About this episode
Is achieving a secure attachment really the ultimate marker of relationship success or could this mindset be doing more harm than good? In the quest for intimacy and connection, many of us fall into the trap of labeling ourselves and our partners, clinging to the idea that “secure” is the only way to be. But what happens when relationships don’t fit neatly into these categories, or when past experiences have shaped us in ways that make security seem out of reach? The pressure to be “securely attached” can sometimes backfire, leading to shame, blame, and a sense of hopelessness.
In this episode, you’ll discover why secure attachment doesn’t have to be the ultimate destination, and why striving for secure functioning—those daily choices and mindful practices that build safety and trust—can be a far more compassionate and realistic goal. Drawing on insights from trauma work, attachment research, and couples therapy, this conversation unpacks the pitfalls of categorizing relationships as “good” or “bad,” explores the nuances of healing within partnership, and offers actionable ways to build resilience, understanding, and growth—no matter where you are on the attachment spectrum.
Hanna Basel is a seasoned couples therapist and certified sex therapist. With expertise in attachment, trauma, and emotionally focused therapy (EFT), she helps people untangle their most complicated relationship patterns. As a former addictions counselor, Hanna brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to her work. She has been featured on CNN, Kare 11, MSN, and numerous podcasts where she talked about her ultimate and simple goal: to help people build relationships that help us heal and thrive.
Episode Highlights
04:23 Hannah’s path to couples therapy: From personal struggles to professional passion.
12:25 Understanding secure attachment and relationship dynamics.
15:26 Embracing relationship growth as a lifelong practice.
19:03 Debunking the myth that you must heal yourself before getting into a relationship.
22:00 Balancing guidance and judgment.
25:37 Neuroplasticity: How relationships shape and reshape attachment.
27:59 Understanding trauma’s role in relationship dynamics.
33:38 Compassion with boundaries.
34:59 Balancing love and constructive criticism.
39:07 Pacing, timing, and emotional safety in relationship repair.
42:10 Understanding pain and betrayal.
46:36 Slowing down for better attunement.
47:57 Breaking the cycle.
Your Check List of Actions to Take
Mentioned
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find–and Keep–Love (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)
Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication
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Episode Transcript
Hanna, thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, happy to be here.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation. Before we get started, we're going to be talking a little bit about secure functioning, secure relationship, attachment style, and helping people understand, maybe not in so absolute terms or binary terms. So I'm really excited to get your voice here. Before we dive into our topic, is there anything you want people to know about how you started working with couples, how this is important to you?
Sure. I think one thing I like to say is that I come to this work from struggling with relationships, and that's really what brought me into it, not knowing how to figure it out. So I'm someone that if I have something that I'm struggling with, I want to learn and I want to figure it out. So from there, being in the trenches of relationships. I stumbled upon it, actually. I was focused more on addiction and trauma, and then I started to move into sex therapy. With sex therapy, I started to work with couples, and I just loved it. I love working with couples. I think it's such a privilege and an honor for people to let us into these spaces that are so intimate and vulnerable and scary. So I just am so appreciative of getting to do this work.
Yeah. Well, thank you for just sharing a little bit about your own learning and journey, and then also professionally how this has developed for you. I think so many of the things you've named, as it relates to addiction and trauma and sex therapy, it's all so interconnected for people often. So I appreciate your compassion as you just approach the work, and the humility around like, I've had my own struggles. Me too, and that prompted a lot of my interest in. Always been interested in relationship, but I felt like I was pretty well equipped, given my PhD. I was so ill-equipped, so it was hugely confronting. But that was a lifetime ago. The person I was interviewing right before this, we were talking about the analogy of the yoga and just how much a lot of this is such a practice. Even if we have awareness, we have orientation, we trust the process, it's still a practice.
Absolutely, it is a practice. We know that, which I think is helpful. But oftentimes, couples don't know that, or people that aren't in this line of work, they don't think that it should be a practice, because it's not really introduced to us in that way.
Exactly. I'm not sure how she was feeling about it. But I kept emphasizing that because I think so many people think: Oh, if I get the insight, if I have the understanding or I do emotional processing around it, then I can be free of it or liberated. That's not always how it works.
I wish it was. I think we all wish it was.
I know. We lived a life, we experience things in a way, and likely have tendencies that we'll continue to work with.
Absolutely, in ourselves and with our couples. I completely relate. It is ongoing work, and it's so much easier if you embrace it than if you fight it or battle it or pathologize it.
Yes, okay. So speaking of embracing versus even pathologizing, one of the topics, you sent so many, and we were just chatting and I was like, which one do we focus on? The one that stood out to me was really looking at how people are viewing secure attachment, and perhaps helping people understand how they can be supported by maybe wanting to develop more secure functioning, versus necessarily needing to arrive at some securely functioned place. But tell me, I don't know, that was what I was getting from your topic, that if people think that they should be always aiming to be in a securely attached relationship or be securely attached. Where would you like to start?
Yeah, I think that you introduced that really well. There is this ideal of being in a secure relationship, and then period. I think, like you said, just a few minutes ago, a secure functioning relationship is a practice. Even people with secure relationship styles can have chaos in their relationship and can have insecure functioning relationships. So I think that a secure attachment style is something that is internal. Secure functioning is something that happens between us, our partner and us.
“I think that it's so much more realistic and hopeful to aim for a secure functioning relationship and what that means, and how to get back to secure functioning when you get off of it. Because we all will. We're going to be thrown off of it, with stress and life and speed and all of that.”
Yes, thank you. Would you be willing to elaborate, for people who are familiar with the terms, and also as you're describing the attachment tendency or style, how that's internal, and how securely functioning habits or ways of relating, that's more external? Would you be willing to share more?
Sure. So in terms of your attachment style, a secure attachment style is kind of your blueprint. It's been shaped by early experiences. It can also be shaped by further experiences. But most of us, our attachment styles are at least set when we're in childhood, and they might change throughout life. But it's our internal landscape in terms of what we expect, how we see ourselves, how we see others, whether we believe love is safe and intimacy is safe or not, all based on our experiences. A secure functioning relationship, for me, that's less about how you're wired based on experiences, and it's more about the choices you make, even if they're hard and even if you don't do it perfectly. So some examples for me, for a secure functioning relationship, would be like, trying to protect each other's dignity during a fight, prioritizing the relationship when things get hard, making decisions that benefit the We and not just the Me, and repairing ruptures instead of just letting them go. So all of these are choices and practices that we do, and that aren't easy, especially if you don't have a secure attachment style, but they're also doable. You can still work to do it by understanding one another over time, and by working with your attachment style in the relationship.
I really appreciate the focus of this, in that it helps give people much more, I feel like options to work with, versus how attachment style can feel. I think, for research purposes, it serves its purpose to categorize. But also the way we actually relate to it, it can feel very decisive or even labeling. Maybe even weaponizing for some that maybe aren't intending to, but could be like, you're insecure or you're secure. Like, this tendency to kind of categorize. So is there anything you want to say about that?
I just agree. I think that, unintentionally, we do weaponize it. We diagnose our partners and their attachment style, I see that a lot. Oh, my partner's avoidant, we need to work on his avoidance. Or my partner is anxious and it's because of their trauma, and we need to fix that. So it's focusing on these styles as being problematic, when they don't need to be problematic. That if we can understand them with more compassion and make sense of them, we can work with them. We have to learn what each partner needs to feel more safe, how maybe their natural inclination in relationships would be to shut down. How do we help them move from that? It's not going to go from shutting down to not shutting down. But it's how can we take tolerable steps in line with their attachment style, to build their capacity to tolerate something else.
So it almost sounds as though it's perhaps inviting people to get away from good and bad, or right and wrong.
Yeah. Since I practice Emotionally Focused Therapy, I'm always trying to get away from that. Because not only is it not helpful, but it's often not true. It's often not about good and bad or right and wrong, and it really doesn't have a place in most of the conversations. Even though we think it does, and I understand that people really think that it has to do with right or wrong. But it often doesn't.
I think this is part of it potentially, I wonder what you would think, when people are accessing more information, being more informed, or perhaps getting information in bits, whether or not it's a reel or this, and it's like it lands. So I love that there's an exposure and an understanding, and also, people feel comforted by the binary or the right and the wrong. Then that seems like: Oh, now I can make that more actionable. But it can actually have a real negative effect also.
Yeah, I see that. I agree that there's both really great value to it, and I love that people have more access to this information and more ways to talk about it. And I also agree that it can oftentimes get people stuck in the tunnel vision of: Oh my gosh, that describes my partner to a T, this must be the problem. So now I know what the problem is, and maybe the problem is, my partner's a sex addict. So now we need to fix his sex addiction, and then our relationship can be okay. Then if we think about the dynamic of that, a partner going to their partner and saying: You're a sex addict, we need to fix you. That doesn't usually create a really healthy, safe environment for a couple to work towards changing whatever their patterns are.
Yeah. Even for one that is relating to or perceiving themselves, that perhaps I can't get into relationship because I have these insecure tendencies I need to work on myself. Do you want to speak to that also?
Yeah, I think that that that is very true. That can create a lot of shame, and it can create a lot of stuckness in terms of how we see ourselves. Because yes, how we see ourselves is just as important as how we see our partners. Because it teaches us what to expect and what we deserve, and risks that we can take or not take in our relationship. I think that people often come in and they are pathologizing themselves, again, unintentionally, and what we really all need is more self-compassion.
Yeah. Again, coming back to what you're inviting people to consider with the information about being securely attached or having a secure attachment style, that there isn't necessarily maybe an arrival. That there's a real, I guess, practice. I mean, this is weaving in nicely, that if we're in practice of the more securely functioning behaviors, that that can be a guide. Versus, do I have this style or do I have that style?
Yeah, I love how you said that. I don't think there is an arrival. Again, I think it's human to want there to be an arrival. But from my experience in my work from other therapists that I talk to, from all the reading, there isn't an arrival.
“The relationships that last, it's, it's not a point that they've arrived at and stopped. It's that they learned to work together, and it's progressive, and they change together. Even if they don't change at the same speed in the same ways, they change directionally. That is a practice, and it requires ongoing conversations.”
No kidding. That's assuming maybe life circumstances are relatively the same. But then if we add the complexities of living life, that can pose challenges, where people under stress will often feel more challenged, maybe regress a little bit, or even feel less resourced and perhaps utilize old tendencies. It just seems like you're inviting an approach of less diagnostic, and more being interested in understanding or having curiosity around what it means or what one is experiencing or the other is experiencing.
Yeah. I think that that is my approach in general, is that people often do come in with these labels of one another. I want to understand what that means for them, for each individual, for the relationship. Even if someone comes in and says, I have a really anxious attachment style, that doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. So what does that mean for you, and how do we make sense of that? How do we tell your story in a way that helps your partner have more compassion for how and why you show up the way that you do, and vice versa? Because that's so much more helpful, is really understanding the whole story, the narrative, and your style.
“I'm an attachment style junkie, I still want to read everything. But I don't want it to box us in, and I want us to use it in order to have more compassion for one another, not in order to box us in and put periods at the end of sentences.”
Yes. If I could take that one step further, as far as the person that's interested in getting more information, that while it might feel so resonant or illuminating that these things maybe are operating, that perhaps to turn the attention back on self even around: Well, how is this helpful for me, or what's the relief that I'm feeling? Maybe I feel hopeless or helpless in certain scenarios where I don't know what's going on or disoriented. So to have some language or structure to this feels so supportive, and to do the thing you're saying is like, can we learn more? That's perhaps a starting place.
Yeah, it is. It is a great starting point. Then how can we take it and apply it and self-reflect, and use it to understand ourselves in a more concrete and vulnerable way.
Yeah. I'm even thinking about even the idea of there being a goal of having a secure attachment style or to be in a secure relationship, it has to check certain boxes. It sounds like perhaps what you're really recommending is an entirely different approach that is much more fluid and complex, but also offers a lot of humanity and compassion. But tell me if I'm hearing you.
No, you're getting it completely right. That is where I'm coming from, and what I have found works better for me and for the people that I work with, is that there is more fluidity. That if we try and reach those checkboxes, where I no longer need to check out and I know how to stay emotionally present all the time, that's wonderful. These are great goals. But it also can create a lot of hopelessness when you can't do that, when your relationship doesn't meet those checkboxes. Not everyone's relationship needs to look the same. People can figure out what works for them. That might be having two people with a super anxious attachment style and trauma history. I think I work so much with trauma that I'm very sensitive to how a trauma shapes people, and how we need to have different expectations when people have suffered really egregious trauma that has shaped them. They're probably not going to have what looks like a secure attachment style. That doesn't mean they can't have a secure functioning relationship.
Yeah, I want to dig into this a little bit. I also want to name, I'm thinking of the book Attached. Do you remember that book? I've had clients reference that, and I'm like, well. Because I think it can be so helpful and offer such guidance, and also, people can use it in a way that is more categorical and judgy. But also, we want to be informed and we want to understand. But then we're living with real people who potentially have trauma. So how do you ask people to hold information? Is it just what we're talking about?
If we're talking like this, versus if we're in session with a couple and I have a couple come in and they've read this book, and they're like: This is who I am, and this is who my partner is. I'm probably not going to challenge that. I'm just going to use that as information, and I want to know what they identify with, and then we want to expand on that. So I think that that is a good starting point. Like you said, there's nothing wrong with coming in at that place. And can we expand on it? The story is greater than just that book with the attachment styles and the descriptions.
Yes. I think I was even thinking about the person that's dating that hasn't partnered yet, and that is negotiating perhaps even grief around like: I love this person, and yet I have all this information, maybe they don't meet the description or the criteria of somebody who has a secure attachment style. You're saying there's a lot more here that is workable. I would love to hear more, but do you want to say?
Yeah. I would say, can you have a conversation with this person about what you're noticing? If you're dating and you're noticing, this person doesn't have a secure attachment style, or what seems like it according to the book. First of all, I would say, are you reflecting on your attachment style right now, as much as you are on theirs? If not, then that's curious. But the other thing is, then I would have a conversation and invite them into it and say: Hey, I've been reading this about attachment styles. This is what I'm really looking for right now, I'm hoping for. What are you hoping for? Is this important to you too? I would also ask someone to say, what are their growing edges? What do you struggle with in relationship when you get close to someone? Are they aware of it? Can they acknowledge it? And do they want to work on it? Because that's way more important.
I would so agree. Because that's where relationship exists, in my opinion, is where we get to be in this place of together and supporting one another, ideally. But just how we're relating, how we're negotiating.
Yeah, exactly. It speaks to that myth that you have to heal yourself before you can be in a relationship. So it speaks to that myth that you have to have resolved all of your trauma and your issues before you can love someone. What you just said is exactly right.
“Healing doesn't happen before a relationship, it happens inside of it. That's where we learn and grow, and that's where we become more honest with ourselves and more accountable and more willing, because the mirror gets held up. Hopefully in loving ways, not in pathologizing ways.”
Yes. This is what you've been speaking to already, is our experiences. I believe in neuroplasticity, and this is what the research shows even about attachment style, that while those formative early, early years have such an imprint, as you said. Also, we're still learning current day and we'll continue to learn. So if we can bring attention to that and how it's not static, that it doesn't just happen to us, that we are participating in our attachment experiences. That could be one way of saying it.
Yeah, absolutely. We are. It's not static, and we do have some agency. That's part of why couples’ therapy is so powerful. My belief, and like you said, the research shows that we're creating new neural pathways, where we're actually working with the brain and the limbic system in order to be able to change how we may naturally respond over time. Because we're trying to create new experiences for people.
Yes. This is where that focus and the goal of secure functioning versus attachment style can be such a north star. Because that's where we earn and experience more of that secure relationship that impacts our understanding of relationship, which affects our attachment style.
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely. Well, talk to us a little bit about trauma, given your background, and as you're talking about how more of these insecure attachment tendencies likely relate to some level of relational misattunement, rupture, or even trauma.
So talk more about trauma in terms of?
Well, people that are recognizing or working with insecure attachment tendencies, and trauma might play a part, how to hold that, how to be with that?
So in terms of working with how to hold that and be with that, I think a huge part of this goes back to this sense of self-compassion and being able to hold ourselves with a sense of: This is what happened, it's not our fault. And these are the impacts, this is how it shaped me. I think a lot of times, what I'm working with is how to identify trauma, that it's there and it's an explanation, and that that too isn't an endpoint. But it is an explanation that needs to be understood and needs to be brought into the conversation, and then how do we work with that?
So an example would be that, oftentimes, people with trauma have a hard time with closeness. Closeness can be scary, especially if it's been relational trauma. So if they get close to someone, maybe that's when they get triggered, is when the vulnerability is triggered. So how do we have compassion and understanding that through the trauma lens, that it makes good sense that they would get scared? Of course they do. And when they get scared, they might start to poke their partner in order to try and get them to get away, or whatever they might do. And how do we also acknowledge what they're doing and work on it? Because most people with trauma that are showing up that way, that are hurting their relationship, don't want to be showing up that way. It's not a choice. That's such a huge piece. It's reactive. It's almost like we become more animal-like in those moments when we're fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
So one way of saying this, I know in the EFT language, we might call it a protective strategy. The behavior is perhaps a manifestation of that trauma, that what's visible is in part trying to help the wounded part or the part that's been traumatized.
Yeah, absolutely. I think all behavior is a response to what's happening inside of us. So we have to slow down and figure out what's happening inside of us. I think this is where people can get a little bit, I don't know, racy.
“There's this sense that oftentimes trauma is used as a blank check or a scapegoat. I think that there's a difference between really understanding the impact of trauma and that it does explain it, versus that it explains it and takes away accountability. Because it doesn't. We can still have trauma and accountability.”
Most people that I know that have trauma aren't trying to use trauma. They're not trying to use it as a way out. They actually really want to work on it and they want help working on it.
It's often that, to your point, with the nervous system, feels like a hijack. That it's almost like it becomes its own thing where it's really hard to feel regulated or in control.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, for really, really good reason.
Yes. So what you're describing, that's a whole level of work, just to even be able to recognize what's underneath these reactions or these behaviors or these tendencies. In relationship, if someone's partnered and they're able to have this understanding of like: Ah, this is what's going on.
Yeah, it's so relieving to understand that this story is bigger than you. If you are partnered with someone with trauma, it can feel like the dynamic is about you, and it's really, really helpful when you can put the pieces together and see the story. You're a part of it, but it's much bigger than you, and it usually started before you, unless the trauma happened with you.
Yes, maybe we want to talk about that a little bit. But just to hold that for one moment. So can we go back to the ownership? Because sometimes people struggle with feeling the compassion, but also their own levels of protection around like: But it wasn't okay, or what you said or what you did wasn't okay. But also, there's a part of me that can get where this came from and has empathy for that. So how do you help people negotiate that?
Yes, that's such a great conversation to have. Because there's this saying out there, hurt people hurt people. Again, we can't just go around saying that and say it as if: Okay, no big deal, just let it keep happening. It's hurt people hurt people, and we need to do something about it. We need to be the ones to slow it down and to do our part to not create more hurt in the world. Especially if we've been hurt, why would we want to put that out into the world?
So the way that I do that, if I'm thinking about working with a couple in session, and I have one partner that's really maybe traumatized and lashes out in the relationship, and the other partner is really hurt. Can they hold both? Because both are important. Can we hold the compassion, the understanding? And can we also hold that it's not okay? It's not okay for their partner to slam a door in their face and to call them names. Having compassion and understanding for how it developed isn't saying that that's okay and it doesn't matter if it continues. So we can help people say: I understand where this came from and I have so much empathy for your pain, and I really need you to commit to working on not doing this anymore, to work on telling me you need a break first. Again, it's finding those small tolerable steps to be able to move in a different direction.
I am so grateful for how you're describing this, because it often is difficult to hold both and to be in that place. The language is super helpful to have examples, and I think people can likely feel that if they're in a place of like: Ah, you did it again or you did this. It can feel a little bit of that blame, and again, likely from a protest of like: This hurts, I don't want this to happen, and I need you to see it. But how it's delivered, the empathy part is lost. It takes that tone of criticism or complaint or correction of some sort. And what you're describing, talk about securely functioning relationship, to be able to hold the love and the empathy, and also a address a behavior or an interaction that we want to look at and do differently. We even think about this with parenting, of helping children, wanting them to feel loved and seen and held, but also called into: Okay, let's learn how to do this, don't bite your sister or whatever it is.
Yes. I have a 3-year-old and 4-year-old, so I totally relate to what you're saying. We understand they don't have the skills. That's the same with someone with trauma and doesn't have those skills. No one helped them with them, they weren't modeled. If people had the skills, they would use them.
Yeah, and this is where I think the continuum is often really helpful. Because if you're looking at, in a relationship, one has experienced levels of trauma that are significant, the priority can often feel like: Oh, that needs a lot of care. But then perhaps the other has pain and maybe lesser degrees of trauma. Does that now not get space? So the deferring, when really, we can just hold the pain and the injuries that we both carry. Some are more significant and horrific and absolutely require that slowing down and that real awareness and treading lightly, and I think the continuum is helpful. Because it's not trumping the other necessarily either, would you say?
Right, and this is much easier said and done in a relationship where there hasn't been trauma in the relationship. Then it's easier to hold both, it's easier to slow down, it's easier to go back and forth between the pain, especially if the pain has happened externally. But if that pain has happened internally, that sometimes requires different strategies.
Yes, so let's talk about that. Well, before we pivot to that, it's the same thing, but we're just talking about the wounding and the triggering inside the relationship. Is there anything you want to help people to further feel it inside themselves, how to hold both? The compassion and empathy, and also, I want to set a limit or I want to work on doing this more skillfully with you, if you're willing?
Well, I would say getting in touch with different parts of ourselves. Because we generally have those parts within us, we're just not in touch with them. When I feel hurt, I'm not in touch with my empathy. I have to actively get in touch with my empathy. I have to remember, this is my husband. How do I give him the benefit of the doubt? What do I know about him to be true outside of this moment where I think he's being a real big jerk? So we have to choose to access those parts and to hold them. Because otherwise, our body will pivot to the part that is more defensive and protective.
Which is a natural tendency.
Absolutely.
Yes, thank you. So we have to work a bit to get in touch with what might not feel so loud.
Yes. It has to be intentional. It does require work. It's not our default setting, because survival adaptation. It's not helpful to access empathy if we're being chased by a tiger.
No. This is one of the things, I'm sure you would be able to help describe this too in the EFT work, is helping when let's say a partner has shared something vulnerable, and the partner listening might have a moment of oh, and then they move right into their own protection or their own distrust, or we would call it maybe a block. To slow that down and help them be able to identify both. Like, what happened right before you were telling me that? I felt so emotionally empathetic. Can that also have space, and then also how this is true? So it does take either a support person, or it does take just these questions that we would prompt ourselves to remember what's not so viscerally present or what we might be overlooking, given our nervous system's responsiveness or activation.
Okay, great. So talk to us a little bit about when there has been injury or trauma inside the relationship.
Well, I think that that often is more challenging, because the person who hurt you is also the person that you need help from. Whereas, it's easier to probably hold both when the pain comes from outside. I think oftentimes we have to wait a little bit to ask someone to hold both at first, if they've been hurt by their partner in an egregious way, where there's been a betrayal of some sort. So for me, that just comes down to pacing and timing, in the same way we all want to have with our partner. In the same way we want to have when we're being honest about something, we want to think about when is the right time? Is this the right pace? Is my partner having a really stressful week? Or did my partner have a great night's sleep and they seem like they're feeling really well, and there seems to be a time? It's the same thing we do as a therapist, is we need to pace it and time it and be attuned to when a person is going to have the capacity to have empathy for why their partner may have coped in the way they did.
So we have a greater opportunity of having connection and repair and understanding. We're wanting to set it up so that we are increasing the chances that we can actually have this way of relating.
Yeah, and I also think it's responding to someone's pain. It's so misattuned to respond to someone's pain that's at a level 10, to say: I understand you're at a level 10, but can you also access some empathy right now? That's not humanly possible. Now, if you're at a level 2 of pain, you might also be able to hold empathy. But we have to be able to ask someone to do something they can actually do.
Yes. Well, you're describing something that's really important, I think, in negotiating hardships, that oftentimes both people are feeling pain, as you talk about pacing, and how we're able to hold more than maybe our just immediate reaction. I'm even thinking about an affair, where the person who's had the affair so-called happen to them, and they're wanting to know why and they're seeking, but really, they're hurting and they're alarmed and they're maybe totally shattered in their sense of what was, and feeling this level of betrayal. So they might be asking questions of wanting to know why to have understanding, and if that person felt comfortable enough with their partner to say why, they can't actually respond to how that makes sense. Not that it makes sense to have an affair, but if there's compassion around like: Oh, you were hurting. Again, I'm not excusing, this is the ownership. But that there is something that was happening for them and choices that they made, again, that bring understanding too, that that can't be held in that moment.
Yes, exactly. It really can't be. I think we can all think about this. If we're hurt by someone, and then that person is saying: But you know, this is what was happening for me. That's going to just set us up more. Because we're not being responded to in that moment. The defensiveness is getting a priority, versus our pain getting a priority. The pain needs priority. The wound needs to be tended to first.
It can be confusing. Because even the one that's hurting, probably in that scenario, both people are hurting. But the one that's felt betrayed might be sending the signal of, tell me more, tell me about this. When really, they're not in a position to really hear. They want to hear, but they're totally rattled.
Yeah, and that's where I have couples talk to me versus one another. If couples are really escalated or there's that kind of scenario, I want them to talk to me, so then I can decide if it's a good idea to ask your partner that question or not. Because we don't know what's a good idea in those moments when we are hijacked. So no fault of anyone for asking those questions, I get those. I would be asking those questions too in those moments. It's just a form of panic.
So helping people orient when there's been injury inside the relationship and how to build more repair, and perhaps both people are really in a lot of distress and feeling a lot of pain. You talk about timing, being resourced, pacing. Anything you want to say here to help? I mean, obviously there's professionals like yourself and myself that help people negotiate this. But just maybe smaller injuries that maybe they're not necessarily needing or wanting to seek professional help. How do you support people in negotiating the pacing of this?
That's a great question. I talk about how do we create safety in the relationship? So I'll reflect oftentimes, if the pace is going fast, how does that feel to their bodies? How does that feel to one another? For most of us, if the pace is going fast, that means our emotions are going fast too, and not in a vulnerable way. That means that our anger, our protection, it's all coming up. In order to access our more vulnerable emotions, which is what we need to bond with one another, and to really understand what is compelling each of our behaviors, we have to go slow. I will actively slow that down. I mean, my couples are probably so sick of me saying, can we just slow that down for a second? Or if there's one thing you should practice this week, it's just to slow it down. I'm sure they want some sort of other thing to practice at this point. I can't state that enough, the importance of going slow in order to access ourselves. I can't access myself if I'm going fast.
Totally. I think that there's a bit more ability to attune when we do slow down, that does one partner have a little bit more room? Let's say I was in the midst of sharing, and it seems like you're having a big response, I feel quite able to hold and maybe turn towards you. If you're in a place where it's interfering with your ability to go in the direction we were going, then I might be able to slow down and say: Okay, well I can pause, it seems like maybe you have some feelings here. Or if he were to say, if I'm thinking of my husband here: I really want to hear where you were going and what you're saying, it means a lot to me, and I'm just noticing I'm having such a big response, I'm not even able to stay with you, I can't even hear you right now, I just need a second. Then there's some choice that we have.
Yes, we have more choice when we can slow down. Beautiful way of putting that. I love it.
It's not an exact formula.
No, it's not an exact formula. If it were, then everybody would've figured it out and written a bestselling book, and we wouldn't need all the other books out there. The reason there's so many books and podcasts is because it's not a formula and we're all trying to understand it better. But it's not cut and paste.
One thing that you're just saying, I think along with slowing it down, I talk about two things with couples. One is the creating safety, and the other is meaning-making. It's very hard to be curious about our meaning-making if we're going quickly.
“One thing is we want to be able to assess what's happening in our bodies. The other thing is we want to assess what's the story in our head, and is it true? Most of the times I reflect, it's not even a communication issue, it is a meaning-making issue.”
Totally, I love that. That's such a good distinction. Because I run into this all the time. My brain works very fast. Even if I'm in the practice of reflecting back, did I get that right, my husband's like, what are you hearing? Because I'm making meaning, I'm interpreting, and he's just like, that is not at all what I'm saying! Then I'm just like: Okay, all right, tell me more. So it's like I will notoriously, if I'm feeling any type of threat, perceive it in a way, and my brain is working super hard to understand. But I'm creating meaning, and it is perhaps not what's true for him.
Yeah, because you're human, and that's what we do. I had a great example of this yesterday with a couple, where one of the partners saw an Instagram reel and it made them think of their partner, and they thought: Oh, this will be a great conversation starter. It was about ADHD, and they were curious if their partner related to any of it. They sent it to their partner. So for them it was like: Oh, this will be a great conversation starter, I really want to have more of a shared understanding. Their partner took it as: Wow, my partner sees me as broken, and that the reason that they are sending it to them is because they want them to admit that they have a problem. So then we can imagine how the conversation went. This partner got defensive, of course, because they misunderstood the intention, and we can all understand outside why they would get defensive. Yet, the first partner that sent the Instagram reel felt really hurt and rejected, because they were really coming from a good place. So I think that's a great example of a meaning-making issue that we all do very quickly. We fill in those blanks. I think that oftentimes when we're saying we have communication issues, it's not communication issues. It's safety, and it's meaning-making.
Hanna, I love that prompt of like, what's the story that I'm telling myself, what's the meaning that I'm creating about this, or what am I making this mean? Because that could be a pattern interrupt that could potentially reset, and maybe a couple wouldn't even have to go down whatever road of an argument or the disconnection there, and we can clarify and we have an opportunity to say what was true.
Okay, wonderful. Well, it sounds like you have so much to share. For people who are enjoying what you're saying and want to get more connected with you, what would you encourage people to connect with?
Yeah. So I'm on Instagram, TherapyWithHannaB, and so I post little tidbits here and there. I also have a website where I blog, which is HZBTherapy.com. I'd say those are probably the two main places that people can find more information about me.
Wonderful! So with your blog and your Instagram, it sounds like people can access some of what you have to share. Then on your website, what might people find, if they're interested?
Well, I just created a course, The Cycle Stops Here. So it's all about breaking cycles in your relationship and communication. So that's one thing that they'll see. But other than that, besides my blog and that, they'll just have access if they have questions, if they want to get in touch, if they want more resources. I have a newsletter that I come out with too, which is kind of my musings, something that stuck with me from the month, something that I'm learning in a new way. Most of what I'm sharing on Instagram are things that stick out with me as profound or thought-provoking or something that I haven't put words to yet, that all of a sudden, I heard someone else put words to and then I want to share it. So I'm just all about sharing these things that I find fascinating and interesting.
Wonderful! Are you taking new clients if people are living in the Portland, Oregon area?
Yeah, I'm not taking regular new clients, but I do intensives. So I do four-hour intensives with couples, and you don't have to live in Oregon actually to do an intensive. So that's what I have more openings for right now, otherwise I'm pretty full.
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for everything you've shared here today. I've really enjoyed all that you've offered us here.
It was such a great opportunity. So thank you.
The post ERP 488: Should a Secure Attachment Always Be the Goal? An Interview with Hanna Basel appeared first on Jessica Higgins.