Unraveling Insecure Attachment Styles: Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety in Relationships

We also talk about how you can begin to unravel the anxious attachment style , which is one that I resonate and I know so many of my listeners do . As a reminder , you can always find me at emotionalabusecoachcom , instagram at emotionalabusecoach , and I have a series of courses online and one-on-one sessions that can all be found on my website .

I hope this episode is helpful for you . Hi Melissa , thank you so much for joining me today . Thank you for having me . Can you share with us a little bit about you and what you do ?

And then the other two , anxious and avoidant , are about split down the middle , and anxious and avoidant usually pair up together . So an anxious attachment style is when you're feeling needy , feeling insecure about the relationship , constantly needing reassurance , wondering what your partner is doing , where they are , these kinds of things .

And avoidant is when you're withdrawn , you're emotionally shut down , you're unable to meet your partner where they're at emotionally , and it's just more of like a shutdown mode . And then disorganized has a little bit of both . So it's like I love you but get away from me , Yeah .

So it's like a real push pull within the person of they want to be close but they can't handle the closeness .

How do you define secure attachment ?

But they present very anxious and get very judgmental of themselves and how they're showing up . But in these situations like I'm thinking about one client specifically the relationship almost perpetuates the anxiety at times that she probably has an anxious attachment style anyway .

But the person is also promoting behaviors that if she doesn't respond immediately there's a consequence to that , whether it's stonewalling or anger or something like that .

When somebody is identifying as anxious and you meet them and you can tell that there's also toxicity in the relationship , how can somebody just take a step back and see like and I'm thinking about the patient , not as us looking outward in of like I've always been anxious , i feel this way , but this relationship is also perpetuating all of this .

I think when we're in those situations , the person most likely this is what I see at least is that they blame themselves regardless .

So it's really interesting how the attachment styles can be fluid based on who you're in a relationship with .

So what they would want to be doing is working on regulating their nervous system so that they can show up in a less anxious way and therefore behave less avoidantly . Did that make sense ?

It creates a lot of self judgment of like why do I have to be this way , why do I feel this way ? Because moving through that anxiety is miserable .

And so when you have someone come to you and they're really trying to unravel that , what are some strategies that you recommend that help them understand where they are and maybe release some of the judgment before they begin to work through it ?

They're focused way more on what the other person is thinking , feeling , doing , and that all comes at their sacrificing really themselves to care more about the other person .

So there's a little bit of fawning involved in that , and so what we would need to do together is get them back into caring about themselves , who they are , what their goals are , what their dreams are , and getting back to who that person is and reconnecting , building self love , building self worth .

These would all be strategies to get an anxiously attached person to become a more securely attached person .

So what we're going to be needing to do is get the person into regulation , get their nervous system regulated so that they don't default to a fawning response .

Yeah , just that , it's like it's huge . I see it all the time and I think that it can just be like oh well , if I just do this , then this will happen . Or like I think that I like that you touched on the available nest , because if they're not , then that just activates that anxious attachment again , like I'm doing something wrong .

And so I know that this is a complex question , but I've had clients ask me is a narcissist avoided ? And when they ask that , usually my answer is , well , it's like there's not , like they're avoided or they're anxious . They could be anything . What do you think a narcissist typically is ? What would their attachment style be ?

because if you think about , what's at the root of being anxious , avoidant or disorganized is anxiety , And so a narcissist has a decent amount of anxiety where they are concerned about what other people think of them . Their egos are very fragile If they feel cut down in any way .

they feel overly attacked , so much more so than what somebody who doesn't have narcissism would feel .

What's going on with me , and how do I get grounded and centered and how do I find a more self-loving place to exist in ?

I'm going to give an example of what I mean .

When I was healing from my last relationship , one thing that I realized was and this is when I was still in the relationship and I knew it was unhealthy , i just was having a really hard time getting out I realized that a lot of the behaviors that were happening were highly unhealthy , and that's the word that I remember using .

And then , eventually , i started using secure because I was able to see a few more things , but that came later . But it would be like okay , like a healthy person would do this , a healthy person would do this , and then it was for their behaviors , but then I also are doing it for my own . Okay , in a healthy relationship I would be able to do this .

I'd be able to say please don't speak to me that way , or please don't raise your voice , or I don't think that . What do you think I would be able to express myself ? and I was so far away from that that I knew it wasn't healthy . And so there was a lot of that self-talk to be able to take a step back and be able to see what was happening .

And when I think about moving more towards secure , i've read a lot of content online or follow some people on Instagram like the secure relationship , and she talks a lot about what secure would look like , and that was always like a light bulb moment for me of I want to get myself there .

It felt so hard to work through the anxiety and any strategies that I leaned into to work through my own anxiety . It's almost like I needed to create new ones all the time because it was like my anxiety would like . It would almost like , no , i'd be like okay , i figured out how to work with this one now , and so I'd have to like keep going .

If you have someone who's just like they're super stuck and some of these strategies aren't understanding , how can they move through it slower to get from being super anxious closer to secure , even be able to identify what secure looks like ?

So this vagus nerve is attached to everything And , depending on where this vagus nerve is activated is dependent on how we are going to be feeling whether we're feeling calm and grounded , or whether we're feeling anxious , in a fight or flight , or whether we're feeling down and depressed and in a total shutdown mode .

And fawning , by the way , happens right in between the anxious and the down and depressed . So that's kind of a middle response in between those two , if that makes sense . Does that make sense ?

I've seen a lot of books about the vagus nerve And I really I think I've had a hard time wrapping my mind around the influence of it , or even had I worked with it at Acupuncturist for a while And she said something to me once I'm thinking about your vagus nerve , as She wasn't focusing on that , there was other parts of my body .

I was there for anxiety And she was like I'm thinking about your vagus nerve , which felt very manifesting , or just trying to tap into some of that energy , and I remember feeling like that sounds really interesting , but this topic feels really complex .

When the vagus nerve is activated around the mid chest , upper stomach , is when you're going to feel anxious . And when the vagus nerve is activated at the base of the spine , that's when you're going to feel down , depressed , hopeless . Got it , yeah ?

And so when people are struggling with anxiety and they just can't get regulated , more often than not it's because they're trying to do it through their brain . They're trying to think their way out of it , they're looking for mental strategies to try to talk themselves out of feeling anxious , and that's not how we get rid of anxiety .

The way we get rid of anxiety is by going into the body and listening to the physical Sensations that are coming up around the anxiety . So oftentimes anxiety is gonna come with a super tight chest or some knots in your stomach or something like that , and so that's where I get my patients to go .

Is Is really going down into the body , feeling into that tightness and giving that tightness , a voice , so even just asking , and I just get them to ask in their mind , like asking What's going on for you , what's bothering you right now , and the tightness will usually say something and it's all just done quietly , we're not doing any of this out loud .

The tightness will usually say That it's feeling alone And it usually what it's needing is support and validation . So if you can go in and Interact with your anxiety on a physical level you feel it in your body while you're speaking to it and you're Validating it and telling it , it makes sense that it's feeling the way it's feeling . It'll really calm down .

It's like soothing a child , yeah .

And This morning she actually , like she was very angry and I was like I didn't understand why , because it was like an easier morning , but you know , but on the way to school it was just like she was frustrated and then angry and then didn't want to hold her backpack And then , like , wanted me to hold her hand a specific way , and I remember being like

she's anxious , but I don't know why . Like I can tell that there's something like she's not mad , she's presenting mad . It's interesting . So , like I sat her down and I did almost like exactly what you said . I was like I sat her on like a step on the walk to school and I was like Charlotte , just Like what's going on ? and she was like nothing .

And I'm like what's going on ? She's like nothing , and I'm like , okay , she goes , i don't want to go . And then she like opened up about like a friend that hasn't been there , that she misses because she feels alone , and I was and like , and it was like this , like unraveling , and she just needed a calm down and get back into her body .

Now that you say that that's probably exactly what was happening , like the trauma response was like that fawning of like I'm just gonna be mad and frustrated because that's how I do , and , like You know , the fire or Eve actually fight , right , you know . And then flee of like I just don't want to go to school .

Like she also lied and said she was sick , and she wasn't . I was like , if you're sick , that's okay , but I am gonna be working all day . You sure you want to be home . It's gonna be so boring .

And then it was like no , and so I think that , like , if we as adults can do that to ourselves which , like we often don't , you know , like we're so kind to like our children but not ourselves of like what is actually going on ?

and then the asking ourselves over and over again If you are working with somebody who is afraid to go into their body because that's just a scary place , do you just start with the brain first ?

Then , yeah , we can just do other things We can just talk about , like what's happening in their day-to-day life right now and how it's impacting their day-to-day life . But then slowly again we'll circle back around to going into the body . I have lots of patients who struggle to go into their body .

So it just takes a little bit more gentleness , slowness , to go in , because a lot of people aren't taught how to tune into their body . It's not something that our parents passed down to us . Certainly they didn't ever learn it .

So it's a foreign concept to feel these feelings of anxiety , frustration , everything your daughter was feeling this morning , and Go into the body and be like , oh hello , tight chest or not in my stomach or whatever , and Interact with those parts of ourselves . It's a foreign concept to go inward . It's more a Normal thing .

What people typically do is go into their mind and be like , okay , how do I solve this ? What do I do ? and they try to get together a game plan which totally just overrides Why it's all happening in the first place , and so usually it won't work . When we try to think our way out of anxiety , it usually just gets worse .

So just really focus on that tightness in the chest , really focus on how big or small it is , if it's moving , if it's got different shapes , sizes , colors , and just really get mindful about what's going on in the body and get curious And taking kind of that really non-judgmental stance around the physical sensations in the body . That works so well .

I remember feeling exactly the same way , especially when you're in a toxic relationship or you've been trauma bonded to somebody and healthy and secure seem to align . Before we got on , you and I were talking about some ways that you go about like you help clients think with , some things that you help clients think about .

How do you help people or what is actually your theory around beginning to move towards healthy , even just mentally within ourselves , or beginning to believe that we can have that healthy relationship ?

Why is my chest tight right now ? Why do I have a pounding headache ? What is my poor body going through that ? I need to support it through And move it , shifting more into a self focus around how you can regulate your nervous system and how you can get into a more securely . Basically , what you're wanting to do is become your own secure base .

That's how you heal your attachment style by becoming your own secure base . And the way you become your own secure base is by tuning inward , going into the body , listening to it , validating it , being gentle and kind and loving with it , and by doing all of that you're building self-worth and higher self-esteem .