The Transformative Potential of Understanding Attachment Styles

00:02 Jeffrey Besecker This is The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker. Connection, that divine spark that unites us all, not only with each other, but to everything. It's said you can discern the character of another by the company that they keep, our relationships growing stronger when we are both willing to understand the other, and that love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. From the level of consciousness, we are all united. That is, until we create the disconnect from our divineness. Our early childhood associations and conditionings can lead to struggles in forming healthy attachment styles, shaping our perceptions of love, trust, and emotional security, and influencing our ability to establish secure connections throughout our lives. Today, we explore both the spiritual journey to healthy connections and the mental processes that sometimes hinder them. Tune in to find out how holding on to what we love is often a process of letting go, when we return to The Light Inside. We'd like to offer a shout out to our affiliate matching partner, Podmatch.com. Podmatch is the revolutionary podcasting matching system driven by AI. As an industry leader in podcast guesting and hosting, they are a go-to solution for creating meaningful podcast interactions. Podmatch.com makes finding the ideal guest or host effortless. Stop by and visit our affiliate link today at www.thelightinside.us. What do a monk and a retired neurosurgeon have in common when it comes to teaching us about forming healthy relationships? Simple. They both understand the fundamental element connections play when we bond with those we love and share our lives with. When it comes to creating healthy relationships, the ones that truly nourish and fill us up, the ones that light us up inside, although there is a spectrum of attachment styles, studies show that people who are securely attached have the healthiest relationships. And it's the type that everyone should strive for. As we will learn today, it's often not what we hold on to that shapes our relationships the most. It's what we're willing to surrender or let go that brings us together the most. Born into a family of Vedic yogis, our first guest, Madhu Dasa was hungry from a very early age to gain a deeper meaning and purpose for his life. Although first taking the insights of this ancient wisdom and its foundations for granted, a divine revelation at the age of 16 led him to the profound awareness only a Buddhist monk could aspire. Today, he shares his wisdom, giving us the insight that when it comes to building profoundly meaningful relationships, although secure emotional attachments matter, it's what we are willing to let go of that truly binds us together in unity and love. Matt Hu, I'm excited to discuss with you today how healthy social attachment serves as an essential element of our mental, physical, social, and spiritual journey. Healthy attachment serves as the foundation for building secure relationships by providing a sense of emotional safety and trust. In contrast, insecure attachment styles can lead to difficulties in forming trusting and fulfilling relationships, hindering emotional well-being and contributing to heightened stress and mental health issues. As our jumping in point today, can you explain the foundational role that healthy attachment plays in building secure relationships and how it influences our social interactions and emotional bonds with others?

03:48 Madhu Dasa Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I want to appreciate you for holding such a great sacred space for us to come together and talk about these topics that can really change our lives because this topic, as you know better than most, is relevant to only about 100% of humans out there. So I'd like to first start by establishing a very simple understanding of what we're referring to and talking about here, and that is that Relationships are arguably the most important thing in this world, and if we talk about anything of value in this world, ultimately it's going to come down to a sense of love and belonging, which only happens with two sentient entities having an engaged interaction, aka a relationship. So when we're talking about these types of attachment styles, from a very simple, almost commonsensical approach, we first look at, okay, if relationships are the most essential and important thing that provides a sense of love and well-being, then what we want to do is understand the different types of dynamics amongst those different types of relationships. specifically being what causes friction, what does not allow harmony within those types of relationships, a.k.a. two different egos, two different people with two different conditionings coming together and things not always perfectly clicking into place. So when we're talking about these different types of attachment styles and the effect on the psyche, it's essential to understand that, okay, us as entities, we have conditioning, but conditioning is modifiable. We can change the mind. If this mind couldn't change, what a situation that would be. And so when it comes to understanding these types of interactions or relationships and then the challenges that come with them, we can ultimately boil them down to a few different types of, you could say, conditionings that have been developed in a way that either cause a desire towards more grab, give me, give me, and more nah, keep your distance, which are both two sides of the same coin. So both sides are somewhat I don't want to say healthy unhealthy in a judgmental sense, it's just both of them are defense mechanisms that keep us safe. So what we want to look at here is how do we understand that there are unique conditionings in such a way that it affects our relationships so that we can do everything that's within our control to make sure that relationships have as much opportunity for synergy as possible. because they're what's gonna provide us the deepest happiness, the deepest love. You know, everyone will choose a healthy relationship with someone that they love as opposed to, I mean, even health. People will disregard health relationship, disregard their spiritual practice of a relationship, disregard their business or their purpose. Like, relationships are the thing. So, anyway, to set the stage, that's primarily what we're gonna be exploring here, because once we can figure that out, once we have some good association, and a way to appreciate and actually extract good association with those around us, then we're going to be happy, ultimately.

06:47 Jeffrey Besecker That tiptoes us up nicely to looking at what is our best or highest state of self or attachment and our more challenged, perhaps avoided attachment styles. And how do they impact individuals in their social interactions or their ability to form secure relationships?

07:06 Madhu Dasa Well, when it comes to this particular philosophy of attachment styles, I've always appreciated John Gottman's style of elaborating on these points and in brief, I'm a very simple person. I like simple words and even though I have the desire to speak, find some cool fancy words to use, I think it's always helpful for myself to break into really simple terms and that is that when we're talking about these attachment styles which are usually broken down into three, secure, avoidant and anxious. We're looking at secure being those types of relationships that were formed at a young age that provide, think of it in terms of a satisfaction and contentment with or without engagement, with or without engagement of others. In other words, one is peaceful and content doing their thing, somewhat being an individual. Whereas when you go into the direction of avoidant style, avoidant personality styles, that's where the defense mechanism and the conditioning has been developed in such a way as that to protect myself, I'm going to keep some distance because the closer I get and the more vulnerable I get to you, the more chance there is for you to hurt me and for me to be unsafe. Whereas on the other side, that anxious attachment style is What can I do to get validation from you to make sure I know you ain't going nowhere and that you still love me and that you still care about me? And even there's different philosophies behind one wound, psychological wound being the desire of worthiness, feeling unworthy, whereas the other wound is wanting the desire for being lovable or being worthy of love. And so in other words, when it comes to the anxious attachment style, it's typically a desire to feel lovable. to feel loved and feel worthy of love ultimately, whereas the avoidant attachment is the desire for feeling worthy and proving worth. And from those core wounds of feeling unworthy or feeling unlovable, it causes our mind in order to keep us safe to either grab, come, come, come, come, come, or get away, get away, get away. But both are ultimately defense mechanisms that keep us from having to be vulnerable so we don't have to get hurt.

09:14 Jeffrey Besecker It's a very simple and direct way of illustrating how we sometimes use that emotional avoidance to just simply disconnect and disengage, stepping away. For the sake of positive reinforcement, can you summarize the core assets needed to establish a secure attachment style from that perspective?

09:33 Madhu Dasa Yeah, we always want to take things from a conscious mind first in terms of a space where we can deliberate and actually choose how we want to go into a subconscious mind where it becomes a second nature from a reaction. And the way that we can at least move in the direction of secure attachment, whether one perfects it or is fully in there or not, whatever the case might be, the way one can consciously start to develop these types of secure attachment tendencies. are number one, having an understanding of self as whole. The challenge is if we have a conception of self that is a dented can philosophy, as they say, I'm flawed by nature or there's an inherent intrinsic problem or issue with me, then no matter what we're going to do for the rest of our life, we're going to try to fill that hole with something. So, starting from, you could say, arguably the deepest level would be the level of the self, the level of the ego, and developing a value system or philosophy, understanding that the self, the soul, the spirit, whatever vernacular terminology we might want to be using there, is in itself perfect and complete. and needs nothing else because from that understanding we can build a conscious secure attachment. Whereas, again, even if it's unconscious, even if we haven't took the time to think about it, we might still feel like, oh, I need something else to be whole. So the fundamentals understanding, okay, from the level of the ego or the self, I must understand that I am fundamentally I don't need anything external. From that place and from that you could say philosophical understanding, then we can start to adapt the values that are in alignment with that philosophy, which will ultimately provide a type of secure attachment style, which in turn means acting, let's start with saying practicing, by acting in such a way that we live our life in a way that we can prove to ourself or you can say provide a type of internal external evidence that allows us to understand and accept that reality that we are quote-unquote whole or we are in we don't need anything necessarily outside of ourself or anything artificial. Obviously going back to our initial point relationships which are The reason why we've been exploring these things is we're just talking about our conditioning and others and how that interacts are obviously the ways that we enhance the quality of our life. At the same time, we're not dependent on relationships for wholeness or satisfaction. As opposed the way I like to example I've heard my teachers explain is that just like in the ocean, it's not just an ocean, it's actually a conglomerate of unlimited amounts of little H2O particles, which are whole and complete in themselves, but they are within the ocean. So the ocean is not one and it's, it's, I mean, I don't even know what the term quadrillions, a Google, I think a Google is one followed by a million zeros. Anyway, that many drops of H2O particles within the whole. So in that same way as if we can be whole and understand we're whole and then different practices, maybe we can break into some of the practices that establish that quote unquote wholeness and understanding that, okay, I'm whole, I don't need anything else. However, my purpose or my deepest satisfaction is going to come with connection with other wholeness, like one drop of water back in the ocean as opposed to a drop all on its own. So wholeness within community for the sake of simplicity.

12:57 Jeffrey Besecker What a great way to shape up, you know, how that wholeness allows us to view ourselves in a way that emotionally regulates, allowing us to kind of affirm and embrace our imperfections. We all kind of get that notion that we're trying to reach that best self, but we have to balance that with that intrinsic knowledge that there are imperfections. So looking at that idea of emotional regulation, could you elaborate, Matt Hu, on the concept of emotional dysregulation and how it serves as a role in inhibiting healthy attachment patterns?

13:33 Madhu Dasa Absolutely, and I think you said it really eloquently well in terms of a stepping stone into that answers. Being that we are whole, there's just conditioning that comes on top of that causes that type of imperfection or at least perceiving some type of imperfection. And so as far as this, you can say emotional dysregulation, again I always, for better or for worse, I always like to break down the parts to make sure you see the premise is understood, is that when we're talking about emotional regulation or dysregulation, we're talking about everything from a subconscious perspective. The oldest written philosophy we have on the mind, it comes from India, it's called the Vedic literatures. oldest written books in the world called the Rig Veda and Sama and Yajur and Atharva Vedas and they talk about, and don't worry about the Sanskrit guys, but the idea is that they talk about the mind in three categories or three buckets and of which many of those has translated into modern psychology but we have the ego which is called the Ahamkara. the sense of self, they actually often translate it into English as the false ego because it's a conception of self that one covers that true perfect wholeness with, all these different labels and conditionings. Then we have the conscious mind which is the discerning mind, it's the logical mind, the ability to make deliberate response to life as opposed to just reacting to life, which that reacting to life, that It happens on a subconscious level or in Sanskrit, this is called the manasap. It's called the mind. It's the emotional reactionary mind. It's just what's trained, which we're grateful for it. That's what allows us to get in the car and not have to think of every single, okay, now I gotta slightly lift my foot and then I gotta, then I gotta, things go on autopilot or writing with a pencil or whatever it might be. We want a lot of things to go on autopilot, most things actually. However, we want to make sure that these things are in alignment. So our subconscious mind, conscious mind, and then ego manasa buddhir and ahamkara in Sanskrit. So when we're talking about emotional regulation, dysregulation, we're talking about it on the subconscious or sometimes they call it unconscious level. And that means it's trained. It's in a situation where we are not, it's not in a conscious place. We're not attentive to what's happening there. It's just happening via programming. So when it comes to, again, it's the same thing, whether it's emotional regulation or dysregulation, It's the way that we've trained ourself based on our philosophical understanding in alignment with our values to react to life and situations. Typically on how we learn from whoever raised us, usually our parents or whomever might have raised us, up into the age of about seven where we're just our subconscious mind taking in information, how our parents or whoever raised us reacted and responded, we learned how to react and respond according to those tendencies. So, you know, if one of the parental figures say, you know, when they got mad, they punched a hole in the wall, we consciously or unconsciously learn, oh, that's what you do when you get mad. I mean there's a bunch of examples of directions that could go and why our minds give meaning to the emotional reactions we see in our parental figures but ultimately we grab and choose okay this is how one reacts to this situation, this is how one responds to this situation and then eventually after seven when one starts to develop that conscious mind up until different people have different perspectives, but let's just say the mid-20s on average where the mind is still quote-unquote plastic. As we're developing that mind, that's when we are starting to attribute those qualities to ourself that we've learned from a young age and then we react to life from emotional level as opposed to from a conscious and deliberate level. So the first step in understanding that and then frankly overcoming that is taking things to a space of awareness, understanding how do I react on a conscious level and then from there we can start to actually look at it and then change our neural pathways in such a way so that we, that same stimuli might happen but we change the response as opposed to going to a, you could say, emotionally dysregulated space.

17:43 Jeffrey Besecker How we approach the circumstances of any particular situation often determines the results that we gather or the outcomes that we create. Our energetic fields of being are infinitely subjected to the persuasive power of influence, and what we see or observe is often precisely, to quote the often-worn axiom, what we get. As humans, we live in social relationships shaped by the actions of approach and avoidance. With both being crucial for normal physical and mental development, survival, and well-being. Approach being essential in our friendships, seeking new opportunities, and problem solving. While avoidance includes such instances as avoiding dangerous situations, recognizing unhealthy relationships, and being aware of potential adverse threats. Our guest, retired neurosurgeon Gary Simmons, is stepping into a new phase of his illustrious career. Now as an author, Gary's latest novel explores the emotional specter that is burnout through the eyes of a struggling neurosurgeon. Shedding light on the role of our neurological processes in social avoidance, today he explains how this becomes an essential component in creating healthy, lasting relationship bonds. Gary, although the connectivity of the nervous system is still well beyond our reach of full understanding, in what ways does it contribute to our ability to form healthy connections throughout our relationships?

19:08 Gary Simonds I may be able to shed some light. I don't know if I'll have all the answers for you, but I think there is plenty to hypothesize about. Well, we have potentially a lot to cover. And first of all, I just want to thank you for having me, Jeffrey. I didn't say that in the opening there. I just got into the narcissism of talking about myself. But thank you very much for having me and for doing this and working on this component of human interactions. I think it all very much relates to what I've been interested in through the years and a lot of other neuroscience directions in that I guess kind of first and foremost, not looking at it from the neuroconnectivity component, just what we know about a healthy mental life is relationships interacting with one another, being connected, particularly good, strong, healthy connections between one another, is really important for healthy human minds, for continuing to function well. And it's on multiple levels, but in the burnout world, we certainly know that diminishing relationships is one of the symptoms of burnout and certainly adds to burnout. Whereas, you know, if you can maintain healthy interactions, healthy relationships, it helps build resilience against burnout. Similarly, it even, I mean, it has a lot to do with brain health overall. We know, for example, that maintaining healthy relationships throughout life is somewhat protective against dementia. Not that it's going to prevent it for everybody, but it is one of the risk factors for dementia is to have diminished or lower levels of healthy relationships with other beings. So it's intertwined in all this is the need for human beings to be connected and to have healthy relationships with other people. It doesn't have to be thousands of people, but it should be with the people that you care about.

21:28 Jeffrey Besecker That role of connection and community is so essential for our overall health and well-being. How does social avoidance differ from regular social interactions in terms of our neurological processes?

21:41 Gary Simonds There is not necessarily, I'm not going to be able to tell you that I know actual neurological connections that are missing, but you can certainly hypothesize, and I think Coming particularly out, I think, of depression research and chronic stress research, we know that chronic stressors change our brains. I mean, they structurally and physiologically and connectivity-wise change the structures of our brains. If I could digress just for a second, Jeffrey, I think we often think of the brain almost like a computer in that you're born, it's all been set up, all the little wires have been connected, all the little capacitors and You know, the insulation, all that, everything's been all connected up and that's the way it is. That's what you've been given and that's what you work with. The reality is the brain is changing all the time. All the time. Now, you can't necessarily grow a lot of new neurons. We know you can grow some in certain areas of the brain like the hippocampus. But for the most part, you're not really growing new neurons, but what you're doing is changing how the neurons are communicating with each other all the time. I mean, it is an absolute ongoing process throughout our whole life, and much of it has to do with what components of the brain are we using a lot? Are we reinforcing these connections? And not only do you reinforce the connection, you change the actual connections, what are called the synapses. You change the receptors of neurotransmitters. We've all heard of dopamine and maybe serotonin and that sort of thing, but just your ability of one neuron to catch more of those neurotransmitters than before can change. And then the whole structure of how a neuron receives messages from other neurons can change depending on how we use these various networks in our brain. So, on the positive side, if you're really using them well, if you're out there, you're engaged, you're interacting, life is good, you're getting food when you need it, you're getting happiness when you need it, kind of all these positive networks are being reinforced and strengthened, the connections between the neurons are strengthened. But if you go in the opposite direction and you're subjected to chronic stress, chronic bad things, hardships, that sort of thing, disappointments, The opposite can occur. You actually lose connections. You lose even the structural framework for one neuron to talk to another across large areas of the brain. But there are certain areas that are involved, particularly with our reward systems and our emotional systems, that seem to be very vulnerable to this. And so there are areas like the amygdala, the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex, all of which get involved in the stuff that make us happy and the stuff that make us sad. And if you continue to reinforce, you actually may even lose neurons. We can see it on MRIs. They've seen it in pathological studies that people with chronic depression, for example, lose a significant amount of neurons and supporting cells in areas like the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus and that sort of thing. Whereas Interestingly, the amygdala, which is an emotional supercharger, if you will, actually grows under these stresses, and that may not be very good. And there's another area, really, it's not a very well-known area, but it's called the lateral habenular nucleus. gets involved and kind of down-regulates everything. Anyway, long story short, and sorry for kind of going into the weeds there, but… You jumped right in ahead to the next two questions, so I'm glad we jumped into those weeds. Well, the more this stuff goes on, to get back to your original question, the more this stuff goes on, the less able we are to engage. The prefrontal cortex has a lot to do with motivation and perceiving the outcomes of our actions. And so you can lose a lot of motivation and therefore, if this goes on enough and you lose those circuits, you are going to withdraw. And then it becomes self-reinforcing. It becomes a cycle, if that makes sense. Yes.

26:35 Jeffrey Besecker What happens on a neurological level when an individual uses avoidance as a coping mechanism to deal with the discomfort of social interactions?

26:45 Gary Simonds Yeah, I think the stuff that I was just talking about is what's going on. And the avoidance behavior even is that you have to ask yourself at some point, you know, what came first, the horse or the cart or the chicken or the egg or whatever the metaphor is, you know, what came First, are you in an avoidance behavioral cycle out of choice, and then that's reinforcing these negative circuits? Or are you in that avoidance because of negative circuits? I think they start to get lost in one another. And there's another even element to this, Jeffrey, that goes one step beyond, which I think is in some ways terrifying, but certainly fascinating, is being in these situations even may affect our genes. There's a whole science of epigenetics, and it's not the genes themselves, but it's kind of your system's ability to turn the genes on or off. And there's something that they call methylation that goes on of the DNA that can block your ability to read the DNA and make proteins that may be very necessary. And so there's evidence that chronic stress and chronic avoidance and the stuff that we're talking about can actually change our ability to read our DNA. And that can get passed on even at least for one generation. So if things are really rough going now, that can even be passed on to our children. The flip side to it I think which should be encouraging is this fact that the brain never stops changing and therefore you can potentially shift all this, you can potentially work on it and push it in a better direction, reinforce the right pathways and improve, increase your connectivity in the right areas of the brain, increase the signaling between the right neurons, if you will, and actually improve.

28:55 Jeffrey Besecker It's interesting to observe that role that our DNA plays. I just watched a great program on the Gaia channel looking at that role that our DNA and that protective sheath that is formed as a result of that, forming that very physical shield to that energetic reaction, interaction.

29:16 Gary Simonds Yeah, and our genes, our DNA is kind of similar to what I said about our brain. You kind of think, oh, they're just there, and your DNA is there, and it just does its thing, and it's pretty set in stone. It's going to do this, and it's going to do that, and it's going to do it at certain times. And the reality, that's that's getting modified all the time by our experiences and our environment. So it's not static. We may not be changing the gene itself, but we're changing our ability to read it.

29:47 Jeffrey Besecker So from that aspect, how does the brain's reward system become involved in the cycle of avoidance and how does it contribute to the reinforcement of these behaviors?

29:58 Gary Simonds Well, the reward system depends on a lot of things and some of these structures that we were just talking about all come into play. And it's a complex dance. And to be honest with you, Jeffrey, we pretend we know a lot about it. But we know a lot about it at a 50,000 foot view. We see regions of the brain light up, do their thing or change on MRI scans or functional MRI scans or tractography or that sort of thing. But we see these things on these marvelous scans we have. But what's really going on is way down on a super microscopic level. between millions of neurons with billions of connections. So to pretend that we've got it, we know exactly what is working and what's not working, is a stretch. But we do know that there are various areas of the brain that are very much involved in these reward systems and they tend to use certain types of neurotransmitters. Again, the very popular one is dopamine, but there are plenty of others that are involved in this and plenty of other structures. They tend to be structures related to what's called the limbic system with the hippocampus and the amygdala. part of the cingulate gyrus and parts of the brain stem, the ventral tegmental area, raphe nucleus and stuff like that, just various parts and they're communicating with this very high function part of our brain, what we call the executive functions of our brain, you know, the stuff that really makes us us in the prefrontal cortices And they're all interacting. They're doing, like I said, a minuet of which we have no clue at the cellular level how complicated that really is. But we do know, again, when subjected to chronic stress, for example, and chronic hard times, several of these components start withering away, if you will. They are not functioning at their best. Whereas other areas that are involved in, as you say, avoidance, recognizing things that cause us pain and distress may actually strengthen. So the amygdala, which has a lot to do with fear and stress reactions, may actually get stronger in its signaling. This lateral habenular complex also gets stronger in its firing and it kind of shuts down some of the standard reward centers that we have in the brain. So, the reward system in general is one that notices that certain things that we do, certain actions that we take, result in pleasant experiences or safety or whatever, and the true pleasant feelings that we get in the brain from some of these things. They come from endogenous opioids and cannabinoids and stuff like that. But the dopamine circuits kind of are looking for that and then they kind of drive us to seek further reward when we recognize that certain things work very well for us. But, if we're disappointed, we find that we work real hard at something or we've tried real hard and we're not getting a reward, that system tends to get shut down by these other systems, the lateral abdominal and the amygdala and all. So again, what we do is we either reinforce things that our brain is recognizing, make us feel good, or we pull away. And you could easily see that affecting how we interface with the world. If, A, every time we interface with the world, we interface with other people, we get a negative experience early on, so you think of a miserable childhood, for example, abuse in childhood, that sort of thing. Well, we're shutting down all the reward circuits that we normally would get from interacting on a positive level, on a happy level, and we're in avoidance, as you say. That system is there. You gotta have both. You gotta have a system that says, whoa, You know, don't go there. It's dangerous. You should be afraid of this. And you should have a system that says, hey, this is great. This makes us feel good. This contributes to our health. But if you continue to recycle and reinforce these negative circuits, they're going to be stronger. They're going to be bigger. That is how your brain is going to interface with the world going forward.

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38:09 Madhu Dasa What a great question, all great questions here. I would say if we were to pick a fundamental, I'm going to go with a negative core belief or you could say a function of what it is. It's a belief that we have agreed to, usually on an unconscious level, which then causes again either healthy interactions or unhealthy interactions. The first negative belief to overcome in order to again move towards a more secure situation in life. is the acknowledgement that the mind is number one, only trying to keep us safe. Like that's its only job is it's doing what it thinks is going to keep us safe. And then number two, once we've acknowledged that understanding the mind doesn't actually know what's best, regardless of whether it's trying to keep us safe or not. It's just going to do what it's going to do. And so the first practice to accept, in other words, start to embed into your life and into your day-to-day practices and habits would be understanding that you are in control of the mind as opposed to the mind being in control of you. If we believe that whatever our mind comes up with is true, which we do, it's frankly, it's just unconscious. The mind has an opinion, it says, I like this, I don't like this, and we just accept, we don't necessarily challenge that idea. If we can start to challenge, it doesn't have to be every little action of the mind, that will become exhausting pretty quickly, but some of those bigger beliefs. that come up, and acknowledging, okay, I'm in control. The real me, the self, the spirit, the unit of consciousness that I am, that's different than the body, and how do I know it's different than the body? It's because, God forbid I lose an arm, I'm not less of a person. If I lose an ear, I'm not, it's not like if there's less of the body, there's less of me. No, I am me, and I have a body. aka biomechanical robot. And I also have a mind, that's why you can discern between different, you can observe the mind, you're not bound by it. So if we can start simply acknowledge as a ground zero, I am in control of my mind, my mind is not in control of me, and again having that type of stance, then from there what we can start to do is have remeditated beneficial practices. And I mean there's a long list of what that might look like according to different psychophysical natures be it everything from reading and consuming healthy content that then changes the mind to different types of meditations to different I mean it's a long list of the specific types of practices we can start to do to retrain the mind to move in the direction of a more secure attachment arguably one of the most important being going out and stepping outside your comfort zone to be with quality humans, people who are like-minded that you can have an engaging feeling of love, respect for. But the main thing is we have to start with that understanding. Otherwise, when our mind comes up with all these limiting beliefs, you can't do that. No, you're not good enough, whatever it might be. If we're consciously or unconsciously believing that, we are not going to do it. The person who doesn't lose weight is the person who says, I'm not gonna lose weight. The person who doesn't make the money is the person who says, I can't make the money. Until we overcome just that mental block itself, it's going to be really hard, arguably impossible to sustainably achieve whatever we want, be it a secure attachment or not. And ultimately, again, that comes down to practices that create a sense of wholeness within. And I typically advise meditation practices around that. But of course, there's a long list of other things we could do.

41:31 Jeffrey Besecker As you mentioned, that role of ego and how those ego filters often step in as avoidant coping mechanisms. In that regard, then they become oftentimes defensive behaviors. From your perspective, what are some of those defensive or protective mechanisms we sometimes use to shield ourselves from that emotional dysregulation?

41:54 Madhu Dasa I've seen before, my wife and I often use, it's called this emotion wheel, and it's a wheel of different, you could say, starting with some of those more visceral and easily identifiable emotions, say like sadness or anger, whatever the case, fear. And then going into, you could say, more specified emotions within those. And I think, anyway, there's a bunch of versions of this. Anyone could even just Google, you know, emotion wheel, and you'll see a bunch of different options there. And by looking at said list of examples of emotions, anyone could be able to identify a few directions that they Now obviously there's various types of conditionings and whether you take it, I mean there's a lot of ways to categorize conditionings. I mean people use everything from astrology to the Enneagram to human, I mean there's a long list of ways to categorize that but ultimately we know that different psychologies respond and react negatively in different ways, have different strengths and different weaknesses. And so I think it's important for people to have a word that they can associate with the feelings that come in response to those negative emotions and those negative programmings, be it avoidant or attachment, and knowing what that looks like. Because if we keep it general, it's still helpful. Like, this makes me sad. I get sad and then I get… Like, I don't want anyone around me. And that's it. Like, okay, that's a good start. But the more we can bring more, you could say, awareness and meaning behind our responses, an example might be, okay, my avoidant attachment tendencies may kick in. And then what I want to do is I notice my barriers start to go up and I become cold, maybe a little mean. And let's be an example for one person's very common avoidant attachment styles. I become cold, distant and mean, almost like lock up the heart, put a couple, you know, steel frame doors and lock it up and then I become cold and then maybe I have a stone wall or whatever the case might be. To the extent that we can identify our specific patterns there, then we can again start to reverse engineer and ultimately find out that initial trigger that caused the many examples of ways that we can negatively respond. Because again, if we can find that initial trigger that caused me to Screw you man, whatever it might be. Then what we can start to do is, again from a conscious level, is talk ourself down and do practices I like to call relievers. Practices that once we step outside of that core self, for those of you listening, I'm drawing like an invisible line across my face here. It's like we have like our centered and this is when we're in our core, we're present, we're attentive. We all know what it's like when we're like connected, we're dropped in, we're in flow. And then when we step outside of that, that's when we get into these types of negative behavioral patterns and also negative cognitive behavioral patterns, of course, but we step outside of that and then we want to have a series of practices that pull us back to center, which again is going to be unique for each and every individual. things that ultimately give us pause, that allow us a little bit of space between the stimuli and response. So we can choose how do I want to respond to this? So that as opposed to locking down or bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, or grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, whatever that tendency might be, we can now ask yourself, wait, I've chosen, I've thought about this before. I know how I actually want to respond when the stimuli comes up. Now I have a choice. Let me practice that. And then just like anything over time, as you practice that, it becomes second nature ultimately.

45:21 Jeffrey Besecker You mentioned that center line, you know, from the Vedic tradition, the chakras being our energy or power cord essentially that runs down the middle of us, the center of our energies. When we speak of centering ourselves, merely aligning that flow of energy so it is actually flowing. that act of labeling emotions. I was in a great conversation on LinkedIn yesterday about how that task can be challenging at times simply because we're not empowered with that social learning, with the language or knowledge to name our relationships first or what is a relationship to name our relationship and our emotions. in and of itself. We struggle sometimes to do that because that's not a common language in our vernacular.

46:08 Madhu Dasa Yeah, and it's interesting because there's two opinions. Some people say don't give it name, don't give it meaning, but the challenge with that is all we ever do is give meaning to everything. That's how we, like the way we perceive life is we attribute meaning to things, which is what then attributes our sense of values and what's actually important to us because this means more good, this means less good, or whatever the case might be. And so the benefit of actually giving language, which again, language is just the ability so that we can all attribe meaning in a way that we can all talk about the same thing. It's how we can communicate our experiences with others. If we can actually find vernacular to give a sense of meaning to these different tendencies, emotional responses, however you want to qualify them. then what happens is then we can deconstruct the meaning around it. It's like, what is it? You can't solve a problem if you can't write it down. It's like if you can't be clear enough about the problem and write it down, it's gonna be really hard to solve it in the same way. It's like if you can't figure out what meaning you're driving, or like the words, if you don't know exactly what it is that you're talking about, it's gonna be very hard to break that down and to deconstruct it in such a way that you can work with it, that you can again bring it to a conscious level and ultimately work through it.

47:23 Jeffrey Besecker manage it. From that perspective, when we have that language to express that emotion, you know, we can communicate it, we can address it, we find meaning in it. And if that's lacking, we sometimes utilize that itself as an avoidant device to kind of sidestep and say, I simply don't know how to express this, which can be a very raw and vulnerable place to find yourself. It can be a very insecure and challenging space sometimes. By that same regard, when we develop that language of expression, we're able to work through the meaning rather than suppress it. Ignoring it sometimes becomes a habit when we can't explain or express it, not necessarily even explain it, but just give it an identity, a healthy identity, hopefully. In that same regard, when we lack that language of expression, that ability to communicate it between others, it also challenges our ability to form healthy social bonds and secure attachments.

48:23 Madhu Dasa Yeah, because otherwise, how are we going to convey points, right? We're so dependent on language. I mean, there's, of course, subtle communication. There's a lot that can be expressed without words, but ultimately when it comes to these really deep, less tangible aspects, especially when it comes to psychology and like the functions of the mind, we're so dependent on finding language that actually expresses that experience. And without providing a good terminology or a good sense of understanding and good meaning that we can then convey and express to others, it's going to be so hard to manage that thing or work through it. Or, yeah, you know, as you mentioned, we're just going to forget about it. It's like, I don't even know, there's something there, whatever, push it away, out of sight, out of mind, only to, it ain't going nowhere, you lock it in a cage, it's just going to get angry.

49:15 Jeffrey Besecker Just as I mentioned in this prior episode, we recorded with Corey Rosenki looking at that idea that we all somewhat have, first and foremost, our own kind of personal dialects, our personal understandings. And then on that social level, there's also that cultural or familial dialect that sometimes develops. You know, we each kind of have a little bit of flutter there in our perception of things based on our own experience. I can't disagree. You know, in that regard, then we have to kind of develop that healthy ego development that sidesteps emotional transforms where we start to form those assumptions about someone's meaning. Even when they're expressing, still realizing that we all experience our emotions differently based on our perspective.

50:07 Madhu Dasa Yeah, and you know, to that point, I think what I always like to convey is that Whether we study philosophy, or let's take psychology as an example, whether we study psychology or not, we all have a psychology. In the same way, whether we study philosophy or not, we all have a philosophy. And that's the benefit of spending a little time, no one has to become an expert, I mean, go for it, become an expert, both, but to the extent that we can understand, okay, this is how the brain works, this is how my brain works, and these are the set of values I have, these are the types of sets of values, types of philosophies, and this is the value that I want to attribute my life to. to the extent that we have those then we can actually bring them in integrity because the challenge is we could spend all day talking about psychology and how the mind works but then ultimately if we don't have some type of lighthouse to ground ourselves down into in terms of some types of axioms, some types of fundamental truths that we're like yeah yeah this this is what I understand to be reality. Then you know yeah it's like trying to dock your boat at a moving lighthouse. So the benefit of understanding what's not only how your mind works but also what's important to you and like what is it you want to be feeling and doing and acting in this world, the direction you want to be going, the opinion you have of other people, etc., which is ultimately your philosophy, which means me as a conscious unit, how do I engage with other conscious units in this world? To the extent that we have some conception of that, then it can ground our understanding of psychology so that as opposed to just figuring it out, we can now figure out how the mind works in relationship to achieving our goals that are in alignment with our values.

51:43 Jeffrey Besecker In that regard, we look at that role of how our frameworks influence our perspective. And when we step again into that healthy ego development, we're able to step into that kind of fourth person perspective that we have a healthy structure of self as our foundation. But we can also remove that sense of first person's perspective. Things are happening for me rather than to me and simply see another's perspective. You know, from that element, we have that interesting conundrum of the introspection illusion, where there are just simply certain aspects of our mental and psychological states that, as you mentioned, slip into that subconscious and unconscious realm beyond our awareness in most regards. run that aspect, what perspective or insight might you offer to looking at how to objectively receive feedback and that crucial element forming our social interactions and our attachment development?

52:45 Madhu Dasa Yeah, there's there's a English mantra that I like to remind myself of. I mean, sometimes my mind fights it. If we practice it, we're certain to be far more receptive to, you could say, life's lessons or the, as you mentioned, receiving feedback in a way that's gonna ultimately improve our social interaction. And that mantra, which, be careful if you guys start saying this, crazy things might happen, it is, I live to be corrected. If you go around everywhere and you say, and you know, someone says, Hey, what are you, what are you doing? You say, I live to be corrected. You know, I'm, I'm guessing slightly, but, uh, if we can have a receptive mindset and ultimately knowing we're not omniscient, we don't know everything. Thankfully. Talk about going crazy real quick. It's a burden to carry, right?

53:36 Jeffrey Besecker It's not a burden. to know everything at once, you know, to have that available.

53:43 Madhu Dasa Yeah. Access to knowledge. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Access to knowledge is what we want, but you to have it all there. Like, thank God for forgetfulness. That's all I'm saying. Um, Yeah, if we have this motto of I live to be corrected, what it does is, again, it starts to shift the mind in such a way of receptivity, and so that we can learn lessons in any space of life. Now, obviously, I'm not suggesting you go, you're walking on the street and some homeless person says something crazy to you that you're just like, what? Oh, maybe that's a divine, I mean, maybe it is, but like, I'm not suggesting we have to go out of our way to try to, you know, how is the universe speaking to me, potentially,

54:21 Jeffrey Besecker That polarity in everything, you know, sometimes that lesson is specifically in the thing that you don't desire. I don't want to have this in my life can be a lesson. How do you then create the situation where you either create the thing you truly want or overt or shift the thing you no longer need?

54:46 Madhu Dasa Yeah, totally. And you know, that, that mindset of receptivity can really do wonders. And especially if you're putting yourself in the right situation and everyone knows if they're in a good company or not, you know, associations, everything, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. It's like, you are like the five people you spend the most time with and everyone knows if they're in good company or not. And if you're not leave and go get some good company. And what happens is with that mood of receptivity, okay, I'd like to be corrected. I want to learn. The best, most efficient way to do is you find people who have those qualities and through osmosis and spending time, you gain them. It's just, it's a natural way to do it. That's implicit. Otherwise, we're going to gain others. Otherwise, whoever we're hanging out with, we're going to gain them.

55:29 Jeffrey Besecker We adopt those patterns sometimes vary either subconsciously or specifically unconsciously. A lot of times it's completely in the autonomic nervous system.

55:39 Madhu Dasa Yeah, totally. Yeah, and especially, I mean, that's a good point too is that when it comes to any type taking these into a conscious place in the mind. When we're looking at the functions of the central nervous system, almost all the time, the thing that we want to do is decompress, de-stimulate, go from that sympathetic nervous system response of fight or flight or freeze into that, as they say, rest and digest that parasympathetic nervous system, which is much easier to access the conscious mind and less reactive.

56:10 Jeffrey Besecker Matt, who in our pre-conversations, you mentioned that role of love and the Vedic traditions theory of non-attachment. Can you share from your perspective what non-attachment is? You know, we're talking about healthy social attachments. Yeah. From that Vedic tradition, non-attachment and how this relates to social bonding, healthy social bonding.

56:33 Madhu Dasa Yeah, it's interesting. This is one of the few, I mean, there's many topics, but this is one of the main interests I had that caused me to becoming a monk and, you know, studying this stuff full time because, you know, becoming a monk, it's a little unusual and you pretty much isolate yourself. with a bunch of what I like to call it's like a spiritual frat house, a bunch of other monks. And so it's a very isolated, you know, it's like in some ways you're immersed more than ever with social interactions because there's a bunch of humans that you're considering dealing with. But at the same time, you're almost in a little bubble away from quote unquote normal life. And so as I got into this, I really wanted to understand, okay, this, as a kid, I thought, oh, this world is hard. I don't want to engage. I don't want to be attached. The more attached I get, the more sad or angry or whatever it might be. So I wanted to learn, like, what does it actually mean? First of all, what does attachment even look like? And then what is, quote-unquote, good or healthy attachment? And then what is unhealthy attachment? And when it comes to this, you could say, yeah, the Vedic tradition, which functionally boils down to there's four old Vedic literatures, the Vedas, which literally in Sanskrit just means knowledge. And there's a series of other books that come after that, 108 Upanishads followed by 16 Puranas. Anyway, it's a whole vast philosophical literature there. Some of the fundamental tenets there around attachment is that this material world around us is transient. It has a beginning and an end. So the challenge with developing attachment to something else that's transient, there's 100% chance it's gonna cause negative emotional responses. And there's a lot of different types of negative emotional responses, but long story short, we are gonna get bummed. I love my car, 30 years later, it's like, what happened to my car? It doesn't work anymore, whatever it might be, let's speak of a car, let's speak of our body. It's constantly every day, every cell in our body is changing or every morning looking into a new face, new cells. You know, everything around us is constantly changing and everything has a beginning and has an end. So if we attribute our happiness ultimately to that which has a beginning and end, we're ultimately going to be bumped. For the sake of simplicity, it's going to lead to dissatisfaction and disappointment. And so to the extent that we can number one, acknowledge that, okay, that's not going to provide happiness, like attachment to material things at the beginning and end don't provide happiness. And then number two is identifying what does provide happiness and that is connecting to sources of, at least the Vedic perspective is that which is eternal. And they say that the self, the conscious unit, or sometimes they say the soul, the self, the spirit, whatever terminology we might be using there, the real you that's observing the body and the mind and the functions of them. that unit of consciousness is never ending. And that's why we can still remember, even though our body changed when we were a kid, when we were five, we still have the same me, us, we could perceive what was happening, even though the body completely changed. Every seven years, every cell in your body's completely changed. You have reincarnated every seven years. So congrats if you're over 21, you're three reincarnations in, taking on new carnate.

59:42 Jeffrey Besecker Three versions of me, if you want to go to that structure. Yeah, yeah, right. And you're kind of without any accord to it.

59:50 Madhu Dasa Yeah, just constantly changing. Totally. Constantly changing and in flux. And so the body is changing, but that self, that unit of consciousness doesn't change. That's why we're observing the whole life. And even the Vedic perspective believes that even after this body, it keeps going. and another explanation that we could potentially get into, but the idea then is let's get attached to that thing which isn't temporary, which isn't that material body or material things, but the unit of consciousness, in other words, other souls, other entities, that are also going to continue past the matter which has a beginning and an end. So, you can say that healthy attachment is to that which is of, they call it an eternal principle, or the nature of the self, the soul, which is, it's often considered a divine spark. It's called the jiva or the atma in Sanskrit. It's a divine spark. If we can look past the material coverings, which frankly we all want to do anyway, even, you know, our constitution says we're all created equal. It's like, but we don't look the same, we don't talk the same, we don't smell the same. So, on what level are we equal? We're level on equal to the soul. and the soul only, other than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's that ultimate energy, right? That soul energy. And so we're not actually equal in a physical way. So how are we equal? We're equal on level with the soul. So that's where the healthy attachment is. And removing the attachment to that physical external material, and then more towards that principle of the soul, which keeps going even after the body, according to the Vedic perspective.

01:01:20 Jeffrey Besecker That tiptoes me up to a remembrance of that ancient wisdom of don't hold on to the hot coal, that non-attachment of release and surrender. You know, ebb and flow allows things to move. That's a very salient point for me to kind of grasp today. I want to thank you for shattering my illusion of monkdom with that theory of the spiritual frat house. You forever have remolded and opened my perspective on monkdom, so thank you for that. As we tiptoe up to our end here today, Matthew, from that notion or idea of non-attachment, How do we walk that fine, energetic line down the middle that tiptoes up to healthy non-attachment and straddling that line sometimes straying into emotional avoidance, surfacing as aloofness, ambiguity, or indifference at times?

01:02:18 Madhu Dasa Yeah, well, you know, I'll answer with a short, it's an ancient story where this sage, this saly person comes into a kingdom and the king's there and he sees a sage and he says, oh, sage, I'm so happy you're here. My life is so hard, you know, I have so many dependents to take care of and all these balances to maintain and so many mouths to feed. He goes on like this, oh, it's so hard. And he says, you know, I've got all these wives, you know, with all these children, and it's so, such a headache. And he's gone out and the sage is listening. tolerantly and patiently. And he says, Sage, what do I do? You know, I'm so bound by this. You know, it's like these things have their hold on me. Like, what do I do? How will I ever become free from all of these hardships and attachments? And to make the point, the sage walks over to a big column and pillar. in the palace. And the sage wraps his arms around the pillar and then his legs and squeezes the pillar and starts to shout, help, help, help, help, someone please help. The King Mars, like, what sage, what are you doing? He says, please help, the pillars got me, the pillars got me. And then, the king could realize he kind of slapped himself in the head and went, Oh, I get it now. I'm complaining that the pillars got me while I'm the one holding on. I'm the one holding on to all of these things while I'm complaining that they quote unquote, they got me, but I'm the one that's not letting go to them. And so in this, in the same vein, to the extent that we can understand that ultimate principle that, okay, I'm a soul, other souls, that's where real happiness is going to lie. It's connecting on that level of self. And knowing that the body is going to change. What we then do, and there's a term in Sanskrit, the Vedic perspective, they call Dharma, which means like the purpose. Dharma literally means the intrinsic quality of something. They say that everyone has a deep intrinsic purpose or unique gifts according to their psychophysical nature that they can use while they're in this life to uplift and empower others to ultimately also understand the nature of the self or soul. And so the way they reconcile this is, because if without some sense of purpose, then it's like, screw this all, screw the material world, I'm gonna go to the mountains, screw everyone, you know, and some people do do that, but then you're isolated, you're alone, there's not that soul connect, it's just, you know, then you're still dissatisfied. So the way it's reconciled is while you're in this world, be in this world, but not out of this world. And what that looks like is one does their duty or their dharma or their purpose, in a way that's very diligent, but ultimately understanding that this isn't my home forever. I'm only his body for a couple days, months, years, decades, maybe a century or two, for a short amount of time. So while I am here, what can I do to positively impact and inspire other entities to look inwards, to become more conscious, or you could say be more in touch with their own consciousness? because that's where satisfaction is going to ultimately lie anyway. So this life is ultimately based around service. Okay. How do I do my purpose in such a way where I'm serving and helping and inspiring others to also uplift them? Because, you know, you just change one, what does it help one person help the world? It's like all it, all it takes is if everyone can inspire one other person, now we start talking about exponential growth. So the idea is ultimately the same, my home, I ain't only here for a minute, but while I am here, there's a purpose behind it. And that purpose is ultimately to serve. And I mean, of course, philanthropic, I'm a big fan of that charitable acts and philanthropic acts, but even more, the highest form of charity is helping inspire others to go inward, to ultimately get connected with that supreme dormant consciousness within that divine spark from within. That's ultimately going to provide happiness, even more than happiness to say true, deep, bliss and satisfaction. as opposed to temporary happiness and distress, something that's like deeply satisfying.

01:06:16 Jeffrey Besecker It's such an inspiring and enlightening place to find ourselves in. I want to ask you one last thing today, Manhu, if you could give us one last tip to forming those healthy bonds and truly enriching relationships, what would that one tip be?

01:06:35 Madhu Dasa Yeah, so as simple as it sounds, and I alluded to this earlier, it's association is everything. If you want to become a great snowboarder, go hang out with some great snowboarders. If you want to become a great lawyer, go hang out with some great lawyers. The easiest and most efficient way to, and you can say tool or practice, to actually be able to get to that place where you are on a conscious level responding to life in a secure way is find people who are doing that. And have this receptive mood, this mood of, I live to be corrected. You go to people who are imbibing that quality of life, and then you listen to them, you connect with them, you speak with them, you inquire from them, you reveal your heart to them. I mean, the challenge might then be, okay, where are these people? How do I find them? That's maybe a bigger conversation in terms of where you're at in the world. But these people exist all over the place. And it's just a matter of finding them and doing everything you can to be near them. If you can't do it full physical proximity, then in the form of books, like there's ancient literatures. One I like to read every day is called the Bhagavad Gita. It's a 5,000 year old book, it teaches on the nature of the self. And it just teaches, a lot of these things we're talking about, it's like Vedic psychology 101, and just going over like the proper perspective of like actually achieving contentment and purpose in this life. And it's like, you know, reading a book like that, you know, it's quite the old book, I don't get to talk with the author. The idea is like associating, even if you can't do it physically, through the books or through online classes. Nowadays, we've got more access to content for better or for worse than we've ever had. Finding good sources to listen to. And that's my number one tip to myself that I consistently remind myself and then for everyone else. Because if you're associating with like-minded individuals that are where you want to be, Not only are you going to start to gain their attributes, but you're going to do what they do, and you're going to read their books, and you're going to do their meditations, you're going to whatever the case might be. And that's what changed my life. That's what made me become a monk. When I was on my 18th birthday, I met monks, I was like, I want this, whatever you guys got. I don't know where you're at right now, but you seem like nothing could throw you off and I want that. And then just by association, it was like developing those qualities. And before you know it, you do what they do. And it's like, you're going to become wealthy, hang out with some wealthy people. You want to become healthy, hang out with some healthy people. You want to become X, hang out with people who do X. And so that's, that is not only the most efficient way to do it, but is the most important and first step to achieving success in any type of discipline and especially when it comes to developing a type of secure attachment relationship.

01:09:20 Jeffrey Besecker Live to be corrected. That's our highlight reel today. We're all here to shine that light to guide and inspire each other. Namaste, my friend. I want to thank you for sharing your light and energy to guide us today. I truly am grateful and I truly appreciate your soul. Thank you, Jeff.

01:09:40 Madhu Dasa And it's mutual because, you know, I don't know if everyone knows what kind of labor of love it takes to put this content out regularly, but man, I appreciate it because if it wasn't for kind souls like yourself making this knowledge available, which you're doing exactly what we just talked about, you got to do, find sources like this podcast to listen to and take in to change the mind. If you wouldn't have put so much sweat and time and maybe tears, who knows? into allowing something like this to exist. Anyway, I'm grateful and it's such a valuable resource and we really do appreciate it. Appreciate you.

01:10:15 Jeffrey Besecker Thank you. Thank you from my heart to yours, my friend. That is such an encouraging and edifying sentiment. I truly value you. Let's talk again soon. Deal. Don't threaten me with a good time. This truly has been a good time. Thank you. We all desire, want, and need to feel a greater sense of connectedness throughout our lives. However, the stories we tell often hinder our ability to forge these deeper bonds, and we become focused on our differences rather than our similarities, leading to a breakdown in our relationships. In today's podcast, we delved into the crucial role of attachment styles in forging healthy and loving relationship bonds. We explored how our unconscious patterns and subconscious scripts influence our interactions with others, often shaping the way we connect and communicate on a deeper emotional level. Understanding these dynamics not only empowers us to cultivate more fulfilling relationships, but also carries the potential to foster greater unity throughout our communities. Identifying attachment styles is crucial to uncovering the transformative potential of this awareness when building stronger, more compassionate connections. If you found this message meaningful, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been the Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker.

01:11:50 ** you