Your Attachment Style Is Not Your Identity

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3:01Our past and how we feel about ourselves determine the way that we love and what we believe that we are worthy of. And inside, you will learn real practical steps to heal old wounds from childhood, overcome attachment issues, and break painful relationship patterns that are getting in the way of your happiness. This is the most personal and practical work I've ever created, and it will truly change your life. It is more than a book. It's a manual or a guide for healing, for secure relationships, for self-worth, and ultimately for letting go of the parts of your past that are continuing to haunt you.

3:46So again, it's available for pre-order at JillianTarecki.com book. And I thank you all for being here and for your support.

4:01Okay, so today I am talking about anxious attachment and relationships. Anyone who suspects that they struggle with insecure attachment, whether that's avoidance, whatever it is, I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode. And I'm going to describe what it is, how it manifests. I'm going to debunk some myths. And then what you can actually do about it so that you can then have more fulfilling relationships. Because at the end of the day, that's what people want. We all want relationships that feel safe and supportive and alive. And so many of us who believe that we struggle with any sort of insecurity or anxiety in relationships, any sort of attachment wounding as it's often referred to as, there's this understandable but really profound underlying fear that you're not going to be able to have the relationship that you want.

5:07There's always just going to be pain and there's always going to be anxiety and there's always going to be struggle. And I'm here to tell you that that is not the case. So here is what you have to understand about attachment, because something that I've been seeing circulating a lot on social media are people posting quotes or commenting quotes like, oh, that's not love. That's just attachment. Like somehow attachment has become a dirty word. And yet we are wired for attachment. It is actually part of our biology. We are a pair bonding species. So you're longing for love and to be loved. You're longing for safety.

5:56You're longing to be in a relationship, if that's the case. There is nothing in that that's wrong or that needs to be pathologized or examined. It is biology. The same brain that seeks food when you're hungry seeks connection when you feel alone. And we evolved to attached because attachment is literally what helps us survive. It's what has given our ancestors the stability to raise children, to raise a family, to protect one another, and to build communities. If we did not have attachment built into our biology, we wouldn't be bonding. We wouldn't be building communities. We wouldn't be building families.

7:01And so the goal isn't to become someone who never gets attached. The goal is to, number one, choose people who you can actually safely attach to. And then the second goal is to never be in a position where the need to form that attachment with someone is so overpowering because you don't feel like you can survive without it. We don't want to stay in a relationship just because we are attached. We want to stay in a relationship because we actually choose to stay in a relationship But it's complicated because the reason why we won't leave a relationship, even if it's reached its expiration, even if it's not right, is because of that deep attachment.

8:07So in many ways, it's the primal brain and the higher self is always sort of in conversation with one another. And it can, in modern day, become complicated when it comes to marriage today and building a family because it used to just be almost just for survival. And now, today, we don't want a relationship just for survival. We want a relationship for transcendence. On the one hand, that there's something beautiful to that, that we've evolved as a species to see relationship as something more than just something that we do to survive, but actually something that we do to reach higher states and levels of consciousness.

8:58On the other hand, on the flip side of that coin, when we put that kind of pressure on a relationship to help us reach a new level of consciousness, we are then putting an enormous amount of pressure for a relationship to be for us what in the past a whole village or community used to be for us. And so I don't have all the answers. No one does. But I do think that part of understanding relationships and how to actually build a healthier one is learning how to reconcile those two. And like, yes, we want something that's going to help us grow. But at the same time, how much pressure are we putting on a relationship to be everything that we need out of life in order to feel fulfilled?

9:52Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands you need From athletic stuff, like a full-court pickup game Swish! To athletic stuff, like a half-mile stroll Get those steps in!

10:28And for morning hikes up the mountain trail Good pace! To nighttime ghost stories from the camping chair What a twist! Whatever level of active, Sierra loves it all Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want At the prices that let you do it all From athletic to athletic-ish Sierra's got it. The second thing that you have to really understand when you, if you want to understand attachment theory and if you want to understand your own attachment is that your attachment style is not who you are. It is not a diagnosis. It does not encapsulate the entirety of your personality, your desires, your strengths, your weaknesses.

11:11And if you believe in the soul, your soul. It is just one variable as part of a dynamic tapestry of who you are. And it is very, very fluid. So you could feel very anxious with one person and very secure with another. You can feel avoidant with one person and feel anxious with another. So it does not exist in a vacuum. Yes, a lot of us have a certain proclivity towards one or the other. But I have spoken to some of the most anxiously and avoidantly attached people, and it's not as triggered in certain relationships. And it also is dependent on where we are in life. So my question for you is this.

12:00What is the story? What is the narrative? What are the things that you tell yourself about you and your attachment style? Do you tell yourself and do you tell others, oh, I have anxious attachment, as if you're proclaiming that you have some sort of disease or I have avoidant attachment? Do you tell yourself that this is something that you are that can't be changed? When you think about your attachment style, do you have shame? Do you feel embarrassed? Do you feel weak? So in other words, when you think about your patterns in relationship, which includes how you attach and how you don't attach, what feelings does that stir inside of you?

12:52What do you feel when you talk about that? Do you feel a sense of hopelessness or helplessness? Do you feel like you're fucked up? Do you feel like there's no hope for you? Do you feel empowered? Do you feel proud? If you consider yourself securely attached, is that something that feeds your ego? Does it give you confidence? Because you have to really pinpoint the story that you tell yourself about it. Because oftentimes when we tell ourselves a story about our insecure attachment, there's a whole lot of shame and negativity that's attached to that. And then we get convinced of our story. And the more convinced we are of the story, the more we identify with the attachment style and the more that we identify with our attachment style, the harder it is to overcome whatever it is that has been preventing you from having and creating healthy love in your life.

14:02This isn't about lying to yourself. It's not about, you know, telling yourself, you know, BSing yourself. But it is not a diagnosis. It's not something that you catch, like you catch a cold. It is not a permanent state of being. It is something that comes up in certain situations, certain circumstances, and with certain people. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime.

14:53So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands for the super athletic stuff, like running gear for cruising up the trail. Woo! And the super athletic-ish stuff, like fishing gear for chilling by the creek. Nice cast. Fitness apparel to push for higher reps. You got this. And golf balls priced so you can afford to lose one. Or a few.

15:29I have seen and heard lots of dating quote-unquote experts talk about, you know, you're anxiously attached if you're getting anxious during dating. And that's not necessarily true. I think that dating can produce a lot of anxiety in all of us. I think that a lot of us can really get in our heads when we're dating. I think there's often we are receiving a lot of mixed messages. I think then you combine that with or you consider someone who has been conditioned by their family, by society, by their peer groups, by history, to believe that if they're not chosen in love, that their value goes down.

16:20There are also people who have been conditioned to believe that romantic love is the most important, this is most of us, the most important kind of love that there is. There's the anxiety for women who want to build a family and are reaching a certain biological age. There's what we think our friends are going to think of us. There's so much conditioning and pressure and fear that rests on so many of our shoulders that can contribute to having anxiety and dating that's not necessarily traceable to what went on in your family growing up. Because a lot of people, when there's insecure attachment, particularly anxious attachment, You may have had one or both of your parents who were not consistent with you.

17:17Maybe they were not consistently present, literally present and energetically present. Maybe you had one parent who was mentally ill or always working or just not in touch with themselves emotionally. And so you never really felt loved by them. There was no, there wasn't for many different reasons. there wasn't a bonding that happened. Maybe because of one parent not being present with you or having a major problem or not being a great parent to you, you developed an extreme attachment to the other parent. Because at the core of anxious attachment is I'm going to be left. I'm going to be alone.

18:05I'm going to be abandoned. Um, bad things are going to happen, but ultimately because of who I am and because of what I believe happens in life, meaning I may have a belief that sad things are going to happen, or I can't depend on people, or I can't rely on people or, you know, I'm always going to get my heart broken. These stories, these thoughts lead to a almost pathological attachment to someone because we are so afraid of losing them. And ultimately we think that we're going to lose them because something in us is not worth staying for. It also manifests as a lot of separation anxiety. So a lot of people with anxious attachment might have separation anxiety from a parent, siblings, family members, pets, not just their romantic partner.

19:16There's almost like this sort of consistent feeling of like being unsafe. Not in all circumstances. Lots of people who have insecure attachment are incredibly confident and highly functioning people in many areas of their life. But if they love someone, then they are ultimately thinking about losing them more than the average person. Sometimes in a relationship, anxious attachment can be triggered by someone who's constantly pulling away. Sometimes anxious attachment is triggered not because of anything that their partner is doing, but because something is going on in that person's life that's making them feel less confident in themselves.

20:10and therefore it's being manifested in the relationship. All of a sudden you're not feeling as stable and as grounded and as centered. And so then maybe your habit is to turn to your partner and make them unconsciously responsible for bringing more stability back into your life. So it's nuanced. And the only thing that I would say, in addition to asking yourself, what is the story that I tell myself about this is what is going on when I think about the times where I have been, where I have experienced what I would consider to be anxious attachment, what else was going on in my life? Was there something about the dynamic that I had with this person that was particularly triggering and activating for me?

21:13Was I feeling ungrounded and uncentered in my life for other reasons? Do I have a habit of when I'm in a relationship to forget how strong and capable I am and I fall back into a habit because that's really at the end of the day. It's a habit and all habits can be broken? Do I fall into a habit of making my partner responsible for my security and happiness? Very much in the way that we would expect that from a parent. So it's really just about bringing conscious awareness to all of this. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app.

22:08Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands you need. From athletic stuff, like a full-court pickup game, swish to athletic stuff like a half mile stroll get those steps in and for morning hikes up the mountain trail good pace it's a nighttime ghost choice from the camping chair what a twist whatever level of active sierra loves it all head to sierra or sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all from athletic to athletic sierra's got it the last thing that i want to mention is this.

22:57All insecurity is fear. And whenever we feel fearful in a relationship, and usually that fear is, I'm not good enough. And so therefore, if I'm not good enough, this person is going to flee and I'm going to be left. And I'm going to be out without this relationship. That's incredibly important to me. Or we fear that we are going to be consumed by the relationship to the point where we lose our connection to ourselves. And there are people who have an extreme fear, an irrational fear of losing themselves. And then there are people who have an irrational fear of losing the other. I would say more times than not, we have a combination of both.

23:47But whenever you're starting to feel that fear, that insecurity in a relationship, the first question you can ask yourself is, am I fearing losing myself or am I fearing losing the other? And what could that be about that's happening inside of me? Is that an old thought? Is that something that comes from my past? Is that something that's coming from my partner or is it something that I'm projecting onto my partner? this is how we become self-aware emotionally mature adults in a relationship and then you can say to yourself okay what do i need right now what do i actually need to give myself right now and if you have a proclivity towards running away because you're afraid of losing yourself or clinging because you're afraid of losing the other that's when you're going to breathe and say, I am no longer bringing that kind of dysfunction into my relationships.

24:52I'm not going to run away because I'm afraid of losing myself because I know that that fear of losing myself usually has nothing to do with the other, or maybe it's something they said and it's really something in me, or maybe it is something that you have to have a conversation with your partner about. But the promise that you have to make to yourself is I'm not going to bring this to my relationships anymore. I'm going to do things differently. Because whenever we are insecure, we are fearful. And whenever we are fearful, we are selfish. I don't care if you identify with being a giver or not.

25:27Everyone can be selfish in a relationship. And when we are insecure, we become selfish. And what I mean by that is, all we're thinking about is our needs, how we can feel better. And we're not thinking about what the other person needs. I recently spoke to someone who was very anxiously attached. Everything was about her getting her partner to understand her, but there was nothing about, well, maybe I should try to understand where they're coming from. When we go into that kind of survival mode, which is just fear, that's all it is. All we're thinking about is ourselves. And in a relationship, the moment one or both people are only thinking about themselves and not also considering their loved one is the moment that the relationship starts to enter dysfunctional territory.

26:26So yes, we have to think about ourselves, but we have to, if we love this person, we have to think about them too, because that's what love is. So what do you do if this is something that you struggle with? Well, number one, you stop telling yourself that story that that's who you are and that it's some sort of diagnosis. You watch the stories and the dialogue in your head. If you have a lot of anxiety in relationships, if you feel, if when you love a pet or a loved one, you tend to really think about losing them and, you know, maybe you've really mastered not going straight into clinging and you've mastered the sort of behavioral stuff that comes from that fear that is not serving you or the other person, but you can't seem to get rid of that fear completely.

27:19You may never. It might never completely go away, but it can definitely get better. It can definitely get better if you're in a relationship with someone who is supportive and kind and doesn't just run away at the first sign of, you know, any problems, like they're mature, they're in it. It will get better when other things in your life are more stable. It will be better when your blood sugar is better. Like, honestly, the more, the better sleep you get, the better your nutrition is, the better that you, the more connected you feel to, to community, to the things that bring you some happiness and some joy, the more you'll see your anxiety decrease.

28:20The more you take care of your body through exercise and movement, whatever works for you, the more you will see that anxiety decrease. When you start to see it increase, you always have to look at your life and your daily habits holistically because it does not exist in a vacuum. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip, the Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime.

28:59So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. From athletic stuff like a full court pickup game, swish, to athletic stuff like a half mile stroll. Get those steps in. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic, Sierra's got it. The third thing is make sure that you're dating people who aren't constantly triggering every fear from your childhood. You know, it's, yes, we want relationships. We want to be able to grow. And certainly when both people are very committed to being the best partners that they want to be, and they are willing to do the work, a couple can overcome mountains.

29:53and there are times where we have to be honest with ourselves that that we're just with someone who's just it's way it's way too triggering it's it's it's um it's just not going to work and so who you choose matters the next thing like I said everything is contextual pay attention to what else is going on in your life do not think that just because you've had a history of some insecure attachment, that that's who you are in every circumstance all the time, you have to consider the context. Next, build community. The opposite of loneliness isn't a relationship. It's connection. And connection comes in many forms.

30:41And you never want to cling to a relationship because you have nothing else going on in your life. You have no other community. Force yourself to build community. Go to that yoga class. Go to whatever that is. Join something. You are going to tell yourself a lot of stories. You're going to get really comfortable. You're going to, some of you are not going to want to leave your house, but you have to build community. The more that you have community around you, the more confident you will be entering a relationship because you will feel supported by connection in your life and not look to your partner or to your date to be the only source of connection in your life.

31:25And then the last thing that I will mention today is be a communicator, not a ruminator. So when you're really in your head and there's a lot going on, communicate. You may wanna communicate to trusted counsel, but just get used to communicating with your partner. And it's not about blame or finger pointing. you can even say, hey, this might just be me. You know, like I'm feeling a little bit like ungrounded. So I realized that this could be me. But when you said that, it kind of just, I don't know, it made me worried. And I could use a little reassurance about that because it made me feel uncomfortable.

32:04And in the way that you communicate that, there is confidence. You can communicate your insecurity in a confident way. And what that does is convey an actual confidence and security in yourself and knowing, hey, I care about myself enough and I feel secure enough in myself to be able to be honest about when something doesn't land well. But it's not this constant like, oh, you have to reassure me every five seconds. It's, hey, this may have been in my head, but this thing that you said, it kind of hurt my feelings and it made me spiral a little bit. Can we talk about it? And I want you to get used to being able to say that to your partner because it's so incredibly important.

32:53And if your partner ever says something like that to you, you have to be able to say, yeah, let's talk about it and be generous with your reassurance. Anyway, hope that helps. I am always seeking out new ways to explain insecure attachment and to explain the nuance of relationships and why some relationships can feel incredibly dysfunctional or incredibly insecure and why others can feel incredibly secure. And there's just so many different ways to look at it. So I hope this helps. Please let me know in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube, But if you're listening to this, please do not hesitate to reach out at hello at JillianOnLove.com.

33:39Anything that that landed for you on this, any questions, anything that you want me to further explore, do not hesitate to reach out. And until next time, thanks for being here. Jillian on Love is a Q Code production executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson, produced and edited by Travis Howe. Music by Will Tendi. Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime.

34:21So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. Coca-Cola. For the big. For the small. The short and the tall. Peacemakers. Risk takers. For the optimists. Pessimists. For long distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.