February 7, 2022 • 33 mins
And it is week number three of the Attachment series! This week Kat is tackling the insecure anxious attachment style in adults. Where does it come from? Are they actually anxious? What are they afraid of? Oh and whyyyyy in the world do they seem to be attracted to people with avoidant attachment styles? These are the questions and Kat has the answers. Listen this week to hear all the juicy details as we wrap up our series!
REMEMBER: If you have questions send them in ASAP Kat will be answering them on the 2/16/22 episode of Couch Talks.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
You Need Therapy. My name is Cat, I am the host,
and today is a good day to have, the day
you need to have. And before we get into anything,
I'm just going to give out the quick disclaimer that yes,
this is a podcast about mental health and therapy that
is hosted by a therapist. However, it does not serve
(00:33):
as therapy. So now that we got that out of
the way in the beginning, we can jump into today's episode,
which we have made it to the third installment of
our little series on attachment theory and attachment styles. And
I'm gonna do one more episode following this based off
of the questions that you guys send to me and
(00:54):
have sent to me about the different styles and all
of that. So we'll do one more Q and a episode,
and then we're going to wrap it all up in
a imperfect weird bout. I know that I mentioned I
would do a disorganized slash fearful avoidant episode, but I
gotta be honest with you because I just need to
be I am not an expert on that style, and
(01:18):
I would feel way more comfortable if I had somebody
that knew more about that style here talking about it
with me. I mean, I know enough that I could
talk about it, we could have an episode on it.
But if I do an episode just on that, I
just would feel more comfortable. As somebody who preaches that
(01:38):
we have to be careful about the information we put
out and how we put it out, and to stay
in line with that and to stay like comfortable with
just like my own feelings, I would like to have
somebody here guiding that content. So maybe we'll do that
in the future. I can't make any promises. What I
can't promise is it's not on the calendar as of now.
And the truth is we really don't have like a
(01:59):
ton of re search on that, and there's tons of
research on what we've been talking about. But it feels
like I will say, for me, in my past, especially
in my training, all of the stuff about disorganized kind
of got glazed over because it was like, oh, it's
so rare, and so we didn't really talk about it,
and so then it became this thing in my head.
(02:19):
I was like, I'll never deal with it. But I
feel like this is just in my head, This is
not research, this is just like my thought. I just
think it's one of those things that is probably more
prevalent than we realize, but there isn't that much research
on it, and we don't put that much attention on it,
so it gets missed. But none of that is that
important today because that's not what we're here to talk about.
(02:41):
Maybe we'll go there someday in the future now, but
we are going to dive head freaking first into is
the anxious slash preoccupied adult attachment style. I know that
you guys out there I have been waiting for this
owner excited, probably have sent this to somebody because I
(03:03):
bet the majority of listeners that have an insecure attachment
style are anxious. And I bet those same listeners were
also excited about the avoidant episode because that describes the
people that they have found themselves dating over and over again,
which we will get there. Don't you worry so little
(03:23):
baby recap here. If you are like this is new
to me, what are you talking about? Pause this episode,
go to two episodes before and listen to the basics.
That's where you're going to find. What is attachment theory,
what are attachment styles? All of that? What is secure?
Why don't you talking about that because we don't. We're
just not going to right now. That felt mean to say,
(03:45):
But go back there and listen to that and then
come back and join us. But baby recap. For those
of you have been through this journey, we're talking about attachment,
which is the biological system in our bodies that keeps
us connected to others. And when your relational and emotional
needs are not met, we take note of that, and
if they continue to not be met, we eventually developed
(04:06):
strategies to shut ourselves off from need or to basically
like sloth style, attached to it. And that is my
very unclinical way of describing this. And in those two
ways that we react or respond to not get your
needs met, we develop these insecure attachment styles. We talked
about avoidant last week, and this week we're going anxious
all of the way now when it comes to anxiously
(04:30):
attached humans. Instead of avoidance, this person is more about preoccupation,
almost like borderline obsession. But I wouldn't technically use that word,
even though I just did use that word. So these
people have been exposed to an inconsistent attunement of their needs,
so an inconsistent experience of having their needs understood and met.
(04:51):
And last week I talked about hope UM and talked
about how the avoidant person just loses hope, like they
don't have the hope. The person that develops an anxious
attachment STUF, they experience a back and forth of hope
and disappointment. It comes, it goes away, It comes, it
goes away. They know that it's possible, but when they
have it, they can't really calm down because they're also
(05:11):
used to it being left like things just aren't consistent.
In fact, they're very well use the word in consistent.
It makes it hard for them to settle down, and
it makes it hard for them to trust. So in kids,
it will look like the mom or whatever primary caregiver
they have is there and then she's gone. She's there
and she's gone, she's present and she's meeting my needs,
(05:32):
and then she's all of a sudden, not why isn't
she here? I don't know. We make up stories that
it's about us because we are egocentric. And along those
same lines, parents typically look inconsistent. Sometimes they're there for them,
sometimes they're not. This can be due to like normal circumstances.
I want to reiterate what I said last week, and
I think I say it all the time, But developing
(05:55):
an insecure attachment style doesn't mean that your caregivers or
your parents are bad to evil people. It could mean
a lot of things. The inconsistency can be due to
a lot of different things. It doesn't mean that they
are bad parents and like don't know how to love
or aren't loving or don't care about you. It could
mean that, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean that.
So it can be a result of the caregiver that
(06:17):
suffered from their own mental health issues. Maybe mom was
in and out of treatment, Maybe parents were sick for
in some other physical way, or maybe they had a
job that was back and forth, or maybe they themselves
had their own anxiety. So what happens is our attachment
system gets activated when we perceive a threat to our connection,
and when we perceive a threat to our connection, we
(06:39):
engage in attachment activating behaviors. Those are called protest behaviors.
If a child feels like they're not getting their needs met,
they'll start doing these protest behaviors, signaling for somebody to
come and attune to their needs. That could be whining, crying, scanning, clinging,
And if this goes well, if the caregiver comes back
and and it tunes to them, they stick with that
(07:01):
secure attachment system. If it doesn't go well, over and
over and over again, they will form an insecure attachment.
So in a normal, healthy adult human you can have
these protest behaviors, they will protest when the parent leads,
But in an insecure, anxious attached person with their experiences,
they can't be calmed down even when those protest behaviors
are met, because it's so inconsistent that they have met
(07:24):
or that they are met. So it looks a little
funny in children in this mirrors and adulthood because they
will go to the parent, but when they go to
the parent, they're still not soothed because they are unsure
that the parent will be they're moving forward. They just
lose a lot of trust in their safety. They can't relax,
and they create this I better hang onto this else
(07:44):
I'm gonna lose you. Clinger experience and and adults, this
is like the stage five Clinger situation, and it gives
a lot of empathy. It lends a lot of empathy
for the stage five clingers because often it is due
to this, and it's not that they are actually crazy.
They are actually taking the experiences they have had and
(08:05):
making sense of them, and it's a way for them
to not feel distress. But it looks crazy from the
outside now. A lot of times, what you'll also find
in these children is that the parents are also fearful
in their parenting styles, and the child can feel that.
So the child can feel the doubt, and then the
child becomes preoccupied with the parents instability. They can't relax,
(08:27):
and now they will be taken care of because they
can tell that the parents are unsure and things are
up in the air. And last week I used the
example of the in an avoidant attached person like their
parents like don't really know what's going on to that
with them. So like this kid is the kind of
kid who would look out in the crowd to see
if dad would show up, and he gets let down again.
(08:48):
But then sometimes he's there, and sometimes he's not in
somebody's there or he says he's going to be there,
and then he doesn't show up again. And then if
he is there, he keeps looking. If he's like a
baseball game, like every time he runs out to the field,
he looks in the crowd again to make sure Dad's
still still there. It's not like, oh, I know Dad
is here, versus an avoidance not looking out in the
crowd because Dad probably doesn't even know I have a game.
(09:15):
Now in adults, let's talk about adults, because that's what
we're talking about today. This translates to the kind of person.
And I hate saying this, but I alluded to it
like a minute ago. Translate to the kind of person. Also,
this sounds unprofessional, so just sit with me in this.
They're the kind of person that outsiders say acts crazy crazy,
(09:35):
very clinical term. However, I will say the same person
that calls someone else crazy, and it's like, oh, they're
acting crazy, they look crazy, they're crazy quite possibly maybe
doing the same things to themselves. They just lack self awareness,
so we might want to not call people crazy. What
is cool about anxiously attached individuals is they have like
(09:56):
a sixth sense. They can tell something that is off
before anybody else. They are hyper vigilant. They can scan
and identify when things seem off, and it would be
an awesome superpower to have. But what they lack as
emotional regulation, so they lack the emotional regulation connected to
the fear that might appear when they notice that something
(10:17):
is off, so they react instead of respond to this awfulness,
and they do this way too quickly, and they make
gross assumptions. And that's one of the main issues with
somebody who has an anxious attachment style, because it's not
that they're wrong all the time. They might be right
that something's off, but they make assumptions based off of
that that a lot of times are not true, and
(10:38):
then they act in a way that while they're trying
to pull in closeness, pushes people away and romantic relationships.
It can look, why aren't they texting me? Over analyzing
every single text and interaction, constantly seeking a way to
be calmed down, but nothing sticks because something else is
always popping up because humans are imperfect and sometimes we
just like miss things, and they read way too much
(11:00):
into the missing and they do a lot of information seeking.
So here's the truth? Where only as needy as our
unmet needs. So some of an anxious attachment system has
an overactive attachment system, But it doesn't mean that their
need is not appropriate. Maybe their needs aren't being met
so then they over activate this attachment system to get connection,
(11:23):
they seek soothing through others. Why an avoidant person is
going to seek soothing through themselves, and then a secure
person uses a nice little combination. And what's really hard
and frustrating is that someone who has an overactivated attachment
system uses behaviors that we do call activating strategies in
order to find a maintained attachment. Yet it actually does
the opposite. Like I said earlier, So while an avoidant
(11:44):
person engages in deactivating strategies in order to detach from
their attachment system, and anxious person is going to engage
in activating strategies in order to gain attachment. And activating
strategies are thoughts or feelings that attempt to bring closeness,
and I think of them as like magical thinking. He
or she can change or making excuses for behavior, minimizing
(12:06):
situations or red flags. So when the threat to connection
is perceived, the anxiously attached human being will engage in
these activating strategies. Again, thoughts or feelings that are created
in an attempt to re establish connection or closeness when
it feels like there's a threat to the loss of it,
and then once the person responds to those activating strategies,
(12:27):
they'll re establish their security and they can go back
to being their normal selves, but not far long. There's
a constant loop and anxiously attached human beings. So let's
talk about some examples of activating strategies. And I'm going
to pull these from that same book that we talked
about last time, Attached, So the authors Heller and Living
(12:48):
list these as some basics examples, So thinking about your
partner constantly and having a difficult time concentrating on anything else,
remembering only their good qualities, ignoring red flags you know,
um and putting them on a pedestal, so making them
um higher than you and under estimating your worthiness even
(13:11):
but like your talents and abilities, and then overestimating there
like they're they're greater than they really are. It's almost
like they elevate to another dimension, like they're less human
than the rest of us. And then having this anxious
feeling that only goes away when you're in contact with them.
And this is another thing that somebody with an anxious
attachment system lives in, this idea that this is like
(13:33):
the only chance you have to make it. And while
somebody with an avoidant attachment is always looking for somebody better,
the anxious person is like, this is the one this
is my one chance that my soulmate. I have to
make it work, like having a scarcity mindset, and then
like minimizing like I said, like saying things like all
couples have problems, everybody has problems, or having the idea
(13:54):
that they can change, you can almost like wishfully convince
yourself that you are seeing little changes in them when
like nothing is actually changing. Now. Earlier I mentioned in
kids that protest behaviors and those being a way to
re establish connection to a parent, and that protest behavior
is not the issue. It's the amount of protest behaviors
(14:14):
and if we can be calmed after the protest behaviors,
so it is something that lets the caregiver no, I'm
not okay, I need you, and then the caregiver can
respond to that. Now an adults, protest behavior has become
kind of the same thing, an attempt to display up
unhappiness and signal this idea that I need you, so
the partner can respond to that. And depending on what
(14:35):
kind of protest behaviors, some can be more healthy than others.
And what I want you to know, and that is
that just a protest behavior in itself is not unhealthier pathological.
But when you have an anxious attachment, it becomes constant
and all consuming because they can't be soothed. So it's
so frequent that their protest behaviors, which are attempts to
(14:56):
re establish connection, end up driving their partners away. So
the same people Helen Leaving have a good list of
these as well. So and you guys are gonna be like,
oh I do that. You're gonna do some of these,
but it's the amount and if these things actually soothe
you for an appropriate amount of time, calling, texting, waiting
for phone calls, driving by where they are, or waiting
(15:19):
for them outside of places to to run into them.
Protest behaviors, keeping score, so paying attention to like how
long it took for them to call back, or how
many times they texted you first or you texted them first.
This one withdrawing, I like to say, and I gotta say,
I got this from my therapist. You can't withdraw your
way to connection. So withdrawing a protest behavior might be
(15:40):
like turning your back to what your partner, or saying
I'm fine and then really as an attempt for them
to come and ask what's wrong, but you're actually not.
It's a little backwards that is really backwards, and the
backfires often threatening to leave, So making threats an attempt
for them to say no, don't leave me. Or manipulation
in the four of acting busy, ignoring phone calls like
(16:02):
I said, like to withdraw my way to connection it
doesn't actually work, or trying to make them feel jealous. Right,
So that could be a bunch of different ways, whether
it's dropping hints about other people, commenting or liking on
your Instagram post, saying that an X reached out to you,
or that somebody did express interest to you or something
(16:22):
like that. And again, what somebody with an anxious attachment
system doesn't realize is that the questions that they're constantly
asking in their behaviors, that they're constantly behaving in or
using their attempts to pull somebody in, what they're doing
is they're pushing people away and in their heads like
I got to hold on as tight as possible because
(16:43):
if this person leaves, I don't know when they're come back.
But what somebody is feeling is suffocated, especially someone with
an avoidant attachment, which is very often who these people
end up dating. Why you ask, let's talk about that.
So avoidant and anxiously attached humans, people with an avoidant
attachment style or an anxious attachment style mirror each other's
(17:06):
needs and that's why they are drawn to each other.
Dating someone with the insecure attachment makes your attachment more
solid in its own. Insecurity, you deepen the lesson you've
already learned, and that's why you're attracted to them. We
go to what we know. The avoidant believes people are
too needy. The anxious believes people will leave me. The
avoidant leave people. The anxious overseas through others and appears
(17:30):
to needy. So they're like the perfect match, but the
most imperfect match at the same time. And I'm going
to take this moment. I feel like I'm about to
give an ad like a p s A. I'm going
to take a moment and insert a little conversation talk
chit chat about why I often express that I do
not like most will use the word most Dating and
(17:53):
Relationship Coaches. If you are an avid listener of the podcast,
I'm sure you're like, yes, we know this cat. Well,
I don't know how much I've really talked about why,
so let's get into it. Sometimes, dating advice basically advocates
for you to date an avoidant partner. And I don't
know if you've heard of this book, but a long
time ago, my friend recommended me to read this book
(18:13):
called Why Men Love Bitches. I think I was in
my mid early twenties. I was in my early twenties,
so I don't know how popular this book is now.
Ten years ago, I guess it was like a hot item,
and so my friend recommended me read it. I was like, yes,
I want a relationship, let me get this book. And
I got a couple of chapters in probably and there
was some part about like something about cooking dinner, and
(18:33):
I don't even know what the book said, but I
was like, this is so screwed up. I really wanted
to say something else, but this is so screwed up.
So I stopped reading it and I gave the book
to Goodwill when I moved two years ago. I don't
know why I still had it. That's a whole other too,
But anyway, I got a couple of chapters in and
I was like, this is like physically and emotionally disturbing,
(18:57):
and for one, this book was telling me to get
a partner, I had to basically not be myself and
too well, actually I don't even think I need a
number two. I could come up with one, but I
mean that was enough, right, Like, no way in hell
am I going to find a partner by turning into
this mean and calculated human that is like every move
(19:18):
I make is a way to manipulate this person into
liking me. It just feels so disgusting and wrong. And
dating advice and coaches they often give you tips and
rules to use to help you get the guy or girl,
But I need people to hear this. By showing up
and pretending to be someone that you're not, you're allowing
someone else to be with you based on their terms,
not yours. You give away all your power, and you
(19:41):
give away all of the ability for you to get
your needs met. And you're basically basing a relationship on
meeting somebody else's needs. And I will give the caveat that.
Sure there might be good dating advice, and sure there
might be good dating and relationship coaches out there. But
I don't know many of them. I haven't seen many
of them, and and I just think we need to
(20:01):
be aware of this because we all want help. And
I think the people that follow that advice and follow
that stuff, they're not bad people and you're not looking
for something bad, but it can be really dangerous. And
I just have a heart for like not causing more
harm than good. And you might be saying cat like
it works. Sometimes people get in relationships using these tips
and like, totally, yeah, it could happen. There's exceptions to rules,
(20:24):
for sure. Life is not black and white. But if
the way you got someone, I don't know why I
said it, like that got someone, see, it's like, well
it's a game, like I captured them. Anyway, if the
way you ended up in a relationship was through playing
a game and being someone that you're not, it's eventually
going to backfire. And I find it's going to backfire
(20:45):
in two main ways. One, when you start to show
up as yourself, it's going to screw up the system
that you've created, and your avoidant partner is going to
leave you and you lose right, Like all of a sudden,
you show up with needs and you start like actually
texting them when you want, They're gonna like, who is
this person that actually wants to talk to me? I
gotta this doesn't work for me. What worked for me
is when you were distant and actually like you didn't
like me, so I felt safe, so I liked you,
(21:06):
Or you pretend to be someone else and you lose
because isn't that miserable in itself? If you never start
to show up as yourself, then like, then you're just
losing all the time. You're never going to end up
getting your needs met here, and that deepens this belief
that like, your needs are too much, that you're too needy,
and you're not too needy. Let me remind you that
you're as needy as your unmet needs. And this goes
(21:28):
back to how we've been talking about the fact that
both insecure attachment systems styles avoidance and anxious are afraid
of the same thing, rejection and abandonment. They are just
going about their attempt to avoid this in different ways.
The anxious attachment style human they're hyperactivation there. Why haven't
(21:52):
you texted me? Is an exaggeration of a very normal
response of needing love and connection. This is one of
those like activating strategies in a head that might turn
into a protest behavior of like texting them seventy five
times or not texting them at all at all to
see if they ever respond to them. These people are
not aware that they're pushing people away because their attempts
(22:12):
to create connection comes out and looks desperate and looks
like desperation. Really, these people are saying inside their system,
I feel so abandoned and rejected. But they don't know
how to just be honest and ask for their needs,
especially because the bitch book is telling us that to
get a relationship, we're supposed to act like we don't
care about the other person. What the hell is that?
It sounds crazy The way to get a relationship and
(22:35):
the way to find connections to act like you don't
care and you don't want it. You don't find a
healthy relationship by making your partner feel like you don't
care about them. Like, think about that for a second,
and some of you are like, yeah, we know, we
don't like this either, Like, but then we have people
telling us that that's the way. It's not the way.
So what these people really need to self soothing behaviors right,
because they think I have to have you, want to
(22:56):
have to have you now to be soothed, and they're
not soothed when they do have you because in waiting
for you to leave now, we talked about what kind
of client this would be last week in an avoidance,
So what kind of therapy client is this? What kind
of therapy client is the anxious attachment style? And first
of all, they are the most common kind. They are
the ones that are more likely to come to therapy
and to come to therapy on their own. They're also
(23:18):
the client that loves therapy, and they ask a lot
of questions like what do I do? Or what should
I say? They want the therapist to tell them everything.
They don't trust themselves, and you know how to avoidant
like the therapist like me, I become like an annoyance
or a bother to them. The therapist doesn't become a
bother to them because they are afraid that they bother
(23:39):
the therapist. So they ask questions like are you going
to fire me if I don't do blank? Or they
always want to know do you like me? They really
care about what the therapist thinks about them. It's also
hard for them to believe that we don't think they're
crazy like that, the anxiously attached person gets sent the
message more like you're crazy, you're acting crazy, you're crazy.
So then they think they're crazy and they sometime him
(24:00):
know some of the behaviors make them feel crazy, while
the avoidance think everyone else in their life is crazy.
And when it really boils down to all of this,
we're dealing with fear here. Remember our attachment system is
highly activated by emotions, specifically fear, and this person has
an over activated, unregulated fear of being alone. They think
I won't be okay if I get left. And there's
(24:21):
also the scarcity belief here. I talked about this earlier,
the scarcity belief that there aren't enough people. I won't
find anyone else, while avoidance think there has to be
someone better out there for me. They just assume you're
not going to come back. They need constant connection, constant attention,
constant validation. And there's people that assume if I don't
hold this together, it's going to fall apart. So how
should we encourage these people to move towards security and
(24:45):
one through secure relationships? But what we want to encourage
somebody with an anxious attachment system. Now this is very difficult.
It's not as easy as it sounds coming out of
my mouth, but we want to encourage them to move
from vigilant to the outside. It's stuff like what everybody
else like, scanning whatever else needs. So you then change
your behaviors based on those things in order to not
(25:06):
get people to walk away or leave. You're walking on
eggshells to vigilant inside. So focusing more on what I need,
what I want, and asking for that in an appropriate way.
We need these people to be a little bit more
selfish rather than self less, because the selflessness doesn't actually
get your needs met. And that's part of the reason
we're constantly in the cycle of trying to get our
(25:27):
needs met. And they need to hear like, you don't
have to be all easy breezy, because it is the
attempt to be easy breezy that makes you feel a
little crazy because you're not easy breezy. You have needs.
You're as needy as your unmet need. And it's our
job to realize that when we are having this like
overactive attachment, we're having an exaggerated reaction. Just because you're
(25:51):
feeling something doesn't mean something has to be done right.
So when I have that sixth sense and I'm like
something's off, doesn't mean I have to act. The world
is probably safer than you feel it is. Somebody with
an avoidant attachment style is more likely to go on
dates looking for ways to make the other person like
them before they even decide if they like that person.
And I want to flip flop that. So we have
(26:11):
to start asking ourselves, what are we attracted to in
this person? How is this person going to be able
to show up for me? How isn't this person going
to be able to show up for me? And is
that a deal breaker? Okay, if you start to see
red flags when you're dating, or if you're in a
friendship or even at a job, the best thing you
can do for your attachment system and to move towards
security is to back away. And if you want some
(26:31):
help learning how to spot an avoidantly attached person, go
to the episode from last week. But these people again
go back to those activating strategies and we minimize things,
and we use magical thinking, and we stay in these
relationships that deepen our insecurity and deepen our insecure attachment.
The best thing you can do in order to find
(26:54):
is successful and caring and loving and healthy relationship is
to actually just be yourself. It's one can't meet your needs.
A securely attached person can say like, Okay, this sucks,
but this isn't gonna work. And I think that comes
from this idea that they don't have the idea that
there is only one person out there. And they also
don't have the idea that there's perfection either. So the
(27:15):
best thing you can do to find a secure, healthy relationship, loving,
carey relationship is be yourself. So in secure attachment, as
someone can't meet your needs, that person can say this sucks,
but this isn't going to work out because this person
knows and believes that there isn't just one person out
there that that will love them. They have more of
(27:36):
an abundance mindset when it comes to relationships, not that
there's like a million people and they can have a
million partners. This goes more to it the avoid but
they believe that there isn't just one out there that's
gonna ever love them or give them attention. They believe
that connection is available to them. What I want somebody
with an anxious attachment style to hear today is that
(27:57):
not everyone's relationship and relational needs are compatible with yours,
and that's okay. That doesn't mean that you're not worthy
of love and connection. That is just a sentence and
we can put a period at the end of it.
It doesn't mean you're too needy, doesn't mean that you
are too unneedy. It just means that your relationship needs
(28:18):
are not compatible with that person, and there will be
somebody else. So I want to go back to this
idea that I'm sure I've said in one of these episodes,
but the most important thing in re establishing a secure
attachment system are the relationships that we can develop moving forward,
and the idea that it's not so much what happened
(28:39):
to you. It matters, and it's important to look at
what we do with what happened to us. So it
doesn't matter what happened to you. It matters what you
do with that experience. It's not whether or not there
is trauma, it's if that trauma has been processed. Because
to an extent, we all have some kind of trauma,
and relational trauma especially, So it's what do I do
with these past experience inances that have shown me X
(29:01):
Do I make them the rule or do I look
at the other experiences that I might have. Because to
grow and deepen our sense of security, we heal in relationships.
We have to be in relationships to shift our attachment
to a more secure attachment something that I love. I
really can't remember if I said this last week, so
I'm going to say it again. But it's a quote
(29:22):
from Dan Siegel, who wrote this book Mind Site, which
is really good and talks about attachment and that in
the neurobiology of all of it. But he said, if
you can make sense of your attachment wound, you have
a better chance of not continuing the narrative. We are
meaning making people, so we create internal narratives. In order
to create change, we first must find awareness of the problem.
(29:43):
This is cat talking. That's what we're doing today. Back
to the quote. Then create a new understanding of what happened,
and then new experiences can create a new narrative. Having
difficult experiences early in life is less important than whether
we found a way to make sense of how those
experiences have affected us. Making sense is a sore of
strength and resilience. Making sense is essential to our well
(30:03):
being and happiness. And I think that's so important because
what we're doing, and I say this a lot like
awareness is awesome. But now that we have the awareness,
we have to do something with it. We have to
create new narratives. We have to create new experiences and
match those experiences with new narratives. And a lot of
times what we do when we have an anxious attachment
system is we're in a new experience, but we're matching
(30:26):
it with an old narrative. And that is a recipe
for a disaster. Now, I think it's worth being said
for talking about adult romantic relationships. I mean, I guess
that this really does go to any kind of relationships.
But what I do want to say is that healthy,
secure relationships are going to end up feeling very boring,
(30:50):
very boring, because you don't have to engage in all
of this like chaos, and your template or your baseline
for normalcy is way off or health, your baseline for
health is way off. So someone with a secure relationship
is going to have a baseline for health that makes sense,
and somebody with an anxious attachment your baseline for health
(31:11):
is like where a secure person's chaos would be so
chaos feels normal and healthy to you. It's what you know, right,
you move to what you know, You go to what
you know, So relationships that are healthy are gonna feel boring.
You don't have to engage in all of this. So
you're like, do they even like me? I don't even
like them? This is boring, This is not exciting. I
need more excitement my relationship. There just wasn't any passion.
(31:33):
And then you get in this like anxious avoidant trap
where the anxious person and the avoidant person are constantly
going back. If you're one of the people are like,
why do I keep finding these people? Is because you
go towards what feels normal, and what feels normal actually
is chaos, and what feels healthy or what is healthy
and what is calm feels very boring. So it takes
two willing individuals to create actual healthy intimacy, and you
(31:55):
have to find all individual And if there's a willing
individual in front of you, they're not going to be
playing all of these games. So you're not going to
be jumping over hoops, and your arousal template isn't going
to be as activated because your arousal template is way
off So if I could leave you guys with anything,
if you're like, I want healthy attachment, how do I
know how to find it? One clear indicator is that
(32:17):
you might be bored. And I know you guys don't
love that, but it is. It is what it is.
Is that what the kids say. That's what I'm saying.
It is what it is. You might have to be
bored for a little bit, let yourself attach and then
see what it feels like. So here we are. That
is where I'm going to wrap up this episode. That's
where I'm gonna wrap up the adult anxious attachment style episode.
(32:39):
I hope that this gave you some good insight that
you needed. And if you have questions, remember send them
to Catherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com and
I will try to answer those on Wednesday, So send
them right away. If you're listening to this later in
the week, you can still send your questions. I'm just
going to do an actual couch Talks episode on attachment
(33:00):
on Wednesday. Have the day you guys need to have.
I will talk to you guys on Wednesday
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
You Need Therapy. My name is Cat, I am the host,
and today is a good day to have, the day
you need to have. And before we get into anything,
I'm just going to give out the quick disclaimer that yes,
this is a podcast about mental health and therapy that
is hosted by a therapist. However, it does not serve
(00:33):
as therapy. So now that we got that out of
the way in the beginning, we can jump into today's episode,
which we have made it to the third installment of
our little series on attachment theory and attachment styles. And
I'm gonna do one more episode following this based off
of the questions that you guys send to me and
(00:54):
have sent to me about the different styles and all
of that. So we'll do one more Q and a episode,
and then we're going to wrap it all up in
a imperfect weird bout. I know that I mentioned I
would do a disorganized slash fearful avoidant episode, but I
gotta be honest with you because I just need to
be I am not an expert on that style, and
(01:18):
I would feel way more comfortable if I had somebody
that knew more about that style here talking about it
with me. I mean, I know enough that I could
talk about it, we could have an episode on it.
But if I do an episode just on that, I
just would feel more comfortable. As somebody who preaches that
(01:38):
we have to be careful about the information we put
out and how we put it out, and to stay
in line with that and to stay like comfortable with
just like my own feelings, I would like to have
somebody here guiding that content. So maybe we'll do that
in the future. I can't make any promises. What I
can't promise is it's not on the calendar as of now.
And the truth is we really don't have like a
(01:59):
ton of re search on that, and there's tons of
research on what we've been talking about. But it feels
like I will say, for me, in my past, especially
in my training, all of the stuff about disorganized kind
of got glazed over because it was like, oh, it's
so rare, and so we didn't really talk about it,
and so then it became this thing in my head.
(02:19):
I was like, I'll never deal with it. But I
feel like this is just in my head, This is
not research, this is just like my thought. I just
think it's one of those things that is probably more
prevalent than we realize, but there isn't that much research
on it, and we don't put that much attention on it,
so it gets missed. But none of that is that
important today because that's not what we're here to talk about.
(02:41):
Maybe we'll go there someday in the future now, but
we are going to dive head freaking first into is
the anxious slash preoccupied adult attachment style. I know that
you guys out there I have been waiting for this
owner excited, probably have sent this to somebody because I
(03:03):
bet the majority of listeners that have an insecure attachment
style are anxious. And I bet those same listeners were
also excited about the avoidant episode because that describes the
people that they have found themselves dating over and over again,
which we will get there. Don't you worry so little
(03:23):
baby recap here. If you are like this is new
to me, what are you talking about? Pause this episode,
go to two episodes before and listen to the basics.
That's where you're going to find. What is attachment theory,
what are attachment styles? All of that? What is secure?
Why don't you talking about that because we don't. We're
just not going to right now. That felt mean to say,
(03:45):
But go back there and listen to that and then
come back and join us. But baby recap. For those
of you have been through this journey, we're talking about attachment,
which is the biological system in our bodies that keeps
us connected to others. And when your relational and emotional
needs are not met, we take note of that, and
if they continue to not be met, we eventually developed
(04:06):
strategies to shut ourselves off from need or to basically
like sloth style, attached to it. And that is my
very unclinical way of describing this. And in those two
ways that we react or respond to not get your
needs met, we develop these insecure attachment styles. We talked
about avoidant last week, and this week we're going anxious
all of the way now when it comes to anxiously
(04:30):
attached humans. Instead of avoidance, this person is more about preoccupation,
almost like borderline obsession. But I wouldn't technically use that word,
even though I just did use that word. So these
people have been exposed to an inconsistent attunement of their needs,
so an inconsistent experience of having their needs understood and met.
(04:51):
And last week I talked about hope UM and talked
about how the avoidant person just loses hope, like they
don't have the hope. The person that develops an anxious
attachment STUF, they experience a back and forth of hope
and disappointment. It comes, it goes away, It comes, it
goes away. They know that it's possible, but when they
have it, they can't really calm down because they're also
(05:11):
used to it being left like things just aren't consistent.
In fact, they're very well use the word in consistent.
It makes it hard for them to settle down, and
it makes it hard for them to trust. So in kids,
it will look like the mom or whatever primary caregiver
they have is there and then she's gone. She's there
and she's gone, she's present and she's meeting my needs,
(05:32):
and then she's all of a sudden, not why isn't
she here? I don't know. We make up stories that
it's about us because we are egocentric. And along those
same lines, parents typically look inconsistent. Sometimes they're there for them,
sometimes they're not. This can be due to like normal circumstances.
I want to reiterate what I said last week, and
I think I say it all the time, But developing
(05:55):
an insecure attachment style doesn't mean that your caregivers or
your parents are bad to evil people. It could mean
a lot of things. The inconsistency can be due to
a lot of different things. It doesn't mean that they
are bad parents and like don't know how to love
or aren't loving or don't care about you. It could
mean that, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean that.
So it can be a result of the caregiver that
(06:17):
suffered from their own mental health issues. Maybe mom was
in and out of treatment, Maybe parents were sick for
in some other physical way, or maybe they had a
job that was back and forth, or maybe they themselves
had their own anxiety. So what happens is our attachment
system gets activated when we perceive a threat to our connection,
and when we perceive a threat to our connection, we
(06:39):
engage in attachment activating behaviors. Those are called protest behaviors.
If a child feels like they're not getting their needs met,
they'll start doing these protest behaviors, signaling for somebody to
come and attune to their needs. That could be whining, crying, scanning, clinging,
And if this goes well, if the caregiver comes back
and and it tunes to them, they stick with that
(07:01):
secure attachment system. If it doesn't go well, over and
over and over again, they will form an insecure attachment.
So in a normal, healthy adult human you can have
these protest behaviors, they will protest when the parent leads,
But in an insecure, anxious attached person with their experiences,
they can't be calmed down even when those protest behaviors
are met, because it's so inconsistent that they have met
(07:24):
or that they are met. So it looks a little
funny in children in this mirrors and adulthood because they
will go to the parent, but when they go to
the parent, they're still not soothed because they are unsure
that the parent will be they're moving forward. They just
lose a lot of trust in their safety. They can't relax,
and they create this I better hang onto this else
(07:44):
I'm gonna lose you. Clinger experience and and adults, this
is like the stage five Clinger situation, and it gives
a lot of empathy. It lends a lot of empathy
for the stage five clingers because often it is due
to this, and it's not that they are actually crazy.
They are actually taking the experiences they have had and
(08:05):
making sense of them, and it's a way for them
to not feel distress. But it looks crazy from the
outside now. A lot of times, what you'll also find
in these children is that the parents are also fearful
in their parenting styles, and the child can feel that.
So the child can feel the doubt, and then the
child becomes preoccupied with the parents instability. They can't relax,
(08:27):
and now they will be taken care of because they
can tell that the parents are unsure and things are
up in the air. And last week I used the
example of the in an avoidant attached person like their
parents like don't really know what's going on to that
with them. So like this kid is the kind of
kid who would look out in the crowd to see
if dad would show up, and he gets let down again.
(08:48):
But then sometimes he's there, and sometimes he's not in
somebody's there or he says he's going to be there,
and then he doesn't show up again. And then if
he is there, he keeps looking. If he's like a
baseball game, like every time he runs out to the field,
he looks in the crowd again to make sure Dad's
still still there. It's not like, oh, I know Dad
is here, versus an avoidance not looking out in the
crowd because Dad probably doesn't even know I have a game.
(09:15):
Now in adults, let's talk about adults, because that's what
we're talking about today. This translates to the kind of person.
And I hate saying this, but I alluded to it
like a minute ago. Translate to the kind of person. Also,
this sounds unprofessional, so just sit with me in this.
They're the kind of person that outsiders say acts crazy crazy,
(09:35):
very clinical term. However, I will say the same person
that calls someone else crazy, and it's like, oh, they're
acting crazy, they look crazy, they're crazy quite possibly maybe
doing the same things to themselves. They just lack self awareness,
so we might want to not call people crazy. What
is cool about anxiously attached individuals is they have like
(09:56):
a sixth sense. They can tell something that is off
before anybody else. They are hyper vigilant. They can scan
and identify when things seem off, and it would be
an awesome superpower to have. But what they lack as
emotional regulation, so they lack the emotional regulation connected to
the fear that might appear when they notice that something
(10:17):
is off, so they react instead of respond to this awfulness,
and they do this way too quickly, and they make
gross assumptions. And that's one of the main issues with
somebody who has an anxious attachment style, because it's not
that they're wrong all the time. They might be right
that something's off, but they make assumptions based off of
that that a lot of times are not true, and
(10:38):
then they act in a way that while they're trying
to pull in closeness, pushes people away and romantic relationships.
It can look, why aren't they texting me? Over analyzing
every single text and interaction, constantly seeking a way to
be calmed down, but nothing sticks because something else is
always popping up because humans are imperfect and sometimes we
just like miss things, and they read way too much
(11:00):
into the missing and they do a lot of information seeking.
So here's the truth? Where only as needy as our
unmet needs. So some of an anxious attachment system has
an overactive attachment system, But it doesn't mean that their
need is not appropriate. Maybe their needs aren't being met
so then they over activate this attachment system to get connection,
(11:23):
they seek soothing through others. Why an avoidant person is
going to seek soothing through themselves, and then a secure
person uses a nice little combination. And what's really hard
and frustrating is that someone who has an overactivated attachment
system uses behaviors that we do call activating strategies in
order to find a maintained attachment. Yet it actually does
the opposite. Like I said earlier, So while an avoidant
(11:44):
person engages in deactivating strategies in order to detach from
their attachment system, and anxious person is going to engage
in activating strategies in order to gain attachment. And activating
strategies are thoughts or feelings that attempt to bring closeness,
and I think of them as like magical thinking. He
or she can change or making excuses for behavior, minimizing
(12:06):
situations or red flags. So when the threat to connection
is perceived, the anxiously attached human being will engage in
these activating strategies. Again, thoughts or feelings that are created
in an attempt to re establish connection or closeness when
it feels like there's a threat to the loss of it,
and then once the person responds to those activating strategies,
(12:27):
they'll re establish their security and they can go back
to being their normal selves, but not far long. There's
a constant loop and anxiously attached human beings. So let's
talk about some examples of activating strategies. And I'm going
to pull these from that same book that we talked
about last time, Attached, So the authors Heller and Living
(12:48):
list these as some basics examples, So thinking about your
partner constantly and having a difficult time concentrating on anything else,
remembering only their good qualities, ignoring red flags you know,
um and putting them on a pedestal, so making them
um higher than you and under estimating your worthiness even
(13:11):
but like your talents and abilities, and then overestimating there
like they're they're greater than they really are. It's almost
like they elevate to another dimension, like they're less human
than the rest of us. And then having this anxious
feeling that only goes away when you're in contact with them.
And this is another thing that somebody with an anxious
attachment system lives in, this idea that this is like
(13:33):
the only chance you have to make it. And while
somebody with an avoidant attachment is always looking for somebody better,
the anxious person is like, this is the one this
is my one chance that my soulmate. I have to
make it work, like having a scarcity mindset, and then
like minimizing like I said, like saying things like all
couples have problems, everybody has problems, or having the idea
(13:54):
that they can change, you can almost like wishfully convince
yourself that you are seeing little changes in them when
like nothing is actually changing. Now. Earlier I mentioned in
kids that protest behaviors and those being a way to
re establish connection to a parent, and that protest behavior
is not the issue. It's the amount of protest behaviors
(14:14):
and if we can be calmed after the protest behaviors,
so it is something that lets the caregiver no, I'm
not okay, I need you, and then the caregiver can
respond to that. Now an adults, protest behavior has become
kind of the same thing, an attempt to display up
unhappiness and signal this idea that I need you, so
the partner can respond to that. And depending on what
(14:35):
kind of protest behaviors, some can be more healthy than others.
And what I want you to know, and that is
that just a protest behavior in itself is not unhealthier pathological.
But when you have an anxious attachment, it becomes constant
and all consuming because they can't be soothed. So it's
so frequent that their protest behaviors, which are attempts to
(14:56):
re establish connection, end up driving their partners away. So
the same people Helen Leaving have a good list of
these as well. So and you guys are gonna be like,
oh I do that. You're gonna do some of these,
but it's the amount and if these things actually soothe
you for an appropriate amount of time, calling, texting, waiting
for phone calls, driving by where they are, or waiting
(15:19):
for them outside of places to to run into them.
Protest behaviors, keeping score, so paying attention to like how
long it took for them to call back, or how
many times they texted you first or you texted them first.
This one withdrawing, I like to say, and I gotta say,
I got this from my therapist. You can't withdraw your
way to connection. So withdrawing a protest behavior might be
(15:40):
like turning your back to what your partner, or saying
I'm fine and then really as an attempt for them
to come and ask what's wrong, but you're actually not.
It's a little backwards that is really backwards, and the
backfires often threatening to leave, So making threats an attempt
for them to say no, don't leave me. Or manipulation
in the four of acting busy, ignoring phone calls like
(16:02):
I said, like to withdraw my way to connection it
doesn't actually work, or trying to make them feel jealous. Right,
So that could be a bunch of different ways, whether
it's dropping hints about other people, commenting or liking on
your Instagram post, saying that an X reached out to you,
or that somebody did express interest to you or something
(16:22):
like that. And again, what somebody with an anxious attachment
system doesn't realize is that the questions that they're constantly
asking in their behaviors, that they're constantly behaving in or
using their attempts to pull somebody in, what they're doing
is they're pushing people away and in their heads like
I got to hold on as tight as possible because
(16:43):
if this person leaves, I don't know when they're come back.
But what somebody is feeling is suffocated, especially someone with
an avoidant attachment, which is very often who these people
end up dating. Why you ask, let's talk about that.
So avoidant and anxiously attached humans, people with an avoidant
attachment style or an anxious attachment style mirror each other's
(17:06):
needs and that's why they are drawn to each other.
Dating someone with the insecure attachment makes your attachment more
solid in its own. Insecurity, you deepen the lesson you've
already learned, and that's why you're attracted to them. We
go to what we know. The avoidant believes people are
too needy. The anxious believes people will leave me. The
avoidant leave people. The anxious overseas through others and appears
(17:30):
to needy. So they're like the perfect match, but the
most imperfect match at the same time. And I'm going
to take this moment. I feel like I'm about to
give an ad like a p s A. I'm going
to take a moment and insert a little conversation talk
chit chat about why I often express that I do
not like most will use the word most Dating and
(17:53):
Relationship Coaches. If you are an avid listener of the podcast,
I'm sure you're like, yes, we know this cat. Well,
I don't know how much I've really talked about why,
so let's get into it. Sometimes, dating advice basically advocates
for you to date an avoidant partner. And I don't
know if you've heard of this book, but a long
time ago, my friend recommended me to read this book
(18:13):
called Why Men Love Bitches. I think I was in
my mid early twenties. I was in my early twenties,
so I don't know how popular this book is now.
Ten years ago, I guess it was like a hot item,
and so my friend recommended me read it. I was like, yes,
I want a relationship, let me get this book. And
I got a couple of chapters in probably and there
was some part about like something about cooking dinner, and
(18:33):
I don't even know what the book said, but I
was like, this is so screwed up. I really wanted
to say something else, but this is so screwed up.
So I stopped reading it and I gave the book
to Goodwill when I moved two years ago. I don't
know why I still had it. That's a whole other too,
But anyway, I got a couple of chapters in and
I was like, this is like physically and emotionally disturbing,
(18:57):
and for one, this book was telling me to get
a partner, I had to basically not be myself and
too well, actually I don't even think I need a
number two. I could come up with one, but I
mean that was enough, right, Like, no way in hell
am I going to find a partner by turning into
this mean and calculated human that is like every move
(19:18):
I make is a way to manipulate this person into
liking me. It just feels so disgusting and wrong. And
dating advice and coaches they often give you tips and
rules to use to help you get the guy or girl,
But I need people to hear this. By showing up
and pretending to be someone that you're not, you're allowing
someone else to be with you based on their terms,
not yours. You give away all your power, and you
(19:41):
give away all of the ability for you to get
your needs met. And you're basically basing a relationship on
meeting somebody else's needs. And I will give the caveat that.
Sure there might be good dating advice, and sure there
might be good dating and relationship coaches out there. But
I don't know many of them. I haven't seen many
of them, and and I just think we need to
(20:01):
be aware of this because we all want help. And
I think the people that follow that advice and follow
that stuff, they're not bad people and you're not looking
for something bad, but it can be really dangerous. And
I just have a heart for like not causing more
harm than good. And you might be saying cat like
it works. Sometimes people get in relationships using these tips
and like, totally, yeah, it could happen. There's exceptions to rules,
(20:24):
for sure. Life is not black and white. But if
the way you got someone, I don't know why I
said it, like that got someone, see, it's like, well
it's a game, like I captured them. Anyway, if the
way you ended up in a relationship was through playing
a game and being someone that you're not, it's eventually
going to backfire. And I find it's going to backfire
(20:45):
in two main ways. One, when you start to show
up as yourself, it's going to screw up the system
that you've created, and your avoidant partner is going to
leave you and you lose right, Like all of a sudden,
you show up with needs and you start like actually
texting them when you want, They're gonna like, who is
this person that actually wants to talk to me? I
gotta this doesn't work for me. What worked for me
is when you were distant and actually like you didn't
like me, so I felt safe, so I liked you,
(21:06):
Or you pretend to be someone else and you lose
because isn't that miserable in itself? If you never start
to show up as yourself, then like, then you're just
losing all the time. You're never going to end up
getting your needs met here, and that deepens this belief
that like, your needs are too much, that you're too needy,
and you're not too needy. Let me remind you that
you're as needy as your unmet needs. And this goes
(21:28):
back to how we've been talking about the fact that
both insecure attachment systems styles avoidance and anxious are afraid
of the same thing, rejection and abandonment. They are just
going about their attempt to avoid this in different ways.
The anxious attachment style human they're hyperactivation there. Why haven't
(21:52):
you texted me? Is an exaggeration of a very normal
response of needing love and connection. This is one of
those like activating strategies in a head that might turn
into a protest behavior of like texting them seventy five
times or not texting them at all at all to
see if they ever respond to them. These people are
not aware that they're pushing people away because their attempts
(22:12):
to create connection comes out and looks desperate and looks
like desperation. Really, these people are saying inside their system,
I feel so abandoned and rejected. But they don't know
how to just be honest and ask for their needs,
especially because the bitch book is telling us that to
get a relationship, we're supposed to act like we don't
care about the other person. What the hell is that?
It sounds crazy The way to get a relationship and
(22:35):
the way to find connections to act like you don't
care and you don't want it. You don't find a
healthy relationship by making your partner feel like you don't
care about them. Like, think about that for a second,
and some of you are like, yeah, we know, we
don't like this either, Like, but then we have people
telling us that that's the way. It's not the way.
So what these people really need to self soothing behaviors right,
because they think I have to have you, want to
(22:56):
have to have you now to be soothed, and they're
not soothed when they do have you because in waiting
for you to leave now, we talked about what kind
of client this would be last week in an avoidance,
So what kind of therapy client is this? What kind
of therapy client is the anxious attachment style? And first
of all, they are the most common kind. They are
the ones that are more likely to come to therapy
and to come to therapy on their own. They're also
(23:18):
the client that loves therapy, and they ask a lot
of questions like what do I do? Or what should
I say? They want the therapist to tell them everything.
They don't trust themselves, and you know how to avoidant
like the therapist like me, I become like an annoyance
or a bother to them. The therapist doesn't become a
bother to them because they are afraid that they bother
(23:39):
the therapist. So they ask questions like are you going
to fire me if I don't do blank? Or they
always want to know do you like me? They really
care about what the therapist thinks about them. It's also
hard for them to believe that we don't think they're
crazy like that, the anxiously attached person gets sent the
message more like you're crazy, you're acting crazy, you're crazy.
So then they think they're crazy and they sometime him
(24:00):
know some of the behaviors make them feel crazy, while
the avoidance think everyone else in their life is crazy.
And when it really boils down to all of this,
we're dealing with fear here. Remember our attachment system is
highly activated by emotions, specifically fear, and this person has
an over activated, unregulated fear of being alone. They think
I won't be okay if I get left. And there's
(24:21):
also the scarcity belief here. I talked about this earlier,
the scarcity belief that there aren't enough people. I won't
find anyone else, while avoidance think there has to be
someone better out there for me. They just assume you're
not going to come back. They need constant connection, constant attention,
constant validation. And there's people that assume if I don't
hold this together, it's going to fall apart. So how
should we encourage these people to move towards security and
(24:45):
one through secure relationships? But what we want to encourage
somebody with an anxious attachment system. Now this is very difficult.
It's not as easy as it sounds coming out of
my mouth, but we want to encourage them to move
from vigilant to the outside. It's stuff like what everybody
else like, scanning whatever else needs. So you then change
your behaviors based on those things in order to not
(25:06):
get people to walk away or leave. You're walking on
eggshells to vigilant inside. So focusing more on what I need,
what I want, and asking for that in an appropriate way.
We need these people to be a little bit more
selfish rather than self less, because the selflessness doesn't actually
get your needs met. And that's part of the reason
we're constantly in the cycle of trying to get our
(25:27):
needs met. And they need to hear like, you don't
have to be all easy breezy, because it is the
attempt to be easy breezy that makes you feel a
little crazy because you're not easy breezy. You have needs.
You're as needy as your unmet need. And it's our
job to realize that when we are having this like
overactive attachment, we're having an exaggerated reaction. Just because you're
(25:51):
feeling something doesn't mean something has to be done right.
So when I have that sixth sense and I'm like
something's off, doesn't mean I have to act. The world
is probably safer than you feel it is. Somebody with
an avoidant attachment style is more likely to go on
dates looking for ways to make the other person like
them before they even decide if they like that person.
And I want to flip flop that. So we have
(26:11):
to start asking ourselves, what are we attracted to in
this person? How is this person going to be able
to show up for me? How isn't this person going
to be able to show up for me? And is
that a deal breaker? Okay, if you start to see
red flags when you're dating, or if you're in a
friendship or even at a job, the best thing you
can do for your attachment system and to move towards
security is to back away. And if you want some
(26:31):
help learning how to spot an avoidantly attached person, go
to the episode from last week. But these people again
go back to those activating strategies and we minimize things,
and we use magical thinking, and we stay in these
relationships that deepen our insecurity and deepen our insecure attachment.
The best thing you can do in order to find
(26:54):
is successful and caring and loving and healthy relationship is
to actually just be yourself. It's one can't meet your needs.
A securely attached person can say like, Okay, this sucks,
but this isn't gonna work. And I think that comes
from this idea that they don't have the idea that
there is only one person out there. And they also
don't have the idea that there's perfection either. So the
(27:15):
best thing you can do to find a secure, healthy relationship, loving,
carey relationship is be yourself. So in secure attachment, as
someone can't meet your needs, that person can say this sucks,
but this isn't going to work out because this person
knows and believes that there isn't just one person out
there that that will love them. They have more of
(27:36):
an abundance mindset when it comes to relationships, not that
there's like a million people and they can have a
million partners. This goes more to it the avoid but
they believe that there isn't just one out there that's
gonna ever love them or give them attention. They believe
that connection is available to them. What I want somebody
with an anxious attachment style to hear today is that
(27:57):
not everyone's relationship and relational needs are compatible with yours,
and that's okay. That doesn't mean that you're not worthy
of love and connection. That is just a sentence and
we can put a period at the end of it.
It doesn't mean you're too needy, doesn't mean that you
are too unneedy. It just means that your relationship needs
(28:18):
are not compatible with that person, and there will be
somebody else. So I want to go back to this
idea that I'm sure I've said in one of these episodes,
but the most important thing in re establishing a secure
attachment system are the relationships that we can develop moving forward,
and the idea that it's not so much what happened
(28:39):
to you. It matters, and it's important to look at
what we do with what happened to us. So it
doesn't matter what happened to you. It matters what you
do with that experience. It's not whether or not there
is trauma, it's if that trauma has been processed. Because
to an extent, we all have some kind of trauma,
and relational trauma especially, So it's what do I do
with these past experience inances that have shown me X
(29:01):
Do I make them the rule or do I look
at the other experiences that I might have. Because to
grow and deepen our sense of security, we heal in relationships.
We have to be in relationships to shift our attachment
to a more secure attachment something that I love. I
really can't remember if I said this last week, so
I'm going to say it again. But it's a quote
(29:22):
from Dan Siegel, who wrote this book Mind Site, which
is really good and talks about attachment and that in
the neurobiology of all of it. But he said, if
you can make sense of your attachment wound, you have
a better chance of not continuing the narrative. We are
meaning making people, so we create internal narratives. In order
to create change, we first must find awareness of the problem.
(29:43):
This is cat talking. That's what we're doing today. Back
to the quote. Then create a new understanding of what happened,
and then new experiences can create a new narrative. Having
difficult experiences early in life is less important than whether
we found a way to make sense of how those
experiences have affected us. Making sense is a sore of
strength and resilience. Making sense is essential to our well
(30:03):
being and happiness. And I think that's so important because
what we're doing, and I say this a lot like
awareness is awesome. But now that we have the awareness,
we have to do something with it. We have to
create new narratives. We have to create new experiences and
match those experiences with new narratives. And a lot of
times what we do when we have an anxious attachment
system is we're in a new experience, but we're matching
(30:26):
it with an old narrative. And that is a recipe
for a disaster. Now, I think it's worth being said
for talking about adult romantic relationships. I mean, I guess
that this really does go to any kind of relationships.
But what I do want to say is that healthy,
secure relationships are going to end up feeling very boring,
(30:50):
very boring, because you don't have to engage in all
of this like chaos, and your template or your baseline
for normalcy is way off or health, your baseline for
health is way off. So someone with a secure relationship
is going to have a baseline for health that makes sense,
and somebody with an anxious attachment your baseline for health
(31:11):
is like where a secure person's chaos would be so
chaos feels normal and healthy to you. It's what you know, right,
you move to what you know, You go to what
you know, So relationships that are healthy are gonna feel boring.
You don't have to engage in all of this. So
you're like, do they even like me? I don't even
like them? This is boring, This is not exciting. I
need more excitement my relationship. There just wasn't any passion.
(31:33):
And then you get in this like anxious avoidant trap
where the anxious person and the avoidant person are constantly
going back. If you're one of the people are like,
why do I keep finding these people? Is because you
go towards what feels normal, and what feels normal actually
is chaos, and what feels healthy or what is healthy
and what is calm feels very boring. So it takes
two willing individuals to create actual healthy intimacy, and you
(31:55):
have to find all individual And if there's a willing
individual in front of you, they're not going to be
playing all of these games. So you're not going to
be jumping over hoops, and your arousal template isn't going
to be as activated because your arousal template is way
off So if I could leave you guys with anything,
if you're like, I want healthy attachment, how do I
know how to find it? One clear indicator is that
(32:17):
you might be bored. And I know you guys don't
love that, but it is. It is what it is.
Is that what the kids say. That's what I'm saying.
It is what it is. You might have to be
bored for a little bit, let yourself attach and then
see what it feels like. So here we are. That
is where I'm going to wrap up this episode. That's
where I'm gonna wrap up the adult anxious attachment style episode.
(32:39):
I hope that this gave you some good insight that
you needed. And if you have questions, remember send them
to Catherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com and
I will try to answer those on Wednesday, So send
them right away. If you're listening to this later in
the week, you can still send your questions. I'm just
going to do an actual couch Talks episode on attachment
(33:00):
on Wednesday. Have the day you guys need to have.
I will talk to you guys on Wednesday
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