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Jessica Fern on Healing Our Relationships, Consensual Nonmonogamy and Reclaiming a Secure Attachment
"Imagine what it would be like to experience more clarity, connection, possibility, and skill in your everyday life and relationships. Imagine feeling at home with yourself and your relationships, living and acting from your most preferred values and intentions. Imagine getting triggered, but knowing how to respond instead of react. Imagine feeling at ease, and even empowered, by your painful past--no longer being overwhelmed or overpowered by painful stories, outdated beliefs, or critical voices that limit your life.”
These are the words of this episode's guest, Jessica Fern. She is a psychotherapist, public speaker, and trauma and relationship expert. In her international private practice, Jessica works with individuals, couples and people in multiple-partner relationships who no longer want to be limited by their reactive patterns, cultural conditioning, insecure attachment styles, and past traumas, helping them to embody new possibilities in life and love.
In her bestselling book Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy, Jessica breaks new ground by putting together attachment theory, trauma and polyamory into one cohesive body of work.
Her insights on attachment styles and how to heal our relationship with ourselves and others are profoundly inspiring, not only for those amongst us who chose consensual non-monogamy as their way to love, but also for those among us who are most comfortable in monogamous relationships. After all, everything is about love, its presence, or its absence.
In this episode with Jessica, you'll discover:
-"Being Love"...03:10
-Jessica's path to psychotherapy and healing...04:30
-Personal experiences with trauma in childhood and inter-generationally...05:30
-A primer on Attachment Theory...07:15
-Living life as a consensual nonmonogamist...10:50
-Cultural and psychological models of love prescribed in the Western world...15:00
-Different attachment styles with different partners in polyamorous relationships...18:50
-The effects and disruptions attachment styles with parental figures can cause later in life...20:10
-Intentionally forging multiple attachments with multiple partners...23:10
-The source of security comes from your own internal place; there can be external influences, but they are not the source...27:40
-H.E.A.R.T.S. attachment...29:45
- Here (be present)
- Express Delight
- Attunement
- Rituals and Routines
- Turning Towards after Conflict
- Secure Attachment with Self
-Some people rely more on the structure of a relationship than the expression of love in the relationship...33:20
-A look back at the evolution of marriage gives clues as to why certain parts of the culture rely so heavily on relationship structures over relationship essence...37:15
-Before you can be polysecure, you have to decide if you want to be an attachment figure for multiple partners...40:20
-Six specific strategies to move toward secure attachments in multiple relationships...43:05
-Jealousy is attachment primal panic; here is what you and your partner can do to support yourself...45:15
-Self-soothing and self-regulation tips from the polyvagal theory and inner parts work...48:45
-Practices that have informed Jessica's life...55:05
Resources mentioned:
Jessica's book: Polysecure
