Insecure to Secure with Jessica Baum

george grombacher 0:02
Jessica balm is a psychotherapist, she is the founder of the relationship Institute, her newest book is anxiously attached to becoming more secure in life and love. Welcome to the show. Jessica,

Jessica Baum 0:14
thank you so much for having me. excited to have you

george grombacher 0:17
on. Tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Jessica Baum 0:23
Well, I’m a psychotherapist and I have a group practice and have a coaching business. And we’re really I started in the world of addiction and codependency and then worked my way into becoming an Imago therapist, which is a specialized couples counseling and started seeing patterns. And in my own life, of course, I think, you know, anybody who goes into this field has also personally struggled. So just really learning about relationship dynamics and attachment theory, which led me to my book anxiously attached, you know, struggling with codependency my whole life, and in my personal life, and then treating it in my practice, really learning how to heal it and seeing what works. And then diving into attachment theory, which really is at the root of all of it led me to want to write this book for myself, the book I needed. And the book that I’m sure so many other people have already told me they needed. So that’s how I got there. It’s a very short version of how I got there.

Unknown Speaker 1:22
I appreciate that.

george grombacher 1:25
Human beings have been meeting each other and forming relationships and having babies for really, really, really, really long time. Was it always hard? Or do we move along into modern living and hit some kind of inflection point where it just got extra hard?

Jessica Baum 1:42
So question, I feel like it’s getting harder, because the people’s attachment systems are getting a little bit more insecure. And that has to do with evolution and technology and the transactional nature of our world and how we kind of don’t understand the nature of relationships quite the same. And there’s almost too many options and too easy to like, discard. And, you know, there’s just, it’s a lot going on, it’s a harder world. And I also think people don’t understand how hard relationships how much work they entail. So there’s a lot of our culture just wants instant gratification and wants now, so after the initial honeymoon phase, many people, you know, they don’t stick out, stick it out to do the deeper work.

george grombacher 2:29
So it’s it’s a lot.

Jessica Baum 2:32
It is a lot. Yeah, relationships are their work, they really are, it takes it takes a lot of work. And it takes a certain type, you know, you have to be willing to look at yourself and kind of look inward and understand what is really yours.

george grombacher 2:48
Do I what is really yours. Tell me more about that.

Jessica Baum 2:52
Yeah, so in the book, I talk about your attachment, wounds, and your protectors and your adaptive strategies, and how we stay in connection. And I go into, like, why we behave certain ways in relationships, why we attract certain types and relationships have those dynamics play out, and starting to get conscious of what how fear and adaptive strategies are actually running the show versus, you know, because we’re all trying to stay in connection. So starting to understand, okay, this is really mine, like my event and then or my fear or what’s going on for me. So instead of trying to control you, we start to shift the narrative and try to heal that or try to be with that differently so that we don’t, you know, end up in relationships that are just based on control and fear.

george grombacher 3:41
So I am working to manage my fear and my adaptive strategies rather than control myself that I get that right or wrong.

Jessica Baum 3:51
I’m working to, to understand and have compassion for my adaptive strategies and the way I operate when I’m scared. And once I understand that, and get to the root of the fear or the wound, we could heal it. And then there’s more space or neural plasticity that gets built and we might have more options. And in terms of how reactive we get in relationships, we might have more awareness, we call it dual awareness into understanding like, Oh, this is what’s really going on versus you’re doing this to me, well, we might get out of projection easier. We might have more compassion for our partner and how they’re actually adapting and trying to survive and start to see them through another lens.

george grombacher 4:34
Where do I pick all this stuff up from? Do we all get it around the same time just throughout life? My my wounds, my protectors, my, my adaptive strategies

Jessica Baum 4:48
throughout life, but a good portion of how we’re our nervous system is highly hardwired comes from our primary caregivers and our home and so as babies we don’t come out fully developed, and so we’re still kind of connected to our mother as a one unit and we are still forming our nervous system and depending on her nervous system, and we’re connecting right brain, the right brain, we will form a sense of safety in terms of how responsive she is and how much she’s co regulating. And so we we develop either an inherent sense of trust, or anxious people, they tend to feel like the balls gonna drop, or they leave themselves and monitor the room. Although codependent traits, or avoidant people kind of learn that they’re not going to get their needs met, so they shut down. So we learn a lot of this very, very early, before we even have what you would think of as memory, the memory is more sensational. And the trust, the inherent trust, that we’re gonna get our needs met is really a bodily sensation that we either have or we don’t have. And then when we’re adults, we take that memory and those early adaptive strategies and experiences in that actually, we had reattach. And we bring all of that with us. And then that gets played out very differently. And, you know, people don’t want to hear it. But a lot of that is really rooted in fear or patterns that were embedded very, very early on.

Speaker 2 6:10
What do you mean, people don’t want to hear it? Because people want to want to hear that, like, oh, it’s

Jessica Baum 6:15
not really my partner that’s causing me to have this, you know, feeling in my gut or this explosive feeling. And it’s like, actually, that’s a feeling you’ve had before, that’s your body saying, this is very scary, that’s a sign that that’s or there’s earlier trauma there. And that’s a very big connection to make, when you can start to make the connection that big sensations actually are a form of memory. They’re our earliest form of memory. And we feel the biggest sensations usually when we attach the deepest to another human being.

george grombacher 6:46
That makes a lot of sense to me. And I guess that is a function of I would rather blame it on exterior outside circumstances than then recognize or explore the idea that this is something that is unique to me, and maybe it’s not my fault. But if I want to get to where I want to go, it needs to be it needs to be addressed.

Jessica Baum 7:12
Well, I think the there’s a couple of ways to answer that it’s not all from the past, there’s a split, there’s, you know, 80% happening in the past that’s old, and then 20%, usually happening in the here. And now depending on the sensations going on. And I think some people are more conscious, or willing to get more or bring more awareness to what’s really going on and take in this information and expand that window of like, wow, there is many layers to this where the wound is showing up in all my relationships, the sensation seems to be always there. And then there’s a lot of people that are just stuck in projection, who can’t get out of the fact that it’s the other person’s fault, because they don’t have the inner abilities yet to kind of form a deeper understanding of what’s going on inside of them. So they tend to try to control or manipulate or understand what’s going on inside of them in direct relationship to what’s going on outside of them versus, hey, there might there might be something, something else going on here. And we might we might need to look at this differently.

george grombacher 8:13
Again, going back to the reality that we’re all a lot, we’ve all got the our paths that we have, and maybe we struggle with maybe we don’t and there’s the things that we want today and the things that we need today. I know that I can certainly get myself so twisted up that I almost feel like I’m sort of lost or blind. And I tried to out think it what what role does intuition have just my kind of gut instinct, if any?

Jessica Baum 8:45
It’s interesting, because a lot of people, you know, intuition is big. But if you have trauma, you can think that you’re having intuition. And it’s really a familiar trauma that’s leading the way so it can be very tricky as to what is intuition what feels right, what feels familiar. And then sometimes even you can have the intuition all you want, but the allure, or the red flags are there, and I can explain that and you still kind of go diving in headfirst. So intuition isn’t always accurate, because trauma and, and the past can kind of influence the decisions that you’re making in the present and you might not be conscious of that.

george grombacher 9:25
Right? So my, what I perceive to be my true north is, is maybe has been knocked off by some kind of trauma or core wound of some kind.

Jessica Baum 9:38
It can be you know, and I believe as human beings and I do study interpersonal neurobiology, and this is proven that we’re inherently designed to heal and go towards healing. So even if we pick a non healing relationship or not, there’s a part of our body that wants to recreate to hopefully get conscious or hopefully become aware. That’s the goal. I mean, I can say that I had To get conscious in the most painful situations, and sometimes it’s through the suffering or through, you know, different situations that we feel are right or intuition guides us. And they’re not necessarily wrong if if they help us evolve and shift and change, and I’ve been lucky enough to have that experience, but when you’re in that experience, you don’t feel very lucky.

george grombacher 10:19
No, no, it doesn’t sound like it would be a good feeling or, or that you would feel very fortunate to be to be having it. Out there and lucky about this, right?

Jessica Baum 10:32
Not until after there’s like a little bit of gratitude afterwards, because it’s shipped to you. But yeah, during you feel like you’ve opened up Pandora’s Box. Right?

george grombacher 10:40
Right. My question was, are we ever fixed? But I understand that that’s crude and blunt, perhaps you know, what I’m trying to ask.

Jessica Baum 10:53
We’re never needing to be fixed. We’re always whole and everything we do make sense, right? So are we ever fixed? No. But I think we become more and more conscious. And we become better at attending to what is coming up in our inner world and our outer world, and we develop more and more capacity to treat ourselves with that tenderness and love and others. So our compassion and our, our bandwidth expands. And we’re, you know, we, we evolve, but, but we are always being touched, and we’re always being awakened, and we’re always being if you want to call it triggered, but the intensity might change, or the reaction might change, or the viewpoint or the way we look at it, or the way we respond, eventually shifts, so it becomes I wouldn’t say becomes easier, it does become easier unless something drastic happens, right? Like Life is full of wonderful surprises, and sometimes really hard surprises. So yeah, it gets easier, yes. And it gets deeper and more meaningful, and we don’t try to escape our own suffering quite as much. And we become more resilient, and we become more insightful as to how to handle things when they come up.

george grombacher 12:10
The title of the book is anxiously attached, becoming more secure in life and love is that what you hope for people as they engage in your work is to not to get fixed, like I just described, or said, and you did a great job of describing it. But to then just feel more secure, that I can handle this situation, I’m secure. In my thought process, I’m secure in my interpersonal relationship with my loved ones, people I care about?

Jessica Baum 12:40
Yeah, it’s such a good question. Like, I want people to feel more secure in themselves. But I also want people to understand that everything their experience makes sense. And to make sense of their experience from a more compassionate way from the neuroscience from the way they develop. Because I think once we can start to understand we are the way we are, we shift in general and that there’s nothing really wrong with us, this is how we adapted to survive. And so I want people to understand that all their parts are okay, all their adaptive strategies make sense. And as you start to heal, and your capacity to be with the uncomfortability and with and to attract support are healthy love, your ability to feel more secure expands because you start to experience, you start to experience connection in a new way. And you start to feel more secure in your connections, and you start to pick different people to stay connected to people who are more loving and present and nurturing and kind versus maybe what you would call like, as a trauma bond or something that’s familiar that you know, recreates the root wound, and you’re not you’re not really in a healing process with it.

george grombacher 13:49
So how do I know if I think that we all need to do this kind of work? But how do I know if I need to maybe more than than somebody else?

Jessica Baum 14:04
Oh, wow, that’s a good question. I think if you know that you need to do this work, you’re just very lucky because you’re already being called to do something a little bit deeper. But if you have struggled in the same type of pattern over and over again, and you know, you have these deeper feelings of not feeling lovable, or abandonment wounds or, and you just feel like you know what, I just want to really, I want to figure this out, I want to heal a little bit deeper. It’s not that they don’t show up. It’s really a lot of space and, you know, things shift around them and you’re able to make healthier choices. So if you’re just sick and tired, I know for me, I was just sick and tired of being miserable. And I was like, I got to work through it and working through it means you feel really uncomfortable in the presence of people who can really hold it and help you navigate those waters. And I was just like, I’m not going to live the rest of my life. So miserable and so I just made the choice that I was going to heal it and It’s it’s a journey. But I mean, what’s the other option? Just stay unconscious and hang in there. I mean, people who do that are just surviving. And there’s nothing wrong with that either. But just be aware, you’re just surviving when the right people, places and things show up, maybe you will be courageous enough to try to go there as well.

george grombacher 15:19
So there’s more for you, potentially.

Jessica Baum 15:21
Yeah. And I want to say it never ends. It’s not like I’m sitting here and saying, I’ve done the work, I’m done. No, it’s an a continuous unfolding. does get easier. I’m gonna say that, but it is a continuous unfolding, once you become a little more embodied. Yeah.

george grombacher 15:37
I dislike the saying or the term or whatever it is leveling up. And there are different levels of things. So you experience when I feel like when I recognized some of the some of the causes of my negative patterns like scarcity, I traced it back to when I was a little kid, and lots of the things that were going on in my household with my parents relationship that ended up splitting up and not having enough money. And I think that these are probably pretty common that very few of us experience perfect childhoods or growing up. And so I can speak to the value of doing the work that you’re describing a little bit. Just kind of scratching the surface. But when you do you feel more in control, you feel more secure. So I certainly am a proponent for the things that you’ve been describing.

Jessica Baum 16:32
That’s great. And the irony is like, in my experience, doing the work or starting to do the work is all about letting go of control. And letting others help you. And then the paradox is you feel so much freer. No,

george grombacher 16:46
that’s a tricky one. Letting go of control. Just

Jessica Baum 16:50
it’s literally like I’ve been spending the last couple years of my life. Just keep surrendering it, you know.

george grombacher 16:58
Yeah, I like to joke that I’m not a human being I am without question a human doing, and I’m trying really hard to become a human being. So you’re supposed to do Jessica.

Jessica Baum 17:08
Yeah. And the human doing is really born out of survival, like I must do to feel safe. If I’m not doing then, you know, I’m not feeling as safe. So that’s okay. That’s what it’s good that you know that and I was a human freaking the biggest producer and human productive machine and, and that was actually slowing down. It was very hard for me, it was so hard. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

george grombacher 17:31
Those patterns that he’s talking about, Jessica? Yeah, yeah, those

Jessica Baum 17:35
patterns, delegating trusting others, having space in your life to deal with what floats up, all that stuff is really hard. And I think you’re one of many who are like, real, I just remember clearing my schedule and being like, in an and facing every single thing that I would never have to face again. And I get it, I get why we stay busy. It makes perfect sense. And

george grombacher 18:01
it does, doesn’t it? Yes. But keep doing what you’re doing, you’re gonna get what you always got. Isn’t that how it goes? Or maybe on the first day physics, we learned that an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force and vice versa. Yeah,

Jessica Baum 18:16
and I was like to look at it as a protector, like when I was a workaholic. And you know, people would still say I’m busy. But I was really, really busy. I used to say I needed work, I needed that safe place. I wasn’t ready to deal with every single thing that was going on inside of me. So work provided safety for me. And until I had safe enough people in a safe enough environment, all the right things. I think, God, thank God, I was that busy, because I just couldn’t have coped and whether it’s shopping or eating or drinking, like we all have ways in which we protect ourselves that we kind of need, that it’s not about really taking them away. It’s about becoming aware of like, this is why I’m working. I’m working because I don’t want to slow down because if I slow down I’m scared you know, becoming starting to become more conscious of like, oh, this is why I’m doing this. This is why this behaviors there and that’s okay. That is really okay.

george grombacher 19:11
No matter what, Jessica, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you and where can they get their copy of anxiously attached, becoming more secure in life and love?

Jessica Baum 19:23
I’m all over the internet but if you put Jessica Bauman anxiously attached anywhere on Amazon, I’m in like 11 countries I have a coaching business as be self full.com And I have a private practice here in South Florida. The relationship Institute of Palm Beach I have a group of wonderful like clinicians that work for me and are trained with me and we are all you know versed in healing attachment wounds and codependency so yeah, just google me online. Luckily I pop up everywhere and the book is a wonderful I’m not just like it’s a wonderful place to start. There’s so much value You and I put so much in that book. So a lot of people get a lot of healing experiences from that book. And if you read that book and it’s working, doesn’t have to be me, you can just find a therapist find someone bring what comes up in the book to another human being, because you do really need to heal in healing relationships, which is another whole topic. But thank you so much for having me for having me on today. Well, it

george grombacher 20:21
was a pleasure. If you enjoyed this as much as I did, so just get your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, get your copy of anxiously attached, becoming more secure in life and love. And I will link that in the notes of the show go to be self four.com and check out the relationship Institute of Palm Beach as well. I will link all of those in the notes and dig in. This is a good starting point. And like Jessica said, hopefully you’ll be able to find some good tools and just get started in this process. Thanks again, Jessica.

Jessica Baum 20:57
Thank you so much.

george grombacher 20:58
Until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.