The speaker breaks down three attachment styles: secure, anxious, and avoidant. She shares how her own anxious need for closeness clashed with a partner's avoidant withdrawal, then recommends Internal Family Systems therapy to heal early wounds and suggests using neutral language like "I sense you are pulling away" instead of accusations.
Chapters
Are you anxious or avoidant? I really want you to take a beat in your relationships because really we're here for 3 things: healing, forgiveness, and love. I would add a 4th, relationships. So look at your relationships. Are you pulling away or pulling towards? Maybe you know the 3 attachment styles we all encounter. Number 1 is secure. We feel confident giving and receiving love. We trust easily and handle intimacy and independence with balance. Number 2 is anxious. We crave closeness but fear abandonment, often seeking reassurance and feeling overly sensitive to signs of disconnection. 3 is avoidant. Values independence, almost like ultra-independence, over closeness. We tend to pull away when intimacy grows. Often suppresses our emotional needs. I experienced a romantic connection recently in which I noticed anxious parts of me coming up, wanting more connection, wanting more celebration, wanting consistent love. The other person didn't want as much as me. The quantity of my love was too much for them, and in their past, that love had been painful and unsafe, so they closed up. They were emotionally avoidant. So really the connection ultimately wasn't a right fit for both of us. I learned a few things from it. We all deserve people who are with us. You are an awesome human. If you want a devoted relationship, don't lower your standards for people who are hot and cold for you. We have anxious avoidant parts. Generally, I'd say I'm a secure attachment, and yet I was definitely noticing anxious parts of me coming from a mother wound. Get to know your parts through Internal Family Systems Therapy. It's an amazing book. Go look it up. So you can lead your internal world with more skill. I found the language of, "I sense you are pulling away." to be more skillful, then I sense you're being avoidant. Because one is anxious and one is avoidant. Those are charged words. Let me know your thoughts here.
