Podcast Newsletter: Episode 33 How I saw Anxious Attachment Before Life Coaching

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Anxious Attachment Solution

Hello and Welcome! On today's podcast today I want to share with you how I saw anxious attachment before life coaching and how I see anxious attachment now as a Life Coach and the strategies I use now to comfort myself when my anxious attachment gets triggered, because let's be real it still gets triggered.

When I first learned about anxious attachment I understood that I had these patterns in relationships that cause me to be reactive or impulsive when I felt like a partner was pulling away, when there was a misunderstanding or conflict, or when I just thought there was. 

I felt crazy inside and people told me I was “acting crazy”. I knew I wasn’t crazy though  but I felt such intense emotions and couldn’t just process them. I had to do something to make these emotions feel better, which oftentimes looked like calling or texting someone over and over again. Seeking reassurance, validation, over explaining, being so defensive that it would make communication hard and so on. I saw how my anxious attachment affected all of my relationships, not just my love life. My relationships with my sisters, my parents, my coworkers and my bosses.

I understood that I had inner work to do. Books told me that having anxious attachment meant I didn’t feel good enough, that I had low self esteem, and that I sought validation from others to feel good enough and worthy of love. Books told me that I had to build my own self confidence and my own secure base inside of me instead of seeking validation and approval from other people. They gave me things to do but it never quite helped. But I could see all of these things playing out in my life.

I never felt good enough, I never felt pretty enough, attractive enough, smart enough, my self confidence was low. My self love was conditional, I only had love for myself when others loved me. Showed love or appreciation toward me.  I worked hard to get approval from others. I was so anxious about how other people saw me that I worried more about what they were thinking about me, their thoughts about me mattered most. As a result I spent the majority of my time trying to make everyone else happy. I was always thinking about what I could do to make sure they stay happy and in love with me. I thought I could control how other people felt and their thoughts about me if I did everything “perfectly” or everything I thought they needed me to do.

I was definitely reactive to other people's words, tones or actions, because any response that I preceived as negative sent me into overthinking creating so much overwhelm. These negative responses had to mean I did something wrong or that they would leave me, or not be friends with me, they would think I am inexperienced or not smart. Basically negative interactions meant I would be deemed unworthy of something: unworthy of love, unworthy of my job, unworthy of their friendship. 

I felt like love was out of reach for me because no one would ever really love me or stay with me. I understood that I wanted nothing more than to be loved and yet the scariest thing for me was to be loved because feeling love and being in love was not something my nervous system was wired for- it was wired for the chaos of rejection. So even though rejection triggered my anxious attachment it is what my brain is used to.

Now six years later, I can see my anxious attachment for what it really is. It is not a soul problem, a me (personality problem) - it is simply a brain reaction, a nervous system reaction to something I perceive as negative or threatening to my relationships. I can see that when something happens, my brain immediately goes to “fear”- that fear - creates an urgency to do something- this urgency drives me to take certain actions to receive temporary relief from the overwhelming fear- never really solving the root cause, just reinforcing this cycle so then it repeats. 

For example, Let’s say you are dating someone- everything seems to be going well, but then something happens they cancel plans, they don’t text back right away, they don’t respond to something in the way you anticipated, they spent time with someone else, it could literally be anything  -   and all of a sudden you start overthinking, your brain is consumed by lots and lots of anxious thoughts

• They don’t love me anymore, they are mad at me, they are going to leave, this was never going to work out, they are going to leave me for them, they really like them, it was never real

These thoughts create such an intense feeling of fear (fear of rejection/fear of abandonment). Which creates an urgency to react and gain temporary relief. Reacting typically looks like seeking attention: trying to feel validated, reconnected, communication right now or shutting down: putting up walls, not communication, self sabotage clothed in self preservation. Hurt them before they hurt you, kind of thing. We do these things to get relief from our intense emotions. Then we “feel” better temporarily, because this is not actually solving the problem, this is reinforcing our attachment cycle.

So how do you stop this cycle? Self Awareness. Before you can stop this cycle you have to grow in your own awareness of what anxious attachment looks like for you: What happens just before you have these anxious thoughts? What just happened? Write it down. What did it make you think? Write it out. How did that make you feel? Write it out. What did you feel the urgency to do? Write it out. What is it that you really need in this moment? Most often what we need in this moment is to be comforted, so this is when we learn how to comfort ourselves through a triggering event. Do we need to feel connected, do we need reassurance that we are enough, do we need to know we are actually safe and this person really isn’t abandoning us? Do we need to believe that we are not actually dying and that we are

You have to become aware of what a triggered event looks like and you have to become aware of what you do in a triggering event before you can stop this cycle. 

5 Steps to stop this cycle 

1. You have to become an observer of your thoughts and feelings. What thoughts are you thinking, how do they make you feel?

2. You have to grow your capacity to feel the intense emotions without taking action. This looks like naming the feeling in your body, where does it sit, how does it feel, while acknowledging how uncomfortable it is to sit with these feelings.

3. You have to grow your capacity to feel the urgency to react and know that you are already safe and you can process these emotions before you react. This looks like practicing thoughts of “I am safe right now, my anxious attachment is triggered but I am safe, I feel the urgency and I do not have to do anything yet”

4. You have to learn how to feel urgency and decide to pause

5. You have to learn to give yourself compassion and love in this exact moment. This looks like acknowledging your anxious attachment has been triggered, validating your feelings because they are real for you right now in this moment and still deciding to pause and feel them. Creating safety with yourself. Letting yourself know that you are capable of feeling these overwhelming emotions and creating trust with yourself. 

If you want to learn more about how to do this in real time my 1:1 coaching program is for you. I help women with anxious attachment calm their anxious thoughts, soothe their nervous system and pause, so that they can stop reacting to big emotions that cause extra obstacles in their relationships. Email me at Amberlynn@takingbackherbrain.com for more information. Have a great day and remember self compassion!