You Can Overcome Anxious Attachment - Even if You Are With an Avoidant

summary

This podcast episode delves into the complexities of anxious attachment styles in relationships, emphasizing the importance of self-regulation, communication, and understanding personal triggers. The discussion highlights the need for compassion and accountability between partners, the significance of differentiation in relationships, and the impact of negative self-talk. Listeners are encouraged to listen to their intuition and recognize red flags in their relationships, ultimately aiming for healthier, more secure connections.

Jennifer goes deeper into the issues Kristina brought up in Episode 10.

takeaways

• Anxious attachment styles can lead to specific relationship challenges.

• Self-regulation is crucial for anxious partners when avoidant partners withdraw.

• Understanding personal triggers and past wounds is essential for healing.

• Effective communication requires timing and calmness.

• Compassion and accountability are foundational for healthy relationships.

• Differentiation allows partners to respect each other's individuality.

• Negative self-talk can hinder personal growth and relationship health.

• Listening to one's intuition can help identify red flags in relationships.

• Healthy relationships should foster security and connection.

• Asking for needs clearly is vital for relationship success.

00:00 Introduction to Relationship Dynamics

00:53 Understanding Partner Needs and Differences

01:50 Anxiety and Avoidance

03:46 Curiosity and Compassion in Relationships

04:53 Wounds

06:03 The Anxious Avoidant Struggle

07:53 The Negative Cycle

09:44 The Importance of Self-Regulation

12:04 Communication Examples

13:20 Communication and Asking for Needs

15:08 Impact of Parents and Survival Strategies

17:22 Secure Relationships

17:55 Recognizing Red Flags in Relationships

18:35 Friendship, Compassion, Curiosity, Attunement

18:58 Differentiation

21:09 Developing Healthy Communication Skills

23:45 Listening to Our Bodies

25:11 Self Talk

26:28 Parent's Communication

27:16 Inner Voice

28:07 Listening to Intuition and Red Flags

29:28 Closing

Jenn (00:00)

You don't feel seen or heard.

You feel like your partner doesn't listen to you. And obviously, you wouldn't want to stay in this kind of relationship forever. That's very painful. Either you or your partner decide that you want to work on this, or you or they may eventually leave. We deserve to have good relationships. We deserve to be happy in our relationships.

And so we have to develop the skills to be able to do that.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Lehr, a licensed marriage and family therapist and your host, and I'm also the founder of WeConcile, an app to help you improve your relationship.

In episode 10 of the Yearning Heart podcast, Kristina brought up a lot of issues that I would like to go into more deeply here in episode 11.

Do you sometimes feel as if your partner doesn't meet your needs, that they don't act the way you want them to or need them to? And this is common. Often our partners don't know what we need and they may need something different.

We might need to talk about our feelings and they might need to decompress. We end up disconnected and in pain and we feel abandoned or pressured. We don't yet have the skills to work through this with our partners. What do we do? First, be aware that you and your partner really are two different people,

we build bridges by learning about each other. And this requires curiosity and a desire to know what makes our partner tick. Why are they reacting the way they're reacting? What is going on? And why are we acting the way we're acting? Our partner will not automatically know what we need, what our deepest wounds are, what our pain is.

let's suppose you are anxious attachment and your partner is avoidant, which is a really common combination. The anxious partner will have an intense need to feel connected and the avoidant partner may need to pull away, may need to take space, may need to,

process by shutting down. So in other words, they've learned to regulate their emotions by separating from the other person and being by themselves. Now, this doesn't work for the anxious partner usually, because the anxious partner has a very strong urge to work things out right this second. And when they have that urge and the

avoidant partner isn't available. temporarily, until the relationship is at a point where both partners can work this stuff out together, the anxious partner needs to be able to self-regulate. So are you able to tune into your body and get in touch with your anxiety or your shame or your feelings of lack or sense of abandonment or your loneliness? Whatever's going on inside. And can you focus on your breathing?

or practice short meditations so that you can calm yourself down. If you can't and your partner isn't able to be there for you, you'll be in a lot of pain. And while ultimately we want to be able to co-regulate with our partner,

you probably don't know how to do that with each other yet. And they or you may not be available. So that means you do have to learn how to self-regulate, which is a form of self-care where you talk to yourself, tell yourself you're gonna be okay, that you'll get this figured out. So you don't like go off the deep end and panic or, cause more harm to your relationship because you're reacting and you're yelling.

To get your partner to meet your needs and vice versa means that both of you will need to change. So the questions are, are you curious about your partner? Is your partner curious about you? Do you have compassion for your partner? Do you have compassion for your partner's suffering and compassion for your own suffering, self-compassion? Does your partner have compassion for your suffering? Does your partner have compassion for their own suffering?

So we really have to get into curiosity and compassion to begin to unravel the blocks to being there for each other, which is being accessible, being available, being able to communicate.

The other thing that Kristina brought up is do you understand what a real relationship is?

This means you begin to understand what your work is, what your partner's work is. we each have individual work to do, and then we have relationship work to do. Learning to self-regulate is individual work. Learning to co-regulate is couples work.

Your work will always be about understanding yourself better. And this can happen in the relationship for sure, but some of it can happen outside of the relationship. So what are your triggers? What are your deep wounds? Why does this specific trigger trigger you? Like what happened in your past that means that when this specific thing happens between you and your partner, it's intolerable to you. What happened growing up that caused these wounds?

for example, if your parents always told you that you were too sensitive, you might feel as if you're not good enough, that you're defective, that you're flawed, or if your parent never helped you with your feelings. So if you got upset as a child and they sort of shut you down, instead of helping you process your feelings, you're gonna have trouble with your feelings. And these are things that it is your responsibility to start looking at.

Some of it, this again, you can look at with your partner, but you can also look at this stuff by yourself and start untangling what is going on that's causing your side of the issue. Obviously the other person has to look at their side of the issue.

Another thing are you always trying to get your partner to show up, but they keep leaving or shutting down or just aren't available and you are stuck feeling anxious and abandoned. And again, this is a dynamic where the person who's shutting down or leaving is generally the avoidant partner and the person with the anxiety that shows, that is on the surface is generally the

more anxious attachment style partner.

When a person leaves, they're avoiding their feelings. They don't know how to process their feelings. They might not even know what their deeper feelings are. They've never had help with that growing up.

might not even understand what's causing them to pull away. They just know that they can't tolerate whatever's happening. Generally, it's the anxious partner's desire to communicate more deeply, or perhaps the anxious partner is trying to get them to show up, or the anxious partner's emotions are heightened. All those things can

cause the avoided partner to pull away.

The person who is avoiding or leaving or shutting down needs to understand their triggers. Like what is causing them to pull away?

What are their underlying feelings? What is going on in their body? Is their stomach tight? Is their chest tight? Do they have a cold sweat? Like there will be body symptoms that will be clues to the feelings they're having. And it's good to focus on the body if you're avoidant, because that will definitely open up more insight into what the feelings are that are going on that they're generally not able to be in touch with.

The anxious partner will often have to learn more about why they feel so unsafe and they need to start creating more self-safety in themselves.

when this happens between two people, we call it the cycle in emotionally focused therapy. And it's what happens over and over when you behave this way, I have this reaction, deep down I'm feeling this and deep down you're feeling that. That deep down stuff has to be brought to the surface so that can be talked about. And this is why couples therapy doesn't happen in one session. Because we are wired to process things a certain way

we wired growing up. And so to get deep into this, we need to do some work, whether it's on our own, with our partner or in therapy. And this work is not particularly quick and easy. It takes a while, but there's a lot that can be understood and pieces can start to be unwound

keeps repeating and the issue is severe enough that it isn't solvable, that is when you know you have to start working on your relationship. It will just happen over and over if you don't get to the root of what is causing your behaviors and your reactions and these deep feelings that came from how we were raised,

when our feelings weren't honored and how we survived. All this behavior has a purpose. It's to help us survive. But surviving in a functional relationship is different trying to survive difficult feelings when you're a child because your parent or caregiver doesn't really know how to help you with them or has put you down or criticized you.

or done a number of things that cause the feeling self to be insecure, insecure attachment. Instead of securely knowing oneself, securely being attached, feeling safe in one's relationship and in one's body.

if both partners decide they want to work on this, they can begin to do this work together and explore what is happening and begin to open up more understanding of themselves and each other.

Let's suppose You don't feel seen or heard. You feel like your partner doesn't listen to you. And obviously, you wouldn't want to stay in this kind of relationship forever. That's very painful. Either you or your partner decide that you want to work on this, or you or they may eventually leave. We deserve to have good relationships. We deserve to be happy in our relationships.

And so we have to develop the skills to be able to do that.

and what can I do about it?

What is happening that's causing this trigger to keep reactivating? Am I doing something that's keeping this cycle going? Like my actions may be contributing to us falling into a cycle and my partner's actions probably do too. Most likely both of our actions are contributing to falling into a negative cycle.

Let's suppose your partner is just busy. They're not available, not because they're trying to ignore you, but they're busy, but it's a trigger for you. You want them to listen to you right now. Something happened, you're upset with something they did. You need their attention, but they're busy, they're not available. That means you need to slow down. You need to give them the space to find a time when they are available.

when this happens, you may, instead of calming down, get triggered and push your partner to listen to you when they aren't available. This is really problematic because then you're perpetuating a cycle. And yes, they can't just skip off into, we're never talking about this again because that's not participating in a relationship. But you can say, I need to talk about this. Let me know when you're available and we'll set up a time

so that you have a place and time set up so you don't feel so abandoned in that moment.

Because when you're pressuring them, they're going to push back most likely. and not want to deal with you

And that means you have to stop, slow down, breathe, calm down, and tell yourself, it's gonna be okay, we will get a chance to talk about this,

We will work this out.

And when you talk to your partner, you both need to be calm. If you're not both calm, you will go off most likely into a negative cycle again. So timing your conversations has to be around feeling calm.

Some of the words you could say could be, I really need you to listen to me. It's very painful for me when I feel as if you don't listen and it makes me feel as if I'm unimportant and you don't care. Could you let me know what is going on for you when I'm talking to you and you aren't listening to me?

we don't know what they'll answer, but the answer will tell you a lot. Are they willing to attune to you? Are they willing to give you the time that you deserve? are you doing something that's causing them to not listen to you?

if you are doing something that's causing them to not listen to you, then you need to find out what that is and try to adjust your behavior so that they will be more available. And this is not assigning blame anywhere. People are hardwired from childhood on how they respond in relationships and rewiring takes some time.

and some energy and some focus and some learning and some development of new skills.

Now if your partner has a block where they cannot hear you, they don't want to listen to you, and they are unwilling to work on it, that's a sign that the relationship may have hit the end of the road. If they are not willing to do what it takes to solve the problem. I'm thinking of a personal story for myself where I was in couples therapy with my first husband and he would shut down and...

he shut down so completely that there was no way to do any work with him. So I did work with the therapist with him sitting there shut down. We never got to a place where we could get him to not shut down that completely. And that was highly problematic. That therapy failed, that relationship failed because he couldn't find the part of him that could be present when his anger, when he got triggered, his anger was so big.

He couldn't stand it and he completely shut down. There was no way to work in that situation, for me anyway.

once you've established safe dialogue and curiosity for each other, you can begin to explore what happens between you. cannot do this by yourselves, you may need to get additional help. part of this work again is looking at how the trigger developed. Can you talk to your partner about your history,

about how you were raised or how a past relationship wounded you that has affected your sense of security and your ability to be present in a relationship.

Do you help each other understand each other's triggers, attachment wounds, and attachment needs? And you need to develop a vocabulary for what your attachment needs are, what your attachment wounds are, what your triggers are, so you can communicate them. the WeConcile app does help with this. There's a whole section on attachment needs and fears.

often, have to look at our childhood, how we were treated, how our parents engaged with us. What did they do when we were disappointed? What did they do when we were angry or upset or sad? Did they nurture us? Did they tell us to go to our room? Did they tell us that we weren't good enough? All of that is really important information

because it's your caregiver's job, your parents' job to help you understand how to process your feelings, not just leave you with feelings that you don't know what to do with.

if our parents did not really help us with our feelings, we developed survival strategies and these strategies are how we survived difficult feeling moments, difficult situations as a child when we didn't have the support we needed. And these survival strategies are what you see in relationships in the negative cycle, the way we behave, this developed.

way, way, way a long time ago when we were trying to get through difficult situations in our childhood.

when we develop these strategies to survive as children, they show up in a relationship and they show up in our lives. We might have developed perfectionism and really pressuring ourselves to always be perfect. We might have developed performance stuff where we're always trying to perform. We might have developed workaholism where we work too hard because that keeps us away from.

our feelings. We might have developed an addiction. There are many, many things that come out of these survival strategies that later impact our relationship in ways that don't work.

Now, are you so anxious in your relationship that you don't know what to do? And this is a big issue for people who are anxiously attached.

So one of the questions is,

How much of that anxiety is yours? can you learn to self-soothe?

How much of that anxiety is caused by behavior of your partner? they willing to be a teammate and help you with it?

Is there something going on that would make anyone feel anxious? again, develop ways to take care of yourself.

Relationships ultimately, when they're secure, should help you feel more grounded, more secure, safe, connected, and not anxious. If the relationship is causing you to feel anxious or avoid, that means there's things going on, behavior that doesn't work, and under the behavior are feelings that have not been processed or helped.

to be integrated into the person in a way where both people are working with each other to help each other with their feelings.

Maybe your partner doesn't consider your feelings at all. And that's a red flag. or what if they're not accountable for their actions? if they don't consider your feelings and they're not accountable for their actions, we have a big red flag.

They could be a narcissist. They could be a sociopath.

because what you need has to matter to them for you to have a viable relationship. If what you need doesn't matter to them, this relationship will probably not make it.

if your partner isn't considering your feelings and isn't accountable, but they realize they have a problem and they're willing to work on it, that's another story. That means you very well could work out that relationship.

friendship, compassion, curiosity, being attuned to each other are the basis of a healthy relationship. And without these, what is your relationship based on? Because chemistry will not carry you through 30 years of relationship. Friendship will, compassion will, curiosity will, caring about each other will.

one of the things that came up in the podcast with Kristina episode 10 was, and she didn't talk about this directly, so I wanted to bring it. She moved from being undifferentiated in a relationship to differentiated. And that means she moved from being in a one-person system to a two-person system over the years of her having relationships. A one-person system means that you expect your partner to mirror your needs.

to understand automatically what they are, to agree with everything. That means the other person isn't being seen as a different and complete person. So the movement from a one-person system to a two-person system where both people recognize their differences, they respect each other, they're able to talk about their differences and figure out a way to bridge them, that is healthy.

That is the goal, to be in a two-person differentiated relationship.

And that has a lot to do with the difference between a relationship based on fantasy and a relationship based on reality. a fantasy based relationship will not make a person happy because they are not with their twin, their identical twin, they're with a different person. So you've got to get rid of the fantasy of who they should be and get into the reality of who they really are. And can I love this person for who they really are? Am I willing to do what it takes to be there for

they really are. And that's the difference between a more fantasy-based relationship and a real relationship.

Because nobody is perfect, we will have difficult feelings in any relationship. We will at times feel angry, we will at times feel frustrated, we will at times feel disappointed, we will at times feel overwhelmed. We have to be able to manage our own feelings because sometimes our partner won't be able to do that with us. The goal is that they can do it often, but also we have to be able to do that for ourselves.

And that's a huge skill set that people who are highly reactive could benefit from developing.

Another thing that came up is this idea of communication, of asking for what you need. it's one thing to ask for what you need and have the other person deny it or be incapable of giving you what you need. It's another thing when you can't actually ask for what you need. Asking for what you need

is part of being in a functional relationship, being able to say, I need this, this is important to me, can we talk about this some more? This particular thing is, close to my heart and I need you to listen to me about that. If you can't say that, then you have some skills that you must develop because you will not get your needs met if you are not able to ask for them.

How do I express my feelings in a constructive way? Communication is a two-way street. If you cannot calm down and be constructive in your communication, you will not get, the response you want. You might not get it anyway, but you have a much better chance if you can ask clearly and directly. And then you'll know, what's going on with the other person because you'll see how they react to a clear, direct, unambiguous

need, it's really important to be able to learn how to do that so you can move your relationship to a point where you can talk to each other and the other person actually has a chance to give you what you need because they were able to hear it.

When you're anxious, you have to slow yourself down and slow the communication down. You can't be coming at your partner like you're a train on going high speed down the tracks. The partner will probably not be able to handle that. So you have to breathe, slow yourself down, give yourself time to be able to form real sentences that make sense and the other person can hear. You have to know what the other person's listening limitations are.

How do you word something? How do you frame something so that your partner can hear it? This is all part of having good communication. You also have to be able to talk about your deep feelings. You can't just say, where are you? Why did you leave me? You have to say, when you left, I felt as if you left me with a whole load of responsibility and I was overwhelmed and I felt abandoned and we need to talk about this because

that was not okay for me. You have to be able to find a way to really get into the deeper situation of the feelings and what you need.

Often our anxiety shows up in our bodies. Are you able to listen to your body? Do you meditate? Do you tune in? Do you do body scans? Do you do yoga nidra, which is a, it's a period like spending 10, 20 minutes and going, tuning into each part of your body. Our anxiety resides in our bodies. It often comes from our thinking, but we access it through our bodies and through our thinking.

If you have a lot of anxiety, your anxiety probably is very difficult for a avoidant partner. And you do have to learn how to get a handle on your anxiety for yourself and for the relationship.

And with the body, again, noticing. There are really good books out there. Lucia Capaccione is an author. she has some inner child workbooks where you can actually draw a picture of your body like a child stick figure. And you can have the heart speak and the stomach speak and the neck speak and the shoulders. And you'll get the...

body will speak. the stomach will say, I feel tight. I'm scared or I feel cold. And that reminds me of when I was a kid and when my father got angry and I felt cold or any number of things, but it really helps you get in touch with what's going on in your body and where some of this anxiety originated.

Developing new capacities is very important and self-talk is right up there at the top of what we can do to help us develop new capacities. So different people need different new words in their heads, because some of the words in our heads or some of the beliefs we have about ourselves could be, I don't deserve anything better, or everything I do is wrong, or nobody loves me, or

nobody listens to me. These kinds of self-talk are negative and we need to switch that to positive. instead of nobody loves me, I am lovable.

Instead of I'm worthless, I have value. We have to turn the negative self-talk, not just in the words, but in a feeling sense in the body to the positive. And that means understanding where these negative thoughts came from. So we can go, that's not mine. That was given to me when this happened and I took it on and I don't want this anymore. I'm going to give this back. And I'm going to claim that I am

100 % okay despite this failure, despite this struggle, despite this anxiety, despite this sense of overwhelm. That is changing self-talk. It's very important to do.

in addition to how your parents may have treated you, there's also, did your parents model good communication between each other? And lots of times, parents will do their difficult communications behind closed doors. The kids don't see it. And the parents may not even have been good at communicating. So whether they didn't see it or they did see it, but it wasn't good communication,

The kids don't learn good communication because it hasn't been shown to them. We learn by what we see. So there's a lot there in terms of, were you raised in an environment where your communication skills and your self understanding skills were nurtured so that you could be successful with them out in the world, or is that something that you need to learn now?

Often we have a clear inner voice that says, uh-oh, be careful, and we don't listen to it. And this is when we have a red flag about some person, how they're behaving, maybe they are, stonewalling us or whatever, they're doing something that isn't okay, or they're behaving in a very highly me, me, me way, and we're not feeling so important. Whatever it is,

When we get a little voice that says, be careful, look out, we have to listen to it. And learning to listen to that voice is really important. Often we find ourselves in difficult situations, relationships, sometimes because we simply didn't have the experience to know what we were walking into, and other times because we don't listen to our gut feelings, our intuition.

Let's suppose you have a red flag and that red flag says, I don't like that this guy's not really, or this girl, guy, this person isn't really.

attuned to me, they don't seem to care about what I need or want, that everything has to be done their way. And you're aware there's a bit of a red flag or it feels a little uncomfortable. Your stomach might feel queezy, something's going on. You're like, things are off. But you think the person is so attractive and there's chemistry and you want them to like you and you let go of that little warning voice.

That means you're not listening to your intuition. It doesn't mean you should cut the relationship off right then and there, but it means you need to keep your eyes open and pay attention to what's going on because you could end up in a situation that will be very difficult and hard to extract yourself from. And as you learn what you need to learn and get healthier in your relationships, you'll be quicker to listen to.

the red flag and go, I think I don't want to do this.

So those are the things I really wanted to cover that Kristina brought up in episode 10 that I thought had value for our listeners. if anybody wants to put a question in the comment, I will always answer them. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and it provided some value for you.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe or give us a five-star review, and this will help us get this podcast out to other people.

Jenn (29:38)

You can find me on social media under either WeConcile or Jennifer Lehr LMFT. Please try our app, WeConcile, to help you create your best

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