From Anxious to Secure: 6 Shifts You'll Notice As You Heal
In anticipation of the upcoming launch of my signature program Healing Anxious Attachment, today's episode is all about what changes you can expect as you heal your anxious attachment.
I'll be sharing 6 shifts that you'll notice as you do the healing work and become more secure within yourself and in your relationships.
WHAT WE COVER:
learning to observe your anxious thoughts rather than be ruled by them
not feeling the urgent need to fix and problem-solve your relationship
trusting that conflict isn't a matter of life or death
building your self-worth
learning to enjoy your own company
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Sign up for my signature 8-week course Healing Anxious Attachment
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
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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. Today's episode is titled from Anxious to Secure Six Shifts.
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You'll notice as you heal. So, as the title suggests, we're going to be talking about what that journey looks like as you start to heal your anxious attachment style and develop a more secure way of being in relationships. So what I'm going to share with you today is drawn not only from my personal experience of shifts I've noticed within myself and in my relationship as I have worked on my own anxious attachment over the years, but also the shifts that I consistently notice in the many, many hundreds of people that I've worked with in healing their anxious attachment. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before I dive into that, a couple of quick announcements.
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In keeping with the theme of today's episode, you will have heard me speaking about my signature programme, Healing Anxious Attachment, which is reopening for early bird enrollment in less than one week. For those of you already on the waitlist and I think there's almost 1200, which is amazing, you are all taken care of and you will get an email when doors open next week. If you aren't on the waitlist, but you're interested in the Healing Anxious Attachment programme, definitely join the waitlist. You can do so via the link in the show notes and that will ensure that you get first access next week as soon as doors open, and will also entitle you to save $100 on the course price. So definitely join the waitlist if you're at all interested.
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And as I said, the link is in the show notes or you can go straight to my website, stephanierig.com and that should all be relatively straightforward and easy to find. The second quick announcement is just to share the featured review, which is this is the only podcast that I've listened to every single episode and have been able to relate to. I'm fearful avoidant attachment and lean anxious. This has made it extremely hard to maintain relationships. Stephanie's knowledge has taught me so many things about myself and I'm thankful every day that I found this podcast.
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Thank you, Stephanie. There are no words that can express the gratitude I have for you and your work. Thank you so much for that beautiful review. Brought a big smile to my face and I'm so glad that you found my work and that you are getting so much out of it. If that was your review, please send an email to podcast@stephanierigg.com and my team will set you up with free access to one of my Master classes as a way to say thank you.
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Okay, so let's dive into these six shifts that you'll notice as you heal your anxious attachment style. And I should say at the outset, a couple of things. This is far from an exhaustive list. As I was writing it. You might notice that usually I have five tips or five signs or five something, and I had to keep going and I thought of a 6th one and then I started thinking of 7th and 8th ones and then I had to just hold myself back.
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In the interests of brevity for the podcast. So this is not an exhaustive list. These are just six of many shifts that you'll notice as you heal your anxious attachment style. The other quick thing I should say at the outset, and this is particularly for people who might be new to the podcast, new to my work, or even new to attachment theory, a really important and foundational thing about all of this work, which makes it so powerful, is that healing is possible for everyone. I always get asked, is it really possible?
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Is that really something that is achievable for people to not be anxious anymore, to become secure? And the way that I always answer that is, yes, it is possible for everyone to become more secure in their attachment. That doesn't mean that you'll never be anxious again. It's something that I still come up against from time to time, but it's no longer my whole experience, it's no longer my story, it's no longer something that I'm at the mercy of. So it really is something that you can unlearn and you can learn a new way of being.
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And that is why I'm such a big advocate of this work and I really do believe in its efficacy. Okay, so let's dive into these six shifts that you'll notice as you heal your anxious attachment style. The first one is you're able to distance yourself from your anxious thoughts and stories in real time. So you're able to shift into more of a witnessing role and really observe your thoughts and stories in real time rather than experiencing them in this all consuming way. In this way that feels very true and then creates so much anxiety and stress in your system and spins you out of control.
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So, again, this is true for not only anxious attachment. I think generally, as we do any kind of healing work, and certainly a lot of meditation and other spiritual practises are predicated on cultivating this skill of being able to witness ourselves in real time. And I think it certainly is, particularly for the anxious mind, the anxious system. It is a really powerful shift that you will notice because once you can stop yourself and go, wait a second, what am I making this mean? Is that necessarily true?
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Do I have all the information? What are my choices in this moment? Do I need to spin out and start frantically trying to fix things or get back in control or get information or connect with someone or do whatever other fear driven thing my body would have me do. I can kind of interrupt the process much earlier and kind of coach myself out of it in a way that when you're at the earliest stages of your journey with anxious attachment, that can feel really out of reach, that ability to distance ourselves from the fear and the anxiety and shift into more of an observer role and really decide that, no, I'm going to act from a more grounded place. I'm going to look at this situation with a bird's eye view and I'm going to assess what's really happening.
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I'm going to ask myself what I need and then I'm going to decide on the other side of that space and that process of self inquiry and that alone. Honestly, if that was the only shift you made, you'd be in such a better position than before you made that shift. Because it really is very powerful and transformative, not only for your relationships, in that it prevents you from lashing out or engaging in other activating strategies or protest behaviours that can be harmful to your relationship, but it's actually just so powerful for you in your own ability to calm yourself and your own ability to create safety for yourself and support yourself in those moments. Because again, before you go through the process of healing and when you don't have that tool, you can feel not only really stressed, panicky, afraid, but really alone, because you are not able to provide that safety for yourself. And so you feel terrified because it's like being a frightened child and no one's there to help you.
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So that is the first shift that you'll notice as you heal. You're able to shift into that observer role and remain grounded. Even when anxiety is present, even when those fear stories come up, you're not at the mercy of them. Okay, the next shift that I've noticed, this is a big one, that I've really noticed in my relationship is I don't feel such a sense of urgency in terms of fixing and addressing everything. So if there is something that's bothering me, if something's happened, if my partner said something or done something, or not said something, or not done something, whatever it might be that stirred up some sort of an emotional response in me, I trust that we will address it at an appropriate time.
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So, by contrast, before I had done a lot of this work and I'm sure a lot of people listening will relate to this, there's this sense of urgency around. We have to address everything now because it's not safe for there to be any sort of tension or disconnection or any other thing that could feel threatening to the relationship. And your fear will always tell you that everything is urgent and global and important and make or break, right? So as you start to heal, you trust in the relationship enough and in the connection you have with your partner that you don't need to kind of storm into the space of the relationship with this long list of here are all of the things that are wrong, and we need to fix them right now. Because I can't tolerate anything less than perfection in our relationship, in our connection.
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And relatedly to this one, I would say your tendency to keep raising the bar all the time softens a bit. So this is something that anxiously attached people are notorious for this sense of okay, we need to do this thing in order for the relationship to be okay, we need to make this change or we need to fix that problem. And then as soon as that thing does get addressed, it's not enough. We need more. We move the carrot keeps dangling, we keep moving the goalposts all the time.
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And the reason for that is often because we can't ever feel reassured. Because the thing that we're saying we need in order to be okay is not really the thing that we need. It goes so much deeper than that surface level thing that might be triggering us and so it will never feel like enough. Our ability to receive that reassurance is really impeded by the fact that we're not addressing the root cause of the problem there. So I think as you start to heal and as you start to reprogram some of these old patterns, you'll really notice that not only you don't have this urgent need to fix everything in terms of you can let things digest and settle and trust that when the time comes, you'll have a conversation, you'll work through it and you don't have such a strong bias towards everything that is wrong and feel this need to once one thing's.
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Addressed. It's almost playing whack a mole with all of the things that are wrong in your relationship rather than just resting in a feeling of peace and contentedness. Okay, so the next one is that when there is a rupture, so if you do have a fight, if there is conflict in your relationship, it doesn't feel like life or death. Okay? So again, by contrast, I think for people who are in the thick of anxious attachment and again, this was certainly me, conflict feels really, really scary because for most of us, we have this sense of feeling like we're only ever one fight away from breaking up.
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Even if that's not true, right? Even if there are no signs to suggest that in the relationship, even if there's no evidence to support the fact that you really are on the brink of the relationship ending. It feels like that because disconnection feels really, really unsafe to the point of almost feeling life threatening. And so because we've got this looming fear of abandonment that is always just there under the surface and driving so many of our fears and protective strategies and behaviour. As soon as there is conflict, there can be this sense of, oh no, this is it, this is where it all ends.
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This is where you're going to leave me. And that really, again, interferes with our ability to have healthy conflict because we've got our fear goggles on, right? When we start to do the healing work and we start to learn new ways of experiencing conflict safely, of having hard conversations, of advocating for ourselves without getting really combative and antagonistic with a partner, we start to realise that conflict can be had safely, that not every rupture is a matter of life or death. We can zoom out and go, okay, I can hold in one hand the fact that I'm upset with you or you're upset with me over this thing and we still love each other and care about each other and we're committed to each other and everything's going to be okay, we're going to get through this. Our ability to hold both of those things is something that most anxious people need to learn, because as soon as we've got in one hand, you're upset with me, it's very, very hard for us to feel like everything else could still be okay.
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And being able to hold both of those things as true is a really powerful and important shift that you will notice as you heal. Okay, so that's a nice segue into the next shift you'll notice, which is you're able to find your way to the healthy middle, the space of both and. So if you've not heard that expression before, both and, meaning the opposite of either or. And I think again, when we're in fear and insecurity, we live in the land of either or. It's either my needs or your needs.
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It's inherently oppositional. There's so much competition built into it and we are operating from this place of threat and self protection, and that is the space of either or. When we start to become more secure, when we start to build our capacity, we realise that there are so many options in between the extremes of either or, of me versus you, and we start to recognise that both and is possible too. So what do I mean by that? To take it out of the abstract, an example might mean I can have compassion for you and I can have boundaries for myself rather than if I'm compassionate for you, that means that I'm making excuses for you when I lose myself.
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That's the insecure version, right? The secure version is, I can have compassion for you. I can see that this is hard for you and I'm not going to lose myself in the process of feeling that empathy and compassion for you. I'm still going to advocate for myself. I can assert my needs while also respecting your needs.
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We don't have to play in this zero sum game of either you get your needs met or I get mine met. Again, that is insecure lens. We go, okay, how do we both get our needs met? What's the compromise? What are the choices?
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How could this look in a way that works for both of us so we find our way to this healthy middle. Okay, so the next shift that you will notice is you start to really believe in your own worth and value, both as a person and as a partner. Okay, this is huge. Again, you could take any one of these on their own and they would be hugely valuable to your life and relationships. But this one in particular, you start to actually believe that you have worth and value.
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So a lot of anxiously attached people, I would probably say all anxiously attached people struggle with low self worth to some degree. And that low self worth drives a lot of relationship patterns and behaviours. Things like not expressing needs, things like not having boundaries, things like jealousy and comparison. All of this stuff comes from oh no, I don't believe that you could really love me for me. I don't believe that you could really value me.
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So I people please or I over give, I overextend myself to try and earn your approval and your love and keep your approval and your love. Perfectionism is another great example of how that unworthiness drives unhealthy behaviours. We feel like we have to be perfect, otherwise someone's going to leave us. So as you start to do this work and you start to build up that self worth and that self respect, you go, wait a second, I have a lot to offer. I believe in my own worth, I believe that I deserve to have needs, I believe that I deserve to be cared for.
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And that is such a powerful shift because it allows you to stand tall and stand firm in your relationships. Again, not from a place of aggression or self protection, but just from a place of self advocacy. And that's really the energy that you'll start to notice yourself embodying as you become more secure, this energy of self advocacy. And that is really such a beautiful shift to notice in yourself whether you're in a relationship or not. Okay, the last shift that I want to offer you is that you start to enjoy your own company more.
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So a lot of anxiously attached people really struggle with being on their own. And particularly if they're in a relationship, they tend to be so consumed by thinking about the relationship all the time and being apart from their partner can be quite triggering, can stir up some level of stress response. Now, depending on the dynamic in the relationship and how much trust and stability is in the relationship, that might go from very low level anxiety all the way up to quite extreme anxiety when you're apart from your partner. But as you start to become more secure, you're less consumed by thinking about your relationship all the time, or even by dating. If you are dating rather than in a relationship, and you start to develop this really beautiful, comfortable, thriving relationship with yourself, you start exploring who am I, what do I like?
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What do I like doing? You start prioritising yourself and figuring out how you want to live your life. Again, this isn't a reaction against being in a relationship. It's not to say that you can't enjoy the company of your partner or other people, but you're not dependent on it in order to feel safe, secure, fulfilled in your life. And you really start to build out the pillars of your life and diversify your energy so that you're not over indexed on your relationship or your dating prospects or that kind of domain, which for most anxiously attached people as a starting point, takes up 99% of their field of vision at any given time.
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And as you would know, and as I certainly know, that gets really exhausting. So as you become more secure, you really do start to not only prioritise yourself, but really enjoy building that relationship with yourself and step into a more fully embodied, authentic version of who you are. And from that place so much becomes possible. It's amazing for me, my students and clients, it's not just the relationship stuff that changes it's I've quit my job and I'm starting my own business, or I got a promotion, or I'm travelling the world. All of these things become possible when we step away from fear and into a more authentic, secure, embodied version of ourselves.
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So that is a really powerful shift that you'll notice as you become more secure and shift away from those old patterns of anxious attachment. Okay, so that was six shifts you'll notice as you heal. I really hope that that has been helpful and I hope that if you are someone who struggles with anxious attachment, I hope this has inspired you and given you a sense of what is possible for you and available to you if you do this work. Because I promise you, this is a transformation that I've experienced and that I have accompanied many, many people on. It is possible for you.
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And as I said, I really hope that this has given you some cause for optimism and has inspired you to do the work. And if you are someone who struggles with anxious attachment and you're ready to make a change and you'd like some support in doing that, do cheque out healing anxious attachment. My signature course, the Waitlist link is in the show notes and early bird enrollment opens in just six days time and I would love to see you there. Thank you so much for joining me, guys. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave a rating or a review if you're listening on Apple podcasts, but otherwise I look forward to seeing you later in the week for our Q and A episode.
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Thanks, guys. 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 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.
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Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.