🧶 Attachment Theory Explains Everything — Social Media & AI Addiction with Shannon Algeo

Amelia HrubyHey friends, Amelia here with a message from one of our Off the Grid friends and partners. I probably don't have to tell you that selling in 2026 is hard. And if you're listening to Off the Grid, you're probably not interested in doing it on social media, so so you're likely turning to relationship marketing as an option for finding new clients, sharing your offerings, getting the word out about your work, and hopefully converting some new audience members into excited first time buyers. All of that sounds great in theory. Right?

Amelia HrubyWhen I say it here on the podcast, it sounds awesome. But how do you actually make it work? If you want to improve your skills with referral partnerships and affiliate programs so that you can make money through your network, I highly recommend that you join my friend, Jana Carlson, on Monday, June 22 for a wonderful workshop called your twenty twenty six referral partner playbook, strategies that work now. I know and have seen time and time again in my business, that relationships are a powerful source of leads, but that doesn't mean that it's obvious how to find the right people, nurture the right relationships, and then turn them into referral partnerships that bring in business. So in this one hour workshop with Jana, you will learn which referral strategies are unlikely to work, what powerful and relevant strategies do work right now, and how to match your offers and referral partnerships effectively.

Amelia HrubyWhether you're new to relationship marketing or you've been investing in your referral network for years, you should leave this workshop with a fresh perspective on how key relationships can help you sell more. Head to the link in the show notes to sign up and tell Jana that I sent you, or you can just head to thecopromotionclub.com/campworkshop, and you will find more information and the link to join. I'm hoping to attend myself and I'd love to see you there. Now, let's get into today's episode.

Speaker 1Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay.

Amelia HrubyHello. Hello. And welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about stepping back or away from social media and big tech so we can be more present and find pleasure in our daily lives. I'm your host, Amelia Freebee. And on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for sharing your work and making money online with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia HrubyToday, I am bringing you an incredibly special conversation all about attachment theory and how it shapes our addictive tendencies to smartphones, social media, AI, and really all technology. I have mentioned attachment theory many times here on the podcast because when I talk about my decision to leave social media, I often say that I felt like I was anxiously attached to the apps and I had to get out of there. And I learned that language of anxious attachment from my therapist back in the day, as well as from a lot of just, like, pop psychology posts when I was on social media. But I am not a psychologist or a therapist, and I didn't totally understand what attachment theory was or how it worked until I talked to today's guest. So today I am joined by Shannon Algeo.

Amelia HrubyShannon is a writer, psychotherapist, researcher, poet, and host, the Soul Feed podcast. He is on faculty at the Esalen Institute and the Kripalu Center, and he just published his new book, The Power in Your Hands, Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology. I have read almost every social media critical book out there, and I have to say Shannon's is one of my favorite. Like, if I was gonna recommend you get three books on these topics, it would probably be my book, Cody Cook Barrett's book, and Shannon's book. That's how highly I regard this book, and I am thrilled to have Shannon here to talk about it.

Amelia HrubyIn addition to today's conversation, I am also hosting Shannon for a free book club that I would love for everyone listening to this to come to. It's happening next Wednesday, June 10 at 01:30PM central time, which is 11:30AM Pacific, 12:30PM mountain, 02:30PM eastern, convert to your own time zone from there. I like this book so much that I wanted to celebrate its release with Shannon and host a live conversation where I will ask Shannon more questions about attachment theory and technology addiction, and you'll have the opportunity to ask questions or share your experiences as well. So if you want to come to the free book club, head to the show notes for the link to RSVP and sign up. And without further ado, let's dive in to today's episode, shall we?

Amelia HrubyHere's my conversation with Shannon Algeo, author of The Power in Your Hands, Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology. Hi, Shannon. Welcome to Off the Grid.

Shannon AlgeoOh my gosh. I'm so excited to be here. I'm like, who let me in here? I'm an Off the Grid listener. How did I get here?

Shannon AlgeoI'm so honored to be here, and it's so great to talk to you again because we've been talking behind the scenes for a few months now.

Amelia HrubyWe have. I'm so thrilled to have you, and I think it's good for listeners to hear that because it is a common thing in the world of Off the Grid that conversations about a potential episode will begin, like, six to twelve months before somebody's actually on the podcast. And every once in a while, there's somebody who, like, lands in my inbox, we connect, we record, it goes live, but it's much more common that there are multiple conversations, there's a lot of relationship building as we sort of, like, find our way toward the right episode to create together. So I'm really thrilled that you're here. I can't wait to have this conversation.

Amelia HrubyBut where I wanna begin today is honestly with a little bit of, like, mea culpa or apology to listeners because as I was reading your book, I was like, oh, I have said so many times on this podcast that I was anxiously attached to Instagram, and that's why I had to leave. But I have never once explained what anxiously attached means. I have never meaningfully talked about attachment theory. It's, like, not my area of expertise. It's, like, I know the language, but I'm so excited to have you here today because psychology is your area of expertise, and I'm really looking forward to sort of weaving that in, not just in the, like, you know, buzzword way I have been, but in the studied and practiced way that you work with and understand attachment theory.

Amelia HrubySo thank you for being here to do that with us.

Shannon AlgeoI'm so excited to talk about, yeah, attachment theory and how it relates to our phones because it is a real and often overlooked dynamic in how we are connecting to our devices as a surrogate attachment figure. So just to back up for a second, when I was in school, in graduate school, studying counseling psychology, becoming a psychotherapist, learning about attachment theory, I kept having this thought that I am in an I am in an attachment relationship with my smartphone. I feel like there's an attachment quality to that relationship. And it was just this thought that kept coming and I was wondering about. And so just to really start at the very beginning, what is attachment theory?

Amelia HrubyYes, please. Tell us that.

Shannon AlgeoYeah. Like, what is it actually when you go a little bit deeper than the, like, kind of buzz, pop psych, social media kind of attachment style conversation, attachment theory was a theory that was established by John Bowlby, a British psychologist, and it's been researched and developed over the decades. But at its core, it is this social, biological, and evolutionary response that we as human beings have as infants and toddlers to attach to our primary caregivers in order to ensure safety and survival. So we come into this world incredibly vulnerable. You know, we can't walk around.

Shannon AlgeoWe can't feed ourselves. I mean, we are, you know, essentially useless, and we are we need care. We need a lot of care. We are social species. And in order to survive, we are built we are developed through a social weaving of care.

Shannon AlgeoAnd so based on how that relationship goes, that attachment relationship goes, we might develop a secure attachment, meaning we can kind of you know, we we know we can rely on other people, and we also know how to self regulate within ourselves. And that really is the the task of attachment development is, did I get enough? Did I get good enough care and soothing and seeing and safety and security from my caregiver that I learned to develop an internal musculature of of a capacity to self soothe and self care? It starts from how we are soothed and the mirroring that we get and the holding, and and it really it needs to be good enough. I I think the research shows that it can be slightly over fifty percent of the time.

Shannon AlgeoIf parents get it right slightly over fifty percent of the time, then that child can develop something like a secure attachment style. Now I I talk about in the book that I don't like to talk about styles like it's a zodiac or astrological sign and that it's kind of this fixed thing because attachment research shows that while childhood is incredibly formative and important for the development of our attachment, Attachment continues to develop throughout life, and we are incredibly neuroplastic, and we're relational, and we can have attachments that continue to develop through adult relationships as well. But because childhood is so significant, let's go back there for a second and talk about what happens when it doesn't go well or when there's inconsistency. For a number of reasons, there might be inconsistencies, and there could be big t and little t trauma. There could be socioeconomic factors.

Shannon AlgeoThere could be intergenerational trauma factors. It could be gender and racial factors. So many things can influence the ability of our parents to care for us in the ways that we need. And so let's say that a parent or caregiver sometimes is soothing and available, and other times is, like, completely unavailable. That can cause a young one to develop an insecure anxious and anxious preoccupation.

Shannon AlgeoAnd in the anxious style, the child kind of fixates on the caregiver because they don't trust on a neurobiological nervous system level. There's this distrust in the availability of feeling seen and soothed and safe and secure. And so that preoccupation is this coping strategy to let me watch my parent, you know, oh, my my mom's moving farther away. Where's she going? She's going to the other side of the pool.

Shannon AlgeoAm I gonna be okay? And that preoccupation leads to this anxiety. If on the other hand, let's say a caregiver is overbearing or hypercritical or kind of bearing down on a child, and that child feels like it's not safe to express their emotions, that they have to hide their emotions or their caregiver is gonna have a big dysregulated reaction, then that child might learn a coping strategy of withdrawing and avoiding and creating distance in order to feel safe and soothed and seen and secure. And and then often also, it's called disorganized attachment style. I call it disoriented in the book because that that word sounds less shaming to me.

Shannon AlgeoBut the disorganized attachment style usually comes from volatile or violent or abusive homes, and the disorganized style includes both anxious and avoidant tendencies and can kind of be erratic when there's dysregulation.

Amelia HrubyFirst of all, just thank you so much for that gorgeous, concise, but nuanced explanation of attachment theory and attachment styles. I feel like I could have read 500 probably AI generated blog posts about this, and I never would have gotten to just, like, the clear information that you just shared. And I'm so, so grateful for how you explained that, and I feel like now we have undone or repaired the harm that I perhaps did by just throwing the idea out there and never offering the support to people around it. So, definitely, as you were describing that, what was coming up for me was similar to what you described. Like, you said you had this sort of intuition that, like, I think I have an attachment relationship to my smartphone.

Amelia HrubyThat is also what I noticed in my relationship to Instagram specifically. And the reason I said that I felt anxiously attached to Instagram is because the mechanisms and manipulations of the algorithm had me always watching it. It was the parent going to the other side of the pool, and I was just hanging out, making my reels inside the water being like, am I okay? Is this okay? Are you gonna like me?

Amelia HrubyAre you leaving me forever? Are you gonna come back? Are you gonna think this is cool? Like, I had this, like, constant self surveillance, algorithm surveillance. Like, I was looking at what everyone else was doing.

Amelia HrubyI was panicking. It just created this particular type of relationship that I had learned in therapy in other, you know, human relationships to call anxious attachment. And so I'm so curious for you, like, once you had this intuition that there was something happening with attachment in your phone, and then you learned more about attachment theory, like, what happened from there? What was your relationship to your phone like? What was your attachment style with it?

Amelia HrubyHow did you start to apply this framework to your relationship with technology?

Shannon AlgeoYeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I am a humble student of technology addiction and technology attachment. That that's the reason I chose this as my topic of research in grad school, and that's the reason that I wrote this book, The Power in Your Hands, which starts off with saying, hi.

Shannon AlgeoMy name is Shannon, and I'm completely addicted to my smartphone. And I started to just understand when I was learning about attachment theory and I was considering the deeper underlying attachment related needs in my body, in my being, in my relational field that I was attempting to meet through Instagram, through Facebook, through reaching for my phone. And that's just the subtle awareness of, like, oh, what am I really reaching for? And that's the thing that I started to learn. I I so once I had this intuition, the job of my research was to evaluate and examine and and ask questions and go diving into all of the existing research if there was any existing research linking attachment styles to compulsive smartphone use.

Shannon AlgeoAnd I was I was so affirmed by the research that I found because there are multiple studies. Most of them have begun or or most of them began in 2020 and onward, but there's even some looking at children's relationships to cell phones that go back to the twenty twelves. And what I found is that there is correlated positive correlated, research that links insecure attachment styles to compulsive and smart to compulsive or problematic smartphone use. And so when I saw that research, I was like, oh, this is both an intuition, and it's something that's being measured and studied. I'm not experiencing this alone, which, by the way, that is such an important thing that I remind myself and my clients and people about again and again is that this is a societal addiction, and we need to be addressing this issue in community and in relationship, not overpathologizing.

Shannon AlgeoLike, oh, you know, what I don't want from this book is people to be like, oh, it's my attachment style and it's my brokenness, and that's why my relationship to this phone is broken or or why I'm treating it like an attachment figure. This is really up to all of us to look at the ways that technology is impacting our relationships, our internal world, our creativity. But just to go back for a second to what you said about the anxious attachment style that you noticed in your relationship with Instagram, there's something very unique about the anxious attachment style and what the algorithm does that mirrors and mimics the sometimes available, sometimes unavailable caregiver. So what does Instagram and what are these social media apps do? They utilize something called I'm sure you've talked about this before.

Shannon AlgeoMany listeners probably know this. They utilize intermittent rewards. So sometimes you get likes and new followers, and other times it's crickets. When I put myself out there and I post a new reel, I watch my attachment system get more anxious. Am I seen?

Shannon AlgeoCan I feel soothed knowing that I am liked, that people are applauding and encouraging what I'm doing in the world? And so this is this biological attachment vulnerability that we are bringing to the relational field when we interact with the algorithm. If we don't know this and don't look at these underlying attachment related needs and how they're being exploited by these technologies, then we might not ask the deeper questions that can lead us to make new and different choices. So that's the reason that I focused on attachment in this book is that I do believe as a therapist who works with clients, I have clients who I've worked with for many years, that when we go deeper into the psyche, which is the Greek word for soul, then we can be inspired to make richer, deeper, more meaningful changes in our root system beneath the soil rather than just trying to, like, fix our behavioral addiction or do, like, behavioral modification or you know, like, I think it's important to understand intermittent rewards and dopamine and attention span and memory. But if I'm actually wanting to connect with a human being, but I instead am reaching to the phone as a surrogate, as a surrogate relationship, then I'm actually developing this nervous system coregulation with an inhuman device.

Shannon AlgeoWhen I think the work of our I I know the work of our human intelligence, HI. Like, let's talk about HI. This human intelligence is to continue to learn that it can be safe and reparative and healing to reach for another person for support and to have the capacity to self regulate internally. So attachment is a relational dynamic. It's not a personal plight or pathology.

Shannon AlgeoAttachment gets activated in the dynamic field between Shannon and Amelia, between Amelia and your partner, between Shannon and my close beloveds. And that when we build this relational resilience to actually co regulate and self regulate, I can co regulate and reach to other human beings for support. And when when those adults who are flawed humans and sometimes have other things going on cannot give me what I need in that moment, I can also I am building the skills to self regulate. And this is how we shift our attachment from maybe kind of being fixed in a stuck response of anxiety or avoidance. And we can actually, through neuroplasticity, through interpersonal neurobiology, we can learn new ways of being in relationship that actually transforms our experience of attachment.

Shannon AlgeoAnd that is a long winded answer to this question around, yeah, how I noticed this in my life. And I just track I'm always or I'm often tracking when I'm going to my device and what and who I'm really reaching for.

Amelia HrubyOh my gosh. If I was nodding any harder, I think my head would fall off my neck at this point. This is so good. Okay. Now I know the reason I haven't tried to talk through any of this myself is because I needed you to come here and say all of it so eloquently and wisely.

Amelia HrubyI am really, really hearing you on this insistence that attachment style is not a fixed trait of who we are. It is a pattern of our nervous system, perhaps, that we can can get stuck in, so it can feel fixed, but that doesn't mean that it is how we always have been and always will be. And I'm really hearing you that the way to shift our attachment style or habits or patterns is in relationship. And that maps so clearly onto my own personal experience of, you know, my life, I suppose. Like, I think in general, I am very fortunate to have developed a relatively secure attachment style with my parents and in my family.

Amelia HrubyAnd then I had a series of really toxic relationships, romantic relationships in my twenties that actually sort of harmed that. Like, the anxious attachment developed through just a series of one after the other toxic, problematic, harmful relationships. And I remember when I met my spouse, JJ, or when we sort of reconnected and started dating, I had been in therapy at that point. I knew a bit about attachment styles. I learned some of my habits, and I sort of watched myself, like, try to push JJ away to, like, prove to my anxious attachment that they would leave.

Amelia HrubyAnd the way my attachment got secure again is that they didn't leave. Like, JJ would call me out on it and be like, I know what you're doing right now. I'm gonna hang out here. And like, when you regulate, we'll come back to like, you not trying to sabotage this relationship anymore, which feels very vulnerable to say on a podcast thousands of people will listen to, but it is something that happened. And I wanted to bring that in just to say that, like, I have witnessed in myself how I shifted from a more secure attachment style to a lot of anxious attachment back into a really secure attachment style through relationality, as you've said.

Amelia HrubyI think that this is also important and what it takes me to is that, you know, when I was in that period of insecure attachment, I was on my phone all the time. Like, my anxious attachment and going to my phone for it only exacerbated that because as you've said, like, there isn't human relationality there. We think there is through the proxy of the app or the screen, but I was seeking healthy whole relationships so I could feel more secure on every level, quite frankly. And I would go to the phone and I would get the algorithm, and it would just exacerbate the anxious attachment tendencies. And I think it was truly, like, quite harmful.

Amelia HrubyAnd it probably, in this indirect way, kept me in some of those toxic relationships longer because I couldn't see that pattern when I was getting it in every part of my life. So that feels wild to say, but I I think that when we start to unpack attachment, we start to see how it really does touch almost everything in our lives.

Shannon AlgeoOh my gosh. It was, like, such beautiful reflections to hear you apply that to your own relationships. And I incorrectly explained attachment theory in the original version of the book. Luckily, it was a draft, and a fellow clinician, a fellow therapist reflected back to me, you're actually explaining secure attachment incorrectly. And it was actually a really deep moment because I was like, oh, that's because there's a part of me that doesn't get it.

Shannon AlgeoI'm not fully understanding. She's like, Shannon, secure attachment isn't something that one person holds. It is a relational dynamic that gets activated in a field between two people. And so someone's trauma or wound or past experiences or fears or anxieties or avoidance can actually, you know, activate or it can soothe, like you are describing with JJ, it can actually invite the stabilization of security in that relational field when one person is feeling maybe the highs and lows of the of the anxious and the avoidant dips that happen when we feel unsafe, because that is ultimately what I talk about in the book, this practice of bowing at the feet of your coping mechanisms. Bowing at the feet of my coping mechanisms is this practice of of not just resisting and be like, why am I like this?

Shannon AlgeoYou know, why why am I having these anxious responses? But rather understanding, like, the attempt, the internal attempt to self soothe and to find safety, that's what's really happening here. That's what the anxious response style or the avoidant response style is attempting to do. It's attempting to find stability and safety. And so the task of moving towards secure is learning that there are other options.

Shannon AlgeoWe still get to have those foundational coping strategies that kept us safe when we were younger. We don't have to let those go, and we can even bow at the feet of them if we feel so inclined and say thank you. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. But when we are on a healing journey, we're inviting in other possibilities for relationality, for regulation, for action, and for experiencing ourselves. And so I just love to bring that in because we are dynamic human beings.

Shannon AlgeoWe are relational human beings. None of this is our fault, and yet it is our responsibility. Only I can attend to how technology is uniquely impacting me internally and relationally, even as it impacts all of us on a societal level.

Amelia HrubyI appreciate everything you just said, and I really like this phrase, bowing at the feet of our coping mechanisms. It feels very true to me. And I and I like work that, like, sort of destigmatizes coping. We can appreciate the things that help us get to where we are, and we can learn from and even indulge them as we need to. And bringing that in, sort of, I think, steps us toward another huge topic in social media discourse and your book, which is addiction.

Amelia HrubySo a lot of people use an addiction framework for talking about social media. Right? Like, they talk about being addicted to their phone. You even used that language before. Right?

Amelia HrubyI'm addicted to my smartphone. And then they go on to explain it through, like, dopamine loops and sort of, like, neurobiology and hormones and chemicals and things like that in our brains. But what I love about your book is it's not that you don't agree with any of that, but you talk about addiction related to attachment specifically. So could you talk about how attachment theory relates to addiction? How does addiction weave into this?

Shannon AlgeoOh my gosh. Yes. The there is this one particular article that I read in grad school that I wish I that I I essentially wrote this book so so that I would have the opportunity to shout this from the mountain tops. Because I was like, the integration I felt in my being, in my soul, the validation and the hope, There's just so much here around this article by Philip Flores, a psychologist. And the article, I think, is called addiction as an attachment disorder.

Shannon AlgeoAnd, you know, we don't have to use the word disorder because that can be so pathologizing and stigmatizing. But the essence inside of this article is that he perceives in his research, all addictions are misguided attempts to self regulate and meet unmet attachment needs. So when we are struggling with addiction, we're attempting to utilize something outside of ourselves in order to self soothe, in order to access that unavailable care. And if we perceive addictions as an attachment related attempt, then I think we have great hope of meeting the underlying, maybe even the invisible or overlooked needs that are underneath the surface that we can't always see or that maybe get clouded by the addiction itself. It's like especially with technology.

Shannon AlgeoThe average smartphone user is spending the equivalent of sixty one to eighty days per year on their phone. That's two to three months a year, and this is perceived as a societal addiction, as something that's really, like, become normalized. And even calling it an addiction is, like, you know, like, a little edgy. It's like, wait, are you saying I'm addicted to my phone? Like, you know, am I addicted to my phone?

Shannon AlgeoAnd that's a process that each of us can go through. But if we can understand addiction as an attachment related attempt to self regulate because there's this there's this core self, part of the the work of building the self with a capital s, the psychological self, the soul self. In internal family systems, Dick Schwartz talks about self energy with a capital s. So that's actually a developmental task that we are all presented with in our early development is developing a cohesive sense of self. And that is a process that is undergone through relational attachment that teaches us that I can find safety within myself because my attachment figures showed me how.

Shannon AlgeoAnd not only did they show me how, they allowed me to borrow their nervous systems when I felt dysregulated. And through that nervous system coregulation, I know in my body that I can find homeostasis and peace. And so when we develop a habit or a pattern of reaching for a substance, reaching for a drink, reaching for food, reaching for our phones, then we are attempting to fill this hole in the self through the external resource. That's not a bad thing. It might lead to to suffering.

Shannon AlgeoThere might be suffering there in being stuck or fixed in that habit. But if we can actually learn to attend to building that sense of self through real human mirroring? Like, if I'm posting on Instagram and becoming an influencer because I'm so desperate to be seen, like I did in my twenties, by the way. This is my journey. I'm not judging other people.

Shannon AlgeoI am the problem. Hi. So because I know that path, that tempting, seductive path that we were sold, that social media is going to be the pathway to heal our attachment wounds, to finally be seen, to be acknowledged, to be known. But then to realize that the algorithm is not partnering with our attachment needs, it's exploiting them because then we can't stop. We can't stop feeding it.

Shannon AlgeoWe can't stop looking at it. We can't stop gratifying it, pleasing it. And that's where attachment researchers are now Zach Stein from the AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition is talking about how these technologies are actually fracking and hacking the attachment system of human beings, and it is mimicking like a narcissistic toxic relationship in which these companies are exploiting the vulnerabilities of human needs in order to sell what they need to sell in order for them to survive because of how much debt they're in, etcetera. So, anyway, I kinda backed us into the the global kind of societal element of that for a second, but I this is really a a it's a personal relational thing. And I think that that's that is what I keep coming back to is these technologies can only be successful to the degree that we are farming out our relational needs to them.

Shannon AlgeoAnd the more that they are acting as a surrogate attachment figure for us, the less we're engaging in the natural world. And by the natural world, I mean, like, hanging out with our friends too.

Amelia HrubyYeah. The natural world of relationships is just, like, chilling with our friends. Yeah.

Shannon AlgeoIt's like Attention ecology is a group group hang.

Amelia HrubyYes. 100000%. I really appreciate also that you sort of wove AI into there as well because I do think a lot about and I know that Zach Sine talks about this. Like, the way that with social media, we were sort of trying to perhaps get this, like, affirmation, be seen by the algorithm so we could be seen by other people. And I've always said there's this sense for me on social media where, like, that's that's sort of happening in, like, a quasi public.

Amelia HrubyRight? Like, if we're, like, posting and trying to be visible, like, then other people can see us. Even though it's, I think, a poor proxy for human relationality, there can be a humanly relational element there. Right? Like, I talk to people all the time who are like, I met my best friend or my cofounder or my favorite podcast or whatever on social media.

Amelia HrubyRight? So it's not totally devoid of human relationality. It just has a lot of problems that it causes in relationship to that. But with AI now, people are having these intense personal relationships with their chatbots. And, of course, some of those are romantic, people are dating, AI, whatever.

Amelia HrubyBut even just, like, the average user who's, like, I just use it for work. Like, it's still a one on one conversation between you and a chatbot that happens in private with the surveillance of the company who owns the AI model. And I think that this has to be, like, even more detrimental for our attachment. It's that kind of, like, narcissistic mirroring back that you mentioned. Like, we're not even asking to be seen by other humans who at least maybe are real on the other side of the screen.

Amelia HrubyNow we're just being asked to be seen by this, like, conglomerate of words that makes slop, that sort of says what we say to it back to us. That's very, like, uncharitable. But I'm so curious for your take on this. And you have a chapter in the book about using AI without losing your sense of self, which I really appreciated because I have noticed that with social media and AI, people who have done that developmental work of cultivating a strong sense of self do seem to be able to engage with these apps or platforms without perhaps, like, exacerbating their anxious or avoidant attachment. But what are you seeing so far with AI and attachment theory?

Amelia HrubyAny thoughts you have, I'd love to hear.

Shannon AlgeoYes. Okay. So there's two ways that I want to talk about this that are different and both very helpful for, I think, this conversation to feel a little more whole. So one is that developing this sense of self. And I think, you know, we're we are alive human beings, and and our attachment relationships and dynamics and and our attachment styles can, as we've discussed, be ever changing.

Shannon AlgeoWe are alive. We're not fixed. And so we need to all be attending to how these technologies are impacting us in the present here and now, like today, this hour, this week. Maybe something that felt good last week is not feeling good this week and, like, to just attend to that. But for those of us who are either like, for young people who are literally developing minds and developing a sense of self for the first time or for people who've experienced relational rupture and trauma that have led to a fractured sense of self.

Shannon AlgeoI'm thinking about a person who's maybe experienced intimate partner violence, DV, people who've had a toxic long term job relationship with a boss, like, people who have a fractured sense of self maybe because like you described, Amelia, you grew up really with a secure attachment, but something happened that chipped away at that self cohesion and that sense of self. We need to be really careful and intentional and discerning about how AI can be used to outsource that, like, that need to feel confident, to feel affirmed. Affirm me. Say what I think. You know?

Shannon AlgeoLike, oh, this is actually feeling good. Oh, I actually I'm actually feeling good about talking to AI about this because I don't wanna risk the vulnerability of having this conversation with a real person because real people haven't really been showing me lately that they can show up and and see me. Luckily, I I don't feel that way right now, but I have felt that way before. So just tracking what kind of vulnerable state we're in when we're going to AI to fill that, you know, when someone's lacking self cohesion, I've heard supervisors and other clinicians talk about it's kinda like there's this hole in the center of the self. And, you know, maybe it's not that simple where there's just like an empty hole, but, like, maybe something got chipped away at, and there's kinda, like, a vulnerability or a weakness or something that's needing love and and healing balm and care.

Shannon AlgeoAnd so when we are experiencing that vulnerability, the type of care that we reach for, whether it's algorithmic, AI, or human, can make a really big difference in how we're experiencing the repair. And and and I think to make this point actually richer, the second thing that I wanna bring in is from a professor, we're gonna kinda get depth psychological, like, and a bit soulful for a second in in the therapeutic relationship. A professor of mine, his name is Ben Heilville. He's a depth psychotherapist and incredible, clinician. And he just did this training about AI and the inexhaustible other and was exploring what it means for therapy clients to be relating to this inexhaustible other.

Shannon AlgeoIn the therapeutic relationship, something that is meant to get activated is this transference and countertransference. The therapeutic relationship is actually meant to facilitate a, hopefully, reparative attachment experience, which means sometimes we we not not sometimes. It means that we come up against the limitations of our human therapist, just like we came up against the limitations of our human caregivers as children. And when that therapist responds in a way that triggers and activates us, how can we, as adults, attend to the limitations of our therapist, hopefully talk about it, and that is the therapy is like processing rupture and repair. So one thing that I've heard clinicians exploring is what does it mean that that therapy clients are now outsourcing part of the therapeutic process to this inexhaustible large language model.

Shannon AlgeoInexhaustible meaning it is presenting to have no limitations, to meet all needs immediately, to to create this veneer of intimacy, to offer what we want to hear even as no one is there. There's no soul there providing that transmission of care. And in the depth psychological field, there's this idea of intersubjectivity where it's not just Shannon and Amelia here. There's also this third intersubjective energy that Shannon and Amelia co create between our unique constellation of relationality. And so so there's, like, this third entity coming into the therapeutic relationship where it's actually now the therapist, the client or patient, and this other perspective that is in that is often influencing the therapy, especially if clients are talking about really personal material.

Shannon AlgeoSo I I don't know. I just love talking about this. Forgive me if you're listening and this is a little too, like like, psychological geeky here. But I think, like, remembering the richness of human connection. And this isn't just woo woo Jungian.

Shannon AlgeoIt's also deeply interpersonal and neurobiological. If you go into Dan Siegel's work of the resonance and coherence that gets transmitted between people's brain states, where we actually get into a flow of coherence when we are in flow with another person, that is not happening when we are in relationship with AI, but we are being given this sort of plastic surgery kind of phantom shell of it kind of feels good to be told that I'm brilliant. There is that kind of like, oh my god. Am I am I amazing? Because AI kind of like feels like so talking about me like I'm amazing, but is that actually satiating?

Shannon AlgeoAnd I think the answer is no.

Amelia HrubyYeah. The answer is you are amazing, but AI telling you that kinda means nothing.

Shannon AlgeoOh my god. I need to spin around myself, but I'm gonna get tied up in my headphones. I'm just dancing here with

Amelia Hrubyyes. I'm completely tracking with you. I've gotten really into doctor Jacob Hom's work, the therapist from What My Bones Know, the complex PTSD memoir that Stephanie Fu wrote. And I've listened to, like, every single podcast episode he's ever done. And he talks a lot about that very specific relationship between therapist and patient or client and the risks that you have to take, and he talks about them as human relational risks.

Amelia HrubyAnd he's talking about exactly this, that, like, that relationship is one in which we take those risks such as to repair relational harm, and it has to become this, like, opening and practice ground, and there has to be a rupture in that for healing to come through, and there is none of that when we are talking to AI. And, you know, in my opinion, like nothing you or I just said means that people can't, like, use AI to schedule a meeting, but it does mean that you can't use AI to meaningfully heal on a human level. And, you know, here at Off the Grid, we're mostly talking about business and creativity. And so the sort of, like, aspect of AI that comes up a lot is, like, people using AI to generate writing in their business. Like, is AI writing your emails?

Amelia HrubyIs AI writing your book? And I was talking to a friend the other day, and they were sort of just, like, talking about someone they knew who was, like, writing all their emails with AI. And they're like, I just keep getting these emails, and nobody is writing them. And that really stuck with me. I was like, if AI is doing all the writing, all the editing, and all you're doing is, like, putting it into the email client to send it, like, nobody is writing the emails.

Amelia HrubyAnd that is kinda how I feel when people go to AI for psychological support or something that they're calling therapy. I'm like, nobody is saying this to you. Nobody is healing here. Like, it's a nobody.

Shannon AlgeoIt's a nobody. It's a nobody.

Amelia HrubyYeah. And, again, it's like, maybe you can have a conversation like that that does, like, give you a new thought or spark something in your mind. But taking it back to attachment theory, like, that is happening in our nervous system. And a nobody cannot experience or understand that.

Shannon AlgeoJust even on a a simple level, it's important to notice how you feel in your body when you are on AI or if you're if you are using AI. I've noticed I become incredibly dysregulated, flooded, and overwhelmed. When I use AI, the quickening, the the speed, the stimulation, the sympathetic nervous system response that I feel, Like, oh my god. I have so much to read. Oh my gosh.

Shannon AlgeoIs this worth reading? Oh my like, is this even what I want to be reading? Do I need to be prompting it better? Can I trust this? What does it mean if I believe what it's saying?

Shannon AlgeoDo I need to, like, resist what it's saying? Like, I just feel often so overwhelmed, especially like, if I go in and I use Claude for, like, one quick thing, that I usually feel, like, pretty fine about. But if I get into, like, a process, I get lost. I feel really lost. I have trouble tracking what's even happening.

Shannon AlgeoI so just full disclosure, I do not use AI to write emails, and I have a signature in my signature, it says this email was written by me, Shannon Algio. I think it's incredibly important whether you use AI or not to disclose. We need to know who we're talking to and if we're talking to a who. And I think it's incredibly important to have that transparency, and I loved your AI series on off the grid and about having an AI business policy, etcetera, etcetera. So so important.

Shannon AlgeoAnd I it's just so important, like, for me. I'm a writer. I've been a writer since, like, middle school. I was, like, a language arts girly, like, not so great with the maths, but give her some words, and she'll she'll write you

Amelia Hrubya poem. There are poems in your book.

Shannon AlgeoThere are literally poems in my book. I love I I like writing. I like writing. And I feel, especially with, like, book launch energy, I feel the pressure of commerce and capitalism pushing me to go faster and do more, and I feel those temptations of wouldn't it be nice if I just had I mean, I don't really have this thought because I'm opposed to it, but I have the temptation, the the felt sense of wanting the relief of AI to just, like, I've already written so much about this book. I've sent so many emails.

Shannon AlgeoCan you just, like, write me five emails to send to my email list? That would be that would I mean, saying it right now, I'm like, that sounds amazing. And I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that because I I well, back it up a second. We need to I think we must ask what it means to farm out our creativity to another source of of a computer system, a large language model because something I am so passionate about is who I become when I go through the process of writing a book.

Shannon AlgeoThis book, The Power in Your Hands, has been in the works for four years. It has been an initiation. There is blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into these pages, and it and this book changed me. This book was me reckoning with my own addiction to technology. And this book was a proof of concept for myself and my soul that I could still create even I could overcome my attachment to technology to write a 95,000 word book.

Shannon AlgeoI still have poetry in me, and that proof of concept is a proof of self. It's a sense of self that I get to hold now knowing and I get to tell you, Amelia, with full honesty and transparency that I wrote this book, and no one can take that feeling away from me. And that's pride, and that is self cohesion. And so I want everyone who's a creative and an artist or or someone who's even, like, in the process of re identifying as a creative and an artist for the first time to really wonder about this initiation that gets activated when we do the hard work of making something. And I just don't think that that can get taken away from us.

Shannon AlgeoWe can't let it. And I also just don't think that it can happen.

Amelia HrubyYeah. Like the product of anything that a chatbot's gonna write or make for you is not going to be the same as what you would create having gone through that initiation. Like, it's not possible for it to recreate that, and so much is lost when we attempt to do that. But what I'm really appreciating about everything you're saying though is, like, the shared deeply held commitment we have to the creative process, as well as to the self discovery process. And what I can tell is a shared belief that we know that's something that only we can do, and it must be done in relationship with other human beings, plants, animals, living bodies on this planet.

Amelia HrubyRight? And within that, you know, I have chosen to not use social media and not use AI or generative AI, at least for this year. And you are engaging with social media and in limited ways with AI as well. And we can still both hold that commitment and have different behaviors and different relationships to the technology and reckon with the harms of it at the same time. So I just wanna name that too.

Amelia HrubyLike, we're not here saying that if you want to experience secure attachment, you can never open Instagram again, or you can never look at Claude. Right? To me, what it comes back to is, like, once you are aware of the very real harms that these technologies do to our attachment systems and to our creativity, then you can be in that sort of constant conversation with yourself of, what am I going to this for? How is it impacting me? How does my body feel as I use it?

Amelia HrubyAnd in my experience, if you can stay in that conversation and be honest with yourself there, then you can maintain your, like, cohesive self even as you move through the world. And frankly, we all have to do that because we live under white supremacists, patriarchal capitalism. So, like, everyone is having to confront the harms of our systems and try to stay whole in the face of them. But I just want us all to be a little more awake to what the technology itself is doing in that process.

Shannon AlgeoYeah. And I I can't tell you how many times I think about and share about your description of attention ecology through your attention is sacred except on social media, which I have right here on my desk and I recommend to so many people. But the Robin Wall Kimmerer analogy of the ecology that we all exist in, that none of us would be here if if there were not a planet and a Milky Way and a cosmos. And this solar system, and this Earth, and the land that we're on, and and the seasons that we are in relationship with. And that within that is this economy of human care and food and shelter and the ways that in which we take care of one another and in the ways in which we are challenged to.

Shannon AlgeoAnd that from there, when those two are interwoven, we can find that beautiful, like, essential soul purpose, that spiritual, that higher purpose. I really like James Williams. Have you heard of the spotlight, the starlight, and the daylight when talking about attention? So spotlight attention is like, I have the ability to focus. Like, I can direct my focus, or can I direct my focus on what I want to be paying attention to in a given moment?

Shannon AlgeoSo we have spotlight attention. Like, look at Amelia. Don't look outside right now. Then we have this starlight attention, which is this capacity to determine our higher values, our goals, and values kind of like looking at the stars. Like, what is important to me?

Shannon AlgeoWhat do I wanna orient towards? Kinda orienting towards our stars. And then the daylight is the the just the whole picture, the the being able to see, have metacognition, insight, self reflection, and that attending to these different qualities of attention, the spotlight, the starlight, our goals and values, and the daylight, our ability to want what we want to want. Like, the daylight is allow allows us to orient towards, you know, what is this ecosystem that I'm in that even allows for my goals and values to come forward? And I just I love that, like, multidimensional expression of attention because it just feels true that attention is so many things.

Amelia HrubyI think that's such a beautiful framework. And what it's reminding me of now is that there is so much to attend to and tend to in our lives. And the reason that you wrote this book and we had this conversation is not to, like, get us all mired in attachment and be like, oh, no. Am I anxiously attached? Am I violently attached?

Amelia HrubyIs this like, it's not that. It's so that we can have a baseline of knowing some of our patterns and tendencies of reaching toward that sense of cohesion, secure attachment, a clear and whole sense of self. Because from that place, we can attend to so much more. Right? It's like from that place, we can actually do the spotlight, starlight, and daylight with joy and pleasure and in the ways that we desire.

Amelia HrubySo I think this is really beautifully woven together, attachment, addiction, and attention as all part of one ecological conversation. And I'm feeling really just, like, held by everything that we brought in today.

Shannon AlgeoYeah. Me too. I really so appreciate the reflections and the ideas that you've brought here, Amelia. And I my hope is not that this book is, like, includes everything that you need to know and all the solutions for us to break free from tech addiction and five simple steps that I actually wanted to write the opposite of that kind of book. I wanted to write a book that maybe made people feel, like, a little lost at times or, like, one not lost, like, I don't know where I am, but, like, wondering, how does this apply to my life?

Shannon AlgeoWhat do I do with this information? And one of the things that I really bring in, because this is what I did, what was experimentation, playing with little tiny but significant experiences of getting offline and getting into the built world in our lives. And that involves protecting ourselves from digital spaces at times so that we can access our humanity, our deeper psyche and soul, our creative capacity, our the relational satisfaction. I noticed when I do these sacred slow offline fasts, these digital fasts for like forty hours, I am so much more invested in the people I bump into at the cafe. I let myself get into longer conversations.

Shannon AlgeoI am more mystified and delighted by the spontaneity that's happening in my day because the digital world is not my primary focus, and then the actual world, the the real world is interrupting my digital life. Don't you know I'm busy? Don't you know who I am? But rather, when I go offline, I'm just like, here I am, raw dogging in the wild. Like, I'm a whole person.

Shannon AlgeoAnd so that is the essence of the power in your hands is to do experiments, to be inspired, to try new things. Because if we want to change a habit, the key to change a habit is to change a habit. It's a it's a it's a little bit of a catch 22. If we want to rewire our neuropsychology and our neurobiology, then we have to put our bodies in new positions. And for me, and I think of so many people who listen to Off the Grid, that means turning our phones off.

Shannon AlgeoAnd at at times and having this protected time where we can remember rehumanization, we can remember human intelligence and human wisdom that's just waiting there for us in the wings. It's right there.

Amelia HrubyRight there when we turn off our phone. I love this. Well, Shannon, I just, once again, want to say that The Power in Your Hands is an amazing book, and I hope that listeners are, if they have not already purchased it, are now inspired to go buy it. I wanna really emphasize that the first half of the book is this, like, beautiful, brilliant articulation of the problems with technology and the challenges of technology addiction. It really goes deep into attachment theory.

Amelia HrubyAnd then the second half of the book, though, is all about practices to remember ourselves, to reclaim our humanity, to sort of heal these harms we may have experienced. And, you know, I've read most of the social media and tech addiction books out there, and I feel like so many of them just, like, articulate the problem then sort of, like, drop us off at the end with, like, those solutions. We're just like, okay, enjoy.

Shannon AlgeoBest of luck. Yeah. See you

Amelia Hrubyout there. But I love that your book offers so many possibilities and practices and ways to move forward. So folks who are tuned in, go get the book, learn those practices, experiment with a forty hour fast or turning your phone off for a while. And, Shannon, where can people connect with you if they want to stay in touch or learn more about your work?

Shannon AlgeoYeah. Oh, thanks, Amelia, for yeah. Just so wonderful to be connected with you today and, over these last many months and the months to come. So grateful to be in relationship with you and appreciate your perspective and your questions and your presence and your care. And also your modeling of how to do things differently is so inspiring.

Shannon AlgeoIt's like you're such a leader showing us it doesn't have to be the way that we all thought maybe it had to be, and here's how it can be. So that's such an essence of your work, and and it's a real medicine. So thank you. And, yeah, The Power in Your Hands is available everywhere books are sold. And if it's not available where books are sold, if you go into a local bookstore and it's not there and you ask, do you or can you carry The Power in Your Hands by Shannon Algeo, that bookstore will most likely order copies of the book, and then it'll be visible in the real world to more people, which is so amazing.

Shannon AlgeoBut, yeah, it's available. You can go to shannonalgeo.com/book, and there's a bunch of information about the book. There's an excerpt you can read of the whole introduction and some more. There is all of the events coming up. There's some book events that are gonna be rolling out through the rest of 2026 and into 2027.

Shannon AlgeoI'm also in the fall leading three digital liberation programs, five day offline retreats in Ireland and in, Stockbridge, Massachusetts at Kripalu and at the amazing Esalen Institute in Big Sur. And that is such a deep passion of my work is getting to spend a whole five days with people practicing the medicine of all of this in our bodies and in community and in nature. So, yeah, shannonalgeo.com/book. Please get a hardcover copy. I mean, if you feel inspired by this, I really believe that having this book in your library will be of value.

Shannon AlgeoAnd I don't say that lightly, but I really do think it will offer something to you and the ones you love. And I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to get to share with someone who is like a co conspirator and with a community of co conspirators who listen to this show. So thank you.

Amelia HrubyThank you so much, Shannon. And we are hosting a virtual book club for your book, I think, just a week after this comes out. So Yay. Folks, if you want to hear more from Shannon and ask your own questions, you can join us for that on June 10. It'll be happening live on Zoom.

Amelia HrubyThe link is in the show notes to RSVP and join us. You do not have to have read the book to come. You can just arrive, enjoy the conversation, ask questions, and then get the book later when you feel called to because I really think you will, and I'm so happy to have it in my library. So thank you so much listeners for tuning in. Thank you again, Shannon, for being here and joining me in this conversation.

Amelia HrubyAnd until next time, friends, we will see you off the grid.

Speaker 1I kinda hate social media. Feeds on my brain like a bacteria. If you're in my Wikipedia, it'll say, I kinda hate social media. Post a picture of myself. Sacrifices my mental health.

Speaker 1Use your product time to tell. I would Can you share this? Will you wear this? Do you like this? Leave a comment?

Amelia HrubyOkay. That was an abridged version of Social Media by Surfer Boy and Rectangle. To hear the entire song, find Surfer Boy on Spotify or head to the link in the show notes. Thanks so much to them for sharing the song with us, as well as to Melissa Caitlin Carter, who sings our theme song that you hear at the start of every show. I'm your host, Amelia Frooby, and if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will download the free Leading Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.funtoolkit.

Amelia HrubyUntil next time, I will see you Off the Grid. Hi again. Thank you so much for staying tuned in to this episode. I'm truly so grateful when folks listen all the way to the end. And as a thank you gift, I'd like to offer you a few free resources from members of the off the grid community.

Amelia HrubyIn the spring, I led a program called Close Biz Friends, and I help people create resonant free resources, share them strategically on their marketing channels, and then amplify their reach through cross promotion. So these resources all come from folks who participated in Close Biz Friends this year, and I'm thrilled to share them with you today. The first is a seven day email challenge for saving more money from financial coach, Dailene Higgins. I don't know about you, but in this year's economic turmoil, I've been very grateful to have some savings in the bank, and I think I could use some more. So I really appreciated Dailene's seven day email challenge and highly recommend signing up for it today.

Amelia HrubyThe second resource is similar but different, and it comes from Kristi Omdahl. Kristi is a Wayfinder Master Coach and Circle Facilitator, and she's created a toolkit for navigating capitalism and other fuckery. That toolkit includes more than 50 actions that you can take to flip capitalism the bird, as she says, without sacrificing your integrity or values. I really feel like the email challenge for saving more money and the toolkit for navigating capitalism go together, right, because we want to resist these big systems and also we wanna resource ourselves. And so I hope that if you're having any thoughts about money this spring or summer, you will grab both of these resources from my new close biz friends.

Amelia HrubyThanks so much for tuning in to the show, and until next time, you know where to find me Off the Grid.