5 Life-Changing Lessons I Learned about Secure Attachment When I Was Anxious AF
“I hardly recognized you,” my roommate told me about the months before my breakup finally happened.
I was completely withdrawn, ushering myself from the kitchen to feed myself–on a good day–back to my room where I endlessly poured into “the work.”
The kind of inner-work that’s supposed to make you feel better.
Better about my messy, painful, and begrudging foray into polyamory as a way to “save” my relationship.
This time, I decided, I would meet all the jealous feelings and beliefs about not being good enough head-on.
I read the books, listened to the podcasts, and wrestled with my strongest feelings.
I meditated, breathed, and used somatic practices to rewire my nervous system.
I enrolled in a course on how to move from anxious to secure attachment.
I got on the waiting list for a highly recommended therapist.
I was doing all of the right things, but I still hurt all over.
I was still miserable.
(We’ll get to why in Lesson #4)
In my most concentrated and desperate attempt to become securely attached and manage jealousy on a level I’d never before experienced, I learned so much about what security really means, and how not all the “work” will take you where you want to go..
So today I’d like to share 5 of the life-changing lessons I learned about secure attachment when I was feeling deep relationship anxiety.
My hope is that some of these lessons will offer massive paradigm shifts for you that open you up to increased relationship security and stronger self trust.
These are things I wish someone had guided me through as I renegotiated my years-long relationship to insecurity, anxiety, and fear.
Which is why I’m also leading a micro-masterclass on Relationship Security for Anxious Hearts.
Register for that workshop (go ahead, I’ll wait for you right here!) and come back to read some of the valuable lessons I learned in my journey from anxious to secure.
Lesson #1: Relationship anxiety comes from your nervous system, not your mind
Which means you can’t, like I so desperately tried, think your way out.
Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls your fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and feign response.
It’s what’s taking in sensory information, linking that information to an associated meaning, and then dictating how you respond.
It’s called the autonomic nervous system because it’s doing all of this unconsciously, without you having to think or process the information in more logically-expressed regions of your brain.
Which is why you can watch your lover lean in close to laugh with a mysterious cutie and feel your heart pound and that searing heat shoot from your stomach to your skull before your logical brain can chime in with – oh, chill, that’s just a friend!
So often when people experience jealousy, relationship anxiety, or start acting clingy or avoidant, they try to think or reason their way out of it.
Hi! Me! I’m guilty!
When I get triggered, I start to overthink – stuck in thought loops that are intended to pull me out of it but end up spiraling me deeper and deeper into the icky feelings and icky behaviors.
So why don't my thoughts change how I feel?
Emotions win over logic.
Have you ever watched a movie where the main character, overcome with intense emotion, acts like an irrational fool?
(Here I am remembering how Catelyn Stark let her desire for revenge overshadow any sort of critical thinking during GOT’s “red wedding” episode.)
Emotions drive decisions.
And your core beliefs & your core wounds influence your emotions (we’ll go there in Lesson #2 and #3).
Your nervous system runs a referral loop from feeling to thought and back to feeling.
And it’s doing so in order to keep you safe.
Which means, it’s primed to invest in the most dangerous outcome so that it can be ready to protect against it.
Here’s a simplified example:
When you feel a tickle on your leg, your arm automatically brushes the spider off before you can think: “ew, spider, get off!”
Similarly, your body primes itself for danger when it sees an outcome that your personal narrative deems as dangerous: “Babe's sure interested in that cutie…will he betray our relationship agreements for her?”
But if I feel secure in my relationship, Babe’s conversation with Cutie won’t ruffle my feathers in the same way.
Because the communication to my nervous system will be of an entirely different nature.
So, let’s dive a little deeper into what’s impacting whether or not you feel secure or insecure in your relationship.
Lesson #2 - Core beliefs impact the way you interpret everything
After years of being teased and bullied throughout childhood, one of my clients formed several core beliefs that impacted the way she shows up in relationships.
She formed the core belief “I’m not good enough,” which expresses itself in dating anxiety (no one who actually knows me will be interested) and in sexual situations (I’m just one wrong move away from my lover telling me they think I’m ugly).
Her core belief is so strong that, despite not having any evidence to support the belief (she easily gets dates with interesting/interested people, and has had consistent lovers for years!) the belief still impacts how she feels about herself.
We form foundational beliefs mostly in two ways:
Repetition:
Your parents often scolded you for “going out of the house looking like that!” so you tried to dress more conservatively.
People laugh at your jokes often so you must be funny.
You get low test scores in math so you must be bad at math.
You got teased for being quiet, so you believe that being an introvert is undesirable.
Peak Experiences:
Your mom caught you masturbating and lost her sh*t so you internalized the shame and believe self-pleasure is shameful.
You got so sick from drinking Jack Daniels that you will never touch it again.
A dog bit you as a kid and now you’re scared of dogs.
Your first relationship ended in intense heartbreak and now you associate love with pain.
Notice how each one of these experiences carries with it a particular emotional charge.
Emotion + interpretation = core belief.
Your interpretation will change how the belief sits in your system.
And the intensity of the emotional state when integrating that belief will play a big role in how that belief is expressed.
For example, my parents often scolded me for going out dressed like a “slut” but I rebelled against their old fashioned thinking and didn’t buy into the belief that looking like a slut (or being one) was bad.
There was little to no emotional intensity involved in their scolding and I wasn’t punished in any way I cared about for dressing like the little scamp I was.
The beliefs that we create are often closely linked to our “survival” – in this modern world, that means how much we can fit into social groups, and how much pain we can limit in our experience.
To keep you safe, your nervous system will cling to beliefs like, “I’m not good at math,” or “Love is pain,” so that you stay safe – that is, so you’re not blindsided the next time you get a C- on your exam or when your girlfriend says she just wants to be friends.
Now let’s go one level deeper.
Your brain needs congruence between what it believes and what it perceives as real.
When there's a mismatch between our beliefs and reality, it creates a state of cognitive dissonance, which can be uncomfortable and motivates us to resolve the inconsistency.
So when I’m caught up in the belief “hetero men can’t be friends with hot women without cheating” (sigh, yes, a real deep belief I had in my anxious relationship!) I will always seek evidence to support my belief (even if it means denying evidence to the contrary).
Any Instagram profile of a hottie that flashed in my periphery would throw a dagger into my heart, because that belief said, “Yo! Look out! You’re not safe!”
And for my client, who had evidence to support that she was desired and desirable, kept dismissing her partners’ love as if she had somehow duped them in order to stay congruent with the deeper belief.
That’s why my work centers around clearing and transforming these deeply held, disempowering beliefs.
Because until you shift your relationship to your core beliefs, they will continue to control your perception and actions, no matter how much you want to invest in a more empowered mindset.
Lesson #3: Core beliefs impact the way you show up (and usually lead to the outcomes you’re directly trying to avoid)
In my insecure relationship, I held a deep-seated belief that it wasn’t safe to be myself.
This belief was reinforced every time my partner would criticize me for my looks or style choices, chipping away at my self-esteem.
I started to conform to what I thought I was "supposed" to be.
I constantly self-monitored, trying to conceal my stomach when I was naked, dressing in a way that my partner complimented (which I was never very successful at!), and running a litany of worries and criticisms about myself.
It drained me emotionally and mentally.
Because I believed I couldn’t be myself, I didn’t show up as myself.
I lost touch with my magic, and I became someone who I could never feel that proud of because I was never quite “right.”
That experience was so painful that once I was free from the cycle of belief (free from my partner’s perpetuation of the belief) I was able to create a new belief for myself.
Now my #1 requirement for a relationship to be held, loved, appreciated, and valued for the fullness of myself.
And with that belief I act in alignment with my true self.
(If it sounds simple it both is and isn’t – I’ll walk you through exactly how I embody secure beliefs in my Relationship Security for Anxious Hearts workshop!)
Lesson #4: Insecurity has a valuable message – listen to it!
Insecurity, jealousy, anger, resentment – all these emotions that are so easy to label as “bad” or “I don’t want it, get it off me!” are actually your body’s way of saying, “Listen, this needs paying attention to.”
When I work with clients, we’re often uncovering messages that need to be read and acted upon (instead of what normally happens, which is ignoring the sensation or trying to make it go away through distraction until it hides only to reappear again at a later date).
Sometimes a client’s insecurity around initiating sex is asking for more confidence in their foreplay/sex skills.
Sometimes the insecurity around a partner not texting back is asking them to practice sitting with discomfort (and reminding themselves of all the ways their partner is there for them).
And sometimes the insecurity around a partner’s ability to hold boundaries and respect the relationship is because the partner is showing you they’re not holding boundaries and respecting the relationship!
There’s a skill in being able to read insecurity’s messages.
The first and easiest question I ask clients to determine if the demand is for internal work (like reprogramming your belief system), external work (like communicating a need to your partner) or if it’s an issue with the relationship itself (like if your partner’s actions aren’t matching their words) is whether or not you have concrete evidence to support the belief.
For example, the client who felt insecure around initiating sex never once actually got rejected by their partner. So some of that work has to do with clearing the disempowering belief. But they also felt like they had a deficit in sex skills that would help boost their confidence (not a bad thing to work on either way!).
And for the person who’s partner wasn’t texting her back, she was easily able to communicate the need with her partner, who heard it and adjusted their behavior.
And, for my dear sweet soul who kept trying to do internal work when the clear message was that the relationship itself wasn’t supporting my boundaries and definition of respect, the real solution was to exit the relationship.
While doing inner work when the real issue is external or with the relationship doesn’t always solve the present issues, doing the internal work will always strengthen your internal support system so that you can be more equipped to handle the natural consequences.
Lesson #5: Have the conversations you’re avoiding
Just like there’s a balance to how much responsibility you take for doing the work, there’s also a balance in communication.
Sometimes you over-communicate when you aren’t being soothed by your own nervous system (and locked into old models of perception when you’re being run by an old belief) so the issues in your relationship seem ongoing, ever-present, and unchanging.
And sometimes you under-communicate when you’re afraid of the consequences your communication could have.
When my ex and I finally had the conversation about opening our relationship, it felt like ripping off the inevitable band-aid.
We’d probably both been tiptoeing around talking about his desire to date other women, afraid of how painful the conversation would be.
Because we weren’t really having a conversation about opening (which can be a deep, beautiful, and empowering conversation), we were having a conversation about ending; we just both couldn’t admit it yet.
When I entered a new partnership, I noticed myself feeling a little blocked around asking certain qualifying questions like, “do you want kids?” because I was worried that his answer could require me to quickly move on from something I cherished.
Fortunately, having that conversation (I’ll be real with you, he initiated it) showed that we were aligned, and my anxiety around that unknown fork in the road disappeared.
How many times have you held onto the “unknown,” preferring to live in a fantasy of alignment instead of actually knowing?
Or choose to remain silent because asking felt too confronting?
Let’s loop back to the dissonance caused by a belief or need not matching your reality.
Your brain still wants congruence.
But when there’s an unknown involved, your brain will default to survival mode – what belief do you need to protect most against?
So that lingering question about whether or not our expectations align when it comes to being friends with our exes, let’s say, could end up hyper-attuning you to anxiety that shows up as, *ping!* Was that her ex? How often do they talk? What is she saying? Does she want her back?
Relationship security requires trust – trust that your partner is being honest with you, and trust that you’re being honest with yourself around your needs and desires.
And that can be activating territory!
I’m coming to you with a very special workshop that’s dear to my heart, because being in an insecure relationship wreaked havoc on my nervous system (for years) and I want to share with you four deep practices you can use to feel more secure in your relationship.
Register for my Relationship Security for Anxious Hearts workshop right here!
Catch the live workshop on August 15th, 2024. Everyone who registers will be sent a recording within 24 hours of the live.
