Attachment Wounds & the Authentic Soul

If you fear abandonment…
Or pull away when things get close…
This episode is for you.

Attachment patterns aren’t personality flaws — they’re nervous system adaptations.

We explore Attachment Wounds & the Soul — how early relational experiences shape adult love, spirituality, and identity.

In this episode, we explore:
• Anxious and avoidant attachment
• Abandonment wounds
• Relational triggers
• Emotional regulation in intimacy
• Secure attachment development
• The spiritual meaning of relational healing

This conversation may shift how you understand yourself.

📅 March 17
🕔 5 PM PST / 7 PM CST

Live on YouTube, Facebook & Instagram

Which attachment do you think you are?

#AttachmentTheory #PsychologyAndTheSoul #RelationshipHealing #EmotionalHealth #NervousSystemHealing #ConsciousRelationships #kelleewhite #drshirley

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Hi, everybody. Hi, I'm spiritual medium and psychotherapist Kelly White, and I'm with my dear friend.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Hi, I'm Dr. Shirlene Pellizzari, psychologist, and welcome to Psychology in the Soul.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Yay! I love that.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Every time I say that, I love that title that you that you chose. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Well, we chose that together. So we chose that together.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

It was a combined effort, but you know it was all her. Actually, all her.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

No, it was. And happy that happy uh St. Patrick's Day. And believe it or not, this is green, even though it looks uh turquoise, which is my favorite color. It is green. Favorite color. And I missed the email. So I'm wearing my typical tan, tan and beige. Well, you just came back from a fabulous trip. So you got some you just well deserved tan. Thank you. Yes. Oh my gosh. Well, today, everybody, our episode is about attachment wounds and the soul. So, how you love today didn't begin in adulthood, it began actually in infancy. Attachment is not just about relationships. And you're gonna hear Shirley and I talk a lot about attachments. And by the way, everybody, I just want to throw this in. We have a very special guest that'll be joining us in a little bit, in a little bit. So that she's gonna be here, and we're very excited to have her here. Yeah, but attachment is not just about relationships, it's about safety. Do I feel safe? It's about regulation, it's about identity.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah, yeah. It is truly. I mean, at the core of attachment is safety, you know, how we feel safe in the world. And we talk a lot, there's attachment theory, which was originally developed by John Bowlby and then expanded by a woman named Mary Ainsworth, describes how early caregiver relationships shape the emotional regulation and relational expectations and nervous system responses. It is such, it happens in the first 18 months of life. And you see how, yeah, you see how a baby is attached to the parent. Attachment is not personality, it's adaptation. It's a very important adaptation, and it has to do with how attuned the primary care caregiver was to the child. And again, when we talk about these things, it's not about blame, it's just to understand. You know, I mean, if we all had we all as parents had this information the moment our kids were born, then you know, our show probably wouldn't because we wouldn't need it. So seriously.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Oh my gosh. And spiritually, because I always love to look at things from the spiritual round, attachment patterns often will shape how we late to trust, how we relate to surrender, because you'll hear in the spiritual world, you know, world surrender, but even how we feel about the divine or uh you know the other side. So this conversation is going to be about awareness. It is Shirley pointed out, it's not about blame.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yeah, yeah. Attachment is that emotional bond that's formed between a child and a caregiver. You know, what a caregiver could be. Well, caregiver is a child attaches to one person, they attach to many, many people, right? An infant, but there's a primary caregiver, and that's only because you can attach one person at a time. And the primary caregiver is basically the first person an infant attaches to. Usually it's a mom, because mom, you know, is there with the child for the most part, but it could be a grandparent, it could be a nanny, it could be a father, it could be an aunt, an uncle. It doesn't matter. It's who the who the infant spends most of their time with.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

You know, surely I've had many clients that I'm sure you have too that will say to me, and and it happens often when I'm doing a reading for somebody. If I have doing a mediumship reading, uh a mother figure will come through and she'll they will say, No, it's not my mother, that was my nanny. And so, and a lot of like people that I've worked with, their mothers or and fathers had really very little to do with the caregiver or as a child. So they really attached to the nanny. And then I've had places and situations where the nanny then was taken away from them.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

That is really, really hard. You know, what I always caution new parents is if they're if a nanny is going to spend a lot of time with the child as much as possible, keep it consistent, you know, to one, hopefully one nanny or one or two, but not change them around. I have seen adults who parents were working and the nanny, unfortunately, they kept changing nannies every year. So the child never really got to attach. And the moment the child would attach, then that nanny would be taken away. And again, it wasn't for any other reason than the need at the time, but you see how it affects how it affects a child because the caregiver becomes the external regulator of the child's nervous system. You know, again, a child cries because it needs something, even if it's just to be held. When I say child, I mean infant, right? And unfortunately, way back when, you know, we were taught that you don't pick up a crying baby, still teach it how to self-soothe and that ridiculous concept. I think it's sort of what was a doctor stock. Yeah, I think it was to make the child dependent on Dr.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Spock.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

We'll blame it on the yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but a human infant is the most dependent of all mammals, and they need. And a child doesn't learn how to soothe itself. The child learns how to soothe itself by the way it was soothed. You know, we don't have that skill set as a baby. And so when a baby cries, it needs you, it needs you to come and coddle it and hold it, and you know, uh, because what you're the message that you're giving that infant, even at that young age, is am I lovable enough to be taken care of? Am I worthy? Am I deserving? Am I lovable? Can I trust others to be there for me? And is the world a safe place? These are the three seeds that are planted, depending on how attuned you are to your infant.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

And those beliefs are pre-verbal?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Oh, yeah. They live in the nervous system before language is developed. So it's something that you kind of know, but you may not have the words for. You won't have the words for it. But in the somatic um therapy, we tune into the body, and it is amazing how tuning into the body without words up pops either a phrase, an image, a metaphor, or something that helps understand what the body was feeling at that moment, even when there were no words. So um, you know, so it's so important. I mean, secure attachment develops when caregivers are consistent, when they're responsive, they're attuned, they're emotionally available. That doesn't mean that at the moment the baby cries, you're there, but you soothe the baby, you talk to it, you don't let it cry itself to sleep. I mean, that is the worst thing, you know, to let a baby cry itself to sleep. It needs to know that it's safe. If you, if you're able to instill safety in a child between zero and two, we believe that we make them dependent. But the exact opposite is true. It feels counterintuitive. But at two, when a child developmentally is about is supposed to explore their environment, they will feel safer to explore their environment because they have what's called a safe base at home. They know you're there so they can go explore. But when they don't know you're there, when it's kind of, I don't know if my parent is going to be there, then that's when they'll get, you know, more hesitant to uh to explore. So insecure attachment develops when care is inconsistent, when it's unavailable, intrusive, or it's frightening.

unknown 8:23

Wow, wow.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

So attachment ruins everybody. It's not necessarily about bad parents. Not necessarily. Some, yes, but not necessarily. So it's really about nervous systems and adapting to unpredictability. Isn't that interesting, Charlie? Because some people will say, I don't like unpredictability. Um, because they they don't know what's going to happen. And yet we live in a world that we're constantly triggered by unpredictability. Right. In fact, it's so unpredictable that it's almost predictable.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Well, right, exactly. Unpredictability, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Oh, that happened.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Okay. Exactly. But that's just it. You know, people on the secure, and it's all on a continuum, right? And we can we can work and shift it. People on the secure attachment continuum, that doesn't mean they don't have feelings. That doesn't mean they don't feel anxious with unpredictability, but they can tolerate it. Their nervous system, the window of tolerance of their nervous system is much greater and they can tolerate a lot more than someone whose window of tolerance is here. Okay. You know, and that has to do there's for attachment, um, you know, styles. Well, she doesn't like to call them styles, but they're more for attachment adaptations, you know, that we can fall into. So it's secure attachment, it's anxious attachment, it's avoidant attachment, and it is disorganized attachment. And again, these are nervous system adaptations.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

And I can go into just a little bit to understand, you know, secure attachment, of course, develops when the caregiver's there. The baby cries, the caregiver goes to the baby to see if it needs anything, even if it just needs to be held, you know. So you grow up kind of realizing, hey, people are dependable. I can trust. You know, the world is a fairly safe place because when I was scared, there was someone there to comfort me. So adults with secure attachment look like they can tolerate intimacy, they don't fear that someone's going to leave them, you know, or that they that connection is dangerous. They can really uh regulate their emotions effectively. Again, that doesn't mean they don't have emotions, but it means that they can they know that the emotion will pass, even if it feels like a tsunami at times. You know, they can communicate needs directly. If I'm having a hard time, I will feel safe to call you, Kelly, which I do anyways, uh, to say, Kel, I need an ear or I need support right now, and they don't feel there's no shame in that, you know, and they know how to repair conflict, you know, they can own when they've done something. Um, their nervous system doesn't interpret closeness as threat.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

And interesting, Choy, because spiritually secure individuals tend to experience trust in relationships and in life.

unknown 11:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Absolutely. So let me ask you, you know, I mean, we'll go through the different attachments, uh, but let me ask you, why do you imagine someone, maybe this question is for when I'm done with describing them, but why do you imagine a soul would come in to experience these different attachment adaptations?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

I'll tell you, souls choose the family they're going to come into on the other side.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

So let's say a soul needs to learn um how to be brave. Let's see, a soul needs to learn to be um uh to have different situations that would make them strong. They learn to believe in themselves. There are a lot of reasons that things that we choose the parents that would do that would cause uh insecure attachment or you know, in any of the different attachments dialings.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

But then it from there, then you would have all the lessons that came with that. Yeah, so it's it's such a deep, deep, deep question, and it could just go on and on and on. But yeah, really good reasons, uh even though you're thinking, I did not choose that mother, I did not choose that product. Oh, yes, you did. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I always remember, you know, the first time I heard you say that, that we choose our parents to learn the lesson that we came here to learn. And it is, I mean, it's it can be very, very challenging, you know. So, like anxious attachment.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Surely it starts from the beginning. I mean, literally, you're out of the womb before while you're in the womb, the mother is already anxious, the mother is already this. So you've already made the choice. Do you know? It does absolutely, and then that first you know, two years is critical. Yeah, yeah. But it's a setup on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

It's a setup. Oh god, life is a setup, guys. It's a setup. Um, what you learned today, it's a setup. But studies show that even in the first two weeks of life, an infant will turn towards the mother's voice because it's been hearing the mother's voice even muffled in the womb. You know, amazing. Yeah. So anxious attachment is also called preoccupied attachment, you know, forms when a caregiver is inconsistent. So sometimes they're nurturing, sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not, you know, sometimes they're available, sometimes they're not available. And so the child never learns. The child, actually, what the child learns is that connection is uncertain, that you know, that I must intensify my signal to get to get uh to receive care. It's the clingy child that doesn't know when it's gonna get it or not, so it'll cling, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Would that translate later to somebody in your life that's kind of clingy and neurotic?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Absolutely. In adulthood, it's a fear of abandonment. It's the person, the friend that calls you up and says it's 5.05. He said he was gonna call me at five. Do you think he left me? You know, so they get so anxious when there is a when when the when they feel that the connection has been lost, you know, hypervigilance in relationships, overanalyzing tone, timing, distance. Well, they said it like this, or do you think they mean that? You know, emotional amplification. Um, and they seek reassurance repeatedly. They're the kind of people where, you know, and again, it goes on a on a uh continual, but you know, where there's no there's no bottom to the barrel. So you can continuously reinforce them, but it kind of just goes right through them. It doesn't stick, it doesn't stay. The nervous system lives in activation.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

That's awful. So an anxious attachment is not necessarily needing this, it's really a survival adaptation.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

So spiritually, this can manifest as fear of being forgotten by the universe that you imagine.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

I've actually had people say that to me. I actually have. Um seeking constant signs out there in the universe constantly, you know, like I need another sign, I need another sign, I need another validation that my loved one is there, you know. Also, it also can come out as doubting intuitive guidance. So you're not really paying any attention to your own intuition.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Well, that's so interesting. You seek in constant signs, it's the same as someone needing constant reassurance. You know, that is so, so interesting. Yeah, it's a really, really difficult way to live because keep in mind that this happened in infancy and in childhood, you know, between zero and six is when the brain forms. So back then it is truly about survival. If we look at it from that lens, if someone isn't taking care of me, feeding me, taking care of my needs, the baby goes off into the jungle and dies. And so it truly is about life or death back then, which is why as an adult, it feels like life or death. And I it lasts all this time. Right. Right. Exactly. And and because it triggers that that infant, that childhood. And back then it was life or death, so it feels life or death. I get so many people who criticize themselves that say, why does it feel so intensely? And I said, Because it was about life or death, and that's what's been triggered. So it's something to really understand and have compassion for.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

So let me ask you this: do more people fall under anxious attachment than any, and we're gonna talk about all four. I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

You know, it's funny, I should have looked up the percentages, but no, they're pretty, I think it's it's a higher rate of anxious attachment, lower rate of avoidant attachment. Um, it's and and interestingly enough, at least this was the statistic that was around when I was learning this, that to kind of foster a secure attachment in an infant, you only have to be attuned 35% of the time to your infant, which seems quite low to me. Right, yeah, yeah, but that was a statistic back then. I'm not sure if it's changed. Um, now the avoidant attachment, they also call dismissive attachment, develops when the caregivers were emotionally unavailable or dismissive. You know, so what would that look like? Well, it's like when, I mean, kind of, you know, my childhood, you know, where the I remember sitting, you know, back then we had a house with the uh with the heat furnaces were on the ground, the grade was on the ground. And so in the winter I would sit on it to keep warm and read my book in the kitchen so I could be near my mom, but there was no interaction. We would all have dinner, the four of us, my family, every day at 4 p.m. Because that's when my dad got home from work and he was very hungry, but nobody would talk. So there wasn't the engagement. My parents never went out. My mother was a homekeeper, nobody drank, nobody, you know, went out or anything. They were always home, but the interaction wasn't there. And so that's what it could look like. It could look like it doesn't, it it's it's emotional neglect. It doesn't have to be latchkey kids necessarily. That's the extreme when a parent isn't home, so there's no interaction. But it could be a parent is home, but they're not interacting with you, you know. Um, so what a child learns is that my needs overwhelm others, or I must I shouldn't have needs because my needs are not going to be taken care of. And so you kind of really push them down, you know, and you start to learn how to how to regulate by yourself. You know, in adulthood in adulthood, that means that there's a discomfort with vulnerability because you don't know how to be vulnerable with someone. And and when you've kind of grown up with the idea that you can't depend on others to be there for you, then being vulnerable can be very scary. You suppress your emotions, you have high independence. You know, I can do it. No, I don't need help, no, I'm fine. You know, um, you minimize your own needs, you withdraw during conflict because it's just sometimes, you know, you can't find the words because what happens is when no one is interacting with you, your language kind of gets a little stunted because you don't have to think of things to say. So sometimes you don't even have the words to describe things.

unknown 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Yeah, you kind of your mind kind of goes blank.

unknown 19:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

They are actually protection.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Thank you for saying spiritually, it may appear as self-reliance framed as detachment, uh, difficulty, surrendering.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

And especially during meditations, I've had many avoidance that I cannot meditate.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah. Well, and meditation doesn't have doesn't always have the same effect that it has on others because uh as an avoidant, you kind of check out and dissociate so easily that meditation is kind of easy, you know. So it doesn't, it it it's it can have the opposite effect of what it's actually for.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

And intellectually uh it's spirituality without emotional embodiment.

unknown 20:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

This is kind of fascinating here.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, yeah, it's almost like skipping it's skipping yourself. It's some people who we call the spiritual bypassers may be doing it because they were never in their body to begin with. I mean, when I first started my somatic work, I didn't realize I was ahead with the body that followed behind. And I really had to, you know, when someone said, Well, what does that feel like? And I'm like, Well, I don't know. And then it would have to be, what do you imagine someone who went through XYZ would feel like? And that would start to clue me in. And then when I took it to the body, oh, my chest feels heavy. Maybe I'm feeling sad. It was like learning a whole new language. Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

I remember when you were learning all of that.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

In fact, you wrote a book on it. You wrote a book on it. Why can't I change? This information was just so mind-blowing to me. I finally understood myself. And I thought, okay, people need to have this information, people need to know because it made so much sense, you know, and then you have somewhere to go, that you have somewhere to you understand yourself, so then A, you don't feel like you there's something so wrong, and you can heal. Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. So now disorganized attachment is kind of one of the most trickiest ones because it develops when the caregiver is both the source of comfort and the source of fear. We have two kind of um, you know, um, you know, um in our in our minds where we we're supposed to run away from threat to save ourselves, right? And we're supposed to, as a child, run towards uh the safety, the person who represents safety, right? So it's two very automatic things that the brain does to keep itself alive because it's all about survival. And when that person, when it's the one person, the same person who you're attached to and they represent safety, but it's the same person that scares you, then it becomes so confusing. It it's like approach avoidant. At the same time. And these two circuitries of the brain kind of, you know, it's very hard. So as an adult, you know, it's push-pull in relationship cycles. Like I it's it's one of the most brilliant books about it was written. Uh I hate you, don't leave me. You know, I want you so bad, but then they push away, you know. So intense intimacy followed by a shutdown, um, emotional volatility, um, dissociation under stress, but still wanting that person, you know, to connect. So it's very difficult, not only on themselves, but also on the people around them.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

And that correlates with trauma.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Yeah, yeah. Many times these are people who, you know, possibly diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. You know, it's that push-pull. One day you're great, the next day I hate you. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Stop walking on eggshells is another seminar book.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Right, right, right. Yeah. It's it's it's very tragic. It's when you look at it from that perspective, from a little baby who was attached to the same, the very same person that scared them.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

From a spiritual lens, surely, if you have a situation like this where you have a parent that is that falls under that uh the disorganized attachment or borderline personality disorder, any of that. If you have that, the lens you can use is exactly what you just described, which is you know, they must have their traumas from birth instead of lay up.

unknown 23:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

You know, all that. Especially disorganized attachment can feel like a longing for connection, but fearing it deeply. It's again, it's I hate you, don't leave me.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Right, right. And talk about as you describe why would someone choose that to really boy, they came to here to learn a very, very powerful lesson.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

And I want to say this, they are our greatest teachers. Yeah, I've learned more from that category than any of the categories. You know, yeah, so at this point in the conversation, everybody, I want to widen the lens a bit. And so much of what we've been discussing looks at attachment through early childhood experiences and the relationship between a parent and a child. But actually, everyone, there is another layer that could influence these patterns. Sometimes what we carry emotionally didn't begin with us. So joining us today is Family Constellation facilitator Barry Gonia, who works deeply with ancestral systems and the hidden dynamics within families. Family constellation theory explores how unresolved trauma and loss and experiences within previous generations can continue to influence emotional patterns today, including how we experience attachment, safety, and belonging. And Carrie brings a powerful ancestral perspective to this conversation. Welcome, Carrie.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Welcome, Carrie. Yay!

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yay, I'm so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_05 24:59

Thank you for having me. Oh, I'm so glad you're wearing the green today for St. Patrick's year. You've got the message.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

You've got the memo.

SPEAKER_05 25:08

I was trying to be festive. Oh my gosh, Kelly, I empowled when you said that it's a setup. It feels like it's a setup. It's a setup.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

We set it up. No, you know you're on the other side and you're talking to your guides and to the ascended masses, and you're like, let me get this straight. What? This is my choice for a parent. This is my choice. Is there any other choice? Well, there is now. You'll have to live in you know some far away place. But oh yeah, they in there's a whole system, there's a whole internet system that how they figure all this stuff out. But it's really for our best and how we learn the best. And as long as we're gonna be here on earth, we have you have to remember you've got a lot to learn. And it just think of it from that perspective, and it will really help you. And Carrie, sometimes uh I've always found fascinating in your work is how you look at emotional patterns, actually, through an ancestral lens. And for listeners who may not be at all familiar, how would you describe family constellation therapy and what it reveals about the hidden dynamics between and within these families?

unknown 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:12

I thank you for asking that, Kelly, because I love family constellation therapy, and I feel like it's just now kind of coming to the forefront since the pandemic. Everyone has been talking about generational trauma. You didn't really hear about it before. And so the premise of this work is that we come in, we literally come in with inherited generational trauma from our ancestors, whether that's a parent, an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent, a great-grandparent. Typically, I mean, I had a lot of trauma from my maternal grandmother, who I never even met. So we can be carrying around on a cellular level or a subconscious level their traumas, their patterns, their adaptations, and it will feel in our body as if it's our own trauma.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

That's fascinating to me, but it is so true. It is so because even we see the attachment, you know, uh adaptation gets passed on.

SPEAKER_05 27:11

Absolutely. I love that Kelly brought up being in the womb because in there's um in family consolation therapy, in order to kind of clear the trauma, you you basically say a healing statement. They call them a healing statement or a truth statement. I do this a little differently. I channel them. I think other practitioners might work in a different way, but I always go back to the womb. In the womb, I imprinted X, Y, Z, because sometimes the anxiety, I always ask people what's the biggest fear phobia that you had as a little kid. And sometimes it's completely irrational because it's an experience that the mom had or that the grandmother had, and they get imprinted in the womb.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

It's it's fascinating that you say that because even research, you know, has proved that there was um they did a they did a research study where they buzzed rats, you know, and and paired it with a tone or something like that, like a tone of music. Seven generations later, even after they stopped in the first generation, the seventh generation was still responding with a stress response when they would hear that tone.

SPEAKER_05 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:20

Wow. I work, I work with a lot of Holocaust trauma, and I have for over 10 years. And there was an article that came out a very long time ago. I think I read it like 10 or 13 years ago, about this journalist who whose grandfather was in the Holocaust, survived the Holocaust. He was the only one, but it was the big secret in their family. And so, as a little kid, this this man was having nightmares of war and torment and all of these things. Wow. Ended up taking his own life in his 40s, and it was tied to the grandpa. You know, so sometimes sometimes we're we're absolutely experiencing the trauma as if it happened to us, even if it happened to an ancestor.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yeah. Well, it changes the genetic patterning.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. Um, I think what surprises many people is realizing that some of these emotional patterns that they carry may not have started with them. So when you're working with someone in a constellation carry, what are some of the signs that an attachment pattern possibly may actually belong to a larger family system rather than just their own childhood experience?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:29

Yeah. So I look for who's missing. So typically historically in previous generations, there was a lot of like stillborns and late later term miscarriages, and like our grandparents or great grandparents' generation because of healthcare, the times, the resources. And so oftentimes, if grandmother suffers a traumatic loss of a stillborn child or a child that you know passes away a couple days after birth, she will turn away from existing kids or kids that come after. And so, how it'll typically show up is if they have a really irrational, I say irrational, if they're if the bigger traumas didn't happen in their childhood and they have raging anxiety, or they're I was completely hyper, hyper independent. And that was the big story in my family was that I came out independent. But babies aren't independent, right? Like toddlers aren't independent, and my grandmother died very tragically in her 40s, which I didn't know. And so I had carried my mom's anxiety, and my mom was turned towards my grandma, and then I was turned towards my mom. So oftentimes I really look for if somebody's missing, if somebody died young or what it would cause in the family system.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

This isn't very bad for people that talk about it or the grief or whatever, and then the child could be neglected, or they feel like a whole it sets up everything, doesn't it? Everything thought about that looking at the loss.

SPEAKER_05 30:58

Something too, as simple as back then, there was no maternity leave. There was no paternity leave. So if parents had to go to work, uh I mean, I really resonated with the nanny story. I have so many clients that were born in different countries who had multiple nannies, or I had a client in Lebanon who was very attached to her nanny, and then a war broke out and they had to flee their home and leave the nanny behind. And like she's late 50s and still suffers that loss.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Yeah, it's devastating.

SPEAKER_05 31:26

It's devastating.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

And then if nobody's talking about anything, that'll just keep it'll keep going forward and forward until somebody will align.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

It's so interesting that you say that because from a nervous system perspective, we see how trauma can imprint deeply, you know, in the body. And what you're saying, it also imprints in kind of I go in the generations, you know, and in the in the I don't know, genetics of someone in their soul that they're carrying it with them too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:58

I love that you're speaking to the spiritual aspect of this because as a little kid, my family had a bunch of kind of platitudes, and I heard over and over again, like, this is how it is, it's in your DNA. And I remember distinctly being a very little kid, like three, four, five, being like, No, it's not. So I I couldn't have known that, right? So it's like spiritually, obviously, I knew on some level, but inherited. I knew I knew that that wasn't how it was. I do, absolutely. I I love when people come and tell me they're the black sheep, because I'm like, congratulations, you're the pattern breaker, you're the bridge from the old to the new, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:45

And it's so funny that we, you know, that the term that we use kind of very, very without thinking is black sheep, like there's something wrong with the person who came to break dysfunctional, you know, patterns, right? Really the person that came to wake the family up.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:04

Yeah, as we all know, it takes a lot of courage to look at these patterns, you know. When people come and tell me that their family is private, or you know, there are a lot of secrets, it's just always trauma. And typically it's somebody died young, or there's war trauma or something significant.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Or I would think there'd be a lot of suicide too in that yeah, shame of that in a family.

SPEAKER_05 33:29

And suicide, I typically will see it repeat either the exact same way or at the exact same age. Uh yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

It'll absolutely say that it opens a door, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:43

For the future for somebody to do it.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

It creates that as an option in the family from from the way that I see it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

What about illness, Carrie, from a perspective of your work in generations? Do you find like a one illness would skip a generation? Or how does that work in you?

SPEAKER_05 34:04

Sometimes it really de it really depends. That's a great question, Kelly. The founder of this work, Bert Hellinger, he passed away a few years ago and he was an elder, and he always believed that illness was out of love and loyalty. So unconscious love and loyalty. I love you so much, Dad. You have Parkinson's, I'm gonna have Parkinson's too. And typically in MS Parkinson's, that kind of thing in my work is typically tied to some type of war trauma. So it's if there was a victim perpetrator situation, the body will almost like freeze or have limited mobility so that it can't go quote unquote hurt someone. But more often than not, I find that people follow through illness out of deep, like childlike love and devotion. And again, most of this just isn't conscious for people.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

And so what kind of changes do you see after you kind of bring that to the surface, especially with illness?

SPEAKER_05 35:02

Yeah, I think agency. I think agency of like, oh, I get to love them and I get to have my own experience and I get to be my own person. You know, there's autoimmune stuff in my family, and we all have seen the science around autoimmune stuff. And I, my whole life, because I witnessed my mom really suffering with it, was like, oh, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do that. And I had some funky markers come up in 2019, and so I did a constellation and saw where I was still kind of following her in that, and then was able to turn those markers off. So I feel like it gives you agency, it gives you permission to do it in a different way, and I think that's the most loving thing you can do for your family is not follow that.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Probably the most difficult thing for somebody to do, actually, to go read their own life, literally to lead their own life, yeah. You know, do I leave my family behind if I choose this? Do I choose this? I remember when my daughter said to me, I'm gonna move to Texas, and I said, I you know, it was hard for me because we were all lived in LA, but it was hard for me. But I just I understood it and I was like, Go with God. I really meant that. I really meant that. My mother said to me, You stop her right now, you tell her she can't do that, she can't breathe. And my mom meant it because all my siblings, we stayed with my mom. And then once my mom died, we all ended up in different parts of the world. It's the damnedest thing ever. But it was that loyalty, it was that loyalty, and I didn't want my daughter to have that same pattern, I didn't want her to have it. I I knew it wasn't healthy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

You know, it's it's so interesting that we're talking about loyalty because from an attachment perspective, that loyalty also exists. You know, you're loyal to your attachment figure.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

And so it's what so if you had an attachment figure, Cheryl, that was I hate to use this word, but unstable. We'll call it mentally unstable.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

How would that it would it would stop you from setting boundaries, it would stop you from setting limits, it would stop you because of that that loyalty of that attachment connection.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? The things that we've been we didn't know about, we didn't thought about, or these things that we're talking about today are they're big items, you know, they make it gives everybody another lens to view things. Oh my gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:27

I think that's one of my I mean, there's so many things about family constellation therapy that I love, but that was the one thing that really made sense to me, is it brings the unconscious into the conscious. And so you literally kind of step in the shoes of the ancestor who suffered XYZ, and you free yourself from it, but you free them from it too. So, like you giving your daughter permission to move, stop that cycle with you, and then her children are free to move about the absolute.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

I want that it's so it's so fascinating to me. We talked about like options, it bringing something up like that creates a different option. So when I call it we're on emotional autopilot, we just do what we do because we do without questioning it. When we start to heal our wounds and bring things up from the unconscious into conscious awareness, all of a sudden our options open up, and we have so many different choices where we just thought without thinking that we just had one.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

But then you have to become responsible for the choice, yeah. Of course, where we all are headed to do, to become responsible for the choice you have, right? As opposed to unconsciously making this choice and this choice from a pattern that started with great grandparents, you know, or great great grandparents. It's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

It is fascinating, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

It is yeah, yeah. And so, Carrie, when you're doing um a constellation and somebody makes a shift, do you have that aha moment with them? Do they do they have that aha moment where they go, hmm, like a light bulb goes on moment?

SPEAKER_05 39:13

They do, and that that is it's it's such a beautiful moment because I really here's how I lead them is I bring my family system with me, and I have all sorts of juicy wisdom from just being born in a family full of love, but a lot of generational trauma, which I didn't know at the time. But I trust that their family comes with them. And so when you're working on constellation therapy, you work what is in what is called the knowing field. So the easiest way I can explain the field, it's the energy container of your entire family system. So, like the soul of your family's consciousness from start to finish. So the field actually shows us what's stuck, and so when that light bulb moment goes on and they realize that they don't have to stay chained to whatever they've been chained to, it's it's it's almost like you feel this like wave of energy, and you'll see like sometimes I had a lady years ago who literally looked like she got a facelift, like everything in her face lifted, her cheeks were all rosy, she was like really kind of sallow and like sunken in when we started. And she had a lot of trauma, she was in her 70s, and at the end, she asked me to take a picture of her because it was like everything lifted. And like people will start to breathe, people will be able to stand up, you know. It's just it's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

It's funny because many of the comments that I've had after I've sent, you know, someone to you is I feel like a weight has lifted. There's more space, you know. So just you know, I I'm wondering if you can give an example kind of so so people who aren't familiar with family consolation can can kind of get an idea of what happens, you know, give us angle of maybe someone that stands out, right and how it's not, how it's right, right.

SPEAKER_05 41:07

Because it's it's experiential and it's kind of abstract, and it blends psychology with spiritual, which I I feel like I'm the bridge between the two of you. That's how we always describe me because I'm very true. Three of us work together off and everybody's beautiful. Experience, yeah, mindset. Beautiful. Like I love science and I love data. And so I feel like family constellation therapy blends both. So it's predominantly done in big groups of people, which some people feel really overwhelmed by. So you let's say, Kelly, if I was doing a constellation on you and you were doing a group, you would sit next to me, we'd do a little chat, ask what you wanted to work on, and then they call them representatives. You would select possibly Shirley to stand in the field and represent your mother. You could select Michelle to stand in and represent your father and whatever you wanted to work on. So then you place these representatives in the field and they start having all sorts of felt sense in their body as if they were the ancestor. So Shirley would start feeling maybe some somatic stuff that Lou could have had in her body, her heart, or her childhood. And so when you're doing it in a group, you use people. When I do it online, I use paper. So they would just stand on paper in their home, which is not lost on me that it's trippy. You stand on paper and you can start moving in a circle, you can rock forward and back, you can kind of attest to that, yeah. Oh, I can totally. And can you explain to people what the field is? Yeah, so the field they call it a morphogenic field, morphogenetic genetic field. So it's this invisible field of consciousness that kind of houses the family soul. So we're born and we have these individual souls, and we're out here learning our lessons and following our soul's path, but we also have a collective soul that we're working together with our ancestral line. So that field, that invisible field, houses all of that information. And so when you put someone in that field, I can speak to myself. I did a group in LA years ago, didn't know any of these people. There were 10 women, I had never met them. I was going, my the lady I learned from was teaching it. And this woman had all these chronic health issues and just couldn't figure it out. So my lady started setting up the field and said, choose someone to be your grandfather, because the grandfather was this like really powerful kind of mythic character in the family. He had died, but nobody really talked about how he died. She put me in the field and she put me, we were in a huge loft downtown LA, and she put me in the center of the loft. And I literally felt like I got shot in the head, and my whole body just dropped to the ground. So I was laying on the ground, like holding my head of like, I don't know what happened, but. I think I got shot. Like, I'm on the ground. I'm at war. And the girl just hysterically started crying. And her grandfather was in a Japanese internment camp. He was a POW and he got killed. But it was too painful for them to talk about him being killed. So he was the spirit, he was the hero, but it everyone had health issues. They had all of these things. And what's crazy about that story is flash forward 10 years later, I was in a crystal shop and that girl was on vacation and she was there with her husband.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

So I was like, I stepped in.

SPEAKER_05 44:34

I was your grandfather, and she gave me the biggest hug and said all her health stuff went away. All of it. Wow. What a story. Wow. Field is phenomenal. The field is intense. You can stand in and literally feel physical issues or emotional issues that happened with your ancestors, you know. So it it can this work can be.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

And I can attest to it. But it actually happened to me the first time I did a session with you in person when you had your office in Pasadena. And I went to see you. And I was not that I was a non-believer, it's just that I had a lot going on, and I was more just was I was kind of rigid in my thinking for you.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

I had to threaten Kelly with an inch of her life. She said, You are going. And I'm not taking no for an answer because by that time I had discovered you and it was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Yeah, and she said, No, you have to go, Kelly. And I remember going, okay, okay. So I get there and then I you could feel the energy in this morphogenic field. I don't know how to explain it. The next thing I know, I'm rocking, and the next thing you know, I feel like I'm getting uh stabbed in the back, actually. Not a stab, it was like somebody had like um, well, yeah, like a stab in the back or a shot in the back. And uh it turned out that one of my uncle great uncles had actually killed a Cossack and it knocked me over in the field. I had no idea what was happening. So this is very real and it's can be very intense. And it was one of the most healing experiences I ever had. But really, Carrie, it's it's it's extraordinary the work that you do.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Yeah. Well, you've said, Carrie, when people are are carrying around like addiction that after a session, they'll just stop the the they they don't have like this need or that same addictive response. Can you share one of those stories?

SPEAKER_05 46:25

Yeah, I mean, especially if the addiction was again tied out of loyalty to maybe a parent that had addiction or a grandparent. Again, most of the time, addiction is stems in my work from like bigger traumas. So I would I would look and see if somebody died young, you know, if somebody's missing, if there's war trauma. But I've had, I mean, I can, I'm always falling on my sword. I can use my family system. There was a lot of addiction in my family system, and I was the only one that was doing any spiritual work, doing any therapy, doing anything. And this work, and I was very quiet about it, not out of secrecy, but I just fell in love with this work. And so I was doing them every two weeks for like a couple of years. I was trying to clean up everything, and it absolutely rippled through my family. I've had cousins who were struggling with addiction that are sober, like ever pretty much everyone's in therapy now, which in my family system, our family motto was fight the pain. Like it was like suppress, keep going, be kind, like you know, so it absolutely rippled through my family. And I see that more often than not.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

You know, it's it's it's it makes sense when you look at energy. You know, you can't shift energy when it's connected to your family energy without it causing a ripple effect and shifting energy and everybody else. I mean, you know, that is even scientists believe that everything is energy, you know. So so it would create a ripple effect. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

From a spiritual standpoint, it would be somebody that has chosen to come in to make some shifts here. It's like, all right, gang, we're not gonna do this this way anymore. We're making a change here.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:10

Morphogenic fields, I I always tell people, Google them, they're really cool. It's how birds fly. So if you see like a bunch of swallows and they all of a sudden shift directions, they are working together in a morphogenic field and they're kind of taking turns leading. So interesting.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, it would have to be energy, right? Because they're not talking to each other. Hey, yeah, it's your turn now.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

We had a thing of I don't know, two or three months or before the winter, a few months ago, where all of these starlings came in and must have been thousands of them. And to watch them right in our yard, literally in our yard. It was the wildest thing in the fields here. And then I'd watch them turn around and dance and then up over here, and they stayed here for 30 minutes. Wow. That was really so. I never would have thought of that as a mortgage in the channel. That's I'm now I'm gonna use that for from now on going forward. That's amazing. Wow. Well, attachment also shapes spirituality, and anxious attachment may manifest as seeking constant reassurance from a sign, as we pointed out, or fear of abandonment. God's gonna abandon me. Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen. Um, avoidant attachment may manifest as a hyper-independence spiritually, spiritually, you know, I'm gonna go follow this person, I'm gonna go follow this person, or a resistance to surrender, and a secure spiritual attachment feels like trust, I trusted myself, unstability, a capacity to question anything without a collapse. Shirley, what about the nervous system?

SPEAKER_00 49:37

So the nervous system doesn't separate relational patterns from spiritual belief systems, you know. I mean, that the nervous system doesn't have that languaging. So what you feel is what you feel. So it could be, you know, it's always after learning from both of you, I always view it as a combination of both, you know, of our human experiences, which is what I work with, you know, to heal the trauma of our human experience. But it also has to do with our soul experience and what we bring in to this lifetime, and from a generational standpoint and from our own, you know, and that also is um, you know, is an important piece, part of us to also take a look at, be curious about, and to heal.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Absolutely. And this is where that ancestral perspective, Carrie, is very, very important because sometimes we experience in a relationship it isn't just personal, it may be part of a larger family story, you know, moving towards healing. You know, we've all been in relationships with those families that have their stories. All families have their stories, you know, and when those dynamics are seen and when they're honored and they're brought into own awareness, which is what we've all been talking about here, people often will experience a deep shift in how they relate to themselves and others.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And three to to begin to explore this, if this is you know all new to you, and even if it's not, you know, there's a ton of online now you can take a quiz to kind of get a sense of what your attachment uh adaptation is. And it can show up differently at work with friends in a relationship. Um, but identify your primary pattern under stress. Do you tend to pull away from people? Do you tend to need people to be there for you? You know, is it a nice combination of both? You know, of course, uh uh balance is always the healthiest. Um, and if you tend to isolate or want to be by yourself, you know, under stress, uh, you know, I'd be curious. You know, I would invite you to uh uh reach out to someone and say, hey, can we talk and see how that feels? And notice if it brings up shame, note if it brings up what they're not gonna want to do that or you know, that kind of thing. Um practice when you when you're under stress and you uh need to call somebody to take a sit back and maybe do a five-minute meditation before you call the person, you know, and see how that feels in your body. Um name it to tame it is what neuroscientists say when you know, learn to emotionally label what you're feeling. You know, I'm feeling scared, I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling um numb, you know, with avoidant, you feel a lot of numbness, you know, and that helps with the nervous system activation.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

And spiritually, to integrate some of the practices may be grounded meditation. I like to do a guided meditation, I think that's always good for people. Uh journaling relational triggers, that's a good one. What triggers me this week? What triggered me? Just start that way. What triggered me today? A lot of drama today. Um breath regulation before conflict. Maybe start noticing your breath before there might be some before you walk into some conflict, and then consciously set boundaries because it's the most important thing you can do on earth is to set a boundary, and a secure attachment will develop through consistency, not intensity. So surely we can always change our style, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Or our adaptation, their adaptation, yeah. Keeping in mind that attachment wounds are not destiny, they're not destined to be a certain way. We can always looking at it through the lens of curiosity. You know, they're attachment, they're adaptive to the nervous system, um, and can be there, they're they're they can develop as patterns, but they can be reshaped.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

I love that. Just remember everybody, you are not too much, you are not too distant, and you are you are adaptive, you can change.

SPEAKER_00 53:47

Right, absolutely. And Carrie, thanks so much. I mean, your work is so it goes so right along with what we all do, with what we do, you know, because it there is such an I think there's been a bigger kind of um uh like window into looking at generational trauma. There's so many more people talking about it now.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Oh my gosh. And Carrie, you have an extraordinary app. Can you tell anybody about your app? Because if you would love to learn more about care, you can go to carygonia.com, but you also have an app. Tell everybody about that.

SPEAKER_05 54:22

I do. I started an app last February called Legacy of Love. I really because date myself 20, 30 years ago, nobody was talking about any of this. And so I was show ahead of your time. Go ahead, and I was really lucky. Like my teacher showed up when I was very young, I was in my early 20s, and so I built what I didn't have. So I do a group monthly constellation. We have such a wonderful group of people. I also have monthly guest speakers, I call them magic makers. So each month I bring in a different practitioner to teach, talk about healing. Both of you have done it. Shirley talked about it. Oh, it's a great group. It's such a great group. We have guided meditations, we have journals, we have guidebooks, we get uh you guys get a daily Spirit Says message, a channeled message from Spirit. I ask them, hey, what do we need to know? We have astrology stuff in there. I really just built what I didn't have, but the group constellations, the monthly group constellations are just incredible. It's been so fun to see everybody shift so quickly in a collective.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Wow, and that's so important to feel that connection, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, and to heal in a collective environment. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 55:36

Totally before we go, too. I want to make an announcement here that our dear friend uh Maggie Goonin is doing an eight-silk weaving practice. And you might say, What does that mean? It's a traditional Qi Gong movement practice, and qigong is amazing. And I've been working with Maggie for the for we've done three uh uh Qigong classes so far, but she's got one live, everybody. She's only taking 12 people, and it's this Sunday, March 22nd at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Cheryl, you should do this. It's so good. So one it's gonna be one hour, it's live on Zoom, it's $20, and it is amazing. You work with Maggie, she is the best teacher. Oh, Carrie, you would love this. You just sit in your own home, you just wear what you want to wear, and you it's so comfortable. And she walks you through all of these eight movements. She's just extraordinary, I have to tell you. So you can register. Um, if you can uh and she says, come as you are, start where you are. And if you need to sit in the chair, you can do that too. It's so calming, I just love it. So I think that um uh Jared, I think you're putting up the link for everybody, so everybody could reach out to Maggie to sign up on Zoom for that. And if you have trouble finding the link, you can always go to my just write to me at infokellywhite.com. And it's just right, Maggie, right? Sherry, Maggie's amazing. So she's part of I have an app too, and she's part of our app. And so anyway, and everybody who's part of my app this Friday, we have um five o'clock somewhere, and you gals are if you're home, it's uh let me see, your time would be three o'clock uh in California, three o'clock, but you're welcome to join us in our group. We can have cocktail or not or have tea or whatever, and we just you know just talk about the week, and it's a real healing and part of our group too, Carrie. I know you love Dwayne.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

Oh I'm gonna oh I hope I don't working at three because otherwise I would definitely join you.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

That sounds like so much fun. Oh, surely, ditch your patient. Come on, I would never I know, I know. Anyway, you guys, it's always great to be together, and I look so forward to seeing you guys, all three of you, soon. And Harry, stay on so when you hang up, just stay on.

SPEAKER_00 58:05

Yeah, yeah. So let's just let's just remind everyone.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

So psychology explains the pattern, okay, spirituality restores the meaning, and intro integration builds security. Yes, yes, yes, and next week, everybody, we're gonna be talking about grief, loss, and meaning making.

SPEAKER_05 58:29

Yes, we're I always tell people we're the future ancestors, so we're we are who everyone's gonna call on. So just remember that. Even if it's a little step forward, any little step helps move your line forward. So we're the future.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

Oh my god. Okay, you know what, Carrie? You should put that on a cup. Yes, yeah. I love that you said that because someone always told me, keep in mind as a parent, you're creating memories for your child, and also we're creating memories for our ancestors. What a beautiful thing to say and to keep in mind.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Wow, Carrie. Yeah, because we are the future, literally. Yeah, because as I say, what comes around goes around, or something because it's true. Can you imagine all of a sudden, what did I create five lifetimes ago? Wow, and funny Thursday I'm doing a show on common. How funny is that? So join me on Thursdays, everybody. So everybody's loving that one. Boy, that was a good one, Carrie. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

That was a great one, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

Yeah, thank you, Shaw. All right, bye, everybody. Hi, Carrie, love you guys.

SPEAKER_00 59:39

Hi, Carrie, thank you.