#120 10 Tips for Healing an Anxious Attachment Style
In today's episode, I'm sharing 10 tips to start healing your anxious attachment style. While "healing" is not something that really lends itself to a formula or a 10-step plan, having guided thousands of students through the process of healing their anxious attachment I can certainly attest to the key growth areas for most folks with anxious attachment patterns.
Healing anxious attachment is a journey many embark on, seeking to transform insecurity into a foundation of safety and confidence in relationships. While the road can be challenging, it’s also profoundly rewarding. These ten tips provide a roadmap to help you start this transformation, offering both practical steps and deeper insights.
1. Adopt the Right Mindset
Healing doesn’t mean you’re broken or in need of fixing. Approach your journey with self-compassion, aiming to create safety and understanding within yourself. Rather than focusing on “being good enough” for others, view this process as a gift to yourself—to feel secure, free, and confident in your relationships.
2. Understand and Regulate Your Nervous System
Anxiety often signals that your body feels unsafe. Learning to identify physical sensations of distress (like tightness in your chest or butterflies in your stomach) helps you respond with self-soothing techniques. This shifts reliance on external reassurance to cultivating internal safety.
3. Address Core Wounds
For many with anxious attachment, wounds of abandonment and unworthiness are at the root of their struggles. Work on recognizing and healing these wounds to reduce the high-stakes feeling that relationships often carry.
4. Build Self-Worth, Self-Respect, and Self-Trust
Developing a strong relationship with yourself is key. By cultivating self-worth and learning to trust your inner compass, you create a solid foundation that isn’t swayed by external validation or rejection.
5. Diversify Your Energy
Avoid pouring all your energy into your romantic relationship. Nurture other areas of your life—friendships, hobbies, and personal growth. This not only balances your life but also enhances the health of your relationship by relieving pressure on it.
6. Identify and Voice Your Needs
Many anxiously attached people struggle to articulate their needs. Start by identifying what’s important to you in a relationship and practice voicing those needs. This promotes healthier dynamics and reduces resentment and frustration.
7. Set and Respect Boundaries
Healthy boundaries are essential for mutual respect and safety. Learn to set boundaries for yourself while respecting those of others. Boundaries aren’t walls; they create a framework for better relationships.
8. Learn Tools for Healthy Conflict and Repair
Conflict is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be destructive. Practicing healthy communication and repair allows for growth and understanding, reducing the fear of abandonment during disagreements.
9. Clarify Your Relationship Vision
Knowing what you want in a partner and a relationship is empowering. Move beyond simply wanting to be chosen and focus on qualities and values that align with your own.
10. Redefine Healing
Healing doesn’t mean eliminating all anxiety or erasing attachment tendencies. Instead, it’s about building resilience, self-awareness, and the ability to navigate relationships with confidence and clarity.
The Path Ahead
Healing anxious attachment is a messy yet transformative process. It’s not about achieving perfection but about growing into a version of yourself that feels safe, secure, and worthy of love. Whether you’re taking your first steps or already on this path, remember that progress—not perfection—is what truly matters.
For those ready to dive deeper, be sure to check out my signature program, Healing Anxious Attachment. It’s helped over 2,000 others heal their anxious attachment, and I’d love for you to join us.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Have you ever noticed a fear of setting boundaries in your relationships? How does this fear impact your interactions with others and affect your own well-being and self-respect?
Do you find it difficult to voice your needs and desires in relationships? What steps can you take to better advocate for yourself and create healthier connections?
In your experience, how does anxious attachment manifest in your relationships? What impact does it have on your sense of self-worth and confidence?
Have you ever felt a strong need for validation and approval in your relationships? How does this impact your behaviour and decision-making within those relationships?
How do you navigate the balance between showing care and support for your partner and maintaining your independence and self-fulfillment?
What strategies have you found effective in regulating your nervous system and practicing self-soothing during moments of anxiety or distress in your relationships?
Do you notice a tendency to avoid conflict in your relationships? How does this impact your ability to communicate openly and effectively with your partner?
In what ways have you diversified your energy across different areas of your life to reduce dependency on your relationships? How has this impacted your overall sense of fulfillment and well-being?
How do you define and prioritise your own needs in your relationships? What challenges do you face in this process and what steps can you take to overcome them?
How do you practice self-compassion and patience in your journey to heal anxious attachment patterns? What role does mindset play in your approach to healing?
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Join the waitlist for Healing Anxious Attachment Black Friday Sale
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, I am sharing ten tips to heal your anxious attachment style. Now, you would probably know if you've been following the podcast for a while, whenever I am opening registration for my program, Healing Anxious Attachment, I typically do an episode that is on the topic of healing anxious attachment. Go figure. And it's funny because the previous episodes I've done, which were most recently the path to healing anxious attachment, prior to that, the three stages of healing anxious attachment, there's been a how to heal your anxious attachment and they're all kind of variations on the theme, but they are by far and away the most downloaded episodes, the ones that people are clearly really interested in hearing about, which I think speaks to the fact that so much of my audience is in that place of struggling with anxious attachment and really wanting to know what to do about that. So today's variation on that theme is ten Tips to Start Healing your anxious attachment. Before I dive into that, a couple of quick announcements.
[00:01:35]:
The first being in keeping with the theme of today's episode, I've created a PDF guide, which is, again, Ten Tips to Heal Your Anxious Attachment. That just summarises what I'm going to talk about today into a neat little PDF that you can download for free so that's linked in the show notes, or you can otherwise find it on my website for anyone who I know. Sometimes people reach out to me saying that they listen to the podcast and take notes. So for a longer list like today's, you can be saved from having to do your own notetaking and download that PDF for free. Second quick announcement is, of course, just to remind you about healing anxious attachment, which is opening in a couple of days time for the big Black Friday special, which is going to be a really big discount. It's just two nine $7 or four monthly payments of $77. So that is the lowest price I've offered the course at since the very first launch, when the programme was just an idea way back in March last year. So it's a really great time to jump in if you are thinking about it, if you have been thinking about it, if the timing maybe hasn't been right, I really encourage you to do so.
[00:02:48]:
Not only is the course $100 cheaper than it usually is, even for the early bird folks, but I'm also including a live Q and A for everybody and a community. So the community component was part of the programme for the first couple of rounds, but then it all got a little bit unwieldy and so I pulled back on offering that. But I'm reviving it for this round so there'll be an online community space where you can connect with each other. I know that a lot of people really value the opportunity to feel seen and understood by others who are on the same path and the same journey. And those spaces are always really supportive and positive and everyone is really, really compassionate towards each other. And I think that helps everyone to feel a little less alone. So all of that is included for the discounted price of $297. And that gives you lifetime access to the course materials and everything else.
[00:03:42]:
So it's a really big sale, it's a really great time to jump in, but that price is only available to people on the waitlist. So make sure that you do sign up in the show notes or on my website if you're interested in that. Doors open in two days time. Okay, so let's talk about these ten tips to heal your Anxious Attachment Style. Now, the first one is to get your mindset right and I think it's important to start here, even as I say, Ten Tips to Heal Your Anxious Attachment Style. I kind of cringe at that title and I wish that I often wish in this podcast that I could have long titles with lots of caveats and nuance, but unfortunately the format doesn't really lend itself to that. So I have to resort to short, snappy titles like Ten Tips to Heal Your Anxious Attachment Style. Now of course, it's not like I can just tick off ten things on a list and then voila, I'm going to be healed.
[00:04:34]:
And that's really what I want to emphasise in getting your mindset right here. It's so important that we're approaching any sort of healing journey, any process of growth from a place of self compassion and seeking to understand and support ourselves to feel safe. I think that so often we come to this work with a sense of brokenness and wrongness and we kind of shame ourselves. We think, there's something wrong with me and I've got to change, I'm ruining all my relationships, I'm so pathetic, I'm so desperate, I've got to stop, right? And I know that feeling, I know that sense of feeling out of control and it can be really overwhelming and exasperating. But I promise you that that is not the frame of mindset is going to allow the parts of you that are really scared to feel safer. It's like a bully is coming into that system and telling the scared little child inside you to just toughen up and to stop being so scared. And of course, that's not the way we would relate to a child and it's not the way that we should relate to our scared parts. So approaching ourselves instead with compassion, of course, coupled with self responsibility and ownership of our part in the pattern, but ultimately having that frame of mind of I want to do this work to gift myself more safety and security and space and freedom in my relationship with myself and my relationship with others.
[00:06:02]:
That's really what we want to be entering into this journey with the mindset of rather than, there's something terribly wrong with me, I'm broken and I've got to fix myself so that someone will love me. That kind of mindset is really entrenching us in the patterns that have gotten us to where we are. And so that is the first shift we need to make. Okay, the second tip is to learn about your nervous system and how to self regulate and self soothe. Of course, I've talked about this so many times on the show. But without understanding what is going on in our body and what it is that feels so terribly unsafe about a particular situation, something that might feel really activating or triggering in our relationships, we've got to know how to speak the language of our body. We've got to know what our body is doing in response to these things. Because when we do feel really anxious, when we do feel really scared, that's our body sounding the alarm and saying there's something wrong here.
[00:06:58]:
And again, rather than just trying to override that or press the mute button on the messages that our body is sending us, the work is really in learning to listen and learning to attune to ourselves and going, oh, okay. I am feeling this tightness in my chest. I'm feeling this sense of butterflies in my stomach. I feel heat in my face. My body's trying to tell me that this doesn't feel safe. And can I seek to understand that and try to bring safety to my body first and foremost so that I can then resource myself to deal with whatever this situation is? Most of us don't know the language of our body and we've been really conditioned out of that level of attunement. And so we just keep pushing and pushing and pushing and then wondering why we feel so burnt out and exhausted and disconnected from ourselves. So learning to attune to our own system, but then also to develop those skills to self regulate, to create safety from within.
[00:07:58]:
Because again, you will have heard me say so many times that for most anxious folks, safety comes from outside exclusively. And that puts us in a very vulnerable position of feeling like someone else is in control of whether or not we are okay. And of course, that's going to create a lot of anxiety. So learning how to rebalance the scales a little there so that we do have this well to draw from within that allows us to feel much more anchored in who we are and what we are capable of. Okay, the next one is understand and heal your core wounds of abandonment and unworthiness. Now, these are not the only core wounds that anxious folks are going to encounter and they're not exclusive to anxious folks. So it's not saying that anyone who has a worthiness wound also has anxious attachment style, but these tend to be pretty high ranking for those with anxious attachment tendencies. So the abandonment wound, as we've talked about, is related to what I was just saying around safety existing outside of us.
[00:09:01]:
There's this sense of someone's going to leave me and I'm not going to be okay on my own. And so feeling like we're always on the brink on the precipice and feeling like we have to try and get ahead of the risk of someone leaving us and that might interface with our worthiness wound, that tells us we are not enough to make someone stay. And that we have to work really, really hard on being a certain way or not being a certain way in order to earn the love, the approval, the validation of the people in our lives. Because we're just so terrified that love is going to be withdrawn at any moment and we're going to be left in the lurch. We're going to be alone in our hour of need. And again, that's a very deep and visceral fear for many folks. And so getting to know that part of us or those parts of us that carry those fears and those burdens is really, really important in sort of addressing the underlying cause of a lot of this stuff. Because you can learn any number of self soothing techniques, but you're going to continue to become activated or triggered or afraid, often in what looks like a disproportionate way if you're harbouring these very deep fears that make everything feel so high stakes.
[00:10:23]:
So it's always a balance of both. It's a balance of creating the safety in the body or learning how to better carry ourselves through challenging moments in our relationships while also trying to understand why those moments feel so challenging having regard to those deeper wounds that we might have. Okay, the next one is to build your sense of self worth, self respect and self trust. So if only it were as easy as just ticking those things off, right? This is a big journey, as all of this stuff is, but self worth to me is a really big one. And I think so much of the work for anxious folks is the self peace, which is why I emphasise things like self worth and self respect and self trust. I think all three of those things can be a little lacking in a lot of people with anxious attachment patterns. As I said, the worthiness wound leads us to feel like we are not good enough in so many ways. And so we really undervalue ourselves and we can really struggle with self esteem, with believing that people like us, that we have something to offer.
[00:11:25]:
We tend to be really biassed towards the ways in which we consider ourselves as falling short or the ways in which we are imperfect. And all of those things, I think, then drive us to behave in ways that further erode our sense of self worth, that lead us to self abandon, to self betray, to act in a way that doesn't really align with who we want to be or what our values are. But because we're so disconnected from self, we maybe don't have that clear compass. So when we start to build our self worth and our self respect, there is this harmonisation that takes place, there's this sense of inner alignment that allows us to go you know what? I might not be able to control everything around me. I might not have all the answers, but I know who I am and I'm kind of broadly comfortable with who I am. And that's a really, really liberating relieving feeling. It's a nice thing to be able to honestly say I'm not perfect, I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but I'm okay with who I am because I know what integrity looks like to me. And I can say that in large part that's the way that I'm living.
[00:12:36]:
And so I think that taking those steps towards greater self respect and self worth pays huge dividends not only in your relationship with yourself but then the ripple effect in your relationships more broadly. You just start to show up differently. You're less inclined to outsource all of that to other people and need so much reassurance and validation from the world around you that you're okay because you start to really believe that in an embodied sense from within. Okay, the next one is diversify your energy across all areas of your life. Now, as you would know, I'm sure anecdotally I certainly do. It's easy if you're someone with anxious attachment patterns to just go all in on the relationship. And as soon as you're in a relationship, the field of vision narrows and you kind of pour all of yourself into this container of the relationship. And I think that that only intensifies if the relationship is feeling wobbly.
[00:13:31]:
So if things are a little off or it's not feeling really solid, then it's likely that you'll only escalate in your laser focus on the relationship. And I think that that can be a double whammy. Because not only do we then start to smother our relationship and a lot of those behaviours of controlling and obsessing and ruminating really take hold. But it raises the stake so much such that if anything does happen to our relationship, if our relationship ends, God forbid, then we're often left really empty handed because we've lost so much of ourselves in the process. We only had so many resources and so much energy and because we poured it all into the project of our relationship and we neglected other areas of life, maybe we didn't pay that much attention to our friendships. Maybe we didn't really nurture those other relationships and we haven't been keeping up with certain hobbies or other habits that we know really keep us feeling balanced and good and whole. When we let all of those things drop off because we just don't have the bandwidth for it because we're so focused on our relationship, then we can feel extremely disoriented and empty handed if anything does happen to the relationship. So as much as it goes against the impulses to actually lean back from your relationship and let go of the grip a little, it not only benefits you as an individual, but it actually benefits the relationship.
[00:15:02]:
Because I think that relationships really do well with a bit of oxygenation and a bit more balance rather than just putting all of your eggs in that basket and then becoming completely obsessive about what happens there and feeling like everything rides on the fate of the relationship. Okay, the next one is figure out what your needs are and start voicing them again. Sounds simple. For a lot of anxious folks, it's harder than it sounds. But of course we are often accustomed to downplaying to minimising, to dismissing our own needs in an effort to accommodate the needs of others because we somewhere along the way convinced ourselves that that was what it took in order to be lovable, was to be easy. And so apparently having no needs makes us easier to love. And so we've often just kind of put all of that away and gone with the flow and been very low maintenance, been very easygoing on the outside. All the while we're having all of this internal turmoil because all of our needs are going unmet.
[00:16:10]:
And that leads to a lot of resentment and stress and frustration and ultimately big blow ups, right? So figure out what your needs are. And as I said, that can be hard for a lot of folks I work with. That. Step one is not just start voicing the needs, it's identify the needs. Because when you've only ever been led by the needs of other people and you've just slotted yourself into whatever situation you've ended up in and you've just gone along with that and mirrored other people, you might be pretty disconnected from what is actually important to you in a relationship. So figuring that out is a big step. And then of course, translating that into the self advocacy of voicing needs. And I would say the hardest part is learning to receive.
[00:16:53]:
Because for a lot of people who are chronic overgivers, receiving is really, really uncomfortable. And once someone actually starts to pay us attention and to show up for us in the way we've asked, we can kind of freeze and go, I don't know how to receive this, I don't know how I push it away because I all of a sudden feel very vulnerable in that receiving. So all of that is part of the work for you as you unlearn some of those old excessively self sacrificial, over giving patterns and again rebalance recalibrate your relationships. The next one is learn to set and respect boundaries in a healthy way. So again, we've talked about it before on the show. Anxiously attached people tend to be fairly average at boundary setting, but also boundary respecting. So I think on the incoming side, in terms of your own personal boundaries, there tend not to be any. And so it's like I kind of, again, just defer to whatever is comfortable for other people.
[00:17:56]:
Or if something is uncomfortable for me, I just suck it up. I don't want to make a fuss, I don't want to rock the boat, I go along with things even if I'm patently uncomfortable or it really doesn't work for me or a situation is very challenging for me, but I just don't really say anything. I think on the other side of that is we're not very good at recognising the boundaries of others and we think that being boundaryless is being that's what you do when you love someone, right? And that's why we don't have boundaries, is again, I think we have this idea that when you love someone, you don't say no, you just let them in without any boundaries whatsoever. And so on the flip side, when someone else sets a boundary with us, we can either take offence to it and feel very rejected and hurt, kind of affronted by the boundary, or we can just bulldoze straight through it and someone will say look, I need space. And you'll call them 20 times and then turn up at their house because you think you know better and you can kind of just quickly dismiss or override their boundaries and go look, yeah, I know you said that, but I just really needed to talk to you. That is as much your work around boundaries as setting them for yourself is learning to respect them in others. So that's a big part of the growth for anxiously attached folk is recognising like I am my own person and you are your own person and there has to be space between us. There are limits, right? Where do my limits meet your limits? And how can we negotiate in that space in a way that actually allows us to be in closer, more connected relationship in a safe way? Because boundaries, when done well, will hopefully invite you into a stronger relationship.
[00:19:47]:
And I think for a lot of us who've not had experience with boundaries, we just think that boundaries mean distance and that can feel really scary. It's like boundary is a wall up, which means that I can't reach you. And that is frightening to me. And so we have this aversion to the idea of boundaries. But really to express a boundary is to express how we can love each other better and more sustainably. And I think that that's a really important mindset shift to grasp. Okay, next one is learn tools for healthy conflict and repair. So again, I think for a lot of anxious folk, there is a level of conflict aversion.
[00:20:22]:
We don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to raise difficult topics because we're scared that someone will leave, right? If I want to talk to you about commitment, I'm scared that you'll just throw your hands up and say, well, this is too much, and then you'll go, so I don't raise the thing, but on the inside my distress is mounting. And then eventually there's usually some sort of volcanic eruption where we then kind of unravel and have this really ineffective conflict where I spew out 50 things that have been bothering me that I haven't been actively proactively, advocating for myself around or sharing with you because I'm scared of the consequences. Again, going back to those core wounds, I'm constantly in this space of feeling like love could be withdrawn at any moment. And so I'm very careful about what I do and how I do it because that's always looming as a potential outcome for me when there's any sort of discord or disharmony. There's not a lot of trust in the fact that we can endure challenging things together as a team and come out the other side. And that does tend to breed this sense of conflict aversion. So one of the great gifts that you can give yourself is to repatten that and to actually have these corrective experiences around conflict, where we go, oh, I can actually have a hard conversation with my partner and feel good during and after that conversation.
[00:21:51]:
I don't have to be in this state of terrible fear and anxiety that at any moment it's going to mean the end of our relationship. Being able to have conflict where you express something that you're disappointed about or that upset you without it being like you're in combat with each other and you're both yelling and you're having to defend and explain and justify your emotions. We can actually learn ways to express yourself where someone is likely to be able to receive and validate that experience rather than just defend your attack. So that's a really big piece as well and I think is, as I said, such a great gift that you can give yourself if you've always been in that mode of tiptoeing and walking on eggshells because you're so afraid of adverse consequences of conflict. Okay, number nine, we're almost there. Get clear on what you want in a partner and a relationship. So the number of people that I've worked with who are either in a relationship or who are single, and when I ask them what's important to you and a partner, they actually just kind of stare at me blankly. When we kind of dig a little deeper, the theme tends to be I want someone who wants me.
[00:23:04]:
And that's kind of heartbreaking when we think about it because it's that worthiness wound in us that's saying all I want is to be chosen. And as much as we can have so much compassion for that part, that just wants to be loved and chosen and of course we all have that part. That part needs to be supported by awareness of what is actually important to me in a partner. What do I value in a partner? What are things that are not going to work for me? What are my deal breakers? What are my non negotiables? You have the right to know that and to say no to people who don't feel like a good fit for you. Again, I think when our self esteem, our self worth has been a little bruised, we don't feel like we have the right or entitlement to say no to anyone who's showing us attention. And so that can lead our so called picker to be a little bit skew if or a little bit prone to pursuing connections with people just because we're riding the high of feeling like someone's giving us attention. So I think that when we can be more discerning and bring that greater awareness, then we're much better placed to measure up reality versus our desires and go, okay, how does this connection stack up against what I claim is important to me? And I think that can often reveal the Stark discrepancy when otherwise we're just feeling kind of confused and like, oh, I kind of like them, but they're pretty inconsistent and I'm not really sure. And they're sending mixed messages.
[00:24:34]:
And then we just keep hanging out in that limbo, I think when we go into it, knowing what we're looking for with absolute clarity and of course, not to the point of rigidity, but just knowing at a pretty fundamental level. Here's what I'm looking for and here's what I'm absolutely not looking for. It's an incredibly empowering way to approach dating and relationships and last but not least, understand what healing actually looks like in this context. So I'm often asked, is it really possible to heal my anxious attachment? And my answer is kind of yes and kind of no. Is it possible to learn new ways of being so that you are not completely in the grips of anxiety all the time and you're not at the mercy of your fear? Yes, absolutely. I can attest to that firsthand and having guided so many thousands of people through this work that there is absolutely growth and freedom available to you. And I will never tell you that healing anxious attachment means you will never feel anxiety again or that you will not experience those little flutters of anxious attachment again. That would be dishonest because that's just part of it.
[00:25:41]:
And when it's been part of your blueprint for such a long time, of course that's still there, right? But for me, and I can speak firsthand here, those parts of me that I associate with my anxious attachment patterns, those are still there, they're still in the background and in certain situations those impulses still arise in me. But I've worked so hard to build up the strength of my other parts that are confident and clear and self aware and have a really strong sense of who I am and what I desire and what's important to me and self trust and all of those things that they now far outweigh the old parts. And I think you'll get to a point in your journey and that'll take a different amount of time for everyone, but you reach a point where the new way becomes more comfortable than the old way and it's really like that becomes second nature. And so that's what's possible for me now, to have a big conflict where I'm attacking and highly emotional, that's extremely unlikely. I can't remember the last time I did that because I've just trained myself so much in the new way, which I actually know works much better for me. And so while you might still have the internal scripts going and the stories you tell yourself and the victim stuff that we can kind of get stuck in sometimes and blaming our partner and feeling like they are the worst person in the world and how could they do that? And who do they think they are? That voice sometimes chats away in the back of my mind, but it's not so powerful anymore, it's not so persuasive that I feel the need to act on those impulses or those little flutters of fear and anxiety that can rear their head from time to time. So understanding and managing your expectations around what healing looks like and means in this context at least, the way that I am teaching it, I've had people before ask me, if I do your eight week course, does that mean I'm going to be healed in eight weeks? And again, it's kind of a constraint of the format that you've got to put a time on it. But of course, healing is not a journey with a start and an end date and then you kind of get spit out of a machine and you're all better.
[00:27:58]:
If only it were that easy. But alas, it is messy and it's a practise. So just again, manage those expectations, but recognise that in embarking on that practise and that journey, you're giving yourself a really, really beautiful gift and one that can profoundly change the way that you experience the world and yourself and your relationship. So it's not always easy, but it's always worth it in my mind. Okay, so that was it. That was long. Ten tips to heal your anxious attachment style. As I said, there's a PDF download that sets all of those out and shares some thoughts on each that you can download in the show notes or via my website.
[00:28:38]:
I hope that's helpful for. You to keep in your back pocket as a little roadmap, and anyone who is ready to do this work, I would love to have you inside healing anxious attachment when doors open in a couple of days time. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys.
[00:28:58]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to 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 five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again sooner.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
Healing anxious attachment, mindset, self-compassion, nervous system regulation, self-soothe, core wounds, abandonment, unworthiness, boundaries, conflict avoidance, partner expectations, validation, approval, self-worth, self-respect, self-trust, relationship balance, self-advocacy, Stephanie Rigg, attachment patterns, confidence building, self-awareness, transformative process, journey, program discount, live Q&A, online community, Instagram connection, podcast review.