Excerpt from a Connor Beaton YouTube video discussing how people unconsciously seek safety from their partner. Beaton recommends developing self-soothing skills (breathing, grounding, body awareness), 'fathering yourself' to comfort the inner scared child, and suggests working with someone knowledgeable about attachment to process these patterns.
What's been happening is that you've inadvertently and unconsciously been seeking safety from her. I need you to make me feel safe. I need you to make me feel okay. I need you to do certain things or act certain ways in order for me to feel okay. This is where, in those moments, a couple of things will be helpful. One, being able to start to soothe yourself. Being able to start to reconnect with safety inside of yourself. Because what's happening is, oh, no, I don't feel safe. She's pulling away. Am I okay? Is she going to leave me? It might not be the conscious thought, but being able to come back into a place of breathing, slowing down, feeling into the body. In my book, I wrote about fathering yourself. This is a part of it, being able to father the boy in you that shows up in those moments that's really scared. It might also be good for you to work with somebody that understands attachment, to be able to process some of this.
How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary
