#172: 10 Signs You're Moving From Anxious to Secure Attachment
In today's episode, we’re exploring the key signs that you’re moving from anxious attachment toward greater security. While every healing journey is unique, certain themes consistently emerge as markers of growth. If you're working on healing your anxious attachment style, this episode will help you recognise the shifts happening within you.
What We Cover:
How healing is not linear and why everyone's journey looks different
The mindset shifts that show you're stepping out of fear and insecurity
Emotional and relational changes that signal you're building self-worth and self-trust
Learning to let go of control and embrace uncertainty
Practical insights to keep you motivated as you continue your journey
Whether you're just beginning to explore attachment healing or you're deep in the process, this episode offers validation and encouragement to help you stay the course.
Join Healing Anxious Attachment to start your journey to secure attachment today!
10 Signs You're Moving From Anxious to Secure Attachment
If I could point to one journey that yields profound benefits in our relationships and our sense of self, it would be the transition from anxious to secure attachment. It's a path of self-discovery and growth that countless individuals walk, and while it's not always a straight line, there are clear signs that indicate progress. Let's explore these signs and how they reflect the internal shifts from anxious to secure attachment.
Validating Your Own Feelings
One of the first signs of moving towards secure attachment is becoming better at validating your own feelings and experiences. Instead of seeking external approval to confirm your emotions, you start trusting your own perceptions. This shift means you no longer rely on your partner or others to validate whether your feelings are "okay". You develop an internal sense of affirmation—acknowledging your emotions and understanding that they make sense. This doesn't mean dismissing others' perspectives, but rather recognising that your emotions are valid in their own right.
Comfort with Space
Anxiously attached individuals often find space in relationships triggering. The absence of immediate reassurance can lead to anxiety and unwanted thoughts. As you become more secure, this changes. You start to feel more comfortable with space and time apart from your partner. Rather than filling that space with negative assumptions, you develop a trust in the relationship that isn't dependent on constant proximity. This newfound comfort means you also stop taking your partner's need for space personally and instead respect it as a normal, healthy part of the relationship dynamic.
Grounding Yourself When Triggered
A critical part of moving towards secure attachment is the ability to ground yourself when triggered. Anxious reactions often happen rapidly and can feel almost out of control. Becoming more secure involves recognising when you’re triggered and employing techniques to calm and ground yourself. This might include deep breathing, mindfulness practices, or other somatic grounding techniques that help you regain control. Over time, this ability to insert a pause and choose your response becomes more natural, leading to healthier interactions.
Avoiding Game Playing
As your attachment style becomes more secure, you lose interest in strategising and game-playing to win someone's approval. Instead of trying to manipulate situations to get the response you want, you start showing up as your authentic self. This means being less concerned with whether others approve of you and more focused on whether the relationship aligns with your values and needs. The energy once spent on trying to "win" love is now directed towards building genuine connections based on honesty and mutual respect.
Asking for What You Need
Anxiously attached individuals often avoid asking for what they need out of fear of appearing needy or pushing others away. As you become more secure, this fear diminishes. You get better at identifying your needs and articulately expressing them without trepidation. This shift signifies a deeper trust in your relationships—that those who care about you actually want to meet your needs. Moreover, you're less apprehensive about the potential fallout from voicing your needs, trusting that a healthy relationship can navigate these conversations.
Internal Self-Worth
Another hallmark of secure attachment is a solid, internal sense of self-worth. As you grow, your self-esteem becomes less dependent on external validation and more rooted within. You start to see yourself as valuable and worthy, independent of others' opinions. While feedback can still be meaningful, it no longer dictates your self-perception. This strong foundation of self-worth means that you’re less likely to internalise negative feedback and more likely to maintain a balanced view of yourself.
Tolerating Uncertainty
Anxiety thrives on uncertainty, often causing people to seek control in situations that are inherently uncontrollable. Moving towards secure attachment involves developing a greater tolerance for life's uncertainties. Trusting in your own resilience and ability to handle whatever comes your way allows you to let go of the need for absolute certainty. This acceptance of uncertainty not only eases anxiety but also frees up mental and emotional energy to focus on more constructive pursuits.
Prioritising Your Well-Being
For some, anxious attachment goes hand-in-hand with neglecting personal well-being. Overgiving and burnout are common, driven by a belief that one's value lies in their ability to care for others. Becoming more secure involves learning to prioritise your own well-being. This means setting boundaries, saying no when necessary, and recognising that taking care of yourself is neither selfish nor optional. It’s a pivotal change that allows for healthier, more balanced relationships.
Authentic Relationship with Yourself
Developing a secure attachment often leads to a more authentic relationship with yourself. This means taking the time to understand your own needs, desires, and boundaries. It also means becoming comfortable in your own skin and valuing your own company. With this deeper self-awareness comes a greater ability to show up authentically in relationships, leading to connections that are more genuine and fulfilling.
Comfort with Conflict
Finally, moving from anxious to secure attachment makes you less afraid of conflict. While anxious individuals may avoid conflict or overreact when it occurs, secure individuals handle disagreements with more grace and ease. They understand that conflict is a natural part of any relationship and not necessarily a threat. This perspective allows for healthier, more productive resolutions and a deeper sense of trust and stability in the relationship.
In conclusion, the journey from anxious to secure attachment is transformative. Each of these signs reflects a significant shift towards healthier, more fulfilling relationships. While the path may be gradual and requires consistent effort, the rewards are well worth it, leading to a stronger sense of self and more meaningful connections.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Self-Validation: Reflect on your ability to validate your own feelings and experiences. Do you find yourself often seeking validation from others? How might you start practicing greater self-validation?
Tolerance for Space: Think about your comfort level with space in relationships. How do you typically react when your partner needs space? What steps could you take to become more comfortable with space and less triggered by it?
Trigger Management: How do you typically react when you're triggered or activated? Can you identify any physical sensations that you experience in those moments? Write about a recent instance and how you might inject a pause next time.
Avoiding Strategies: Do you notice yourself strategising, game-playing, or striving for someone's approval in your relationships? How might these behaviours be serving or sabotaging your sense of self-worth?
Needs and Fears: Reflect on your ability to ask for what you need in relationships. Do you hesitate or fear how the other person might respond? Consider how you might start to articulate your needs with more confidence.
Self-Worth: How much do you rely on external validation to feel worthy? Identify some ways in which you can begin to cultivate a more internal sense of self-worth.
Handling Uncertainty: Rate your tolerance for uncertainty in life and relationships on a scale of 1 to 10. Describe a recent experience where uncertainty was challenging for you and brainstorm ways to increase your tolerance for it.
Prioritising Well-being: Think about how you’ve been managing your own well-being lately. Do you tend to put others' needs before yours? How might you begin to prioritise your own well-being more effectively?
Authentic Self-Relationship: Take a moment to explore your relationship with yourself. Do you find it hard to identify your own opinions, desires, or needs? How can you foster a deeper and more authentic relationship with yourself?
Conflict Comfort: How afraid are you of conflict in your relationships? Reflect on a recent conflict and how you handled it. What might you do differently to approach conflict with more comfort and security?
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment. A place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge, and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about 10 signs that you are moving from anxious to secure attachment. So if you, like many most of my listeners, are someone who identifies with anxious attachment patterns and you've been doing the work to move towards a more secure way of being in your relationships, you may have wondered, 'Am I moving in the right direction? Is it working, so to speak, all of this healing work that I've been doing? And as much as I'm not someone who's going to tell you that it's a really nice, neat, straight line from a to b, from anxious to secure, from unhealed to healed. I think all of that is actually a function of our anxious part, wanting there to be a really clearly cut plan and things that we can expect.
[00:01:23]:
I do also think that there are certain signs that you are growing. And it's really, really important when we're doing any kind of work like this to clock those wins and to be really aware of and celebrating ourselves as we move in the right direction. I think it's all too easy to focus on all of the ways in which we're still struggling, all the things that we're not perfect at. You know, oh, I'm still getting triggered by this. And when our attention goes there, we might be missing all of the ways in which we are growing. And I think when we bring more awareness to that, we're likely to be more motivated and encouraged and heartened by the fact that the work is working. So I'm gonna be sharing these ten signs today that you are moving in the right direction. Of course, it's a non exhaustive list, But I think it's a pretty good starting point.
[00:02:13]:
And whether you notice some of these things in yourself and as I said, you can celebrate that, pat yourself on the back, and feel encouraged to keep going. Or maybe you hear this and you go, okay, I'm not quite there yet. For those people, at least you can have hope and maybe be encouraged that that is possible and that if you do show up for yourself just a day at a time, moment to moment, that this is what is possible for you and what lies ahead on the other side of having done this work. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. I'm gonna be sharing these ten signs that you're moving from anxious to secure attachment. And before we dive into today's episode, just to let anyone know who is maybe new here or who hasn't checked it out before, my healing anxious attachment course is a really beautiful resource for you if you are doing the work or wanting to do the work on your anxious attachment. Almost 2 a half 1000 people have gone through this course in the last two and a half years. So it is tried and tested and loved by many, and always gets really beautiful feedback.
[00:03:16]:
So maybe have a listen to this episode, and if it inspires you, that might be your next step. The other quick announcement is just to remind you about my upcoming retreat in Byron Bay here in Australia. If you are wanting to really go deep and in person work is a whole different kettle of fish, I had someone reach out the other day asking, you know, if they'd done my course, would it just be a repeat of that? And I had to really honestly say if, you know, our growth and healing were as simple as just getting information in different formats, then we could all just sit at home and Google this stuff and magically be healed. Now, of course, that's not how it works. And in my experience, both facilitating and participating, being there in person really takes things up a notch. It's much more connective, obviously, but also allows you to be really seen and vulnerable in a way that tends to really catapult our results. So if you are interested in diving deep with me on this kind of work, the retreat is gonna be about really deeply knowing yourself and building up your self worth, and then also translating that into more conscious relating and tools for healthier relationships in an absolutely spectacular luxury setting. Definitely check out my Byron Bay retreat.
[00:04:38]:
I would love to see you there. Okay. So let's dive into these ten signs that you are becoming more secure. The first one is you're getting better at validating your own feelings and experience. So I did an episode recently on the importance of self validation for anxiously attached people, and you can go back and listen to that if you haven't. In fact, I really suggest that you do because it's such an important puzzle piece for anxious attaches, and it's one that I think often gets overlooked. I think it's not the sexiest of topics, and people are always looking for something a bit shinier, a silver bullet or a magic pill, that's going to really transform their relationship with themselves and other people. And self validation doesn't really sound that exciting, but self validation is essentially my ability to know what I'm feeling and going, yes, I feel this way and it makes sense that I feel this way.
[00:05:31]:
Rather than the base case for most anxiously attached people is telling their partner, like, I'm feeling upset, you hurt me, and needing their partner to agree with them or approve of that in order for it to feel like they're allowed to have that experience. So I only feel like it's okay for me to be upset if you agree that it's okay for me to be upset. Or I only feel it's okay for me to be insecure if you also acknowledge and agree that it's okay for me to be insecure. We almost test our partners by sharing how we're feeling, but then fighting and protesting for them to agree with us. And until they do, we don't really feel like we're allowed to feel the things that we feel. This is an expression of the broader trend in anxious attachment towards outsourcing and overly relying on all of that which is external to us, and we'll come to that a little later when talking about self worth. But a big part of the healing process and as you become more secure, you might notice that you have a greater capacity to actually sit in what you know for yourself. You know, yeah, I don't need you to agree with my perception or my experience.
[00:06:41]:
I don't need for you to say that I'm right or that that's true in order for me to know that it's right and true for me. So we start to orient back to something a little more self sourced, and that being able to validate yourself and your experience rather than needing someone else to in order for you to think that it's true or you're allowed to have that experience is a really really good sign that you're shifting from anxious attachment to something more secure. Okay. The next one is you're becoming more comfortable with space in your relationships. Now as I've spoken about many times before, space can be a big trigger for anxiously attached people and that's for a lot of reasons. Partly because being together feels like real time reassurance that everything is okay. If you're right there in front of me, I can see you and I feel connected to you, then I have in this moment proof that nothing's wrong. As soon as that's not the case, as soon as you're not right there in front of me, then I can start to fill in the gap, that space, that uncertainty, with negative thoughts, catastrophic assumptions, fears, insecurities and send us spiraling into anxiety and all of the behaviors that go with it.
[00:07:52]:
So as you become more secure, you might notice that space is not so much of a trigger and you're actually more comfortable being apart from your partner, and you probably spend less time thinking about them when you're apart. So when you're very much in the depths of anxious attachment, it's likely that anytime you're not with your partner, you're thinking about them, And you're probably thinking about them from quite an anxious place of wanting reassurance, wanting to connect, wanting to call or text or have some sort of, again, like proof that everything's okay, because without that proof you sort of assume that everything's not okay or you fear that something's wrong. An extension of this is that if your partner needs space as you become more secure, you're less likely to take that personally. Now of course, there are caveats to this. I'm not suggesting I always get people saying, but what about this? My partner disappeared for 3 weeks. No one is suggesting that that is okay and that the secure person would tolerate someone just going AWOL for weeks at a time. Absolutely not what I'm talking about, to be very, very clear. But if your partner is in a bit of a bad mood or they're having a hard day and they say, 'I just need a couple of hours to myself', that's not going to be threatening to the secure person.
[00:09:06]:
You're not going to take that personally. So I think as you shift from anxious to secure, you are less likely to take, particularly an avoidant partner's need for reasonable space as some sort of personal failing. Because I think for anxious people, it's like, if you loved me, you'd wanna spend every moment with me. So the fact that you don't want to be around me right now must mean that I've done something wrong. Right? You can almost hear in that. It's a very self centered way of viewing the world and relationships. Right? So as we become more secure, we stop putting ourselves at the center of everything and we're less likely to take things like space as some sort of personal failing. Okay.
[00:09:45]:
The next one is you're able to ground yourself when you're triggered, or you're better able to ground yourself when you become triggered or activated. So I don't want to suggest that, like, the secure person is perfect at this all the time and they are like a zen monk and they never become triggered, and it's just like peace and tranquility. Right? Of course, everyone is human, everyone gets triggered and activated from time to time, but as you move from being anxious to being more secure, you have more capacity to inject some pause into those moments. When you're at the very start of this journey or when you're very anxious, it's likely that it all happens at lightning speed. Right? Something happens, your body reacts, and then you feel almost possessed. Right? You feel like the panic just takes over, and the mobilization of that, and you just have to urgently do something, and you feel like you don't really have control. The you that that is happening to is not driving the bus. So as you become more secure, you're likely to be able to notice that and go, 'Ah, I'm becoming triggered, I'm becoming activated.
[00:10:48]:
I can notice that my heart rate is speeding up. I can notice that maybe my chest is tightening, my stomach is flipping about, I have heat in my face, and my breath is getting more shallow, all of these things, and we're actually watching that happen, and just the act of noticing allows us to create a little bit of pause. And the tools that you'll develop, and this is something that I put a lot of focus on in healing anxious attachment, is tools for somatic grounding and nervous system regulation. Being able to consciously process that energy, whether we need to that energy so we actually lean into the sympathetic activation that we're experiencing, or maybe we can bring ourselves back down through more calming and grounding activities. Being able to do that and actually feel like you're in the driver's seat and you have the possibility of choice in those moments is a really really positive sign that you are moving towards a more secure way of being in yourself and in your relationship. And that is really, in and of itself, is just life changing because as you know, if you're deep in anxious attachment or you have been deep in anxious attachment, it is really, really hard to feel like you're at the mercy of your body in those moments, and it just kind of hijacks you and drives you to behave in ways that maybe subsequently you feel not so proud of or even ashamed of. So as you become more secure, you'll notice that you're able or better able to pause and ground yourself when triggered, rather than just reacting from a really frantic anxious place. Okay.
[00:12:22]:
The next one is you are no longer interested in strategizing, game playing or striving to get someone's approval. So again, when we are deep in our anxious attachment, we are usually deep in our unworthiness And that part of us that feels really unworthy tells us that we have to work really hard for love and approval and acceptance and belonging. And so we tend to strategize, right? We gather all of the information, we observe, we play detective. If someone's behaving in a way that maybe doesn't feel good to us rather than advocating for ourselves, we internalize the way that people treat us and make it about us, and so we then try and change ourselves in order to change how we're being treated. Or if you're in the dating phase, rather than just being clear in what you want and being clear in who you are, and letting people either come or go based on whether that's what they want. You feel like you really have to work hard to get people to choose you and get people to stay. And of course, that's a really tiring way of being in relationships. I don't need to tell you that.
[00:13:32]:
I'm sure that if you relate to it, you know how exhausting it is and how detrimental it is for our sense of self, because we lose ourselves in the process pretty easily when we're just constantly trying to become whoever we need to be in order to get someone's approval. So as you become more secure, you might notice that you feel a little more grounded in you, in who you are, and you're a little bit less attached to needing other people to choose you, approve of you, and bending over backwards to try and curate all of that perfectly and make that happen. You really just notice that you're becoming more comfortable in who you are. Okay. The next one is you ask for what you need without fear. Or with less fear. I don't want these to sound like, you have to have totally nailed every single one of these in order to be moving in the right direction. But you're getting better at first identifying what you need and what you want and what matters to you, and then advocating for yourself.
[00:14:32]:
Right? When you are in the really early stages of anxious attachment, there's a good chance that you struggle to ask for what you want. It tends to be this belief that in order to be lovable, we need to make ourselves very easy and low maintenance. And that in order to be easy, we have to be needless and become very small, not rock the boat, not make anyone's life difficult. Right? We think that our value lies in our ability to take care of other people, and in no way do we want to add to anyone's stress or burden. And so we tend not to be very vocal in articulating what we want and need. Now of course, the problem with that is that as much as you can try and make yourself low maintenance and feign low maintenance, that tends not to be true or honest. So you've got all of these needs bubbling away under the surface, and they tend to come out in passive aggressive ways, ways that spring from hurt and neglect and anxiety and fear and abandonment and all of that other wounded stuff. So as you become more secure, you may notice that you're getting better at not only identifying your needs, but actually trusting that the people who you're in a relationship with, and they can be romantic and friends, family, that they care enough about you that they actually want to give to you, they want to be able to care for you, they want you to be happy and fulfilled.
[00:16:04]:
And that includes knowing about and taking reasonable steps to meet your needs. And we start to be able to trust in the possibility of reciprocal relationships, rather than the asymmetries that we can unintentionally or unknowingly create in our relationships when we're coming from that really anxious, unworthy place. So as you become more secure, you're probably finding your voice a little and becoming more confident in saying like, here's what I need in order to feel good in a relationship, here's what works for me and what doesn't, and feeling like you can stand firm in that again, going back to the first point, without needing the person who you're saying that to to agree with you or approve of what you're saying. It's something that you know for yourself and you feel comfortable with. Okay. The next one is you no longer rely solely on external confirmation of your self worth. So again, it's this idea of your self worth, your sense of self, self knowing, all of that starts to be internal bricks that you're laying. It feels like a sturdy, anchored foundation of worthiness within you, rather than needing people around you whether that's the person you're in a relationship with or even something more tenuous than that.
[00:17:16]:
It might be colleagues and acquaintances, people you have on Facebook from high school. You may just find that you're so invested in what everyone thinks of you or your assumption of what everyone thinks of you that it keeps you from expressing yourself, from being honest, from putting yourself out there in any capacity because you're so concerned with what people might think or say about you. Now, I am not someone who thinks that in order to be secure you have to be totally immune to what people think. I don't think that's honest when people say that. Because I think as a very social species, it is entirely natural that we would be considerate of what people think of us and that we would at least take some of that on board in shaping our behavior and our choices. And I think that that can actually be healthy. I think when we totally put ourselves in a bubble and say, I don't care what anyone thinks and I'm not going to take any of in a bubble and say, I don't care what anyone thinks and I'm not going to take any of it on board, that can be swinging to another extreme. But as you go from anxious to secure, I think what you'll notice is that you're getting better at being discerning about whose opinions you take on board.
[00:18:24]:
And you have a really strong base foundation of trusting in your own value, really seeing and honoring your own value, your own worth, who you are, what you bring to the table, and not assuming that that's something you need to prove to other people, or that you need other people to agree with. And as I said, you become much more discerning in whose opinion and feedback you care about, and whose opinion and feedback you're really not invested in because it doesn't really matter. Okay. The next one is you develop a greater tolerance for uncertainty. So I've spoken about this before, anxiety loves certainty, or the illusion of certainty, and cannot stand uncertainty, which is bad news because there's a lot of uncertainty in our lives, in our relationships. And I think that when we are experiencing uncertainty and the discomfort that comes with it, our instinct is to try and control. Right? And we can engage in all sorts of behaviors that are directed at trying to create a sense of control for ourselves, whether it's controlling other people, controlling ourselves, playing out everything that could happen so that we can almost rehearse how we would respond, all of this is our brain going, I can't bear the thought of uncertainty. I can't just surrender to the unfolding of life and cross that bridge when I come to it.
[00:19:46]:
I need to be prepared. Right? As you heal some of those anxious parts and you learn to comfort those parts and you build the self trust, you also build your capacity to be with that unfolding and to be with the uncertainty of life, and really trust that you can handle whatever comes your way, and that it's not going to kill you, and that you're strong and that you are capable, I think all of that really allows us to to have a greater tolerance for uncertainty. And so that's something that you will notice as you move from anxious to secure attachment, is that uncertainty doesn't send you spiraling, and it isn't something where you feel like you need to desperately try and create control or close the gap or eliminate any doubt. You develop a more mature and nuanced understanding of the fact that all of those attempts at control are largely in vain, and it's not the best use of your time and energy to try and do that. And so you soften a bit and you free up a lot of energy in the process. Okay. The next one is you really prioritize your own well-being. So I think this is maybe a subset of anxious attaches.
[00:20:54]:
It may not be everyone, but certainly there is a subset who really, really struggle to do anything for themselves. The caretakers, the over givers, the people who tend to burn themselves out doing everything for everyone, and there's just nothing left in the tank for them. Or maybe they actively feel selfish in a negative way if they do anything for themselves. They feel unworthy of taking care of themselves and unworthy of feeling good. As you become more secure and again you heal those parts of you that hold those beliefs of what you are worthy and deserving of, you start to really actively prioritize your own well-being and put yourself first at times. Maybe saying no to things that actually aren't of interest to you or that would take away from time that you had earmarked to do something for yourself, your boundaries around your time and energy become better and you become better at prioritizing that which is truly important to you and adds to your well-being and saying no to the things that burn you out, that leave you feeling resentful and depleted. The next one is you have a deeper and more authentic relationship with yourself. Now, this is a big one.
[00:22:06]:
We could do easily a whole podcast just on that, but having a deeper and more authentic relationship with yourself really comes from learning to shut out some of that external stuff that you've been so heavily reliant on and getting to know who you are. Like, what do I feel? What do I think? What do I know to be true? What do I enjoy? What do I not enjoy? What do I want for my life? All of these things that we become very disconnected from when we are living inauthentically, when we are self abandoning, when we're not being honest with ourselves. It sounds so basic and simple and obvious, but I can't tell you how many people I've worked with who when I ask them about their needs or their opinions, they're so disconnected from themselves that they don't actually know the answer. So I always say step 1 for anxiously attached people when it comes to expressing needs or boundaries is figuring out what they are, because a lot of people don't know. They don't know what's important to them in a relationship, they don't know what they like, they don't know what to do with their spare time when they're not just doing what their partner wants because they're so unaccustomed to actually tuning in and going, like hello, there's a there's a me in there, what does that me want? And so as you become more secure, you'll notice that you reconnect with all of that, and it's almost like the the little branches of the tree start sprouting, and there's this really beautiful relationship to self that you begin to nurture and really value and honor and prioritize. And the last one is you are less afraid of conflict. So anxiously attached people tend to kind of go one of 2 ways, and often they'll go both ways. 1st it's like, I'm totally conflict averse and walking on eggshells, tiptoeing, not wanting to rock the boat, not wanting to push someone away, and really having fear that if there is conflict then that's going to lead to the end of the relationship, and so I need to make sure there is no conflict.
[00:24:02]:
But then all of that suppression, all of that bottling up tends to eventually come out, and tends to come out with a bang. And so the conflict can then be really disproportionate and and you are spewing out this long shopping list of things that you are upset about that date back 2 months, and you've filed it all away in your little catalog of of ways that they have hurt and disappointed you, and you use it all to bolster your argument because, again, it goes back to that difficulty self validating. You feel like you have to prove to them that you are right to be upset. And so that tends to be a really dysfunctional pattern, and Particularly if you have a more avoidant partner, they will tend to respond to that avalanche, which often comes across as pretty attacking. They'll usually defend and shut down. And then of course, that part of you that was wanting them to just agree and validate, that part feels really emotionally abandoned and invalidated and that triggers you further. As you become more secure and you become better at caretaking all of those parts within you, you become better at managing your triggers, you become more trusting in the bigger picture of the relationship rather than zooming in on this small rupture in this moment. It creates more security such that you are not so, you know, afraid of conflict.
[00:25:22]:
You're actually able to go to that from a more measured, balanced place, and a trusting place. That like, yeah, we can be upset with each other and still love each other. Right? I can be angry with you and I still really love you, and vice versa. I think the flip side of that can be really hard for anxiously attached people to believe. That you could be angry with me and still love me. That you could be disappointed with me and still think I'm really wonderful and amazing and be grateful to be in a relationship with me. The anxious part of us, the unworthy part of us, struggles to hold both of those things because we really believe we have to be perfect lovable. As we become more secure, we soften some of that stuff, and we are better able to hold both of those things and to zoom out and see the big picture.
[00:26:06]:
And so conflict feels less scary and less overwhelming and less daunting and less high stakes. We're actually able to to have those discussions in a way that is grounded and self advocating, but also takes into account the other person's experience and doesn't get really heated and escalated and overly emotional in a way that is counterproductive. So that's certainly something that you'll notice as you become more secure, you're going to be able to manage difficult moments in your relationship with more maturity, more grace, more ease, more trust, which again, I don't need to tell you is really, really transformative and very, very freeing if you've always lived the version that I described of suppression and then explosion and high drama and then loneliness and fear and stress when that doesn't get resolved in a way that that feels soothing to your system. Okay. That was 10 signs that you're moving from anxious to secure attachment. I hope that you've seen some little glimmers in all of that, some green shoots, maybe you're ticking off multiple items in that list, or as I said, maybe that feels a little far away at the moment, but rest assured that that is what lies ahead, that is what's possible for you if you do this work. And it's not something that's gonna happen overnight, but it is absolutely possible for every single one of you. I really don't believe that this is out of reach for anyone if you are committed to doing this work and to creating the inner relationship that allows all of those things to flourish.
[00:27:39]:
So I really hope that this has been helpful. As I said, if you want a bit more structure and guidance and support in doing that work, my healing anxious attachment program is open for enrollment and is a beautiful comprehensive resource for anyone who is wanting to move from anxious to secure attachment. I would love to be able to support you in that way. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
[00:28:06]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment, relationships, anxious attachment, secure attachment, healing work, self-validation, triggers, nervous system regulation, self-worth, space in relationships, conflict, growth, personal development, relationship patterns, self-awareness, boundaries, self-care, emotional regulation, somatic grounding, dating, self-advocacy, healthy relationships, personal transformation, relationship coaching, self-trust, vulnerability, self-knowledge, self-acceptance, Byron Bay retreat, conscious relating, practical tools.