Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It by Leslie Becker-Phelps Read Free Book Online

(reaching out for attention and acceptance), so they attempt to use both kinds of strategies in a disorganized way. This creates a chaotic and confusing pattern in relationships known as the fearful style of attachment. In adulthood, their intimate relationships are often filled with conflict and confusing dynamics, as they pursue both closeness and distance. Not surprisingly, they are not able to achieve a comfortable and comforting sense of closeness or a healthy sense of autonomy.
    Exercise: How Well Do You Balance Autonomy and Closeness?
    Relationships are, of course, more of an ongoing, dynamic balancing act than achieving some continuously held equilibrium. With that in mind, which of the following pictures
best
represents your ideal relationship? And which picture best represents your current relationship, or your most recent one?

    These styles are expressed in the following statements:
    Secure Style:
I am comfortable sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with my partner.
I enjoy pursuing interests apart from my partner.
I feel loved by my partner even when we pursue interests separately from each other.
Even when we disagree, I expect that my partner will still respect and value my opinions and me.
I am comfortable depending on my partner and having my partner depend on me.
    Anxious Style:
I am most comfortable when my partner and I share all of our thoughts, feelings, and interests—when we seem to have merged into one.
I am inclined to pursue what my partner enjoys, putting aside my own interests.
I am inclined to defer my values and opinions to my partner’s values and opinions.
Whenever I sense my partner being distant, I feel driven to reconnect (for example, frequently calling or texting); or I act angrily, such as by withdrawing or being nasty.
    Avoidant Style:
I am uncomfortable sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with my partner.
I take pride in being self-reliant enough not to need my partner.
I am uncomfortable depending on my partner.
I am uncomfortable with my partner depending on me.
I enjoy pursuing interests apart from my partner.
    In doing this exercise, you might want to draw your own overlapping circles and write your own descriptive sentences that better depict your relationship. (We humans are complicated, so it’s okay if your description includes conflicting sentences.)
    Now consider how well your relationship meets your needs for a:
    Safe haven:
During stressful times, how much can you depend on your partner to provide you with a sense of comfort, protection, and support?
    Secure base:
How much does your partner support your pursuit of interests and goals apart from your relationship? How well does your relationship support your feeling good about your true sense of who you are?
     

Managing Your Emotions
    During infancy, children are practically swimming in emotions. Their interactions with their parents are strongly guided by their basic goal of survival and their accompanying need to feel secure. A part of their brain called the amygdala is particularly sensitive to threats to their safety. It is quick to react to possible dangers, such as hunger, being alone, or falling. It reacts reflexively, without evaluating dangers and adjusting its reaction based on the real threat. When you are walking in the woods and feel a rush of fear at the sight of a stick that you mistake as a snake, you can thank your amygdala. Modulating this response is the function of the hippocampus, but that part of the brain doesn’t begin to work until children are between two and three years old. Until then, all dangers are perceived equally and trigger a desperate search for a safe attachment figure to protect and soothe them. This feeling is what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp refers to as
primal panic
(referenced in Johnson, 2008); and it continues to be triggered into adulthood whenever people feel threatened. It also frequently kicks in when they fear losing their partner or other primary attachment