Alana (00:00):

When we’re doing this independently in relationships, we don’t give the other person. And this happens in parenting and in all of our relationships, we don’t give the other person the opportunity to share with us their experience, to share with us what they need, what they want. And so we end up doing too much. And then we have this false thought in our minds that other people should do that same thing for us. And it creates this dynamic where there’s a lot of resentment.

Dr. Sarah (00:39):

What is codependency from a psychological standpoint and how does it tie into the attachment styles that shape the way that we show up in relationships? I can’t think of a better person to talk about these questions than this week’s guest. Joining me once again on the podcast is Alana Carvalho. Alana is a licensed mental health counselor, co-founder of Intuitive Healing Psychotherapy Practice in New York City, and author of the book, Raising Empowered Children: The Codependent Perfectionist’s Guide to Parenting. Together, we’ll unpack the connection between codependency and attachment, explore why anxious and avoidant partners often find themselves in a dance of dysfunction and discuss how childhood experiences can set the stage for relational struggles later in life. Plus, we’ll also share tangible tools for working through misattunements, how to stop personalizing your partner’s behavior and why intention matters so much in creating healthier dynamics.

(01:37):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:07):

Welcome back to the securely attached podcast. Today we have a guest who has been on before, actually one of my favorite episodes, Alana Carvalho. Thank you for being here.

Alana (02:22):

Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. It’s so nice to speak to you as always.

Dr. Sarah (02:26):

I know, it’s good. We’re like, it’s been a while. And for those of you guys listening, Alana and I are really, I love her. And so I’m just glad that we have this on the books. Now I get to hang out with you again and we need to set up a time to hang too.

Alana (02:40):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah (02:42):

So if you guys haven’t listened to the episode that Alana did a while back, so episode 1 0 6, I’m going to link it in the show description, in the show notes, but go and listen to that after this one because I think it will be a really helpful primer on some of the things we’re going to cover today. But Alana, you are a self-proclaimed codependent perfectionist who has, you’ve really dedicated your personal and your clinical career to really unpacking what codependency is. And so I really was excited to talk to you today a little bit about some of the different ways that codependency can show up in parenthood and also maybe clarify some myths that might be going on about codependency that might help people feel a little bit more grounded if they do experience codependency or maybe worry that they do.

Alana (03:37):

Absolutely. I mean, it’s such a vast topic and there’s so much misinformation, I think. So I’m excited to talk about it. So hopefully we can clarify some things for the audience today.

Dr. Sarah (03:48):

Yes. So can you give us a quick primer first of all on what codependency is?

Alana (03:54):

Yes, absolutely. So usually, I mean, I like to put things in pretty layman’s terms. That’s how I work because that to me makes it more digestible. So the overarching theme is about codependency is when we care too much and also when we have a lack of trust with ourselves. And the combination of those two things lead us to act in ways that basically put ourselves last in a lot of ways, not take care of ourselves, put other people’s needs and wants above our own. And so we end up often with a lot of resentment in our relationships or often burnt out a lot in our work, in our life. So that’s kind of an overview, but how it looks is so nuanced. So I really like to get into the weeds at times around that because obviously there’s just so many different ways it can show up.

Dr. Sarah (04:59):

Okay, that is so helpful in simplification of it and this podcast called Securely attached. We talk a lot about attachment science, and one thing that I see is that attachment language and codependent language sometimes get merged or fused. They are distinct things, but they also co-occur a lot. I’m curious, can you talk a little bit about how maybe an anxious attachment style can co-occur with codependence? Are they correlated? Does one cause the other?

Alana (05:38):

Yeah, I mean, I never want to say anything is one direct thing causes another thing, but certainly our early childhood experiences inform the way we develop and obviously the way that we relate with other people. And that has to do with our attachment styles. I tend to find an interesting thing where it’s certainly there in anxiously attached people, people who tend to lean that way in relationships or in the majority of their relationships. That said, I just want to caveat that it’s not absent from people who are more avoidant in nature, but oftentimes those people in my opinion, have become overwhelmed at an early age in some interesting ways, which can have to do with codependency and can make them also lean in an avoidant way. And so they tend to lean out of relationship and out of intimacy, whereas anxious people tend to lean in and they tend to be the ones who want to people please more because they’re fearful about people leaving, people being upset with them. So they tend to do things that would make people try to stay and be happy with them in some way because that tends to calm the anxiety that comes up in their relationships.

Dr. Sarah (07:11):

That’s really interesting. The piece about an avoidant person also experienced codependency. That’s really interesting to me. And as you were talking, it made me think, and we can go a little into the science a bit here, but made me think about the way we measure attachment patterns in children or the way we test for it. There’s this thing called the strange situation, which is a study, a lab sort of setting where a child comes in with their parent, there’s a stranger comes in, the parent exits, there’s a separation, and then the parent reunites. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the basic gist. And what we’re looking for is how does the child respond when the parent exits? How does the child respond when the parent returns? And typically with an avoidant pattern of attachment, you will see a child show kind of less response to the parent leaving and less response to the parent coming back.

(08:11):

And it’s interesting because oftentimes that avoidance style can come out of a longstanding kind of pattern in the parent-child relationship where the parent is a little bit intrusive to the child, their attempts to engage with the child and meet the child’s needs feels overwhelming to the child, and the child just sort of shuts off, or the child has learned that my needs aren’t going to get met. So there’s other ways to experience that avoidant pattern. It’s not always from an intrusive parent, sometimes it’s from an absence of your needs being met and you just kind of learn to assume they won’t be. So you kind of become avoidant. But that intrusive parent, avoidant child dynamic, can you talk a little bit about that? Is that something that you see that can inform this codependent piece in the future?

Alana (09:08):

Absolutely. So this is a lesser known piece of codependency that I see with clients who tend to move in a more avoidant way, which is that exactly what you’re saying. At an early age, there was some overwhelm of taking in from a parent, the parent, they could feel that the parent relied on them too much in some capacity. And so at some point they kind of tuned out relationally because they felt overwhelmed by the experience of needing to take care of their parent. None of this being consciously aware to them.

Dr. Sarah (09:51):

And this could happen as early as, this could show up as early as 1-year-old.

Alana (09:55):

Absolutely. Right.

Dr. Sarah (09:57):

We know that this is early wiring and nonverbal non-conscious awareness on kids.

Alana (10:06):

Absolutely. So what happens is when I’m working with these people as adults, I tend to see that once we get past some of the initial presentation of their avoidance, I see that there’s early experiences of codependency where they felt like they had to take care of somebody else in their life, a caretaker in their life, and it felt so overwhelming that they shut down to it. And so relationally what happens is they get so overwhelmed by the needs of other people that they shut down instead of lean into it because they just feel like it’s too much. And again, I don’t believe that they often are consciously aware of any of this dynamic that’s happening. It really tends to take some therapeutic, some significant therapeutic work to get to understand that that’s actually what has happened here. And then once they get that and they understand that there’s a codependency and trauma of some sort experience that is underlying this, it actually can become really healing to their avoidant tendencies because we can learn how to find some balance in terms of their ability to not take on too much from other people and not take on too little either, which is the opposite side of the spectrum, which is where they tend to go after those early experiences.

Dr. Sarah (11:44):

It’s almost like increasing their tolerance for being exposed to the needs with some type of boundary, some sense of I can be in the presence of someone needing something from me and I can tolerate all that kicks up for me and I can meet that need by choice. I can choose not to meet that need. And both of those could be okay, I am separate from the needs of this person in front of me, but I’m also not shutting down and not able to notice the need because that can create a really complicated relationship. Let’s say you’re an adult and your spouse has needs.

Alana (12:29):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (12:29):

Of course you want to be able to meet those needs, but if the existence of those needs shuts you off, that’s going to make for a tricky relationship and it’s not going to feel very good.

Alana (12:41):

Absolutely. And I work with couples like this, it’s very challenging because it looks so uncaring. And that’s the hard part for the partner is that they’re kind of like, I don’t think my partner really doesn’t care, but it really feels like they don’t care. I’m trying to understand what’s happening here. And that’s really important because some of these relationships can mimic a narcissistic type dynamic, but they’re actually not that. And that’s an important distinguisher because there’s a difference of a partner who’s malicious and really unkind and uncaring versus somebody who tends to run avoidantly and has difficulty accessing their feelings but truly cares and truly loves their partner, but just isn’t able to be present for them. That’s a very different experience from somebody who’s trying to manipulate or harm their partner or truly doesn’t care. But it can actually look very similar. So it’s very hard for people, I think, to understand what’s happening in some of these dynamics.

Dr. Sarah (13:52):

And then I could see it perpetuating because if let’s say you are in this avoidant loop and you aren’t seeing because you are shut down by the overwhelm of someone else’s needs, you’re not able to see your partner’s needs, and then your partner experiences this sort of what maybe feels like lack of care perceives it as intentional and then gets reactive to that, their needs get louder and more amplified, which shuts you down more. And so it creates this really tricky negative feedback loop where the more avoidant one partner becomes, the more that can elicit an anxious response from the partner, even if that partner doesn’t typically have an anxious attachment style. Absolutely. Or if they do, it will really lift that. So can you talk a little bit about that avoidant plus anxious pattern combo and how that can create something really inflammatory for a relationship?

Alana (14:55):

Yeah, I mean, I think exactly what you’re saying is totally accurate, that when an avoidant person is faced with the needs or feelings of other people, it’s very easy for them to shut down. Or even they’re just faced with their own needs or their own feelings, they shut down around that. So it’s very common for us that do couples therapy where we see that there’s one member who tends to run avoidantly, and then there’s one that tends to run more anxiously. And it really, they both are kicking up each other’s stuff by the way that they’re relating. And it tends to then create a cycle where the avoidant person needs, they remove themselves, whether physically, emotionally, or otherwise. And then the anxious person gets more anxious and then they’re leaning in more and more, and then the avoidant person’s leaning out more and more, right?

(15:49):

And it’s like it’s the perfect storm for creating really difficult and challenging experiences in a relationship. And also a lot of misunderstanding, right? Because again, it looks like the avoidant person just doesn’t care, or they’re just kind of putting their hands up, I’m out of here, and the other person looks like they’re obsessed or everything that is happening with them is needs to be fixed by their relationship. And it’s really just that we all have these triggers and we often get triggered by our partner because they usually have very different ways of relating and it kicks up our stuff. And part of our work, of course, is figuring out how not to personalize the other person’s behavior and understand what it’s about for them versus seeing it as something that is about us, which is a very difficult thing.

Dr. Sarah (16:53):

Yeah. I want to talk about how someone who gets anxious in these dynamics who may have an anxious attachment. I want to kind of fill in the gaps on how that could happen and where that overlaps with codependency. But before we go there, can you talk a little bit about if you are in an anxious slash avoidant dyad pairing in relationship? We talked about ways that we have to figure out how to depersonalize and put context to the other person’s actions, so they trigger us less. What does that actually look like in the work?

Alana (17:34):

It’s challenging. I’m just going to say that, okay, this is not easy work. This does not happen overnight. I mean, I’ve worked with couples for years on some of this stuff, so I want people to be mindful about that because this isn’t like a, okay, just do this thing and then it’ll be fine. But the long-term work really is around learning about your partner, understanding them in a way that gives you context for who they are, how they respond to things, which helps you learn to depersonalize their behavior so you understand what’s happening for them. And you could say, oh, wow, he’s in this place right now versus it being like, he’s doing this to me, or We tend to see things as they relate to us.

(18:21):

And that’s not a great place to be in because what that does is it doesn’t help us see clearly what’s actually happening in a dynamic, which is where hopefully couples therapy can be really helpful in these types of dynamics. Because some of the point is to gain clarity around what’s really happening here. And so what I’ve seen is that when a partner can see, okay, this is what’s happening for him, this is why he’s doing this right now, it’s not about me. It’s not about what I’m doing or who I am or anything like that.

(19:05):

This is how he navigates things and I need to understand that for him. And the more that we tend to give space for that, people who are avoidant can at least relax a little bit so they don’t feel like, okay, I’m being judged for this because that’s a big one. You’re being judged that you don’t care and you’re selfish and you’re all of these things, which again, it can look all of those ways, but may not actually be that. So we have to get clear on what it is. Is the person actually being selfish or is this that they are feeling so overwhelmed right now that they need a lot of space? I have a couple where the husband just has such a difficult time being there for his partner when she’s going through something difficult.

(19:59):

And we’ve talked about it a lot, and he’s like, I really do care. I want to be there for her. I just can’t. It’s so hard for me when I see it. I just want to run. So unfortunately, he’s not there for her a lot when there’s deeply emotional things that are happening, and she’s had a lot of pain around that. But some of the, I think solace she’s gotten is understanding that it’s not coming from a place of malicious intent, that it’s coming from a place of inability to be emotionally in this way. And that type of work is like long-term therapeutic work, and he is doing that type of work he’s trying and he is working at it. He may never get to a place where he can hold her intimately in that way, and perhaps a relationship won’t work out as a result. But I think more importantly, she understands now that it’s not a personal attack, it’s not a lack of caring. It’s a very wounded part of him that has difficulty showing up for her.

Dr. Sarah (21:21):

Yeah, I think what people don’t understand a little bit about attachment is that an attachment behavior is a threat response. It’s elicited in a moment of fear or threat to try to increase your chance of survival. It’s not like a static how I show up all the time. If I have an avoidant style, I might be able to tolerate caring and intimacy and all that kind of stuff in moments where I’m not activated. But if my system gets flooded because something is overwhelming to me and feels threatening to me, and for whatever reason I’ve wired my brain’s wired to detect other people’s emotional needing of me as a threat, that’s tricky, right? Because if I have a partner who I want to be caring towards and intimate with, and every time they have an emotional need from me, my whole system detects that as a threat and responds as my survival instincts kick in and my shutdown starts, that is a threat response.

(22:32):

And so instead of that threat response of the shutdown activating the partner’s threat response, and then we start doing this big dance that escalates and escalates and escalates one, it’s like that partner, the woman in this couple that you’re talking about, if she can escalate that threat dance, one, he might have a better shot at being able to cope with the initial need being overwhelming to him as he increases his tolerance for that and maybe be able to lean in more. But two, she can also be able to say, I imagine in a situation, again, probably with some therapeutic learning happening first, that like, oh, I do have an emotional need right now and it’s worth getting addressed, and if I go to my partner, it might not be, and so I might need to go where I will get it met, right? Do I go to a friend? Do I go to a family member? Do I go to a therapist? But where can I go because my emotional needs are important for me to have them met. But maybe if by continuing to go to my partner for that, not only is it going to continue to strain the relationship, but I will still be left without my needs being met. Obviously that doesn’t always work because sometimes if you are in a romantic relationship, there are certain emotional needs that you just need your partner to. That’s kind of the deal we signed up to be in this life together because we expect our partner to be able to emotionally meet our needs in that relationship. So again, it is tricky.

(24:23):

It’s worth trying to fix that. And if you can’t, that might make sustaining that relationship either very unsatisfying or not possible. But do you see success in therapy with couples who look like have this presentation?

Alana (24:42):

I do. I mean, of course, it depends upon how extreme it is and how willing people are to work on things. All of that factors into it. But I have seen people work on it and have really good experiences where they can work through this feeling of such a great threat that’s happening for them when they see somebody else having deep needs and feelings. And I’ve seen people where it still comes up, but they have their go-to is of how to support their partner enough in those moments that it’s good enough. It might not be incredible, but it’s good enough. And again, their partner knows, okay, they care and trying. To me, that’s one of the most important things, like you care and you’re trying, right? You don’t have to do it perfectly. It’s not about this perfect attunement where they’re there and you’re able to emotionally be fully held. That may not be reality for all relationships, and it’s up to us to decide if that’s okay or that’s not okay. And then there’s some people that really struggle with working through their avoidance, and so it becomes a real challenge to the relationship. So all of that to me is a possibility in this work.

Dr. Sarah (26:13):

You said something there that I think is really important where you’re talking about attunements, and I feel like that’s also kind of, it’s a misunderstood piece to codependent dynamics. Can you talk a little bit about how misattunement comes in, how it reinforces things, but then also how it’s kind of a natural in less extreme situations is a very natural part of relationships that we can’t do away with it.

Alana (26:41):

Right. No, attunement is really important because it’s basically having a true connection to what somebody else is experiencing, seeing it clearly, it’s hard to explain in words, but there’s some presence for the other persons in what they’re going through. When you’re attuning to somebody like, wow, they must be really feeling this right now. And then trying to kind of be with that in a way that supports the person in that experience. And attunement, obviously, I imagine you talk about this with clients all the time, is a really important piece of parenting. It’s a really important relational piece. Codependents tend to overly attune to other people. They’re constantly trying to figure out, or we’re constantly trying to figure out how other people feel and then how to be there for them in those feelings, what they need, what the other person wants, and then trying to meet that need. Unfortunately, what happens is that why I say we overdo it is because it is actually not great to overly attune to other people. We shouldn’t be trying to anticipate their needs and then meet them before the person even asks us for it or identifies it themselves. And we expect other people to overly attune to us.

(28:21):

And this is problematic because that’s really not how we want to be working relationally with other people. We want to, certainly in parenting, it is more on us as parents to learn to attune to our children. No person ever attunes a hundred percent to somebody else when we’re doing this independently in relationships, we don’t give the other person, and this happens in parenting and in all of our relationships, we don’t give the other person the opportunity to share with us their experience to share with us what they need, what they want. And so we end up doing too much. And then we tend to have this false kind of thought in our minds that other people should do that same thing for us. And it creates this dynamic where there’s a lot of resentment that builds because we think that other people should be thinking about us in this same way. And that’s really not the case. To attune to somebody is to generally connect with where they’re at. That’s a really positive thing to do. But what I would like the listeners to be thinking about is where do I do that too much and where do I perhaps not do that enough?

Dr. Sarah (29:48):

Yeah. It’s funny because when you think about, I mean, you can never talk about adult relationships without looking at the original parent child relationship. We were talking about how in people who develop an avoidant style of relating to somebody, there are usually something going on in their early childhood with their own parents where there was either too much or too little attunement. And this is a core piece. This is I think where we really get back to this point of how attachment science and codependency overlap in very important ways. And it is this idea of attunement. If you have an attachment relationship, early childhood relationship, and that parent is over attuning to the needs of the child, trying to anticipate rescue, do everything before the child is able to sit with and experience the feeling on their own, one, that can create, again, some of this, it could go avoidant attachment styles. If that’s overwhelming to the child, it could become an anxious attachment style. It could also be not impacting the child. They could just feel secure and move on because that’s just, the system is more robust. But that over two on the point of the parent can sometimes belie an anxious attachment style for that parent.

(31:13):

And we know that our own attachment styles tend to get passed on into our children unless there’s some conscious effort to shift the way we’re showing up. So it’s just all interconnected is my point. You can’t look at a current adult relationship and not trace all kinds of things back generations because of the attachment transmission, but it’s all really very much related to the attunement of the parent of the child, which then informs that child’s attunement of how they attune to the world and the other people in it. And so when you get these two adults in a relationship, the way they attune to one another is going to be informed by that. And it’s like, I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is if you have, you were saying if you have this codependent tendency and you hyper attune, so you’re setting the bar super high and then your expectation understandably is if I put in this much, everyone should be putting in this much.

Alana (32:21):

Right? Doesn’t everybody do this?

Dr. Sarah (32:23):

Doesn’t everybody do this so egocentric, this is the way, this is the way we do it. And then the discrepancy, then even if you’re in a relationship with someone who isn’t avoidant, although I imagine the discrepancy between what I give and what I get back is extra large, if you are doing this hyper attuning and the person you’re with is under a tuner or it’s not even, they’re not attuning, they’re just miss attuning. It’s like you’re missing each other. That discrepancy can get really big, that resentment can really grow. And again, that’s sort of ends up becoming fuel for this dance that happens.

Alana (32:59):

Absolutely. Right. And to me, the work there is that the codependent has to stop over tuning and that they’ll actually start to see that perhaps the other people aren’t always under doing it. Maybe they’re doing it pretty appropriately, but their perception of what they should be getting back is off in some way. That’s a very common experience. Again, this is why therapy is so important because when we’re in all of our dysfunctional dynamics that have just been passed down to us and that’s how we’re seeing the world and our relationships, we just assume that how we see it is right. But when we have a good therapist to work with us, they can help us see is this person really under attuning or perhaps are they doing it actually in a way that is pretty okay, and perhaps you’re just overdoing it. These are important things for us to understand because again, the word, I brought it up before narcissism, but it gets a little overused and we start to assume that everyone in our life is doing things in this very malicious way and we really need to have some solid clarity to understand the difference between people that are actually doing these things malicious or people that are doing things differently than us. And perhaps it doesn’t feel good, but it’s actually okay. That’s a very different experience.

Dr. Sarah (34:37):

I would think. So the term gaslighting often comes up in these situations where I am having a really big emotional response to some dynamic that doesn’t feel good, and the other person is telling me it’s not happening. I am not seeing this. I don’t understand where you are coming from. Where is the difference between we are attuning to each other mutually versus one person is gaslighting the other person by saying what you are experiencing is not happening when in fact it is.

Alana (35:13):

Right? Well, I think that’s the main distinguisher. When somebody is actively trying to get you to not believe what you know to be true, that’s more gaslighting. That’s very different from someone saying, I don’t remember that happening. That often happens, particularly with avoidant people. I will tell you that I have an avoidant client who completely forgets things like, why does that happen? That is some part of his psyche that is blocking out things that they don’t want to deal with. Do you know what I mean? And he recognizes it sometimes when it pops back up and he is like, whoa, I actually just like that poof, went totally out of my consciousness. And what we don’t realize is that behind the scenes, we have all these coping mechanisms that are going on. And so one of his is to forget things that’s different from somebody who is adamantly trying to tell you that something didn’t happen that we both know happened.

(36:23):

You know what I mean? That’s very different. So somebody who is forgetful and that’s part of how they cope with the world, or part of how their brain works is not necessarily malicious. Could that be done in a malicious way perhaps? I’ve seen things like that, but I just want people to understand that don’t assume that just because somebody isn’t on the same page with you around something or doesn’t remember something in the same way that you do, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s gaslighting. Gaslighting. Really, it is a consistent pattern in a relationship where someone can, not that it can’t happen in instances it can, of course, but generally if it’s an abusive relationship, gaslighting is happening on a consistent basis where somebody is trying repeatedly to get you to not trust yourself.

(37:25):

To get you to put them in a place of power in some way. And so they will chip away at and somebody’s ability to believe in what they know to be true over time in the relationship. And usually it doesn’t happen at the beginning. It’s like there’s a slow build with it, which can make it even more confusing because they’re like, wait, but they’re not really like this. Well, there probably was a time when they weren’t like this. So there’s a lot of confusion that comes into play with gaslighting and intentional confusion. There can be confusion otherwise, but it’s not intentional. It’s not malicious. It’s just that we have a different experience of things. And again, I could say, I know I said such and such, and the person’s like, but I heard it this way. That’s not necessarily gaslighting.

Dr. Sarah (38:25):

That’s misattuning

Alana (38:27):

Can be. Right. And that’s why a lot of the couples work that I do, I love working with couples, and one of the things is that I always make them speak to each other in a way that they know that they actually heard the other person properly and they got a sign off from the person who said it before we continue on. Because that’s one of the biggest issues that happens relationally, is that one partner says one thing, the other person hears something totally different. And yet we were all in the same space and it’s like the same thing happened, but yet we have two different experiences of it. And that’s been a normal relational issue that happens in everyday conversation. And of course it happens in more challenging conversations.

Dr. Sarah (39:21):

It makes me think about actually, so we’ve been talking about misattunement, but I think there’s a distinction between misattunement and misperception. I think what we’re talking about in this situation is when we misperceive one another, I say this thing, I believe it sounds like this to you. You hear this thing, you interpret it in a way that I’m not anticipating, and you have a completely different experience of this exchange, right? We are perceiving the meaning that we’re making with one another in the moment, whereas Miss Attunement, it’s less of in my sense, and tell me if you would agree with this, it’s less of, are we on the same page? Am I understanding you correctly? A little bit, but more about attunement is I’m sensing what you need from me in this moment. I’m sensing how you are feeling in this moment. Attunement is more about tuning into someone’s state.

Alana (40:19):

I would agree. But what I will say is that there’s something about the communication piece that allows us to attune to somebody else. And that to me is a really important parenting piece and relational piece otherwise. So oftentimes when I’m working with parents, I believe that one of the best ways to attune to your child is to mirror what they’re saying back to them because it’s very difficult for us to attune to people when we actually don’t hear them clearly. And so communication wise to me is some of the foundational piece to that. And I think if people can work on that piece in parenting, in your romantic relationships and in your friendships everywhere, you have a better shot of attuning properly to the person, to the situation, to the experience that’s happening. And then we tend to be more on the same page.

Dr. Sarah (41:24):

Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. And it’s not lost on me that anything that’s going to help our partner relationship is probably going to help our parent-child relationship.

Alana (41:34):

For sure.

Dr. Sarah (41:36):

And this idea, so you were talking about in an example, in a couple session would be to actively make them check in and say, did I hear you correctly?

Alana (41:48):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah (41:50):

What are some other strategies along that lines to attune to get better at that sense of we’re on the same page here, whether it’s attuning to one another or perceiving each other accurately, communicating more effectively. I mean, it’s all kind of part of a whole package. What are some things that help improve that, especially if people are more vulnerable to misperceiving or mis attuning because they have very different ways of responding to the environment that they’re in?

Alana (42:21):

Well, to me, what I’m saying is the foundational piece to that because what happens is, is that when we can listen to someone and repeat back to them what they said and make sure that’s actually what was said, we put aside for a moment, our reaction to it. It gives a little bit of space between what the person’s saying and what we want to come in with our emotional stuff and say, that didn’t happen, or You always do that, or whatever the thing is. But we can’t, if we are sitting there and we have to repeat back to the person what they said and make sure we got it before we do anything, it gives a little space between the other person and our reaction to it in the conversation. But it also makes the other person feel so held and so heard by their partner. And oftentimes when that happens, what tends to happen after that is that you see a very different response from the person because they didn’t hear them incorrectly through what they believe the person said, they hear what they actually said, which tends to take things down significantly. And so there tends to be less of a threat response, less of a need to run. And it’s a very connecting experience for people. I mean, I’ve done that experience myself. I do it with people all the time. To me, it’s like there’s nothing more connecting than that.

Dr. Sarah (44:07):

So if people want to try this with their partner and they’re not in therapy, let’s say someone’s listening to this and okay, maybe I’m going to play this episode for my partner and say, this sounds like could be happening between us. Could we try this? We set them up to, okay, how would you actually explain this to somebody?

Alana (44:29):

So what we would do is that, and I always tell them, you can blame it on me, right? It’s like, okay, we’re going to do that silly thing Alana told us to do, right? Because they know that at first it’s pretty awkward, and that’s okay. It will be awkward until it’s not anymore. But you’re going to sit down and one partner is going to start and they’re going to share, and hopefully it’s not too long, but they share whatever it is that they need to, and the other partner is going to sit, they’re going to listen the entire time until the person is done. And once the person finishes, partner number two is going to repeat everything they heard back to the person. And at the end of that, they’re going to say, did I get that right? And that gives an opportunity for partner number one to tell them if there’s anything they missed or if they used any incorrect words that aren’t actually accurate to this. And then partner number two is going to correct it. So if the person’s like, no, actually you just missed this part about how I’m upset with my mom and blah, blah, blah, they’re going to say, okay, so I missed the part about you being upset with mom. Did I get all of that? And then once the answer is yes, you got all of that, then partner number two can respond.

Dr. Sarah (45:49):

And do you find that partner number two in these situations is able to feel less defensive or less shuts down less?

Alana (46:04):

Absolutely. I have other strategies for working on not creating defensive conversation, but this is one of the main ones, and I see it all the time. It’s like suddenly they’re like, oh, okay, so this is what you’re saying, and they can just be with it in such a different way. I was working with this yesterday with an adult mother and adult child, and they did it so beautifully, and it was because they stuck to this. They did it well. They were able to hear each other. The mom who identifies as being defensive, wasn’t defensive as a result of it. It was really wonderful. Does that happen a hundred percent of the time? Of course not. But I will say it really is a wonderful way to change the communication and attunement to each other.

Dr. Sarah (46:59):

And what I think could be extra helpful too is even if, like you said, it’s not going to happen every time, but one or two of these conversations, it’s almost like exposure therapy. If you have an experience where you have a confrontation with a partner where they need something from you and you don’t feel that flooding and that desire to shut down because you’re able to stay together, you’re able to stay connected to each other in a way that doesn’t elicit that threat response because there isn’t an overwhelming need by them for you to meet a need. It’s not overwhelming, it’s just, it’s manageable. Oh, you have this. This is your experience. I’ve got space now to make sure I understand it.

Alana (47:46):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (47:47):

And I’m understanding that you’re not asking an overwhelming amount of me right now. You’re just asking me to repeat back to you what I’m hearing. And in getting through that to the other side of that exchange, you have now had this sort of exposure of dealing with a confrontation in a relationship where someone needed something from you, which probably was just to listen, and you don’t get activated. You realize that’s safe, and now you have rewired a little piece of that blueprint. And so the next time you are faced with a confrontation or an overwhelming need from someone, or the fear that this need is going to become overwhelming, you might be able to stay a little longer.

Alana (48:32):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (48:32):

You’re building that distress tolerance.

Alana (48:34):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah (48:35):

And it doesn’t have to be that we sit down and have these types of conversations every single time we want to communicate. It’s just about getting someone enough practice in this that we’re reducing the frequency of the threat response.

Alana (48:49):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And that goes for both anxious leaning people and avoidant leaning people. We’re working on the distress tolerance for both of them. It just is different types of distress, right?

Dr. Sarah (49:01):

Yeah. So yeah, for the other person in the conversation, can I be heard accurately? And if the other person can hear me accurately, I don’t escalate because all I really need is to be heard.

Alana (49:15):

Yes. Right? This is so true for kids too. This is why I, I harp on it with parents all the time because usually the kid just wants to be heard. That’s all they want. And what happens, what I would love for people, if you are going to try this, watch how many times when you do this, you insert your own words into it that the other person didn’t say. And I will just tell you that for whatever reason, and I just know this to be true, when we change one word about what the other person said, it changes the whole thing. When you wonder why your kid is upset, especially your teen, but is upset because you changed one thing that they said, just understand that that changes the whole experience of attunement to the person.

(50:02):

And so don’t get upset with yourself. It’s totally normal to do that as a human, but I really would push you to say, you’re right. That wasn’t the word that you said. You said you were upset, you didn’t say you were angry, and that changes everything.

Dr. Sarah (50:17):

Exactly. No, and that’s why all this stuff is always cross applicable, like new strategies for our relationships, our strategies for relationships. And this is so useful if people are like, want to get in touch with you, want to know more about the work that you do, where can we send them?

Alana (50:38):

So you can find me on Instagram at the codependent perfectionist, and that’s also my website, the codependent perfectionist.com, and I have a quiz there. You can take the quiz and see how codependent you really are and how perfectionistic you really are. And yeah, you’re welcome to reach out with any questions.

Dr. Sarah (50:58):

Thank you so much.

Alana (51:00):

Thank you.

Dr. Sarah (51:07):

Thank you for listening. Tackling codependency and insecure attachment patterns can feel really overwhelming and leave you potentially unsure of where to start. And these deeply ingrained patterns can be hard to change alone, and that’s why it could be helpful to have a trained mental health professional guide you in this journey of breaking cycles and helping you heal. If today’s conversation resonated with you and you’re looking for support from a therapist who specializes in attachment and relational approaches, please reach out to my group practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group. Our multidisciplinary team offers therapeutic services for people in New York state, and we offer virtual coaching nationwide. We use evidence-based strategies to help individuals, couples, and parents develop the skills that you need to build safe and healthy relationships, nurture growth, and move through your day with more joy, authenticity, and ease. Go to our website, upshurbren.com, that’s U-P-S-H-U-R-B-R-E N.com. To learn more about our services and to schedule a free 15 minute consultation call to get our recommendation of supportive resources that best aligned with your unique needs, or you can just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast and get a link to schedule your free call. I appreciate you being here, and don’t be a stranger.