Episode #176 Adam Lane Smith on love, attachment and better relationships

Today’s guest is Adam Lane Smith!

Adam is an attachment specialist and a two-time #1 Amazon bestselling novelist and a retired licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma and attachment with experience in both clinical and correctional mental health settings. That includes his work in the California justice system where he treated inmates facing the death penalty.

Adam worked for years as a licensed psychotherapist and now focuses his specialty as an Attachment Specialist. 

Through his new role, Adam helps people build a new foundation for their life. 

Fixing attachment issues as their core means you can transform your relationships in marriage, dating, work, friendship, and family. 

By showing his clients how to repair their attachment wounds, Adam teaches people to open up to others, find their voice, receive the love they’ve always wanted, and live without fear.

To view the show notes, please visit: https://www.nextlevelguy.com/adamlanesmith176/

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Here are some key points that I would advise you to concentrate on

•  We all have attachments to things that were shaped from our childhood. Many are OK and help create your personality, but many are currently holding you back from what you want to achieve in life.
• Your attachment style is shaped from your earliest memories and interactions with people from being a baby onwards.
• t's not always them that you miss when you think about an ex, it can be how they made you feel that you miss them! This blew away my oneitis I was feeling for an ex when he said: "But if we don't get good Love, warmth, bonding, nurturing openness acceptance, trust and security in our relationships. All the things that secure attachment would give us ... Start losing all of those benefits and we think about that 1 time that we got it from that one person and usually the most ah the most manipulative people ... it's like heroin ... you've craved it all your life and now you can't stop thinking about it and you think about that person for the rest of your life when you're lonely when you're hurting. And you're lost. This is why people go back to their bad exes and this is why people stay with a bad partner is because they've been addicted to that person through oxytocin so you asked me the process of fixing that well you need to learn as you fix your attachment how to bond to your family and friends"
• "Vulnerability does not mean just crying, vulnerability means sharing something painful and asking for assistance in solving it that is what men need to remember."
• "... no matter where you are at in this believing. No matter where are you are at in in hurting and feeling alone and feeling that you don't deserve love or that you'll never find Love I Want to tell you I work with people in their seventies who are changing right now ... I've worked with people who've killed multiple people. And still find that pathway through and change and build a better life I Want to tell you that I work with people in their sixties who say I never had kids and I don't know what the purpose of life is now and we find it. There is never a point where it's too late as long as you are breathing if you just believe even a tiny amount that you can change. ... You can change and you can find the better pieces and build a better life. No matter where you are. So if you feel like it's hopeless. Please don't feel that. It is not hopeless. Not by a long shot."
• "Instead of an illness system of mental health I was looking at a response system with mental health that mental illnesses were responsive and and responding to environmental issues and attachment issues. So when we fix the attachment issues mental ill mental illnesses quote unquote started to go away."
• Your attachment style shapes how you interact with people in society, how you interact with partners in relationships and how you act when people try to connect on a deep level with you. 
• You can find Oxycontin outwith a relationship by connecting on a deeper level with your family and friends through having deeper and better conversations with them. "Same thing if you're starving for oxytocin, never go dating starving for oxytocin same thing (like you should never go shopping when hungry) you're going to pick up junk food that's going to make you feel really good at first and then gonna make you feel sick over time ... fill up with oxytocin with family and friends then go out dating build real compatibility. And then slowly build oxytocin bonding in when you have the right person that you can actually trust. That's the right method for getting over an ex and for grabbing the right partner."
• "If you start with the belief that you can never truly connect to another human being and that your entire world is going to be a series of transactions of I'm going to make other people so happy that they will either do what I want or they won't leave me. Your whole world comes down to a ledger sheet about how much you have done to make other people like you and just push and buttons the whole world then feels like a video game that you can never stop playing because you have to keep everybody's meters full everywhere you go. It's exhausting"
• Attachment issues are affecting many men in today's society, but many of the health treatment modalities are not designed to treat the cause, they only treat the symptoms, and Adam looks to not only treat the symptoms but show you what causes it and how to fix the issue. 
• A good first step is to look at your past relationships, to see how you interacted as a unit, what went right and wrong, to see how your actions are shaped by your attachment style. 
• "It's very common for men with attachment issues to not have close male friends ... Male friends are harder for men with attachment issues because they will push us ... There will be friction. It will be uncomfortable. There will be tension. There will be confrontations and attachment says every confrontation is death so don't ever confront, don't ever do that. That's that's what a lot of men are dealing with." 
• I love Adam's take on pick-up, on how its working transactions and not real connection, therefore you are always trying to 'win' rather than actually connecting and leaving something of value: "... when you learn pickup game and red pill and stuff like that, it's just a different system. It doesn't teach you to stop and connect human to human with a woman and build an intimate loving bond. It says do these things and it will make her you know wet all over the place and then she will just be crazy for you ... it's not how humans are supposed to work so no matter how advanced you make the video game no matter how fun you make the video game at the end of the day you are just a man living and pushing buttons and getting fake rewards that just plunge you full of dopamine but give you nothing at the end of the day you don't have human contact. You don't have human bonding. You have no human impact you have no human legacy when you die you will have left behind a bunch of naked women who will move on to the next guy. And that's it. You don't leave behind people whose lives are fundamentally changed. You don't leave behind people who say that was a man of honor and because he lived honorably he will live on."
• "... attachment is the ability to connect to another human being to give and receive love you start learning this as a child the moment you are born."
• You should use your life goals and your core values to filter potential partners, instead of chasing feelings, you should chase compatibility in these areas, and this will allow you to find deep-level connection. 
• Fixing your attachment issues can be life changing but very challenging: "... it is unconditioning the brain from that from that childlike terror that no one will ever love you. That is a level of resistance. That's why people don't fix it on their own ... That's why people need to fix it now so that they don't live with that fear for the rest of their lives."
• Adam's tip on finding the right person for you, by going to the right place hit home to me - the place you look for a partner defines the type of partner you will meet and potentially connect with: "... you approach marriage with a person and dating with a person the same way you would approach co-founding a business imagine you are co-founding the business of marriage. Would you want to find a cofounder for your business drunk in the bathroom at a bar or would you like to find the cofounder for your business in church beside you or spending time with their family quietly or in a in a good self-improvement but class or dancing class. Or somewhere fun or somewhere wholesome. Where would you like to find them?"