re: anxious attachment
the first in an ongoing series of written takes on psychology-focused topics
Emotionally, I wanted to stay. Intellectually, I wanted to leave. As always, I seemed to enjoy punishing myself.
Susan Sontag, “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963”
Nothing better to open up wounds than to date. I thought anxious attachment was a thing of my past; something I was victim to as my previous self before years and years of therapy and self-help training.
So when signs and symptoms started to rear themselves while dating, it was not my first thought that I was anxious. No, when anxiety knocked on the door I believed it to be truth. I believed it to be an indication of something wrong, an indication of the other person's mishaps.
And what is anxiety anyway? It is a physiological state perpetuated through biofeedback and behavioural responses. When we are anxious, we are riddled with fear; any potentially conceived threat becomes the most salient star of the room and we cannot place our attention anywhere else. We are, by that means, absolutely dominated by our own fear.
To your body, this is a state of fight or flight. And when this happens we begin to obsessively identify threats in our environment. The way in which this unfolds will be different for everybody–my own experience of this in recent past is coming up with all kinds of stories; these stories of course revolved around my own perceptions of the person I have been spending time with.
As a result, many conversations have been needed–mostly, if not all, prompted by myself. Non-responses have been perceived as disinterest or a lack of care, lack of affection being perceived as exactly the same, bonds with previous partners being seen as threatening, and words being taken as hurtful. That isn’t to say that all my perceptions and experiences of this other person aren’t valid. It’s just the validity of my experience is actually irrelevant at this point, and the reality is that, well, they happened.
Telling myself my experience isn’t valid runs the risk of ignoring the underlying fear or threat. Not only that, but I also run the risk of getting into the habit of invalidating myself. It is more helpful to treat all our emotional experiences as valid, and then address the root of the experience. When it comes to anxiety, it is often a secondary response to a primary emotion. Identifying that primary emotion allows us to move through rather than suppress (and consequentially become depressed down the line).
However, validating our emotions is not the same as believing our narratives to be true. Of course in the moment I want to be righteous in my stories, I want to control my experience. So in relationships, we react. Why? Because what seems most true of all is that the other person is screwing it up for us. They’re making us unhappy! They didn’t show enough care, they weren’t loving enough, they didn’t say the right thing, they this, they that. And it hurt us, it made us upset.
Now hold on tight, because I am about to say something really cliché: we need to focus on detaching ourselves enough from our stories such that we can calm the fuck down. And how exactly is it recommended that we do this? We get really good at sitting with our own discomfort.
But I am not going to say this trope of an antidote and leave it there. Instead, I am going to lean into the discomfort of this extremely disappointing response. You see, the thing about relationships, is that no matter what relationship we are in, we are going to be anxious at some point.
Now take your anxious thought and say: “You know what, maybe that is true,” – because, well maybe it is. And then recognise that your body and your mind’s attempt at taking a possibility and trying to conjure all the ways in which it could be reality is its own attempt to control the outcome. That has been so true of my experience over the last couple of months, my anxiety fuels my need and desire to control the outcome. If I identify all the behaviours, all risks associated with dating this person, react to these risks, reactively communicate these risks, in such a way that I am trying to ensure that it will never happen again, that I won’t be lied to, that they won’t end things and start dating their ex again, I am indeed trying to control the outcome. And aren’t we constantly humbled by the fact that if one thing is in fact true, it is that we cannot control others, and we cannot control external events no matter how incredible we are.
So, do it again, remind yourself that maybe your story is true. In the event that it is true, what does that mean for you? Look at all the ways you are trying to control the outcome, and see that no matter how hard you try you cannot achieve certainty over what is happening, and what is going to happen. At best, all you have is a story and events that have happened, when they have actually happened.
*
Something that I learned from Jim Dethmer that learned from Byron Katie is this: the story we are holding on so tightly, that in which we have so much evidence for, has an opposite. So for example, ‘X is still friends with their ex and so that means they’re not fully over them.’ You reason this point to yourself for at least thirty minutes; you think of your own past breakups, you think about your own feelings towards your exes now, you overanalyze the way in which they talk about them, how often they talk, how often they hang out, on and on and on.
Well, what Jim or Byron would say is this: turn the thought around. Instead of “X isn’t over their ex, turn it into “X is over their ex.” And then, do exactly the same thing you did for the other thought–reason it to death, even if you do not want to. Even a simple example might be enough to confront you, maybe even disarm you; “they broke up.”
What’s the point of this exercise? It’s to show you how you can basically find evidence for anything if you try hard enough. By doing so, you will start to see how you become biased in supporting your emotional stories. The more you practice this, the more you recognise your own bias. And then, by this point we have two skills in cultivation: 1) sitting with discomfort, 2) seeing how the opposite of our stories can be equally as true.
But I am not here to dismiss you either, because sometimes there is really good evidence for a story that is causing us a lot of discomfort and anxiety–and this anxiety is truly indicative of a probable threat. So far we are simply helping ourselves climb down out of reactivity. Once we exit reactivity, and our story is still indeed convincing, we are able to lead from a more empowered place.
So how do we do this? I will circle back around to myself. I am dating somebody new, and I am finding myself feeling anxious at least once a week. They have noticed this as well, and as a response have even propositioned me: “are you even having fun?” And what a fucking great question. That is exactly the question we want to be asking when we find ourselves in situations that are triggering us and causing us reactivity on the regular. Often times when we are dating somebody new, or somebody not so new, and we find ourselves entering a place of reactivity frequently, we are so focused on controlling the external that we don’t pay attention to our own experience.
Instead of feeling anxious about the behaviours of your partner, and what they mean about their feelings towards you, try asking yourself the question: am I having fun? Am I truly enjoying myself? If your answer is no, because they are doing x, y, and z, because they aren’t giving enough–take that seriously. And then genuinely consider: what do I want out of a relationship? What does a good relationship look like to me? What does this relationship look like when it is good?
What exactly are we doing? We are grounding ourselves. We are bringing ourselves back to the table, when we by default, dismissed ourselves because we were so focused on having our stories validated, and we are so focused on the other. This is the wrong place to focus your time and energy if you are trying to be in relationship.
In these moments of anxiety where I am focused on trying to figure out what another person is thinking or feeling, I have to remind myself that I cannot, through no power of logic, answer that question. It is impossible for me to figure it out on my own. So, when I really do feel like there is a point of disconnect like I am not enjoying myself, like I am not being cared for in the way I want to be cared for, it is futile for me to focus on the other, reinforce my story, and react.
Instead, I have to be honest—with myself, and with them. I have to do what Orna advised in Couple’s Therapy Season 1 to the couple who were seriously considering a divorce (the man who was shady and lied about his whereabouts, and the neglected wife crying all of the time–you know the ones): “you (the husband) need to allow yourself to tell the truth, and be seen for what that truth is, and you (the wife) needs to be able to see the truth.”
And that was some of the best advice she gave on that show. You need to allow yourself to be seen, and you need to be a person who can tolerate seeing the other in their truth. God damnit if every relationship established that foundation first and foremost, this would be one hell of a world to be reckoned with. But of course, sometimes seeing the truth is extremely threatening. Seeing the truth often dismantles what we have; we are so woefully at the mercy of our attachments that we cannot let a bad thing go.
Admittedly, I was, for a moment, trending towards not having very much fun. So I have been reminding myself that in my moments of anxiety, where I am so full of fear and doubt, that I am responsible for my experience in all of this. What do I mean? First, my enjoyment is my own responsibility. Two, it is my responsibility to choose whether or not I want to be in a situation that elicits anxiety (and if I do so, then what for). Three, it is my responsibility to get curious about what my most basic needs are and if they are being met. And then finally, it is my responsibility to relate to the other over what is going on.
You see, sometimes we talk ourselves out of relationship; we tell ourselves there is nothing the other can do, the other will not care, the other will be frustrated if we bring our experience to the table. But we don’t make the connection; earlier we elaborated on the type of relationship we want, and now our behaviour might be in direct conflict with the relationship we want to build. In my case, I want a relationship that has, at its very core, radical honesty and closeness. If I tell myself that my discomfort is my own shit, and that “nothing is bothering me” (even when it is), I am actually actively sabotaging myself from having the relationship I want. And then I get unhappy and tell myself that I am not in the relationship I want to be in. Go figure.
This is where we have to be willing to see the other for who they are (rather than controlling the situation to get a desired outcome; not expressing feelings to maintain peace but further cultivating resentment within): we have to be vulnerable, express that we are experiencing discomfort and allow the other to 1) set a boundary, 2) help us solution and own responsibility if they have a part or 3) tell you it’s your problem and frankly, reveal that they themselves are not actually in relationship.
But that’s scary because we already feel like they’re slipping away like everything isn’t OK and we might lose what it is that we really want (a partner, a relationship, to be loved), and so we continue cultivating a half-baked version of what we really want, and then get upset that we don’t have what we are looking for.
Setting a boundary might look something like: I’m sorry my friendship makes you uncomfortable, but I need autonomy and trust to choose who my friends are. What particular thing makes you feel uncomfortable—maybe there is something I can do to help? But if a person simply says, “Well that’s your problem,” maybe that’s something we should witness.
And so, that is what I am reminding myself to do now. When I tell myself I need to hide (an act that cultivates distance), I calm the fuck down, and I remind myself that my reaction to pull away actually sabotages my ability to have the thing that I want; a relationship built on radical honesty and closeness. And it’s nuanced right because the solution isn’t to just anxiously blurt it all out or to blame the other for your discomfort–their experience is just as important, too. It’s not about fighting or arguing, but instead, it’s about doing the act of relating. Otherwise, you run the risk of only being half there because you’re too busy trying to control the outcome–or worse–not showing up because you’ve convinced yourself to quit before seeing what happens if you do reveal. The thing we all have to remember is that a person is always different from the stories we tell ourselves about them–sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better–but the point remains that our anxieties actually sabotage our ability to show up as we are, as we would like, because we’re too focused on that in which we cannot control. We have to go on with the intent of building what it is that we want and see for ourselves if the other wants to go there too.
Maybe when you really try, it doesn’t work out, and that’s alright (you’ll feel good about yourself). But maybe, you end up having fun because the person you tried to convince yourself stories about, actually ends up being different from those stories—you just had to give them the chance to be.
until next time, xxx
