Exploring Attachment Styles And Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids.

Exploring Attachment Styles And Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids. Jahanvi Shah & Samia Bano

Want to learn better ways of parenting and achieve that "just right" balance of being nurturing and effective with your kids?

Listen now to this interview with Jahanvi Shah, #ConsciousParentingCoach and #imperfectmom to two little spirited kiddos. Discover how #consciousparenting can transform your relationship with your child by fostering #emotionalintelligence, #healthycommunication, and self-awareness, setting the foundation for raising strong, resilient, balanced, #happykids.

We explore the four primary #attachmentstyles —secure, anxious, ambivalent, and disorganized—and how they play a crucial role in how we relate to others, especially in parenting and intimate relationships.

Plus, gain insight into:

-- how to heal #attachmentwounds

-- how to #overcomefear based parenting

-- how to #breakthecycle of anger and foster healthier connections

-- how to encourage #emotionalgrowth, boundaries, and self-expression in your children

-- and more!

Connect with Jahanvi now at: https://www.authenticallyparenting.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authentically_parenting

For resources and trainings, join the Facebook Group "Conscious Parenting for Moms" at:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/authenticallyparenting/

To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

#consciousparentingtools #HealthyAndHappy #emotionallyintelligentkids #RaisingResilientKids #givelovegetlove #giveloveandsupport #loveandbeloved #givelove #parentingmatters #HealthyHappyKids

Here's the audio version of this episode:

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Full Video Transcript

SAMIA: Hello, Salaam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha, Holah, Ciao, Bonjour, Buna, Privet, Mabuhay, and Dzień Dobry! It's really, really good to be with you again and I know you'll be so happy you've joined us today because we have a really wonderful guest that I am really excited and happy to be connecting with and is Jahanvi Shah who is a Conscious Parenting Coach. Welcome, Jahanvi.

JAHANVI: Thank you, Samia. I'm super excited and thrilled to be here and looking forward to our chat today.

SAMIA: Yes, indeed. And to get us going, Jahanvi, please tell us more about who you are and what you do…

JAHANVI: Absolutely. So I'm a mom of two kiddos, 9 and 6 year old. I live in New York with my husband… and when my daughter was two, I started on my, you know, Conscious Parenting journey. So from there, you know, I decided I want to get certifications... I got certified as a conscious parenting coach and since that has really been my mission to really empower parents with the knowledge and the tool sets… I feel it's so imperative in order to raise a securely attached and emotionally intelligent children. It's like a must... It's not like a choice, it's a must. And I see that parents are searching for better ways to raise their children. So, you know, I get it. We both want to be, we want to be nurturing and effective so that our kids can grow with self-esteem and self-confidence, self resilience... And this conscious parenting is totally rooted in attachment science, nervous system science, neuroscience, biology… And it's so research-based and evidence-based concepts. So I'm super excited about talking small aspect, but a big impactful aspect, about Conscious Parenting today with you.

SAMIA: Yeah... I'm really excited too. You know, actually what you mentioned about wanting to both be nurturing and effective, that just like struck a chord with me because… I don't have children myself but I have lots of nieces and nephews in my life right now at varying ages. We recently had one of my cousins who gave birth so we have a little, few months old baby in the family, but we also have like 10, 11, 12 year olds and so on, so forth. And you know, it makes a difference... Like, you know, when you're not a parent and you're just thinking about how would I love to raise a child? You know, you have all these theoretical ideas. But when you're dealing with the reality of your child, with their particular temperament, character, etc, sometimes you're like, oh my gosh, those ideas are not working.

JAHANVI: Yeah. Oh Gosh, I so relate to that, Samia, because when I became pregnant with my first child, I had told my husband, "Hey, I got this". You know, my background is special education and child development. So like, I feel like I got this down. You know, children in the family love me, everybody, when we gather, everybody comes to me. I got this... And little did I know… you know, when my daughter started to talk and you know, to question things and all, I think I was… I kept hitting a lot of power struggles and you know, a lot of anger came out too. And I was questioning myself, "Hey, I'm not an angry person in general. Why am I getting angry with this two-year-old child?" And it's… that's where it all began, you know, that, okay, I need to learn better ways of parenting because I don't want to put myself to sleep crying and not feeling like a good parent.

SAMIA: Yeah, and that's amazing that you actually had that realization and you did something about it. Because I also know a lot of… people will recognize different challenges in our lives that are making us unhappy. But we just, we're like, oh, just gotta learn to live with it or don't even think about it that much. Honestly, you just kind of, you're just so much just about getting by, getting through, that you don't really give yourself the opportunity to learn how things could be different, how you could be different. And that can, you know, be one of the reasons we remain stuck. So I'm so happy that, you know, you not only realized that you were having that issue, but then you did something about it and, and now you're helping others too. So it's amazing…

JAHANVI: Thank you. Thank you…

SAMIA: You know, Jahanvi, one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about is, you know, the experience of love in the context of loving our children. I've been really thinking a lot about the difference between, you know, the love that a parent has for their child versus love that we may have as a parent towards our child or that love that we may have in any other relationship, honestly. Because like I was mentioning, I'm not a parent, but I feel full of love for so many people and so many kids in my life. But to sort of like begin to explore what is love, how it manifests, how like, particularly when we're talking about our children, like, what are the different ways it will show up and how we experience it in our lives with our children... I don't know if you have any thoughts on that that you just want to start off with.

JAHANVI: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, right? Like how we relate to different people in our lives. And I always wonder that too. And I think I have a lot more clarity today than I would have a few years back… because, you know, through the Conscious Parenting journey and learning all the things I learned, one of the things I learned was about attachment science. So there is like various different attachment styles that we developed when we were kids with our primary caregiver. And based off that, we learn to relate to our adult relationship when we grow up. So there's... It has so much to do with how we were raised and how our… what kind of attachment style we had with our primary caregiver. Because, you know, we learn to be humans and you know how to love and everything by watching somebody, mainly our primary caregiver. So how it was modeled to us, that's how we're going to bring forward. It could be positive, it could be negative. And that's like, that's the recognition, like, when we grow up, like, okay, something is off or no, I think I'm living my most fulfilling life and I see love everywhere, you know, within myself and within everyone else around me. So it's, I think this… the way we were brought up and what kind of attachment style we had ever had with our primary giver, I think impact so much in how we relate to people, you know, when we become adults.

SAMIA: Ah, so tell me more about the different styles. What are they?

JAHANVI: Okay, I'm going to make it as simple as possible because this could get complicated. But there are various attachment patterns that really affect style of relating to even your child, not just your adult relationship, your partner, you know, any close relationship. And I really strongly feel this information is so helpful and it has helped all of my clients who learned this. I think that awareness like, aha moments after aha moments like, oh, now I get it why my husband is doing what he's doing, or now I understand why my parent is like this, or you know, whatever may be the case. So, you know, it's important to know this so that you can kind of call out within yourself, not just that, but also within the person that you are interacting with that… ah, okay, this is what's happening. What you know, what would it look like to take this and engage in a more secure way... Very important to establish a secure pattern of relating. So first of all, I want to like kind of define attachment. So like basically, attachment is this word that we use to describe this complex drive that we have, this proximity and co-regulation within close relationship. So, you know, our attachment system is inactivated in relationship with people that are, you know, kind of distant, our friends or distant relatives or person at the grocery store, right. That's not going to activate our attachments. Our attachment stuff really gets activated with our caregivers, our best friends, our romantic partners, children, our parents. So it's really important to know that because sometimes people think, well, I don't have this problem anywhere else, but with my partner, I do. In my case, it was my child, you know, like, I wasn't getting angry with anyone else, but I was getting angry with my child. So... And actually I used to get angry with my spouse too, but I think my recognition started with my daughter. But with my spouse, you know, it was like, you know, my partner must be doing the… you know, he's the problem, I'm not the problem, you know, so that's, you know, how you relate. But also, you know, your stuff is probably coming out in that particular relationship in a different way than it comes with maybe your friends, with your cousins, with acquaintances. Because our attachment drive is specific to creating that close relationship, belonging, with this a small subset of people that we have in our life. Because if they're attached to everybody in the world, that would be pretty weird. And that's impossible…

SAMIA: You're right. And, you know, you just triggered a memory for me in terms of people that I've gotten angry with in my life. And it's different because, you know, who you get angry with, how you express your anger with them really depends on the relationship. Like, when I was growing up, I had anger issues. And the reality of the situation was that the vast majority of people that I interacted with, within and outside of my family, actually had the impression that I was a very quiet, nice girl… because I was very quiet and I was very well-behaved in general, in like, I was very much into a rule-following, actually. And so that was translated into, oh, she's such a nice girl. But I definitely had a lot of suppressed anger issues. And for me, where that came out was with my little sister. She was one of the only people in the world that I got angry with and angry at. And I think, you know, it had had something to do with, you know, the fact that I felt so powerless in my life as a child, and she was one of the only people in my life that I felt I had some power over and I could get away with being angry at or towards or with… And my sister was, you know, just such a loving… I mean, she continues to be one of the most loving people I know in the world. But even as a child she was like so loving that even no matter how much I pushed her away and things like that, she just kept coming back to me and to love me. And so I felt, I guess a sense of… like, subconsciously like, sense of like I'm okay to be angry with her because I'm not going to lose her. Like that was part of it. Other than the fact that I felt that I could get angry with her from a power relations perspective.

JAHANVI: Yeah. Wow. And I'm curious, when did you recognize that?

SAMIA: That she was one of the only people I got angry with or…

JAHANVI: No, like when, like you recognize that this was the reason?

SAMIA: Oh, that was decades of... I would say like more like in my early to mid-20s. That was when I really started to do a lot of self-awareness work, self-development work, a lot of healing of childhood trauma, and so forth. And so... Yeah.

JAHANVI: Yeah, yeah, I know… It's so, so interesting and so powerful and empowering once we have such awarenesses and it kind of, it makes us think in other relationship then to do differently or maybe shifting our mindset towards, you know… because we know when we approach somebody this way how it feels and when we approach the other way, how it feels and you know, that's how, you know, that's why, I guess that's how we grow and expand and stuff like that. So just to going back to the attachment... So there are four types of attachment styles or patterns. So we'll start off with the secure one. So the secure attachment pattern, in childhood, the adult caregiver is attuned with us, which means they are able to read our emotional cues accurately of, you know, what we are going through. They're able to understand why this child is feeling what they're feeling. They're available, which means they have to be present and they don't have to be present 24/7. I get it, if you're a working parent, I don't want you to freak out. Gosh, that's not possible for me. How I'm going to do it? It's basically a sense of that I'm emotionally available to you. I'm physically available to you… emotionally available to you as a source of support, right. So basically these primary caregivers are consistent, not perfect. It's not about perfectionism, but they're consistent. So they're able to respond calmly most of the time. They're able to offer empathy most of the time, right. And as a result of interacting with this caregiver, this child learns to respond to distress, tender emotions by reaching for the caregiver. This caregiver is supportive source for me and if I don't feel good, I can go to this person and it will help me feel better. So they reach for them, they maintain contact as long as they need to soothe their bodies. And they soothe fairly quickly. You know, kids who have been, you know, raised in this way, they soothe fairly quickly. You know, I've seen… and my children have done it, they will throw tantrums for hours, especially my son, till he developed the secure attachment with him. I mean, we all throw tantrums, even we have adult tantrums too, right. But basically they quickly, they are able to co-regulate. So the coping skills that develop from this attachment experiences are like, I'm in pain, I'm scared, I'm upset, so I will reach, I will absorb, I will receive and get soothe, right. So and I have attached a statement with this kind of style just for your audience to understand better that this attachment style, you know, basically I'm saying… my needs matter and my attachment relationship is a place where I can get support, right. And this is what we want to feel with our partners, our parents, this is what our children want to feel with us, that my need matters and our relationship is a place where I am supported… that's where we want to, you know, that's where we want to give it to our partners, our children, our best friends, that your needs matters and our attachment relationship or, you know, I want to be a place where you can get support.

SAMIA: Yeah.

JAHANVI: So that's secure attachment. Before I move on, do you have any reflection, any thoughts? 

SAMIA: Oh my gosh, of course. Actually, when you were describing secure attachment, it immediately made me think about my relationship with God. I mean, in terms of what I'm trying to achieve in my relationship with God. Because it's so strange... Like, I've grown up in a religious family, but unfortunately, you know, a lot of times, you know, the way we are taught religion and that we experience religion, it's... There's so much fear that gets mixed in. And the way we're taught to relate to God, it's like, oh, God will punish you if you do this wrong, if you do that wrong. And I've been moving away from that way of understanding and relating to God and really working on developing the belief, like, at a deep level that no, God loves me is always there for me, always taking care of me. So no matter what happens, what goes wrong in life, all I have to do is, you know, ask God for help and I'll receive that help. And God is already actually probably trying to help me, and I'm just like, turned away, not paying attention... And it's just a matter of, you know, being like, thank you, you're there. Thank you. And I receive your help. Yay... And it's been, it's been, you know, and it's so... It can be, I mean, you know, because, like, well, secure… security… that sense of security that, you know, you're safe, that you have the help and support you need… Oh, I mean, so critical, so critical. So wheather it's like that we're striving for it in our human relationships, or in my case now I'm trying to develop that with my relationship with my Lord… But it's so critical because without it, you know, it's like your confidence is affected, you know, you're like your... my decisions, you know… like my life was I felt being driven by my fears. Whereas now the more I strive to have this kind of secure attachment, the more free I feel to do, you know, what I need and want.

JAHANVI: Totally. I mean, it's empowering, isn't it? It's so empowering that, you know, nothing can stop me… Fear, I mean, even, you know, with any relationship or parenting, like, when we parent with fear versus faith, you know, like, trust, you know, like trusting… You know, I see so much fear in parents, and I relate to that. I'm a parent, so I get it. And any nurturing, like, you have nieces and nephews, like, you have a nurturing relationship with them. So fear is bound to come. It's natural human emotion. But when we shift that from, from fear to trust, it's a game changer. And that doesn't happen very naturally till we go into develop that secure pattern. So hopefully we had that at a childhood, but I know a lot of us didn't, which is okay, we're all learning… but we can, you know, change our stories and mold more and more towards secure attachment as we heal and do the inner work that we all have been doing. So the next, the first insecure pattern, Samia, is… it develops when the caregiver is inconsistent. You know, he or she is inconsistently available or attuned. And basically we call the name of this attachment is anxious ambivalent attachment pattern. And this is basically a pattern that developed as a child. And the experience is… my primary caregiver or the person that I most rely on is sometimes able to give me attention, attunement, support, but because of some other complex thing in their life or their mental health or their neurobiology, they're also, you know, these other times where they are not available or they are deeply dysregulated in a way that makes it intrusive or overwhelming for my nervous system. The reason that this is a problem, an attachment, in terms of…we are pattern recognizers, if a child is aware of a parent's inconsistency, they aren't able to rely on that pattern of availability, they basically become hyper-vigilant… when their child feels dysregulated, they respond to that emotional state by scanning and clinging as a relational pattern. And what happens is then they protest. And the protest is essentially, I'm going to reach for you and then I'm going to reject everything you offer me because I'm trying to keep you close to me. I'm trying to keep your attention on me. This moment where you are attuning to me and you are offering me something is so relieving to me that I don't want to want it to end. And so I'm not actually going to let myself be fully relieved. I'm going to continue to reject the things that you are doing in hopes that you will keep… in the hopes that you will keep doing them and that you will stay focused on me and not go away. Right? So the inconsistent caregiver might be someone who struggles intermittently with anxiety or depression that is truly debilitating… You know, so we, and I get it, we all have anxiety. That's not going to set your child into an ambivalent attachment pattern. But if your anxiety renders you to, you know, literally not being able to respond to your child, not being able to, you know, listen to anything that they're saying for days and times at times and weeks at a time, then that could do it... So, you know, like for instance, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, where, you know, maybe I'm available to you when I'm working on my drinking and I'm sober, but when I slip back into a nasty pattern, I'm not. And so as a child, you know, as the child becomes vigilant, right, they become deeply vigilant. And so the sense is people… that people are going to leave me. And the sentence that, you know, I have come up with is, I cannot trust other others to care for me. So I must watch vigilantly for any sign of disconnection. And the other piece of this is that these kids often blame themselves. Like, you know, they keep constantly blaming themselves... What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? Right. They're trying to figure out why sometimes I get what I need. And by need, I don't mean, like, you know, material stuff, but the emotional need... and sometimes I don't… And so usually they end up deciding it must be me and I'm doing something wrong here…

SAMIA: Right.

JAHANVI: That's the first insecure one... Go ahead…

SAMIA: Yeah, yeah. No, wow. You can definitely see this happening in life as well. You know, you made me think about… actually one of my friends who… like, I remember one day I was having, from my perspective… like, I love doing debates on various issues. And like, for me, it's really fun when I get into… into an intellectual argument and, you know, I'm doing it from a happy place. And certainly that day I was doing it from a happy place. But at some point, you know, he got serious about it and then things got tense and I was like, whoa, wait, what's going on here? Hold on... Why are we starting to raise our voices and so on and so forth. We don't need to do that. Just like, having fun here… and he was like, "No, no." So he felt like his point wasn't being understood. And then he started to react in that more angry, aggressive sort of manner. And he said, oh, you know, like, when we sort of took a pause and like, tried to figure out, okay, what's going on, let's slow down, etc, it was like, oh, but this... How? Like, you weren't listening to me. I need you to listen to me… you know, and so it's turns out that, you know, he like, when he doesn't feel heard, listened to, then he will create some drama. Because when he creates some drama, then people respond to him, as in pay more attention from his perspective to what he's saying and needing and wanting. I was like, oh, interesting... Okay. Well…

JAHANVI: Yeah, they're seeking for validation, that constant validation... And I relate to that because I still have to watch out for this pattern myself because I'm constantly looking for that assurance. Not from everyone, but, you know, my primary loved ones. I'm constantly seeking that validation. Hey, give me… Give me validation. Like, nothing is enough for me at times. I, you know, I still work on this pattern… and it's so, like, it's so deeply ingrained in you, right. Like, it's so... Sometimes I'm not even aware of it. And I'm like, oh, okay, now I get it. And since I've done the work, I can quickly recognize it and, you know, do what I need to do to shift from that... But it's, you know… these, you know, when…. When the… the ambivalent pattern is they're constantly seeking for validation and assurance and because otherwise it's so painful because they, otherwise they're going to keep blaming for themselves… that something's wrong with me. So once they get that validation from an outsider that they rely on, ah, it's like a fresh breath of air. Like, okay, I’m believed now, I feel better now.

SAMIA: Yeah. You know, it's the part where you seek validation… I don't know what's more sad when I… actually, you know what? It's not a matter of what's more sad. It's that I feel really, really sad now. Like, before, it used to make me angry, but now I feel really, really sad when I… like, okay, I was watching this Indian drama, and this happens a lot in Indian dramas, by the way, but right now I'm thinking about a particular one in which there was this daughter and father. Like, that was the… one of the primary relationships that they kept portraying in the drama, father and daughter. And the dad was definitely not secure… They were definitely not securely attached. There was definitely this inconsistent attachment, ambivalent attachment thing going on with them. And in the daughter's case, what she did was, yeah, she did blame herself. She was like, oh, what have I done wrong? And so that my dad doesn't love me or he's not loving me now or whatever... And so she was constantly trying to excel at this, that, everything because of wanting that praise, that validation, that love from her dad, that maybe this will make my dad happy, and maybe that will make my dad happy... Quite literally, because her dad was very athletically inclined and into, like, mountain climbing or whatever, she decides that in order to make my dad proud of me, I'm going to go climb Mount Everest.

JAHANVI: Yeah.

SAMIA: So she actually goes and she climbs Mount Everest, literally, just so she could make her dad proud of her. And it's like… but is, you know, but then there's still that question mark... Is it actually going to be enough for him? Is he actually going to be proud of me at the end? And how long will that even last? If he is proud for a moment, but then, you know, what if he... then if that is not enough also, what else can I do? And I was like, oh, my God…

JAHANVI: Yeah… I see that a lot in the part of the world we come from, right. Like, we're constantly pleasers. We want to please our parents, we want to please our teachers. We want to be pleasers. We want to make sure everybody around us are happy and not disturbed by us. So we want to be the good girls and make sure everything is in place and nothing is disturbed by us. And it's a constant thing till we learn to take a backseat, take a breather. That's it... It's okay. Hey, you know, because I think first we need to recognize, am I enough for me? Right. Like, we… We don't even go there. Like, I think till we don't get on the healing journey. I don't even go there. You know, Like, I know... Like, I didn't thought of that. I was constantly pleasing people, and I wasn't even realizing I was… that's not the way to live. You know, that was my reality that, you know, I just, you know, has made everybody happy, and that's what I've seen. You know, you serve everybody, and that's the way to live your life. Yeah. That doesn't… wasn't fulfilling. And that's why the anger comes up constantly, because we are not aligned with ourselves the way we are living our lives. And that's why either you go in an anger or a shutdown mode.

SAMIA: Yeah.

JAHANVI: It's so discomforting. It's just so unbearable for us. And we don't even recognize why this is happening to me…

SAMIA: Yeah. And, you know, so if you think about it from what you just said about anger coming up because of this... So in some ways, would it be true to think that if you do find yourself getting angry in this kind of situation where you have this struggle with this ambivalent attachment style, that actually, if you are finding yourself getting angry, in some ways, maybe you're making progress in your own emotional way of dealing with things in the sense that …if you are just, like, people pleasing, people pleasing, people pleasing... you know, there's so much suppression going on of your anxiety and your stress. But when the anger comes up, it's like your inner self being like, no, I can't take that anymore. Like, too much suppression. And so the anger comes up as a way of trying to relieve some of that suppression. So it's actually… you're actually sort of moving in the right direction for you.

JAHANVI: Yeah. So glad you brought that up because you are, you know, we learned in our culture, society, anger is a bad thing. Anger is a yucky thing... You shouldn't get angry... Like, even as a child, like, you know, like I remember people telling me, you know, girls don't get angry and you know, this and that… and you know, in the Conscious Parenting journey I learned, you know, all these, the primal five emotions that we have, Anger is one of them. And it's not a bad thing. Anger is just an emotion that needs to flow through our bodies. Yes, we don't want to hurt ourselves or hurt others in the process of releasing this anger. So we have to learn the right way to release our angers. But you know, you cannot shove it in. You know, like we have been taught to put it underneath the rug or suppress it and don't let it come out. And that's why the anger will come out. Like, maybe not as a child, but then when you're adult… in my case, the anger came out when I was an adult and to my child it came out, you know, and that was a healthy thing. So if I had learned from the childhood how to release like my 2-year-old, my... Well my, now my son is 6 year old, but when he was 2, so much anger, he was getting angry, he was learning how to deal with his anger. So from the get go he's been taught the tools to release his anger in a way that doesn't hurt him or others. We're still working, but I think he has come a long way. Like, he's learned like when he's playing with neighborhood kids and he gets angry instead of hitting somebody, he's like clenching on his fist, like making sounds and getting his wiggler all calmed down so he can come back online. Like, a six-year-old old… I've seen adults not knowing what to do with their anger. And I feel so good seeing my 6-year-old doing the tools that is learned to release his anger in a healthier way and not suppressing it. Like he knows how to put his anger… his boundaries down. Like, he'll say don't do that to me... And then he's going to crunch and make that sounds to get it all off or he'll just start running around and release it. Like, he's learned so many different tools to is in his back pocket so he can use it whenever he needs to instead of hurting himself or others. And you know, I've taught my kids, no, anger is not a bad thing. You cannot suppress it. Let all your emotions out, let your tears out. Like, we've been told not to cry. Don't cry like a baby right how many times have you heard that?

SAMIA: Yeah…

JAHANVI: So these emotions are just a message… it is telling us that, hey, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding... There's a message. There's some old cycle coming up for you. Let's do what we need to do to resolve it and come up with the solution. So it's just a message. It's nothing else.

SAMIA: Yeah. You just made me think about the Pixar movie “Inside Out”, the one with the emotions…

JAHANVI: Yeah. Oh, I love that movie. Yes.

SAMIA: Yeah. How often does it happen in different contexts that, you know, we teach our kids to suppress their emotions and I mean, a lot of times, you know, you're doing it with the best intentions. Like, when in inside out, when the mom was like, oh, let's be happy for Daddy because, you know, daddy's dealing with some stuff. Can we do that? Can we be happy for Daddy? Yes, we can…

JAHANVI: Yeah, yeah. It's like, like, you told about that mother, father and daughter story. Like, you know, we're constantly pleasing. And I start, I started think my daughter, like, she wants to please her daddy so much. Like, she will like, oh, I want to get this. I want to get the orange belt so papa will be so proud of me. I'm like, okay, that's great. Are you proud of yourself? So, like, you know, trying to teach my kids that… make… do things that will make you proud, you know? Yes, Mommy, Daddy will be happy regardless of what you do or not do. But is it going to make you feel… Do it for you not to make daddy happy? You know, And I think she has shifted her statements that the other day she came home from school and said, I'm so proud of myself. And I'm like, oh, she's never said this before. And now she learning new language. She's nine years old now. And so all the stuff I did when she… up till the time she was to all the unconscious think I did, I'm still undoing them... You are not…. But I'm starting, like, she's not becoming. She was, she was starting to become a people pleaser because I was... because she was watching me. And then so we're undoing a lot of things and now she's doing stuff to, to make her happy. It's making her feel proud. And oh, my God, that was like such a, such a delightful moment, you know, as a Conscious Parent that this thing is working. Yay. Yay... Another assurance.

SAMIA: Yeah, it's like developing a secure attachment with yourself.

JAHANVI: Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, that's primary. Yeah, and if this young kids can get it at a young age, this world would be a different world.

SAMIA: Yeah, indeed…

JAHANVI:  So anyway, I think we are on to our last attachment.

SAMIA: What's number 3…

JAHANVI: So the last one is the disorganized attachment pattern…

SAMIA: No, wait, we have only done two. We've done secure attachment and then we... Oh no wait…

JAHANVI: It’s anxious…

SAMIA: Anxious and ambivalent -- are they two different patterns?

JAHANVI: Anxious, and then there is actually a separate ambivalent pattern.

SAMIA: Ah…

JAHANVI: Basically this person is consistently mis attuned or unavailable so that they're unable to accurately read the emotion of their child and then know what to do and know how to soothe them. Like, some… sometimes, you know we see some parents are not skilled. They just don't know what to do… because they were never very exemplified… and this can be dismissive stance. So sometimes the caregiver is, like, you know, feeling our weakness. I don't care what you feel, get over it. I'm going to ignore that, right. Like. Or they just literally like clam up and look the other way and get uncomfortable and try to talk about something happy, happy or they're intrusive, right. So they might be so hyper-vigilant about their child's well being that they're constantly on the edge and constantly looking for and scanning their child for how their child is feeling and is their child rejecting them… and then they… that creates this inconsistent misattunement. But what this child develops as a pattern is that there is no reason to seek my caregiver when I'm upset because I either will be dropped or I will be met with a level of anxiety that increases my distress and doesn't decrease my distress. So they learn to distract themselves. They learn to focus on tasks. You know, they become the doers and you know, the sentence, you know, I've come up with is my needs are a burden and I need to, I need to protect other people from my emotional messiness. So that was the third one and the fourth one and the last one is... Go ahead, your thoughts…

SAMIA: No, no, that it was just… I mean obviously these things are seeming, like, we could have a little bit of each of these kinds of experiences in our life because…

JAHANVI: ...it could be a combination of…

SAMIA: Ah yeah, because it just reminded me of something that I used to do as a child also where… I, like, I had a sense of like not like I like I went... So just to put in context what I'm about to say, I'm a survivor child sexual abuse. But I never told anyone about having experienced that abuse until I was, like, in my late 20s. Well, in the case of my family, I didn't get around to telling them until I was in my late 20s, so but… one of the reasons that I did not share, that I was sort of conscious about, at least as a teenager, one of my anxieties about why I didn't share what I had experienced is because I was so concerned about how it would hurt my parents, and my mom especially, that I was like, no, I don't want to do that to her. I don't want to put her through that stress and anxiety. And, like, I felt a need to protect her in that way. I mean, there was also that element of, yes, I have a lot of shame and guilt, and I don't want to, you know, deal with that. But there was definitely also this element I recognized as a teenager that I don't want my mom to feel hurt when she finds out that I've been through this.

JAHANVI: Yeah. Oh, my heart goes out to you. First of all, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. No child deserves that. Nobody deserves that, in fact. And for the fact you had to keep it inside of you for all these years, that must have been so painful. Like, you know, it probably almost makes you numb, I suppose. Probably makes you… either you just become such a huge rebel or you just become a turtle and just go in your little shell and, yeah, that's... But I'm glad, you know, even later in your 20s, you're able to… you were courageous enough to come out and express and use your throat chakra and let it all out and… Yeah… I know you always wish, like, I wish I had done this sooner, and I wish I had spoken up a lot earlier, but I'm sure you're grateful regardless…

SAMIA: Yeah. Where I am at now in life, I know that I did the very best I could with what I knew and what I had at every age and stage of my life. And I spoke up when I was able to speak up. Like, I couldn't have done it sooner. I mean, I could have, theoretically, but I wasn't ready to do it sooner. So, you know, there's times when there are people who... Or, yeah, people who sort of push through their fears and do it anyway. I've never been good at denying my fear. I very, very, like, controlled by my fear. So for me, I had to get to that point where the fear had diminished enough that it felt under control enough that I could do this. And so it was just about, you know, going through that journey of learning to, you know, release the blame and the guilt and the judgment… and all of that, you know, definitely helped reduce the fear as well. But then also learning to have more, you know, healthy relationships in my life where, you know, I'm not taking responsibility for how other people are thinking and feeling… recognizing that, no, I'm not responsible for other people's thoughts and feelings. I can only be responsible for my own. And so once I... That was a hard lesson to learn… but once I learned that and I started trying to implement that more consistently...

JAHANVI: A lot of freedom.

SAMIA: Right… So then it's like, okay, okay.

JAHANVI: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm so glad you are openly talking about it. I mean, you're giving courage to so many, so many kids and adults now, you know, who's gone through something like this. And so you're giving them courage. So, you know, I'm really admiring that about you.

SAMIA: Thank you.

JAHANVI: But now you, like, let it all out and you're like, again, you know, you're, you know, just like, I'm wanting to help other parents, you know, you are helping so many other, you know, other people and, you know, make change. Changemaker as your podcast is... Yeah. So that's just beautiful, beautiful...

And the next insecure one is disorganized attachment pattern. And this is where, you know, a lot of intensity comes in your childhood, you know, through your adult caregiver. Basically, it's frightening to the child, right. This could be if the caregiver has been abusive mentally, you know, have that mentality of abusiveness. If they have severe addiction, they're neglectful in some significant way.. there's mental illness, like, maybe schizophrenia, like severe bipolar disorder. But the caregiver feels threatening to the child, so that puts the child in a terrible bind. You know, where we're so designed, right, as human beings to seek our caregivers when we are scared or in dangers. In these attachment experience, when the child feels scared or in danger, they're often feeling scared or in danger as a result of that caregiver. And so where do they go? There is nowhere to go... So they respond to distress and tender emotions by either blowing up, so, you know, going into that fight response or going into that fight response. It's either fight or flight... Running away or shutting down or blowing up and disassociating that kind of faint, sometimes freeze response, you know, you just numb. They're unable to utilize that co-regulation because it doesn't exist in their caregiver. So that, you know, the shut-off or blow-up are kind of their two options, which are so survival based and which is why this, I believe, is the most painful human experience. And Samia, I have worked with some moms over the years who are combat vets who have had terrible, terrible sexual assaults, sexual traumas, abuse… The experience of the person who is supposed to love you and nurture you and care for you being the saber tooth tiger in the room… I'm not sure there's anything, there is more disorienting and oh, I'm getting goosebumps that I'm saying that… or destructive, you know, in all of life, you know… it is immensely painful and disorienting. And so this pattern leads that then, you know, recreate that pain disorientation in your adulthood, right. And the sentence that I always say for this pattern is, I'm bad and the relationships are dangerous.

SAMIA: Yeah.

JAHANVI: And you know, so, you know, something, something to think about, right. And just to reflect on these four categories and think where we stand and where our relation, where our partner or our parents stand, and how our relationship or attachment style is developing with our kids, right. So, yeah… so that's four styles in a nutshell. I know I gave so much out there and I probably didn't give you or your audience time to process this all, but we can definitely do more. Another podcast to process it all. But…

SAMIA: Yes, no, I think it's great. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared and I'll be so happy for you to come back and we can keep talking… and you know, our audience can always reach out to you. So if you're listening, yes, you know what? We will be dropping Jahanvi's links in the show notes, so reach out to her. You don't have to wait for another episode on this show to learn more with her and connect with her... Is there any, any last thoughts you're having, Jahanvi? I feel like I have more questions…

JAHANVI: I feel like, I'm leaving you and your audience with, you know, so much and not kind of giving… which I hate to do, but I know we are time-constrained, but I just want to leave your audience off by saying, you know, the beauty of attachment research is that we have the capacity to move far… move towards more secure pattern of relating, right. So there are the people who are lucky enough to inherited that pattern which knock on the wood, really. I'm hoping that's our children, the next generation. That's what we want to offer them. And then there is those of us who did not have that. And we can put the work into learning secure patterns. And in the attachment research, when someone gets to a place where they're really shifted their pattern from an insecure style to a secure style, we call that earned secure pattern of relating... So it's definitely possible. And you know, if every… if you and your audience is interested, next time we can certainly go into how do you, how do you start to develop secure attachment? You know which could be our first, first few steps into this, you know, developing a secure attachment…

SAMIA: Yes. You know, both you and I, Jahanvi, are examples of the fact that change is possible. You know, you have been on your change journey, I've been on my change journey. And you know, really, we are talking to a community of change-makers. We believe in change. We know this can be done. Change can happen… And we can make it more fun and easy too, if you have… especially if you have the right help and support. So, again, thank you so much Jahanvi…

JAHANVI: Appreciate it. It was wonderful chatting with you.

SAMIA: Yeah…

JAHANVI: Thank you for having me.:)