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hey guys heidi preeb here today i wanted to make a video that is in part an encouragement video for those of you who are going through the attachment healing process and maybe feel like things aren't happening as quickly as you'd
Heidi Priebe walks through the four-stage Conscious Competence model as a framework for attachment healing, from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, with encouragement for those feelin
Key Takeaways
- Attachment healing is a learning process that can be understood through the Conscious Competence model.
- Blaming a partner and waiting for them to change keeps a person in unconscious incompetence.
- The awareness stage is essential and cannot be skipped; understanding root causes precedes effective solutions.
- Mastery of new attachment skills can take years of deliberate practice before becoming automatic.
What the video covers
- The video is an encouragement piece for people in attachment healing who feel progress is too slow or that they are stuck in a stage.
- The Conscious Competence model (four stages of learning) originated in the 1960s-70s, traced to Martin Broadwell (1969) and later popularized by Gordon Training International.
- Priebe argues attachment healing is fundamentally a learning process involving rewiring the brain and opening the psyche to new perspectives, so the model applies well to it.
- Stage 1, unconscious incompetence, is the ignorance stage where people project blame and try to fix their partner rather than themselves.
- Stage 2, conscious incompetence, is the awareness stage: recognizing one's own contribution and the value of new skills, which is often the most frustrating phase.
- Attachment patterns show up across work, friendships, self-esteem and future planning, so observing patterns helps identify root causes rather than treating symptoms.
- Stage 3, conscious competence, is the learning stage where new skills work but require intense concentration; it can take years to rewire responses.
- Stage 4, unconscious competence (mastery), is when new skills become second nature, such as self-soothing under stress and healthier relating without conscious effort.
- Skills differ by attachment style: avoidant individuals focus on emotional awareness, anxious individuals on self-regulation, and fearful-avoidant individuals on a mix of both.
- Priebe emphasizes that every stage is necessary and that progress should be measured with patience rather than expecting immediate solutions once problems are recognized.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and encouragement for attachment healing
- 01:06Origins of the Conscious Competence model
- 02:16Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence
- 03:29Transition to conscious incompetence
- 04:31Stage 2: Conscious incompetence (awareness)
- 05:45Identifying root causes across life areas
- 06:59Stage 3: Conscious competence (learning)
- 08:50Stage 4: Unconscious competence (mastery) and closing thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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like them to happen maybe you're feeling frustrated because you have been stuck in a certain stage of your healing process for what feels like too long and this video is also going to serve as a bit of a model for what to expect as you
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start the attachment healing process so for this video what i want to do is walk us through a model called the conscious competence model so who came up with this model is a little bit difficult to trace according to wikipedia a man named
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martin m broadwell first described this model in 1969 as the four levels of teaching then someone named paul curtis and philip warren mentioned the model in their 1973 book the dynamics of life skills coaching and the model was used
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by gordon training international by its employee noelle burch in the 1970s and it was called the four stages of learning any new skill so this is a model that is traditionally applied to learning not necessarily to psychotherapy or to doing psychotherapy
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work however when you are healing your attachment style what you're doing is learning what you are doing is opening up your psyche to new information and new ways of looking at the world and rewiring your brain to start thinking
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differently and that is absolutely a learning process so the four stages of learning or the conscious competence model absolutely applies to attachment healing and in this video i'm gonna walk us through what it looks like and how we
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can relate it to our attachment journey so there are four stages to this model that details the process of learning the first stage is called unconscious incompetence the second stage is called conscious incompetence the third stage is called conscious competence and the
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fourth stage is called unconscious competence and i'm going to walk you through each of those stages and what those phrases mean so the first stage unconscious incompetence is also sometimes referred to as the ignorance stage and the reason we call it that is
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because we are quite literally at this stage ignorant to both the problem that we're up against and the reason why we aren't getting the results that we want and this is very often the first step in an attachment healing journey because
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people start noticing i have let's say problems in my relationships i have trouble holding down a serious relationship i am constantly experiencing conflict with people and i don't know why and when you're in the unconscious incompetence phase of
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attachment healing what you are often doing is projecting left right and center so you can even be aware of what your attachment style is and still be unconsciously incompetent when it comes to attachment work because as long as
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you are believing that you are not in any way a part of the problem you are not yet conscious of what the real problem is so i see a lot of people for example in facebook groups centered around attachment healing that have
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maybe just received the label of insecurely attached whether it's fearful avoidant avoidant or anxious and they will still be there just trying to fix their partner instead of fixing their own attachment style believing i will be happy and i will be in a secure loving
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stable relationship once my partner changes is absolutely unconscious incompetence it's not until we become aware of how our own attachment systems are impacting our ability to have healthy relationships that we graduate into the next stage of learning so to
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graduate into conscious incompetence which is the next step we have to be both aware of our own contribution to the problem and also see the value of the new skill that we need to learn so when it comes to attachment healing the
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new skill that we need to learn is the ability to relate healthily to other people and depending on what your attachment style is that's going to look different right if you're avoidant it's going to be a lot of work around
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developing emotional awareness and being able to take your own and the feelings of other people seriously if you are anxiously attached it's going to be a lot of learning self-regulation skills and understanding how to keep yourself centered even when someone else is
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behaving in a way that you find stressful and if you are fearful avoidant it's going to be a mix of those skills however we have to first recognize that we have a problem that is not going to be solved by someone else
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changing and also understand there's a skill we can learn that will help us to show up differently and once those two conditions are met we can move on to the next stage which is conscious incompetence which i will acknowledge
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does not sound that exciting but it's a really important step so conscious incompetence is also known as the awareness stage and this stage i believe can actually be the most frustrating of all of the stages because this is a
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stage where you're aware that you have a problem you're aware that you need new skills to solve it but you don't yet have a firm grasp on those skills so the point of this phase is to observe yourself to learn where you need to do
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healing work and what's going wrong and to get a really deep really nuanced understanding of the problem okay that's why we call it awareness so in this stage a lot of people want to kind of skip directly to the third stage which
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is where you're implementing the solutions but we can't implement solutions until we know exactly where the problems are when they show up and why they show up and so first there has to be a period of time when we're working on our
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attachment styles where we just notice when are we getting triggered when are we getting dysregulated when do we find it really hard to show up in a healthy way and relate to other people in a way that is both compassionate and rational
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so during this phase a lot of people feel like because i have the awareness of the problem i should also have the solution but again that is not how it works it would be great if that were how
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it worked but this is a really important phase in and of itself because you are learning where you've been keeping yourself stuck and when it comes to attachment systems these are problems that often permeate through so many areas of our lives right like we might
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think okay my attachment wounding is the reason why i can't have a healthy relationship but when we become consciously incompetent we also start to notice oh it impacts the way that i approach my work it impacts my friendships it impacts my self-esteem it
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impacts the way that i think about the future so we can start noticing left right and center all of these areas that our attachment style is responding to and in the next couple stages we are going to need to start applying new
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skills to all of those areas if we're able to notice as much as humanly possible in this step then we're able to kind of understand what the root causes are of these problems as opposed to treating symptoms in a bunch of
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different areas as they come up so for example let's say you are always procrastinating at work and you're also always starting fights with your partner and you're also always emotionally eating okay these things might seem disconnected from each other but when we
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look at the overall patterns that are forming across multiple areas of our lives we might start to realize i do all of those things when i feel insecure and so the root of this problem is my feelings of unworthiness and if you can
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tackle that problem at the root all of the symptoms are going to naturally disappear on their own right so you can stop this kind of endless battle of trying to apply solutions to all of the symptoms you can get rid of the problem
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at the root and that is ultimately going to save you a lot more time but in order to figure out where the root is we have to move through the conscious incompetence phase of this model where we're just noticing noticing our bad
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behavior noticing our disproportionate reactions noticing all of the ways in which our lives are not working for us and once we have a really clear idea of that then we can move on to the next stage which is conscious competence
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conscious competence is also known as the learning stage so this is the stage where you know how to do something but you need to concentrate pretty intensively in order to do it it is not yet second nature so when it comes to
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attachment healing let's look at working with triggers right phase one of the model might be not even knowing when you're triggered and thinking that all of your triggered responses are truly a reflection of the situation and then when you reach phase two of the model
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you might be able to consciously notice when you're triggered and that doesn't mean that you can fix the trigger you might continue to explode anyway but at stage three you're able to both recognize when you're triggered and also
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implement a different response so these can be tools that you do both in the moment like having a strategy for what to do when you're triggered or it can also be things that you do proactively so let's say you are avoidant and you
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struggle to notice what you're feeling and respond to it appropriately conscious competence might look like you setting an alarm on your phone four times a day where every time it goes off you sit down and notice what's going on
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in your body and what's going on in your mental space and that might be the practice of you training yourself to become sensitized to your emotional experience and if you're anxiously attached this might look like you proactively building a healthier
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relationship with yourself by keeping promises to yourself by working on things that you're really excited about by filling your life up with comfort and stability so that you're better able to regulate your emotions when someone else is not available so when you're at this
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stage you are implementing a lot of new solutions and new strategies but you're not yet doing them without thinking you really have to focus on it when you're triggered you really have to take a step back go i'm experiencing a trigger i am
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not going to react to it in my old way i'm going to use the tools that i've been learning in therapy or online or that i've developed proactively for myself and i'm going to apply them here and it might feel like you are going
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against your natural energy with everything you have it might feel incredibly difficult to implement at first but i promise you the more that you practice the tools that you are learning the more you will begin to do them on autopilot okay so it can take a
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very long time to work through this stage it can take years in fact i would say it often does it takes a really long time for us to start rewiring our brains to think and respond differently on autopilot okay but the conscious
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competence phase of the model is the part that you cannot give up on you cannot because i promise you you are learning even when it doesn't feel like you are and you will make mistakes and you will mess up and you will not get it
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right and that's okay too right a lot of the time there's kind of a feedback loop between steps two and three of this process maybe you have really good solutions for dealing with your attachment wounding in some areas of
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your life but in other areas you're still really struggling and i want to encourage you to adopt the mindset of no failure just feedback here okay so even if a new strategy doesn't work and you just can't do it your emotions your
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attachment system just got the better of you that's okay use that as information adjust your approach and keep going because if you can get through this phase of the attachment healing process you eventually graduate to the final level of the model which is unconscious
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competence otherwise known as mastery when you are at this level it means that you have practiced the new skill so many times and in so many different situations that you no longer have to consciously focus on it in order to do
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it and what this means in the attachment healing process is that you have reached a place where you have earned secure attachment you no longer have to consciously remind yourself to think differently about a situation or to react differently to a situation that
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used to trigger you you are now automatically thinking and responding differently it's no longer a tug of war between the old response and the new response the new response is now your go-to response and this is such an
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incredible place to reach in your attachment healing journey because this is the stage when you finally feel safe in your own body you finally feel comfortable in your own skin you finally feel like you know how to spot people
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who are trustworthy and you're comfortable trusting them you can be both independent and interdependent and it doesn't feel like a herculean effort to do any of that stuff it's just your natural state you might be naturally noticing your emotions as they come up
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and you might be naturally able to self-soothe when you're stressed out or experiencing a difficult or painful feeling you might have worked through some of the traumas or wounds you used to have that would cause you to get
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triggered and you might not be getting triggered as often if at all anymore and from an attachment perspective we would call this the point where your internal working model of attachment relationships has fundamentally shifted you are now looking at yourself as a
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secure base as someone that you can trust and rely on to keep you safe and you're also able to trust and rely on other people because you know how to notice red and green flags and react appropriately to each one and that
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doesn't take a humongous deal of conscious discernment you are tuned in to your own emotional responses and to other people so you're much more able to root out who you can trust and who you can't without applying an incredible
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amount of conscious effort to the task and so what i want you to take away from this video more than anything else is that if you are at any phase in your attachment healing journey you are not failing for not having mastered it
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already okay even unconscious incompetence is a necessary phase right and most of us are in unconscious incompetence when we first become aware of our attachment styles and it takes a while to begin to wrap our minds around the fact that maybe we're kind of at
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cause of a lot of these problems and to move into the next stage and there can be so much frustration along the way especially when we're at the point where we're able to recognize what we're doing wrong but we don't yet have the skills
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to do something different but i just want to encourage you keep going noticing matters awareness is humongous and so is building up that skill set i promise you that if you persist it will eventually start running on autopilot
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and that will make your life so much better in ways that i am certain you cannot even imagine right now if you're at the beginning of this process attachment really permeates through so much of our lives which means that when
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we start healing it we start healing every different area of ourselves so i wanted to start off the new year with this video because last year at this time i decided that i would devote the entirety of my year to healing my
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attachment style and that would be my number one priority and i could not have imagined and i really mean this at this point last year where i'd be right now and the decisions i'd be capable of comfortably making at this point in my
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life and the way that i would be able to think about myself and other people and the compassion and understanding that i would be able to extend towards myself and other people i could not have imagined this i didn't know you could
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have an experience of life that feels like this and so if you are starting today on your attachment healing journey i just want to use this video to encourage you that you are in for something that is so rewarding so
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rewarding even when it feels frustrating as hell along the way okay i believe in you i really truly believe that we all have the capability to change if and when we are ready to commit ourselves to doing so and so if this is a journey
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that you're on i hope to see you back here over the course of this year i love you guys happy new year and i will see you again here soon [Music] you
Topics:attachment healingconscious competence modelattachment stylesanxious attachmentavoidant attachmentfearful avoidantemotional regulationself-awarenessrelationship healingHeidi Priebe
