Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Hi. We have the author of an incredibly popular book.
Yes.
Read by millions.
Millions indeed.
His first book was Attached. Amir Levine. He is a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, and of course a best-selling author. And he has a new book out, kind of answering as he talks about Attached, outline these different attachment styles, and then people were naturally curious, can I change mine?
And so his new book is to address that exact question, Secure, The Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life. Please enjoy Dr. Amir Levine. This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple TV, the new U.S. home of Formula One. Starting March 7th, you can watch complete all-access live coverage of every Grand Prix, including preseason. practice, qualifying, and sprints all in one place.
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Chapter 2: How does Amir Levine explain his journey into understanding attachment theory?
Hi, Monty. How are you? I'm good. Did you have a good weekend?
I did have a good weekend.
Anything spectacular happen?
Nothing spectacular, which is a good weekend.
Okay.
You know, relaxing weekend. I'm moving this week.
Friday?
I'm sleeping there on Friday.
Oh my God, Monica's been building a house across the street for what, five, six years?
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Chapter 3: What are the myths and misconceptions about attachment theory?
I didn't have a PhD, but I really liked it. And it was the analyst who said, well, maybe you should give it a try. But he didn't really know what it means. I didn't barely know even how to hold it by pet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I found this one paper that I really, really liked about long-term memory and how long-term memory is conserved and epigenetic changes in those neurons in a plesia, which is a sea slug. That has enormous neurons? Yes, huge neurons. And then I went, and again, I guess that theme of going and talking. So I went and I talked to the last author on that paper.
but he wasn't the one who masterminded it. So he listened to me for two minutes. His name was Eric Kandel. And then he basically said, let's go up a floor. And we went, that's where I met James Schwartz, Jimmy, my first mentor. I basically talked to him a little bit about my thoughts again, the same thing about the research and the ideas that I had.
And then he said, okay, we'll give you a try for three months and see how you fare. And then we'll see what happens after that. So there I was going into the lab, which I've never imagined that I would do behind the bench, starting all these molecular experiments. Yeah.
Now, do you think you had a primary question about life in humans that you thought was going to be answered in psychoanalysis or the pursuit of it and the practice of it and that you saw in this epigenome work? Well, maybe the answer lies over here or had not even occurred to you yet. Do you think you had like a driving curiosity, like a primary question?
I really did want to understand what makes human tick. And I really wanted to understand the brain better. But I don't think that at the time I had a specific idea. I've always had this thirst for knowledge, which maybe will explain why I did what I did. Because at that time, I was almost done with my residency.
It's been many years going through medical school and then coming here and doing another year of internship. I had to do two years. I had to repeat a year of internship. Then I did adult psychiatry and then child psychiatry altogether another five years. So after doing all that training. You were 71 years old.
Seriously, you're aging backwards.
And when we think, okay, it's time to make money, right? You have to open up your private practice and start making money. And then, oh, wait a second, I still really want to learn more. And I'm going to take a salary, which maybe is like a tenth of the amount and just continue with my education and learning. But I didn't even think about it that way at the time.
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Chapter 4: How does Amir relate his personal experiences to attachment theory?
So what do we need to understand about how the brain works?
So our brain loads exclusion. That was like the most important thing that I would start with. I call it the cyberball effect. The biggest thing is safety because we're not descendants of eagles or elephants or lions. Yeah, we're not. These like primates who live for a long time in the middle of the food chain. And it was only when I was on a safari in Africa.
You realize how fucking vulnerable we are. Because we went, they took us, most of the time we're in those like vehicles and you feel like it's okay, even though one time an elephant... So charging at us, it was pretty scary. But at one time we walked outside in the wild, but they had a guy with a rifle behind us and a guy with a rifle in front of us. And we had to keep a single file.
And at no point could we have actually opened the gap. And if we did, they would tell us immediately close the gap. And then I realized, whoa, when we were there, there's no people with rifles in the front. And then it's not about just like, oh, I like being hyper-included. It's so nice. I love it. It's so comfy and warm and cozy.
It's more like if you're excluded, then you can fall prey at any second.
You're dead. Yeah, you're dead.
It's life or death. And the fact that we're all close to each other here, for example, now. So if a predator came, I have 66% of survival better than if I were myself because they're going to go after you.
Rob's fucked. He's going to get picked off back there behind that wall.
Not if they come in this way, then he'll run out that door and he'll be safe.
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Chapter 5: How do secure attachments influence personal relationships?
It can be in friendships, in romantic relationships. It can be at work. It can be in so many different areas of our life. So those relationships are really, really important. And then he didn't take it personally. And it's easier for secures not to take things personally because they don't sense danger. So it's like, okay, it's easier. And so, yeah, I understand this is something that comes up.
Chapter 6: What role does memory play in emotional healing?
And so she was able to learn to open up to him and talk to him about her fears and then slowly to unpack the boxes. All the angst that prevented her started to sort of melt away. And it worked really well, but it worked in the here and now. And it really didn't depend so much on understanding the past. Yeah.
But there is something to be said about recalling past events in therapy or in general with even with friends. What actually does happen is an opportunity to rewrite your memories. You're recalling something. And what we now know is that from a neuroscience perspective, when we recall a memory, we we to some degree disrupt it.
We know it in like in animal models, when they recall memory, you can prevent a new protein synthesis and maybe getting too technical, but new protein synthesis in order for long-term memory to re-solidify, you need new protein synthesis, you completely erase their memories. So basically by recalling something, you disrupt the memory and you have a chance to not just create a causal connection.
I think it's actually more powerful to change the actual memory, to edit it, to suit you more now to where you are now.
That's why everyone's memories of the same experience are very different.
Very different.
Because over time, they're thinking about it and they're changing.
Constantly editing it. Constantly and can be affected by how other people talk to you about it, how you recall it. Memory is very vulnerable in a good way, I think.
I'm with you and I am concerned about modern pop psychology for all the reasons we're listing. One thing I found about going through my past when I actually did real therapy starting five years ago, I guess, I was telling these stories that I had told a million times.
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Chapter 7: How do attachment styles affect our emotional responses?
But in this context with this man, I do believe I was feeling the emotions attached to those feelings that I had never let myself feel. And I feel like I got to actually cry when I was telling the story for the first time. And I felt like I was allowing myself to experience and grieve For something I just never made space for because I thought it might have killed me.
So for me, I felt like there was utility in it. And then I had delayed the emotional response to some of these things for so long. And that once I had the emotional response, they got smaller. I knew somehow on the other side of that door was crying and I was just not going to go there. And then once I did that part, I did feel like it liberated me to go forward.
Completely. So that's the second. The first part is the sort of re-editing those memories.
And the second part is that when you sit together with someone that you trust, and how often do we get to talk about those really difficult moments or intimate moments and recall them with someone that you fully trust, that you have a very unique therapeutic relationship is unlike any other relationship in the world. Yeah.
That you can open up and they're there just to listen and to help you and to understand you. And if you feel that connection, they give you the secure base to be able to process some of the information and really change it in a way that now actually feels more secure. So that's the thing. And actually a lot of studies show that... doesn't really matter so much the modality of the treatment.
You know, there's CBT, there's IPT, there's all these different types of treatments, but actually it's more about the fit with the therapist.
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Chapter 8: What insights does Amir share about attachment theory and personal growth?
So again, we come back to the attachment thing. Exactly. How well do you feel that you connect with someone? And how much attachment is powerful. I like to say that attachment is both at the base of suffering and healing from suffering. Because remember the strange situation, how effective it can be in regulating our emotions. So we have an attachment hierarchy in our head. We all have it.
And I know that if something bad happens to me, I know exactly who's number one I'm going to go to, who's number two. You see, you're all nodding because you know too. Yeah. I know exactly who to go to. And that's very important for our brain. And then if I'm securely attached to them, most of the time, a single word from them or a sentence or even a hug will calm me down immediately.
There's just no Xanax or Klonopin in this world that can be as powerful. And no wonder because it works on so many different neurotransmitters all together, like opiates. oxytocin, dopamine, you name it, it works on those and other things that we haven't discovered yet. It's so powerful, but the opposite is also true. Insecure attachments can be the most powerful instigator of emotional distress.
So attachment is the basis of both Suffering and Healing from Suffering. And part of the reason why I wrote this book is kind of like to really try to shift people towards getting better and making things work for you better than being stuck in that place where your brain constantly is surveying and feels that danger.
So interesting.
Another part of the book talks about biological diversity and hidden sparks of talent. So please tell us about that. When you become a molecular neuroscientist, you see the enormity of molecular diversity that we all possess and how different it is. And we know it because we all look a little bit different.
And we all have these different abilities, even just in the way that we can flip our tongue or like even with our fingers, all these different things. But also it goes way, way further than that. Evolution loves diversity. It's really one of the best survival mechanisms. But we don't really fully appreciate how diverse we are and also in our talents.
And not only that, oftentimes, especially people with insecure attachment, sometimes their biggest talents, they perceive as impediment. But here, like a hidden spark of talent that someone actually identified was your math ability. And so when you lean into that ability, how it can really profoundly change your world.
Oh, it was dominoes. If I'm actually good at math, maybe I can be good at other things.
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