Hello everyone, and welcome back to Needy No More, the podcast
dedicated to healing the anxious attachment style.
I'm your host, anxious attachment style coach, and
author Chris Ratcliffe. I've helped thousands of people
across 6 continents to end the cycle of anxious attachment
through my books, workshops, digital downloads, and coaching
program. I'm excited to carry on that
mission here in the podcast, sharing tools and techniques,
principles and practices for you to explore on your journey to
growing more secure. Welcome back to the show,
everyone. We are in episode 5 and today is
going to be a little bit different.
So far, we've been exploring the cycle of anxious attachment and
the different steps within it. We've covered trauma,
abandonment, and codependency, and we've yet to cover nervous
system dysregulation, stress aversion, and addiction.
We will cover the latter 3 topics in future episodes, but I
thought it might be fun to take a little bit of a break from
going through the cycle and to do AQ and a episode.
So that is exactly what we're going to be doing today.
I'm going to start off by answering the top five questions
that I typically hear from everyone I've spoken to all
around the world. And from there, I've got 25
audience questions from my Facebook group, from Instagram,
from TikTok, from every corner of my audience online that I'm
going to go through 1 by 1 and answer.
My hope is that this will touch on some topics that are
currently top of mind for you and that you'll be able to learn
from the answers that I provide for the other folks who
submitted. Keep in mind, remember, you can
always comment on the podcast episodes on Spotify, and you can
always e-mail me at me@crackliff.com.
OK. So let's get into it.
The very first question that I typically hear from folks is
where does anxious attachment come from?
This is a bit of a complex question because it does vary
from person to person. But as we've been exploring in
the show so far, there are specific experiences that occur
that cause us to become conditioned to expect our needs
to be unmet or to be met inconsistently, and those are
trauma, abandonment and codependency.
Now, the result of those experiences are nervous system
dysregulation, stress aversion, and addiction, and we've yet to
explore those in the show so far, but we will in future
episodes. All this is to say that you're
anxious attachment style does not come out of nowhere.
You experienced moments of disconnection, invalidation,
abuse, neglect, varying forms of trauma that made you believe
that you were too much or not good enough, that your needs
didn't matter. And that causes us to grow
anxious in our relationships. Like I've mentioned before on
the podcast, many folks can trace their anxious attachment
style back to childhood. But that's not everyone.
Sometimes folks have a relatively stable childhood.
I think it's rare for folks to make it out of childhood
completely unscathed. But that said, you can make it
out feeling like most of your needs are going to be met.
Like the people in your life are stable and reliable, and you can
count on them. And that is good enough to
create a secure attachment style.
But when that doesn't happen, you can see why it would cause
someone to grow up and think that people are always going to
leave or people are going to mistreat them.
I know I felt this way. I've been very upfront about my
trauma in all aspects of what I'm putting out there into the
world in my books, in this podcast, in my coaching
sessions, in workshops. And I've talked about
experiences I've had with my mom, my dad, my sister,
etcetera. But it's important to also know
that anxious attachment doesn't always go back to childhood.
Sometimes you can experience instability, infidelity, and
invalidation in your adult relationships, and that can
cause you to develop an anxious attachment style.
But one of the powerful aspects of attachment theory is
recognizing that the experiences that you have been through have
caused you to be conditioned. So in other words, you have gone
through experiences that made you feel a certain way, and
because of that, you're now showing up anxiously in your
relationships. It doesn't just come out of
nowhere. It can be one relationship that
really sets you back from a security standpoint, that makes
you grow more insecure. So that's the answer to the very
first question, where does this come from?
It comes from experiences with folks who didn't meet your needs
most of the time, who you felt like maybe weren't really
plugged in or attuned to how you were feeling, who didn't
prioritize you, who you feel didn't choose you.
So you've got to look back at your relational history and see
where does this come from? What did I experience that
caused my nervous system to anticipate this in the future?
The second of the most common questions that I typically get
from folks all around the world is why do I feel this way?
The short answer is that you feel anxious in your
relationships because your nervous system has learned that
that is a strategy to try to get your needs met.
That you need to lean in, That you need to try harder.
That you need to be the one to bridge the gap with the other
person. That is learned And like we were
just discussing, The more experiences you go through that
cause you to feel like you need to bridge that gap, that you
need to work harder and over exert yourself, that you need to
abandon yourself in order to get your needs met, then of course
that will cause you to feel disjointed, disconnected and
dysregulated. A lot of this boils down to what
your nervous system learns in terms of a relational model, in
terms of expectations of getting your needs met or not from the
people in your life. And so you feel this way because
of your experiences in relationships.
And keep in mind, this can come out at work, it can come out
with friends, it can come out with family, but usually it's
coming out with a romantic partner or while dating or in a
relationship because romantic relationships are where we feel
most vulnerable and most exposed.
That's where we're most sensitive to having our needs
met or not. So you feel this way because
your nervous system has learned that it needs to try to protect
you by anticipating being hyper vigilant, being hypersensitive.
It is learned. And the beauty of all this is
that because it is learned, you can unlearn it.
And of course that is a process. The next most common question
that I get from folks is how do I fix myself?
And for those who are listening instead of watching, I used air
quotes and I'm using air quotes when talking about the word
fixing. Because you do not need to fix
yourself. You are not broken.
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it feels it needs
to in order to protect you. Trying to protect yourself is
not a bad thing. Your nervous system is designed
for that. So from a short term standpoint,
it will protect you and it will keep you safe, but long term it
will prevent you from connecting with others.
So it actually becomes the very thing that prevents you from
getting the kind of dynamic or building the kind of
relationship that can actually help you to heal.
So while you don't need to fix yourself, you might need to
unlearn protective patterns, conditioning that you picked up
along the way, coping mechanisms and machinery that we build
around ourselves to try to prevent ourselves from
experiencing pain and from getting hurt again in the
future. But you cannot experience
connection without vulnerability.
So when you don't allow yourself to be vulnerable and you don't
put yourself out there, you actually prevent yourself from
experiencing the very connection that you need in order to heal.
So you don't need to fix yourself, but you might need to
heal from some of your traumatic experiences, to come to terms
with what has happened, to make peace with your past, which is a
process that you'll go through continually again and again as
it comes up. You might need to strengthen and
maybe even develop a relationship with your inner
child or your previous self. If you feel like this stems from
your relationships in adulthood, you could always do that with
your previous self. Inner child work is just
previous self work. You're sitting with parts of
yourself that didn't get to express themselves and didn't
have their feelings heard, that weren't held with a sense of
care and comfort and consistency and compassion.
So those are some of the ways that you can help to heal, and
we'll continue addressing how to heal the anxious attachment
style in future episodes of the show.
But for now, please know that you are not a car.
You're not broken down on the side of the highway.
You are a human being and you might be more sensitive than
most. That is definitely true of folks
who are on the more anxious side of things, who are on the
anxious side of the attachment spectrum.
That is OK, but that does not mean that you require fixing.
You're not broken. Your system is doing what it
feels it needs to do, so you got to work with that energy and
meet it at that level. But telling yourself that you're
broken or that you need fixing only reinforces shame, which
keeps you locked in anxious attachment because it requires
an external balancing force because you feel yourself to not
be worthy enough internally. The next most common question
that I get is will I always be like this?
The short answer is no, you will not.
Does that mean that even as you address your protective patterns
and work to heal, that you won't experience anxiety?
That you won't get triggered? No, of course it doesn't mean
that. What it means is that you'll
learn to move through it more quickly.
Through learning to regulate your nervous system.
You will learn to be present with your feelings, to not
project them onto other people, to approach them from a grounded
place and ask for what you need. And that means that you'll move
through those feelings of anxiety and doubt and discomfort
and worry and fear more quickly. It does not prevent you from
experiencing any uncomfortable emotions, because as humans were
meant to experience the full breadth of the human experience
and of all of the emotions, whether they're comfortable or
not. So you're not always going to
feel this way. No, you'll have plenty of
experiences of connection and joy and happiness and peace and
stability, And from time to time, yes, you will get anxious,
but it's always how you address your feelings that matters.
Secure attachers still feel all of those things.
It's what they do with the feelings that makes them more
secure. They know they won't last.
They know that they'll have their needs met in one form or
another, even if it means they need to diversify away from this
relationship or go to someone else.
It means that they recognize that the needs themselves are
not the issue, that they are not a burden, and that feelings,
again, won't last. That you're going to move
through them. Because emotions aren't
permanent. You're not always feeling one
thing in perpetuity. In fact, we're usually
experiencing bursts of emotions, many emotions, simultaneously.
Which means that you can learn to lean into other aspects of
your experience. So you can learn to see that you
can hold grief and gratitude simultaneously.
You can hold discomfort and safety simultaneously.
So with that said, no, you're not going to always feel the way
that you feel right now. If you are in a state of anxious
attachment, it means that you'll learn to move more quickly
through it and that you even recognize that that movement and
that cycling, that ebbing and flowing is a part of the
process. That it doesn't mean you're
taking a step back or that there's something wrong with
you. The 5th of the top five most
common questions that I get is how long will it take me to heal
this? Please hear me clearly when I
say this. Healing is not a function of
time. Many of my coaching clients have
made more progress in three months with me than they have in
three years, either on their own or with a therapist or both.
And that is because healing is a function of safety.
If it is unsafe relationships that wound us, it is safe
relationships that help us to heal.
And I am one of those folks. For the people that I work with,
I see them. I get it because I have been
there and I never judge or criticize them.
So they feel very heard, very seen, very understood.
And that means that because they're held in such a
comfortable way, because they feel those things, because they
feel so safe, they can make a lot of progress and right over a
lot of that pain from the past time is a concept of the
rational brain. Emotions are not housed in the
rational brain, and in fact themselves are irrational.
So you've got to meet yourself in your emotional brain.
And This is why when many people try to journal or talk their way
out of their traumas or through their healing, it doesn't work
because you can only make so much progress that way.
It doesn't mean those techniques are ineffective, but they're
only going to get you so far. You have to learn to work with
the emotional brain, which doesn't operate by the rules of
logic or the thinking mind. So you've got to operate
differently. You have to allow yourself to
just experience it, and you have to allow your emotions to unfold
as they will. And sharing and opening up to
others can really help, especially when they can hold
this with you. They can't take away the
discomfort, but they can be present with you when you
experience it, and that helps tremendously.
I always say that there's three aspects to healing.
There's time, intentional action, and love and support.
Those are the three aspects that we need.
Time is not the only thing that caused you to get hurt.
Time can certainly help from a healing standpoint, but there's
no set limit. And sometimes you have to remind
yourself that it is the process of going through the emotions
that is actually healing. It is the process of learning to
open up and express yourself, to lean on the people that you do
feel safe with, that helps you to move more quickly through the
experience. But healing is a process, it is
a journey, and it is a lifelong one.
It's important to remember too, that healing is not linear.
It is actually a spiral upwards, not a line upwards.
That means that you're going to be on different sides of that
mountain, which means you'll revisit similar lessons.
That you need to reintegrate at a deeper level that is
absolutely natural doesn't mean you're taking a step back.
It means you're deepening your understanding of the techniques
and of the principles. That's a big one to remember.
So healing is not a function of time.
That said, you will need some time and from person to person
that will vary, but you'll reach a point, a tipping point, where
you do feel more confident, more solid, more peaceful, more
secure in your relationships, and you'll move more quickly
through the discomfort, through the experience of your anxiety.
OK, so those are the top five questions that I typically get
from folks. Where does anxious attachment
come from? Why do I feel this way?
How do I fix myself? Will I always be like this and
how long does it take to heal? I'm going to now transition into
answering audience questions and the very first one is I'm
currently in meshed and I can't end it.
I have self abandoned and know it's irrational.
What do I do? Well First things first here.
You can end it, you just don't want to and that is OK.
Many of us repeat dynamics emotionally from our past.
We're trying to heal from experiences that we've been
through previously and we're projecting that onto the person
in front of us so you can end it.
I know when you're enmeshed, it feels like that person is your
end all be all. I know it also feels like they
are your entire life. They are not.
In order to address this, you need to take some of the energy
that you are allocating to that person and instead allocate it
to yourself. If you know you're doing
something that is irrational, you have to recognize that you
are playing a role in this and you need to take accountability
for how you're spending your time and energy, which are
finite resources. So do things that are
replenishing to you. Make plans with friends, go to
that workout class, journal, meditate, do cold exposure.
Take some of the time away from that person.
I know it's scary to do this because you might be afraid of
losing them, but what's even worse is losing yourself and
then the relationship crumbling under the weight of the pressure
that you're putting on them. We explored this in last week's
episode on how a fear of abandonment is a self fulfilling
prophecy. Do not abandon yourself.
You can leave if you need to, if you know it's unhealthy, if you
don't feel like the other person is aligned with you in the ways
that you need. And it can be deeply healing for
an anxious attacher to actually leave and end the relationship
first, because many of us are accustomed to being left.
And it can be really empowering to own the fact that the
relationship just is not what we need, even if it is really
painful to let go. Next question, can I heal and
still be enmeshed? Yes, both of those things can
happen concurrently. They're not mutually exclusive.
You can be working on your healing and you can still
experience enmeshment in your relationships sometimes.
Again, we need to go through mistakes multiple times in order
to learn the lesson that it's trying to teach us from those
experiences. I know that's true for me.
I've been meshed with folks more times than I would ever care to
admit. But you need to recognize that
if you're still repeating patterns, there's probably some
more healing work that you need to do in order to better be
boundaried. When you're approaching
relationships and to recognize that enmeshment is a function of
codependency that is driven by self abandonment.
Remember from the codependency episode, When I read that
chapter from Needy No More, the book and the quote from that
chapter that really stands out to me that I always say is
codependency is the vehicle, enmeshment is the engine, self
abandonment is the fuel. So you have to stop abandoning
yourself, at least more often than not.
It's not about absolutes. OK?
The more you can incrementally learn to take back some of that
time, take back some of your power, the better off you will
be. You can experience degrees of
enmeshment and it can still be healthy.
It doesn't mean that bonding with other people is an issue.
And so it's important to recognize that yes, you can
still do these two things. You can still be healing, and
you can still be experiencing enmeshment.
These might be indications, though, of where you need to
focus your future efforts from a healing standpoint.
Next question I trust my partner but not his ex.
How to deal? At the end of the day, you have
no control over what other people do.
That includes both your partner and their ex.
By trusting your partner, you have to trust that how they're
interacting with that person is in a way that would not
embarrass you or put your relationship at risk.
As I remind folks, the opposite of of uncertainty is not
certainty, it is self trust. You have to remind yourself that
if and when you were to find out that something sketchy is going
on with the two of them, that you'll address it head on and if
necessary, you'll leave the relationship if it violates your
trust enough and if it violates your safety enough.
How you deal is focusing on what you can control, not on what you
can't. So what you can do is learn to
be with the feelings of jealousy and frustration and insecurity
that come up to ask your partner to hug you, to hold you, to
spend more time with you. Remember, we've talked about
asking for more of what you want.
These are good examples of that. So you don't try to control the
relationship that your partner has with their ex.
You can express that it makes you uncomfortable, you can
express that you understand why they might want to communicate
with them, but you don't try to control that.
I know it's hard, but you've got to learn to detach in those
circumstances. It's the only thing that you can
do. Next question, is it common for
an anxious attacher to push their partner away when being
pursued for sexual intimacy if needs are not met?
If so, what can be done to prevent or change this?
So yes, it is common for an anxious attacher to engage in
protest behavior and to push away the very connection that it
is that we desire. So in this circumstance, you
might feel like your needs are not being met, so you're
rejecting your partner because you feel they're rejecting you.
This is a recipe for disaster. In order to address this, you
have to recognize that you're preventing the very connection
that it is that you desire. Learn to be with the feelings of
not having your needs met and talk to your partner about what
might be getting in the way. But do not reject them or push
them away when they're trying to connect with you on a physical
level because that's going to cause more disconnection in the
relationship. And that's not going to make
them want to meet your needs any more than they already are
because they're going to feel inadequate as a result of that.
So you have to learn to address things head on, to go to your
partner and say, this is what I'm hoping for from you.
This is what I'd like more of. I'd like to talk about ways that
we can negotiate how these needs are met that work for both of
us. But you don't reject them or
just not have sex with them, OK. You might not be willing to in
that moment. You might not be in the mood, in
which case that's a genuine thing to say to them.
Like, hey, you know, I'm not really feeling up to this
because I'm feeling a little bit disconnected.
And I want to address some things in our connections.
And I'm hoping that you might be amenable to that.
It's important to address things directly.
Be direct. The more direct that you are,
the more secure you are. Next one, How do you heal after
breaking up with an extremely avoidant partner?
It feels like my all time high anxiety levels were hit.
You deal with a breakup in the same way that you do any other
breakup. You've got to lean into the
process of grieving the connection.
That means grieving the moments of joy and camaraderie and
companionship that you had with them, the times that were
really, really good. And it also means grieving the
experiences of disconnection and invalidation and not having your
needs met and maybe tolerating more than you should have.
You've also got to grieve the future that you were working
towards, that you built in your mind, and you have to learn to
let go of the idea that you created about this person in
your mind. That is a big part of the
grieving process, especially because anxious avoidant
partnerships tend to start off so electrically, so intensely.
Many of us are working to recreate those sparks at the
beginning that we had with that person, and learning and feeling
like we cannot recreate that is really hard and like we lost
something truly special is really, really challenging.
Please know there are many people with whom you will
connect. Not all of those people know how
to sustain a healthy relationship.
They might not have learned how to set boundaries or how to
communicate in an effective manner or how to hold space for
other people and their feelings. Focus on learning what you can
from the connection, how you can show up in a more secure and
healthy fashion in the future. Make a list of what you're proud
of from the relationship because it's not all bad.
What did you experience with this person that was good for
you? What qualities did they possess
that you're hoping your next partner might possess?
Someone who is avoidant is going to trigger you at a very deep
level and it hits at some core wounds that folks like us have.
It brings up all kinds of abandonment related trauma, and
that's really tough. So you have to validate for
yourself that it is OK that you're feeling so intensely at
the end of this part of your relationship with this person.
And remember that relationships don't end, they just take
different forms. You're still relating to them in
your mind. You're still mulling over the
relationship from the past. You're still trying to process
letting go of the future you were working towards.
Those are all natural parts of the grieving process.
I'm doing an upcoming episode on breakup so we'll address this
more in the future. Next question, I started a
relationship after divorce with great communication.
Over a year into it and I'm seeing so many avoidant
tendencies with them. Is my anxious attachment
contributing to this? I have done lots of work.
Now it feels like I'm heading backwards fast.
Look, relationships are a dynamic.
You're feeding off of their energy and they're feeding off
of yours. So it works both ways.
So yes, you're anxious tendencies might be contributing
to some of the distance that you might be feeling with that
person. The only way you're going to
know is if you sit down with them and address it directly to
talk about how you have been feeling, to explain to them that
you're not going anywhere, that you want to work on it together,
that you're open to hearing their feedback as well.
If you happen to be noticing that they're dismissing your
feelings, that they're invalidating you, you might have
to stand up and advocate for yourself and remind them, as I
encourage my clients to do all the time in their relationships,
that that other person is also complicit in creating a dynamic
in which they might not want to participate.
Remind yourself, your teammates, they are not your enemy.
You can work together to address this, but you're going to need
to be direct. And, and if after multiple times
of trying to address this and trying to advocate for your
needs and expressing your appreciation for the ways that
they're showing up for you and asking them for more of what you
do desire and talking, you know, about any blockages that might
be present, then you're going to have to realize that you're
either going to have to accept them for who they are or accept
that they might not be the person that you need to be in a
relationship with. Do not try to recreate the
dynamic from the beginning of the relationship.
You cannot recover that, but you can renegotiate things in a way
that works for both of you. Now, what are some healthy ways
to navigate the fear of abandonment without seeking
external reassurance? Well, you can validate yourself.
You can do inner child reassurance.
You can do nervous system regulation.
And it's important to recognize that healing is never about
operating in isolation. Because we are social creatures,
we need reassurance. We need other people.
That's what helps to provide the safety that helps us to heal
from experiences that lacked that safety in the past.
So it's never about one or the other, about only seeking
externally or only going internally.
It's about learning to hold both.
So your question is also problematic in that it implies
that you should not seek external reassurance.
You can and you should, and it will help with people who
actually are able to provide that.
How can I tell the difference between a valid relationship
concern and my attachment anxiety?
They're not mutually exclusive. I think a really telling way to
see if something is coming from nervous system dysregulation or
being triggered or being in a state of anxious attachment is
if there is a sense of urgency. If you feel you need to address
it right away right now in order to feel better, that is probably
telling you that it's coming from the past and not what's
happening right now. It doesn't mean that there might
not still be something for you to address, but it does mean
that you need to sit with your feelings and decipher what it is
exactly that you want to ask for or to talk about with the other
person. To try to regulate yourself to a
level where you can have a productive conversation.
Any concerns that you might have about a relationship, if you
sleep on it for 24 to 48 hours, they're still going to be there
and you can address it at that time.
These things are also usually addressed better in person, so
it might have to wait just by the nature of waiting until you
see that person next. How do I balance being
emotionally available while maintaining my own boundaries?
These are also not mutually exclusive.
Boundaries are the ways through which you make yourself
emotionally available. They create the lanes of
expression for you. They create the borders of the
relationship in which you're willing to exist.
So how do you balance it? Well, you communicate your
boundaries. Those are your limits when it
comes to your emotional availability.
That's how you balance it. You set and you maintain your
boundaries. You realize that boundaries are
the distance at which you can love them and you
simultaneously. That is a quote from Prentice
Hemphill. By the way.
What strategies can help me break the habit of overthinking
or assuming the worst overthinking is under feeling.
Sit with your system, identify where there might be tension or
constriction. Breathe into those pockets of
tension and constriction. Recognize that overthinking,
rumination are symptoms and not the cause.
The cause is nervous system dysregulation.
So you have to learn to be with your body and with the
sensations of discomfort and stress.
And that will ultimately address the symptom of thinking or the
thoughts that are happening as a result of you experiencing
something that you do not want to experience.
And therein lies the problem. You have to be willing to
experience all emotions and to know that they won't last.
And to remind yourself you don't have to do this alone.
You can lean on your support system.
So in terms of overthinking, focus on feeling, not thinking.
The thoughts are not the issue. Actually.
It is the nervous system dysregulation that's driving it
that's calling you back into your body.
That's why it feels so urgent. Your body is literally screaming
at you to be with it. So be with it.
And if you can't, if you don't have the capacity at that time,
go out to dinner, go to the movies, call up or FaceTime a
friend until such a time when you can be with it and then be
with it. How can I create more emotional
security within myself so that I don't rely so heavily on my
partner's responses? This question is problematic
because you're always going to experience reactions to things
that happen around you. So trying to prevent yourself
from feeling things is an issue. So that is what I would prevent
yourself from doing. You have to be willing to risk
pain. You have to be willing to get
hurt. You have to be willing to be
triggered. Security comes from recognizing
that that experience won't last, that your feelings are valid,
and also that they're not going to last forever.
Yes, work at affirming yourself and validating yourself, but
it's OK to rely on your partner's responses.
They're an important person in your life.
So there's an implication here. There's an inference that you
shouldn't be relying on them. You shouldn't be only relying on
them. This might mean calling up a
friend instead and talking through this.
This might mean working with a therapist or a coach like me,
for instance, to validate yourself so that you don't rely
so much or put so much pressure on the other person.
But you're always going to feel things as a result of what's
happening around you. You cannot prevent that.
How can I practice healthy detachment without feeling like
I'm abandoning my partner or giving up on love?
Healthy detachment is about recognizing that there's only so
much that you can do for someone else.
You can hold space for them. You can offer your support, you
can ask them if they want your perspective, if they're looking
for solutions, but it's not abandoning someone to allow them
to experience what they are going through.
That's actually you preventing yourself from abandoning
yourself, which is a good thing. You're not giving up on love,
you're giving love a chance. You can't prevent someone from
experiencing pain or discomfort. And it is important, as we've
discussed, to allow them to experience it, because that can
be motivating in ways that they need in order to address their
own stuff, in order to be motivated to change or evolve or
to grow or to address whatever's in front of them.
You're not abandoning them. Your presence is enough.
You do not have to always solve other people's issues or do the
work for them. You're not abandoning them.
When you do this, you're actually preventing self
abandonment. How do I know if I'm engaging in
protest behavior or simply standing up for myself?
I think this goes back to what I was saying earlier about
urgency. Protest behavior is going to
come from a place of urgency. It's going to say, well, if you
did this, I'm going to do that. It's retaliatory.
Standing up for yourself means look, I understand where you're
coming from. My perspective is different.
I would like to share that with you because I know that my
feelings and my needs are valid. You can still advocate for
yourself without retaliating, and that's the difference.
How do I handle moments when I feel the urge to reach out for
reassurance, but know it's coming from anxiety rather than
genuine need? There's nothing wrong with
reaching out for reassurance, even if it's coming from
anxiety, and part of what helps us to move through anxiety more
quickly is to express it. I know that this was likely
unintentional, and I know that you probably didn't mean it to
come across this way, but I was really triggered when I heard or
saw Blank. And I'm sharing this with you
not to make you feel bad or like you've done something wrong or
like you're a bad partner, but to understand where I'm coming
from and to just hear me out. Talking through things is
important, and that is related to safety and intimacy.
This is the dependency paradox. The more you learn you can
depend on someone, the less you actually do.
So the more you do lean on someone who can reassure you,
the less you'll need that reassurance.
How can I set realistic expectations for myself while
I'm healing? One, you don't do everything
overnight. And it's also not all about
doing. It's about learning to be with
your body and with your feelings.
So you got to balance being and doing.
That's the first thing that I would recommend.
The second thing is, again, remember the three aspects of
healing. Time, intentional action and
love and support. We need to lean on other people.
That means you'll need your support system.
So while healing, think about who do I have in my corner?
Do I need a professional here to maybe accelerate this process or
to direct me or guide me along the journey?
Again, many folks that I work with experience more healing in
three months with me than they do in three years by themselves.
So think about the support system and the team that you
need to get through this and to address whatever it is that
you're going through. Remember that a romantic partner
is one person and they are human.
They're going to disappoint you. They're not going to be able to
meet your needs all the time. Your romantic partner is not
some sort of needs fulfilling ATM.
You can't just go to them and make a withdrawal whenever it's
convenient for you. They've got a life, they have
things going on. A big part of healing is
learning to be more flexible with other people, and also
recognizing that someone else can only do so much for us that
a romantic partner, a friend, a family member, you know they've
got their own stuff going on too.
And you need to step up and meet your own needs a lot more of the
time usually. And learn to value your own
time. How do I stay present in my
relationship without letting my fears dictate my actions?
Well, learn to have a healthier relationship with your fear.
Fear is neither good nor bad, but it will show you what you're
still carrying with you from the past.
The conditioning that's there, that's present in your nervous
system and in your body, the wiring in your brain that causes
you to anticipate similar things to happen now and in the future
to what happened in the past. Learning to regulate your
nervous system will help you to sit with your fear and to
recognize that you always have a choice whether or not you act on
it and where you go for comfort in those moments.
That it doesn't always have to be that romantic partner or one
person. You can be present in your
relationship by learning to be present with yourself.
This is a big part of the work of healing anxious attachment is
learning to regulate your nervous system to be with the
feelings of discomfort that come up.
Give yourself breathing room. Remember that you don't have to
rush to any kind of solution, any kind of action that you can.
Let your fear be there and if over multiple days you're still
feeling it, then share it with your partner.
Say, look this is really vulnerable of me to say but I
just need you to hold me because I've just been feeling really
scared and I know it's irrational, but I just need you
to be here with me and hold me and tell me everything is going
to be OK. How can I approach my partner's
avoidant tendencies without triggering my own anxiousness
again? It's not about preventing
yourself from getting triggered, because your partner is going to
trigger you eventually. No matter what you do, no matter
how secure or regulated you are, or no matter how much work they
do to grow more secure. It is inevitable.
So how can you approach your avoidant partner?
Remember to stay emotionally diversified, to make plans with
friends, to give yourself things to look forward to in the
future, like going on a road trip or a cruise or a vacation
of some sort. Remember to take really good
care of yourself, so to have your routine and to do your best
to stick with it. But in terms of approaching
their avoidant tendencies, let them know what you appreciate
that they're doing, because avoidance are very, very
sensitive to criticism. So it's important that they see
that you see what they're doing to meet your needs and to let
them know that they can come to you with anything.
That if they ever need space, that it is OK and that you
respect that, But that you need to have boundaries around that.
And that you need to know when you can expect to hear from them
next. And that you are more than happy
to take the time yourself to process.
And learning to value that time on your own is important as
well. So those are some ways that you
can learn to approach an avoidant partner.
Lean out, take about 10 to 15% of the emotional energy you're
putting into them and allocate it elsewhere.
What you want to do with that is totally up to you.
But that will help the avoidant to see that there is some
breathing room here. This person is not looking at me
as their end all be all. They are taking better care of
themselves. They're not going to feel as
pressured and suffocated and usually they'll lean in as a
result. Not always, but we're also not
managing for that outcome. The only thing you can do is
learn to diversify yourself and hope that your partner will
follow suit and continue advocating to work together as a
team to address any concerns on either side.
How do I balance patience with my partner's healing journey
while still honoring my own needs?
Oh, this is a good one because this can be really, really
tough. There's a quote from Marianne
Williamson that I just love that I think really hits home at
this. And she says it is our failure
to accept people exactly as they are that gives us pain in a
relationship. It is our failure to accept
people exactly as they are that gives us pain in a relationship.
Remember that other person is doing the best that they can.
They cannot meet all of your needs and it's going to be tough
when they might be meeting a good amount of them or it might
be kind of ebbing and flowing depending on where they're at.
Relationships are never only about meeting needs and only
about one person. A romantic partnership is a
wonderful addition to our lives, but it is just that, an
addition. We have to remember that there
are plenty of other sources of connection in our lives and that
we can be with someone and still have breathability and space and
to continue negotiating. Relationships are an ongoing
negotiation. You're going to have to
compromise in some way, and you'll have to recognize that
some of your needs sometimes might go unmet, and that is OK.
And it's a natural part of this process.
Remember not to back down from things that are essential for
you. And for anxious attachors, that
tends to be communication, prioritization, inclusion.
So remind them that it's not about whether or not you meet
the need, it's how and that that's up for negotiation
between the two of you. What are some signs that I'm
making progress in healing my anxious attachment?
I actually just recently did a blog post on this 9 Signs that
You're healing and Growing More Secure.
Go to cracklift.com/signs to read the blog.
But here are some just kind of off the top of my head.
Some signs are you're kind of able to go with the flow a bit
more easily. This is a sign of nervous system
regulation. You're more flexible, you're
more patient, you're more understanding.
Other signs that you're making progress in growing more secure
and healing your anxious attachment include laughing,
humor and not taking things so seriously is a major sign of
healing. Those are just a couple, but you
can read all nine at the blog on my site.
What are some tips on how to heal the abandonment wound and
how to manage when you feel such a horrible loss from
relationships that don't meet your needs?
Well, these are related because your abandonment wounds are
going to keep getting exacerbated if you keep bonding
with people that might not have the skills or the capability to
be there for you in the ways that you really deeply need.
A lot of healing. Abandonment means building
relationships with people in your life who are safe, with
people who really get you. And if you need to start with a
professional, then start there because they will show up for
you and they will be consistent and they will hold space for you
in ways that other people may have struggled to provide to
you. I think it's also really
important to validate the fact that if you go through multiple
experiences that make you feel abandoned, it's only natural
that you're going to anticipate that in the future and that
you're going to feel very, very low when a relationship ends.
Once again, in abandonment, please validate that for
yourself. It makes sense that this is
going to shock you and Rock You to your core.
Remind yourself you are a powerful, capable adult of being
more conscious and intentional in the people you allow to have
access to you. Remembering that your
sensitivity is not for everyone is important, and being more
discerning about the kinds of people that you allow into your
corner is going to be really, really foundational and
transformational for you. All right, we're rounding to the
final questions here. There's five left.
How do you slow pace a relationship and at the same
time feel comfortable moving slow?
This is interesting because it implies that you should feel
comfortable and many anxious attachers will not feel
comfortable going slow in a relationship.
A lot of this is learning to be better bound Read in Early
Stages of dating. I'm going to dedicate an entire
episode to talking about a couple of different relationship
models that anxious attachers can use when dating.
But for now, just know that taking your time and building
something sustainable is going to feel very different from the
codependent and meshed pedestal based connections that you've
had in the past. But it feeling different is
actually a good thing. So you're going to have to learn
to be comfortable with the discomfort.
You're going to have to learn that stability is going to come
across as being mundane and boring and lacking in
excitement. But the goal of relationships is
not to be excited. It's to feel safe and to have
stability. Especially for folks like us who
have been through abandonment and trauma and who have been
through our fair share of codependent dynamics.
So slowly pacing yourself and feeling comfortable are probably
not going to go hand in hand for you.
The only way that you learn to be more comfortable?
Pacing yourself while dating is by going through the motions
your brain and your nervous system learn through repetition.
That's how they learned to seek out enmeshment and intensity,
and it is what will cause you to unlearn it and replace it with
new patterns, new conditioning, and new wiring in your brain.
How do you find peace with being alone?
This is such an important part of healing anxious attachment
because so much of our energy tends to go external and not
internal. We're very imbalanced in this
way. But remember, time and space
apart are really healthy things in a relationship.
And for many of us as anxious attachers, we know this In our
friendships and other relationships, like with
colleagues or with family, we let things breathe.
Sometimes we can go months or maybe even years without
speaking to certain people in our lives, and then we pick
right back up where we left off. What that shows us is that space
and time apart are not a threat. They're actually an important
part of having healthy connections with other people.
Learning to value your own time is going to be a process, and
it's not going to be super pleasant at first if you're at
the beginning of that process. Being alone is going to be very
uncomfortable at first because it can bring up feelings of
rejection and abandonment. Because for many of us, they've
come to mean the same thing, that being alone means being
abandoned. But this is actually the
opportunity for you to listen to your body, to cultivate a better
relationship with your nervous system and with your inner
child, to practice self-care. So that time is incredibly
valuable. So you might even be excited in
hearing me talk about this because you might not realize
how much you can do with that time when you're not just
dedicating it to other people in your life.
How to heal the abandonment wounds so that if or when you
get into a relationship with a fearful avoidant or dismissive
avoidant, you don't freak out when they pull away.
How to be secure in yourself and alone time to not want or need
them so badly. First of all, it's OK to want
and need other people. It is OK to freak out when other
people pull away. But they are not responsible for
managing your reactions. So it is important to cultivate
a healthier relationship with yourself and your body and to
address your core wounds and experiences that happened from
the past and allow for the expression of some of those
feelings. You can let this out in therapy.
I do this work with my coaching clients all the time.
But you've got to give movement to the feelings in the past that
you didn't have held for you. It is also important to validate
yourself. Why are you implying that you
should not be scared when someone pulls away?
Of course you're going to be. Don't beat yourself up for your
reactions because that only exacerbates the emotional
experience. It is a form of self
invalidation. Remind yourself it is OK.
I'm a little freaked out right now.
I haven't heard from them in a little bit.
This is really scary to me. But I'm going to call my friend
and I'm going to go for a walk and I'm going to remind myself
that I cannot and should not try to control what other people do
or not do. That I can advocate for myself,
that my time is incredibly valuable for me.
It really is. Being secure in yourself Being
means being willing to recognize that what you are feeling is
valid, but that your behavior as a result is not always valid.
So if you're freaking out and then projecting all of your
feelings onto your partner, that is likely going to push them
away. Especially if they're fearful
avoidant or dismissive avoidant. Learn to be with that
discomfort. Babe, please.
I know it's tough, but this is a big part of healing, leaning on
the people who are safe for you outside of your relationship.
Cultivating your safety squad is really going to be essential.
We have to learn to let other people pull away.
It doesn't mean that you need to force yourself to be OK with it,
but you have to recognize you cannot make anyone do anything.
You can talk to them about any boundaries that need to be set
around the pulling away or around the space and time apart.
Those negotiations are probably going to need to happen during a
stable, peaceful time when you come back together, but they can
and should happen either way. You've got to also advocate for
yourself, and in so doing, you'll get the clarity that you
need. All right, final two questions
here. Is anxious avoidant a really bad
combo? I keep attracting and being
attracted to emotionally unavailable people.
How do you break this cycle? I would really love to know a
way to set some boundaries for myself so I don't get hurt this
much again in the future. First of all, any attachment
pairing can work. Some are harder than others.
The anxious avoidant combo is really tough.
I'm dedicating at least one, but probably multiple episodes of
the podcast to this coming up. It is not a bad combo per SE,
but it can be triggering to both people involved.
And that is because the anxious and avoidant attachers needs are
directly opposite of one another's.
Their core beliefs are confirmed in that dynamic.
I also remind people all the time, it's not that you're
attracting emotionally unavailable people, it's that
you're allowing them to stay. This is why in my coaching
program I don't have exercises on red flags or green flags.
Because we know what red flags and green flags are, we just
ignore them. You have to learn to pay
attention early on and to recognize that not all avoidance
are made equal. Not all anxious people are the
same. Look at the person and not the
label. What work have they done on
themselves? How have they addressed their
wounds or worked through their previous heart breaks?
Setting boundaries for yourself might mean learning to take your
time. Not rushing to enmesh, not
rushing to physical intimacy, to setting a certain time limit for
dates, to not saying every little thought or feeling that
crosses your mind or that you experience early on.
The way to break this cycle of dating emotionally unavailable
people is to recognize that you yourself have been emotionally
unavailable because you've tolerated things that you know
emotionally available people would not tolerate.
Someone who's really ready for a relationship is not going to
tolerate mixed signals, wishy washy behavior, people who are
uncertain or not really clear about what they want, people who
aren't consistent in their communication.
You're not going to tolerate that.
So the key here is for you to become emotionally available,
for you to work to grow more secure to a point where you
recognize you have certain relationship needs and you're
going to need to be more discerning and more specific
about what you want and not just accept being chosen by somebody
else. Last question for today, when is
a relationship over or bad enough to leave?
If after multiple times of advocating for yourself and
being met with invalidation, inconsistent behavior, with
dismissiveness, at some point you have to ask yourself why am
I staying? You might need to give yourself
permission to leave first. In my experience, the opposite
of love is not hate or frustration or disappointment or
sadness. All of those emotions contain a
high degree of energy. The opposite of love is actually
apathy. If you're met with apathy with
someone who just does not seem to care or does not seem to have
the capacity to hold space for you to have the fuel in the tank
to address things as a team, then that is a clear sign that
you should leave. If after multiple, multiple
times of trying to work together and address things, you feel
like you're the one that's always advocating for the
relationship, you're the one that's always pushing it
forward, Yeah, that's probably a sign that you might not be in
the relationship that you need to be in, that that person might
not be the person for you. I hope that the answers to these
questions were really helpful for you, and I'm excited to
share my very first interview with you soon.
I've got 2 interviews lined up with my two very first guests on
the show. Can't wait to share those
episodes with you. We're going to resume talking
about the cycle of anxious attachment and the steps of
nervous system dysregulation and regulation, stress, aversion,
and addiction. In future episodes, we're going
to be talking about breakups, the anxious avoidant
relationship, and I can't wait to share more with you soon.
For those who are interested in exploring more content from me,
go to cracklift.com for blog posts and go to cracklift.com
Coaching to explore my coaching program and set up a free
consultation with me. That's Crack life with 2F's
CRACKL iffe.com coaching.