The Surprising Problem With Trying to Be Secure: Attachment, Parts Work & Emotional Honesty with Dr. Marisa G. Franco
Episode Notes
What happens when trying to be more secure (on the surface) backfires?
This week, Dr. Alison talks with Dr. Marisa Franco, about her new book, Worth. They explore a different way to think about anxious and avoidant attachment, the surprising science of how old memories continue to shape our present relationships, and why healing doesn’t require making someone else the villain.
They also talk about grief, empathy, and a powerful experience Marisa had in therapy that changed how she understood the parts of herself she had spent years trying to hide.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
*A different way to understand anxious and avoidant attachment
*Why seemingly small moments can trigger surprisingly big reactions
*The fascinating science of memory reconsolidation
*What grief has to do with genuine empathy and closeness
*The surprising overlap between attachment science, parts work, and spiritual healing
About Dr. Marisa G. Franco:
Dr. Marisa G. Franco is a psychologist, professor, and New York Times bestselling author of Platonic. Her new book is Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment.
More Resources:
Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment—available wherever books are sold
Listeners get exclusive access to the first 3 chapters of Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul.
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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Transcript
Episode 228
Marisa Franco
The very thing I was trying to do to save the relationship arguably could have caused more harm to the relationship because again, we can't work on problems that I'm not fully acknowledging because I'm putting all this pressure on myself to be secure. The point isn't to be secure, it's to be emotionally honest, right? Because the more that we can express those parts of us, the more we can get our needs met, the more that we can heal. And that's what parts work really does for us. It allows us to be more emotionally honest. To authentically get to a resolution where I accept my parents as they are, I have to fully embrace the ways that I didn't accept them. When I'm in my own place of pain, that is urgent for me and that can take over the whole screen before my eyes. When I haven't processed my own pain, that eclipses the true empathy and compassion that I might have for you.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of The Best of You. Today's conversation was just such a special one. It was just such a delight. It kind of veered at times a little bit more into a conversation between two counseling psychologists kind of geeking out about attachment and parts work and inner healing. But it was just such a surprise as I dug into the book for today's interview to discover so many overlapping themes with my own work. This conversation is with Dr. Marissa G. Franco. She's a psychologist, a professor, and the New York Times bestselling
author of Platonic. She has a brand new book out. It's called Worth the New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment. And as I dug into the book, I began to notice some striking similarities between some of the conclusions Marissa landed at and some of the work that I did in The Secure Soul. So the conversation ended up being just such a fun conversation and back and forth. Between the two of us as we talked through some of these themes. Because what I discovered is that Marissa doesn't approach attachment as another goal we have to achieve or something we can find out there. And in fact, she shares a story today about her own journey of being in a dating relationship and realizing that she was working so hard to be the safe base, to do all the right things, to be safe and secure for this other person that she was abandoning herself. And it set her out on this journey that you'll hear. Hear us. talk about today. She talks a lot about memory reconsolidation, which is the power of the science and the power of why revisiting some of these painful memories actually changes things inside of us. I loved that part of the conversation. And toward the end of the episode, Marissa shares an encounter she had in therapy, a spiritual encounter she had that I thought dovetailed so well with what we think of in the Christian faith as this idea that we are fear. fearfully and wonderfully made. Every single part of us is fearfully and wonderfully made. And we can experience that belovedness, how beloved we are of God in the deepest places of our souls. And I loved hearing that Marissa had a glimpse of that in her own work in therapy and just how powerful this work can be, both spiritually and psychologically. This is such a powerful conversation. I learned a lot from Marissa. She's got a teacher's heart. She's a really good teacher. And so she broke down some of these concepts and the science behind them in such a beautiful way, but also a practical way, a way I could really understand it. I think you're going to love this conversation. You can pick up Marissa's new book, Worth, Anywhere Books Are Sold, and you can connect with Marissa at drmarissagfranco.com. We'll link to that in the show notes.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Marissa G. Franco.
I'm so thrilled, Marissa, to have you. As I was sharing with you before we hopped on, there's just so much synergy between where your work and your own inner work, both your academic work and your inner work, has led you as me. And so I'm just so excited to have
this conversation with you and learn more about all that led to this beautiful book, Worth.
Oh, I am so excited for it to nerd out with you, too, in this conversation. I was like,
can we please just geek out a little bit here? I want to start, before we kind of get into the
nitty gritty of how you... kind of reframed attachment in your own life with this relationship that
you start out within the book, because I think it's so relatable. So just talk to us a little bit
about this relationship you found yourself in and what you found yourself doing under the guise of being a, you know, securely attached person and how that led to this journey.
Yeah, absolutely. So this is a relationship I was in during the COVID pandemic and things sort of
started to go awry where my ex-partner would sort of start withdrawing. If I told him ever
anything, he'd give me the silent treatment. Things were sort of falling apart. Like every morning
he wouldn't really greet me, it would just sort of be like a grunt. And how did I respond to this
breakdown? Well, I was, you know, studying research on relationships at the time and learning
things like co-regulation where you regulate yourself and you... to regulate your partner soft
starts you're bringing up the conversation in a very soft way like i would love to see more of this
this and this you know um not using the four horsemen of the apocalypse as folks know like the
gottmans i'm just trying all the stuff that i learned is like parts yeah of like trying to secure
be an anchor for both of us And none of it is working. He continues to withdraw.
And I continue to try to figure out how can I engage better to sort of bring him back to this
relationship. And it gets to sort of this point where we're on this hike and it's supposed to be
like a nice date for us and missed all of this sort of breakdown that's happening between us.
And I noticed myself. trying to be so happy and chipper. But at some point I just break down and
I start crying and I tell him like, I can't be the shock absorber for your moods anymore.
And that's when that was the beginning of the end of that relationship. And that led me to this
reflection that I was sort of using this idea of secure, secure attachment to really abandon
myself. Right. Because instead of asking myself, how do I feel? What do I need? I thought of
What does it look like to be a secure partner for him? And I think a lot of the times when we talk
About attachment theory, we talk about it in relation to other people. Exactly. But the first step of
being secure is being authentic to who you are and where you're at. And so it's far more secure
to say, hey, I'm anxious and I need reassurance than it is to pretend to be able to regulate
yourself and the other person. So I say in the book, the most secure thing that I said in that
relationship was that I finally wanted to end it. Wow. because you finally reconnected to your
own inner world. So I would love, just for my listeners, many of whom have read the first couple
of chapters of The Secure Soul and kind of where similarly, it's a little different where in my own
Experience, I see in myself and other people looking, kind of either trying to be the secure base.
or looking for someone else to be that secure base in a way that isn't humanly possible and kind
of finding the limits of this whole attachment theory. Not that it's not incredibly powerful,
but also like there is no perfect parent. There is no perfect partner. There is no perfect friend.
And so you, I'm just so want the listener. This was just such a fun discovery.
You went on a journey in your own life. You dedicate the book to a therapist.
Yes, I do. I do. And you go on a journey into your inner world.
Can you share with us a little bit about what that was like for you and how that changed how you
began to think about worth and security and self-esteem and all these things?
Yeah. So I think before I wrote this book on self-worth. I was sort of like, I feel good about
myself. You know, I have high self-esteem. You know, this isn't a problem for me. It's the
problem for the people out there. And then I'm going to this therapy and it finally becomes more
about me admitting the truth of how I feel than presenting as if I have it all together and I have it
all OK. And so in the book, I say, like, when I no longer see my personality through a strainer of
acceptability, what is left? And I realize that. There are parts of myself that feel ashamed,
parts of myself that feel needy, parts of myself that feel insecure. And I have just been pushing
those parts away and trying to ignore them and lean on the parts that don't feel that way.
thinking that that's the way to be secure is almost too... pretend, to act it out,
to keep the parts of your flaws in the shadows, right? And only the sparkly parts that you're
spending time with around yourself and others. And then I realized that you can only heal the
parts of yourselves you're willing to acknowledge. And that if I'm trying to suppress or shame
parts of myself that are more needy, are more dependent. then I'm reenacting on those parts of
me the same thing that makes those parts insecure in the first place. And so in the book, I argue
against feeling perfectly secure, but secure-ish. So there's always room for us to admit to the
parts of ourselves that are insecure so we can provide those parts of us with the utmost care
and compassion. So I love that argument that the goal isn't to feel secure 100% of the time,
because that would actually be disingenuous. Exactly. Yeah. Because that would mean
eradicating parts of me that at times don't feel 100 percent sick. It's such a great freeing
reframe. As I was reading your book and, you know, sort of all that I had no idea where you
were going with it. And I the IFS therapist to me was like, oh, my goodness, she's doing some
parts work here. What's happening? You know, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I've wondered is.
instead of putting ourselves into these buckets of anxiously attached or avoidantly attached or
disorganized, right? I find it much more helpful to think about parts of myself at times, anxiously
reach parts of myself at times do not want to deal. I I'm just curious in your own experience and
in your own framework, how you think about that. I find that a little bit more helpful, but I'm curious how you think
about that. love that because you know you can be a different attachment style in different
relationships and ultimately I think that's about this different relationship is bringing out a
different part of myself and it also allows us I think for what I'm saying in the book which is
like the point isn't to be secure it's to be emotionally honest right because the more that we can
express those parts of us the more we can get our needs met the more that we can heal and that's
what parts work really does for us it allows us to be more emotionally honest because instead of me
saying like Oh, I'm not anxious. I'm not anxious because a lot of me isn't anxious. I'm able to say
a part of myself is. And that emotional granularity allows us to tell the truth of our inner
experience more deeply. That's so good. Even applying that to that relationship,
which needed to end. But if you'd had this framework, you might have been able to say a part of me
wants to be safe for you. And a part of me is frustrated. Yes,
exactly. Which would have been more honest. It would have been more honest and even more caring for
him because maybe if he knew that I wasn't just secure, secure, secure, he would have changed his
behavior, right? And it's interesting that the very thing I was trying to do to save the
relationship ultimately, arguably, could have caused more harm to the relationship because, again,
we can't work on problems that I'm not fully acknowledging because I'm putting all this pressure on
myself to be secure. I love how you're saying that it's a way to be more emotionally honest.
Exactly.
So where, when you use this term, which I love secure ish, what does that look like?
Yes. On a day to day basis, you know, in, in a moment where you're on a date or in a moment where
you're with a friend or, you know, what does that look like for you?
How do you, how do you practice that? Yeah. So. I was interviewing people that were sort of secure
-ish. And one interview that really stands out to me was with Dr. Skylar Jackson, because he said
he would wave his hand over his day to see where his emotional energy lied, which small things were
actually big to him. And that was really revelatory for me because I was like, I'm used to
acknowledging my feelings when they're hitting me in the face. But if it's a small thing, I'm kind
of used to just pushing it away or trying to ignore it. But it was almost like for these secure
people, why would I ignore a feeling? That's a precious part of myself that I don't want to let
diffuse into. That's a part of myself I want to be curious about and get to know. And so day to
day, that looks like, you know, when I speak on security, it's really about.
this framework I have called feel, heal, do, which is that when you feel something, something,
some little hurt, some little pain, instead of trying to push it away, let it come to the surface,
like embrace it, right? That label that feeling, acknowledge how it feels in part of you.
And then heal is give yourself care. Maybe put your hand on your chest and remind yourself I'm
safe. I'm okay. I'm okay. And then do is. After you've had that feeling complete,
is there still a change that you need in your environment? And I'll say practically how this
manifested for me is, you know, I talk about an example of the book where I'm supposed to hang out
with a friend and we talk about hanging out as a group. And she's like. I say, oh, yeah, maybe we
can we can start hanging out as a group this time. And she says, no, I prefer to hang out one on
one. And I want to text her back right away and say, oh, yeah, yeah, totally fine. But I'm
internalizing all this stuff. And I'm noticing that when I'm texting someone urgently, it's often a
desire to escape a feeling in myself. And now I'm trying to be more open even to those small
passing feelings in me. And so I turn towards what's there and I notice. oh, I feel like my my
offering was sort of a little bit rejected. I'm feeling a little bit rejected and I don't feel like
I should feel rejected. So then I'm trying to text her and say it's all OK. But slowing down.
noticing that rejection, feeling that rejection, caring for myself. You know, I'm OK.
You know, my reality is valid. It's OK to feel this way. I'm here for you. Right.
Letting that sort of feeling move through me. And then actually, after the feeling moves through
me, I felt like I no longer cared. But if I did care, maybe I could have, you know, checked in
again about I thought we were going to hang out as a group. Do you want to plan for that in the
future?
That is, it's such a great example because there's so many components to that. The pause before the
part of you that just immediately wants to reassure her was a cue. Why am I so urgently needing to
reassure her? Maybe there's a part of me. And then again, I think that. That's so profound that in that case,
you didn't actually need to speak to it with her. You needed to be that safe place for you.
Yeah. And that's why I think. because I just did a lesson on this with my students.
They're afraid to acknowledge those small feelings. They're afraid to acknowledge that I was kind
of hurt in that situation because they think it'll destroy the relationship. I don't want to hold
it against this person. You know, they don't have capacity to actually hear me. But I'm telling
you, this internal process, you don't need to tell anybody about it if you don't want to.
Like this process is for you. It's for you, for you, for you, first of all. And second of all,
What we really find in the research, what I found through writing this book, is that when we
acknowledge our feelings and care for ourselves in this way, we are less likely to take our
emotions out on other people. And in fact, it's the very people who don't have a practice of
finding security in themselves who are the ones that are acting aggressive towards others,
passive aggressive, withdrawing from the relationship. So it sounds counterintuitive, but the more
that you can acknowledge your anger, your hurt, your frustration in a relationship and care for
yourself through that emotion, the less you feel the need to take it out or distance yourself from
the people around you. It's so good. And, and I love, you know, it's funny,
Marissa, I mentioned, you know, for the listener, I mentioned to Marissa before the call that this,
I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from just having coffee with you, as opposed to like
staying in the interviewer role. Because it's so interesting to hear you say that when I was
writing some of the stories for the Secure Soul, it's mostly just my inner dialogue. It's sort of
with these younger selves. And I want to get into that because I love how you talk about it
primarily in terms of memory. But I almost kind of created these different versions of myself that
I'm having these conversations with. I tell almost very little detail about what the event was
outside. I'll give some of that. But it's almost exclusively focused.
For one thing, a lot of the people in my outside world I love, I don't wish to tell their story.
I don't wish to tell what was going on with them. Or because I'm high in empathy, I'm aware that
some of these moments that were so hurtful for me were not, that other person was not intending for
that to be heard. And there is a place to... uh, hold people accountable. So that,
that, that is, it just wasn't what I was trying to do with this. I was trying to show exactly what
you're saying. Like so much of that inner witnessing and being with and feeling seen and known,
um, can happen internally. I, I, I love the, uh,
Yalom's, uh, thing about how that, that, uh, The idea that isolation is kind of ultimately this
reality that no one can fully know our inner lives, but we can.
And so I just, I love how you're saying that, that so much of this, it doesn't mean we don't
sometimes need to have the hard conversations outside of us. Of course we do. But to your point and
what you're saying about your students, that there's that fear of just honoring inwardly when maybe
that's the thing that's most needed.
Absolutely. I mean, it's just the longest relationship we'll have is the one we have with
ourselves. And we really need to work on it and we need to spend time on it. And we need to treat
our internal world as if it matters. That's really how I define worth in the book, to treat your
every feeling, your every emotion as if they matter to you and they're deserving of your attention
and compassion. That's so good. I want to talk a little bit about...
how you move from attachment into memory. Yeah. What is going on? What is that relationship and how
are you seeing memory as such a crucial component to worth and safety and inner secure-ish-ness?
Yeah. Yeah.
So you can think about insecurity, including insecure attachment styles. They're a theory of self
and the world. And the theory, you know, if you're anxious, people are going to reject you. If
you're avoidant, you can't trust people. If you're disorganized, it's sort of a mishmash of the
two. And the thing is that when things happen that counter that theory. And sometimes what happens
is we can't necessarily internalize that information. And so, you know,
when you're sort of anxious and you think people are going to abandon you and maybe someone
continues to show up, but today they took a little longer to answer that text, right? That theory
comes up again. Oh my gosh, look at it. It's all along. This is, I was waiting for this to happen.
Look, they're finally abandoning me despite all the information as to how they've shown up, right?
And so when I began to think of self-worth attachment as like a theory of self.
I had to understand where does that theory come from? And I'm sort of jumping around between
different concepts, worthiness, self-esteem, attachment, because I think they all are under, you
know, undergirded by the same sort of thing. And that is that that theory comes from. Your
memories. Researchers say memories are the database of self-esteem. That the reason that you think
that if you get close to me, you're going to harm me is because if you're avoidant, that has
happened before. It's real for you. Yes. And so what researchers also say is that memories don't
just record the past. Memories are the database of self-esteem. And the thing about memories is
they're not just there to record the past, but predict the future. So a part of you thinks that
whatever happened in your past is going to happen again. And that's why our attachment styles are
adaptations, right? If someone is going to be really inconsistent about their love, like maybe my
caregivers were, I might have to fight for it. I might have to always, you know, try to stay close
to them to remind them of me. But the problem is that you might be in situations where the past
isn't replaying and something different is happening and it's very hard for you to tell. And so
because memories are not just made to record the past, but predict the future, there's this feature
of our memories wherein we can actually update our memories. And what that means is that we can go
back. to the memories where we were abandoned or we were emotionally neglected. And we can picture
ourselves intervening as our current self and say, you always deserve love and care.
This person's ability to not show up for you doesn't mean anything about who you are as a person. I
want you to know that I'm going to be here for you as long as you need. You're safe. I'm here. I'm
here. I'm here. We can go back to our memories and visualize ourselves intervening in that way.
Research finds that it not only predicts less. trauma symptoms, greater self-esteem, but you also
see changes in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that records the memory. It's so
powerful. You use this term. The only other time I've ever...
really learned about this term was a presentation, actually Dick Schwartz was there at the
Danielson Institute in Boston, memory reconsolidation. So that's kind of what you're speaking to,
but tell us, I love, I think it's such an interesting, even just the phrase memory reconsolidation
is something powerful and scientific for anybody who thinks there's sort of a woo-woo component to
this. And certainly for many of my listeners, there's also this component of inviting um you're
inviting god into to be with you in that space where there can be that why why did god abandon me
there right so there's there's a lot to this but i love how you break down this science can you can
you walk us through what that term means and and that there's something actually happening here
yeah so let's let's nerd out a little bit yeah yeah sort of the original study that introduced us
to this term was done by this guy named kareem nadair and he Before him,
it was thought that memories are sort of this fossilized record of events. We can't really change
them. You know, once they're written, they're etched in stone. And so his mentor, Joseph Ledoux,
told him, like, memories can't be changed. Like, that's preposterous. So he's conducting this study
with these rats where he's exposing them to shocks and a noise and shocks and a noise and shocks
and a noise. And eventually they start freezing at the noise because it's associated with the
shock. And so the sort of beep. And so what happens is then he gives these rats a drug so they
can't freeze in response to the beep, the noise anymore. And so then when he takes them off the
drug, he's looking at, if I play the beep. Will they continue to freeze because that's their
original memory? Or will they stop freezing because this new experience of them being calm when
they were on the drug disrupted that original memory of them having to freak out whenever that beep
played? And so when he does play the beep after these rats now, after they are no longer on this
drug, he finds that they don't freeze anymore. And so what he argues is that this new memory
related to this beep, to this noise, actually updated the past one of this beeper, this noise being
something scary or being something threatening. And so that was the beginning of memory
reconsolidation, which has since been studied in human beings that, hey, if we go back to a
negative experience. We can add positive information where we're much calmer now, right?
And we fundamentally update the way that that memory sits in our brains. But I want to really
emphasize updating the memory for healing. is really about updating the emotions in the memory,
right? Because these are memories that carry emotions we haven't processed yet. They're what's
called open memories. They trigger us. We don't like to look at them. They make us anxious. They
make us angry. We don't feel like we have closure. We're confused as to why it happens. If we talk
about it, we might break down or get upset a little bit. And it's these kinds of memories that...
not closed. So they continue to imprint themselves as to on how we experience the world right now
until we can go back and offer ourselves that closure. You are such a good teacher.
Your students are so lucky to have you. The way you break this down, I'm just sitting here thinking
I'm so grateful that we're getting the benefit of listening to you break this down and make it so
concrete, right? And so real. So tell, can you give us an example of what this might have,
you share a lot of vulnerable stories in the book of what this might have looked like for you.
Yes. Yeah. So the interesting thing about this theory is that sometimes the memory doesn't seem
like that big of a deal from our adult self now. When we are children, things imprint on us a lot
more intensely. We don't have resources in the same way. We're completely dependent on other people
for our survival. Everything is a lot more threatening. So one memory that I've often gone back to
is as a kid, my mom was a teacher. Then she tutored kids after school. I would go to soccer
practice. She would often arrive late. And I was the only kid, the only kid of color too.
And I'm always having my parent arrive late. And the coach is waiting. with his daughter and his
daughter and her friends that are going home. And I'm just sort of off to the side alone, feeling
ashamed, embarrassed, feeling like something's wrong with me. But I try to address it with my mom
and she's telling me all these reasonable reasons why she's going out of her way to help me.
And so thus there's, I also feel powerless and that there's nothing that I can do here. And so for
me, it's not, not heard, not heard in that moment, even though that was probably true on some
level. Exactly. Adult me is like, I am also an adult, sometimes late, sometimes you have a lot
going on and it's hard. But as a kid, exactly. It's painful.
It was, it was very painful. And so. It involves, so it's me really going back to the memory and
make it as vividly as possible, saying it in the present tense. I'm on that soccer field. I see,
you know, Janine and her friends laughing and me on the side. I feel embarrassed.
I see the coach asking me if I know when my mom's going to come. I have nothing to say to him.
I feel alone. I feel sad. I feel upset. I also feel like I don't want to show anyone that I feel
this way.
Then picturing my adult self going in there and saying, I am here to pick you up. I will always be
here when you need me. You will never be alone. Nothing is wrong with you. The fact that your mom
didn't show up, it doesn't mean anything about you, your sense of worth, your sense of validity.
And I want you to know you can tell me how upset you were at having to wait. I'm going to hear you
and see your anger and your hurt as valid. And I want to know anytime you're upset because that
really matters to me. It really matters to me. I want to be able to offer you care in those
moments. And then my younger self continue to ask for what she needs. of, okay, like,
can I like jump into your arms and then let's go into the car and I can cry in there. And then my
adult self, absolutely, I will take you there. And then picturing that and then subsequently asking
myself, how does this change my view of myself and the world around me after this memory has been
reconsolidated? Which, and how do you notice those shifts?
How does it change? Because it is, yeah. Every time I go back to the memory, I'm like, wait,
there's more. Keep going. I even feel I feel in my body right now that I'm like,
oh, I can still feel that like hurt or that pain or like it feels like a tightness in my chest
because it's like the pain around it. But then I can't express that pain. And I think receiving
that someone actually wants to listen to me and hear me,
it almost makes me want to cry because it's like, oh, I'm finally safe to cry. I don't have to hold
those emotions in anymore.
It makes me feel free. Like it makes me feel like something that has been burdening me is like kind
of falling off of me finally. It makes me feel safe and it makes me feel alive.
Like it feels like in not having to like hide parts of myself, there's a new like almost like
vivaciousness for living and excitement about it and trust in other people.
And it almost reminds me of this quote. Khalil Gibran says like, to be free is to cease to think of
freedom. And I think to be loved is to cease to think about being loved because you are loved so
well. And that's almost how I feel in that moment. Like this freedom and this like,
I'm not even thinking about it anymore. I just want to like be myself and express myself in the
world.
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and free that just whatever was kind of stuck or trapped in there is no longer yeah it's subtle
shifts but they really matter to then how we show up with other people,
with ourselves. Yes. We're not dismissing ourselves. Yes.
We're taking more of our full self in. Right. And feeling like more free to bring up needs or
problems or concerns. And, you know, I don't know, all these ways you see the past shaping the
present. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is such a real moment,
what you described, where our adult self can dismiss it,
analyze it away, look, you know, and, but it mattered. And that's who that's, that is a precious
part of you that took that in. Exactly. And it's like,
it's so freeing to get beyond evaluating. whether it should matter and just admitting that it does,
right? Just admitting what is my actual emotional truth, not having to question it or pull it or
reframe it or manipulate it, right? That if it hurts you, it hurts you,
period. And I wonder, I'm going to go off script here again for a second, but also what it means
about the other person. Because I think even in that story,
that was your experience. And I think as parents, you know, for my listeners who are parents, you
know, I know for me, it was always I didn't kind of what you were saying about your students. I
didn't want my parents tried so hard. So I felt like if I honored some of my own experiences,
I was saying they were bad and I didn't it doesn't have to be that much of a binary. No,
it's almost a sort of just this was real. And and it almost is freeing.
And I kind of like you with the text. I don't this isn't even something I. And I can maybe laugh
about it with them or, you know, maybe there, and there might be instances where we do need to go
and have those repairing moments where there really was. And I know I've had many clients where
there was a real abandonment there that needs to be addressed. And so that there's that piece of
it, but it's kind of like that do step in your, you know, maybe this is a conversation I need to go
have with the person who wasn't there for me, or maybe this is something I need to figure out how
to set boundaries with because it's still going on today. But in my own journey, it was similar to
yours where it was like, I could be so empathetic to the other person. I almost didn't. It meant I
shouldn't validate what my experience was. Exactly. Do you know what? I think as an adult,
like I'm close to my mom, I realize she's an imperfect person and I love her. But I think how I
truly, truly get there to feeling like with integrity, I believe that.
And it's not coming from a place of, you know, having the people please her because she's my mom
and I don't want to, you know, dishonor her. I truly get there through grieving the way she was
imperfect for me and acknowledging the way she was imperfect for me and feeling that,
right? And you don't skip the stages of grief, right? And to authentically get to a resolution
where I accept my parents as they are, I have to fully embrace the ways that I didn't accept them.
And I have to fully sit with those ways. Marissa. That is such...
I want, I'm just sitting here going, you are like literally speaking into these conversations I'm
having with myself and so many friends where I want to break down what you just said.
There's a lot of wisdom in this. You said to get to that place of close, of true closeness,
of acceptance, of honoring what we do have. I actually have to go through the grief.
Yes. Oh, that's so counterintuitive. I know. People don't know this.
So this is like, say more. Can you say, say more? Because it feels,
it can feel disloyal. It can feel like it's going to break the relationship. Yep.
And it is so true that it actually, and it has something to do with the emotional honesty piece.
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Say, so say more about how it actually. And again,
this is within a certain, I want to always give the caveat, in some relationships where there's so
much toxicity or so much brokenness, but in many of these sort of ordinary wounds of just being
imperfect humans. So say more about. Yeah. Well, empathy is fundamentally a quality that we can
embrace when we're more well-resourced, right? That I can think about when I'm in my own place of
pain. That is urgent for me. And that can take over the whole screen before my eyes.
And so when I haven't processed my own pain, that eclipses the true empathy and compassion that I
might have for you, right? Because I'm still upset. I'm still angry. I'm still sad. And I haven't
moved through any of those feelings. And it's simpler to, if I broke my leg and you're in pain,
I'm probably going to focus on my broken leg, right? And maybe I will try to acknowledge your own
pain, but it won't be as deep of an acknowledgement. You know, it just won't be as thorough. It
won't be have as much integrity as when I heal from some of my own stuff. And that pain gives me
room, gives me resources, gives me spaciousness to now see you in your full humanity.
And that is really the quality that we see of these secure-ish people. They don't only treat
themselves like they matter. They care more deeply to everyone around them. I would say that is
really one of the most defining qualities of truly secure people are truly so caring and better
able to meet the needs of other people because there's this flexibility that comes out of not
feeling threatened by your own pain and having more capacity to attune to other people. That is
such... a word that it actually paradoxically allows us to have more spaciousness for other people
and not the kind to bring this full circle that is
abandoning yourself. Exactly. Exactly. Not the urgent kind of empathy.
Oh my God, I need to care about them. I need to, I'm bad. I'm so guilty. Yes. I have to make them
feel okay. I have to be this safe place for them. The kind that is, I have been a safe place for
myself.
And so I, I, from the fullness of that, even just recently,
I've noticed with, with some folks where I've had to work through some stuff, I can be
simultaneously.
present and grateful for what's in front of me and aware of what's not there. Because I know,
you know, it's such a, and it allows me to go, but I can be grateful for what is present between
the two of us. Yeah. We shouldn't have to sort of coerce ourselves into gratitude. And I think
gratitude naturally comes when we sit with our, and move through some of our own pain.
As you were writing the book, it's such a. an incredible book, just the benefit of so much research
and your own life wisdom, your own experience. What did you find most surprising?
I think just this idea that
we're not truly living in the present. There's this psychoanalyst, Philip Bromberg,
and he says that we don't go to therapy to deal with what's happened then, but what's still
happening now and we're convinced will continue to happen, right? And that there's literally a part
of our brain when we go through a new experience, right? Let's say I grew up with a child and
parents were very critical, very critical, even humiliating. My boss gives me constructive
feedback. There's literally a part of my brain that re-triggers the previous emotional state that
I had in this moment right now. with my boss because it's drawing parallels between that memory and
this one. So it's not only that we are still living in the past. It's like we're still re
-experiencing the past. Literally like a moment of harm becomes every moment after that.
And to think of security as finally the ability to truly live in the present because you have been
able to confront some of those old harms that are stamping themselves onto now. And so for me,
often I'll ask myself, okay, what's actually happening in this situation versus what are the
assumptions that I might have based on my past experiences, I find it extremely hard to not do that
and to try to grapple with the truth of a given situation beyond what it's like triggering in me.
And so I think that's both a fascinating and a tragic idea for us as human beings that,
you know, and why I'm really motivated to write this book because it can feel so hard to feel.
worthy and to get out of the trap of the past and actually live in and take in the beauty of the
present. Yeah, that's powerful. That's really powerful. That just keeps us in the fullness of the
present moment, which is I wanted to say the beauty. And I was like, and maybe that's what we fear
a little bit. It's also what's hard in the present moment. It's also not. having our defenses in
the present letting letting us experiencing it as it is and trusting ourselves rather than bracing
yeah and yet it's such a better a better way to show up dr marissa g franco the book is called
worth the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment and listener uh If you've followed me
for even a minute, you will find so much in this book that resonates because just this journey that
you've taken us on is just such a... I just I love where you took this.
I just I think it's so important. There's so much more depth to, you know,
we we didn't get a chance to geek out. I'm older than you. And I did the first two years of my Ph
.D. in a counseling psychology program, which is similar years before I switched to the degree in
psychology of religion. But I partly switched. And this was years ago.
This is it may have changed. And that's another conversation I'd love to have with you. But it felt
like everything that I was learning in the counseling psychology program, same with clinical
psychology, was so behavioral. So it didn't allow me to get into the deeper inner world.
And that's what I was hungry for. I stumbled upon IFS well after I was finished with my doctoral
work. And it was kind of like, oh, this is what I was, you know, was still really at the height of
everything was cognitive behavioral therapy. Not that, and again, very helpful tools in, in, in
thought restructuring and all of that. So I, I just love that, you know, you're bringing this
fullness.
into the conversation. Honestly, it really feels like a spiritual book. And I, you know,
as we end, I just want to share one story from the book. And that's, you know, with my own therapy,
I talked about trying to acknowledge these parts of myself as I push away. And there's this part of
me that felt. ashamed, dependent, needy, does not match my larger sense of self.
So I just try to push it away. And in my own therapy, my therapist was like, we work with the
divine and giving things up to the divine. And so my therapist said, you know, give that part of
you up to the divine. And so I did, I tried to picture this needy part of me that I felt ashamed of
being offered to the divine. And the message that I got back was that part of you is perfect too.
That part of you is perfect too. And that was so mind-blowing for me.
I was so used to trying to push these parts away, but I realized the problem that was never that I
felt insecure. It was that I felt ashamed of my insecurities. And the second that I treat those
parts of me as beloved is the second they become integrated into me and no longer feeling like they
need to hijack my emotional experience of self and other and able to finally, so they could finally
get my attention and my love. That's beautiful. fearfully and wonderfully made every single part of
you it's beautiful i love that i love that it's a beautiful book i've loved talking to you i'm so
grateful that that our paths crossed and i hope we can have more conversations to come the book is
everywhere tell us where to find you and other things you're doing um the books available
everywhere books are sold yes so it's called worth the new science of self-esteem and secure
attachment um i share tips on the science of connection with self and other at dr marissa g franco
that's dr M-A-R-I-S-A-G-F-R-A-N-C-O. And you can reach out at my website,
drmarissagfranco.com for speaking events on self-worth at work or to get a free list of practices
to improve your self-worth. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, my pleasure. This was
such a great conversation.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you
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