You can tell that this podcast by Jonathan Foust is one of my favorites based on the copious notes I took – I will be referring back to this recap often as it helps me to remember that each of us is responsible for our own well-being:

– Examine our relationship to love – both carnal and spiritual love. Romance, sex and infatuation make us do things we look back in horror. We all have an impulse towards connection.

– The idea of romantic love didn’t start til 18th century France – courtly love.

– When you seek love and connection, what is the essence you are looking for? Set of intimacy, passion, commitment.

– Question is whether it’s rooted in a healthy desire for connection or are you seeking validation, security and someone to fulfill your unmet needs. Near enemy of love is grasping and inability to let go. Can show up as possessiveness, fear, jealousy

– Attachment is self-serving and echoes inward. Love goes outward. Shadow side is attachment. Balance independence with emotional availability and connection.

– Become disconnected to yourself when a drive for attachment isn’t met and you stifle a part of yourself. Devolves into a sense of separation. Feeling of not being seen and not being heard.

– There are four attachment styles – they overlap and there are gradations on a scale:

1. Secure – confident and secure.
2. Anxious around intimacy. Preoccupied and need excessive reassurance. Anxious around rejection and abandonment.
3. Avoiding emotional closeness. Independence more important than emotional connection.
4. Complex state where desire closeness while also fear of abandonment. Lot of conflicting behavior.

– Knowing your attachment style is a huge first step. Attachment style touches every aspect of your relationship but you’re onto yourself.

– If you really want to change, you can if you’re aware of your attachment style. You’re aware of how you’re impacting others. There is a big distinction between your story and your actions.

– What is it you’re needing? What is it that the other person is needing? Take time to consider and how would the other person describe you. How do you show up in their life.

– Having strong boundaries can be valuable. Filling up your cup first. Mutual respect. Good fences make good neighbors. Not walls, but fences. Anxious people try to go over fence. Need self-awareness of your patterns.

– Therapy can be invaluable to bring out self-awareness of how attachment style grew as a way to protect yourself. It served you but now limits you.

– What is the core belief here? Take time to challenge that belief. What would it be like if not true. Who would you be? And how can you better express yourself? So much of our lives are driven by unmet needs. Be patient with small victories.

– Seek healthy and secure relationships. Find like-minded people. Probably the most important thing. Self-compassion and challenge your beliefs.

– ‘Do not seek love. Simply seek the barriers to love.’ – Rumi

– Remembrance of impermanence. ‘It was already broken.’

– What if this was the last time you see someone? What would you want to say?

– If you want to be happy, think about death five times a day. Love without limits. Break chain of patterns of anxiety and disassociation. Remember impermanence. Brings in non-attachment. You accept here and now.