Sarah's Journey: From Perfectionism to Self-Discovery So this is from surviving the living the spotlight edition and I'm here with Sarah, and why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself and where you're from?  So I'm Sarah Michelson. I, um, I'm from, well, I grew up in Wisconsin, moved to Minnesota. Here we are. I, I came with my kids. I came from my husband. Um, We eventually got married three years ago, been together almost nine years. through out of that um, he is my third husband and life is funny, isn't it? There's so many things that happen, we try to live this life of Um, this worldview of, oh, if things aren't perfect, then I can make them perfect.   📍 ​  And I must be with the wrong person and I, you know, I must be doing the wrong things and we're always in this level of imperfection. And that's where I found myself. I tried being the perfect mom. I tried being the perfect wife. Oh, well it can't possibly be me. So it must be my husband. You know, All of these lies, we're always chasing these lies.  Um, My dad was a pastor my whole entire life. He was also a boiler inspector. My mom was a stay at home mom. Growing up, you don't know any different, right? And growing up, I'm, now I'm realizing that my mom was probably borderline, definitely had narcissistic traits and tendencies and features. Um, Maybe my dad was a dismissive avoidant attachment style. My mom was fearful avoidant. And so we get all of these mismatched things and trying to make sense of this my entire life. It's just like, why do I feel so out of place? Where is my identity? So you try to be good with, with like perfectionism and you try to be a good girl and you try to go to church and you try to live up to this.  Oh my goodness. And you make a mistake and you make a definitely moral and value mistake. And then you keep trading your authenticity for the world and for acceptance and all of these things. And so there's just this thing inside of you that is always waging, now I can identify it as spiritual warfare in my world. And then I came upon my husband and I were going through some really hard things, some betrayal issues this past year.  You just have all these divine moments. You can look back at your life. And I just, I noticed these mile markers and it's just like, Oh, there you were. And this YouTube video popped up and it was about integrated attachment theory by Tyese Gibson with personal development school. And finally, finally there was an answer. I'm like, no wonder I act this way. You know, Maybe there is something that I can work on. Not that there's something wrong with me, but something that I can work on. So that's what kind of brought me here to. Pursuing a certification to become an integrated attachment theory coach um, through Thais Gibson's Gibson integrated attachment theory courses.  You talk about growing up in a feeling that you needed to be perfect or that if you were, authentic, then maybe you weren't going to find answers or be received in a way that your family wasn't going to accept it and provide you answers maybe in a church setting. And so what did that feel like? Or how did you um, Go about looking for answers then did you look in a relationship or outside the church or did you just kind of feel unsettled? Well, I always felt unsettled So what happens was when you're when you're not accepted for who you really are You're authentic you as a child, you know when this attachment is Forms, it starts from zero to two is when your attachment style is formed and then it's reinforced from two to eight.  So when you're authentic place in the world, how you show up in the world is not accepted by the people that are supposed to keep you safe. That are supposed to, identify with you and accept you for who you are. There is a disconnect between your brain and your body. And when that happens. I think that there's a disconnect in the spirit of your inner world because you're trying to be somebody you're not, right?   📍 ​  And your body always in your spirit always wants to come back to real authenticity. But every time that shows you're disciplined for it, you're not rewarded for it. There's negative and positive emotions associated with, Oh, okay. I can be the quiet little girl, but really inside of me, I am loud and rambunctious. So. So your true self is, is negated. Your true self is actually punished. And this fake self, which is again, is not authentic, is rewarded.  So from a very young age, we learn to be someone we're not. Kind of Keeping up appearances. Keeping up appearances, but it's, but it's, it's even worse than that because. You have this view, like I, I see it as like a mirror in my head. You have this view of who you really are, of who God really made you to be. This real place of how you can actually connect with God, and with others, and with yourself. Right. And it's stolen from you. Yeah, and so you have to look at somebody like, one of the things, you know, and it's, and it all has to do with like, Like our, our parents core wounds, like what happened to them really?  So it all comes back to a place of compassion. How did they get to be the way they are? Why wouldn't they repeat what they know?  And these are the same messages I gave to my children. Sure. Why wouldn't I? It's what I knew, right? And why wouldn't she? It's what she knew.   📍 ​  One of the most striking things that I just realized last December was this story we were going through emotions and that one of the emotions exercises was think about the last time that you felt X and then think about the earliest time you felt X and the earliest time would be pre 18. One of the words was beautiful. I have never felt beautiful since I was 15 years old.  I've never known myself as beautiful since I was 15 years old. Because my mother always had to be the prettier one. Always had to be the more beautiful one. I was literally, since my dad had my attention, I related most to my dad. My beauty was where she felt threatened. And her beauty is where she found worth. So if I had more worth than her, that made her worthless, right? So it was always a competition. The triangulation that happens within narcissistic, narcissistically abusive relationships is triangulation of how can I make my world better by creating chaos and nobody looks at me. So she always compared my beauty, she always compared my smarts, she always compared everything. The last time I felt beautiful was when I was 15 years old and I went to the prom with my boyfriend, right?  And then I was telling the history of my life last August and I was in a group of women who had suffered the same type of betrayal. As I'm telling my story, one of the other gals jobs is to write down and dictate little notes and then offer some positive feedback on it. And when I got to the point, I'm like, I never saw myself as beautiful. And she wrote in her little note, she said, remember, classy, not trashy. Those two words changed my entire view of my everything, because suddenly my personality was classy. It could be accepted. My physical beauty. I could find worth in something outside of my physical beauty, outside of how I treated and took care of other people.  I could finally start living my authentic self, how God created me, how he made me to be more effective for him, for his purpose, for his plan, for all of God's good. And guess what? He's going to use the mess of my story to create a beautiful message  how has your family received uh, the news that you're learning these things? You must be very excited. I'm very excited. And, And wanting to share, share all of that. Are they excited? Are they kind of uncertain? How do they? feel Right. Right. Um, 2018, my mom died. And after that um, none of us knew who we were because of codependency and enmeshment. Yeah. You know, I love that I can finally put words. To what I was feeling and experiencing my entire life.   📍 ​ Understanding Attachment Styles and Their Impact   📍 And so let's talk a little bit about integrated attachment theory and  for uh, the people who are uh, watching the podcast um, we have some resources which you've provided for us. And thank you for that. You're welcome. And we're going to have them on the website, Holly bot.me on the, um. spotlight's resources page and um, the listeners and viewers can uh, check those out on their own time and uh, there will be some great resources for them to review and help them in their own journey. And so, um, we have uh, description or an overview of integrated attachment theory.  We have an anxious attachment uh, style uh, dismissive avoidant attachment style of fearful. Avoidant attachment style and secure attachment style, and I thought I wonder which one of these I would be in relation to others, you know, my husband and um, my family, and there are. A little bit in each one of these things that I can see myself and then I also thought back over time. Yes.  Because I have been a very wounded and traumatized individual, maybe even a very, I've been a very toxic individual in my past and I have done a lot of healing um, over the years and I would. I hope that I have improved in my ability to be good for others and good for myself. And so I looked at the last page, which is the secure attachment, and I thought well, I sure hope that stable and emotionally balanced, good at communicating, describes me at least a little. Yeah. But my question for you is.  Is it possible to move from one of these more unhealthy styles to secure attachment? Absolutely. That is the goal. That's what I teach. That's what I coach people to do. That's good news. So we're not stuck. You're not born in one way and you stay there. Okay. Nope. Nope.  So a brief overview, anxious attachment is more clingy. They are, there's a lot of good things. There's a lot of negative things, toxic things, and they will be more codependent and there'll be more clingy in a relationship of like, no, no, I need you close. I need you close. I need you close. Um, Dismissive avoidant will be Relationships are never rewarding. They are super harmful. They are super toxic. I don't need them I can't need them because they hurt too much. I'm gonna go over here and be by myself I'm gonna be like the classic introverted ideal that society has that's not what an introvert is, but I'm gonna just go be by myself Life is too hard. Yeah Fearful avoidant is a mix of the two. Okay, so they are going to adopt Both anxious characteristics as well as dismissive characteristics, and some will be stronger than others. And it will all depend on the life experience that you're in, on what your trigger is, okay? If you're triggered and you think your, your fear of abandonment is triggered, you're going to become more anxious. You're going to be more clingy. If somebody is smothering you and taking your autonomy and freedom away as an, as a fearful avoidant. You're going to go the other way. You're going to be like, I can't handle you. You need to deal with yourself. So it's, it's that hot, cold, right? I love you. Get away from me.   So integrated attachment theory, it is the pairing of the subconscious mind and John Bowlby's in a attachment theory work. So what's integrated. Is Thais Gibson put together this plan and she is pairing like cognitive behavioral therapy dialectical behavioral therapy, emotional processing tools, somatic processing, all of these things are integrated into this one system.  So then I'm curious, the emotional processing tool, is that a part of moving from an unhealthy attachment style to the more healthy style? It is. It's a tool that we use um, when we get to the emotional  stages of, you know, identifying what the patterns are within the attachment styles of what their emotional um, how they show up, you know, are they super clingy or are they dismissive, you know, so that kind of a thing. Um, What are your emotions that you're feeling? Where are you feeling them in your body? So it's a lot of somatic work too. Okay.  But in order to get to that point and use that tool. Um, Focusing on what integrative attachment theory is and how you move to secure. So what we do, we isolate and reprogram core wounds and fears. We assist in understanding and communicating a person's individual personality needs and what their expectations are for themselves and to get from others. Sure. We assist in the tools for the emotional patterning. Sharing and creating strategies for healthier coping mechanisms and boundaries.   📍 ​  And actually, the interesting thing about coping mechanisms and boundaries all relate back to your needs, a person's personality needs, right? If you don't know who you are, how in the world do you know where you're going?  Supporting healthier forms of communication. So now that you know who you are, basically, how are you going to communicate that? How are you going to stand up for yourself? Right. So, Attachment styles. are all formed from different environments. For example, the anxious preoccupied attachment style is formed from a measure with your guardians or your parents with a level of inconsistency and real or perceived abandonment.  And so kids naturally are narcissistic in a way where they're like well, it must be me. You know, It can't possibly be my parents because you know, they're supposed to literally make me survive. Right. So we take it on ourselves as children because we don't have the whole. Emotional maturity to look at somebody else and say, oh, mom's having a really bad day. Yeah, or no wonder dad left You know, he had all this trauma growing up as a kid. No four year old knows that right? So real or perceived perceived being Maybe mom was a stay at home mom But then at some point in your developing years, she had to take on a part time job to help out and suddenly she's gone Sure, so that creates a disconnect. So a dismissive avoidant is born out of emotional neglect Direct or indirect and neglect in general. So if you're, if your parents are providing for, you know, a lot of dismissives will say, I had a great childhood. What are you talking about? I had everything I wanted, you know, I was able to play sports. I was able to have, I mean, I had clothes, food, shelter, all of these things, but then they're showing up at 60 years old and they don't have no idea how to relate in a relationship and it's everyone else's fault.  Show me the child from zero to seven and I will show the show you the adult is the quote. I think that I forget who that says but emotional neglect is simply I don't see you for who you are. I'm not going to let you sit without emotion. I will either make you repress that or punish you for it. Sure. And if you're angry, there's no room for that because me as the adult, I can't process that cause I never have. So you don't get to feel it either. Stop crying and be quiet. That's right. Yep. Sit down and shut up when really you are loud and boisterous. Yeah. So you can't be sad because I can't process that as an adult child. You need to grow up and you need to not be sad. You need to just go ahead and sit there and be stoic. Yeah. And so that's actually one of the characteristics of a dismissive is stoicism. Fearful wooden, like I said takes on characteristics of both and they come from a house of chaos, trauma and abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse.  A lot of times, a lot of times, um, uh, addiction, like raging addictions will be present in that. Like for instance, my mom was a food addict, you know, and when we're talking about addicts and addiction. It's not the substance. Sure. Right. Yep. It's the behavioral patterns behind it. Yeah, it's the emotional Rollercoaster that we all experience right and as a child because we don't have all of this developed We're walking on eggshells, right? We're hyper vigilant, you know, we adopt these ways in order to survive Yeah, so when when we're viewing these insecure attachment styles Maybe the, the listeners of the readers online will look at that and say, Oh my gosh, look at how messed up I am. Yeah. No, No. Congratulate all that stuff. Cause it allowed you to survive this long, but see throughout life.   📍 ​  We're never given a choice of who we want to be if we're in these insecure households. Right. And it's not on purpose. It's no one's fault. Right. People don't have children other than absolute. Psychopaths, people don't have children with the idea that you have, I'm going to, I'm going to have these kids and I'm going to royally mess them up, right? Nobody has that goal, but you just repeat what you know, right? And then as children, we survive with this and as adults, we don't know any difference. So we repeat it. And sometimes our insecure attachment styles will morph into more dangerous ones. And sometimes we adopt coping mechanisms of addictions, be it sex, drugs, drinking, gambling, shopping, humans.  What is a codependent? We're literally addicted to other people. Yes. So are all of these things bad? They're maladaptive coping mechanisms. That speak to you don't have your personality needs being met and you have no idea how to process your emotions in a healthy way. You just haven't found healthier strategies. So working out of these insecure attachment styles towards a secure attachment style, it just all requires to know who you are and to adopt different strategies that are actually going to be on the positive side and less negative. I agree. And having compassion for yourself in the journey. That's true. So then as you were learning all of this,   📍 I assume then that you were doing the similar work in your own life and adopting this journey. Do you think that this is a lifelong journey that has maybe some quick wins   Reflecting on Personal Growth and Therapy Experiences So I've been in counseling and therapy for over 20 years um, from my first husband on. And I've found, you know, little tidbits of success and, but overall it was really um, disheartening, including the latest ones we have, not that they don't have good material, good thoughts, good intentions, but I find it woefully incomplete.   📍 ​   I'm more of a holistic person. It's just like, let's not look at sex addiction. Yeah. You know, Let's not look at alcoholism. Right. Let's not look at these things to me in my mind, like how my mind works. It works in puzzles. And you need all of the pieces there in order to put those puzzles together. And if you're only dealing with the coping mechanism, where people have gone to, to find relief, you're giving an aspirin for a headache without doing tests to see that there's an aneurysm. That drives me mad in the world of therapy right now. And I am not a licensed therapist, I'm a coach, okay?  I'm going to continue to learn everything that licensed therapists know because it's all really good information. It's good to know and understand where people are coming from, what they've experienced, hear other people's stories, and it's woefully incomplete. I just told my therapist the other day, I said, talk therapy for me doesn't work.  That's why these these attachment style sheets are so revelatory. It's like Oh my gosh. Unpacking Core Wounds and Parenting Challenges   📍 📍 ​  I am afraid of being abandoned. Yes. Oh my gosh. One of my core wounds is I will be betrayed. No wonder I push people away before they can. Yeah. No wonder I'm always just, you know, distrusting of other people. That doesn't feel good to me. No. As it's happening. I know that there's a disconnect there somewhere. And then we  adopt coping mechanisms that aren't so great that hurts your heart to know that this is what you've done to others. This is what you've done to your children when your only goal was to be the best mom in the entire world. Yeah. So how has this um, affected your parenting to learn some of these things? I wouldn't say that it has been a 180 yet. Yeah. Because we still fall into those old patterns. Yes. And I would say that it has affected my parenting tremendously. Yeah. Because I have a 17 year old. Both of my girls are off on their own. My 17 year old is graduating, going to be going off to school. My your first child is always the one that bears the brunt of everything, right? Apologies and Healing in Family Dynamics   📍 So I'm so sorry my dear I'm so sorry. I keep apologizing  to her and that's where it brings you to is just like I did this to you Yeah, I am so sorry   📍 ​  So I regularly make those calls and I'm like and it's not so much that she can address them and be like oh This is what I did to you. This is what's wrong with you. It comes from a place of I gave you I call them dead bodies It's everything I didn't want to deal with. So I shove off on others. This is like projection. This is blame. This is blame shifting. These are all of our wonderful techniques that we got. So we didn't have to carry these things ourselves. So I, I have people picture like the grossest dead body in the entire world. And it's stinky and it's disgusting and it's slimy.  And throughout all of my chaos that I was growing up in with their father. I just kept throwing dead bodies at my kids like here. No. Nope. Take it. Take it. Take it. Take it Yeah, and so I just recently told my oldest I said, you know what? Here's some things that I've recognized that I did to you and did with you and I expected you to carry and it was Any, you know age inappropriate? Yeah, I Need to take that back. Yeah, Shifting Parenting Styles and Embracing Change you shouldn't be carrying that you need to give that back so if you want to hang on to that you can but just know that I'm here to take it back when you're ready and So many times, like the fear of betrayal and the fear of being abandoned and the feeling of unsafe, that's a core wound of fearful avoidant. I am unsafe. One thing I noticed for myself when I started to make   📍 changes was a disbelief that changes would be made  and that they would be effective and successful, permanent, positive.  You're looking forward to positive relationships. You want loving relationships. You don't want this toxicity anymore, right? ,  I knew that eventually I wanted to get to that point where I could accept that toxic people were in my life, but then I could also speak up for myself.   📍 ​  And at least if verbally or non verbally or whatever, but just emotionally in my own heart being like, I don't have to accept that and I don't have to fix it. I've been toxic to people just like you admit that you had, and why would those other people until I show up in a different way and they can learn like levels of trust. So when I explain boundaries,  I think of it like in banking terms. It's. There's some people that I wouldn't even tell my name of the bank to that I didn't have. And there's other people that I would give my username and password to.  Yep. And I would let them manage my funds. Yeah. And all of that can shift depending on Can I trust you with this? Yeah. I'm gonna give you this much access. Oh, okay. You can move to the next level. Yep. Oh, I see. Thank you. Here we are. Yeah. But that's mine to decide.   📍 One of the Personal Growth and Understanding Attachment Styles traits that I had to work through that  just slapped me in the face as a fearful avoidant was one of our things, our core wounds is I will be betrayed and it's a self fulfilling prophecy.  We tend to give you, I'm going to give you all of my trust here. Take my username and password. Do what you want to it. And then we're surprised when you do what you want with it. When you've just betrayed me and you walked away and you didn't carry the same morals and values that I did. What? Why don't you? Yeah. So many times. Every single person works and projects their own morals, their own values, their own personality, their own everything on someone else without them earning it, without accepting that. And this is the enmeshment part, right? Without accepting that somebody else is different than me.   📍 ​  Yeah. I can still appreciate and value that. Even though they're not like me, it's what's the rule of narcissism and codependency? I call it two sides of the same coin. They're both looking for validation from the outside in rather than dealing from the inside out. Yes. Okay. When I realized that I'm like, Oh my goodness, where does my worth and value come from? Yeah. It can't come from outside. It can't. And this is where we work on core wounds. This is where we work on new boundaries. This is where we work on all of these things so that we can fill our own cups, understanding our own needs within the attachment theory. If we understand our personality needs, we can fill them ourselves so that when it, like I have a personality need for helpfulness, okay. For some reason, I was super, super surprised by that, and I've been helping people my whole entire life. But until you know who you are, how do you know where you're going, right? If I fill my own need, if I can help myself emotionally, mentally, in the seven areas of life, my career, financially, if I can fill my own cup, it's not a desperate need to get helpfulness from the outside of me, like demanding it from someone else and then being rejected and shamed and betrayed when it doesn't come from the outside in.  Now I'm curious, in all of this and in your church upbringing and all of that, did you have a time at which the two came back together and you had a better understanding of your identity with God and with Jesus and that became less of an uncomfortable, unsettled feeling and more authentic? So, I always had a close relationship with God, and I have always appreciated the trials and tribulations in life because it always pushed me to God and to Christ and to the Bible. So that was my escape. That's where I felt good about myself because I, at least I knew, and spirituality is actually one of the seven areas of life that we need to fill. Um, I felt good that I was filling that bucket, that need, and I also, that was like the biggest betrayal to myself. When I didn't act in a moral and valued way, right? So the disconnect was both heartbreaking and, and I knew there was a disconnect to myself, there was a disconnect with others because I treat different, different people, certain ways, you know, I would be, I would act more righteously, you know, like, no, no, no, this is how you should be. Just ask me, right.  meanwhile, I'm over here living this duplicitous life. Sure. And guess who knows? God does. Right. So all that while, I'm so grateful for the conviction in my heart where you just kept saying, Hey, guess what? You know better. Right. But let me lead you on this path. So I don't like, I live my entire life without regret. I don't, I don't regret one single moment, one single choice, one single anything because it's led me here. Right. I often say, if you regret anything, you haven't learned what you're supposed to learn. In life, you haven't sat with yourself and you haven't sat with the Lord long enough for him to reveal what's missing, right? What you're supposed to learn. And with that attitude, as I'm going through trials and tribulations, I can sit there into that despair. It does hurt. I accept it. I don't try to push past it anymore.  Now I sit with him. And I pray to the Lord, like I give up, Lord, this is yours, you are capable, I am not, show me what I need to know, lead me in the direction you need to be, use me for good. And on the other side of that, I always know that there's a silver lining.   📍 I Embracing Emotions and Overcoming Coping Mechanisms think one thing that I really learned As I had some personal growth was in, in my coping,   how to live with being uncomfortable and not escaping being uncomfortable and that it's okay to not be okay.  I think a lot of the addictions and poor coping mechanisms people engage in is they're trying to escape. Discomfort. Either physical discomfort or emotional discomfort of any kind.   📍 ​  Absolutely. And, And when we do that, in addition to engaging in uh, poor coping mechanisms, we also suppress Um, it can lead to emotional numbing and in the worst cases, emotional disconnect. I mean, Even seeing the world as if you're watching a movie through your own eyes, right? Or as if you're watching someone else's life and you're not even in your own body.  So part of the emotional processing tool, which we can post online for anybody that wants to go through the exercise, it's very, very um, laid out. It's very self explanatory. It's, It's for the individual to kind of work through line by line. I think there's five or six questions, but the emotional processing tool allows you to be like, okay, I'm angry, but then it comes down to a question of what am I making it believe, or what am I believing about the situation? What were my thoughts about it? And then what do I need to feel not angry? So in order to go over, if you're, if you identify that you're angry, because like I said, if you're in the middle of these things like, oh, I'm so angry, you've skipped past 57 other emotions to get there because anger, happiness, surprise, sad, these are all emotions that society accepts as um, Okay. We don't need an explanation for why you feel this way. Right. Okay. Fine. You're angry, whatever. Get over it. Yeah. You know, we, We as a society push these things away, but we don't recognize the, the measures that took us there. So are you angry? Uh, Are you aggressive? Do you feel aggressive? And is it because maybe somebody was hostile towards you or you were hostile towards your emotions, et cetera? Well, What do you need on the other side of that? What do you need to be the opposite on the triangle there? Happy. Do you need to feel content about a decision? Are you angry because of a decision? Do you, Do you need to feel content and how can you get joyful and free? Can someone else help you with that? Or is that something you can do for yourself? And then what do you need to be joyful and free about? Right. Figure out what you're dealing with. Figure out what beliefs you're working with. Go to that attachment style sheet and be like, okay, these are potential core ones. Uh, Can I feel joyful and free if somebody doesn't betray me? Can I feel that way if I don't betray myself? Yeah. Cause that's where it all starts is with you. Starts with you. And then it projects out in the world. And then we're surprised when other people treat us the same way we've been treating ourselves. So this wheel is a handy way for people, even wherever they are at throughout the day to check in with themselves and identify how they're feeling and maybe even take steps to If it's not a good feeling rectify it, it's so many times, we can identify angry or sad, but emotions are nothing more than a sensation in your body that goes up to a belief or thought. Okay. To, to un demonize emotions. This is what we need to do. We just need to make them a thing. Oh, they're a problem. Well, There's gotta be a solution to it, you know. understanding they're just a sensation. Where do you feel fear? I feel fear in my chest and it feels like kind of a numb, tingly thing. Describe it. Take the teeth out of it. Yep. Being like, Oh, okay. Um, What am I fearful about? Oh, I'm afraid that, you know, my boss is going to come and fire me and then I'll Okay. Uh, What are you afraid is going to happen after that? Yeah. Well, That I'll be unsafe and I won't be safe and secure and I'll lose my house and I'll lose my kids. Okay. This is where the emotional processing tool gets. Okay. Use that and then retell the story. Is it really true that my boss called a meeting at 1 o'clock because he's going to fire me? Or could it be because he's asking me about the presentation? Both can be true, but what is more true? Let's tell a couple different stories of what it could be to bring ourselves down and deal with the problem in the moment rather than catastrophizing. And always keeping ourselves on guard in order to protect ourselves from this invisible monster that doesn't exist.  I am going to wrap this up a little bit, but I have one final question in addition to the resources you've provided that I'm going to put on the website on the Spotlight Resources page if someone wanted to learn more or even um, find a coach to help them through with some of these things um, and I will put Your information up in there as a resource um, how would they uh, go about uh, learning more or finding a coach or getting in contact with you? Is that? So they're welcome to contact me directly. Um, I can walk through if I'm not a fit, I can refer out. Um, Tyese Gibson has all kinds of attachment theory stuff online on the YouTube. Uh, Personal development school is where it's under. Um, More specifically, I mean, I, I have learned from a. Bunch of different people and if I know somebody that can help I will certainly lead them in that direction You know, nobody is a fit for everybody. Right, right. And if I can help somebody I sure will. Okay. Well, That sounds great And I want to end with, you know, we have talked a lot about Emotional Coping mechanisms that are not necessarily healthy in all of the ways that the human spirit can go wrong. And um, that's a challenge for every person on earth. You know, We are all, nobody's born perfect. We are all born with a struggle. And we've, we've talked a little bit about how even if we're raised in the church um, It doesn't mean that we're automatically going to be perfect and um, no parent is perfect. Even parents are born uh, sinners, right? But that that's not a reflection on God, right?   📍 God himself is perfect. And, And Jesus is the great physician, right?  And that includes uh, being able to heal. All of these, these things. Finding Healing and Purpose Through Faith And so personally, in my own experience like yourself, I had decades of therapy, which was very helpful in all of these things are helpful, but Jesus was the one who provided the ability. To understand. Yes, right.   📍 ​  he is the only one that can completely fill our needs. I think that we have these longings, these needs that can never be filled in any other way than through him. That he gave us these needs so that we will, you know, C. S. Lewis said that um, because these needs can never be fulfilled by another person, it tells me I was made for another place. Amen. Right. Amen. And that I was made  for someone who can. Yeah. Right. And, And God is that person. And so I want to make sure that in, in everything that we're talking about, that we're pointing uh, everyone who's listening to the person who can provide the ability to understand these important materials, which are. Important because  one person we all want to be securely attached to is God is Jesus and have that good relationship and then he gives us the ability to have secure relationships with everyone else. And that's what he wants us to do. to have. That's why we're here. Absolutely. You know, He said uh, you know, the first and most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That's what he wants is relationship with us. And he said, and the second commandment is like it love your neighbor as yourself, right?  It's all about relationship and he wants to affect that, right? So I encourage. You and me and everyone listening to use these tools, these very wonderful tools to help ourselves and each other uh, to do that very well. Right. So I want to thank you so much for being here. Thank you. so much. And providing these.   📍 📍 ​   Look for more episodes that inspire@hollybot.me. Until next time, remember, your story is never over. God's grace is always waiting to rewrite it. This is from Surviving to Living.