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Chapter 1: What is the weekend catch-up about?
Yes, this is our weekend catch-up to satisfy our weekend listeners. It's a smorgasbord of bite-sized clips from the week that was. A week of moaning about music, that was me. Pricing mattresses, that was Jenny. Examining a memoir on marriage, that was Mairead. And a bring-back-bins campaign, that was Bernard. But we start with Dr. Coleman Nocter. An attachment theory.
I offered up my one sentence explanation. How we bond in infancy affects all relationships. What do you think of that, Colman?
It's good. It's not wrong. No, it's actually a funny topic because for years, like I've worked in this area for 25 years, I'm kind of saying we need to consider attachment more. You know, we're thinking about illness in terms of symptoms and in terms of brain and neurology. Like the attachment is really important. And now I find myself saying we need to talk about attachment less.
It's become so...
So what are they saying? Because Jenny was telling me that everyone's talking about it on social media and these people probably aren't qualified in the main, are they? I don't know.
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Chapter 2: How does attachment theory influence relationships?
And why is it so popular now to talk about attachment theory?
I don't know why it became such a juggernaut of popularity, but it seemed to resonate with certain bunches of people. But people have taken a very complex thing and simplified it into something quite crude of which it's not.
So Coman gave us his own brief explanation of how it works or doesn't, depending on the individual.
Attachment theory is basically the first 1000 days of your life is really crucial because the hardwiring of the way in which you see the world occurs in that time.
So three years or so.
Yeah, so that early infant attachment creates the lens through which you see the world. So whether you are very trusting, whether you're very optimistic, whatever the case may be, that crucial experience forms this very significant working model that stays with you for the rest of your life. I'd be a firm believer in it. I absolutely... would see that it has massive impact.
I don't see why it can't. Do you know what I mean? So attachment theory kind of, it flares up when you start to develop an intimate relationship in your own life. So when you're starting romantic relationships, all the patterns of attachment that you would have had or that particular style becomes quite agitated in those relationships.
So say, for example, if you have, so you have the secure attachment, which is the holy grail that you want, that kind of, you know, I'm secure in my own self and I'm fine. Or you could have an anxious attachment, which kind of would be described as something maybe a bit clingy, maybe needs reassurance quite a lot, is not sure that you're going to stick around.
And then you have avoidant or dismissive attachment, which is someone who says, I find being cared for or being loved threatening. So I'm just going to push it away and I don't want anything to do with that sort of thing.
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Chapter 3: What are the different attachment styles?
So I know that now. And it's obviously a spectrum. So I could be somewhere in between that and secure and that and anxious and whatever. But I know that. And as a result of that, what do I do?
Yeah, I mean, let's say, for example, so the avoidant dismissive attachment might you might be in really healthy relationships with people, but you tend to sabotage them when they start to get too much or, you know, that there's a kind of a sense that you don't like the vulnerability of needing somebody else. And so when it gets to that, it's actually better to just cut that off.
The less I care about you, the less you can hurt me. Almost that kind of a mindset. And so you usually land in therapy after having five divorces or whatever it might be on the basis of that. Commitment issues. Yeah. And again, and there might be it's important to kind of understand why they're there or what might have been the reason for that.
But so when you know that when you feel this urge to run or to. to get out of that relationship, even though you might stop and go, actually, this could be just me trying to sabotage this. I might need to take a breath and see if this is my stuff. And if it's my stuff, then can I work through it? Or can it make me better at breaking a pattern? There's always patterns in our lives.
But in every relationship, The main two struggles in any relationship, especially an intimate relationship, is that we seek intimacy and sovereignty or independence. And we want that at different levels.
That all makes sense. Jenny has had an interest in this area for quite some time. But on Monday's podcast, it was the first time we'd really chatted about it in earnest.
I was going through all the different, over the years, you know, reading all the, like secure, anxious and avoidant. When I was looking at them all, I was like, you can pick little bits from all of them.
Yeah.
You can, but you can recognise things like, I'd recognise like hyper independence, hate anybody. Like if somebody was like, I would consider it smothering me, that could mean putting your arm around me.
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Chapter 4: How did a memoir reveal the complexities of marriage?
Each brain contains about 86 billion brain cells, releasing hundreds of chemicals, and they're connecting with each other, each one connected to maybe 10,000 other brain cells. The entire contraption is more complicated than we can cope with. Hold on, hold on, hold on.
The organ that we're trying to understand, which is a very complicated organ, the brain, doesn't have the wherewithal to understand its complexity.
The physicist Emerson Pugh said, if our brains were simple enough that we could understand them, we would be too simple to do so. But the problem is we focus on the brain all the time.
Chapter 5: What was the shocking revelation in Belle Burden's marriage?
We focus our brains on our brains way too much. And too often we treat our body, that is our physical body and the rest of our nervous system in our body, we treat that as a machine for carrying our brains around. as opposed to it all being a unified entity. And what's the problem with that? Well, the problem with that is we behave as if we are disembodied.
We behave in such a way that we don't tap into the possibilities of our physical bodies. We live these hyper-cognitive lives. We think too much. We overthink. Did our ancestors think too much? Probably. This is probably something that developed over time.
But we're at a point, certainly now in evolution, where I think the amount of thinking that goes on is excessive and not necessarily helpful for us. We overanalyse everything. And, you know, at some level, people know this because most people spend a significant amount of time trying to turn their brain off.
When you think of people, you know, drinking alcohol to excess so often, people taking mind-altering drugs, people trying to turn the thinking off so they don't have to cope with its complexities.
Well, it's that thing. I only realised this recently when somebody says, I got out of my head. I just thought that was a vernacular way of saying, another way of saying I was drunk or I was high or whatever. But it actually is literally for a lot of people getting out of their heads because, as you say, we're overthinking.
We are, and we look for ways to stop it. So there are unhealthy ways and there are healthy ways.
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Chapter 6: How does the cost of a mattress relate to relationship dynamics?
So an unhealthy way is obviously drinking alcohol, drinking yourself into a stupor until you conk out or you forget everything. And the same with taking various kinds of drugs. There are healthy ways to turn your brain off as well. So, for example, take swimming. Swimming is really interesting because it's a very bodily experience.
You know, once you jump into the water and you're wet, suddenly nothing else matters. You're cold, you're wet, and you're using your physical body to take all this attention away from your brain. You're suddenly, acutely embodied. You're aware of it. And I have a colleague who swims quite a bit. And I say, you know, when you're swimming, what are you thinking about?
And she says this really interesting thing. She says, nothing, I think. When I'm swimming, there is just the swimming.
Proof, if proof were needed, that swimming is good for our mental health. I have to admit, I was like a kid in a candy store, to use the American phraseology, having Brendan answer all my questions. And what about that old chestnut? Our thoughts are not facts. They may not be, but they are important, according to Brendan.
And they influence our moods and they influence the next thoughts that come along. And cognitive therapy, which is a really helpful kind of therapy for some people, for some things, very much recognises this fact. So this idea that...
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of using AI in personal apologies?
The automatic thoughts are what shape us. So, for example, with this lovely glass of water here, if I spilt it, I might immediately think, I spilt the water, I'm clumsy, I'm always clumsy, I have always been clumsy, I always will be clumsy. And within seconds, my brain will correct that and say, no, you just spilt the water. It doesn't mean anything about you.
And even if I believe that, that little train of negative thoughts that came first, they have had an impact. Even though my logical brain dismisses them really quickly, they have had an impact. It's the same on social media. If you're scrolling something and let's say I saw a picture of Kim Kardashian, I would, you know what my brain would do?
Chapter 8: How does music shape cultural identity in Ireland?
And you're not to laugh at this, you have to promise you won't laugh. My brain will compare me with Kim Kardashian. And unfortunately, in that moment, she will come out better. But then my brain will correct that within seconds and say, what are you doing? This is a curated image of a social media star. Comparing yourself to her, Brendan, is utterly bonkers.
And my logical brain will dismiss the comparison. But my automatic thought, my automatic comparison will have had its emotional impact already. And it's those automatic thoughts that shape so much of our self-image.
But don't we all compare ourselves to nearly everybody?
Right.
We do. And what we need to do is to try to do less of it.
See, the problem with social media... But here we go, it's part of being human.
It is part of being human. And social media very much amplifies it. It gives opportunity to compare faster and more and to more glamorous type people than was ever possible. So we do need an awareness of this tendency to compare ourselves to other people, even when the comparisons are utterly ridiculous, because they will still have an emotional impact.
So when you say our thoughts are not ourselves, that is true. But as you know, our habitual thinking patterns shape how we feel about ourselves. But we can change them. I mean, earlier you described me as being optimistic about the negative effects of technology and so forth. And I do think the negative effects are overstated. And I think we understand... There's a but coming, though.
No, no, there isn't. We understate the positive things. To put this another way, to really reduce this to basics, every morning on this planet, Ray, eight billion people wake up and we fundamentally want one thing. We want human connection.
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