Rewire Your Relationships: The Attachment Patterns, Blind Spots, and Protective Moves Shaping How You Love

27:23and you hear the way you love me isn't good enough. Your partner says, I want us to spend more time together. And you hear you're about to lose all your independence. Maybe they say, hey, can we talk about what happened last night? And here's what you hear. We're about to have a conversation where I feel like a failure and I don't know how to make it stop. So then you withdraw. not because you don't care but because sometimes you care and the emotional stakes feel enormous so here's where accountability comes in if you repeatedly withdraw without communicating and you dismiss your partner's feelings or make it impossible to address the problems that behavior does have an impact yes your internal experience matters and so does the experience of the person who's trying to connect with you.

28:17So understanding why you shut down doesn't mean your partner is required to spend the rest of their life guessing when you'll be emotionally available. And if you're the person who tends to shut down, I want you to hear this. You don't have to magically become comfortable with vulnerability overnight. And maybe here's a starting place, okay? You say, listen, I want to have this conversation and I'm getting overwhelmed right now. I just, I need 20 minutes and I will come back. Because needing space and abandoning the conversation are not the same thing. You can practice letting someone care about you without making emotional independence the price of admission, basically.

28:59Okay, let's get into our last one here. Fearful avoidant attachment, which is basically when closeness and distance both feel threatening. It's a tricky one because this is sometimes described as having high levels of both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. And what that can mean is that you intensely desire emotional closeness while also feeling super duper uncomfortable or frightened by it. They're kind of like magnets repelling against each other at the same time. Like you worry about being abandoned and you also struggle to trust someone who wants to stay. Or you feel really desperate for connection when a partner seems distant.

29:43And then you become overwhelmed once they're emotionally available. And if you experience this, I mean, you know how confusing it can feel. You think, okay, I finally have the relationship I've wanted. Great. Yes, this person is interested in me. They're showing up. They want to build something real. so why do I suddenly feel like I need to get out? Or you might find yourself in relationships where you alternate between pursuing someone and withdrawing from them. You feel unsafe when they pull away but you also feel unsafe when they come close and the result can be a lot of internal conflict because part of you is saying please please choose me and another part is saying don't let anybody get close enough to hurt you.

30:28God, those really are two things that are hard to have coexist together. So I guess the takeaway here is not, oh my God, I'm fearful avoidance, so I'm incapable of having a stable relationship. It's that you may need to build your capacity to tolerate both emotional closeness and the uncertainty that comes with caring about another person. You might actually need to learn what safe vulnerability feels like, how to communicate a need without immediately regretting it, and how to distinguish a present day threat from an expectation shaped by previous experiences. And those are skills that can develop over time.

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33:09Go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H dot com slash BLF and get your kids the full body support that they deserve. Guys, there are certain things now that I'm a grown up where I'm like, I'm just not willing to deal with it anymore. Bad coffee. No, it's not happening. Jeans, especially the kind where you need like emotional resilience to just get them up and zipped. Not happening. And then underwear during your period where you're wondering the whole time, Like, is everything OK down there? Especially after having kids where I didn't have a period for a certain amount of time. Now that I have it back, it's just like, oh, my God.

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35:02Head to NYX.com and you'll see why I love NYX. Don't forget to use the code BIGLITTLEFEELINGS for 15 % off your order. Get leak-proof undies, amazing bras, and more. That's K-N-I-X.com. Code BIGLITTLEFEELINGS. NYX.com. You're going to thank me. There are certain kid things that are so common, we almost stop noticing them. Snoring, sleeping with their mouth open, grinding their teeth, waking up tired even after what should have been a full night's sleep. And because kids are kids, it's really easy to just kind of file that all under, well, children are weird sleepers. But Toothpillow looks at something most of us were never taught to pay attention to, how a kid is actually breathing while they sleep, and whether their jaw and airway development could be part of this picture.

35:54These are things with kids that can be life-changing. So with Toothpillow, their process starts with a free at-home assessment. You submit photos and answer a few questions, and real airway dentists review everything. Then they tell you what they're seeing and what they recommend. If treatment could be helpful, but walk you through it. And if your kid needs something different or nothing at all, they tell you that too. So if a child is a fit for the program, Toothpillow's doctor-guided treatment is designed to support natural jaw growth, proper tongue posture, and healthy nasal breathing while they're still growing.

36:28The two-year program happens entirely from home and includes a series of soft, removable appliances, short daily myofunctional exercises, and check-ins with the Toothpillow airway dentist and care team. And the part that really made me stop and pay so much attention to this is the timing. Toothpillow says that the key growth window for a kid's jaw and airway is roughly ages 3 to 12 while they're still actively growing. So if you've ever looked at your kids sleeping with their mouth hanging open or you heard them snoring from halfway down the hall, this is one of those things that may be worth getting more information about.

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37:38Tell me if this happens to you too. You go to your closet. You're looking through. You're trying to pick something cute. You're like, no, no, not that. Okay, not that either. You have all these clothes in your closet, but you don't actually want to wear any of them. I am so done with that chapter. I recently got rid of a bunch of my clothes. I just did it. And instead, I'm focused on getting pieces that I actually like. And let me tell you where my go-to has been. Quince. If you do not know about quince, you need to. My mom is the one who turned me on to quince. Thank God. I've gotten so many good things from there.

38:14And if you follow us on Instagram, you've already seen a bunch of them. I got the cutest black wrap dress that I wear to events. I wear it to work meetings when I need to look nice. I wear it to date nights. It is so comfortable. It's kind of like wearing a bathrobe almost. except you look really put together and really beautiful. It's such a win. I have a crop top for them that I wear all the time to workout classes. That thing has been through the washing machine so many times and it's held up incredibly. I have the cutest tote from them that holds everything, you know, like all the toy cars and the rocks and there's snacks at the bottom, but it looks really chic and nice because it's actual leather.

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39:33Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's quince.com slash BLF. Okay, now we have to go over something so important. We've got the attachment styles. You probably just listened and noticed which one resonated with you most, which one is happening in your current relationship, And now we have to talk about the relationship dance that makes two people feel completely alone. Like what happens when attachment patterns meet each other inside of a relationship? Because this is where things get really interesting and sometimes really messy. But the more you understand it, the more you can work with it.

40:17Imagine one partner is especially sensitive to signs of disconnection. When something feels off, they want to talk. They want reassurance and they want to resolve the issue immediately. Now imagine the other partner becomes overwhelmed by emotionally intense conversations. So when conflict escalates, they need space and they need time to collect their thoughts and they might struggle to communicate while they're upset. Neither person's initial reaction is inherently wrong. but watch what happens when each person interprets the other's behavior through their own fears. Okay? Partner A notices that something's wrong and says, can we please talk about this?

41:04Partner B is already feeling overwhelmed and says, I don't want to do this right now. Partner A hears, you don't care about me. So they push harder. Now they start saying things like, why can we never talk about anything? Why do you always shut me out? Partner B hears you're failing again and nothing you do will ever be enough. So they withdraw further and they say something like because every time we talk it turns into this huge thing. And now partner A feels even more alone and partner B feels even more trapped. And suddenly you've got two people in the same house who both believe the other person is the reason that they can't feel safe.

41:47Each person's waiting for the other person to change their behavior before they can feel safe enough to actually show up differently. You see how it's a dance that really spirals together? And the awful irony is that their attempts to protect themselves can intensify the exact reaction that they're afraid of. The more one person pursues, the more the other may withdraw. The more one person withdraws, the more desperately the other person may pursue. And over time, couples can begin reacting not just to the original problem, but now to the entire history of how these conversations have gone. The conversation about the dishes isn't actually about the dishes anymore.

42:29It's about whether you can count on each other or whether your needs matter or being honest leads to connection or another exhausting argument. And again, nuance, context, not every pursuer is anxiously attached and not every person who withdraws has an avoidant attachment style. But attachment theory can help us recognize what fear might be driving our participation in the cycle. And this, my friends, is where I want to introduce a question that can completely change the way you approach conflict. Okay, are you ready? instead of asking, why does my partner keep doing this to me? We're going to try asking what happens between us when one of us gets scared?

43:14Because that's the question that moves us away from deciding which person is the problem and toward understanding the pattern that you're creating together. Now, that doesn't mean that both people are equally responsible for every conflict. And it definitely doesn't mean that you should overlook cruelty and intimidation or manipulation or repeated violations of your boundaries. Let's get into the hard-hitting tools. Okay, tool number one. The next time that something happens in a relationship and you feel yourself becoming emotionally activated, I want you to learn to recognize what I call your protective move.

43:50Your protective move is the behavior that you tend to reach for when you feel emotionally threatened. Now, for some people, it's trying to resolve the problem immediately. Hey, hi, it's me. That's me. I always have to keep an eye on this. And for others, it's going to be shutting down. And for some people, it's becoming incredibly agreeable and abandoning their own needs because they're afraid of upsetting someone. Or maybe it's becoming critical, controlling, defensive. Or it could be acting like you don't care about a relationship because caring feels too vulnerable. So the next time you feel yourself becoming upset, I want you to ask yourself three questions.

44:30What am I afraid is happening right now? What do I feel the urge to do to protect myself? And if I follow that urge, what's likely to happen next? Let's say your partner tells you that they're going out with friends on a night when you thought the two of you would spend time together. Your fear might be, I'm not important to them. And your protective move might be to say, whatever, do what you want. And what's likely to happen next? Your partner might take you at your word and go out. And you might spend the entire evening feeling resentful and furious. And now you're more disconnected than you were before the conversation even began.

45:12And rewind it, okay? Maybe your protective move is to immediately accuse them of never prioritizing you. And that could lead to a fight where the original need, wanting quality time together, gets completely lost. Okay, rewind one more time. Now imagine that you recognize your protective move before you act on it. You might say, okay, I was really looking forward to spending time together tonight and I'm feeling disappointed. Can we figure out another time for us? Does that guarantee your partner will respond perfectly. Of course not, but it gives you an opportunity to communicate what you actually need rather than asking the other person to decode your protective behavior.

45:54And if your protective move is withdrawal, your version might look really different. Maybe you recognize that you're becoming overwhelmed and your first instinct is to end that conversation. The goal is not to prevent yourself from ever feeling afraid. It's going to happen. It's natural. It's human. The real goal here is to build a little bit of space between the fear and what you do next. Okay, time for another tool here. Stop making your partner solve a mystery. I know a lot of us do it, usually without ever even realizing it. We want something from our partner, but instead of directly asking for it, we create a situation where they have to prove that they know what we want.

46:35And listen, I understand the desire. I've done this. We've all done this. I don't want to have to explain every single thing that I need for the rest of my life. Sometimes I want my husband to magically recognize that I have had a truly spectacularly overstimulating day and arrive with exactly the kind of support that I need. And you know what? After years of being together, I do think it's reasonable to expect our partners to learn things about us. Absolutely. We shouldn't have to explain the same fundamental needs forever while the other person makes no effort to understand us. But there is a difference between wanting a partner who knows you and requiring them to demonstrate their love by correctly guessing something you haven't communicated.

47:16Because sometimes we unintentionally turn our needs into a test, and that's something that doesn't really help the relationship. We think, okay, if I have to ask, it doesn't count. If they really cared, they'd already know. Like if I tell them what I need, they're only doing it because I asked. And we got to challenge that. Why doesn't it count if you ask? Why is love less meaningful when someone listens to you or takes your needs seriously and responds? Like actually, isn't that exactly what we want from a relationship? A person who can hear us and care about what really matters to us? You're not signing on here to become their full-time project manager.

47:53They're a grown-up. They're an adult. You have a shared life. but naming a problem clearly gives you information because once you've communicated a need you get to see what happens. Does your partner listen? Do they care about your experience? Are they willing to work towards a solution together? And does their behavior change over time? That information is important and you don't have to keep inventing increasingly complicated ways to get somebody to demonstrate that they care about you. You can communicate your needs and then you can pay attention to how the other person responds. Now let's get into what accountability actually looks like because I feel like that gets skipped all the time in attachment talk.

48:37Accountability. Because I really do think there's some version of attachment content that goes something like this. I have an anxious attachment style so I need a partner who reassures me constantly. or I have an avoidant attachment style. So my partner needs to understand that I don't like talking about feelings. And understanding each other's needs is absolutely important. But an explanation for your behavior is not the same thing as taking responsibility for your behavior. OK, this is my little bit of tough love for you, and it's going to help you grow. I do this for myself, too. It's not just you.

49:14We're in this together, boo-boo. Let's imagine you recognize that your fear of abandonment sometimes causes you to lash out when your partner wants time alone. You might want to say, I have an anxious attachment, okay? So when you go out without me, it activates my abandonment wound. And yes, that's a very meaningful description of your experience. But what happens next? Does identifying the wound mean your partner is never allowed to spend time alone? doesn't mean that every time they do something independently, they're responsible for managing the anxiety that you experience. Does it mean you don't have to take responsibility for the hurtful things you might say when you're afraid?

49:51No. Exactly. No. Now let's look at the other side. Okay. Maybe you recognize that you have avoidant tendencies and struggle to communicate during conflict. You might want to say, you know what? I shut down because emotional conversations are really overwhelming for me. Okay, yes, that helps us understand what's happening, but it doesn't mean your partner is required to accept a relationship where difficult conversations never happen. Your attachment history may explain your protective move, and it does not automatically justify the impact of that move. And here's where it gets really, really powerful.

50:30You can hold two truths at the exact same time. Here's an example. I was genuinely afraid you were going to leave me and I shouldn't have threatened to break up with you. Or here's another one. I became overwhelmed during our argument and shutting down and giving you the silent treatment for two days without communicating with you was hurtful. I can own that because when you understand why you do something, you gain the ability to recognize the pattern. And when you take responsibility for the impact of that pattern, you gain the opportunity to change it. Okay, we're gonna quickly hit on like my last points here.

51:08Okay What do you do after a fight? Repair You've probably heard this here at blf a ton repair repair repair Because I don't want you leaving this episode thinking that secure relationships are the relationships where nobody gets triggered and nobody shuts down And everybody communicates beautifully all the time. That is not real relationships Sometimes you're gonna understand your protective move before you act on it. Sometimes you're not the more we can pause and regroup and circle back after that hard moment and just own it and acknowledge it like, hey, you know what? I didn't handle that well.

51:43I got activated. I'm so sorry. That probably hurt you. And reconnect and really repair it, the healthier the relationship's going to be. And then we got to do that other part, the part about following through and really trying to change the cycle. because if every conflict ends with the exact same apology and nothing ever changes, you're not really repairing the underlying pattern. You just become really good at apologizing. Okay, friends, as we wrap up here, what does it actually look like to become more secure? Because I don't want to leave you with a beautiful understanding of your attachment patterns and absolutely no idea what to do with it.

52:21In attachment research, we sometimes talk about earned security. This is the possibility of developing more secure attachment through experiences and the way we come to understand and integrate our relationship histories. But the central idea is important. Okay, it's this. Your relationship patterns are not necessarily fixed. You can develop new ways of responding. The first is learning to tolerate the feeling without immediately acting on it. You might say to yourself, okay, I'm feeling uncertain right now. I can feel uncertain without immediately trying to make that feeling disappear. I can handle this.

52:58This feels yucky, but I know I can get through this. And then you can return to something that matters in your own life. It might be noticing the urge to become emotionally distant and choosing one small act of connection. Maybe you tell your partner, I'm having a hard time about this, but I want you to know that I care. Or maybe you allow yourself to ask for help with something that you'd normally insist on just doing alone. you're developing a greater ability to remain connected without abandoning your own boundaries the second place to begin is learning to understand what your body does when you feel threatened because sometimes we're trying to solve a relationship problem while our whole nervous system is in a state of intense emotional activation and in those moments you're not necessarily in the best position to have a productive conversation this is really where regulation skills can help so much.

53:50Okay, the third practice is learning to receive love. Some of us are very good at doing things for other people and we anticipate their needs and we're so good at being helpful and making sure everyone else is okay. And then when someone wants to take care of us, we don't really know what to do with ourselves. Like if that sounds familiar, your practice might be allowing yourself to receive a small amount of support without immediately earning it or repaying it or dismissing it. Let somebody help. Tell somebody what would make your day easier. Allow yourself to be disappointed or vulnerable in the presence of a person who's demonstrated that they can respond with care.

54:33And this is where the relational part of attachment work becomes so important. We don't develop all of our relationship patterns in isolation and we don't have to change them in isolation either. This is how growing in good, healthy relationships works. Consistent, respectful relationships can provide opportunities to develop new expectations and new ways of connecting. Now, I want to bring this all back to parenting for a minute because as a child therapist, one of the things I find so powerful about understanding attachment is recognizing how the skills we're talking about in adult relationships connect to the emotional experiences we create for our kids.

55:17And if you're a parent listening to this, I can practically hear your brain going, oh my god, have I already given my kid an insecure attachment style? You don't need perfect parenting to develop a secure attachment. All the research shows kids benefit from caregivers who are responsive, emotionally available, and able to provide a reliable sense of safety over time. That does not mean responding perfectly to every emotion, preventing every disappointment, or never getting overwhelmed. It really honestly means building a relationship where your kid can experience the full range of being human while knowing that connection doesn't disappear every time things get difficult.

56:02And one of the most important things we can support that is through repair. Like, I hope that's what you take away from this. Repair, repair, repair. It literally changes how the experience gets stored in their brain. Okay, besties, this has been quite the episode. Okay, we've learned there is no relationship where you can guarantee that you will never be hurt or misunderstood or rejected or disappointed. But you can learn to trust yourself to recognize what's happening and communicate what you need and maintain your boundaries and respond to difficult things in ways that align with your values.

56:37and when old fears show up because sometimes it will you can recognize it and you can know where it came from and have compassion for the version of you who learned that protective strategy because you are not responsible for every experience that shaped you but you can have a say in what happens next you get to write your story that's where the work begins I'm so proud of you for being here and building self-awareness and updating your toolbox for your relationships. You're doing an amazing job. Thanks for being here with me while I'm going through my own messy middle part. I hope this episode gives you a little more understanding of yourself, a little more compassion for the people you love, and most importantly, something you can actually use the next time an old relationship pattern shows up.

57:29Okay. I love you guys. I have to go rest because we have a big day tomorrow. And I will see you next time and after bedtime.

57:58Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.