Hey, everyone. I have a really big announcement. My new book, re-write your story, how to step into your power and get the love you deserve is officially available for pre-order at jillianterrecky.com/book. Our past and how we feel about ourselves determine the way that we love and what we believe that we are worthy of. And inside, you will learn real practical steps to heal old wounds from childhood, overcome attachment issues, and break painful relationship patterns that are getting in the way of your happiness. This is the most personal and practical work I've ever created, and it will truly change your life. It is more than a book. It's a manual or a guide for healing, for secure relationships, for self-worth, and ultimately for letting go of the parts of your past that are continuing to haunt you. So again, it's available for pre-order at jillianterrecky.com/book, and I thank you all for being here and for your support. Okay, so today I am talking about anxious attachment and relationships. Anyone who suspects that they struggle with insecure attachment, whether that's avoidance, whatever it is, I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode. And I'm going to describe what it is, how it manifests, I'm going to debunk some myths, and then what you can actually do about it so that you can then have more fulfilling relationships, because at the end of the day, that's what people want. We all want relationships that feel safe and supportive and alive, and so many of us who believe that we struggle with any sort of insecurity or anxiety in relationships, any sort of attachment wounding, as it's often referred to as, there's this understandable but really profound underlying fear that you're not going to be able to have the relationship that you want. There's always just going to be pain, and there's always going to be anxiety, and there's always going to be struggle. And I'm here to tell you that that is not the case. So here is what you have to understand about attachment, because something that I've been seeing circulating a lot on social media, or people posting quotes or commenting quotes like, "Oh, that's not love, that's just attachment." Like, somehow attachment has become a dirty word, and yet we are wired for attachment. It is actually part of our biology. We are a pair bonding species. So you're longing for love, and to be loved, you're longing for safety, you're longing to be in a relationship, if that's the case, there is nothing in that. That's wrong, or that needs to be pathologized or examined. It is biology. The same brain that seeks food when you're hungry, seeks connection when you feel alone. And we evolve to attach, because attachment is literally what helps us survive. It's what has given our ancestors the stability to raise children, to raise a family, to protect one another, and to build communities. If we did not have attachment, built into our biology, we wouldn't be bonding. We wouldn't be building communities. We wouldn't be building families. And so the goal isn't to become someone who never gets attached. The goal is to, number one, choose people who you can actually safely attach to. And then the second goal is to never be in a position where the need to form that attachment with someone is so overpowering because you don't feel like you can survive without it. We don't want to stay in a relationship just because we are attached. We want to stay in a relationship because we actually choose to stay in a relationship. But it's complicated because the reason why we won't leave a relationship, even if it's reached its expiration, even if it's not right, is because of that deep attachment. So in many ways, it's the primal brain and the higher self is always in conversation with one another, and it can, in modern day, become complicated when it comes to marriage today and building a family because it used to just be almost just for survival. And now, today, we don't want a relationship just for survival. We want a relationship for transcendence. On the one hand, that there's something beautiful to that, that we've evolved as a species to see a relationship as something more than just something that we do to survive, but actually something that we do to reach higher states and levels of consciousness. On the other hand, on the flip side of that coin, when we put that kind of pressure on a relationship to help us reach a new level of consciousness, we are then putting an enormous amount of pressure for a relationship to be for us what, in the past, a whole village or community used to be for us. And so I don't have all the answers. No one does, but I do think that part of understanding relationships and how to actually build a healthier one is learning how to reconcile those two. And yes, we want something that's going to help us grow, but at the same time, how much pressure are we putting on a relationship to be everything that we need out of life in order to feel fulfilled? This is a paid advertisement by BetterHelp. With age comes the wisdom of understanding that life rarely follows the plan. Things can happen any moment, career changes, there's just life events that can force us to adapt as we go. And with over 30,000 therapists worldwide, BetterHelp is one of the leading online therapy platforms, having served millions of people globally. And that's a reason people rave about it. BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and a thousand hours of hands-on experience and hold all required education training and certifications. So you can meet with a range of professionals from marriage and family therapists to social workers and counselors. So you don't have to navigate life's changes alone, and you shouldn't sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/onLove. That's better-h-e-l-p.com/onLove. The second thing that you have to really understand when you, when if you want to understand attachment theory and if you want to understand your own attachment is that your attachment style is not who you are. It is not a diagnosis. It does not encapsulate the entirety of your personality, your desires, your strengths, your weaknesses, and if you believe in the soul, your soul. It is just one variable as part of a dynamic tapestry of who you are. And it is very, very fluid. So you could feel very anxious with one person and very secure with another. You can feel avoidant with one person and feel anxious with another. So it does not exist in a vacuum. Yes, a lot of us have a certain proclivity towards one or the other. But I have spoken to some of the most anxiously and avoidantly attached people and it's not as triggered in certain relationships. And it also is dependent on where we are in life. So my question for you is this, what is the story, what is the narrative, what are the things that you tell yourself about you and your attachment style? Do you tell yourself and do you tell others, oh, I have anxious attachment is if you're proclaiming that you have some sort of disease, or I have avoidant attachment. Do you tell yourself that this is something that you are, that can't be changed? When you think about your attachment style, do you have shame?
Do you feel embarrassed? Do you feel weak?" So in other words, when you think about your patterns and relationship, which includes how you attach and how you don't attach, what feelings does that stir inside of you? What do you feel when you when you talk about that? Do you feel a sense of hopelessness or helplessness? Do you feel like you're fucked up? Do you feel like there's no hope for you? Do you feel empowered? Do you feel proud? If you consider yourself securely attached, is that something that feeds your ego? Does it give you confidence? Because you have to really pinpoint the story that you tell yourself about it because oftentimes when we tell ourselves a story about our insecure attachment, there's a whole lot of shame and negativity that's attached to that, and then we get convinced of our story. And the more convinced we are of the story, the more we identify with the attachment style and the more that we identify with our attachment style, the harder it is to overcome whatever it is that has been preventing you from having and creating healthy love in your life. This isn't about lying to yourself. It's not about telling yourself, you know, guessing yourself. But it is not a diagnosis. It's not something that you catch like you catch a cold. It is not a permanent state of being. It is something that comes up in certain situations, certain circumstances, and with certain people. This episode is sponsored by Wayfair. I love Wayfair and all my outdoor furniture is from Wayfair. I really wanted to get great furniture for my balcony. I just never had outdoor space before living in New York City and I didn't know where to go and then I discovered Wayfair. The thing about Wayfair is that it's high quality. So you can find quality materials that actually stand up to weather in real life. So you are basically shopping furniture and decor that is actually designed to last. And when you shop with Wayfair verified, you shortcut to durable pieces hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection, testing things like quality of materials, functionality and features, and even how long it takes to build. And Wayfair rewards members get 5% back every day, helping you get even more value from your Wayfair purchases. Shop across a wide range of price points and you can find what's right for you. So join Wayfair rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair every style, every home. I have seen and heard lots of dating quote-unquote experts talk about, you know, you're anxiously attached if you're getting anxious during dating. And that's not necessarily true. I think that dating can produce a lot of anxiety in all of us. I think that a lot of us can really get in our heads when we're dating. I think there's often we are receiving a lot of mixed messages. I think then you combine that with or you consider someone who has been conditioned by their family, by society, by their peer groups, to, by history, to believe that if they're not chosen and loved, that they are, that their value goes down. There are also people who have been conditioned to, to believe that romantic love is the most important, this is most of us. The most important kind of love that there is, there's the anxiety for women who want to build a family and are reaching a certain biological age. There's what we think our friends are going to think of us. There's so much conditioning and pressure and fear that rests on so many of our shoulders that can contribute to having anxiety and dating that's not necessarily traceable to what went on in your family growing up. Because a lot of people, when there's insecure attachment, particularly anxious attachment, you may have had one or both of your parents who were not consistent with you. Maybe they were not consistently present, literally present and energetically present. Maybe you had one parent who was mentally ill or always working or just not in touch with themselves emotionally and so you never really felt loved by them. There was no, there wasn't for many different reasons there wasn't a bonding that happened. Maybe because of one parent not being present with you or having a major problem or not being a great parent to you, you developed an extreme attachment to the other parent because at the core of anxious attachment is I'm going to be left, I'm going to be alone, I'm going to be abandoned, bad things are going to happen. But ultimately because of who I am and because of what I believe happens in life, meaning I may have a belief that sad things are going to happen or I can't depend on people or I can't rely on people or you know I'm always going to get my heart broken. These stories, these thoughts lead to a almost pathological attachment to someone because we are so afraid of losing them and ultimately we think that we're going to lose them because something in us is not worth staying for. It also manifests as a lot of separation anxiety. So a lot of people with anxious attachment might have separation anxiety from a parent, siblings, family members, pets, not just their romantic partner. There's almost like this sort of consistent feeling of like being unsafe. Not in all circumstances, lots of people who have insecure attachment are incredibly confident and highly functioning people in many areas of their life. But if they love someone then they are ultimately thinking about losing them more than the average person. Sometimes in a relationship anxious attachment can be triggered by someone who's constantly pulling away. Sometimes anxious attachment is triggered not because of anything that their partner is doing but because something is going on in that person's life that's making them feel less confident in themselves and therefore it's being manifested in the relationship. All the sudden you're not feeling as stable and as grounded and as centered. And so then maybe your habit is to turn to your partner and make them unconsciously responsible for bringing more stability back into your life. So it's nuanced. And the only thing that I would say in addition to asking yourself what is the story that I tell myself about this is what is going on when I think about the times where I have been where I have experienced what I would consider to be anxious attachment. What else was going on in my life? Was there something about the dynamic that I had with this person that was particularly triggering and activating for me? Was I feeling ungrounded and uncentered in my life for other reasons? Do I have a habit of when I'm in a relationship to forget how strong and capable I am and I fall back into a habit because that's really at the end of the day. It's a habit and all habits can be broken. Do I fall into a habit of making my partner responsible for my security and happiness? Very much in the way that we would expect that from a parent. So it's really just about bringing conscious awareness to all of this. This episode is sponsored by Babel. If you're traveling
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All insecurity is fear. And whenever we feel fearful in a relationship and usually that fear is I'm not good enough and so therefore if I'm not good enough, this person is going to flee and I'm going to be left and I'm going to be out without this relationship that's incredibly important to me. Or we fear that we are going to be consumed by the relationship to the point where we lose our connection to ourselves and there are people who have an extreme fear, an irrational fear of losing themselves and then there are people who have an irrational fear of losing the other. I would say more times and not we have a combination of both but whenever you're starting to feel that fear, that insecurity in a relationship, the first question you can ask yourself is am I fearing losing myself or am I fearing losing the other? And what could that be about that's happening inside of me? Is that is that an old thought? Is that something that that comes from my past? Is that something that's coming from my partner or is it something that I'm projecting onto my partner? This is how we become self-aware, emotionally mature adults in a relationship. And then you can say to yourself okay what do I need right now? What do I actually need to give myself right now? And if you have a proclivity towards running away because you're afraid of losing yourself or clinging because you're afraid of losing the other, that's when you're going to breathe and say I am no longer bringing that kind of dysfunction into my relationships. I'm not going to run away because I'm afraid of losing myself because I know that that fear of losing myself usually has nothing to do with the other or maybe it's something they said and it's really something in me or maybe it is something that you have to have a conversation with your partner about. But the promise that you have to make to yourself is I'm not going to bring this to my relationships anymore. I'm going to do things differently because whenever we are insecure, we are fearful and whenever we are fearful, we are selfish. I don't care if you identify with being a giver or not, everyone can be selfish in a relationship and when we are insecure, we become selfish. And what I mean by that is all we're thinking about is our needs, how we can feel better and we're not thinking about what the other person needs. I recently spoke to someone who was very anxiously attached. Everything was about her getting her partner to understand her. But there was nothing about well maybe I should try to understand where they're coming from. When we go into that kind of survival mode, which is just fear, that's all it is. All we're thinking about is ourselves. And in a relationship, the moment one or both people are only thinking about themselves and not also considering their loved one is the moment that the relationship starts to enter dysfunctional territory. So yes, we have to think about ourselves. But we have to, if we love this person, we have to think about them too because that's what love is. So what do you do if this is something that you struggle with? Well, number one, you stop telling yourself that story that that's who you are and that it's some sort of diagnosis. You watch the stories, the stories and the dialogue in your head. If you have a lot of anxiety in relationships, if you feel, if when you love a pet or a loved one, you tend to really think about losing them and maybe you've really mastered not going straight into clinging and you've mastered the sort of behavioral stuff that comes from that fear that is not serving you or the other person. But you can't seem to get rid of that fear completely. You may never. It might never completely go away. But it can definitely get better. It can definitely get better if you're in a relationship with someone who is supportive and kind and doesn't just run away at the first sign of any problems like they're mature, they're in it. It will get better when other things in your life are more stable. It will be better when your blood sugar is better. Like, honestly, the better sleep you get, the better your nutrition is, the better that you, the more connected you feel to to community, to the things that bring you some happiness and some joy, the more you'll see your anxiety decrease, the more you take care of your body through exercise and movement, whatever works for you, the more you will see that anxiety decrease. When you start to see it increase, you always have to look at your life and your daily habits holistically because it does not exist in a vacuum. This episode is sponsored by Thrive Cosmetics. I love Thrive Cosmetics and my friends love Thrive Cosmetics. 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That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S. com/jillion. The third thing is make sure that you're dating people who aren't constantly triggering every fear from your childhood. Yes, we want relationships, we want to be able to grow and certainly when both people are very committed to being the best partners that they want to be and they are willing to do the work, a couple can overcome mountains. And there are times where we have to be honest with ourselves that we're just with someone who's just, it's way too triggering. It's just not going to work. And so who you choose matters. And the next thing, like I said, everything is contextual, pay attention to what else is going on in your life. Do not think that just because you've had a history of some insecure attachment, that that's who you are in every circumstance all the time. You have to consider the context. Next, build community. The opposite of loneliness isn't a relationship. It's connection and connection comes in many forms and you never want to cling to a relationship because you have nothing else going on in your life. You have no other community. Force yourself to build community. Go to that yoga class. Go to whatever that is. Join something you are going to tell yourself. A lot of stories. You're going to get really comfortable. Some of you are not going to want to leave
your house, but you have to build community, the more that you have community around you, the more confident you will be entering a relationship because you will feel supported by connection in your life and not look to your partner or to your date to be the only source of connection in your life. And the last thing that I will mention today is be a communicator, not a ruminator. So when you're really in your head and there's a lot going on, communicate, you may want to communicate to trusted counsel, but just get used to communicating with your partner. And it's not about glamour, finger pointing, you can even say, hey, this might just be me, you know, like I'm feeling a little bit like ungrounded. So I realize that this could be me. But when you said that, it kind of, I don't know, it made me worried. And I could use a little reassurance about that because it made me feel uncomfortable. And in the way that you communicate that, there is confidence. You can communicate your insecurity in a confident way and that what that does is convey an actual confidence and security in yourself and knowing, hey, I care about myself enough and I feel secure enough in myself to be able to be honest about when something doesn't land well. But it's not this constant like, oh, you know, you have to reassure me every five seconds. It's, hey, this may have been in my head, but this thing that you said, it kind of hurt my feelings and it made me spiral a little bit. Can we talk about it? And I want you to get used to being able to say that to your partner because it's so incredibly important and if your partner ever says something like that to you, you have to be able to say, yeah, let's talk about it and be generous with your reassurance. Anyway, hope that helps. I am always seeking out new ways to explain insecure attachment and to explain the nuance of relationships and why some relationships and can feel incredibly dysfunctional or incredibly insecure and why others can feel incredibly secure. And there's just so many different ways to look at it. So I hope this helps. Please let me know in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube, but if you're listening to this, please do not hesitate to reach out at
[email protected]. Anything that that landed for you on this, any questions, anything that you want me to further explore, do not hesitate to reach out, and until next time, thanks for being here. GelineonLove is a Q-code production executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson, produced and edited by Travis Howe, Music by Will Tendi.
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