On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Relationship Expert Thais Gibson: Do You Keep Attracting The Same Emotionally Unavailable Partner? (Use THIS Attachment Reset To Break The Cycle And Choose Better Partners)

February 18, 2026

Key Takeaways Copied to clipboard!

  • Attachment styles, while useful for context, should be viewed as temporary patterns to heal rather than fixed labels that define an individual. 
  • Subconscious programming, which equates familiarity with safety, drives attraction toward partners who mirror past relationship dynamics, often overriding conscious desires for emotionally available partners. 
  • Healing insecure attachment patterns involves a five-pillar process, starting with rewiring core wounds, learning to self-source unmet needs, regulating the nervous system, and developing conscious communication skills. 
  • Constructive conflict resolution requires both parties to communicate what came up for them, validate each other's emotions, state their specific need, and clearly paint a picture of what that need looks like in action. 
  • Criticism in relationships should be reframed as an unmet need, and requests must be specific (painting a picture) to avoid being lost in translation or triggering defensiveness. 
  • Setting healthy boundaries requires subconscious rewiring of core fears (Pillar Five) before intellectualizing the concept, as fear of abandonment or rejection often prevents anxious attachment styles from setting them effectively. 
  • True relationship certainty is built over time through meaningful conversations and shared growth, rather than being present from the start. 
  • Relationships should be viewed as an 'ashram' or a place of growth and evolution, where challenges are opportunities for joy rather than exhaustion. 
  • It is easier to add excitement to an already safe relationship foundation than it is to build safety within a relationship based only on initial excitement or chemistry. 

Segments

Introduction and Purpose
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(00:00:00)
  • Key Takeaway: The episode aims to move beyond labeling attachment styles to actively healing and transforming subconscious patterns.
  • Summary: The episode introduces Thais Gibson, creator of Integrated Attachment Theory, focusing on healing core relationship wounds. Listeners will learn that attachment styles are protective mechanisms, not defining flaws, and the goal is conscious reprogramming. The conversation promises practical tools for transforming patterns shaping adult connection.
Defining Attachment Styles
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(00:04:28)
  • Key Takeaway: Secure attachment results from consistent parental approach-oriented behaviors, conditioning a belief that emotions are worthy and reliance on others is safe.
  • Summary: There are four attachment styles, with securely attached individuals comprising about 50% of the population. Secure attachment stems from parents consistently approaching and soothing a child’s distress, teaching them their emotions are worthy and trust is safe. Insecure styles (anxious, avoidant, fearful-avoidant) make up the remaining 50% and require specific healing.
Anxious Attachment Explained
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(00:07:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Anxious attachment stems from real or perceived childhood abandonment, leading adults to people-please and often attract emotionally unavailable partners.
  • Summary: Anxiously attached individuals fear abandonment, being alone, or rejection, often developing superpowers in charming others to win approval. Perceived abandonment can result from inconsistent parental presence, leading to a deep fear of love being withdrawn. These individuals often require more validation and certainty in relationships.
Thais Gibson’s Personal Journey
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(00:09:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Conscious efforts cannot overpower the subconscious mind, which dictates behavior until underlying programming is rewired.
  • Summary: Thais Gibson entered this work after struggling with addiction, realizing that willpower could not overcome her subconscious programming. This realization led her to focus on rewiring core wounds and understanding the subconscious mind’s driving role. Attachment theory was later integrated to map specific wounds, needs, and nervous system patterns to each style.
Dismissive Avoidant Style
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(00:13:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Dismissive avoidants develop from childhood emotional neglect, leading them to repress attachment needs and fear vulnerability as shameful.
  • Summary: Dismissive avoidant attachment arises from emotionally uninvolved parents, causing the child to minimize their need for connection to adapt. As adults, they retreat emotionally when relationships become serious, fearing reliance or engulfment. They often internalize shame, believing their vulnerable self is defective or weak if expressed.
Fearful Avoidant Style
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(00:16:05)
  • Key Takeaway: Fearful avoidants experience love as bittersweet because unpredictable, chaotic childhood environments taught them love is both good and potentially harmful.
  • Summary: This style often results from significant childhood trauma, such as parental addiction or severe conflict, creating competing associations with love. Fearful avoidants become hot and cold partners, fearing abandonment while simultaneously fearing being trapped or betrayed by reliance on others. They develop hyper-vigilance, reading micro-expressions to predict danger.
Attraction to Insecurity
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(00:20:17)
  • Key Takeaway: Subconscious programming equates familiarity with survival, causing insecure individuals to be attracted to partners who mirror their own internal relationship dynamics.
  • Summary: The subconscious mind, which runs 95-97% of behavior, prioritizes familiarity over conscious desires for secure partners. Anxiously attached individuals often attract partners who mirror their self-dismissal, while dismissive avoidants may attract preoccupied partners. Developing a secure relationship with oneself first is the prerequisite for being attracted to healthy partners.
Pillar One: Rewiring Core Wounds
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(00:25:53)
  • Key Takeaway: Core wounds are rewired by identifying the opposite positive belief, recalling ten supporting memories (images/emotions), and listening to a recording in a suggestible state for 21 days.
  • Summary: Affirmations are ineffective because the subconscious mind processes emotions and images, not just language. The three-step process uses repetition of emotional memories to fire and wire new neural pathways, effectively reprogramming the subconscious belief. Consistent practice during suggestible states (like after meditation or before sleep) yields high success rates in rewiring wounds.
Pillar Two: Meeting Unmet Needs
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(00:36:05)
  • Key Takeaway: Healing requires identifying unmet childhood needs (e.g., validation, presence) and actively practicing meeting those needs within the relationship to the self.
  • Summary: Trauma includes what didn’t happen, such as consistent emotional support or safety, leading to unmet needs that are often projected onto partners. Healing occurs when individuals become their own parents by repeatedly giving themselves what they lacked, training the subconscious mind through practice until self-sourcing becomes the new baseline.
Pillar Three: Nervous System Work
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(00:44:27)
  • Key Takeaway: Insecure attachment styles keep the nervous system in sympathetic overdrive (fight/flight), which is countered by somatic processing to regain self-attunement.
  • Summary: Insecure individuals often experience mild dissociation by avoiding or hiding emotions, keeping their nervous system dysregulated. Somatic processing involves witnessing and labeling physical sensations of triggered emotions (e.g., heat, butterflies) rather than getting lost in the mental story. This practice brings brain activity back online in the neocortex, achieving self-regulation and self-attunement.
Pillar Four: Conscious Communication
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(00:49:40)
  • Key Takeaway: Effective conflict resolution requires partners to first validate each other’s emotions before clearly communicating specific, actionable needs.
  • Summary: Self-regulation must precede effective co-regulation in relationships, as relying solely on a partner for soothing creates imbalance. Communication must move beyond vague statements like “I need support” to painting a clear picture of the desired behavior. The framework involves communicating what came up, validating the other’s emotion, and then detailing the specific need.
Conflict Resolution Framework
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(00:51:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Effective conflict resolution requires communicating feelings, validating emotions, stating the specific need, and painting a clear picture of the desired outcome.
  • Summary: A three-step framework for conflict resolution involves communicating feelings, validating the other person’s emotions, and then clearly stating the need by painting a specific picture of what that looks like. Negative framing (criticism) shuts down communication because the subconscious braces for punishment; needs must be converted from criticism into positive requests. Specificity, like requesting a 15-minute call every evening, prevents needs from getting lost in translation.
Validating Needs vs. Trauma-Driven Needs
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(00:55:57)
  • Key Takeaway: Needs stemming from attachment styles must be addressed by first rewiring core wounds (Pillar One) and learning to self-source (Pillar Two) to ensure requests are reasonable, not just demands born from lack.
  • Summary: Intense needs from anxious attachment styles can feel like a burden, leading people to withhold them or overwhelm partners. The 90-day reprogramming process prioritizes rewiring core wounds first, which reduces the internal pressure to source validation externally. Once self-sourcing begins, requests become more reasonable because the ‘hole in the bucket’ is partially filled, preventing over-pressuring the relationship.
Understanding Healthy Boundaries
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(00:58:58)
  • Key Takeaway: Healthy boundaries are adjoining expressions of one’s true yeses and no’s, but anxious styles are boundaryless (people-pleasing), dismissive-avoidant styles set boundaries too strongly, and fearful-avoidant styles cycle between boundarylessness and anger-driven boundaries.
  • Summary: Anxiously attached individuals struggle with boundaries due to fear of abandonment, leading to people-pleasing. Dismissive-avoidant individuals set overly strong boundaries, equating compromise with vulnerability, often leading to cancellations instead of small requests. Fearful-avoidant individuals cycle through people-pleasing, frustration, anger-driven boundaries, guilt, and returning to people-pleasing.
Implementing Boundary Work Subconsciously
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(01:00:54)
  • Key Takeaway: Intellectualizing boundaries is insufficient; real-time boundary setting requires subconscious rewiring to overcome the fear that boundaries equal unsafety due to past punishments.
  • Summary: Boundary work must be done in order: first auditing boundaries across life areas, then surfacing subconscious fears (e.g., fear of rejection), and finally rewiring those fears. Exposure work, starting with small, trusted boundaries (like asking for a stapler back), helps the brain build emotional safety through repetition.
Anxious/Avoidant Cycle Dynamics
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(01:07:51)
  • Key Takeaway: The anxious-avoidant cycle is perpetuated by worst-case scenario projections, but clear communication using the feeling-need framework allows partners to paint pictures that reveal reasonable, compatible needs.
  • Summary: Anxious partners fear abandonment when avoidants seek space, while avoidants fear engulfment when anxious partners seek time; both jump to worst-case conclusions. Using the feeling-need framework helps partners understand that the need for space is for recharging, and the need for time is for connection, leading to feasible compromises like scheduling specific time blocks.
Unwilling Partner and Relationship Longevity
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(01:10:44)
  • Key Takeaway: While one partner can lead the way in self-work, if the other remains fundamentally unwilling to engage in necessary conversations after a set period, the healthy partner may need to walk away guilt-free.
  • Summary: Often, one partner’s healthy communication gives the other permission to follow suit, but in about 10% of cases, unwillingness persists due to deep woundedness. The healthy partner should set a deadline (e.g., 90 days to a year) to try their best, and if no change occurs, walking away is the only choice to avoid carrying the emotional labor for both people.
Love Bombing and Narcissism Vetting
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(01:12:36)
  • Key Takeaway: Love bombing exists on a continuum, ranging from narcissistic control to insecure attachment styles people-pleasing by placing others on a pedestal; setting an early boundary effectively vets the difference.
  • Summary: Extreme love bombing often signals narcissistic intent for control, but lesser degrees can come from anxious/fearful-avoidant insecurity where the person idealizes and people-pleases. If a person honors a boundary early in dating, they are likely insecurely attached; if they disrespect the boundary, it is a major red flag suggesting narcissistic tendencies.
Power Struggles and Trait Integration
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(01:20:58)
  • Key Takeaway: Relationships are designed for growth, and the power struggle stage is crucial for integrating repressed traits from a partner, transforming conditional attraction into deeper, unconditional love.
  • Summary: Early attraction often involves repressed traits (e.g., an organized person drawn to an easygoing one), but these traits cause friction in the power struggle stage. True growth occurs when partners humbly integrate the positive qualities of the other (e.g., learning flexibility or discipline) rather than trying to teach or change them, deepening roots in love.
Navigating Breakup Grief
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(01:32:02)
  • Key Takeaway: Healing from a breakup involves intentionally replacing the needs the ex-partner met and reclaiming the positive aspects of self that were expressed in the relationship.
  • Summary: Breakup grief is the detachment from non-physical elements, specifically the needs the partner used to meet, creating a void. Healing is fast-tracked by intentionally resourcing those needs through healthy people and self-work, and by honoring the positive self-expressions (like being a nurturer or protector) that were lost.
Certainty in Commitment
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(01:38:22)
  • Key Takeaway: One is never 100% ready for major life commitments like marriage, but certainty is built over time by successfully navigating the power struggle stage through meaningful conversations.
  • Summary: Feeling 100% ready is a fallacy; instead, there should be a high enough degree of certainty to take a leap of faith. Real love is built in the power struggle stage when masks drop, allowing for deeper conversations that move love from conditional to unconditional. This process of working through conflict builds the certainty that resists frivolous doubts about changing minds later.
Building Certainty Through Conversations
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(01:41:50)
  • Key Takeaway: Certainty in a relationship is achieved by building it through meaningful conversations over time, not by being 100% sure initially.
  • Summary: Frivolous fears about partners changing diminish as deep connection is fostered through consistent conversation. Love is grown, not just given, through this process. The value of a relationship is realized through the growth that occurs over time.
Relationships as Ashrams of Growth
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(01:42:59)
  • Key Takeaway: Every stage of life, including being partnered, is an ‘ashram’—a place defined by growth and evolution.
  • Summary: Repeating the honeymoon-break cycle avoids necessary growth, which is essential for realizing relationship value. The greatest joy a human can feel comes from navigating challenges. The goal is choosing a partner with whom challenges become enjoyable rather than exhausting.
Finding Gifts in Hardship
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(01:44:00)
  • Key Takeaway: Painful experiences and relationship ‘rubs’ are necessary for polishing and growth, often containing invaluable hidden lessons.
  • Summary: Quickly concluding that hard things shouldn’t happen prevents learning; Rumi’s quote emphasizes that friction leads to being polished. A personal exercise revealed that every hard time provided a serving gift and a lesson for the next season of life. Facing pain without outsourcing support can lead to deeper self-relationship and spiritual connection.
Timeline Pace: Truth Over People-Pleasing
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(01:46:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Anxious individuals should honor their truth and timeline rather than slowing down to win over a partner, as self-betrayal feeds negative subconscious patterns.
  • Summary: When faced with matching pace or honoring one’s timeline, one must be upfront about their needs and timeline. If a partner is unwilling to meet halfway, the individual must honor themselves and move on. Attempting to slow down to win someone over never works and reinforces self-betrayal.
Safety Versus Excitement in Dating
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(01:47:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Safety is the preferred foundation; excitement can be intentionally built into a secure relationship, but building safety into an exciting but unstable one is much harder.
  • Summary: Stay with the person who feels safe and then actively build novelty and spontaneity to maintain the spark. It is significantly easier to add excitement to a safe relationship than to develop security in an exciting but volatile one. This caveat requires that basic attraction and liking for the person must still exist.
Chemistry and Unmet Needs
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(01:48:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Intense chemistry or limerence is often triggered when someone expresses your repressed traits, meets deeply unmet childhood needs, or mirrors how you treat yourself.
  • Summary: Following chemistry is advisable if the commitment to do the necessary work is present, as chemistry reveals much about the self. The intense spark often signals repressed traits needing integration or unmet needs being sourced externally. Vetting a partner’s willingness to do the work is non-negotiable when chemistry is present.
Self-Generated Closure and Certainty
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(01:49:04)
  • Key Takeaway: Closure after a breakup is achieved by questioning self-defeating stories on paper, thereby giving yourself the certainty you seek from an ex-partner.
  • Summary: The desire for closure is fundamentally a search for certainty, which an ex-partner often cannot provide. Writing down negative stories like ‘I wasn’t good enough’ and actively questioning their validity generates self-honoring proof. This internal process provides healing and growth, giving the individual control over their narrative.
Final Five: Core Relationship Wisdom
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(01:50:57)
  • Key Takeaway: The best love advice is self-compassion, the worst is trying to change unwilling partners, and the spark signals repressed traits or unmet needs.
  • Summary: The best advice is to be compassionate and gentle toward oneself, while the worst is attempting to change others who resist self-work. The spark in dating indicates someone is expressing repressed traits, meeting unmet needs, or mirroring self-treatment. The ultimate law for the world should be learning and rewiring one’s subconscious conditioning to avoid repeated defeat.