#16: Love, Attachment, and Non-attachment in Relationships, with Zach Beach

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

What did you learn about love while growing up, and how does influence the way you love as an adult? How might non-attachment benefit your relationships, and how do you go from feeling anxious in your relationships to experiencing non-attachment? These are some of the areas we cover in our conversation.

Zach Beach is a love coach with a Masters in Psychology, the best-selling author of The Seven Lessons of Love and two poetry collections, founder of The Heart Center love school, and host of The Learn to Love Podcast. He has taught and coached thousands of couples and individuals on how to deepen their love and connection.

You can learn more about Zach and his work by going to his website:

www.zachbeach.com

On social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), he is @zachbeachlove

To learn more about Karin, you can visit her website at www.drcalde.com

Transcript

PODCAST INTRO

[00:03] Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, practiced at a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to love is Us.

EPISODE INTRO:

Hello, everybody, and welcome. My guest today is Zach Beach, who is a love coach. Now, most of my guests on this show value love and bring it into the work that they do because they're helping people with their relationships in some way or another. But Zach seems to take that to a whole other level, and he was really intentional about how he learned about love from all these different perspectives. And you can learn a little bit more about that on its website. But it does talk about that a little bit on the show today.

Back in Episode 3, the subject of the episode was on anxious attachment styles and relationships. And today we expand upon that conversation around attachment and we talk about how we learn about love, about his book The Seven Lessons of Love. So we talk a little bit about that. Then at the very end, he mentions how a lot of people are interested in bringing the concepts of love and connection more into the workplace. And I mention how I'm going to interview someone about that very topic in the following week. And yet in the podcasting World Time is not Always Linear, and I've actually already published that episode. It's episode number 13 if you're interested in going back and listening to it.

So I'll just also say that for all of you lovers out there who are in a committed relationship and you haven't yet downloaded my free guide, seven Signs of a Healthy Relationship, you can do so by going to my website, drcalde.com, and scrolling down to the bottom of the page. They can just help you explore new ways to strengthen your connection with your partner.

So I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you do enjoy it, I hope you'll share it with someone that you love. Here we go.

EPISODE

Hi, Zach.

[03:27] Zach: Hi, Karin.

[03:29] Karin: Thanks for joining me today. We were just talking about what's going on where you are in the world. You're dialing in from beautiful sunny California, right?

[03:45] Zach: In theory it's sunny California, but it's been a really wonderful theme, actually, because it has been raining and I've been teaching a lot of yoga, so I get to introduce all these different intentions about when it's raining. So one common metaphor I love to say is that it's always sunny above the clouds. So any pain or challenges or suffering that you are currently going through, it's just the weather. It'll pass. And our true, radiant, loving nature is, of course, always shining, regardless of whether or not there are clouds. But I've also been thinking about this quote by Thomas Merton, one of my favorite Christian mystics, and he says, as long as the rain keeps talking, I will listen nice. It's easy to be like, oh no, it's raining. Or you could be like, what a lovely sound. I'm going to curl up in a blanket and have some tea.

[04:42] Karin: There's a lot you can do with it, can't you? That's great. Yeah, that's great. I love the metaphor of listening to it and what we can hear when we listen more deeply. So what drew you to California? And you're in the Bay Area, right?

[05:00] Zach: Absolutely.

[05:02] Karin: Yeah.

[05:03] Zach: I'm in the San Francisco Bay area. The original reason I moved here must have been about twelve years ago, was because of a girl, as you might know. And it was very interesting to me because before I started on this path of love, I believe it or not, was an engineer working in biotech and pharma, and I was like, do people believe in love as much as I do? Kind of thought to myself. And I remember I had graduate applications into business school and was slowly climbing up the corporate ladder and had some stock options that had yet to be vested. And then I remember talking to some of my coworkers and I was like, yeah, my partner at the time just got into law school in Berkeley, California, and they were like, okay, goodbye. It was instant. It wasn't like, you should probably stay for the monetary and career success that you will have at this company. It wasn't like, you should probably break up with your partner to stick with your company and your career. And I realized, obviously a career can move. But I just love that it was how instant and quick it was, and no one was like, oh, you should really stay. You have a really good thing going here. Your stock options are going to go out the window. Everyone's like, that's what we're here for. We're not here for some artificial idea of success and fame and monetary wealth. We're here for other people. And what really makes a meaningful life is meaningful relationships.

[06:44] Karin: So it really aligned with who you are and perhaps who you were becoming. Was that right?

[06:53] Zach: Oh, yeah. And then yeah. Moving to California, that's like night and day. I have lived in different places in the States, but this place has definitely been really fundamental to my healing, growth, and spiritual transformation.

[07:08] Karin: In what way?

[07:11] Zach: In just the availability of all sorts of programs, retreats, workshops, communities, and people that are also committed to living this life with an open, heart, clearing the mind getting in touch with deeper and more expansive aspects of our nature. I'm a yoga teacher and there's a little joke. You can throw a rock out a window in California and hit a yoga teacher because of course, there's so many people on this path and of course there's amazing pockets elsewhere in the States, but this is where my heart is and will remain for quite a while.

[07:53] Karin: Sounds like a good move then.

[07:56] Zach: Yeah, absolutely.

[07:58] Karin: Good. So you've told us that you're a yoga teacher. What else do you do for work?

[08:05] Zach: Well, I think of my entire life path as meant to bring more love into the world. And I like to explore that in a myriad of ways. I generally think of my work as being on the level of the body, the heart and the mind. So on the level of the body? Absolutely. Teaching yoga, getting people to be in touch with their bodies. Every day I get to read poetry and tell people to open their hearts. Somehow I found that as a career. And on the level of the heart, I love poetry, reading and writing it, and on the level of the mind, I teach and write and coach couples and individuals on how to have more successful and longer lasting relationships with others and themselves.

[08:50] Karin: And how did you come to do that work? In particular, the coaching work?

[08:58] Zach: For me, it was a deep process of reflection on what really matters most in this life and then intention to live in line with what most matters. And that little story of how I moved here was just one piece to the love puzzle that I realized that we're social beings, we need social connection, that our need for love, kindness, caring is just as fundamental as food and water for our emotional well being. And that life's too short not to do what you love. And I decided that what I love was love. And I was like, how can I commit my life to this cause, you might say. And once I started on this path, I realized how extraordinarily difficult it is. There's not like a love incorporated that you can apply to get a job at you can't go to school yet. I want to change this, but you can't go to school yet. And major in love and minor in compassion.

[10:00] Karin: I would have majored in that too. I'm there.

[10:06] Zach: Because we don't live in a world that really prioritizes love and connection. So it really involved with kind of carving out my own path. And I'm sure many of your listeners, and I'm sure you as well, are carving out your own path. And that's what I love about any intention that we can set is rather than a goal, which is in the future. And it's a single point that we have to target. An intention is so open ended. There's so many ways to express any intention that you might set, whether it's peace, forgiveness, self love, others, compassion. So I really have just hopped on this ride of love and been inspired by all the places it takes me.

[10:50] Karin: And what are some of the places that it took you?

[10:56] Zach: Well, all around the world, actually. I've really been on this path of looking for the best teachers, gurus, shamans, saints, mystics, wisdom traditions, indigenous traditions, spiritual practices, religious practices that do help us all love more and become more loving individuals. So I have gone, I don't know, about 40 or 50 countries, I might say, to study and learn. So everything from going to Thailand to learn time massage, because another one of my favorite things is getting bodies to connect with other bodies. So I do like guided time massage workshops. But fundamentally, time massage, for example, is lovingkindness this idea of meta. I've been to Nepal, studied Buddhism there and just finished a bit of a stint also at a couple of monasteries, Buddhist monasteries in Thailand. Gone to India, study, do Yoga there in the banks of the Gandhis. And then really been inspired also by indigenous practices and indigenous cultures, which I generally explore by going down to Peru in the Andes there to work with the people there. And I never would have imagined I'd be living this life before I got here. And it's been an amazing unfoldment. And that's really just what happens when you live from your heart. I sometimes describe it as almost imagining, like, you're in the middle of a valley, and then you think, oh, I want to get to the top of that mountain, because that's what you see. That's what's in your realm of your world. Once you get to the top of the mountain, then you see so many more mountains, and then there's just more to explore and more to discover. And that's one of the things I found about love, is how vast and expansive and truly infinite it is. And I will continue to explore it.

[13:06] Karin: And I bet you there was a lot of self discovery along the way through your travels, through your education, I'm guessing. Is there anyone a particular experience you had that you might want to highlight and tell us a little bit about.

[13:26] Zach: On the path of self knowledge?

[13:28] Karin: Yeah.

[13:32] Zach: I just want to begin by saying I've always been blown away by how little I've learned in my education. And I went to school for 1618 years, and no one ever told me to listen to my heart. No one ever told me what it means to forgive another or how to say goodbye to somebody who is on their deathbed. No one taught me how to close my eyes, listen to my breath, or place one hand on the heart and bring my intention there. And we do live in a very externalized world where we are told in order to gain knowledge and become wise, you have to bring as much external knowledge in the form of books and courses and subjects. And never once was I told there is an internal source of wisdom that we can discover within ourselves. So I just said that because it's always sort of phonetically challenging to talk about anything along the lines of self knowledge, self realization, or self discovery because it's like you need to find yourself, where am I other than who I am right now? And I say that because there's this old joke about a therapist who tells their client that they should go on a meditation retreat to start feeling better. And so he goes, and he's been struggling before the retreat with being angry and frustrated and mad at work and other things. And then he just goes and sits and watches his thoughts and sees how mad and angry he is. And he goes to his therapist and says, that didn't work at all. The therapist says, what are you talking about? I said, you'd be feeling better. You're feeling your anger better. You're feeling your frustration better. And that, for me, was also part of the path. Once you look within, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. You begin to observe the sources of your suffering, the mental anguish that you are putting on yourself. And there is a courage that is required to face it, face these conditionings to look deep into the nature of our suffering and the true source of our happiness.

[15:58] Karin: Yeah, indeed. Well said. It does take a lot of courage and some real work. And yet what we get that self understanding and that self knowledge can really transform our lives.

[16:15] Zach: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing. Once we start getting in touch with our own emotions better, we're able to get in touch with other people going through those same emotions better. So self compassion increases our capacity to be compassionate to others.

[16:32] Karin: Yeah. And that helps with that connection that we are always seeking in some way or another.

[16:39] Zach: I believe absolutely that's a common inquiry I'll give my yoga students, people come to yoga and they ask them what it means. And usually they give some idea of union, connection, linking together. And then I ask, in the modern world, what are most people disconnected from? And the answer tends to be everything. We're disconnected from ourselves, our bodies, our hearts, our intuitions, our dreams, our purpose. We're disconnected from each other in our atomized and isolated world and the dissolving of communities. We're disconnected from the world. We don't know where our food comes from. And it always amazes me when people think nature is something that you go to like, oh, this Saturday I'm going into nature. We're so disconnected from the world. We're caught up in all sorts of artificial man-made environments during much of our lives. So that's the path back, path back to connection. And there's so much connection that needs to be brought back into this world.

[17:40] Karin: And speaking of connection, I wanted to talk more with you about that today. It was really hard to find a topic and I think it's partly because I feel like there's a lot of overlap between you and I and the work that we do, although you have a much more spiritual side of your work that I really respect. And it's like, oh, we could talk about this and we could talk about that. We could talk about relationships and sex and emotional connection and couples and reigniting the spark and all those different things on those topics that I love.

[18:18] Zach: That's what I'm saying, because love is expensive. It covers every aspect of the human experience. That's what I've discovered. You can go anywhere about love.

[18:26] Karin: Yeah. And the place that I ended up landing on is attachment. And you talk a little bit about this in your book. You wrote a book called The Seven Lessons of Love. Heart Wisdom for troubling Times. And if we have time later, maybe we can talk a little bit more about the book because I've been working through it and I'm really enjoying it. But in a section of the book you talk about attachment, which of course could be another word for connection but has it a little bit of a different flavor. And I think that a lot of people are learning about attachment. They've maybe read the book attached by Amir Levine and Sue Johnson's book hold Me Tight And so I think those two books have helped kind of bring that attachment into the mainstream and people are really understanding what their attachment styles are. But I'm sure there are a lot of people who are listening that perhaps aren't as familiar with attachment. So I thought we could maybe start there. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the different attachment styles and how they develop and how they play out as adults.

[19:44] Zach: Of course. Have you heard of the Buddhist vacuum cleaner? It's not very good. There's no attachments. And I just say that because obviously attachment to attach and attachment are both verbs and nouns that we use in day to day society or in our common parlance, for example. Now, in spiritual communities, attachment means something very specific and that is not the attachment that we're talking about. Now, when people talk about attachment theory, attachment styles, it generally refers to a very large and robust compendium of psychological research that basically looks at how our early relationships, our early caregiving relationships I was going to say parents, but sometimes aunts, uncles, grandparents take the ones that end up taking care of us. Our early caregiving relationships are extremely strong predictors of our adult romantic relationships. And it started way back, I think, in Baldi, in Bulby. Bulby in his research and really has been going on at least 40 years in the psychological realms. And the idea is very simple because we all come into this world and we generate models about how this world works and then we use those models to, of course, navigate throughout life. Right? We wake up sunrises every day, okay, I now know the cycles of day and night, and this is now I know what to do with my life. Right? So too, when we come into this world, our brains are little sponges, and they absorb all sorts of knowledge about the world, including what love is, what it means to give love, what it means to receive love, how that love is to be expressed, what to do if you are in pain and suffering. Whether or not there are people around you that will be there to comfort you, that you can rely on. And in a terrible twist of fate, all those what you might call attachment patterns, what sometimes is referred to as emotional blueprints or relational blueprints, they're back there somewhere near, subconscious, just so ready to be revived as you enter into romantic relationships in adulthood. And I say that in a general sense because a lot of people want to latch right onto attachment styles. What is your attachment style? What are you going to put in your Tinder profile that you're looking for? But it's important to recognize it's a very global model and it covers a lot of things. Everything from like, is breakfast time, a time to be very quiet and read the newspaper or in this case, scroll through our phone, or is the time to connect before you start your day. So the basic idea is tell me how you were loved and I will tell you how you love. Because if I learn a little bit about what your loving environment was at a very young age, it'll tell me a lot about how you operate in your relationships as an adult. Sometimes those patterns serve us. And if we were had very nice role models of love and relationships from our parents, our primary caregivers, many times people come to attachment theory because they're like, why am I so stuck? Why do I keep having the same repeated patterns in my dating and relationship world? What is going on? There's someone or something controlling this destiny of mine and it's not panning out. And it's that sort of fed upness or that sort of frustration that leads one to be like, oh, I have a certain repeating patterns. I'm attracted to a certain type of person, and until I become cognizant of that, nothing will change.

[24:06] Karin: Yeah. And and I want to I want to talk a little bit about, you know, what those styles are not because I want us to put ourselves in a box, because I think that those styles change and shift depending on the time in our life and the person with whom we're in relationship with. And yet I think it can be useful to help people kind of self reflect and recognize some of those patterns that they do tend to repeat. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about kind of the general, maybe the three big categories.

[24:55] Zach: I'd love to. I mean, it's important to recognize it's a model. It's not necessarily a diagnosis. But I do talk to a lot of therapists, and I kind of ask them about therapy in general. Loves to pathologize. The first thing you need to learn is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and come up with all sorts of different ways to categorize different symptoms people present to you. But in general, obviously, none of us want to be pigeonholed. But in general, we can't change what we don't know and understand. And most people really find a diagnosis extremely helpful because now I finally understand there's a direction to go forward. It's kind of like when you go to the doctor, you're like, my shoulder hurts. I don't know why it hurts, but when there's lightning and thunderstorm out, it hurts even more, or something like that. These are odd symptoms and behaviors, and you're trying to connect the dots, and then your doctor's like, okay, it's this it's tendonitis or something, and this is what we do for that. And you're like, oh, thank God I have a word. I have a way to think about it. And then I also have some common strategies that I can use to cope with and fix this issue that I'm having. And you're absolutely right. Our attachment style does change throughout our lifetime. And even just one successful, happy, loving relationship can massively reorganize our own brain to have what one might call the most desirable. But it's important not to put too much value on any of them. The most desirable attachment style is what we call secure. And the basic idea is when your parents were taking care of you. I'll just use parents from now on. Your parents were taking care of you. Was there neglect or was there overwhelm? Were they helicopter parents that were around too much, or were they neglectful parents that weren't around enough? If you had the perfect parents, which none of us had, of course, but the perfect parents were ones that were highly attuned to your own emotional state, that they were able to understand what you needed in the moment, to be there with you in the moment, and to offer you what you needed. And a lot of times, our own emotional scaffolding in the brain is built off of the emotional scaffolding of our parents. So how well were they able to reflect back what we ourselves were feeling? So once we get into that tantrum and stop our feet and start crying, and they're like, sounds like you're angry, it's that attuned reflection that really helps us in our early developmental stages. So what if we didn't get that? What if we experienced neglect? Well, it's important to recognize these are kind of evolutionary responses, and they're there for a reason. So if we did experience some level of neglect, we sort of come to this subconscious conclusion that we are on our own, that there are people in this world who we cannot rely on to be around. So we have to kind of be self sufficient, manage our own emotional needs, not rely on others. So this tends to go towards the category of what is known as avoidant. You tend to avoid a certain level of emotional commitment with others because you've learned that you can't rely on others to be around. So the idea of commitment scares you. And if someone pushes to establish deeper levels of the relationship, you start to run.

[28:56] Karin: That'S one. Attachment style is avoidance style.

[28:59] Zach: Yeah, you'll hear all sorts of different kind of different terms, different spectrums. So I'll just go them, I'll just do them real quick, secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized. I tend to use the four, but you'll see, like ambivalent usually other terms for it as well. And disorganized is kind of like the, oh, we don't really want to talk about that too much, generally anxious and avoidance. So if we also experience overwhelm, like that helicopter apparently also does bring about a little bit of avoidance because you're like, I always have to be pushing away and a little bit of anxiety, like maybe this love is going to be too intrusive. But if we have more sporadic caregiving, then it does produce a little bit more of an anxious attachment. So this tends to happen with childhood abandonment. For example, like if a primary caregiver left us at a young age, then as an adult we might be worried that our partner is going to leave us.

[30:01] Karin: Right, so those are kind of the general categories. And then of course, the disorganized one tends to have a more chaotic start in life. Right. Often in abusive situations that tends to be a much smaller percentage of the population that tends to experience that.

[30:26] Zach: Yeah, fortunately. Yeah. It's like 5% or 10% or something.

[30:30] Karin: Yeah. So how does that start to play out in relationships? So we often hear about a person who has more of an anxious style, seems to often be in relationship with those who have an avoidance style and that lovely, keep happening. So why is that?

[31:04] Zach: Well, so don't kill the messenger, but we think that we choose a partner because we are very intelligent and we've evaluated them with a perfectly rational mind and we also experience a very real and authentic connection. There's just chemistry, we just know each other. I feel like I've met you before, perhaps in a previous life, and most psychologists would say, oh, you have met this person before in the form of your caregiver. Meaning that if we had, for example, an emotionally unavailable parent, we will be attracted to emotionally unavailable people. Because your brain basically sees this person as, oh, this is normal, this fits my model of love. What this person's behavior is fits exactly into my model of love. So this therefore somebody that you need to enter into a relationship with. So there's the old dialogue where two people on couples therapy and one says to the other, but I love you. And the other one says, don't threaten me. And that's what we call the anxious avoidant pull. Because as an anxious person, you need reassurance, you need commitment. You're worried your partners might might be leaving. You're worried your partner might be cheating on you if they don't text you back soon enough. There's this underlying fear, anxiety and worry that predates your current relationship, right space in the past. And so you want that. You ask for it. You're like, Can I have this reassurance? I need some commitment. I need some more frequent communication, for example. And to an avoidant person, that's quite scary, whether they say it aloud or not. Because to them, deepening love means deepening pain or a greater risk of abandonment and loss. So the person that wants that commitment ends up being the person that they run from. And it's just this back and forth, back and forth little dynamic that's going on. And so there is a sort of rewiring repatterning or simply re understanding of what a loving relationship is and what it should look like. I even recently had a guest in my podcast and she was just like, a lot of love is boring. We look at certain television shows and media and we think that the yelling and arguments and lack of communication that happens in relationships is normal. And that's also what happens. An anxious person might meet like a secure partner or a securely attached person, and they're like, this is boring. This person just is there for me.

[34:32] Karin: They're stable. They don't yell. They listen to me. It's so weird. There's no chemistry. Exactly. Yeah. I'm always wary when someone says, but we have chemistry. I think, oh, red flag. What does chemistry mean for you? Let's dig deeper deeper into that. Of course, not always, but yeah.

[34:58] Zach: I hope that answers your question.

[35:00] Karin: Yeah, absolutely. So do you have clients that come to you and say, I'm in this pattern. How do I break it? So do you help people kind of relearn their attachment style or do you have a different approach?

[35:24] Zach: Yeah, I would say that is like the presenting problem. Right. This is something fundamental to the human condition. We often know what is right and what is wrong. We all tend to know what we should be doing. We know what food is healthy. We know the stress is bad. We know that sleep is good. Getting the appropriate amount of sleep is good. But there's often those obstacles in the way. And that's where a coach and coaching relationship can be particularly helpful because a coach can help to identify those obstacles and then find a path around them or a path to remove them or. Path to help understand them, to lessen them, to potentially help you get over them. So that is one of the most important lessons of attachment is that our emotional wounding, I'll just say, happens in relationship, so our emotional healing also happens in relationship. So that is where the coaching, coaching relationship can come in because that coach can act as a secure base just like a therapist can, just like a good friend can. That's why even just reaching out to friends is often a way to build more secure attachment. Having basically a consistent and steady and supportive relationship can be very supportive. Right. So in general it is that iterative process of noticing or recognizing the patterns that aren't serving you while simultaneously on the other side, intentionally building that more secure attachment, intentionally growing into a more attached style. A more securely attached style.

[37:17] Karin: Yeah. And then you also teach non attachment, is that right? Which is not quite talking about the same thing. Right. It's a little bit different. I mean, I'm sure there are some people who might think, oh, well, avoidant people are practicing non attachment, right? But no.

[37:47] Zach: Well, that's why these terms, they are connected. I'll say these aren't totally different terms the way like some term might mean something in computer programming and some term might mean like something over here. I almost wish the field of psychology came up with a different term than attachment theory, but it is connected mainly because non attachment letting go is a key foundation for a loving relationship, or even just loving in general. And later we could potentially get into how many people have an incredible misconception about what non attachment is. So we could get into that. But I'll just begin with this basic idea that you can't love someone and try to change them at the same time, which is to say, if you love somebody, you love all of them. And if you are loving them and wanting to change them, then you're really only loving part of them and you're actually wanting another part of them to be different. But all of us, me, Karen, here, listeners, we all want to be accepted for who we are as we are in this moment. So one of the most loving acts that you can do for your partner is to fully accept them and who they are in this moment. Which is why non attachment is a key part of love because it allows the people in our life to be exactly who they are and let's go. Let's say the non attachment is of any desire to fix, change or improve the person it is that we are with. Like do you want to be fixed? Do you want someone to come up to you, Karen, and say I'm here to fix you?

[39:56] Karin: Right? Yeah. So non attachment sounds a lot like acceptance.

[40:10] Zach: Sure, it could be. So let me just, let me, let's, let's get into it because the in Buddhist psychology, there's a lot of non terms non harming, non attachment, non judgment. And it's easy to think that that means not just because it's so phonetically similar, but it's a special middle way. It's a middle path. Maybe you've heard of this middle path, which is to say that nonattachment is that special middle path between attachment being overly attached and detachment being totally cut off from our experience and from our life. So a lot of people think non attachment means not caring. I'm sorry your dog died. And you're like, okay. It is what it is. Not at all. That is detachment. That is being totally cut off from our emotional experience, from our humanness, from our aliveness. So it's that middle way. If we notice ourselves getting too detached, we have to bring presence to this moment. We have to meet this moment with our full mind, our full body, and our full heart. If we find ourselves being aversive, pushing away, not wanting, that's where the acceptance piece is so key, right? So that's where instead of pushing away, instead of running away, we bring a level of, okay, this is a moment of suffering. We might say. This is a part of life. And so it is a key component, I might say.

[42:00] Karin: Yeah. So it seems like a difference between non attachment and detachment is that in non attachment, you're still allowing yourself to feel.

[42:13] Zach: Oh, you're feeling. You're feeling. That's the thing. You're feeling it better.

[42:17] Karin: Yeah.

[42:18] Zach: Remember from earlier? So you're fully with it. You're fully in your human experience. So if you are in grief, you are feeling and getting in touch with that grief, which is our gateway to compassion and understanding. So it's being able to hold the pain and the sadness with just as much equanimity as the joy and happiness in our life.

[42:50] Karin: And what is a signal that tells you that you're starting to hold on too tightly and becoming too attached?

[43:05] Zach: Well, I think it's Joseph Goldstein's motto that if you try to hold on to the rope as it slides through your hands, you'll just get rope burn. And that's where part of non attachment arises from a fundamental understanding of how this universe works, which is that everything passes and nothing stays still, that everything changes. And usually when we do look at our attachments, it's because we want that thing to stay the same, and we don't realize that it's changing all the time. And a good sign that you are overly attached is if you are suffering, is if you are in pain in some way. And that suffering is a signpost pointing exactly to where you are stuck and exactly where you need to let go.

[44:08] Karin: So it can really help guide us and point us in a direction toward healing. Then when we recognize what we're feeling and when we're suffering.

[44:17] Zach: Absolutely.

[44:19] Karin: So how does one go from having, let's say, an anxious attachment style to being really fully present in their relationships and practicing non attachment. I mean, it seems like it can be pretty far apart. But I'm curious, what's one thing that you might tell someone to help them feel more secure and non attached in their relationships?

[44:53] Zach: Unfortunately, if you're listening, you're already doing it. Which is of course, gaining an awareness of the underlying dynamics that are at play in your relationships in general to build a more secure attachment. The advice is this. So you mentioned attached, right? And a lot of people love that book until they get to the end because it's like, what am I supposed to do? And the basic prescription is just be with someone who is securely attached. That's just like, oh, this is how you do it. Is there anything else I could potentially do? Which is it, say, the general recommendation to build more secure attachment? A be with someone securely attached? Okay, we can throw that out the window because a lot of that's not really in our control very much. Two, we talked about therapy and our coaching. A consistent relationship with somebody who loves and cares about you. Even if there's that monetary exchange, even though you're paying them to love and care about you, they still love and care about you.

[45:53] Karin: Or therapist is really going to care about you for sure.

[45:55] Zach: Absolutely. Every coach and therapist I talk to, they love their clients. Three meditation so you can give yourself the unloving presence that you didn't receive as a child. So sometimes meditation is referred to as spiritual reparenting, which I love. Four is community, right? So, okay, if an individual relationship isn't in the cards right now, supportive community, some support group, and then also is focusing on yourself is another key way. Now that's like the general recommendations for building kind of any secure attachment no matter where you are. Like even secure people, quote unquote, secure people can become more secure. We can all become more secure, especially because different partners bring different things out of us. So you might be secure in five relationships and then suddenly, wow, I'm feeling really anxious with this person. I wonder why. And that's an amazing time to talk to your partner about your needs. So once you gain that self awareness of what is happening, you express it to your partner. And this is the unique prescription for those who are more anxiously attached because there is going to be this underlying behavioral tendency to not rock the boat. Like, I don't want to be seen as needy or seem like I want a lot of things. This relationship is so precious, I don't want to ruin it. And we have to kind of notice that reaction and come back to what are you feeling right now? Anxious. What are you needing right now? A hug, something like that. And then you are able to talk to your partner about about your needs. And then they can meet them, right? So you don't have to suffer by yourself. And that's where a partner can come in. And just one final little piece of advice is this is anxiety we're talking about. So self soothing, self regulation can come up. Learning how to regulate your own emotions, naming it, detaining it, feeling it so you can heal it. All those fun little slogans involve any self soothing that we can do.

[48:25] Karin: Yeah, great. Well, yeah, those are all great things for people to do and steps to take. And I wanted to take just a quick minute to talk a little bit about your book that you sent me, which I've been really enjoying. I already mentioned the seven Lessons of Love heart Wisdom for Troubling times. Who did you write that book for?

[48:56] Zach: Everyone. Because we all need love. Actually, that's the first lesson, is that we all need love. And this was surprising for me on this path. I thought love was like, nice, meaning it's a nice thing to have. And there's other things in our life, like our hobbies and our careers and other things that love doesn't come into play. But since all my research and this isn't just some dippy pie in the sky ideal, that all you need is love. This is rooted in neuroscience and psychology, like attachment theory, like interpersonal neurobiology, that simply shows that our need for connection and belonging is just as fundamental for our health and well being as something like diet and exercise. So I did write it for everyone. These are lessons that we can all learn. And again, part of the reason I wrote it is because our education around love is so poor, we didn't receive many lessons of love as we were growing up. Although someone told me this comment along the lines of we learned everything we needed to know about life in kindergarten.

[50:19] Karin: Yeah, I've heard this idea.

[50:20] Zach: This when you learned how to share, how to see I'm sorry, it's just crazy. It stops there. Rather than, say, give you more mature relational tips and tools.

[50:33] Karin: Right? Well, what are you want to just kind of briefly tell us what the seven lessons are? And I have them here.

[50:44] Zach: No, I know that each one needs to be expanded a little bit, but a lot of them tie into many of the things that we're talking about. So, yeah, the first one is that everyone needs love, right? And this is, again, science that shows that poor social connection is just as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day in terms of overall health and longevity. And then the second one is that our home is our first love school. And this is the attachment theory. This is where we learned about what love is, what it means to give, receive, et cetera. And then number three, we've talked about and touched on a little bit. Like, once we recognize that everyone needs love, how do we go about growing it? And lesson three is that love begins with our attention, which is to say that if you really want to be there for other people, you have to actually be there. And this applies to ourselves. So, absolutely, meditation is one way of spiritual reparenting, because we're giving attention to ourselves, finally turning our attention inward, closing our eyes, listening to our breath, and listening to our heart. And it's that focusing of attention that allows us to be with other people as well. And this is a really key theme I've been exploring lately in my life, that, first of all, again, we all know what we tend to know what needs to be done, right? So we don't need someone to tell us. We just need somebody to be there with us. And most problems in life can't be solved by our partner, in this case, but they can be shared. So that's one of the best things we can do for each other, is just be there for each other, to bring our open hearted, kind attention to each other. And I wrote the book, I don't know, maybe eight years, a few years ago, I'll say, and I realized we're right now, we're in a crisis of attention with our phones. I watched this lecture with Esther Perrell, and she was like, how many of you, before you go to sleep, stroke your phone lovingly as you gaze into it?

[52:56] Karin: I love this. Great.

[53:01] Zach: Oh, my God. Is that what we're you know, now when I look at my my hand on my phone, I'm like, I'm stroking my phone. So, you know, we need to stroke our partners just as much, if not more, as our phones. And that's the thing. We are in a crisis of attention right now, which is why intentionally focusing, refining, and bringing our attention to ourselves, each other in this world, can be so transformative.

[53:31] Karin: Yeah.

[53:33] Zach: So those are the first three. Those are little great little taste.

[53:40] Karin: Before we hit record, I was telling you how much I enjoyed just a little intro that you have on your book. If you don't mind, I'd love to read it to give people a flavor, because you're also a poet, and this really came through in your writing. So it says, after this book was printed, it was dipped into a pool of love and set out in the sun to dry, and every energetic photon paused for a few moments somewhere between the words and their meanings. So as your fingers kiss the pages, as your eyes caress the text, while you leave emails unread for a few extra minutes or hours, a little bit of that light enters that beautiful, beating heart of yours, allowing you to see what's inside just a little bit better. So you realize that everything you will ever need and ever desire has been there all along. Yay. I think that's beautiful. So thank you for that.

[54:43] Zach: Thank you. My own words, without getting my ego too inflated, I wrote a poetry book called 108 Shavasana Poems that was kind of written for teachers, yoga teachers, to read during class. And not too long ago, somebody read my own poem in class and I was like, laying down. I was like, hey, it's not bad. And they actually kind of read it a lot better than I think I would have read it. So I was like, that's good.

[55:14] Karin: Nice. Put their own touch on it. That's great. Oh, no, let me back up. What does love have to do with the work that you do? Oh, it seems so silly given that we've been talking about love this whole time. I don't know. How do you want to answer that question?

[55:37] Zach: I'll just say that love has everything to do with the work that I do, but also everyone else as well, that underlying most, if not all, of human action is that need to be seen, accepted and loved either by others or by ourselves. So even those pursuing something like fame, what is fame but an acknowledgment? Recognition and appreciation from many people. And that extraordinary validation. So we mentioned Esther Perrell and she's moved a lot into the working world, too, because nowadays people do want meaning and intention in their working relationships as well. And we all know that phrase that you don't quit your job, you quit your boss, which is to imply that even the best work can be a kind of hell if it's not with the best people that don't see us and support us. So, absolutely, love is fundamental to all of our work. So even listeners who are bosses and managers of other people, everyone on your team wants to be seen and wants to be heard.

[56:57] Karin: And that's so interesting. You mentioned that next week I'm going to be interviewing a woman who talks about just that, about bringing more love to the workplace. Yes, absolutely. I agree with that. And how can people learn more about your book, your podcast, working with you?

[57:18] Zach: Yeah, I'm very easy to find. My name is Zack Beach, so you can go to zackbeach.com or find me on social media at zackbeachlove. All my books are on Amazon. Just search zackbeach. And if anything I said today resonated with you, I'd be more than happy to work with you, so feel free to reach out.

[57:41] Karin: Great. Well, thank you, Zach. I really appreciate you taking the time and bringing all your love here today. Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation.

[57:52] Zach: Thank you, Karen. I loved it as well.

[57:55] Karin: Thanks for joining us. Today on Love Is US. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the love and Connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, ali Shaw for my artwork and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together. You me close.