, I'm going to go to this experience that I have stored in my body. So we're going to try to get safety based on what we have experienced before. So if I've experienced a lot of abandonment and, like, someone not with me and people dropping off and then you drop off, my system is going to try to protect me, to set the alarms off that say something's really wrong here based on what it experienced earlier on. So. So it takes time to re. I don't even like to use the word reprogram. I don't like to refer to any of the science as so mechanical. But maybe for the audience, it's grasp. You can grasp it, but, like, we kind of relearn how to depend, and we relearn things with people who are dependable. And our system, our nervous system, can relearn what that safety really is as an adult. So that we have to pick people who actually show up and are consistent. Yeah, but we typically pick people who are familiar. I know. Unconsciously until we're healed. I definitely pick people who had a lot of traits, like my dad, no regrets, but did a lot of healing. And in. In some situation, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm living in my childhood again. This is so common. Like, if you study interpersonal neurobiology, like, yeah, this is like the trick in life. We end up in our familiar family home. But the work is to heal it, to get a con conscious of it, to not make it about what everything that's happening in the here right now.
- [16:15]
C
It's interesting. Like as you're saying this, I'm think about friends and colleagues that I've met throughout my life that like have sort of displayed these sort of. I hate to use the word dramatic, but dramatic responses to like, you know, generally like they'll be telling me like, I can't believe this person did this and I'll be like, like, well maybe like in my head I'm thinking like, well maybe they just got busy. Or like, why don't you just ask them? And, and I sort of like makes a little bit more sense now that maybe they just like have had such terrible experiences in their past that they're like, oh, they're catastrophizing about this, you know, seemingly innocuous thing. And I think that's a really nice way to approach relationships, friendships is like, okay, like just take it, take a deep breath and like, what is this actually about? You know?
- [16:58]
B
Absolutely. And like the story that we make up on our head is so irrelevant. Like what's going on in your body right now.
- [17:05]
C
Yeah.
- [17:05]
B
And now you're coming up with some narrative because the alarms are going off and it's just really about the early alarms going off. So as soon as you start to understand that you can get out of the narrative a little bit more and stop blaming the other person because you're being awakened or I hate the word triggered or activated or shut down by a behavior. We now have more information here that it's not just about that person, it's your nervous system is not feeling safe in this moment.
- [17:31]
C
Yeah. And I hate to bring this up, but I do wonder about this and I'm curious if you've thought about it. Do you think that in modern day society, like as tools like the phone and iPads and like all these sort of distractions have come about, would you guess that people will become more and more insecure because now they're sort of, you know, kids are getting their iPad at dinner and they're not, you know, they're like sort of, their parents are always looking at their phones, you know, so on and so forth. Do you feel like this is actually contributing to more challenges?
- [18:02]
B
Yeah, I mean I study like intergenerational trauma and like basically the evolution of the brain as well. And we are sadly moving more and more avoidant as. As our culture focuses on success and achievement and we become more detached and have less connection and face to face interactions and we're less right brain to right brain and being with each other, our brains are moving more in an avoidant way. And it, and to be avoidant, which I have experienced a lot of avoidance, it's a very lonely place to be because you're more in your left hemisphere and you're not as relational. And so it's, it's a very lonely experience as we, as we are culturally moving in that direction. And Ian McGilchrist is a science. He a million. I talk about him a lot in the book and he studies the hemispheres of the brain and a true avoidant lives more in the left hemisphere. And that is becoming more prevalent because.
- [19:00]
C
We'Re just always focused on success, career.
- [19:02]
B
Aspirations and less on connection, community, connection. Like we're not living like when you really understand the neurobiology. We really need so much more community and connection that we're currently getting in our more modern society. Like living in an apartment. And that was me. I lived in Manhattan. I lived in my own apartment. I was super independent. I thought that was really the thing to do growing up. I'm like, let me be this badass. What? Right, yeah, that hurt me tremendously. It led me to extreme anxiety and depression. And those messages about independence are pushed on us, but it's interdependence that we're needing. But so, but those messages push us to be more avoidant and the screen time is pushing us more into an avoidant category. And it's. It's a lonely place to be.
- [19:49]
C
Yeah, I worry about this too, especially with, I think marriage rates declining, people having less sex. I mean, there's like a lot of factors that are changing and evolving and people are having a lot more casual hookups. Like they're not really creating these sustained relationships. And so I do worry about, like, what does this mean? Like, are people ever going to heal then? Right. If you're saying you need safe, secure people to be connected with, whether it's friends or relationships. But, but primarily, I would imagine relationships are more powerful. Intimate relationships are more powerful in healing. So like, does that mean that we're sort of not going to work as a community, as a society to heal?
- [20:28]
B
There's a statistic that I put in the book safe and I forgot the name of the woman. But 75% of our Western culture is living in a left, left brain, dominant way. 25% is leading with the right brain. And we need both hemispheres. So that's a very scary statistics. And that is Literally why we have chronic loneliness, depression. So there's a very strong link there. And when I talk about healing in the book and finding anchors, we need to find people that are holding states of safety and are more right, like in the right hemisphere. And I talk about how one nervous system holds another nervous system. But yeah, it's, it's sad. The statistics are actually pretty devastating.
- [21:13]
C
So what can you look for if you're looking for someone who's more right brain dominant?
- [21:17]
B
Yeah. So someone who can be really present most of the time. So they still get dysregulated. They don't show up perfectly. They don't judge you, they don't fix with you. And they can be with you like that. You can feel like you're in a room with them and you're sad and they're not telling you how to fix it or how to. But they can like actually just join emotionally with you and, and not let you move through that without trying to control it in any way. I mean, this is what holding space really is. And like their nervous system might like stay more in like the. Our nervous systems always moving like this. But as we do the work, our nervous system work moves like this, but their nervous system actually holds. And steady co regulation holds steadier. They might get a little dysregulated, but they have the safety, internalized safety enough to hold our experiences. And then we move them out of the body up into the right hemisphere and they integrate into the left. That's literally how we heal developmental trauma.
- [22:15]
C
Well, if one in four people have this characteristic, it's going to be very difficult to find. To find them. Potentially.
- [22:23]
B
A lot of people who come to me say, you know, I can't find your anchor. I sometimes I'm the person's first anchor. The brilliant thing about our nervous system is it only takes one safe relationship to change the trajectory of all your relationships. So your nervous system needs to depend on one person. It starts with one anchor, one person who has this quality. You start to recognize it. You start to get vulnerable. You start to depend in a healthy way, which is really hard for any man that's listening. I get it. But after you are kind of move through that, you start to understand, oh my God, this availability is out there. And your nervous system actually starts to attract more of it. So yes, I don't want to be doom and gloom, because I do think we can find one person and we can start this process. And it might be a professional, but it also might be an aunt or, or you know, a cousin or a sibling. And I talk about how we can co anchor for each other if there's enough safety there.
- [23:19]
C
Yeah, that's, that's good. In terms of you. You mentioned that in the Western world. So are we seeing different patterns in other parts of the world where community is more of a focus?
- [23:28]
B
Absolutely. And I like not going to sit here and tell you the statistics that I know all of that that's going on in the world, but places where there's a lot more connection and community mental health is better, secure attachment is higher and like people are thriving and living much happier lives. Like when you really understand this stuff, like, I feel like I had such an embodied experience through my own healing and I share openly about it. You understand like as a human how fragile and vulnerable we are to connection. Like, you really get in touch with that. You start to value relationships on a different level and you start to understand like they are like essentially the quality of our relationships determine the quality of our life. And you just really get in touch with how much we need connection. It's a biological imperative. When we're an infant, we can't survive without connection. It is so important. So I think really getting in touch with that is like, kind of was like a very awakening experience for me. And sure, there were times I'm like, well, I need to live in more community and I need, you know, and I do better when I'm in more community, as I think most people do.
- [24:31]
C
So let's say you found an anchor. Let's say you found some, you know, someone in your life that, that helps you hold space for you. What about getting rid of the, the sort of. The negative people or the people who might be sort of triggering you to feel more anxious, avoidant, disorganized, whatever it is. I think that's very difficult for people. It's like let go of, of sort of relationships that aren't serving you because they could be family, they could be friends you've had for many years because obviously you've held onto them with some, some degree of disregulation.
- [25:03]
B
Yeah, I mean, I go in depth in this, in the book, if there's implicit awareness on both ends. Like these are the relationships where like, like I don't understand. He's hitting her and they keep going back. Right. Like people go back to the familiar over and over and over. Because implicit information is so strong in us, it doesn't always make logical sense. But as you start to heal, it's not about necessarily getting rid of people. You do need safe environments and safe people. But it's about bringing what is coming up in you to a safe person and using that as a catalyst for your healing. And as you heal, you will move away. But doesn't happen overnight. And it's not a logical process like I've stayed in a relationship where wasn't healthy. It takes time to leave the familiar and reorient to something completely new. And it's scary. So it's not, it's. It's a process. It's a process.
- [25:58]
C
I think everyone stays in some degree of unhealthy relationships at some point because it's just easier to. It's easier. Right. And sometimes it might not be so detrimental and you just keep that person around because they've been around forever and it's like much more difficult to distance yourself from them.
- [26:15]
B
Yeah. And you know, subconsciously you might be scared of the loss of them more than you're scared of staying miserably with them. So you know, there's so many levels to start to it's abandonment at the core of most of it and start to explore those and you have to be so slow and, and you know, as a, as a psychotherapist, you have to be so compassionate that like things take time to unravel and really understand. And yes, you will walk away and lead towards more healthy, more secure relationships. But it's a process of totally reorienting your nervous system and your way of being towards healthier people.
- [26:51]
C
If you liked that clip with Jessica Baum, make sure to check out the full episode right here.
- [26:55]
D
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