[SPEAKER_00]: You probably know what an ace is, an adverse childhood experience, trauma and stability, the things that happened to you that you didn't deserve and couldn't control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Researchers have spent decades documenting how those early experiences affect your brain, your nervous system, your relationship, and your health decades later.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a side of that research that almost nobody talks about and it may be, to me, the most hopeful thing I've ever read or talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: The science of what protected you or would have, or still can.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are seven specific childhood experiences, what researchers now call positive childhood experiences, or PCs that have been found to dramatically reduce the lifelong impact of adversity, even severe adversity from childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the most important finding isn't just about kids, it's about you right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this episode, you're going to learn what those seven experiences are, how to figure out which ones were missing from your childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most importantly, the research backed ways adults can actually build what they didn't get because yes, that's a real thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really changes everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So stay tuned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Relationships Made Easy Podcast, where I give you the exact steps to create connection, joy, and ease, and all your relationships, whether it's with your partner, your family, your friends, or most importantly yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Abby Medkath, psychologist, bestselling author, TEDx, speaker, and the bossy Jewish mom you didn't know you needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each week you'll get no nonsense, research back strategies, serve with humor and love, so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start having the relationships you deserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll always leave knowing exactly what to say and do to shift your relationships for the better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: like I was a little slow there on the uptake of my introduction to the podcast, but you know, I'm always reading research.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my one of my favorite things to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's concerned we're just some people, but I get journals, I get the actual paper journals still.
[SPEAKER_00]: here to my office and I, you know, really like to look at what the latest research is and what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And PCEs or positive childhood experiences have been talked about quite a bit lately in different formats.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, you know, I've never covered this in almost eight years, we're in our eighth season, our eighth year of the podcast, and I've never talked about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are positive childhood experiences and, of course, why do they matter, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the short answer is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Positive childhood experiences are the relational antidote to adversity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're where aces adverse childhood experiences accumulate harm.
[SPEAKER_00]: PCEs positive childhood experiences accumulate protection that I think that oh that was actually well said that was the best way to say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the landmark research for about this comes from Dr. Christina Bethel and her colleagues at John Hopkins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the last things I read was I reread, I should say, was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Jamma, what we call Jamma, pediatrics.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this one was all linked to it in the show in the blog, but at 2019 I'm gonna say, it was 2019 or 2020.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they identified seven specific positive childhood experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they found, I think, is nothing short of remarkable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adults who reported six or seven of these experiences had nearly four times lower rates of depression and poor mental health compared to adults who had only two or fewer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this helped through even when controlling for how many aces adverse childhood experiences those adults had experienced.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what is so huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to really explain this today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So please,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, hang in there because it's such important research and it'll help you really understand how big this is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, so I want you to let that just land for a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your PCE score, your positive score, positive shot of experience score, didn't just soften the impact of adversity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was independently predictive of your adult mental and relational health.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in other words, the presence of these
[SPEAKER_00]: these kinds of experiences, these seven experiences, mattered on its own terms, not just as an offset to the bad stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the research also showed a what we call a dose response relationship, meaning the more PCs you had, the better the outcomes, you know, the higher the dose, the better the outcomes, and the fewer you had, the more vulnerable you were, regardless of whether you'd also experienced adversity as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the part that I really want you to hear, the
[SPEAKER_00]: absence of positive experiences can be just as damaging as the presence of the negative ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is why people who had just, quote unquote, just neglectful parents can be have severe mental health issues later in life and, you know, they weren't beaten, their parents weren't alcoholic, there was food on the table, all that stuff, but there was this kind of level of neglect.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what are the seven positive childhood experiences?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so these are the seven identified and Bethel's research.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you listen to these, I want you to generally sit with each one and ask yourself, did I have this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, for all my new people, whenever I mentioned the research or the free, I have a great free download for today or anything else, you can find any link to anything I talk about under the video if you're watching on YouTube and or on my website, abemecaft.com,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I write a full blog for every episode because that's how much I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might have someone you know who you think, oh my God, they need this information, but they'll never listen to Abby for an hour or 40 minutes or whatever today is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they would read something for 10, 7 minutes or 8 minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can you can send them the blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So number one, PCEs, positive-child experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one is you felt able to talk to your family about your feelings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just that talking was technically allowed, but that it felt safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: That someone in your home was interested in your inner world and that you wouldn't be shut down, dismissed, or punished for having feelings.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, you felt your family stood by you during difficult times.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when things got hard, you know, a friendship fell apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: You failed at something or you were scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: You felt like your family had your back.
[SPEAKER_00]: You weren't navigating hard things alone, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: number three is you enjoyed participating in community tradition and this one surprises people it doesn't surprise me it's about belonging to something larger than your media family so obviously religious communities there's lots of
[SPEAKER_00]: positive predictions for people who are involved in church and temple and mosque and other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, from the research, this is diners research and other people, but it's pretty, it's hard to tell what it's from.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't seem to be from the quote unquote like belief in a God.
[SPEAKER_00]: or an Allah or anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's from the community aspect.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the research bears out in different ways around this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean if you don't have your kids involved in religious community that they're gonna be a mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just something to think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's religious communities, cultural rituals, neighborhood events.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked about this before my own children were, their dad is not Jewish and I'm Jewish.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was, we didn't like go to temple all the time or go to church or things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we had a lot, I raised my children very purposefully in a neighborhood where there's a lot of, in this little town here in Northern California where people, you can walk out the front door and you know your neighbors and there was block parties and
[SPEAKER_00]: the schools were close by, you could walk to school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there, there was so much, there's a lot, a community center on our court, on literally on the end of our block.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a community center in a library.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was so many things to do with this town.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Albany in California, and we always called it smallbany.
[SPEAKER_00]: because it's like a small little town.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, we're right in your San Francisco and all these fabulous things to do in Oakland and Richmond, it really cool cities with lots going on, but there was a lot going on here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So having neighborhood events, that kind of stuff really protective factor, seasonal family traditions, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you know, I'm big on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime I can cook food and have a meal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's really about the sense that you were part of a connected world, and definitely when I think of growing up, I had as much as there was not good things in my childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a lot of that, a lot of that feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number four is you felt a sense of belonging at school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, not necessarily that you were popular, but that there was a place for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: if you were the geek or the athlete or the whatever, that you fit somewhere that the social world of school wasn't purely threatening or alienating.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number five is you felt supported by friends that you had at least one real friend who showed up for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all the research shows you just need one.
[SPEAKER_00]: One real friend who shows up for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: peer connection in childhood isn't a luxury.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really a developmental necessity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where you practice trust, repair, conflict, belonging outside of the family, all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so whenever I have people who are who have very small worlds, like, you know, you have to be careful, of course, with home schooling, things like that, making sure that the kids, those kids have a lot, which most
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they make sure that there's lots of, you know, those kinds of things where there's groups and there's places that their kid, kid or kids come together with other kids, but you just want to make sure I think sometimes in families that have large families.
[SPEAKER_00]: where kids are homeschooled, what I have found is that there aren't as many things outside the house because the kids have each other, but we want to have friendships outside the family, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do want to be clear about that on however that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number six,
[SPEAKER_00]: non-Gordian adults who took a genuine interest in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So could be a teacher, a coach, and a neighbor, a friends parent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who saw you and cared about you, they cared about how you were doing in a way that wasn't transactional.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this weren't one turns out to be enormously protective, especially when family relationships are complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, this is huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even say enough about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, again, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and I want you to think of who you are in people's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm working with a client right now, who's has a new niece.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've just talked to her about how, and her family's a little crazy, and I've talked to her about how important it is for her to be very present in her niece's life as, you know, that sort of healthy factor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like don't take those things lightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number seven, you felt safe and protected by an adult in your home, not just physically safe, but emotionally safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was at least one adult in your living environment whose presence made things feel more okay, not less.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the seven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, so before you, before you spiral about how many of these you're checking off or not checking off, I want to say something important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I say this is a, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: relationship maven psychologists with 40 years of experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: This list is not a verdict on your childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a map.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maps are useful because they show you where you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can figure out where you want to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just like that's what we're talking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how to missing
[SPEAKER_00]: positive childhood experiences, PCEs show up in your adult relationships as you're, I think your next natural question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the thing about childhood experiences, positive or negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't stay in childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: They travel with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They become the lens through which you interpret your adult relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: The expectations you bring into every room, the nervous system responses that fire before you've even finished a thought, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to walk you through each PCE and give you a concrete sense of how it's absence tends to show up in your adult relationships right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this isn't again about like pigeonholing you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about understanding why you do what you do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We always want to have an explanation, not excuse, an explanation, so we can figure out next steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you didn't feel able to talk about your feelings, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You you probably struggle to name what you're feeling in real time or you may feel a deep, a name fear that sharing your inner world will push people away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might overshare in an attempt to find like finally be heard or undershare as a way of staying safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: In either way, emotional intimacy
[SPEAKER_00]: um, I think that's hard to explain to a partner who grew up differently than you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you, if so, if your family didn't stand by you during hard times, if this was the case, you may have a really a deep sea to believe that you're on your own when things get hard even in relationships where that isn't true.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might have trouble asking for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might minimize your own distress to avoid burdening a partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you might feel a confusing,
[SPEAKER_00]: what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to use a resentment when you need support, but can't bring yourself to ask for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good one right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, if you didn't experience community belonging, if that happened, you might feel chronically like an outsider.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if even groups that would welcome you, there can be a kind of routelessness to adult life, a difficulty feeling fully grounded in any community that traces back to not having had that experience modeled or provided for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number four, if you didn't feel like you belonged to school, if that was the case, then peer environments in adulthood, you know, workplaces, social groups, even couples friendships, can really trigger old feelings of not fitting in and you may shrink in group settings or avoid them or conversely what I see as people who work over time to be liked in ways that just leave you exhausted and resentful.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's that resentful word again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number five, if you didn't feel supported by friends, so if you didn't have that growing up, you may struggle to trust peer relationships, of course, right doesn't take for me to figure that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might keep friends at arms length or find yourself repeatedly surprised when a friendship goes deeper than you expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And doesn't end a disappointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you may have the opposite problem, investing so intensely in friendships at the other person eventually pulls away, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we kind of end up sabotaging it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The six one, if you didn't have those two non-parent adults who took a genuine interest in you, this one often shows up as an intense need to be truly seen by a partner, by a boss, a mentor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone in the position of care or authority?
[SPEAKER_00]: I see this a lot, especially with bosses and things.
[SPEAKER_00]: When a partner seems distracted or disinterested,
[SPEAKER_00]: The response can feel wildly disproportionate and now, you know, hopefully now you know why you're not just reacting to today's interaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're reacting to years and years of invisibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then number seven, if you didn't feel safe and protected in your home, your nervous system learned that home, which is supposed to be the original safe base, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: a fundamental wiring issue, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: The very thing that's supposed to be the antidote to threat closeness and connection, it gets coded as a potential threat itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're insecure and a healthy relationship, it's probably this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you that right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just did an episode recently about insecurity and healthy relationships, so make sure you check that out if that's true for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so can you actually heal what you didn't get?
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, I want to be really clear here because there's a lot of vague wellness language floating around about healing your inner child.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I'm gonna tell you is as always grounded in actual research.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the concept is called earned secure attachment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked about this a little bit in the past attachment episode's I've done, which of course I'll link to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was first identified through work on, you know, what's called the adult attachment interview, which was developed by a researcher named Mary Maine and her colleagues at Berkeley.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they found, looking at adults who had genuinely difficult and inconsistent childhoods, okay, was that a meaningful portion of them were classified as securely attached anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: not because they were in denial and not because they'd forgotten what happened to them in their childhood, these bad things, but because of what had happened in their lives since the positive relationships they'd built, the experiences in school or at work, the people who showed up for them in ways that their early caregivers hadn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an attachment researcher.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's also a clinician, Dr. David Wallen, and he wrote about this in his work, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget the name of that book, but again, I'll link to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Describing how later relationships, it's like they offer us a second chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard as your childhood may have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get a second chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: What defines an earn secure adult isn't the absence of a hard history.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the quality of the relationship they now have with that history.
[SPEAKER_00]: Research that uses that adult attachment interview shows that earn secure adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: can tell a really a coherent story about their difficult early experiences, you know, these aces, these adverse childhood experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can tell, they can tell the story, the narrative holds together, the emotions appropriate and the meaning making is integrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: They understand how what happened affected them, they get it without being defined by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so what creates earned security, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This earned security attachment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the research points to, there's like three main, I'm gonna call them pathways.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is therapy, sorry people, therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Long-term relational therapy is one of the most well documented roots to earned security.
[SPEAKER_00]: The therapeutic relationship itself functions as a corrective emotional experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it provides consistency, a tumour, a safe base in real time, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not just talking about your relationships, you're having a new kind of relationship, often for the first time with that therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: AI does not replace and I'm sure we'll have research eventually on AI, but I will tell you as it is now, it's so hard if you haven't had therapy to understand why AI is not the same even remotely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't episode on it, so I'm not going to get deep on it right here, but I can't tell you how repetitive I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, with some men I've worked with, I'm the first woman they've ever talked to that they can't have sex with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, can't, like, that's never gonna happen, not a million years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it puts a whole new energy in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I've had it where maybe a man complimented me in my session or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, huh, why did you feel a need to talk about how I look or, you know, what are you bringing in here?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you on comfortable with?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we get to go there, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: or maybe on the first positive female experience a woman has had, you know, she has not many girlfriends, maybe or women who she's looked up to, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many where we're parative and restorative things that happen in the therapeutic relationship that are incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, again, if you cannot afford therapy or haven't had therapy or can't access it for some
[SPEAKER_00]: to try to help you kind of do it yourself, so to speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is something in the relational aspect that you're gonna be missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not gonna lie about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have some research about different kinds of therapy, like just doing it yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a little different.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are still, no matter what else we are still social creatures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are built that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has not been evolutionized out of us at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's number one is therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two is a secure romantic partnership.
[SPEAKER_00]: A partner who is consistently warm, responsive, emotionally safe can really do something profoundly reparative over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the research shows that secure romantic relationships can shift attachment patterns in adults who came from insecure backgrounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this isn't about your partner being your therapist by the way, it's about,
[SPEAKER_00]: the, I don't want to say this, it's about the accumulated weight of evidence that safety is real, that closeness doesn't have to end an abandonment or humiliation or rejection that you can be known even with all your words and still be loved, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the third, so I want to be clear
[SPEAKER_00]: the research shows really helps now not being in a unhealthy relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, well, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to go down there right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me let me get to number three.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could I could I could digress, but I won't right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three is sustaining relationships of any kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me just go there, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might not.
[SPEAKER_00]: have a partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not even want a partner, a romantic partner, but sustaining relationships of any kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So mentors, coaches, close friendships, faith communities, support groups, you know, 12 step groups, any relationship characterized by genuine interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Consistency and emotional safety contributes to what researchers call the accumulation of new relational evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how we talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are essentially teaching your nervous system through repetition that the old predictions don't they don't always come true and that's a really good thing and.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to just make one important note, earn security.
[SPEAKER_00]: This earn secure attachment isn't a transformation into a someone with no past.
[SPEAKER_00]: The old internal model working models don't disappear.
[SPEAKER_00]: What changes is that they're no longer the only option.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: New patterns,
[SPEAKER_00]: built through accumulated, corrective experience, become available alongside the old patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: And over time, they really do become more readily available.
[SPEAKER_00]: That shift from one,
[SPEAKER_00]: single anxious or avoidant response to having a choice between that response and a more secure one is really what I'm talking about, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked a lot, you know, I'm a classic avoidant attachment style person and when I get sick, so when I get sick, I just, I don't want to talk to anybody, I want to curl up and like my wounds, I want to be in bed, I don't want to ask you to, I don't want you to offer to help bring me anything like I'm the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I remember like really hurting my leg once and I had it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I, it was this, it had blown, I had fallen and it blew up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, it didn't break thank God, but like my ankle was five times a size.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was black and blue.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had it up and I remember it maxed my son had come home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had done it during the day and I got up, put my foot up and somehow got myself home drove home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was my right foot, like shouldn't have done it got.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I could barely feel it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank god my office is less than a mile for my house.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, get myself home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get my foot up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sitting there and Max is like, oh my god, what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tell him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, so he sees me start to get up because what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, I'm just a little thirsty.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, let me get you some water.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I go, no, no, no, it's probably good to walk on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, he's like, no, it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just like, you know, loving way really yelled at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, this is such crap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you need to get over yourself right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you don't like help, but this is ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, sit the F down and I'm going to take care of you kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's how much that'll go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and yet I now, I'm much better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really, I've gotten much better over the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as he said that, I was like, oh my god, I'm being ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I'm much better at asking for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess is what I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's one of the options now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, my old wiring might be like, go to bed, delay, but I talk to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't ask for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my new wiring is there, too, with new options.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so where I will ask for help and I will accept help and I won't be such a jerk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so here are five ways to repair what your childhood missed, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to get practical here, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because earned security is not just something that happens to you in a therapist's office either.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can actively cultivate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are the most research-supported ways to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, here we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: number one is to name what you didn't have.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't about blame or self-pity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about accuracy.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you grew up without an adult who made you feel truly safe, you didn't develop certain relational skills and expectations that most people get got automatically.
[SPEAKER_00]: So naming that clearly without minimizing and without dramatizing, we're not minimizing, but we're not minimizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really evolve the other work and the free download of put together for this episode is going to help you do exactly that, but I'll talk to you about that in a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two is to deliberately seek out corrective relational experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can do this, what you can be single and not in therapy and you can do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be intentional, intentional about building relationships, provide what was missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you didn't have adults who took a genuine interest in you, look for a mentor, a therapist, a community group, where that kind of sustained interest is possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you didn't feel you belonged,
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead of rotating through a bunch of them, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this one doesn't work, this doesn't work, no, no, no, sit there, go every week, do your thing, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Breath doesn't create the deep belonging you need, depth and repetition do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really want to say that, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, I've had this recently with a client.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sent them to their local chamber of commerce.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said go to the Chamber of Commerce meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have it every month.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just go every month, go every month for six months and then tell me and sure enough, it's a she sorry, not a he she went every month for six months because of first she was like this was stupid.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but she goes they were they were kind of friendly.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were friendly right away to where they were because not a lot of people always go to the Chamber of Commerce.
[SPEAKER_00]: She first of all she met so many people in her town.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had moved not that long ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was starting a business and.
[SPEAKER_00]: or was a solo printer, I should say she'd already had a business, but you know it has like an online business.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, you know, she's always in her house, you know, we're at her office.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it went so well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So something like that, like it doesn't have to be join the Elx Club.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, 12-step meetings were always great for me, you know, whenever I went to a new town when I moved from the east coast to the west coast, one of the first things I did was go to 12-step meetings.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how I got my first job out here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how, you know, and then I was in school, so I met people too, but there are so many options that you don't have to be, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's 12 steps, meetings for just about everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go to a picture, go to pendant, go to a photo pendant, anonymous meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: You be amazed, getting a sponsor through 12 steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just so many ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people immediately think of like church or temple or something, and they're like, I'm not religious, it's like, there's a million other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Join a hiking group, but go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't join 40 things and go once to everything, because you do, because right away, you're not gonna necessarily feel good there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to go over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: is when they give the commitment back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to make the commitment first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three is to let people be safe with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know this sounds simple, but it's one of the hardest things in a list, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: When your nervous system has learned that closeness is risky, you'll unconsciously do things to manage that risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'll keep emotional distance, you'll test people, you'll create conflict,
[SPEAKER_00]: the repair work involves noticing those patterns and staying even when everything a new says to go, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would also say what's in there is do not gossip, do not gossip, do not talk crap about anybody else ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number four is to build your mindfulness practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you think I make this up so I can talk about mindfulness every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you don't get through an episode without me talking about it because it's everywhere in the friggin research.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to specifically tell you why it matters here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't interrupt a pattern you haven't noticed yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mindfulness is how you build the observational capacity to catch yourself mid-spiral and make a different choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's real.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the research.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have episodes on mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's my free mindfulness starter kit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, whatever, just get yourself with your mindful practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number five is you have to tell a new story about your history.
[SPEAKER_00]: We call it narrative coherence in psychology and it's one of the key markers of earned security.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean rewriting what happened or pretending it was fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means developing a story about your childhood that's integrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: One where you understand what happened, why it affected you the way it did and how it connects to who you are now.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, again, I think, best I'm on the therapist, but journaling,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, the kind of deep identity based reflection, you know, is the, is the kind to do, and I have a therapy to go bundle that also goes with today's episode that I'll talk about where I do just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, all moves you in that direction, but I'll talk about that later, but these are the things you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm going to wrap up by saying this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you grew up with most of these seven experiences, your nervous system got a head start and congratulations.
[SPEAKER_00]: You likely built some.
[SPEAKER_00]: internal scaffolding for trust and belonging and emotional safety that is really served you even if you've had other struggles, which is awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: If several of these were missing, you probably spent a lifetime trying to get in adult relationships what you didn't get in childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes in ways that made the very fit you needed harder to find.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you got kind of graspy and codependent about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the research is clear, and I really want you to hear this, the absence of these experiences isn't a life sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Earn security is real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is plastic, and your brain continues to organize itself, and reorganize itself based on the new relational experiences, but you know, well into your delta to your die.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what your childhood didn't give you, your adult relationships, your community, your deliberate work that work you do can still provide.
[SPEAKER_00]: right you don't have to have had a perfect childhood to build a secure life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have to be willing to keep showing up for the corrective experiences that are available really to you right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about the the free download for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I've been killing these, I just want to say, I'm calling it my PCE profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your protective childhood experience profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a self-assessment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to walk you through each of the seven positive childhood experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really helps you identify which ones were present are missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: I think asks the kind of right questions to start connecting what you didn't have to what you're experiencing in your relationships right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as always, you can find that again on the website where you get this episode on AbbeyMeckF.com or you can find it under the YouTube video.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as always, I have what I call a therapy to go bundle if you want to go deeper with this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm calling this bundle healing what your childhood didn't give you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just includes really practical tools to help you do the actual repair work, not not just understand it, so there's journaling prompts for healing what your childhood didn't give you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I give very specifics.
[SPEAKER_00]: How my.
[SPEAKER_00]: How your your positive childhood experience gaps show up today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in other words, connecting what was missing to what happens in relationships now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a corrective experience plan in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of helping you build what your childhood didn't provide.
[SPEAKER_00]: A sheet, a script sheet for asking for what you didn't get.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a script sheet for letting people in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a letter to your younger self, where I sort of help you write that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very specific to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there you have that's $10 if you want that that you can get that for just $10 and it includes the free download.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're sure you want to do all this work, then you can skip getting the free download and just get it all together.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that is it for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope this was a.
[SPEAKER_00]: positive you know something aspirational today so you can look ahead if you're a parent obviously these things are super duper important but even if you're just somebody important in another kid's life it's important and then you know so it's important what you do from yourself down and then what you do from yourself up right how you're in your relationships today what you're doing to be corrective and and make make a better life for yourself all right
[SPEAKER_00]: Have an amazing week, and you and I'll talk real soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for spending time with me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're loving what you're learning here, come join my one love collective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my private community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be take these conversations even deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get a ton of bonus content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Live Q&As with me, guided visualizations, journaling prompts, scripts,
[SPEAKER_00]: and an incredible community of like-minded people ready to support you as you create more ease and joy in all your relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all waiting for you at AppieMedCraft.com or right on Substack.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next week.