Finding Freedom: How to End a Relationship with Anxious Attachment

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on ending a relationship when you're anxiously attached. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. So let's start out at the beginning. Let's talk about what is anxious attachment. People who are anxiously attached often need to be in a relationship in order to feel safe. And when it looks like they're going to be rejected or abandoned or alone, they start feeling very panicky. Trauma triggers that stress response, so they go into fight or flight. In anxious attachment, we often see fight or fawn. The person fights for to keep that relationship or they fawn. They will do whatever they think it's going to take in order to make that other person stay or happy. People who are anxiously attached often rely on others to validate them, and they're desperate for approval. They need someone else to tell them, hey, you're okay, you're lovable. They have difficulty setting and maintaining boundaries. Well, when you set and maintain boundaries, that means you risk rejection. You risk making somebody angry because you don't agree with them or you're not letting them walk all over you. And that is very threatening to somebody who's anxiously attached because they don't want to rock the boat. There's a fear of abandonment. We kind of covered that. They're tolerant of unhealthy behaviors in relationships. It's sort of the. The concept of any relationships better than no relationship. And as I mentioned, fawn or fight. When their anxiety is triggered, they often don't flee. Now, if they flee, it may be that they get anxious and they start withdrawing into themselves. But very rarely are they going to just leave the relationship. They are often going to try to fight to keep it. And as a result of being in relationships that are pretty chaotic, they develop a difficulty trusting others. Well, when you're repeatedly in relationships in which the other person's not trustworthy, guess what you learn? That most people aren't trustworthy. Now, whether that's accurate or not is something that you'll have to examine. But based on your experiences in your relationships, it seems like people are not trustworthy. And that's one of those cognitive distortions you'll eventually have to work on addressing. What causes anxious attachment. Well, in general, it's caused by a poor child caregiver relationship. Now, people can develop an anxious attachment later in life, but let's talk about the child caregiver first. If the caregiver's ability to meet the child's needs were inadequate for some reason, then the child didn't feel safe. The Child may not have felt loved. It's like, well, if you loved me, you would make the pain go away. You would make me feel safe. You would help me feel secure. And the caregiver, for whatever reason, was. Was unable to consistently do that. Sometimes they may have been intrusive or overbearing and just sort of smothering. And other times they may have been dismissing or rejecting of the child, saying, oh, you're overreacting, or not knowing what the child needed. So just throwing their hands up in the air and going, well, they'll cry it out. So the dynamics that create anxious attachment really come down to unsafeness and unpredictability. The child did not feel safe. Now, prior traumatic experiences can also lead to anxious attachment. If you have this trauma, whatever it is, and that trauma leaves you feeling unsafe and powerless and it doesn't get resolved, then it can lead to unhealthy relationships. So if you experience trauma in general, the person may experience, or you may think, I must do whatever to keep this person around so I can be safe. If all this bad stuff is going on around, I need to be in a relationship with somebody to help me feel safe, to help me stay safe, because I don't believe in my own ability to keep myself safe. If you had prior experiences that were traumatic with significant others, such as being in a relationship with someone who had an alcohol dependence issue, then you may have developed the belief system that if I start doing everything right, then they will stop drinking because they will love me more than the alcohol. And there's all kinds of things wrong with that line of thinking because it doesn't have to do with you versus the alcohol. It has to do with the person with the alcoholism problem. Has to do with their pain and their ability to tolerate pain versus their ability to. Or their desire to numb it out with alcohol. And you don't even factor into the equation a lot of times. But I digress. All right, so you're in this relationship, and it's not healthy, it's dysfunctional in some way. And you start thinking, I need to get out of this. This is not good objectively in my mind, my wise mind says, this is not good for me. This is causing all these problems. But my heart and my gut say, oh, maybe there's one more thing you can try. If you're anxiously attached, ending an unhealthy relationship may feel like you failed or rejection of you as a person. If I only had done this better, or if I would have only been thinner, smarter, funnier, whatever, and we're going to talk about addressing some of these things in a couple of minutes. But it's important to recognize that thoughts that you have when you start thinking about ending a relationship and what may be triggering that anxiety, it also may open the wounds from prior relationships where you couldn't make the person love you. It's important to reflect on that. Was it you that they weren't loving, or were they unable or unwilling to love, period? They didn't love themselves, they can't love anybody else, or they only loved themselves and they didn't want to love anybody else or something in between if it was you. And I know that's harsh, but not everybody is meant to be together. Just like when you make cookies, you put sugar cookies and chocolate chips together and they bring out the best in each other. If you put sugar cookies and onions together, that's just nasty. It's not going to work. Nothing's wrong with onions, nothing's wrong with cookies, but they don't work together. So it's important to examine, you know, if it was you, does that make you a bad person or a bad fit? And I would argue nearly 100% of the time, I. I'll go out on a limb and say 100% of the time it was a bad fit. And then recognize in the relationship how you have done your part. And you can't change somebody else. You can't make somebody love you. You can't change their feelings. They have to be willing, ready, and able to do that themselves. So we're back to the beginning. Okay, they're not willing or able to change. And you recognize this is an unhealthy relationship. What to do, beginning to heal. The first thing is to get motivated. And we see this in any type of change. And I've said in other videos, and I'll say it again, change causes crisis, and crisis causes change. Whenever you start doing something different, it takes more energy, it takes more focus, and it inevitably requires some sacrifices. And so change can be uncomfortable to downright miserable somet times. I'm not going to sugarcoat that this is not an easy process, which is why it's important to objectively make a list. And we call this decisional balance in motivational interviewing. But objectively make a list that you can refer back to. Start out by making a list of the benefits of being in the relationship. I know you're like, doc, we were just talking about ending the relationship. Why am I going to want to look at the benefits? Because you choose things that in some way you feel are more beneficial than the alternatives. So let's look at what needs and what benefits are coming from this relationship and really objectively think about that. Once you have that list, think to yourself, if you were not in the relationship, how could you get those needs met? Maybe one of the benefits is having somebody to talk to, having somebody who understands you, having somebody who cares about you. You know, you can go on the make a whole list. How else can you get that need met besides through that one person? And it may not be the same type of love or relationship or intimacy, but that can come in other relationships. So you want to think, how can I get the needs met as much as I can, or at least to the bare minimum, if you will, if I end this relationship? Identify the benefits of ending the relationship. We got to look at pros and cons of both, and that list will help you identify the reasons you want to do it. But then we have this little sneaky Pete over here. Identify the drawbacks to ending the relationship. And sometimes you're thinking, leaving this relationship, it's gonna hurt like heck. Yeah, it is. I'm not gonna sugarcoat that. Leaving this relationship means I won't have the same friends. Leaving this relationship means it may mean a lot of things. There may be a lot of drawbacks. So we need to get those out there. Because as long as those drawbacks are looming out there, then change, doing the hard stuff is going to seem less rewarding. It's like, oh, there's a lot of problems in making this change. So identify the drawbacks to ending the relationship. And then think, how can I minimize what. Or tolerate those grief, for example? That's going to happen. It's a drawback. It's unpleasant. How can you tolerate it? How can you experience it, work through it instead of avoiding it or staying in the relationship? Likewise, you know, staying in the relationship, you're probably experiencing some grief, too, because you're feeling misunderstood or you're always fearing abandonment. Once you've done this decisional balance worksheet, you can always go back and add to it and modify it. But this is the beginning of helping you make that decision that, yes, this is what needs to be done. And identify all of the things that may pull you back to the relationship, the benefits of the relationship or the drawbacks of leaving the relationship and starting to make a plan to address those. The next step is to start addressing some of your unhelpful thoughts, or what they call in cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive distortions, because we see that A lot of people that struggle with abandonment, anxiety, low self esteem, depression, anxiety, the list often have some, if not a lot of unhelpful thinking styles. So as you work through the following questions, be on the lookout for these cognitive distortions. When you start thinking in all or nothing terms. This person always does this or never does this. All right, what are the facts for and against your belief? Always going to look fair and balanced for and against your belief because there's a reason you have that belief. How accurate is it? So what are your facts? And find exceptions. If you say this person always is there for me when I absolutely need them, okay, is that actually true? Are there exceptions when the person wasn't there or this person? Never. I can't even think of examples right now, but you want to look at that. The next thing is catastrophizing. A lot of times when we're getting ready to make a change, we may focus on our worst possible outcome scenario, our worst fears. Like when a thunderstorm's coming, instead of thinking it's going to be a 20 minute rain shower, we think oh my gosh, it's going to be a deluge. We're going to have six inches of rain, quarter quarter size hail and tornadoes. You know, that's the worst possible scenario. Whereas reality is probably somewhere in between. So thinking about what are your fears? What are you expecting is going to happen when your relationship ends? And then evaluate the facts for and against that belief and, and the probability. There's always a possibility, but the probability that the worst case scenario is actually going to happen. And I think most of the time you're going to find that yeah, it's out there, but it's like a.0001% chance. Minimizing is another cognitive distortion. And in this particular situation, a lot of times we see people minimize their abilities to handle what is coming up. They, they don't see themselves as strong as they really are. Or they minimize the impact of the lies in their relationship and on their personal self. Your significant other says they're going to do this and then they, they don't. They keep breaking their promises, they keep telling lies. And maybe they mean what they say when they say it, but then they don't follow through. Even if it wasn't an intentional lie, it's still breaking a promise. And minimizing the impact of sometimes. And sometimes can be devastating. Because in behavior modification, we know that random schedules of reinforcement sometimes is one of the strongest ways to maintain a behavior. So if your significant other sometimes meets Your needs. And other times, not so much. A lot of times you'll focus on the sometimes and minimize the impact of the times when they don't do it. You'll say, well, a lot of times they do it, or sometimes they do it and forget about how bad it hurt when they didn't do it. So again, facts for and against and think of examples of in terms of your abilities, when you have shown strength, when you've endured things that were really difficult. Think of examples of times that your partner broke promises or told lies and how that impacted you. Think of examples of the sometimes the inconsistency, the unpredictability, very much like probably your family of origin. Personalizing is another one that unfortunately develops, especially if the attachment was developed. Attachment issues were developed in the caregiver relationship. Children think in all or nothing terms and they think in what we call egocentric or very personal terms. It's all about me. And it's important when something happens. You're in a relationship, your partner breaks a promise and you may think to yourself, they didn't love me enough or I wasn't good enough to deserve that, whatever it was. And it's important to look for alternate explanations besides you. Why might they be doing this? And it may be very subconscious on their part. They may have their own insecurities, their own issues, their own stuff, but it's their stuff that is contributing to their behaviors. Another way to address personalization is to separate behaviors from yourself. If something happened, maybe they got angry about something that you did, okay, they're angry at your behaviors. They are not rejecting of you. Likewise, you know, they can use the same thing to try to manipulate you. And mind reading or expecting to change the other person is another cognitive distortion. You think I I know what they need, I know what they want and if I do it, then they're going to keep their promises, then they're going to love me, then they're going to follow through. Not so much the if the person doesn't even know what they need, then how are you supposed to know what they need? And that second guessing, that hyper vigilance that trying to read their mind in order to fawn in order to keep them from abandoning you is exhausting. Okay, so those are the cognitive distortions and you'll refer back to them. But beginning to heal means starting to face facts and it can be kind of brutal. List the needs the current relationship is and I have parenthetically supposed to be filling for you. You may think it's filling these needs but is it really? And is it doing it consistently? Is it helping you feel safe and accepted and loved and secure? Sometimes that doesn't cut it. We want to see something that's consistent. So identify the facts for and against your belief that this relationship is fulfilling a particular need for you. And then again, explore other ways that you can meet these needs. If you need to feel, feel supported, okay, is this relationship doing that? Facts for and against that belief. How else can you get support? Or from where else or whom else can you get support besides this person? The next one. Identify the beliefs you have about the current relationship. You may think, if I just do better, then the relationship will succeed, or if I'm just a little more patient, the relationship will succeed. Or one of the most toxic ones. They said they were going to change and I believe they're going to do it this time. Identify the facts for and against your beliefs to figure out. Is this relationship all that you're making it out to be? A lot of times we romanticize things that we want to hang on to. Even people in early recovery from drug addiction often romanticize the effects of the substance. They're just like, oh, I remember the good times. I'm just, I'm going to ignore those bad times and pretend they didn't even happen. When you start thinking about the beliefs you have about the current relationship and yourself in the current relationship, how are these beliefs similar to those you have had in past relationships? For example, if I just fill in the blank, then they will love me. If I just fill in the blank, then they won't leave me. It's really. Or even if I'm not in this relationship, I can't survive. I'm unsafe. What are the facts for and against those beliefs? When you are four and you were facing rejection from your caregiver. Yeah, the belief that you can't survive on your own, that's pretty on point. When you're 44, that's not quite as accurate. As a 44 year old, you can go grocery shopping and keep a roof over your head, etc. Identify the beliefs you have about addressing the problem or leaving the relationship. Include prior similar experiences. When you think about leaving the relationship, what are your beliefs? Do you believe it's going to be intolerable and excruciating? You're setting yourself up there. If you're saying intolerable, that means I cannot tolerate it, which means I must avoid it at all costs in order to stay safe. Is it going to be excruciating and unpleasant? Oh, yeah, it is. Let's not sugarcoat it. But can you tolerate it? So identify when you think about addressing the problem or leaving the relationship, what are your fears? Are those fears based in fact? And what can you do to help yourself feel safer and more supported when you decide to make a change? And that goes back to that decisional balance. Exercise whatever needs that that relationship is supposed to be filling for you. How can you get those needs met outside the relationship? That relationship is in some ways helping you feel loved, accepted, safe, and safe. How can you feel loved, accepted and safe outside of that relationship? Foreign is the next step. Change is hard even when both people are working together. If you decide to address a, an issue of an unhelpful or unhealthy behavior in a relationship and your partner's like, literally totally on board, that's great. It's still not going to be a walk in the park. When you are trying to identify and change a behavior that your partner doesn't see a problem with or isn't actually willing to change, or when you decide that, hey, I realize this is going nowhere, I need to end this relationship, it can be excruciating, and it'll require not only grieving the loss of the relationship, but also secondary losses. Maybe you have a dog together that they're going to keep. Maybe you have activities you used to do together. Well, you got to find somebody else to do those activities with now. Maybe you have shared friends that you don't think will want to spend time with you when the relationship ends. The list can go on. I don't know what your thoughts are, but you're not only losing the relationship with that person, you're losing a lot of stuff that goes along with it. And it's important to identify that stuff and figure out, is this something that I have to lose or can I find someone else to do it with me? Maybe you used to go rock climbing together. Is this something I'm going to give up when I get out of this relationship, or am I going to find somebody else to rock climb with me? You know, those are different options. And you also may have to grieve unhealed losses or traumas. This may reopen that childhood wound of your caregiver being emotionally unavailable or inconsistent with you. And you part of you may feel like a little kid all over again, feeling terrified and unsafe and not sure which direction to turn. And it's important, you know, go back to connecting with that inner child and being the parent. I know that's kind of a Mental gymnastics now that you're an adult, being a parent to that scared inner child, being a friend to yourself and saying, you got this, and being a parent to that child that says it wasn't you, it wasn't that you weren't lovable, and it's that they weren't able to love you. I love you and you're safe now. Create a safety plan. Make a plan to deal with the emotional fallout and grief. Doesn't just happen and get over in a week. It doesn't. There's going to be at least a year. If you've, if it's been an extended relationship, there's going to probably be at least a year of grieving periods. It gets easier with time, but it's important to be compassionate with yourself and be mindful of when you're having moments or you're feeling triggered or you're having a grief burst out of kind of some feel feels like it comes out of nowhere. You start feeling really sad about not being in that relationship and maybe even craving that relationship again, thinking, oh, minimizing it, thinking, it wasn't that bad. I'm going to go back to it and get support. I can't emphasize enough how important it is when you're making a change, especially a change as big as this one, to have support. Have somebody you can call when you wake up at two in the morning and are thinking about calling your ex. Have somebody you can call in the middle of the day when you're like, I really don't want to eat lunch by myself. In terms of relapse prevention, practice, mindfulness. Dysfunctional relationships can be a lot like a drug. When you start having that craving for that person, for that relationship again, ask yourself, are you needing. Needing emphasis on that word, that person, or are you simply wanting to make the pain stop? You don't like being alone. You want to change this feeling that you have. It's not that you need that person, you just don't like how you feel right now. It can be really easy to be drawn in by promises or even overt gestures from the other person designed to make you stay. It's important to remember that this is actually part of the power and control wheel that going back into that honeymoon period and giving you gifts and or playing on, telling you what you want to hear, what you want to say, making apologies, making promises. Identify when you start be feeling like you're being drawn in and start thinking, okay, I'll give it one more chance. Identify times that they've made and broken promises before, what does that say about their respect for you? Yeah, they may not be able to love, they may not be able to keep their promises, whatever, but they realize this. And if they stay in the relationship, even though they know it's hurting you, that's a pretty antisocial activity or action. That's a pretty hurtful action. So that's showing you disrespect. That's showing you that they care more about them and their feelings and what's going to make them happy in the moment than they care about you. And they may also encourage you to minimize. When they've broken promises before, you know you're making too big of a deal about that. That wasn't that big of a deal. Or they may rationalize you made me. Or if you would have only done this, that or the other, then I wouldn't have broken my promise. Don't let them use guilt. Don't let them minimize or rationalize what happened. And this is another place where support is important. So you don't get gaslit or gaslighted. Not sure what the past tense of that is. And think to yourself, if they're making these promises and making these gestures, what is the actual probability that they will change? Now? They've failed to change five other times. What is the actual probability that they will change? Now? I'm not saying that people can't change. I have worked in addiction recovery for better part of a quarter century, and I know people can change. But assuming they're going to change, having blind faith that they are going to change is often devastating. So it's important to say, okay, I hear that you say you're going to change, and I respect that. But I need to see a little bit of proof. I need some actions to back up those words before I can believe you this time. Explore the relationship as if your best friend were going through it. You know, step back like that fly on the wall or that caring best friend and explore the relationship and look at it. And if when you take that stance, you're like, oh my gosh, you just really need to get out of that. That tells you what you need to know. That tells you what you need to know. When you're not blinded by your own fears and your own anxieties and insecurities. Set boundaries during readjustment. And sometimes I call this detox, sometimes I call it readjustment, whatever you want to call it during this 6 month, 12 month, 18 month period after you end the relationship, set boundaries so you don't get drawn back in if you know that they tend to be very good at manipulating you and making promises. You may need to block their number. You may need to have no contact for a period of time. If you have to have contact, you may need to do it when you have a support person with you in order to help keep you strong in the face of temptation, if you will. And I use the example of a dog, and I'm not being sarcastic, because for a lot of people, their pets are very much like their children. So if you're having shared custody of a dog and you're going to pick up Fido from your ex, okay, you know, that's great because you love that dog and it brings you happiness. But it's also important to make sure you do it in a way that's safe, where you're not going to feel triggered. Have self compassion for yourself. I guess that's redundant. Not every day is going to be a good day. Some days you're going to have cravings, some days you're going to feel depressed, some days you're going to feel angry. And that's okay. But be compassionate with yourself in everything that you do. And don't just say, hey, this is really bothering me today. I need to get myself up and do everything as well as I always do. No, it may not be an 8A. So have compassion and say, all right, how can I do the best that I can do today given the fact that I'm struggling with this over here and it's taking some of my mental and physical energy. Focus on progress, not perfection. You're not going to end a relationship and suddenly feel safe, secure, strong, self efficacious and all that stuff. It's just not going to happen. Focus on progress. How much safer, how, how proud are you of yourself today? Focus on progress in healing your grief. Does it hurt as bad as it did yesterday? Are you able to go a longer period of time without thinking about that person or crying or whatever today than you did yesterday? This is a loss. Just like a death, this is a loss and it's important to not minimize the impact that that has. And I know I've already said it like four times in this presentation, but have a support system. They don't need to be able to fix it. Sometimes you just need somebody that can be with you when you're in pain or feeling weak. You can watch a video together on FaceTime or, you know, there's, there's a lot of things you can do where just having some other A connection with some other human, even if they're not, like, actually in the same room, can help you feel less isolated, less lonely. And it gives you someone you can rely on if you start feeling like you're going to relapse, like you feel like you're going to call your significant ex significant other. People with anxious attachment often experienced rejection and did not learn how to feel safe on their own. As children, they define their worth by whether someone else loves them. Recovery involves beginning to recognize your safety and personal power and your personal worth. What do you deserve? Again, if that means stepping out and looking at it as if you were talking to your best friend who was in a very same situation, you know, what would your best friend deserve? All right. Well, if your best friend deserves it, you probably do too. Address problems in relationships can feel terrifying. And when relationships end, there will be pain. Not going to sugarcoat it. There may be a part of you that feels a little relief, but then there's also a part of you that's sad, depressed, feeling dejected. Okay, those are things that you'll need to process. Only you can make the decision about whether you are willing to or deserve to tolerate the pain of the problems or the pain of change.