Podcast Transcription: The Power of Walking: How 15,000 Daily Steps Impact Longevity and Heart Health with Greg Mushen

Ted Ryce: Thais Gibson, welcome to the Legendary Life Podcast. Super excited to dive into this combo with you today.  

Thais Gibson: I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I'd love to frame this conversation around, this is a health and fitness podcast. You're a specialist in relationships. The view here is that there's a bio-psychosocial model to health. 

Health isn't just having a high VO O2 max or low body fat or having a certain amount of muscle mass. It's what's the health of your relationships? How are you psych psychologically? So really excited to dive into this conversation with you today and I'd love to just start out with something you talk a lot about is attachment theory. 

Why is it so important that you kinda lead with attachment theory? What does it someone need to know about attachment theory?  

Thais Gibson: Okay, so I love this question. So there's so much like just in this, but first and foremost, your attachment style is really the subconscious set of rules that you learn about love. 

So how to meet each other's needs, how to express, how to communicate, but also, you know, the these sort of fears and triggers and ideas we develop about love. So if somebody has this huge fear of being abandoned because they felt abandoned in childhood, this is actually gonna condition their subconscious mind to fear that as an adult. 

I always give people the analogy that if you see a bear in the woods. And you run away and thank goodness you're safe. You get away from the bear, but the next day you have to go back into the woods. Well, what does your mind do? Your mind goes, oh my gosh, where's the bear? You hear the trees moving and you're like bracing for the bear. 

And so because you've stored that threat from the day before and your subconscious mind essentially holds everything, it stores all memories ever. It consolidates memories a little bit over time, but we, we really encode memory more strongly with things that feel more threatening. So because you've stored that threat, that perceived threat from the day before. 

When the trees blow in the woods the next day and you're walking back through the woods, your entire nervous system and body reacts to that perceived threat that you're jecting back out. And this causes you to move into sympathetic nervous system mode. This causes you to produce cortisol and norepinephrine, and you're bracing for impact. 

Now, that's actually helpful for us if we're being chased by a bear in the woods. But it's not helpful for us if, because of our childhood attachment patterns that we learned, we all have our own versions of the bear in the woods. So if somebody's insecurely attached and they learned that, oh, I felt abandoned as a child, I'm constantly bracing for impact of abandonment as an adult. 

Or if they felt trapped and engulfed as a child, and they're constantly pushing people away and feeling dysregulated by connection as an adult. Well, these things that have conditioned the way that we view ourselves and view relationships have the impact to really dysregulate our nervous system as adults to cause all sorts of maladaptive and unhealthy patterns. 

So really the, the focus of my work has a lot to do with identifying our attachment style, noticing, you know, what attachment style we each are, which I'm sure we'll get into. But then actually being able to leverage different techniques rooted in somatic experiencing and, and physiological healing along with, um, cognitive behavioral therapy and lp, you know, a bunch of different techniques that allow us to rewire any maladaptive behaviors. 

Or maladaptive fears and patterns we've learned and in turn that helps us regulate better as people and have a harmonious life.  

Ted Ryce: You are speaking my language here. I love it. And for those of you listening. If you feel like there's something about your relationship that has you on edge, that it almost feels like you're maybe more on edge than you should be, or 50% of the time you're on edge, um, or if you're dating and you feel a bit on edge when you're talking to new people or when you really like someone or whatever the situation is. 

That's what we're talking about here. Correct. Those maladaptive, instead of kind of viewing the situation in a a more objective way, you're reacting to it with a stress response essentially. And, um. You, I, I can't wait to hear what that does, uh, for relationships. But, you know, in my world, right, like you want stress to be from the gym. 

You want it to be from doing your cardio, but you don't want it to be from something where, um, you don't necessarily get stronger as a result. So if you have any follow up there, go for it. But I'd love to hear like what are the different attachment styles. And of course then we need to figure out like how can we know what our attachment style is? 

Thais Gibson: Exactly. Yeah. So we'll, we'll dive right in. So there are four attachment styles. This original body of work came from Cambridge University in the work of John Bowlby quite a few decades ago. It's actually one of the biggest bodies of work studied in psychology, um, with the most like research and, and sort of evidence backed. 

Studies that have taken place. But what's really interesting is, is John Bowlby and later Mary Ainsworth, who are big prominent figures in the attachment world, never really talked about how you rewire your attachment style. And we're not born with it. It actually gets conditioned into us. So that's a lot of the focus that I have is, is how to actually rewire it. 

But we'll start with talking about the, the four attachment style as a whole. So there are four attachment cells. Every single person has one. And most people will be able to start hearing what their attachment style is as we go through the different explanations. But the first one is the secure attachment style. 

So this is roughly statistically supposed to be about 50% of the population. Research shows more currently that it's actually on the downtrend. And what I find to be very interesting as well is that the, the, um, divorce rate seems to go very hand in hand with the, the statistic of how many people are securely attached. 

And also securely attached people they report, um, having the longest lasting relationships, but also, which to me is very important. They report being the most fulfilled in their relationships. So it's not just lasting for the sake of lasting, it's lasting and actually enjoying that relationship So securely attached, people get a specific type of childhood, really. 

And this childhood is that they get a lot of what we call attunement, approach oriented behaviors from a psychological perspective. And what approach oriented behaviors do, which is, it seems so small, but has such a big impact, is when a child is growing up in their home and they're distressed, they're upset, they're anxious, they're crying, any type of of negative emotion, a caregiver in their home is attuned enough to notice it quite quickly. 

To approach them to try to soothe. Now, what that does is it teaches a child uniquely that my emotions are safe to express it's okay to be vulnerable around other people. I can trust that people will try to be there for me. I can, you know, learn to actually get my needs met through people. And because they're loved, even in their hard moments where they're feeling distressed, they actually develop an an innate sense of worthiness. 

Like I'm worthy on my good and bad days because I get love, uh, on good and bad days. And so this conditions a child to grow up and to actually be able to model out those behaviors towards others, to be able to be there for them, show up for them. They usually get a lot of modeling growing up for healthy communication. 

So conflict is something that should be worked through and discussed, not something that has to be a, a huge rupture in a relationship. And securely attached people have a sense of interdependency. I can rely on myself. I can self-soothe. They usually have more regulated nervous systems, and I can also allow you to rely on me. 

And I can rely on you too. And so that's sort of the synopsis of the, the secure attachment style.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. That is, um, not how I grew up or a lot of other, yeah. So, so there is, that's what we're gonna shoot for. And of course we'll come back to it later. How can we, if we're more avoidant or, um, anxious or, uh, I don't know what the, the third one is. 

You're, you're, yeah. But how we're. How we can start to move towards that sec, like rewire ourselves towards being more secure. So what are the other three?  

Thais Gibson: Yeah, so the other three will start almost at one end of the continuum. So you can kind of imagine that there's a continuum between the other three. 

And at one end you have the anxious attachment style and the anxious attachment style. Usually got a lot of, you know, what we call real or perceived abandonment. So a real abandonment is obvious. You know, unfortunately a parent leaves and they just don't come back, you know, a fatherless home, a motherless home, or you know, a dynamic where, um, God forbid, but a parent passes away at a young age and it creates this. 

Deep abandonment wound. But a lot of trauma research shows us very interestingly that if we get enough repetition of a wound across our childhood or throughout life, it has a very similar impact on the brain's hard wiring or programming as if there's one acute experience of that. So that's where we tie into real or um, perceived abandonment. 

Which is you could have a, a painful abandonment where a parent actually leaves and doesn't return. Or you can have a lot of deep inconsistency that causes a child to be like, oh, love is here. Oh, love is taken away. Love is here, love is taken away. And the repetition of feeling like love is taken away across time can also create a big perceived abandonment wound. 

And what you'll see, for example, is this could be that you have loving parents, but they're just always traveling for work. And you're always left with the grandparents growing up, or they just, they're very sweet and kind when they're there with you, but they're just not home very much. And these types of circumstances, maybe you have a, a single parent and. 

You know, they're working all the time just to provide, they're doing their best. But there's this constant feeling for a child that like, wait, Leva is here. It's gone. Leva is here. It's gone. And so this anxious child, they actually adapt to this environment by essentially trying to do everything they can to maintain proximity. 

So they try to keep really close and they people please, and a lot of their big core wounds from an attachment theory point of view, when we talk about rewiring, we call this integrated attachment theory, um, from an, from an integrated attachment theory point of view. A lot of the re the wounds that are there are, I'll be abandoned, I'll be alone. 

They're very sensitive to being disliked, rejected, excluded. They have a big fear of being unloved because when they feel like love is taken away, there's this wound of, oh my gosh, I'm not loved. And they basically handle all of these, um, challenges that they feel by just trying to get as close as possible. 

And so a lot of their adult behavioral patterns really are, are circling around. People pleasing, self abandoning, um, pretending to be somebody that they're not. Just to win somebody over clinging, expressing neediness. They love to move very fast in relationships and, and one of the sort of tragic things for anxious attachment styles is they move so fast that it often puts other people, you know, a little bit off from other attachment styles. 

And so the very thing that they're just trying so hard not to create, they accidentally do instead, because the clinging often pushes people away. And so they often go through these cycles as of as adults of being very likable, charming, charismatic, click clicking quite quickly with people, but then very quickly it's like almost the sand, you know, falling through their fingers because. 

They hold on so tight, so fast and they, they kind of pressure circumstances to move forward in a way that often sort of causes people to end up leaving. And it's almost like they have this self-fulfilling prophecy and the anxious attachment cells, they tend to make up roughly about 20% of the population. 

But again, that's seeming to be a little bit on the incline as of more lately.  

Ted Ryce: Hmm. And avoidant.  

Thais Gibson: Yeah. So our next one is the, the other end of the continuum. So you have your very far end of the continuum, which is your dismissive, avoidant, and dismissive avoidance usually grow up with childhood emotional neglect as being an overarching theme. 

Now I think people hear this at first and they think it has to be this like very overt neglect where like parents are literally never around and food's never on the table. And it can be that, but that's the vast minority of the cases. The majority of cases is where we have children who actually have a good sense of security in the home, where like food's on the table and they're at school on time and there's stability, but there's a complete lack of attunement from parents. 

So a lot of times what you'll see is that a child who's wired, all children are wired for attunement from their parents. And a child who, who's wired for this and needs this but doesn't get it because maybe the parents are emotionally unavailable. Maybe they were dismissive avoidance too. They didn't get that and their own upbringing. 

Um, and the type of messaging you see for avoidance, like children should be seen and not heard or keep a stiff upper lip, or, you know, these, these types of messages. A child who's actually quite sensitive as a young one. And needs that attunement when they A, don't get it, and B, when it constantly feels like it's, you know, their need for that emotional connection is diminished. 

Denied, deflected, even shamed at times or criticized like, don't be weak, don't be a crybaby. Get it together. Um, when there's a lack of any ability to feel emotionally safe with people, basically this, this child adapts to that kind of environment by going. Okay, well, like, I guess I'm broken. I'm flawed at my core that I need this, this emotional part of me is unacceptable or defective, really. 

And they sh they shame this part of themselves and try to repress it deeply. And it's not a conscious process, right? It's a subconscious adaptation to being in an environment like that over time. And it gives them a sense of. Basically control and relief to tell themselves, well, I just need to not need people, and if I just don't need this and I park this part of myself away, at least I feel relief from this pain of yearning for something and constantly feeling rejected. 

And so as an adult, the dismissive avoidant usually ends up in relationship dynamics, where as soon as there's a lot of vulnerability required. If they're like, wait, you're forcing me to access this part of myself that I parked away a long time ago? And vulnerability will often be something that causes them to create distance and so much of how they attach to people. 

Is really rooted in I need to minimize my attachment needs. So as soon as I really like somebody, okay, I just, you know, need to look at their flaws and why it might not work. And then I'm okay because I, I know I don't really need them. Or if there's a lot of demands on things moving quickly or being, you know, very vulnerable, committing deeply, dismissive avoidance can get really cold feet and they can often push people away and kind of move away from something all of a sudden. 

And I think people think, oh, like they just don't care. But really it's that there's these deep conditions within them in terms of how they evolve from their own childhood environment to protect themselves. And a lot of it's really this self-preservation.  

Ted Ryce: I don't know if anyone else listening is like, oh my gosh, that sounds like me. 

Like. I resonate with that one, uh, more than the anxious, although, um, yeah, sometimes I would get, uh, or I have, you know, some anxiety, uh, dating, so, so, okay. We have securely attached, we have anxiously attached. We have this dismissive avoidant, um, and what is the, what is the fourth one?  

Thais Gibson: Yeah. So the last one is fearful avoidant, and I just, I wanna just note something that you said, which is so true. 

A lot of people assume when they hear dismissive avoidant that dismissive avoidance are like robots, like they don't feel anxiety. Dismissive, avoidance can absolutely feel anxiety when dating. Just how they deal with it is to minimize their attachment needs. So like an anxious attachment style. When they feel anxiety, they'll be like, oh my gosh, I need to get closer. 

Dismissive avoidance. When they feel anxiety, they'll be like, okay, well let me look for all the reasons it might not work anyways. Or they'll kind of like retreat into themselves sometimes when they feel anxious. So all of all of our coping mechanisms based on our attachment cell, we'll still feel all the feelings right, but we'll just cope with them in various ways. 

So maybe suppressed a little bit more versus. Try to cling and, and get closer. And so that's like a really important, um, piece and, and a great note that you made. So our last one is a fearful avoidant. So this is our fearful avoidance. Sometimes you'll hear it referred to as a disorganized attachment style. 

Um, fearful avoidance grow up in chaos. Okay, so think of more like acute chaos. You can think of things like a parent with a mental health issue, like a, a, a more acute mental health issue, perhaps narcissistic personality disorder. Parents who are in active addiction. Parents who, there's a really bad divorce. 

There's tremendous amounts of fighting and arguing, and basically the child growing up in this environment learns a few things. Number one, they learn, well, I can't trust my environment or what's going on because everything's chaos all the time. I don't know really how to predict what's, what's, you know, whether or not love and connection is safe or or scary. 

And they basically get wired with competing associations. So what this means is you can have something like love and connection, where some days you've got really nice experiences. Let's say, you know, one day and, and the analogy I often use is, if you imagine mom is an alcoholic, okay, maybe one day mom is drinking. 

And she's in a good mood and she's loving, and you're a kid and you want that love and that closeness. And she's had a few drinks and she's kind of warm, and you're like, oh, like, you know, this feels so nice. But then mom keeps drinking and she becomes cruel and she becomes angry. And now connection is a very scary thing, and it's a very cr, you know, a harmful thing even. 

Then another day mom's sobering up and she's kind of apologetic and feels a little guilty about how she's been acting, and she's a little more kind. Another day mom's maybe going through detox and and withdrawals from alcohol and she's very sharp and snippy and she's in a bad mood and you don't even know if she's okay. 

So it's like you never know what version of of connection you're gonna get. And so you get wired to have this, this, we have a basic need for love and connection as human beings, but you get wired to have very competing ideas about it. Like it can be a really good thing and it can be a really scary thing. 

And so what this causes is just like an anxious attachment style. Their main way of trying to connect is to get closer and closer and a dismissive avoidance to kind of minimize their attachment needs. The fearful avoidant, their way of, of connecting and attaching is basically to be extremely hypervigilant. 

I joke with people that hu that, that the fearful avoidance, the human lie detector, they notice everything. They pick up on every little micro expression, body language. I was a fearful avoidant. That's part of how I got into this work. And I noticed everything and, and you know, you, it's so interesting. You notice all the little changes, any little thing that's outta place, or if a story shifted a little bit, and it's because your mind has been conditioned for a very long time to adapt to an environment that caused you to have to do that. 

Because if you can imagine just using that analogy of if a child grows up in home or mom's an alcoholic, you need to know in two seconds when mom walks through the door, is she her nice version or is she her scary version and I need to go to my room, or I need to go for connection. And so, you know, fearful avoidance, they're very hypervigilant. 

And what's really interesting is they're very hot and cold, as you can imagine, right? So if you're full avoidant ends up going, well, love is a nice thing, so I want love, I want connection. And then when it gets really close, you're like, whoa, I don't know if I can really trust this. Do I really wanna feel this connection? 

I don't really like vulnerability too much either. Let me push it away. And so the fearful avoidant partner is very like, come here. Oh, you're close now. Get back and there's this hot and cold patterning there, which I think, you know, for people on the receiving end of it is very confusing. But also the fearful of avoidant, you know, in those those experiences is flip flopping so much in their own mind. 

Do I want it? Do I not want it? Do I wanna be close? Do I wanna get away? There's a lot of inner turmoil for fearful avoidance until they, they really learn to do some deep inner work and, and rewire.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I wanna get into the rewiring part, and thanks for sharing about, you know, you being a fearful avoidant. 

I also based, at least on your description today, I am not the, the expert here, but yeah, I, I fearful, avoidant, had alcoholism in my home. Didn't know my, my stepmom in particular, very hot and cold, and my dad was pretty solid in some ways except for the fact that he enabled a lot of bad behavior. So if you're listening to this, the good news is once you start to figure out. 

What is going on with your attachment style? You can start to get a better idea of what you need to do to change, to, to reduce, to really put your nervous system. I mean, the way I would frame it would be to put your nervous system at ease so you're able to, yeah, I guess attach better, but also like communicate better, less reactive. 

I feel like I've done a lot of work. I have not worked with someone specifically on attachment, but I feel like. You know, the psychological work, it's, it's, it's helped me so much therapy, I've drank ayahuasca and done all sorts of craziness. Right. And for anyone listening right now, it's like, if you feel I'm 48, I've got a crazier story. 

And, and I'll be on your podcast TAs and, you know, maybe Will, if, if it makes sense, we'll get into it. But like, if you're. Listening to this right now, don't, and, and you feel like this is a major issue that's holding you back from connection in the relationship that you're in or blocking you from being in a relationship. 

The, and you're listening to this show because you're like, maybe the secret is to get in better shape and to get hot into, to lose body fat and build muscle and Yeah. That can be part of it because we know. Aerobic exercise can help lower the sympathetic, drive, the, the sympathetic, let's say, activity of your per, uh, uh, of your, uh, autonomic nervous system. 

But it's not gonna fix the root cause if this is. What's causing the dysfunction? So, Tais, before we get into how to rewire and everything, I'd love to hear, like you mentioned, you're fear, the fearful avoidant, you figured out what you are. You, you and we talked. You're in a relationship for, I believe you're married for over 10 years, so. 

How did you get into this work and, um, why did you get into the attachment specifically versus all the other options of psychology? Other areas or, or, um, right, that you could have specialized in. Why do you feel this was. Thing.  

Thais Gibson: Yeah, I think a few things. I mean, the first one, I, I have a longer story and I'll try to keep it brief, but I actually grew up and internalized a lot of chaos For sure. 

And, um, I am Canadian and I actually went to the us I played soccer and university and got a full ride soccer scholarship and all these things. But, um,  

Ted Ryce: and bartended in Miami, that was, yeah, it was a busy life.  

Thais Gibson: But, um, but the craziest part of all of it was that. I, soccer was my coping mechanism as a kid. 

Like it was like the one thing, and I had a knee injury, um, in one of my scouting years. And I thought, you know, I had this big dream like, I'm gonna get outta my home. I'm gonna get a soccer scholarship, get free, kind of was the idea. And I had a knee injury and I had no other coping mechanisms, no idea how to cope with anything, and was prescribed painkillers and actually originally got addicted to opioids. 

So I went through a period of time in my life where I struggled with all, like basically daily opioid use, minus little tiny chapters for about six years. And, um, and my original, I was very high functioning. So like, if anybody saw the inside of my life, they would be like, you're a frigging mess. But I was kind of keeping it together enough on the outside. 

To show up for stuff and to do things, which, you know, everybody's sort of seen that or been there. If they've ever been in active addiction or seen somebody like you, you have a period where you kind of keep it together until you just don't. So I was kind of hitting this like rock bottom period, just when everything was starting, starting to unravel and I was actually in a psych class and somebody said to me in a psych class, um, your conscious mind can't out will or overpower your subconscious mind. 

And as if anybody has ever been in active addiction that's listening or even just struggled with like a really painful habit that you're trying to get rid of. Like I, for years when I first became addicted, I was like terrified me. I didn't really even understand like what was going on and the mechanics of addiction before I was already like knee deep. 

And I would do things all the time. I would say, I'm gonna delete people's numbers from my phone. I'm gonna get clean by doing this. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna stop. I'm, and you tell yourself things over and over and over again, and then you fail. Every day. You lose you, you tell yourself, I'm gonna, oh, I'm gonna flush 'em down the toilet. 

Oh, I'm gonna, you know, and, and you don't, and you repeat the pattern. And to me that was one of the hardest parts of what it meant to be in that phase of my life. It was like this constant, like inner turmoil and honestly kind of self-loathing that came with that. Like I just felt so weak and helpless to myself. 

And so when I'm sitting in this class, I'm on this, you know, at this moment in my life at the time, I'm just like. Downward spiraling towards my rock bottom. And lots of things are really getting messy in my life in this moment. And somebody says to me, your conscious mind can't out will or overpower your subconscious mind. 

And I'm like, so it's not that I'm weak and helpless, it's not that it's, it's that consciously I want out of this life and this, this habit that I have, this terrible just like torturous thing that I'm in. It's like, and, and then subconsciously I have different motives. And so I was like obsessed. I was like, how do I like get free of this? 

Because this is like haunting me every day and how do I, so I tried at that point in summers in between semesters, outpatient rehab, inpatient rehab, nothing really stuck. I wasn't putting in the work either at that time in my life, but I was starting to get to this point where I'm like, I gotta figure out how to change things. 

And so did a whole bunch of stuff, but one of the things that I did was learned everything I could about the subconscious mind and how it worked and neuroplasticity and how we gain our programming, and, and I learned a few really important things. Number one, your conscious mind is only responsible for three to 5% of all of your daily beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions. 

So we think that our logical thinking self is the one making the, the decisions, but not really. It's really our habituated self and our subconscious and unconscious collectively are 95 to 97%. So we go through this life and we think that, you know, we, we have all these dynamics and there's a much deeper narrative there. 

So. I ended up, and I'll make this part short, I ended up in a position where I got better, I got clean, I got sober. I couldn't believe it, like I couldn't believe that nobody was talking about this. I had done AA classes, NA classes. You don't hear about the subconscious mind. Like, I couldn't believe nobody was talking about these things, and I. 

Like after being clean for a while and I started doing all these certifications in everything I could about anything that would engage the subconscious mind, hypnotherapy, neurolinguistic programming, cognitive behavioral therapy a little bit, has some flavors of things, somatic experiencing, nervous system regulation work, a lot of these things. 

And um, and I was like, nobody's talking about this. So I actually started giving workshops to free for, for people. To people for free. And um, a lot of people would come suddenly, like a hundred people would, and I was like 22 giving these workshops to these huge groups of people thinking like, how did I end up here? 

Like, just this, this kind of crazy thing. So it kind of catapulted me into this. People had asked me for client sessions. I was like, I'm still in school at the time. And, and people were like, we don't care. And so I, I started my practice early while I was actually still going to school. And, um, it was just a really interesting sort of output of, of experiences. 

So that's how I got into this work. And then. I did so much inner work on my nervous system, on um, like a lot of somatic practices, a lot of, um, rewiring my wounds and we'll get into some of this. Um, and a lot of learning my needs as a person so I could better self-soothe and self-regulate. And it was so profound and I actually worked with people originally on that. 

And then after working with people for a couple years, I met my now husband and realized that like I felt really good on my own, but that I actually like wasn't that good at taking up space in a relationship. I would kind of retreat more. I had healed a lot, but I wasn't good at being vulnerable. And wasn't the best at communicating. 

And I realized that, wait, there's this whole other thing set of things that I have to do, which is learning healthy boundaries, learning to communicate my needs, and learning to, um, change my behaviors. You know, not just like retreat if I, you know, didn't feel like a need was met, but actually to talk about it, to be more vulnerable. 

And at the time it made me revisit attachment theory. And I realized like, oh, I had done a lot of the self-healing pillars, like regulating my nervous system, rewiring my wounds, and being able to meet my own needs. But there was three more, you know, to, to be able to communicate and be vulnerable, to be able to, um, show up and, and actually have healthy boundaries and, and to change my behavioral patterns in relationship. 

And it wasn't until I revisited what I had learned at a very high level in university psychology, um, classes, that it wasn't until I revisited that, that I was like, oh, there's other parts that I have to rewire. I have to rewire my communication patterns, my ability to hold tension and be vulnerable sometimes. 

And, and, um, when that came full circle for me, it was very healing in, in my ability to have a healthy relationship and. Then I started teaching a little bit more about that and suddenly all the, the clients that I had wanted to dive into that space. And so that's sort of what, what propelled me into that space to, to begin with. 

Ted Ryce: Love it. What a great story. And, um, I love the passion. You just, you found something, it started answering questions you had about yourself and how to get yourself out of a place that you didn't want to be anymore, and then shared it with people and, uh, started giving workshops and, and then it evolved from there. 

And yeah, I, I hear you. The somatic. Would you call it the somatic, what do you call the type of therapy?  

Thais Gibson: Yeah. So somatic experiencing is the, it's, um, the work of, yeah. Dr. Steven Porges work and, and a lot of the polyvagal theory work. And there's a whole bunch of somatic practices that we can take away from that, that are so helpful for our nervous system function. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And, and I want to tie this back into what you said, 'cause I think it's really relevant for. I would imagine so many people listening to this, you had all these issues, you were dealing with them by playing soccer, and when that got taken away, then you're like. Whoa, my medicine is gone. Right? Like, how, what am I gonna do? 

And you found another medicine, right? And, um, soccer didn't heal you, but it allowed you to manage some of what you are going through to manage your nervous system with exercise. And so if you're listening right now and that's kind of hitting home for you, understand like. If you do get injured or get sick or something happens and you can't exercise for a while. 

I used to be that way too. Tais, like I, I would go to Juujitsu. I would, it's kind of funny to say, like, I, I wouldn't say addiction, I think that's too strong of a word, but like really obsessive, like compulsive where, um, I would have these, I, I use drugs too, like. Marijuana and all types of other things, but I switched it off to ju uh, Brazilian Juujitsu ended up getting a lot of injuries because I would be just over training as a way of ne uh, regulating my nervous system. 

And I didn't understand. 'cause I'm 28. I'm 48 now, so it makes so much sense. But nobody was talking about this stuff Right. 20 years ago. And, and, um, so if you're listening right now and if you. Get, if you suspect that you might be using health and fitness as a way to put a bandaid over some of the other things that are going on, especially in related, uh, in relation to these core wounds or how your, you know, your attachment style, how you're operating in your relationships. 

Now, you know, so there's no supplement or workout routine for that or raising your VO two max. So, um, so let's talk a little bit about like, okay, we've talked about attachment styles. That's really the foundation of how we're operating in our relationships or if we're seeking a relationship. Then, um, you've talked about your own story and how there's different approaches that can really help. 

But if someone's listening right now and they're getting the suspicion, they might be a fearful avoidant like me or, or you, but they wanna, or anxious or whatever, but they want to get more towards the securely attached side. What is the process for that high view?  

Thais Gibson: Yeah, so I love what you said. Um, because actually I find that a lot of people, it kind of like blows by them. 

So we often use these external things to regulate our nervous system and I think we'll focus on maybe like two of the heaviest hitting pillars. Um, 'cause there's a lot of information to go into. It could go one for four hours, but, but I'd love to talk about the relationship between the wounds and how to rewire them and the nervous system because these are two of the things. 

If we get right, everything changes and. Ultimately, more than anything, your attachment cell is the relationship you have to yourself because your core wounds that you have from your childhood, that's your conditioning. So that'll show up for you at work. That will show up for you in your physical area of life. 

That will show up for you in your friendships, family career, like it. It will go everywhere. And so what's so interesting about what you said, and I love that you called that out, because honestly most people miss this, is that your nervous system being dysregulated is actually the effect. Of the wounds. 

Okay. So if we go back to that analogy earlier and, and the bear in the woods. So, so you can do things, we can do somatic practices. There's some great ones. We will talk about that and how to improve your window of tolerance and, and things like that. Um, which we'll get into secondarily. But if you are only doing the somatic work or if we're using, to your point, the soccer or the gym, the juujitsu. 

The, you know, the exercise as a way of kind of stabilizing or regulating our nervous system a little bit. That helps. But you're al it's always like the, the rollercoaster. You always get dysregulated, you use something to reregulate, but then like, don't we wanna stop getting so dysregulated at the root? 

And so the root is that we have, yeah, these, these wounds. And so I'll go through the wounds of each attachment cell. So the, the anxious ones, they tend to be abandoned, alone, excluded, disliked, rejected, unsafe is a big one. If somebody pulls away from them. Those are some big wounds there. Um, dismissive avoidance. 

Their wounds are very much, um, defective, you know, or shameful at my core, like we talked about from childhood. Emotional neglect, um, unsafe as well. They feel unsafe around conflict. They'll generally move away. And then also trapped is a big one. Um, powerless, weak if they're vulnerable. Disrespected or misunderstood. 

Okay. So those are big wounds for them. Fearful avoidance, you know, have the most wounds. Unfortunately, the, the 'cause you get a little bit of the anxious side and the dismissive side, but fearful avoidance, definitely have a, a trust wound. Um, and sometimes it's not even trusting people. It can be really big with people, especially when people get really close. 

We can be scared that, okay, they're gonna break our trust. But also it's like not trusting the future. It's like not trusting what could happen next. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Always bracing for impact in some sort of way. And it causes fearful avoidance to need to control things. Like, and, and they don't usually control their people too much 'cause they very much value and, and cherish freedom and they don't wanna infringe on that, but. 

They'll control themselves. They'll be very controlling of their own lives and activities and, you know, and, um, always super optimizing everything, which can be great, but also can be like a little bit, um, a little bit obsessive at times. And so you'll see that that wound OIDs also have the abandonment wound. 

'cause they obviously experience a lot of abandonment, so they sort of share that with the anxious. They'll, they'll be heard around abandonment and rejection. Um, but they also get scared of being trapped. So they, they have the, some of the avoidant wounds, like they don't wanna be trapped. And they also feel a little bit. 

Weak if they're too vulnerable. So they, they sort of have the, the wounds of both sides in there. Um, and then they have a little bit of an unworthy wound. So fearful avoidance, you know, they generally tend to overcompensate. They always like over, over give and under receive so that they feel like they're earning their worth in the world. 

They'll o over deliver on everything that they can just to feel, you know, worthy and, and enough. Um, and so you'll see a lot of that. So. Here's the first thing, okay? The first thing that people need to understand is that you cannot affirmation your way out of things, okay? When people realize they have these wounds or these narratives, affirmations are not like I, you know, not to. 

People don't like when I say this, but it's just the truth. But affirmations are not the way to go, and here's why. Affirmations are of the conscious mind, so your conscious mind speaks language, okay? Your subconscious mind does not. It speaks in emotions and imagery. So the wounds that we have, they are stored subconsciously. 

Okay? Nobody wakes up and consciously says, today I am gonna tell myself I'm unworthy a hundred times and see how I feel like nobody's consciously choosing that. So what's happened is like the bear in the woods analogy, we got imprinted. We stored these experiences that we had that were painful from before. 

They, they felt threatening. We stored them and now we, we see our world through them and we see ourselves through them. So we project those wounds onto everything. Until you heal the wound, you'll keep going through the cycle of, of, oh, I feel like I'm gonna get abandoned if I'm an anxious attachment style. 

Oh my gosh. People are pulling away. Oh my goodness. And then all of a sudden our nervous system activates. 'cause we're perceiving that or projecting it. All of this fear comes up. We have all of this cortisol, norepinephrine, our nervous system, suddenly in the sympathetic mode. And so, so we gotta, we wanna dig into what's underneath that. 

So I have a tool and I'll actually share the, the tool here. And it's a great starter tool for people who are new to this 'cause it's a really easy tool and, and it'll help make sense of the, the subconscious mind. So your subconscious mind speaks emotions and imagery like we were talking about. And the way you can see this, which is so interesting, is if I say to you, whatever you do. 

Do not think of the pink elephant like you probably pictured the image of a pink elephant. Your conscious mind here is do not, it hears the language, but your subconscious flashes out an image before you can consciously respond. And so, you know, when we get into this position, we have to realize if you're just trying to do affirmations and you're trying to say, I'm worthy, I'm worthy, I'm worthy. 

It's just going to your conscious mind because it's just language. So what we have to do is we have to basically convert. This new idea, we wanna get into our subconscious mind. We wanna convert it into emotions and images. Now, how we do that is every memory we have is actually a container of emotions and images. 

So if I say to you, okay, tell me your favorite childhood memory, and you're like, oh, I was playing on the. The playground with my friends. You might see the image of the bright red slide. You might, you know, tell the, the story and, and you'd smile. And we see people, when they recall old memories, their body language shifts and they, they smile and their tone changes and, and so every memory is a little storehouse of emotions and images. 

So what we do as a three step system is we take the core wound and we find its opposite is step number one. So let's just say an easy one, I'm not good enough. I am good enough. Okay? You got your step number one. And if people were listening, they heard their attachment wounds already. So they know the ones that are gonna be really strong for them. 

Step two is we need 10 pieces of memory where we felt the idea that we're trying to create. So 10 piece, 10 specific times, we did feel good enough. Okay. They don't have to be big. They can be little things. It can be like, I'm good enough 'cause I got out of my bed and my first alarm this morning. It can be, I'm good enough because I showed up as a good friend two weeks ago. 

It can be, you know, anything where we have specifics and when we recall old memories and bring them up. We now are using our conscious mind to speak to our subconscious mind. So now we have, we recall this memory of what we did that was good enough, and we feel the emotion. We see the images in our mind's eye. 

So we record them down, we write them down little jot notes of, of where you can put them on your paper. And we have 10 pieces of proof now for how we actually were good enough. Now, step number three is neuroscience shows us that that neural pathways are kind of like muscles. They atrophy over time if we don't use them. 

So we need 21 days. The, the research shows at, at a minimum of repetition because repetition, fires and wires. So we need the repetition of the emotions and imagery. It fires and wires new neural networks in our, in our subconscious mind. And if we listen back for 21 days to these 10 things. We actually build new neural pathways as we divest from the old ones and the old ways of thinking. 

So it's, these ones are atrophying out, these ones are getting built in. And ideally we do this in what's called a suggestible state. So our subconscious mind is the most open to taking in information when we are, um, producing alpha and theta brainwaves, which is usually like first hour that you wake up or last hour before you go to sleep. 

After a heavy duty workout, um, after a meditation or an ice bath, like after these experiences where we feel this sort of restfulness afterwards, our brain's producing more alpha brainwaves and, and we're, we can really soak up or sponge up more information. So in summary, what you would do is you take your core wound, you find it's opposite. 

You, you get 10 pieces of memory to support the new idea that you are in fact good enough, or that you're worthy of connection instead of abandonment. Or you can have your freedom instead of being trapped, right? So we find 10 pieces of of memory. We record it down. We can literally record ourselves saying it into our phones. 

Listen back when you first wake up in the morning and you're really trying to make sure that you feel about it and you see the images, it only takes two or three minutes a day. And what you're actually doing is you're rewiring these core wounds. And this is something that I've done with tens of thousands of people at this point, and we get people to actually, um, score afterwards. 

And when people stick to the 21 days, we have a 99.7% score for this. And people actually absolving themselves of core wounds. And we've had more than 40,000 people go through this. So this really works and it's always a lot more work to not do the work. So I really suggest anybody listening if they're like, oh man, these wounds are really giving me a hard time. 

It takes two to three minutes a day and you can actually let go of like years of having to fear abandonment or betrayal or these things that are off often popping up for you. And it's a really important place to start.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and if you're having trouble doing this on your own and even though you get the concept of it, make sure you go to TA's website. 

So it's university dot personal development school.com. That's university dot personal development school.com, and you get a seven, seven day free trial here. Do the work. I, I feel like these conversations are hopefully inspirational educational Tais, but I often feel like without the commitment to either working with a coach or a therapist or, um, joining some type of course or cohort. 

It doesn't get done. It doesn't get done consistently, certainly not enough to meet that minimum 21 day standard. So again, if you're listening, not fully sold on joining, make sure you go to Tais Gibson, her, um, her YouTube channel. Uh, you can find her at Tais Gibson Personal Development School. That's T-H-A-I-S. 

G-I-B-S-O-N on YouTube. Some great information there. I just want to throw that out because I always feel like people hear that you gave them the tools to do it. They're, they might start with a lot of motivation and just. Life gets in the way and then you stop doing it. So I, I just wanted to quickly interject that. 

Thank you  

Thais Gibson: for  

Ted Ryce: that.  

Thais Gibson: Thank you.  

Ted Ryce: Of course. And Tais, this also brings up stuff for me outta my world, or, or one thing that isn't necessarily in my world, the health and fitness, but. Um, the negativity bias that so many of us have where we have a tendency, just human beings, period, have this tendency to prioritize negative experiences, look at negative experiences or over, not overvalue, but place too much importance on negative experiences because, well, I guess the evolutionary reason for that would be that kept you alive. 

But we're not living in the, to your example, the bear in the wood. Most of us, unless we're in Alaska, or, I don't know, maybe somewhere in Canada, I'm sure you gotta watch out for the bears. But yeah, if you're, you know, if you're not dealing with those types of things yeah, your, your nervous system can kind of skew negative and so this can, I could see how this could help. 

I think what you said about the affirmations is so important where yeah, you are lovable. I don't believe that, but I'm, I'll keep saying it, you know, uh, or um, or whatever the core wound might be. But when it comes to my world. I also started thinking, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too. For me, it's like, we know that sleep is important in memory consolidation, so something that I often talk about, it's like if, if you're not sleeping well and you're trying to change habits, whether it's health habits or trying to rewire these, these core wounds, um, to, to change your attachment style. 

And you're sleeping like crap, or you're adding on some type of drug, like alcohol or marijuana that's affecting your sleep architecture. Yeah. Uh, you know, that could be that, that can kind of make the process take longer or make it ineffective, perhaps, or not as effective as it could be. Yeah. Any thoughts on that? 

Thais Gibson: Yeah, I agree with you completely. You know, there's actually something called the overload principle, um, in psychology, and it shows that when we're overloaded, so when our, our brain and body are overloaded through poor sleep. Through alcohol substances, things that are disruptive for our homeostatic impulse. 

We end up being in a position where we're like not able to take things in as well, where we're, we're having a more difficult time. And so that's why, you know, there are like tremendous benefits too. Like we, we have these sort of six pillars of healing. One is rewiring your wounds and then it's your needs and your, your nervous system and communication boundaries, rewiring your behaviors. 

Um, and the wound is a really important root cause. Point. But the next really big piece in there is, is also things that are going to allow you to stay more regulated from a nervous system point of view. And what's really interesting is that our mind and body, um, you know, I think people think so. So if you go into it a little bit more deeply, there's sympathetic, which is our fight flight, freeze fawn responses. 

But there's parasympathetic, which actually kind of in a sense has other branches. So we've got dorsal vagal, and we've got ventral vagal. So ventral vagal mode and from a parasympathetic standpoint is when we are in a place where we're feeling sociable, we're feeling open, we're feeling, you know, uh, uh, regulated and good. 

You know, when we are, we're in a good mood. We're usually in ventral vagal. Um, dorsal vagal is if you've ever had one of those moments where you like had a long day. You get home and you like kick off your shoes and you're like, I just need to sit down for a minute. And then you just like stay on the couch and you shut down and you just don't move and maybe you like skip dinner and you just stayed there. 

We, it's called Dorsal Bagel shut down. And you know what can happen is we can be in that space as well. And so there's a lot of different really powerful nervous system practices and, and, um, you know, or I'll, I'll maybe just share, you know, one or two that can be meaningful. But, um, we wanna be pairing these things, right? 

So we wanna be able to do the rewiring at the root, but we also wanna be doing things that are allowing us to actually move through things that we're feeling in our body and being able to regulate. And so, you know, at a high level, there's the obvious, there's the breath work, there's the um, meditation, the mindfulness practices, the yoga, all of these things that helps. 

Slowly move us into parasympathetic nervous system mode, but really ventral bag mode, um, and help us reregulate if we're feeling distressed. But also, um, somatic work has a really powerful impact on the nervous system and a great practice. And this is out of, um, Dr. Steven porridge, this's polyvagal theory. 

Um, and there's a lot of great people who go into this as well, um, Dr. Daniel Siegel. But we can actually work to practice feeling our emotions in our body. Witnessing these sensations of the emotions rather than telling the story that's created them. So sometimes, you know, if you're mad, let's pretend you're, you're mad at your coworker and you're like, God, they did this thing and then they did this, and you're sitting at home like thinking about it and ruminating. 

What we're doing is we're actually through our thoughts, refeeding the emotion and then resing the stress. And if instead we can get into a position where we. Practice somatically processing. And so what that means is, is, and I'll tell a quick study here. So there was a really powerful study done and, and, um, this will explain the exercise the best. 

This study was done, I believe it was outta the University of Bordeaux in France, and they had a whole bunch of participants go into FMRI scanners and they watched what happened when the participants were called, things that bothered them, that really upset them. And what they found when they were watching their brains essentially was that all of this brain activity in the neocortex regions of the brain, so like the prefrontal cortex or logical thinking, kind of analytical self, all of this brain activity when people were triggered, drained out of, in a sense, if you imagine all these red dots drained out of our neocortex regions and really went into like the amygdala and the, the triggered version, the more like reptilian version of ourselves in a sense, and then what the researchers had participants do. 

Sit there and instead of telling the story that that bothered them and upset them, they instead had them just focus on witnessing sensations in their body. So saying, okay, I feel angry when I tell when I say this story. And so label the emotion, number one and number two. Anger in my body feels like heat in my chest. 

It feels like a clenching of my jaw. It feels like a tightening of my shoulder blades. And describe the physical sensations. And they had them do this physical sensation focus for up to 90 seconds at a time, repeated three times. And this is like, this is a somatic practice that allows us to titrate emotionally. 

And what they found is that when individuals did that, all of a sudden all this brain activity, each time they were doing it would go out of the amygdala and go back into the neocortex regions and they would come back online to the sort of, in a sense, higher version of themselves, right? Not the reptilian version of themselves in the reptilian brain areas and regions. 

And so this is a really powerful somatic practice that also allows us, if we sit and actually practice. Feeling our emotions, noticing them in our body, witnessing the sensations and sitting with them. And we do this for 60 to 90 seconds at a time, repeat for two to three times. That actually also is the power to not just help us get into our better brain activity regions, but also regulates our nervous system and moves us out of, um, sympathetic back into parasympathetic mode. 

So it's a really great sort of secondary practice, and I find that when people are starting to pair those two things together, that's where they see massive results, um, in, in quite a short period of time in regards to just being able to feel better both when within themselves or self-esteem, self-confidence, um, and ability to, to really regulate. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah, so important. I, I had to, I didn't have to, but I had a client recently who, he's changed his body. He's ripped right, uh, leaner than me at the moment. And he, but he's dealing with a lot of stress at work and we've already gone through the conversa. I have, you know, conversations with my clients. I'm like, well, is this job a hell yes for you? 

Is your relationship with your wife? A hell yes. It was. Yes, across the board, no hesitation. But more recently he's had a very stressful situation happening in his company. He's an executive. Um. This company had a stressful situation, just exercising and being ripped and having a good family. It, it wasn't enough with the travel and everything else. 

And so if you're listening to this and you don't have some type of, uh, practice where you can calm your nervous system down or you find yourself like the example you used, Tais, I think it's. So common, right? I mean, uh, you, you had this thing go on with someone and you're still thinking about it and, and it, and it just keeps your nervous system activated instead of you realizing what it, what it really is. 

It's not about the story, it's the. The chemicals are going and you're, you're still triggered. Your fight or flight state, uh, is, is activated and you need to calm it down to shut off so you stop caring because I think this is so important. In fact, I'll, I'll, uh, in my, uh, relationship with my ex-wife, I remember the first time I meditated, I was angry about something. 

Don't even remember now, right? But I was like so angry about it and there was a legitimate problem. Then I meditated, and then I was like, oh. Yeah, there's a problem, but I didn't even need to feel all that nervous system activation about it. And now to your point, like the blood is an activity is flowing back into my pre-frontal cortex. 

I can communicate like a human being instead of a dumb animal, dumb, angry animal. And it's like, um, yeah, I was like it. It was just fascinating. Right. So if you're listening now, you don't have something like that. You just, there's another example. So important.  

Thais Gibson: Yeah, I love that. And that's exactly, it's so well said, is that you get into a point where I, I love the way you articulate it. 

Like the, the problem will still exist, there can still be a problem, and that might be a time to go communicate your needs or figure out what they are and, and, or move, you know, move through a, a wound if it's, it's there as well. But, but at the end of the day, when you're in a, a parasympathetic space. 

Everything feels more solvable. It doesn't feel like this huge thing, like it feels like, okay, this is maybe frustrating or not optimal, but like we can address it, we can approach it. And research shows too. The more we practice these habits on a regular basis, both rewiring, both the, the nervous system regulation work and somatic practices, the more we're doing these things. 

The more we are actually accustomed to being in that, that nervous system mode. And the more we operate there as our baseline when a lot of people, you know, I'm sure you experienced this, I know my experience growing up was like, I was always in sympathetic, like all the time. Like fight, flight, freeze, or fun was like all my behaviors all day. 

And so, you know, you, you, I'd always be in one of those modes and doing a lot of this work, rewiring the wounds at the root, then regulating my nervous system. It's like your new baseline becomes one of peace. Or joy. Right? And, and then you're, you're able to move through life in a, in a completely different way. 

And so, um, yeah, I just I love that you shared that. I think it's such a powerful point.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. 'cause you're not stuck with like the story, like what you said, it's not the story, it's your emotional activation, right. Where, you know the story can still exist, but you can change how you feel about it. And like you said, everything feels more so solvable and. 

A more relaxed state or more parasympathetic, I forget the, uh, the, the two versions.  

Thais Gibson: Ventral dle. Yeah. The ventral DLE mode. Yes. There you  

Ted Ryce: go. The ventral vagal. That, that, that's a, a state where everything feels like, yeah, okay. There's some challenges, but you do it one by one or you figure out the solution instead of being like, oh my God, there's so much going on. 

I just, you know. Right. Or what, whatever, however your freak out might sound. Um, that was my best impression. But Tais, this was an incredible conversation. Um, I would love to have you back on the show. I mean, I've never heard you, or I'm sorry, never heard you break it down like this, but I've never heard, I've had people talk about attachment styles on this show before, but the way you talked about it and made it, yeah, just, I don't know. 

It was just easy to understand. Easy to see. At least for me, myself, in your examples, and to give a better, clear picture of like the work that still needs to be done, let's say. So thanks so much for coming on the show and, and sharing your time and, and expertise with us today. I.  

Thais Gibson: Thank you so much for having me. 

This is one of my favorite podcasts I've been on. You asked like amazing questions and they were so insightful and, and, uh, I can tell you really know what you're doing. So thank you for having me. Really appreciate being here.  

Ted Ryce: Absolutely. And again, if you haven't checked out TA's website, university dot personal development school.com. 

Right. And she's on YouTube. Great. Tons of videos there. 400,000 subscribers. So you got a little bit of popularity here, you know, so, uh, just an incredible, um, YouTube channel. Go and check it out. If you felt a connection or saw yourself in some of the examples that TAs said today, and you've been a person who's maybe been listening to this show and maybe listening to other shows, and you're so concerned about your VO two max and other things. 

But you're not getting the peace in your life. Go and check Tys Gibson's podcast out, go to her website, make sure you do what the root cause. I want you to feel better out there. Okay. So thanks so much Tys, again. It's been incredible and I, I want to do this again.  

Thais Gibson: Me too. I would love to. Thank you so much and I'm excited to have you on, so, so that'll be amazing too. 

Ted Ryce: It'll be a lot of fun. Can't wait.