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Is Your Attachment Style Sabotaging Your Relationships? Dr Amir Levine Explains How to Rewire It
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- [00:02]
Narrator
Star wars is back on the big screen with the Mandalorian and Grogu.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Gangsters, war criminals. I'll take out every bad guy in
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Narrator
your deck of cards on May 22. Feel the force on the biggest screen possible.
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Dr. Amir Levine
The old protect the young and the young protect the old. This is the way.
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Narrator
Buck a Lob.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Always wear your seatbelt.
- [00:24]
Narrator
The Mandalorian and Grogu, rated PG 13, may be inappropriate for children under 13. In theaters May 22nd. Get tickets now.
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Podcast Host
Dr. Amir Levine, your book Attached, I believe, is one of the most important books of modern times.
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Dr. Amir Levine
It sold multiple millions of copies. It's been translated to 42 languages. It's kind of crazy.
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Podcast Host
You're the godfather of this.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Those attachment styles, anxious, avoidant, insecure is a major predictor of long term satisfaction in relationships.
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Podcast Host
How do attachment styles originate?
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Dr. Amir Levine
That sounds like the million dollar question, man. So
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Podcast Sponsor/Promoter
hey there. Before we begin the episode, I just want to say thank you for choosing
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Podcast Host
we need to Talk.
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Podcast Sponsor/Promoter
Doing this podcast is one of the greatest joys of my life and I want to continue to share it with you. So hit follow and the bell icon. It takes just a second and it helps us to continue to grow this podcast.
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Podcast Host
Doctor Amir Levine, we need to talk.
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Dr. Amir Levine
I'm here to do that.
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Podcast Host
First, I have to fan over you for a little bit, which I don't believe I've ever started any conversation fanning over a guest.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Thank you.
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Podcast Host
But I'm going to do it. Your book Attached, which was what, 2010, that you wrote with Rachel Heller. Rachel Heller, I believe is one of the most important books of modern times.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Thank you.
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Podcast Host
And it's a book that I've recommended. I have gifted, I have given to many people. I've read over and over and over again. Your book Secure, which I was privileged enough to read an advance copy, is also, I believe, one of the most important books in ever written in, you know, in modern times and I believe will revolutionize how people relate to each other. I am so excited to have you here. There's so many topics that I would love to unpack with you, but I just wanted to make sure that you know how important I believe your work is.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Thank you. I really appreciate it. I'm actually, it's like I didn't expect this. I'm really, I'm so glad to be here and I'm really looking forward to be able to talk about some of the tools that I have in this book and how it helped me enormously and it helped my patients and I wanted to help others too. Yes.
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Podcast Host
Yes. Could we start? For anyone who does not know what attachment styles are and what it means and why it's important, could we start there? What is an attachment style?
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Dr. Amir Levine
So I have to say that I came across these attachment styles by chance, and this whole book came out of just really. Just like something that really could also have not happened just as easily. I was working. I'm a psychiatrist and a child psychiatrist, and I was working in a therapeutic nursery. And I knew about attachment styles in children. There's like, anxious, avoidant, secure. But I didn't know anything about that in adulthood. But the work itself was so interesting at the time that I went and I read more and more, and that's where I discovered that, lo and behold, there's also those same attachment styles also exist in adulthood and really determine how we behave in close relationships. And for me, I was going through a breakup at the time, and it was like a light bulb went on, and it's like, oh, my God, I can't believe this is actually what's going on in the relationship. That's why we broke up. And that knowledge, it almost like you start to see things in color where before you saw everything in black and white.
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Podcast Host
Wow.
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Dr. Amir Levine
So I talked to my friend. To my childhood friend, Rachel Heller, and, you know, when you go through a breakup, you incessantly talk about the breakup. So I said, you know what? Instead of incessantly, let's do something about it. Let's take this information and turn it into a book. But we always had this running joke that it's only going to sell one copy to the Library of Congress because we wrote it for ourselves. Really?
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Podcast Host
Oh, my gosh. Well, you know what? Could you brag a little bit? How many copies of Attached have been sold?
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Dr. Amir Levine
It sold multiple millions of copies. It's been translated to 42 languages. It's kind of crazy. We never imagined it would turn out to be, and it's still selling. It's kind of insane. Yes.
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Podcast Host
Yes, it is. So I've been writing books for the last three years, for the most part.
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Dr. Amir Levine
I know.
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Podcast Host
Well, thank you. Thank you. And what was interesting is that every time I would see the top 10 list anywhere, I would say, oh, great, my book is at number seven. And I would always look number one. Attached. Number one was always attached. Amir Levine. Which is incredible.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Yeah, I know. It's like, I think. You know what? I think we were able to do that same, like, eureka experience that I had, and it wasn't that easy. It took us, like, five years of Writing it because those attachment styles, the anxious, avoidant, insecure, they didn't really. They were buried in academic papers for adults. Like there wasn't an immediate translation. I could see how it was like, how it mattered to me. But it wasn't that easy translating it. You had to give a lot of examples. So I'll tell you. Basically it all has to do with how comfortable you feel with intimacy and closeness, but also how sensitive of a radar do you have to potential infraction in that closeness. So for potential threat, what we mean, threat in an attachment is basically like all of a sudden the other person is less available to you. So how sensitive of a radar do you have for that lack of availability?
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Podcast Host
Ah, okay.
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Dr. Amir Levine
So it's like these two dimensions. So if you really love closeness a lot, you just can't get enough of it. But at the same time you're like, oh, they didn't call me back. Oh, what's happening? Not only bad things, you also notice good things. And that's very important. And we're going to have to talk about that because I really need people to understand it's not only a bad thing that you notice more, but you're able to notice also the bad things. Then you have more of an anxious attachment styles because you can see, well, why are they not answering what's happening? Are they. Okay, I see. That's anxious. And then if you love closeness, but all these signals go over your head because I don't want to sort of say, oh, secures are so great. It's just like they are great, but also it's easier for them to be great because they don't notice all these little things that are happening. They'll be the last to know that their partner is cheating on them because it just goes over their head.
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Podcast Host
Interesting. Oh my goodness, I didn't know that.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Yeah, yeah. So it's great to be secure, but also you'll notice things less. And you love closeness, so you're not as easily threatened by things that may happen in the relationship. And it's easier for you to keep calm because you don't see the potential threat that's coming that's secure. And then avoidance. They just don't feel comfortable with too much closeness. And people say it's because this and that happened to them in childhood. I personally disagree and I don't think the data supports that. I'm a scientist, so I have to sort of say whether science supports or doesn't support. I find that these avoidants just don't feel Comfortable with too much closeness. But you can help them work around that and you can teach them certain tricks where they can actually help them to become more secure. But there is just like this. They just don't like to be too close. And they kind of like. It's like, oh, it just doesn't feel right to me if it's too close. So that's avoidant. And then there's a very small, small portion. There's a very small portion of the population that is fearful avoidant. Where they have this. They do notice a lot of potential threat in a relationship. They really want to be in a relationship, but they also need their space. Whereas, like classic avoidance, they're like, who needs relationships? I'm fine on my own. They really put a lot of emphasis on self reliance, fearful avoidance, want to be in a relationship, but then also struggle in it.
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Podcast Host
Okay, now you just said something in there when you were talking about avoidance that goes against what I often hear people say about attachment theory. Now, you're the godfather of this. So basically you're telling everyone, okay, this is a myth. And what that is, is you said that avoidance doesn't necessarily come from their relationship as a child.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Right, Right.
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Podcast Host
And so if you could speak to how do attachment styles originate? How do they then grow through to how we possess them as an adult?
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Dr. Amir Levine
Right. I think that's a great. That's kind of like the million dollar question. That's a great. I'm glad we're starting with that because it's so important. So I'll tell you first how attachment styles were first discovered. Okay, so. And I think it was an amazing discovery. We talk about discovering the DNA. It's like for a relationship person, like, for me, that's like the discovery of the DNA. It was Mary Ainsworth. She first discovered these attachment style in Uganda. She went there on a field study. Actually, she went after her husband because he was supposed to go there. And then she just, she just did the work. She was a psychologist and she looked at how babies are weaning and their patterns are weaning. And then she saw these three ways that babies are weaning when they stop. And then she came back to Baltimore to Johns Hopkins, and then she did it in a lab. She did something that's called a strange situation test, which is very important because it also goes. I'm going to tell you about it a little bit, but you'll see, I'll refer back to it because it's important for adults too. So she took toddlers and their Caregivers. And she brought them. You could observe them through a one, one. You could observe them through a one way mirror, okay? And you put them in a room full of toys and immediately you start, you can see it on YouTube. They start pointing at the toys they want to play. They start crawling, playing. Every once in a while they look back to see if their caregiver, their mother is there and they're there. And then they ask their mother to leave. And they drop what they're doing, they crawl back, they go over to the doors, they're banging, crying. You try to interest them in the toilet, they'll throw it in your face. They don't care. And then they ask the caregiver to come back. And it's in that moment, the reunion, where she really classified these three attachment style. And it all has to do with how good is the bond in helping the diet and the baby regulate their emotions. So secures, it's like a miracle. The moment the mother picks them up, they come down, start again, wanting to play, anxious, not at all. They cry and they cry. It takes much longer to soothe them. Sometimes they calm down and then they all of a sudden, oh my God, no remembering how horrible it was, start crying again. And avoidance sometimes won't really even like cry and they'll continue to play. But then the mother picks them up and they don't even hug them so much. But when they looked inside, their blood pressure is through the roof. So they're also not able. So they're calm, but they're not calm inside and they're not able to use the bond effectively to regulate their emotions. And then in 1987, Hazen and Shaver thought, well, the same neurocircuitry may also apply to adults. Let's test that. And they did the seminal studies where they had people in romantic relationships weigh themselves according to the parameters that we talked about. Are you anxious, avoidant, insecure. And lo and behold, they saw that it actually is about the same amount of people as babies are anxious and avoidant and secure. Like 50% are secure, around 54, 25 are avoidant, around 20% are anxious. And also it really is a major predictor of how satisfied, like long term satisfaction in relationships.
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Podcast Host
Look at that. Okay, so it's a predictor of long term satisfaction then I would imagine it's also then a predictor of what physical health, maybe how long you live.
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Dr. Amir Levine
So I'm glad that you're bringing that up because first of all, I really think it's important to look oh, it's not a predictor of like happiness. It's something that sounds a little bit more mundane. Oh, long term satisfaction. But if you really think about it, long term satisfaction means, yeah, you're going to have difficult moments. You're going to be. But in the long term, how like stable and good you're going to feel about the relationship. Because really we are such a social species. We never really like, we're never doing stuff on our own. Even when we do stuff, we have conversations in our heads. So we're so innately social that it really has something to do with our health. And also it affects our relationship with our healthcare providers. It even has to do with how we shop. People are secure, care less about logos and consumerism. It also really dictates how we feel about going online and how we can manage the online stuff. You know, who likes you, who doesn't like you. It all affects a lot of our perception way beyond our just like one close relationship. It affects our relationship with our friends. It's just like with our colleagues. Becoming more secure has a much more widespread effect than just like how good is the romantic relationship. And that's why I wrote secure, because I wanted people to have that benefit and we can all become more secure. And that's another very important message.
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Podcast Host
But is that the goal, to become secure? Because what you mentioned also that blows me away is when you said in the 87 test with the adults, it was roughly the same percentage. So to me it sounds like then those adults didn't change from childhood.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Okay, great that you're bringing that up because that's probably, I think, the biggest myth. The biggest, biggest myth. And there is research that actually tells you exactly. And it's not just one study, it's multiple studies that replicated the same finding is that your childhood attachment explains less than 10% of your adult attachment. So more than 90%, sometimes 95% in some studies are not explained by your childhood attachment. So I actually find it extra extremely hopeful message. Yes, because it means that we can change. We can change throughout our life, even in old age. And we do in fact change. We can help it by change because it doesn't really make sense. You know, we are an uber social species and our really our biggest asset is our like ability to collaborate with others. I mean we're not very strong animals, but we yet we live, we made it to the moon, we can live in the North Pole. And all because we can collaborate with others and come up with solutions. So it wouldn't make Sense that we'll be just stay fixated with one thing that happened to us early on and that's how we're going to be forever and ever now. Like we're much more agile. Our minds, our brain is much more agile than that. And I actually discovered that in my work in the lab because I'm also a molecular neuroscientist and that's where I really, when you do these experiments on the molecular level, you really get a sense of how we call it plastic, but really how malleable the brain is.
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Podcast Host
On that note, can we talk about the attachment test that I took and even break down the results and what that means? So this is in your new book that you're providing. It's an app, right?
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Dr. Amir Levine
It's a research based questionnaire that I sort of modified a bit and I actually call it in the book. You can really look and figure out your attachment topography because you see it on a graph. You fill out the questionnaire about different people in your life, people that you're close to, even your pet by the way. I mentioned that to you because we're so close to them. So it's an experience in close relationship questionnaire, but it gives you a wide array of. So at the end of it you get to see where you are and you also can get to see. And that's the new book. Secure is really about how to change your attachment style so you can take it over time and you can actually see how much progress you're making with all the tools that I actually give you, that I give readers in the book, as you can see, you can map your progress, but you can also get a sense where you are. And if there are outliers, maybe you need to look out for those too.
- [17:29]
Podcast Host
Yes, and that was something that I really appreciated.
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Podcast Sponsor/Promoter
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Podcast Host
So the app is my attachment topography, calculator. Correct.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Right. And you can also, if you go to my website, amelievnmd.com, there's a link there and you can just go there because that's a mouthful.
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Podcast Host
All right, super. So.
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- [19:28]
Podcast Host
Dr. Levine, if. Is it possible to grab those results? So I went to the calculator.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Yes.
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Podcast Host
And what I did is, and what I love is that you can put in as many relationships as possible. So you can put your. I didn't know I could put my dog in there.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Good. I wonder if I don't come out.
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Podcast Host
I'm going to do that now after this. But I put Jill in as one, so my wife. I also put my friends in as another. And then I put my co workers in and I saw that each one did come back with different results.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Yes. I mean, it's all within the secure realm. There's a quadrant. But then with the friends and with the colleagues, it sort of like shifted a little bit to like closer to like more to a little bit more to avoidance. But I think that's fine. We don't really share or sort of bare our souls to our colleagues. Well, friends, maybe like, I don't know, maybe you want to think about that or like.
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Podcast Host
No, no, but really, could you, looking at those results, I mean, now what would you say I should do with those results?
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Dr. Amir Levine
So it depends. That's what I really, you know, this is what I really love about attachment. And that's another myth that I need to dispel right away here. It's so important that oftentimes when I went online I saw, oh, you have to heal your attachment style or like, they treat it as if it's a pathology.
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Podcast Host
Yes.
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Dr. Amir Levine
But one of the reasons why I fell in love with this field is that it doesn't come from the medical model, and so it doesn't like. So to pathologize these attachment styles is really not the right way of looking at it, because it's really a variation on the norm. It's like saying that because I have blue eyes, it's a pathology. I see, but it's not a pathology. Maybe if I live in a very sunny place, I need to wear sunglasses more to protect. To sort of to work with my biology. But it's not like, oh, you're like. It's, like, terrible that you have blue eyes. So it's the same kind of thing. And I can even. There's been studies that show how in certain circumstances, there's an advantage to having an anxious attachment style and an avoidant attachment style. One study that I love, I think it's brilliant. They had a group of people in a room, and they had smoke starting to come out. Very little in the beginning, barely noticeable from a computer. And it was the anxious attachment style people that noticed it first. And it was the avoidant people who were like, fuck y'.
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Narrator
All.
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Dr. Amir Levine
I'm out of here. Sorry, I'm out of here. But then everybody followed. So it's like, you know what? I'm not gonna start looking around me to see what's happening and check on other people. I need to get out.
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Podcast Host
I'm curious, what are the security.
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Dr. Amir Levine
They just said, ah, somewhere in the middle. Right. They're not as, like, quick to respond. Right. So I think that's. I think it's so telling. And that's also part of what I try to address in Secure is to really show each attachment style, like, what are their superpower? But then also, what is your version of putting on sunglasses to help you work with your biology better rather than against it.
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Podcast Host
Okay, I see.
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Dr. Amir Levine
So when we get back to this. Attachment is not about healing something. It's about more. Is it effective or is it not effective? Is it working for you or is it not working for you? Okay, so we'll start. But if it's working for you, then that's fine. That's great. We don't need to change anything. But it also gives you an idea like, oh, I'm very close to my wife. It looks like I'm very, very secure. I would say that she's probably your biggest confidant and the person that you are back to, and she fulfills a role of the emotional connectedness that you need to do. And with other people, you don't feel that need. And it's fine, because we all have an attachment hierarchy in our brain, okay? And that's really important to understand. It's important to understand that attachment is really. It's all about. It's a safety mechanism. It's how we feel safe in the world. We really focus about the relationship and the quality of the relationship, but it's really. I mean, it is about that, but it's fundamentally something much more profound because we're not descendants of elephants or lions or eagles. We are descendants of animals that were in the middle of the food chain. And it's hugely. Our way to feel safe is by having others around us and knowing that they're available to us and they're looking at us. Because we'll start with the fact that just by the fact that you and I are sitting here, if a predator came, there's. Just by the sheer fact that you're here, there's a 50% less chance of me getting eaten. Get you or me. But that's a big reduction, not taking into account the fact that maybe we can fight them together. I can alert you to something that's happening that we can sort of devise ways of, sort of like all that. And that's also. It's not just in humans. They even find it in social media, social birds oftentimes. I mean, the life of a bird is like you peck for food and then every once in a while, they swoop up and look to see there's predators coming. But if they're in a group, they actually look up a lot less and they get this freedom. It really gives them more energy and more ability to kind of, like, look for food. So basically, the relationship is more about how we feel safe because we didn't have, like, money or credit cards or condos or, like, fancy cars. People think that that's what's going to make them feel safe, having those assets. But that's not fundamentally how our brain feels safe because it didn't exist when our emotional brain formed. So we all have a surveillance system. Even now, it's always going on in the back of our head. Like you have an idea where your loved ones are and that they're okay. But if I told you, oh, like a terrible thing, like maybe some sort of an accident happened or a building fell or something, I don't even want to say it because it's. Then it will be hard for you to sort of continue this interview. You'll have to stop and make sure that you're okay. And then you can resume, albeit a little rattled, but still.
- [25:46]
Podcast Host
Oh, yes. I mean, on that point, something that actually happened during an interview, or should I say right after an interview, was my son sent a text. So he was at school. There was a intruder. It was an intruder alarm. So not a fire alarm. An intruder was in the building. They had to hide under desks.
- [26:08]
Dr. Amir Levine
Oh, my God.
- [26:08]
Podcast Host
He sent a text saying, mom, dad, I'm hiding under a desk right now. My world stopped.
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Dr. Amir Levine
You see, that was it.
- [26:16]
Podcast Host
I couldn't do anything else.
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Dr. Amir Levine
Gives me goosebumps.
- [26:20]
Podcast Host
So to your point. Scares me absolutely. So I see that we have that
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Dr. Amir Levine
hierarchy, if you will, in our mind, and continued surveillance. Continued surveillance, even if we're not aware of it, of knowing where our loved ones are, knowing that they're safe, and vice versa for them to us. So if I'm looking here, I see that you have one person that can really rely on a lot. And the rest, I mean, it's fine not to like. And we all have that, number one that we know if something bad happens, do we go to. And if we're securely attached to them. It's amazing because sometimes all it will take is one word or is just like simply a hug. Which is also very important because attachment, a lot of it is pre language. So we have to remember that. So sometimes a hug, or if you're not close to them, one word over the phone and they can really help you in an amazing way. And I always like to say that there's no. And it's so important. I'm a psychiatrist, so there's no Xanax or Klonopin in the world that can sort of like make us calm down that quickly because we're such social species. So when relationships are secure and they work effectively, it's amazing how they can regulate our emotions. But the caveat is that insecure relationships can be one of the most potent instigators of emotional upset. Attachment is both at the basis of self suffering and then healing from suffering.
- [27:53]
Podcast Host
Wow, look at that. So you said an insecure relationship will exacerbate issues. In essence, I believe, because we were talking about also that I believe that my relationship with Jill went from a place of maybe it was an insecure relationship. Maybe I think I was highly anxious in the relationship. I think I was highly avoidant at the same time. And it's moved to a place of security. How does that happen?
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Dr. Amir Levine
My guess would be that she's probably more secure. I don't know if that's true or
- [28:27]
Podcast Host
not, but I think so.
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Dr. Amir Levine
So in the course of doing this work from the very beginning, and then now more and more all the time. And that's why I call this new type of therapy that I've devised to help people become more secure. Because initially I didn't really know. You know, when I wrote about attachment styles and attach came out, then patients started coming like, help me become more secure. But there was no immediate way of becoming more secure because again, these attachment styles, they didn't come from the medical model. I didn't ever learn about adult attachment styles in my psychiatry training. It's all something that I discovered by chance. So over the years I really had to sort of really think hard about how to help patients become more secure. And, and I found a lot, surprisingly, I found a lot of these answers from my work in the lab and understanding the brain. And I find myself deviating more and more from the regular therapeutic techniques and talking to my patients about the brain and the social brain and how the brain works and devising specific tools to help people become more secure. But even before you go into all that, if just by sheer luck you ended up with someone secure, they're amazing. They're like these relationship pros. It's like having a built in relationship coach that will teach you the ways of becoming more secure. And again, it's because it's not. I mean, they're amazing. But if you think about it, I told you in the beginning that it's because they don't have such a sensitive radar. But think about really of it as like an alarm system that goes off. So it's not a very sensitive alarm. How much harder it is if you have an alarm that goes off of every little thing that happens. That's basically what being anxious and avoidant is. It's like, oh my God, where are they? They're not here. Alarm goes on in your head. It really is like an alarm. It's the whole stress response that gets triggered in the brain.
- [30:16]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [30:16]
Dr. Amir Levine
Avoidant. It's the opposite. Oh my God, they're too close. No, that's not comfortable. Stay away, stay away. Like, oh, I don't know if I can be in this thing. Like the whole. Such a lot of chatter, a lot of energy that their brain uses to kind of try to manage relationships. And I have a whole chapter insecure about energy because it's not a given. Our brain is a huge energy guzzler and it has a finite amount of energy. So when I say a lot of energy, I really mean real energy. In the brain that you can use for something much better. So with someone secure, you may have acted not so good in the beginning. May have, like, didn't respond to her or got upset with her, and she was like, bring it on. I can deal with it. Yes. And stay calm. But it's easier for them to stay calm because they just don't like. Okay. So he didn't call me today. Why? He'll call me tomorrow.
- [31:08]
Podcast Host
It's okay. You know what is so mind blowing to me about this is everything that you're saying now. Thank you.
- [31:17]
Dr. Amir Levine
Right.
- [31:17]
Podcast Host
Because it's one of these. Where I thought I was anxiously attached as a child. I could have been.
- [31:25]
Dr. Amir Levine
Yeah, of course.
- [31:26]
Podcast Host
But when I entered my relationship with Jill, and it was funny even you coming in here today, I was having this conversation with Jill. I said, what do you think? Where do you think I was when we met? She said, oh, you were avoidant.
- [31:38]
Dr. Amir Levine
You said, yeah.
- [31:39]
Podcast Host
She was like, you were definitely avoidant.
- [31:41]
Dr. Amir Levine
But it's interesting cause inside you describe. You remember that I told you that in the strange situation, the avoidant child, the blood pressure was going through the roof. Yes. So inside it didn't feel like avoidance to you? It felt like, oh, no, no, I don't know what's happening. My world is changing and I don't know how to deal with.
- [31:56]
Podcast Host
Exactly, exactly. But on the outside, you know, she would always say I would present aloof or, you know, get away from me. You know, I'm not gonna call you.
- [32:04]
Dr. Amir Levine
You got to be chill. You got bit cool. Yeah, yeah.
- [32:06]
Podcast Host
She was like, you're too cool. You're too cool. But then over time, or not over time, over our relationship, I believe I have been taught.
- [32:15]
Dr. Amir Levine
Exactly. And that's the promise. And that's why I say it's not even being, like, healed. It's not being healed. It's being taught. I like that you say that because it's really. And I even said it. It's not. I don't even. I mean, I call it secure primary therapy. And there's a coaching there. It really is more about learning certain skills to help you make the relationship work better for you. More efficient, more effective. That's all it is. So. Yeah. She taught you, which is amazing, right?
- [32:46]
Podcast Host
Yes, she did. Yeah, it is. It is.
- [32:49]
Podcast Sponsor/Promoter
Join me and Dr. Amir Levine for more in depth conversation about attachment styles
- [32:54]
Podcast Host
in next week's we're talking.