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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

How to feel more secure

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture, Politics, Philosophy

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sean talks with psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine about attachment, insecurity, and why our relationships shape us more than we think. They discuss his updated framework for anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment styles, why being ignored or excluded can feel so threatening, and how small everyday interactions can either calm the brain or send it spiraling. They also dig into childhood dynamics, therapy, conflict, friendship, loneliness, and different ways we can build more secure lives.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Amir Levine, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author of Secure: the revolutionary guide to creating a secure life We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for the show comes from Service Now. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without

0:07.1

visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in

0:12.8

completely different ways. Service Now turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower,

0:19.2

you see all your AI across the business in one place,

0:22.5

what it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI

0:28.5

to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

0:36.8

Support for the gray area comes from Fetch Pet Insurance.

0:40.9

Do you have a pet?

0:42.0

According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago,

0:45.5

every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000,

0:50.5

and it's almost always an unwelcome surprise.

0:53.4

That's where Fetch Pet Insurance comes in.

0:56.2

According to Consumer Advocate.org, Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats.

1:01.8

You can get paid back up to 90% of vet bills.

1:04.9

You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada.

1:07.4

All vets are in network.

1:09.5

Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now to get your free quote.

1:13.7

That's fetch pet.com slash save.

1:21.5

What does it mean to become more emotionally secure?

1:26.3

Safe?

1:33.6

Stable, calm, less reactive, more trusting. When we talk about insecurity, we usually talk about it in a pretty narrow way, dating attachment styles, anxious

1:41.0

people, avoidant people, all the familiar therapy speak.

...

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