9. From Avoidant to Secure - A Guide in Attachment Styles and Relationship Bliss

Welcome to Sensual Secrets, where we explore the intricacies of human connection and intimacy. In today's episode, we delve into the profound impact of attachment styles on our relationships, particularly in the realm of romance. Uncover the mysteries behind the four main attachment styles and how they shape our interactions. Join me as I share personal insights, discussing my transformative journey from avoidant to secure attachment, and how this evolution has enhanced my ability to relate with depth and understanding.

Discover the power to alter and heal your attachment style through self-reflection and conscious effort. Learn practical tips for recognizing and addressing behaviours associated with different attachment styles. We believe that when you invest the energy and commitment to understand yourself, the rewards in your relationships are immeasurable. Tune in for an exploration of healing, growth, and building more profound connections. Journey towards secure and fulfilling relationships.

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If you find this episode valuable, please leave me a 5-star review and share it with your friends! It would help me out so much!


Link To Resources:
Online coaching: https://www.soli-souls.com/

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liekeselis/

Transcript

Hello, beautiful souls, and welcome to a new episode of Sensual Secrets. Today, I want to talk about attachment styles, because it's something that is so important and has such a big impact on the way we relate to each other, especially in our romantic relationships. Firstly, we'll go over the four main attachment styles and how they show up in individuals or in relationships, and also how they develop in childhood.

And then after that, I will briefly explain to you how I used to be an avoidant and how I have healed that and how I have moved into being a more secure attachment style. So to start off, I think a really important point to make is that any attachment style can be altered, can be healed. And yes, it does require a lot of effort, a lot of energy, a lot of willingness to work on yourself.

But when you do put in the work. The results that you get are so immensely rewarding and when you don't have a secure attachment style and you're able to move into a secure attachment style, the way that you're able to relate with others, to connect with others is just so much more profound and so much more calming and peaceful.

And so I definitely recommend to anybody listening when we go over these attachment styles to question and to recognize yourself in some of these categories, which won't be black and white. You'll probably recognize some behaviors that cross over different attachment styles, but see in which behaviors you recognize yourself so that you get more insight the next time that these behaviors pop up in yourself and you can start becoming aware of where they are coming from so you can start working with them.

And start healing them instead of reacting towards a partner or a friend or a family member from this hurt place, from this insecure attachment style, instead of from love or from understanding. It's kind of a trauma that's been triggered. It's a reaction in your body that is automated, but all of these patterns you can change.

So let's get started by just saying that the difference between the type of attachment style that you develop has nothing to do with your experiences and if they were more or less traumatizing, but it has more to do with how this trauma or this lack of fulfillment of your needs as a child, how this has shaped your bond with one of your parental figures, for example, or your caregivers.

The first one of the four attachment styles is the secure attachment style, the safe attachment style. And you see this attachment style in people who have healthy ways of emotional regulation. They tend to be very empathetic for others, people's emotions, and they set appropriate boundaries for themselves.

So that means that they are comfortable being in a relationship and they're comfortable being alone. And yes, they still get emotional and yes, they might still act out, but they do have healthy ways of dealing with those emotions. And you see this in people whose parents were really attuned to the physiological needs like food, shelter, water.

et cetera, and the emotional needs of the child so that the child learns to trust and rely on other people. So it has a healthy way of relating to others. And it therefore also learns how to be safe within itself, to go to others when needed and to trust others, but also ways of not being too needy or. Pushing people away. The other three attachment styles, they tend to have developed because the caregivers or one of the caregivers hasn't been there emotionally or the needs, the physiological needs of the child haven't fully been met, and so they develop. insecure attachment style. So it could be physiological or it could be emotional.

It could be both parents. It could be all caregivers. It could just be one caregiver, one prominent figure in a child's life, even if it's a nanny or it's a grandparent who helped raise you. And so these three attachment styles are firstly, an anxious attachment style and people with an anxious attachment style can show low self-esteem and they mostly have a strong fear of rejection or abandonment and therefore they're very clingy in a relationship.

They're overly attached and they are in need of constant reassurance and this might have developed due to inconsistent parenting. That means that sometimes the parent might have been responsive to the child needs and other times they haven't been responsive. So the child gets mixed signals and is therefore confused and therefore in adult life it wants this reassurance over and over from a romantic partner.

Next to the anxious, you have an avoidant attachment style, and these people tend to seem super confident and self-sufficient. They don't like emotional or physical intimacy or they are very social, but they don't really let you in. They're not vulnerable. And so they avoid closeness and they close off when things get serious.

They can be annoyed by a partner or they want to end the relationship and they show self-sabotaging behavior because they are scared of this. deep commitment. And so the needs of an avoidant child might not have been met by the parent. So there might have been a parent that was emotionally unavailable, or they might have even discouraged to express emotions.

And so that means that the child stopped seeking, warned or express emotions. to at least fulfill its need to be close to the parent. And so they were suppressing their emotion. And so they didn't seem distressed. And in adult life, that still comes out as suppressing emotion, being disconnected from your emotion, not being able to communicate your emotion, and therefore shying away from deep connection.

And then the last attachment style, number three of the insecure attachment styles is the disorganized attachment style and people with a disorganized attachment style might be inconsistent in their behavior. So they usually have a really deep desire to be in an intimate relationship, but simultaneously, they are intensely afraid of actually.

Being in such a relationship, so they long for closeness, but they're also scared of it, and that's why sometimes it's called the fearful avoidant attachment style, and it's the most difficult one to recognize. These people have a hard time trusting others. They struggle to believe their partner when they say they love them.

They're constantly looking for signs of rejection or betrayal of their partner, so they're very vigilant, and they might have feelings of unworthiness. Disorganized, attached people tend to be afraid to let anyone in and they're scared that they will hurt them. And so they expect disappointment while they want a relationship.

And so they can really flip a switch between being very clingy or being very distant. So an anxious person, you would say they're more clingy, an avoidant person, you would say they're more distant, and a disorganized person, you would say they switch in between clingy and avoidant. And this disorganized attachment style might have developed in childhood through experiencing verbal, physical, or sexual abuse, or they might have witnessed this abuse.

When, for example, the parent would violently or aggressively yell at each other or have arguments. And so this parent becomes a source of fear. The child isn't able to trust the parent. And the central theme in their lives becomes perceived fear. The child is kind of trapped because they are still dependent on the parent, but they also want to avoid them because they want to stay safe.

And so they never know what to expect or how to behave. It ends up being a very confusing situation, hot or cold, left and right, push and pull. And so when these attachment styles interact,

 they always kind of balance each other out. Just like the polarity between the masculine and the feminine energy, there's also this polarity in attachment styles, which tend to balance each other out.

And this creates the infamous push and pull dynamic in relationships. And that is mostly. between, or most extreme, between an avoidant attachment style and an anxious attachment style. And so, the more that the avoidant pulls away, the more needy the anxious will become. The more needy the anxious becomes, the more the avoidant will push them away.

And you go into this negative spiral of disconnection. And I have experienced this as well in my own attachment style. I tended to be more avoidant and I've managed to work my way towards a safe attachment style, but it did require me. years of effort, and it still does. I'd say now that I'm safe, but I still sometimes have these instincts.

So I have moved from an avoidant attachment style to a safe attachment style. And as I've said before, you can still recognize certain behaviors. It's not a black and white labeling or categorization. But I definitely say now that I'm secure because of the fact that I have really learned to stay in conflict, communicate about my emotions or about anything actually, and I don't self-sabotage anymore.

I used to push people away, I used to run away from conflict, I used to have pretty bad or even nonexistent emotional communication and I was always thinking if there is something better out there, while having a beautiful partner even, and I could never fully give myself a hundred percent in a relationship, I would always have the door Just this tiny bit open because what if, what if this is not it?

And I would say that's kind of this fear of commitment, these behaviors and not being able to fully commit that was sabotaging my own desire because actually deep down, I wanted to connect with people, but it also really hurt my partners. And so, I started to gain insight into my attachment style by an ex-partner of mine who has pointed that out to me.

And then I started investigating it and a book that really helped me was Attached by Amir Levine. In this book, everything about attachment styles is written out pretty straightforward, pretty simple. You can really relate to certain stories or you can really see a list of maybe your own characteristics or other people's, your friends or partners' characteristics, and it gives you really Good tips and tricks on how to heal them or how to deal with them in other people, because being aware of these attachment styles isn't only valuable to heal your own inner trauma, but it's also very valuable in knowing how to help other people, how to give space for other people, or how to fulfill other people's needs, especially the people closest to you, your romantic partners or your friends.

your family members. So the way that I healed my avoidant attachment style or mostly avoidant attachment style was firstly by gaining more insight into my patterns so I could recognize them in my own behavior when they would pop up. And so by reading the book Attached by Amir Levine and then analyzing my personal situations and thinking, okay, I recognize this in myself or I recognize this in my environment and others.

And then becoming aware of these patterns, these behaviors. In the moment, when the behavior would arise. So usually when there would be an emotional trigger. And then I could label them. So I could distance myself from this pattern, knowing that it's just a pattern that I've learned throughout childhood or through even traumatic experiences through my life.

So if I have learned this pattern, that means that I can unlearn it and it's not me. So I don't identify with it. I take a step back and I observe it. Something that really helped me is knowing that living in this pattern isn't what I truly wanted. Because I got to the point that I was like, okay, I really want a relationship right now.

I want to, because I've been trying to have some relationships. But some way or another, I always push people away. I always self-sabotage and I'd like to know what's up with that. And so. That actually really catapulted me into my personal growth as well. My desire to love, to be loved, to be able to share love, to give and receive, and to share a deeper connection with another human being.

Because yeah, as a mostly avoidant person, I was pretty, pretty scared of that, pretty afraid to be vulnerable, and I didn't fully understand my own emotions because I had been suppressing them so much. And another important factor in catching myself in the moment and being able to become aware of when these behaviors were popping up was accepting help from my partners, accepting help to point them out while not going in a defense.

Putting my ego on the side and agreeing to a solution or agreeing to my partner, pointing them out when I'm not feeling triggered, so that when I'm in a triggered situation and one of these behaviors would pop up, we could refer back to our mutual agreement. And then the most difficult step. Uh, the step that takes the most effort and energy is to change that behavior in the moment.

So whenever, for example, I would be in a conflict, a discussion, my instinct was to run away and to literally leave the room or even leave the house and learning to stay and calming myself down during those moments, that created a big shift. Um, and how I was able to relate because that opened up the ability to communicate and resolve conflicts.

Something that really helped me was expressing the fact that I wanted to run and expressing what I'm feeling, even if my feelings weren't clear, asking for enough space to be able to talk. So literally just silence because I needed a lot of time to put my emotions into words or these. kind of unclear concepts that were going on inside of me.

I needed time to figure them out. So in a setting of conflict, I needed silence to be able to respond to something, to be able to put into words what was going on inside of me. The moment that I would shine light on the fact that I wanted to run, it would dissipate so much and my partner would understand me in this moment, I would share what was going on inside of me, even if I wasn't fully able to put my emotions into words yet or whatever I wanted to express towards them.

At least they knew I was sharing what was going on inside of me. And that was, Hey, me. I'm having a difficult time, I really feel like running away, but I want to stay, please help me. I need space to be able to talk and put into words what is going on inside of me, or I don't even know what's going on inside of me, but I'm here, I'm staying, even though I really, really want to run away.

Then you can also find agreements between you and your partner of what to do in that moment when I would have shared that I want to run away, something that always suits me is physical contact. So for example, you can make an agreement with your partner to like, whenever you express this, this conflict that's going on inside of you to just give each other a hug so that you would calm down so that I would calm down in such a situation.

And I'm sure you can find a way for yourself of what would help you to soothe the emotions.

And all other situations in my avoidance were related to this running-away concept. I just wanted to get out of there, get out of the relationship, get out of the commitment, get out of the conflict. For example, wanting to break up when things get hard. But then I really learned how to communicate calmly.

What I needed was some space to process. So even just a short walk would help to get myself back, to get my thoughts clear, to calm down. Because initially, the problem was that I would run away and would not communicate at all. My communication would shut down completely, and I would leave anyway.

And that means that I would even go into a silent treatment. Since I didn't know how to express what was going on inside of me, and my partner would just be left guessing what was up, what was going on, even though I felt as if I was guessing myself. Not communicating that at all is really not fair to your partner.

Another thing that really helped me heal my avoidance is emotional regulation. So I already mentioned that I would learn to communicate, that I would need some space to process and go for a walk. Other ways of emotional regulation are that I learned to sit with my emotions instead of pretending that they don't exist and that everything is fine.

So I was unaware of my emotions and I had to learn to feel them to be able to understand them. So I did a lot of body practices and just being present in my body and learning to distinguish a sensation or a feeling in my body or when I would have an emotion, to really learn what this emotion means, where it's coming from, but especially where do I feel it?

How does it come up in my body? What does it feel like? And then I would even look up lists of emotions online and just read which kind of emotions are there and to really start to specify and distinguish different emotions from one another. Another healthy way of regulating my emotions is that now I share when I'm having a difficult time, I share that with a friend, I talk to them, I confide in them, I reach out when I'm having a hard time, while in the past I used to isolate completely, I used to shut down, there would be no communication, I didn't know what was going on inside of me, and I was kind of stuck in this loop of confusion and negative feelings while not even knowing what it was.

Something that helped me with understanding these emotions was journaling. By journaling without judgment, just writing out things that would pop up, so all of these concepts in my mind would become clear and I would find a way to express them as well verbally later on.

And then there's also a lot of healthy coping techniques that I apply now to feel better, to release stress, such as exercise. When I'm not feeling good and I can't immediately get out of the moment, I'll go for a run or I go to the gym or I take an ice bath or I'll eat a little piece of dark chocolate.

You know, there are so many ways that you can deal with things: journaling, sitting with your emotions, meditating, doing some sports. There are plenty of ways and how to deal with your emotions in a healthy way, such as a secure person would do, because it doesn't mean that when you are securely attached that you don't have emotions.

You just know how to regulate them and you just learn how to deal with them and therefore connect in a healthy way with another human being.

And so to close off, maybe just a few tips on how to deal with an avoidant partner. And that is to try to give them space when they need it. Realize that they are behaving from their self-sabotaging pattern, from a pattern that they have learned throughout childhood in order to survive. And don't take this personally, because it has nothing to do with you.

Even though you're in that situation with them, it's nothing to do with you. It's just their reaction pattern, their mode of operation that they immediately return to. They go to that default mode of reacting. Just remember that they actually love you and they might just be overtaken by this default pattern.

Help them to become aware of these patterns or this behavior after they have come out of this high-intensity situation because when they're in this high-intensity situation, you won't be able to talk with them. They will close off or the situation will get worse. Hold space, give them space, don't take it personally, and know that afterwards you can address these issues or these patterns when they have come back to calmness and you can have a beautiful, loving conversation in which you don't blame each other.

So unfortunately, I've noticed that it might be more efficient to put your own needs aside for a little bit and put the relationship, the well-being of your partner first. And then afterwards, you can work things out together and you can agree on a plan of how you can move forward and improve and what to do in a situation like that when this behavior pops up again. Agree on a way forward, on a plan, and as I've said before, you balance each other out.

So when you are together with an avoidant or an anxious or a disorganized person, try to always be the bigger person. Also, when you're securely attached, obviously, but when you try to be the bigger person and to stay centered, then you won't go into these extremes together because that other person will come to center as well.

But when you react to an avoidant by being more needy and commanding that they give you attention and that they talk with you now, the more they will push away. So come back to center by leading by example. And I'll leave it at that. Have a beautiful day.