Unlocking Financial Intimacy: The Role of Attachment Theory with Eli Harwood

Healthy Love and Money

“It can be simultaneously true that our parents did the best they could with what they had, and that we inherited insecure attachment patterns from them because that's what they had, and that those inherited patterns have caused us some pain, dysregulation, grief, loss in our lives, and so the blame is not on the parent. It’s on the pattern.”

When life gives you unresolved traumas and childhood emotional wounds, how can you rebuild your capacity for love and financial intimacy? Our host Ed Coambs sits down with Eli Harwood, affectionately known as the "Attachment Nerd,” who shares her personal expedition from discovering attachment theory through her own therapy sessions to becoming a sought-after therapist and social media educator. Eli provides a candid account of how understanding our inherited attachment patterns can be a pivotal step toward emotional healing and making sense of our default emotional settings.

Eli and Ed take us on a journey through the long and transformative process of healing attachment patterns. They reflect on the impact of childhood experiences and parental influence on our emotional and relational lives. By exploring these foundational aspects, they uncover how these early attachments shape our future relationships, coping mechanisms, and even our approach to money.

Ed and Eli also address the crucial role of parenting in fostering secure attachments and emotional resilience in children. Eli shares practical parenting strategies that don't project our own coping mechanisms onto our kids but instead empower them to handle life's challenges with confidence. Connecting these insights to financial stress, they demonstrate how our early attachment patterns influence our financial behaviors and attitudes. All this and much more inside this special episode of Healthy Love and Money!

Key Topics:

• Welcome, Eli Harwood! (01:21)
• Attachment Theory and Personal Growth through Reflection and Action (06:00)
• Blame Lies with the Pattern, not the Parent(s) (12:09)
• How Childhood Experiences Shape Adult Emotional Coping Mechanisms (18:19)
• Attachment Theory and its Impact on Money Experiences and Behaviors (24:50)
• Introversion and Attachment Patterns (30:35)
• Parenting and Attachment Theory, Showing Up, Listening, and Lighting Up (37:02)
• How Family Dynamics Impact End-Of-Life Care and Estate Planning (42:02)
• Secure Attachment and its Impact on Financial Intimacy (46:39)

Resources:

• Attachment Nerd
• Books from Eli Hardwood
• Attachment Nerd Podcast

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