Emancipate Your Mind

Explore the intriguing concept of trauma bonding, particularly in abusive relationships and among survivors. Discover the important distinctions between bonding over shared trauma and the cycle of trauma bonding itself. Learn about the emotional cycles and biochemical addictions involved, along with strategies for breaking free from these patterns. The podcast dives deep into the complex dynamics of trauma bonds, offering insights on identifying and healing from them.

Exploring the differences between codependency and co-regulation in relationships, emphasizing the importance of healthy interdependence, setting boundaries, and fostering individual autonomy. The podcast discusses the impact of societal norms on dependence and the significance of clear communication for emotional well-being.

Explore the transformative power of co-regulation in relationships and how it differs from codependency. Discover the vital role of supportive environments in fostering personal growth and resolution of conflicts. Learn how emotional safety nurtures development through engaging interactions and the influence of tone of voice. The hosts also share their personal journeys and invite listeners to join the conversation, emphasizing the importance of community in emotional healing.

In this discussion, Kevin Hales, a Licensed Professional Counselor and marriage and family therapist, delves into the nuances of secure attachments in adult relationships. He shares essential steps for cultivating emotional intimacy, emphasizing self-awareness and communication. Personal anecdotes illustrate effective conflict resolution strategies, including the fundamental role of emotional validation. Through engaging metaphors like Frisbee communication, he highlights the importance of empathy and understanding in navigating difficult conversations. Learn how to reframe conflicts as opportunities for deeper connections.

Exploring disorganized attachment style and high demand religion in relationships. Understanding the complexities of fearul-avoidant attachment style and its origins. Analyzing relationship patterns for self-reflection and positive changes.

If you have an avoidant attachment style, you may feel highly uncomfortable getting emotionally vulnerable with other people, which makes it difficult to create the deep connections you both crave and fear. On the one hand, you would love to feel the joy of connection with another special human but on the other hand, because you were taught that emotional vulnerability led to disappointment and sometimes rejection, you tend to approach the world as kind of a “lone wolf”. When someone does crack through the wall you keep around your heart, it can feel a little stressful when they start to demand more of your time, energy, or space. In this episode, we explore both the strengths and weaknesses of this attachment style, how this style develops and explore how high demand religion may have influenced the ways you were encouraged to attach with others. We also discuss a few steps you can take to begin healing this part of yourself so that you can feel safe and secure in your favorite relationships. _________________________________________________________________ RESOURCES: Cheryl. “When Christians Confuse Toxic Positivity with Faith and Hope”. September 17, 2020. TwentySixLetters.org Frederick, Ronald J. “Loving Like You Mean It: Use the Power of Emotional Mindfulness to Transform Your Relationships”. April 30, 2019. Central Recovery Press. Levine, Amir and Heller, Rachel S.F. “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find– and Keep– Love”. December 30, 2010. Bluebird Publishing. Priebe, Heidi. “10 Signs You Might Have Avoidant Attachment Style”. January 12, 2022. YouTube. Durvasula, Ramani. “Narcissism and Attachment Theory”. October 25, 2021. YouTube. Sage, Kim. “Healing Avoidant Attachment: Healing Attachment Wounds”. November 9, 2021. YouTube. The Attachment Project. “Avoidant Attachment Style: Causes and Symptoms”. July 2, 2020. AttachmentProject.com ___________________________________________________________________DONATE TO THE PODCAST AND JOIN THE LIVE WEEKLY DISCUSSION: Do you want support in understanding and working through your own childhood attachment style? Join us for the live weekly discussion this Wednesday at 6:30pm MT. Monthly donors will be invited to weekly live discussions and group coaching every Wednesday at 6:30pm Mountain Time (8:30pm Eastern/ 5:30pm Pacific). Make a monthly tax-deductible donation of any amount at emancipateyourmind.org . New donors will be automatically added to the email list every month on the 5th with links to the discussions, exclusive exercises and tools to help you recover faster, and invitations to attend any additional workshops this year for free. To be added to the email list more quickly, please email us at teri@emancipatedcoaching.com right after making your donation and you’ll be added to the list within 24-48 hours. We hope to see you there! FREE COMMUNITY: Not ready to donate but still want to join in online community and text discussions? Come join the Emancipate Yourself Facebook group to share your thoughts on today’s podcast and ask more questions.

If you have an anxious attachment style, you likely spend your time trying to people please, take care of the people around you, and in general try to win the love and connection you so desperately crave. But, you may worry that those you love don’t care about you as much as you care about them. You worry that eventually, they may reject you or even abandon you and this leaves you feeling anxious and unable to fully trust the people you care about. In this episode, we explore how this attachment style develops and explore how high demand religion may have influenced the ways your parents showed up emotionally in their relationships with you and your siblings. We address fears you may have about your own parenting and your relationships with your own kids. And a few steps you can take to begin healing this part of yourself so that you can feel safe and secure in your favorite relationships. _________________________________________________________________ RESOURCES: Addah, Ogue and Lemay, Edward. “Romantic Surveillance and Secret Assessments: Responsiveness Monitoring Born from Insecurity in Relationships”. University of Maryland. 2014. Catlett, Joyce. M.A. “Anxious Attachment: Understanding Insecure Anxious Attachment”. PsychAlive.com Child Development Institute. “The Power of Attunement”. Firestone, Lisa. Ph.D. “How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Parenting”. PsychAlive.com Gibson, Thais. “The Anxious Attachment’s Top 5 Triggers”. July 3, 2021. The Personal Development School. YouTube. Ludden, David. Ph.D. “How Early Childhood Shapes Your Relationship with God: Attachment Style and Religious Belief.” June 17, 2021. PsychologyToday.com Morton, Katie. “The 4 Main Attachment Styles in Relationships- Plus Attachment Theory”. December 13, 2022. YouTube. Sage, Kimberly. Ph.D. “Healing Anxious Attachment Style”. November 10, 2021. YouTube. The Attachment Project. “Self Regulation Strategies for Anxious Attachment Triggers”. July 23, 2021. The Attachment Project.com ___________________________________________________________________DONATE TO THE PODCAST AND JOIN THE LIVE WEEKLY DISCUSSION: Do you want support in understanding and working through your own childhood attachment style? Join us for the live weekly discussion this Wednesday at 6:30pm MT. Monthly donors will be invited to weekly live discussions and group coaching every Wednesday at 6:30pm Mountain Time (8:30pm Eastern/ 5:30pm Pacific). Make a monthly tax-deductible donation of any amount at emancipateyourmind.org . New donors will be automatically added to the email list every month on the 5th with links to the discussions, exclusive exercises and tools to help you recover faster, and invitations to attend any additional workshops this year for free. To be added to the email list more quickly, please email us at teri@emancipatedcoaching.com right after making your donation and you’ll be added to the list within 24-48 hours. We hope to see you there! FREE COMMUNITY: Not ready to donate but still want to join in online community and text discussions? Come join the Emancipate Yourself Facebook group to share your thoughts on today’s podcast and ask more questions.

Do you crave close relationships with others but find it hard to connect on a deep level? Do you often feel lonely or misunderstood? Do you worry deeply that those you love will abandon you? You are likely struggling with an insecure attachment style. For the next few episodes, we’re going to talk about what we can learn about how we relate to others through the lens of attachment theory. Understanding our attachment style gives us the power to recognize our learned behavior patterns in relationship with others so that we can identify why we’re struggling to connect to the important people in our lives or why we’re constantly worried that those we love will leave us. Knowing what’s going on gives us the power to change our behavior patterns in relationships and get the outcomes we want. Because the levels of control in high demand religion often make it very difficult to develop secure attachment, many of us have never had safe, trusting relationships modeled for us. In today’s episode we’ll begin our exploration of attachment theory with secure attachment so that we have an idea of what we’re aiming for as we heal. _________________________________________________________________ RESOURCES: Cherry, Kendra. “What is Attachment Theory? The Importance of Early Emotional Bonds.” February 22, 2023. VeryWellMind.com Gibson, Thais. “How to Spot a Securely Attached Person (on the first date!). November 25, 2021. The Personal Development School. YouTube. Leo, Briony. “What is Attachment and Why is it Important?” November 5, 2017. PyschCentral.com Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P.R. (2007). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change. Guilford Press. Snipes, Dawn-Elise. “What is Attachment? Creating Secure Attachment Part 1”. December 27, 2021. DocSnipes. YouTube. The Attachment Project. “Attachment Styles and Their Role in Relationships”. July 2, 2020. Attachmentproject.com The Attachment Project. “Secure Attachment: From Childhood to Adult Relationships”. July 2, 2020. Attachment project.com. ___________________________________________________________________DONATE TO THE PODCAST AND JOIN THE LIVE WEEKLY DISCUSSION: Want to be a part of the live discussion and learn more about your childhood values? Join us for the live weekly discussion this Wednesday at 6:30pm MT. Monthly donors will be invited to weekly live discussions and group coaching every Wednesday at 6:30pm Mountain Time (8:30pm Eastern/ 5:30pm Pacific). Make a monthly tax-deductible donation of any amount at emancipateyourmind.org . New donors will be automatically added to the email list every month on the 5th with links to the discussions, exclusive exercises and tools to help you recover faster, and invitations to attend any additional workshops this year for free. To be added to the email list more quickly, please email us at teri@emancipatedcoaching.com right after making your donation and you’ll be added to the list within 24-48 hours. We hope to see you there! FREE COMMUNITY: Not ready to donate but still want to join in online community and text discussions? Come join the Emancipate Yourself Facebook group to share your thoughts on today’s podcast and ask more questions.

Have you ever thought about how high demand religion taught you to relate to and attach with God? Have you considered how your learned attachment style with the God you were taught to worship might have informed your childhood relationships and may still inform your relationships today? In this episode, Self-Trust Coach and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Catherine Quiring, shares the insight she has gained from her own journey healing codependency with the high-demand Evangelical God she was taught to serve and worship. _________________________________________________________________ RESOURCES: Curtice, Kaitlin. “Native” Early, Jay, Ph.D. and Weiss, Bonnie, LCSW. “Freedom from Your Inner Critic: A Self-Therapy Approach”. Gibson, Lindsay C. “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Deal with Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents”. Held Evans, Rachel. “Faith Unravelled”. And all of her other books. Rohr, Richard. “The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe”. Schwartz, Richard. “No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model”. Schwartz, Richard. “You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships”. SAND Website: Science and Nonduality Sounds of SAND Podcast hosted by Science and Nonduality. ___________________________________________________________________ WANT TO BASK IN MORE OF CATHERINE’S COMPASSION AND EXPERTISE? Find her and all of her valuable resources at the links below. Website: www.cqcounseling.com Recovery Group: Trust Yourself Again: Reclaim Your Inner Compass After Leaving Evangelical Subculture Attachment to God Quiz Trust Yourself Masterclass

Often, some of the most difficult conflicts of values we’ll face is with the people we love the most. Many of us were taught through codependent patterns and practices that love means always agreeing with one another on the things that matter most. This kind of thinking is reinforced through scripture that tells us that husband and wife should be “one flesh”- which was often interpreted to mean that you should become like one person. We also hear this kind of ideology when referring to the church community or the “body of Christ”. We are referred to as parts of one being, instead of being separate individuals with interests, priorities, and needs of our own (1 Corinthians 12:27). In Mormonism, the church is told, “if ye are not one, ye are not mine” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:27). When we were still immersed in high demand religion, these kinds of conflicts may not have arisen between us before because we were all outsourcing our sense of personal values to church authorities and their interpretations of scripture and God’s will. It felt like we were on the same page because we were both following the same cookie-cutter rules coming from the same authority figures. Now that one or both of you have begun reclaiming a personal identity, you’ll likely discover that you’ll have individual preferences and priorities in life. Learning to create safe space to discuss those differences and make space for both sets of values can help you develop a healthy sense of interdependency. In this episode, we talk about how to begin doing that. _________________________________________________________________ RESOURCES: Creighton, James L. Ph.D. “When the Fight is Over Values”. June 20, 2019. Psychology Today. OptionsNow.org. “Two Different Religions: Raising Kids Successfully”. April 7, 2020. Options Now- A Life Choice Clinic. Dr. Sarah Schewitz.  “Navigating Different Values in a Relationship”. July 22, 2022. CouplesLearn.com  Shetty, Jay. “8 Rules for Perfect Love and Amazing Sex“. January 30, 2023. Diary of a Ceo Podcast. YouTube.com Smith, Sylvia. “How to Stay Together When You Are Different From Each Other.” April 1, 2021. Marriage.com ___________________________________________________________________ NEED COUPLES OR RELIGIOUS TRAUMA COACHING? I am currently taking a break from one to one coaching as I devote my time to writing a book on understanding and establishing healthy boundaries, but my husband, Kevin, is now taking new clients as a couples and religious trauma coach. He’s a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Colorado and offers therapy in person, by video call, and by telephone within state lines, but can provide therapy-informed coaching outside of the state and even outside of the country. To find out more about how to work with him, check out his page on the Colorado Counseling Center website. Click on the link labeled “Schedule with Kevin” to talk with his secretary, Annette, about how to work with him in either capacity as a therapist or as a coach. She’ll be able to give you all of the information you need to decide if working with Kevin is the right fit for you. ___________________________________________________________________DONATE TO THE PODCAST AND JOIN THE LIVE WEEKLY DISCUSSION: Want to be a part of the live discussion and learn more about your childhood values? Join us for the live weekly discussion this Wednesday at 6:30pm MT. Monthly donors will be invited to weekly live discussions and group coaching every Wednesday at 6:30pm Mountain Time (8:30pm Eastern/ 5:30pm Pacific). Make a monthly tax-deductible donation of any amount at emancipateyourmind.org . New donors will be automatically added to the email list every month on the 5th with links to the discussions, exclusive exercises and tools to help you recover faster, and invitations to attend any additional workshops this year for free. To be added to the email list more quickly, please email us at teri@emancipatedcoaching.com right after making your donation and you’ll be added to the list within 24-48 hours. We hope to see you there! FREE COMMUNITY: Not ready to donate but still want to join in online community and text discussions? Come join the Emancipate Yourself Facebook group to share your thoughts on today’s podcast and ask more questions.