DBT - My "Favorite Person"

hey guys it's dr may how are you um i'm here today to talk about a topic that i know is on the minds of a lot of you guys and um it's something that comes up a lot for people with borderline personality disorder and also who are in dbt but also um people beyond that not just people in that category and that's the favorite person okay so this is a type of relationship that kind of puts us on an emotional roller coaster so it kind of gives us some amazing highs and also some terrible really painful lows and i'm going to speak to you about this not just as a psychologist with my background in psychology but also as somebody who basically has a black belt in this favorite person dynamic my personal experience i've been in a series of these types of relationships throughout most of my life until about 10 years ago and i have a lot of background in this personally so i put this together based on things i learned from psychology and also things i learned from myself okay so i'm gonna share this with you um here we go and i wish this is something that someone shared with me a long time ago so i could save could have saved myself some heartache but um i hope that i'll be able to do that for you today so it's one of those things where you know you can make meaning out of a difficult experience by at least using it to help others okay so that's what i'd like to do with you today all right so here we go so my favorite person and i'm going to abbreviate it as fp in a bunch of the slides so that's just what it stands for okay here we go all right so what is a favorite person okay so it's basically somebody that you've happened to pick out for one reason or another maybe even an unconscious reason and you developed a really intense strong attachment to that person and you kind of just made this unilateral decision on some level even if it's unconscious that this is the person in whom i'm going to anger my idealized person my favorite person my dream person and this person that i picked the real life person didn't choose this i chose it for them i decided that they're going to be my favorite person and so i'm going to act toward them accordingly okay it's almost like i made them my higher power like i put them on a pedestal and came up with these high expectations for how they're supposed to be and how they're supposed to perfectly merge with me okay um and it's almost like i'm putting all my eggs in one basket like i see this person as the potential source of my ultimate happiness or feeling complete as a person or feeling happy and secure and okay and they're gonna do that for me so it's like a lot of pressure that i'm putting on somebody okay that they didn't ask to receive okay um and the idea is that you know when things go great and it feels like there's hints of that happening that they are making me happy that they are fulfilling my needs i could be completely joyful and elated but it always runs out fast it's almost like getting high on a drug like you feel good for a little while and then it fades until the next interaction and then you have to keep renewing it and if you can't you feel like you're crashing down like your whole world is toppling and toppling on top of you and you just get flooded with pain and dysregulating emotions so it's truly a roller coaster okay and it's almost like mistaking love for intensity for love okay so that's the general gist of the definition but i'm gonna go into this a lot more detail okay all right so some similar concepts um it's funny because believe it or not although i've been doing dbt for a long time since 2001 i hadn't actually heard the term favorite person until fairly recently and when i first heard it i was like oh this sounds like this and this sounds like that so the first thing that it's probably most similar to and i'm going to make another video on this shortly by the way is the anxious ambivalent attachment style which in adults is called a preoccupied attachment style and it's very similar to the kind of dynamics that happen here okay i'm not going to go into full explanation now because you know we have a lot to talk about um in a course in miracles which is kind of a spiritual path and marianne williamson talks about this and some other people um there's a concept called a special relationship and it's almost exactly the same as a favorite person but when there because a spiritual past what they say is basically like instead of connecting to your higher power instead of connecting to you know the higher self the spirit within you you're connect you're putting all that on a person and it's never going to really satisfy you because what you really need is your is your higher power spirit okay codependency kind of has some of these dynamics too because there's a similar kind of merging and high expectations and confusing of my needs and your needs and my feelings and your feelings um melody beatty writes about this a lot and learning about that could probably help you with your favorite person dynamic um there's a woman named patricia evans and she's written a lot about verbally abusive relationships and has some really good books on that and she describes that concept more from a point of view of mostly a man anchoring his dream woman in the wife and he calls this like she calls us like a dream person or a dream woman and he kind of idealizes her and when she doesn't match up with his dream woman image he starts getting upset and verbally abusive okay so it's kind of similar to that in certain ways and it's also similar to the defense mechanism of idealization because what you do is you take some good parts of yourself that you've disowned and you see them very strongly in somebody else and you admire them in them and then when the person doesn't match up with that idealized image you start attacking the person for not acting that way okay so this kind of comes up in the favorite person dynamic as well okay so here we go so who can become your favorite person well basically almost anybody um it's commonly in dbt becomes a therapist um it could be a teacher or a mentor it could be a coach maybe someone you look up to or admire um it could even be someone you've never met such as a celebrity or a public figure or an author um sometimes it could just it could be someone who truly is in your life and it could be an amplified friendship relationship or even a roommate um somebody that you kind of just you know made that brought into that intensity to the relationship for i'm sorry my grammar's all yeah um also it could even be your partner okay so any but so it could kind of change forms and throughout your life it could change forms you might be somebody who goes from one favorite person relationship to another so when things really disintegrate with one person you eventually pick up the pattern with somebody else and you fall into it okay so you gotta think about your life try to use this as a point of reflection like when did i start doing this and who was i doing it with and where are the similar patterns across people right okay so one of the main characteristics is a quest for merging okay so look at these pic this picture here right so these hearts are kind of stitched together like the two hearts are trying to become one okay and i know people say well yes in a marriage in a relationship we're trying to be one but there's there's more boundaries in place like this is like a kind of a boundaryless merging all right and that could kind of get us in trouble while it feels good on the one hand it could be problematic on the other hand okay so one of the tactics for merging is going on in your own head okay so when you decide someone's your special person i'm sorry your favorite person i'm across getting the terms exceptional course in miracles it's like you're making them your number one okay they're your biggest priority they're the biggest thing on your mind you put that relationship before everything you could shift plans and change things around just to make sure you're with that person if the person ends up being free you could you could drop what you're doing and just see them because you're putting them number one okay um you might find yourself thinking and obsessing about the person a lot or you know kind of over focusing on them and hoping that they'll over focus on you right it's like if you keep it fresh in your mind long enough it's going to solidify the relationship more right you could you might even you know how like you talk to yourself in your head but sometimes you imagine yourself talking to another person or talking to an audience you might often find yourself kind of like talking to your favorite person in your head like your thoughts are directed toward them like as if you're gonna say what you're saying in your mind to them the next time you meet okay you might also like kind of amplify and replay and relive any positive interactions you've had especially recent ones right so if you had um kind of some nice words exchanged or they pat you in the back or gave you a hug or sent you a nice text it might be something that you're gonna keep thinking about and thinking about just to keep it alive right but eventually it fades and you're gonna need something else to replenish it okay um you might also come up with certain kinds of fantasies about the person like i read about somebody who said they wanted to take their favorite person and keep them in their closet so they could take them out and and talk to them and have them whenever they need them right you might imagine moving in with that person or you know having them with you in some other closer way if they're your therapist you might imagine the relationship going beyond therapy to something else that's more like a friendship or a romantic relationship right so um there might be some you know things like that that are going on in your mind with this person and if the person's not around you might really struggle you know cognitively and emotionally like almost like a withdrawal like you know you kind of oh my god they're not here right okay so so this is kind of you know how we keep them alive in our mind right okay so um like this picture so it's two girls and their hair is braided together and that's kind of like that desire for merging right that i was saying before and the thought process is almost like maybe if we had we did everything the same or if we were of one mind or if we had everything in common it would kind of keep us together it would kind of cement the relationship and everything would go much more smoothly you know so you strive to be like the person so you might find yourself kind of like adopting some of the things that they like maybe you kind of listen to the same music that they listen to or if they like a certain movie you go out and see the movie or maybe it's just even certain expressions that they say that you start to say or certain mannerisms they have um or certain interests they have you know maybe they're interested in golf and you never thought about golf before and all of a sudden you're like you know what i think i want to swing the putter but you know swing the club around a little bit right um you might even strive to be the same career as them um or you know kind of adapt their political views or their values um or their opinions right so it feels like if i'm just the same as them and that's gonna keep them around it's gonna keep everything good okay all right so um another thing is we're aiming to seek like this perfect love and i put love in quotes okay because merging and intensity is not exactly a healthy love but it could feel on some level like love right and this is not necessarily romantic love like sometimes you might have a panic like if you have a special person who's the same sex as you and you always thought of yourself as heterosexual but now you have this strong feeling towards someone who's also a female and you're a female or something like that but it's not necessarily romantic it's just like this intense admiration right it could be someone in the role of like a bigger sister or a mother or somebody like that okay so you're you're always trying to seek this positive attention like love and praise and admiration from them and validation and agreement like sometimes you kind of like try to get validation by getting them to go along with something that you wanted like if you make a suggestion to them and they do it it feels like yes they did it right um or hey check out the show that i like and they do it and you're like all right that's great and if they don't you're like oh man right um so you're seeking for this like a perfect attunement is mirroring like that they're gonna perfectly understand you they kind of understand what you're thinking and feeling and communicated just right okay and you almost get like a high from these amazingly perfect interactions when they do happen okay um but even in perfect relationships in real life or like really good secure healthy relationships they say there's only about 30 percent attunement so the rest of the time it's kind of like you know we got to be tolerating the imperfection right but if you're in this mode you're trying to seek perfect attunement and mirroring all the time which is not a realistic expectation okay all right another dynamic gets to be like you're in this boundaryless one down position okay if you watch my um video about what did i call that boundaries and self-esteem in relationships and i go over the relationship grid this is the part of the grid that's boundaryless and one down okay so you're giving them all the power because they have the power to accept you or reject you or love you or hate you and so you're groveling in some sense for their attention for their approval right and you could you might even find yourself selling out or sacrificing yourself or sacrificing your values just to keep them around just to keep their love and approval and in some sense it's like it feels like i'll just do it it's worth it i'll just give it up i don't care but in other sense it feels really crappy because you're not being yourself you know you don't feel like there's room for the full you so you just throw away all the parts of you that don't seem like it will work in this relationship okay and you might put their needs in once before yours you might just kind of just go along with whatever they want um and even like offer to help or be indispensable in some way because even if you're not sure if they really love you or want you around it's better to be needed than to be wanted i mean it's better beyond than needed but it's better to be needed than nothing at all right so it's kind of like that's that one down position like i'll settle for being needed because i'm not sure if they really love me because it's inconsistent shows of admiration and affection okay and this is very tied into the prostitute archetype right so think about a prostitute who you know sacrifices her body herself esteem her her worthiness just to get what she needs which is probably money or drugs right so i also have a video about prostitute archetype which is also tied into this so feel free to watch that okay um another dynamic that could happen with a favorite person is that you could find yourself putting yourself in a victim role or a sick role more often than you probably should okay this is also a one-down position so you might have found almost maybe even on accident or maybe on purpose because you're in therapy let's say with your favorite person that when you talk about your problems or you're distressed or you're upset that you're able to get a certain kind of comfort from that person and the favorite person's able to you know talk to you and make you feel better and give you consolation and words of wisdom and it feels so good there's nothing like you know getting that when you're feeling down and have someone really put their arms around you so to speak and you know kind of nurture you right and it feels so good that you might end up you know not trying too hard to feel better because if you feel better they may not feel the need to stay around and this is especially the case in therapy right yes i want to feel better i want to be happier but if i am i'm just going to have to end the therapy and end this favored person relationship and i'm not sure i really want to do that right it kind of puts you in a dilemma or you might find well yeah it's okay when we're feeling good together but it's not the same kind of satisfaction as when they're consoling me when i'm sick okay so it's kind of like it's a tough decision right you're putting the relationship before even your own happiness and well-being at times right so ask yourself am i doing this right it's hard to admit this right because no one wants to say they're doing this intentionally or anything like that but you know when you fee when you understand the desperation in this favor of person dynamic it kind of makes more sense okay okay here's another dynamic okay so you could get yourself into a vampire blood donor dynamic all right so in this case i hate to say it and sound judgmental but you're you might be acting like the vampire because your need for attention and love and care and mirroring might be so all-consuming that the favorite person feels like you're sucking the life out of them right you could kind of be so like intense on keeping them around or maintaining frequent contact or constant contact or you know having a lot of crises that you want them to help you with that they feel like there's no room for them it's all-consuming okay it you can kind of if it goes overboard controlling and needy and all that stuff and it's very hard for the other person and if they react to your neediness then you might feel oh my god like like i'm being rejected now right but you have to remember like what it feels like on the other side or imagine validate the other person what it must feel like to deal with you when you're in that mode okay all right um here we go so this is this is another thing that happens so you kind of in this possessive sort of a way have this fantasy that it's just me and my favorite person in a bubble together right that i'm going to over focus on you and you're going to over focus on me and you're going to be my everything and i'm going to be your everything and the fantasy gets snapped when you see them having a life outside of you so if you're seeing a therapist and then you see someone else in the waiting room knowing that they have a relationship with the therapist that might really break your heart i mean you know on the intellectual level yes they see other people but it's almost like it snaps your fantasy that you're the only one right or let's say um you know you're in a relationship and your boyfriend wants to hang out with his friends and now you're freaking jealous because he's spending time with someone other than you right so now i'm not your one and only and it's it's like oh my god so every little sign of separation or that he's interest someone's interested in a different hobby or a different interest or going to work and staying late or if they break a promise or have to change a plan even if it's not personal like let's say you know my boyfriend's caught at work late and because his boss wanted him to do it i might take that as a total rejection even though it had nothing to do with his feelings about me so i might over interpret things like that it might be really hard for you if a friend or therapist that is your favorite person goes on vacation and isn't available to you for a period of time it might be really really hard um and if the person reacts to your vampire tendencies and establishes a boundary it might feel really painful even though they're just trying to make it healthier you know so we gotta realize that this is part of this is what we're bringing to the table this idea that we need to merge is your idea it's not their idea right so we're getting mad at them but they're just having a natural reaction to our you know engulfment okay okay so um more about fear separation rejection and abandonment sounds familiar right okay um so because we're so afraid of this all right we're probably gonna have this hyper-vigilant stance where if you're in danger like let's say you're in the woods and you're worried about a bear what are you gonna do you're gonna be scanning the environment for clues about danger okay so if you feel that abandonment is danger which it is when you're a baby but not now but it still can feel that way you might be constantly scanning for clues or cues that the person may not be you know staying around okay so you might interpret neutral things as potential abandonment or potential rejection even if it has nothing to do with that but you're you're like on this mode of like over assuming the negative okay so you might be super sensitive to things too so any little slight or criticism or the wrong kind of tone or the wrong kind of look might feel like oh my god you know like what does this mean and why are they mad at me you know and if they're mad at me maybe they're just going to leave me right so any problem like could you feel like could lead to the end of the relationship like it feels like a fragile thing you know like like you could just end at any time like at the drop of the hat you know and we're not going to be able to fix this thing um and you also might be afraid at times that you might scare the person off with your own neediness right like and i can't even control it like i feel like so clingy and i i you know i'm trying to hold back but i feel like i can't even stop and that's gonna push somebody away right so that might be part of the fear too like because you can't control your own feelings or behaviors maybe okay so at times when it really gets intense right the feeling of separateness or rejection or abandonment could lead us to feel super angry and desperate to restore the relationship right so you know we might be if we feel like they slighted us or ejected us it might turn to anger like how dare you do that to me it's not fair i just want you to be the ideal person that i want you to be and there's almost like this this like uh come on please just be who i want you to be but it's like this anger that comes out from it okay um at times just to get them back you might do desperate things such as even engage in target behaviors or say things like i'm going to kill myself if you don't come back right and you may not really want to die or maybe in such pain that part of you wants to die but you just want them to come back and be that ideal person again be that favorite person again and not go away and be this bad person who's rejecting you okay um and at times the desperation may take the form of overly apologetic behavior so like i'll just grovel at your feet and apologize for whatever i did even if i don't even know what i did just to see if that's going to get you back okay um so this is kind of also that boundaryless one down position all right okay so essentially as you could probably tell it's like a cycle right it's like a roller coaster kind of cycle where you know things are good for sometimes and you idealize the person they're perfect everything's great but then some little rupture of separation happens and you could go all the way crashing down all of a sudden you could be mad at them you could blame them for doing that um they're so just you're so disappointed you're feeling terrible and then things might get back again and there's more merging and more mirroring and then you're back to idealization so the same person is the angel and the devil combined depending on how things are going and the thing is like your problem is you're anchoring your whole self to this right you're so dependent on this relationship or feeling good or you know your self-esteem or your self-worth or your sense of identity that your every little thing ruptures that you know if something goes wrong you don't have a solid sense of self because it's all lost and and connected to that person and how things are going with that person it's like any time you try to look for external things to make you happy you're always going to be disappointed because nobody could do it just right for you okay um so basically this could switch back and forth very quickly or at some times it might be longer periods of good and interrupted by small periods of bad it depends on your relationship but it could change multiple times in the course of a day and you could be up and down and up and down depending on the way the interactions are going and the way you're interpreting them okay okay another big thing that could come up is shame okay so shame is when you feel like you know i'm not good enough and i'm not worthy of belonging right there's something wrong with me and therefore who could possibly love me okay so this could easily come up when you know you're snapped out of your fantasy and you realize you know this really is a one-sided relationship in the sense that i might be so much more desperate to have this person in my life perfectly you know loving me and they don't feel the same way about me you know they might like you um but the intensity and the desperation and the wish is not the same as yours and the inequality of it could feel really shameful you know because it really put you in the one down position when you're the one who loves so much more um you also might be ashamed of the fact that you feel so needy and you have this unrequited longing right no one wants to feel like you know that kind of grovelly needy person you know it feels really upsetting um you also might feel shame because maybe you never heard of a favorite person before or you never heard of anyone in this type of relationship before you're thinking well what's wrong with me why why am i doing this you know maybe something weird about me that i'm doing this but believe it or not like like i said it actually is a common phenomenon especially with people with borderline personality disorder um and another aspect of the shame might be that in your desperate attempts to restore the relationship you might have behaved in ways that you're really not proud of um you might have engaged in target behaviors or cursed the person out or became aggressive with the person or lost control in some way or whatever and after the fact when things settle down you might feel kind of ashamed about the way you acted because maybe it's really not your best self okay okay so gotta end on a high note so what do you do okay i'm stuck in this favorite person relationship it's creating a lot of angst in my life so how do i move forward from here what do i do now okay this is often the big question so i'm gonna give you some suggestions that you could try out okay now here's the main slide if you remember one thing today this is the main slide and it's the main lesson that i had to learn personally now this is a quote from einstein on the left einstein said you can't solve a problem on the same level it was created you have to rise above it to the next level okay so if your expectation is that if only i can get this favorite person to be just a little bit better and love me as perfectly as i want to then everything's just going to be great right my life will be perfect i'll be happy i'm not going to have any more problems i'm going to feel complete and we'll live happily ever after okay if you're nursing that fantasy you're barking up the wrong tree it's never going to happen okay listen to me it's never going to happen okay you could try different people different situations it's just gonna always lead to pain and heartache and disappointment okay so trying to solve the dilemma of the dynamics in your favorite person relationship on the level of a favorite person relationship is not an effective strategy okay you have to transcend the favorite person relationship by learning healthier relationship skills and establishing healthier secure relationships that's the only way out of this okay um otherwise you're just acting out within the favor person dynamic and it's just not gonna happen for you i promise that okay i tried for like way way too long in my life and i know other people who have too and it's just not going to work okay so please i i mean this i know it's heartbreaking to think of that because you really just want it to work but it's just not okay all right so the first thing we have to do is admit it okay now that you understand what the favorite person relationship is in more detail you have to just own up and admit to yourself right the first step to radical acceptance and saying i accept is i admit so yes i admit i turned certain such and such a person into my favorite person and i'm doing a b c d and e an f and g and h okay um if it's appropriate tell the favorite person what you're doing admit what you're doing now this doesn't mean admit how much you love them no this means i'm telling you i learned about this thing called the favorite person and i i've made you into my favorite person and i know it's not the healthiest dynamic and i want you to help me okay that that's what admitting it to the person is so if it's a therapist or someone you trust and you feel like they can handle it tell the favorite person themselves because maybe they can even work with you on it right especially even a partner right maybe they're struggling with other stuff too and they'd be happy to help you okay if not tell someone you trust outside of the relationship and see if the person could help you figure out strategies to to change it okay so that's step number one if you're staying in the relationship or want to try to make things healthier with that person okay this may or may not work out but you could try all right so the first thing you have to do is think about creating more balance and equality in the relationship because as you can see based on the description i gave you there's not a lot of balance in equality there's a lot of extremes there's highs there's lows there's idealization there's devaluation right this um i'm groveling and putting myself in a down position i'm putting myself in a vampire position like so there's a lot of polarity okay so we have to make this more dialectical all right in a dbt way we have to work on balancing give and fast right so give is the relationship effectiveness keeping a good relationship being kind to the person but we can't go so extreme that i'm being so nice the person and turning us into a prostitute archetype where i'm doing whatever you want to do and i'm being so accommodating to you that i'm squashing my own needs okay so that's where the fast comes in the fast is self-respect effect in this i have to stick to my own values i got to be truthful i got to do what's right for me and take care of the relationship right i can't be so focused on my own needs to merge with you that when you don't mirror me now i'm being nasty okay that's not what i mean either okay so keeping my self-respect and being you know kind and nice and gentle in the relationship too um balancing my needs and your needs right so similar along those lines um i can't just focus on my need to merge with you i got to focus on what are you actually experiencing what do you actually need for me am i helping you enough or am i just so focused on you helping me right if it's appropriate that this is a balanced relationship such as not being a therapy relationship it's a really important consideration otherwise you're just going to suck the life out of the person um also um bouncing on focus balance focusing on the relationship versus exploration okay so in secure attachment they talk about that um you know part of your energy is focused on a relationship or relationships and part of your energy is free to explore and do other things independently right so pursue a hobby a career you know an interest whatever it happens to be all right so it should be more of a balance than that it shouldn't be 98 of your energy on the relationship and 2 on whatever is left over okay and we're going to aim for interdependence right that we're helping each other in a collaborative kind of a way in a cooperative way not that i'm overly dependent on you or vice versa right i'm not too independent i'm not too dependent i'm kind of interdependent so that's the healthy version okay so another thing we got to think about is reducing the intensity right especially because we're thinking that the intensity is sort of a symbol of love but it's not okay intensity is just emotional drama and if your set point is kind of high for emotional drama you're just going to keep creating it in your life okay so you got to learn to tolerate boredom and things being a little calmer otherwise you're always going to create more angst for yourself and others okay so turn down the volume a little bit with the intensity in the relationship so how do we do this one tip from dbt emotion regulation skills is opposite to emotion action for love okay so instead of hyper focusing on the person try to spend less time thinking about the person instead of making multiple efforts to reach out to them to find them to follow them to you know seek their opinion to get help do that less okay or ask different people and don't focus on one single person okay it's important to set healthier boundaries because obviously this is a very boundaryless behavior when you have a favorite person um so you gotta respect that they need space and they need to be their own person and so should you okay um also you should practice detachment now i don't mean like being detached and associated and not caring okay there's a term in the codependent literature called detachment and basically what they mean is reduce the intensity and take some of the emotion out of it so you know it's not being cold okay it's just like you know not being as intense all right dialing it back a little bit um check your expectations and demands because that creates intensity right when i'm expecting someone to do it right when i'm expecting them to get back to me right away when i'm expecting that they're gonna perfectly mirror me or perfectly respond to me then the demand gets really intense and when they don't i get really upset okay so you gotta be more flexible with your expectations of them and handle some things on yourself on your own instead of expecting them to do it all for you all right and like i was kind of saying before sorry if it's a repeat so reduce the frequency of contact okay even if you're living together you don't have to spend every second together go in a different room and do something else sometimes don't always be like you know clingy okay if it's someone you don't live with text them less call them less see them less okay because it's just gonna fuel a fire if you have more and more contact okay or maybe even you know don't talk to them as about intense things as much about bringing up really emotional things really problematic things keep it a little more casual that's another way to reduce the intensity okay another thing is um it's important to try to get a life right so basically uh i don't mean to sound judgmental but like instead of making the favorite person in your life you need to do other things in your life that are fulfilling to kind of defuse it okay so if you have other friends other social activities other hobbies other work commitments other whatever then it kind of like rebalances your life okay it's not a balanced thing to make your favorite person your everything okay and you're obviously going to set yourself up for disappointment sorry um okay um i hit my mouse on accident and okay so i think this is the last one so aim for secure attachments okay i'm gonna also put out a video very soon about attachment styles including secure attendance and what they say is that if you hang out with people with more of a secure attachment style and you spend enough time with them it starts to rub off on you okay so we learn attachment styles in through relationships and it gets reinforced in relationships when they're unhealthy and we can also learn new relationships by being with other kinds of people right and also as you work on yourself the healthier you are the healthier the people you're going to attract you know the sicker you are the sicker the people you're going to attract so if you can learn on your own different healthy relationship skills you could improve your interpersonal effectiveness skills you know figure out what are qualities of healthy relationships and how do i bring those qualities to the table when i'm with people how can i have those expectations for people that i meet right um sometimes we feel well i'm not sure if i really deserve to have a healthy person in my life and i recently read something and uh the woman said what's wrong with accepting something you don't deserve i was like wow i never thought of it that way but it's true right like what if you don't deserve a good person but you can just accept it anyway right practice with that that'll help you develop a secure attachment they also say that you know you could break down secure attachment into a set of skills that you can learn okay and i'm going to go over that also in another video all right so that's that um i hope this felt at least validating to you um so that you know you're not alone that there's other people that go through this and that there's also a way out okay so thanks for listening and knows a bit long and um i'll see you next time thanks guys bye

Channel: Jennifer May, Ph.D.

Views: 24,282

Keywords: favorite person, favourite person, interpersonal effectiveness, Jennifer May, special relationships, enmeshed relationship, codependent relationship, anxious ambivalent attachment, GIVE skill, FAST skill, opposite-to-emotion action

Id: LXTHqzvb_T8

Length: 38min 30sec (2310 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020