Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It (8 page)

Feeling emotional pain and understanding how you maintain problematic patterns do not tell you how to be different or automatically establish healthier patterns. This has to develop over time with new experiences. For example, you might realize that you tend to be guarded with everyone in your current life, even your spouse, because you felt criticized or emotionally abandoned as a child by your parents; or because a former fiancé cheated on you with your closest friend. However, even after you realize this, you still have a few tasks ahead of you if you want to change. You must allow yourself to let down your defenses and experience vulnerability within a caring relationship. Then you’ll need to develop the inner resilience to continue reaching out even after you feel hurt by your new love (which
will
happen eventually in any close relationship). But there’s no need to stress too much about this. Just proceed slowly. You’ll want to feel yourself stretch, but not so much that you snap.

To illustrate further, consider Jessie. Her parents loved her, but they were by nature somewhat emotionally distant. They could smile and laugh and have a “normal” family life, but they tended to focus on their children’s achievements rather than on relating to their children’s more personal qualities and experiences. When Jessie and her siblings were sad or hurt or distressed in any way, her parents responded with directives not to whine and with a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality.

Jessie learned not to complain. She came to believe that her imperfect performance and distressing feelings not only meant that she wouldn’t be loved, but also that she was essentially flawed and unworthy of love. No matter what accomplishments she achieved in life (and there were many), she never felt good enough. She was always waiting for others to see her mistakes and recognize her unworthiness—and reject her. Unfortunately, this also meant that she didn’t trust any man who showed interest in her unless he was also rejecting in some way. As you might imagine, the relationships she had with men were brief and emotionally painful.

For Jessie, like many people who are raised in families that make acceptance contingent on performance, being self-critical was a way of coping that made sense—she was trying to fix all the problems in her performance so that her parents would be proud of her and love her. As an adult, her “overlearned” self-criticism was a part of her identity that she used to try to help herself in three important ways. First, by narrowly focusing on how she could improve her performance, she could sometimes avoid the intolerable distress of knowing she was less than perfect and unlovable. Second, she was more directly trying to ward off rejection, which she thought would happen if she failed in any way. And last but not least, her extra efforts frequently paid off in others’ being happy with her performance (not that she could allow herself to fully take this in).

When Jessie began therapy, she was desperate to be free from her self-attacks, but she couldn’t figure out how to escape. She was all too aware that the
desire
for a healthier, happier way of being does not in itself reveal a map for how to get there. To leave behind those old, beaten-down, and circular paths, you must devise an effective escape route (or be helped by someone who has such a plan). For Jessie, that route was learning to value her whole self, not just what she could accomplish. Once she succeeded in doing this, she was able to leave her critical self behind, and free to enjoy her life and relationships. Of course, as with so much in life, “the devil is in the details.” The next chapter will offer some essential guidelines on how you can develop a personalized escape route.

PART THREE

Compassionate Self-Awareness: The Antidote to Relationship Anxiety

Chapter 5

By this point in the book, you know your attachment style. You understand what causes you to perpetuate unhealthy and ineffective ways of seeing yourself and your partner. These are extremely important insights. But as you increase your self-awareness, you will also feel a strong pull to self-verify your old perceptions of yourself. You’ll find ways to continue seeing yourself, your partner, and your relationship as you always have, and to resist the potentially healing influence of what you are learning about yourself. If you persist, though, a new perspective will prevail. You will be freer to learn how to nurture a happier relationship, and maybe even change your attachment style. While this offers great hope, the billion-dollar question is
how to do it
—how can you maintain insight into unhealthy patterns and actually (finally) nurture a happy relationship?

When faced with this question, it’s natural for people to look for direct answers—a list of fail-safe strategies or tactics for meeting these challenges. They look for concrete tools:
Do this. Don’t do that.
Often, however, the direct methods alone fail. People can’t effectively use the “good” advice they are given because their inner environment supports the unhealthy status quo.

What’s needed is a way to change that core environment—a way that directly improves how you relate to yourself and emotionally connect with your partner. This makes me think about what happened with a small plant I once had. Its green leaves gave my office a little warmth, despite its lack of flowers. But when I moved to an office with a large wall of windows that faced the morning sun, pink blooms exploded all over it and brightened up my office, as well as my mood. Similarly, people can get the “sunshine” they need to blossom from loving relationships.

If you are always standing in the shadows of your attachment-related anxiety, there are two ways you can find happiness in your relationships—and even “earn” secure attachment—which I touched on in chapter 2. One way is with an emotionally available attachment figure who is loving, accepting, and consistently available. This could be a romantic partner, but not necessarily. This figure could also be a family member, a friend, a clergyperson, a therapist, a mentor, or even God. Really, it can be anyone whom you feel that you can turn to for support.

The other way is through what I call
compassionate self-awareness
—an awareness of yourself from the perspective of having a concern for, and a desire to lessen, your own suffering. In both cases, love seeps in over time to comfort and reassure you that you are worthy of it. Ultimately, to earn secure attachment, you must be open to love from an emotionally available attachment figure
and
be open to being compassionately self-aware.

Fortunately, a truly loving partner can help you develop compassionate self-awareness; and compassionate self-awareness can help you be more open to a truly loving partner. Each of these can build on the other—a little bit at a time—to help you feel more worthy of love, see your partner in a more positive light, and work with your partner to nurture a happy, healthy relationship. In addition, they can help you to create a sense (or, more accurately, a mental representation) of your partner—and ultimately yourself—that you can carry with you wherever you go, which can comfort and reassure you in times of distress.

The idea that having the right partner can help you to feel loved and happy is what dreams—and romantic stories—are made of. You can intuitively understand it. But compassionate self-awareness needs some explaining. The concept grew out of my gnawing curiosity about what various areas of psychological literature (not just the ones that I knew of) had to say about creating personal change. As I plowed through piles of research and reflected on my clinical experience, the idea of compassionate self-awareness presented itself as vitally important in personal change and healing. Its two main elements are
self-awareness
and
self-compassion
, both of which I will explain in depth below. Then, in the following chapters, I will provide you with detailed exercises for developing the different parts of this essential skill set.

To improve your intimate relationships, you must look at your role in creating problems—or at what you do to prevent relationships from even getting started. Yet, as I’ve explained, people’s biases tend to blind them to these insights. So developing self-awareness and making effective use of it can be tricky.

But if you persist in observing your tendency to confirm your preconceptions of yourself and your partner (or potential partner), you will begin to see these biases more easily and more clearly. No longer mistaking perceptions as absolute truth, you will be freer to initiate positive changes.

It’s helpful to think of self-awareness as comprised of awareness of emotions, awareness of thoughts, and
mentalizing
—all of which I will describe below.

Awareness of Emotions

Emotions provide a richness of experience that would be lacking in a purely intellectual existence. It’s the difference, for instance, between
knowing
a new romantic interest is a good fit for you on paper and actually
feeling
on cloud nine.

By opening up to emotions, people can sometimes identify beliefs or experiences that they were previously unaware of, or that they did not realize the strength of. For instance, a woman might realize she is in love with a friend only after feeling pangs of jealousy about his dating someone else. Another example is a woman who knows she likes spending time alone, but only realizes just how important this is when her new boyfriend becomes clingy. Emotions not only breathe life into existence; they also provide information for us to act on.

Along with being in touch with their emotions, people need to be able to
self-regulate
—or manage—them so that they don’t get overwhelmed. They try to do this in a number of different ways, many of which fail—and some of which you might relate to. For instance, they might try to suppress, deny, or numb distressing feelings. But when those tactics are used too often, the feelings are likely to go underground, only to come back out at a later time—and with a vengeance, often leaving people anxious, depressed, or angry. A different approach is when people ruminate, repeatedly reviewing the causes and consequences of a problem as they look for a solution. But when the problem has no real or clear answer, they remain caught in a cycle of feeling upset and anxious, trying to problem solve to reduce their distress, failing to fix their problem, and then feeling more anxious. Or they become so overwhelmed that all of their emotions feel like one big boulder mounted firmly on their chest.

By contrast, people who self-regulate effectively are able to tolerate and accept their emotions. They might use the coping strategies I mentioned above, but they do it without working against themselves in other ways. For instance, they might suppress their emotions while at work, but allow themselves to get upset at home and talk about their feelings with their partners and others. Because they don’t feel particularly threatened by their distress, they don’t defend too strongly against it. This allows them to be more fully self-aware. As a result, they are able to ride the wave of their emotions rather than feeling like they are drowning in them.

To help clarify, consider someone who is grieving over the death of a close friend. If this person is frightened by or wants to avoid his grief, he might shut off his feelings, leaving him stuck in emotional numbness (though protected from the pain) and unable to truly connect with others in a deep way. In contrast, someone who is more accepting of grief is generally able to share it with loved ones and maintain emotionally close relationships. Although struggling with negative emotions is always painful, those who can self-regulate effectively do not feel emotional suffering (distress about their distress) as much as people who fight their emotions.

Sometimes people think that acknowledging a difficult situation means that they then need to either be resigned to it or act on it. If they are not prepared to do either, they try to deny their experience. And in the end, they remain distressed without a way to address it.

For example, Amelia doesn’t want to accept that her husband is unkind to her because she fears that she would then need to either leave him, which she is not ready to do, or permanently resign herself to being unhappy. Actually, her feelings do not mean either of these things. They simply mean that she is unhappy right now. Once she acknowledges and accepts this, she will feel in sync with herself, which will give her a different perspective on her problem. She will likely develop new realizations and options—like discovering she would actually be happier without him, or that they can work on their marriage together. Of course, she can always decide to resign herself to the situation; but even then she would be doing it with a different frame of mind, which might enable her to consciously decide the best ways to continue within the marriage.

Distinguishing Thoughts and Emotions

It is important to know the difference between thoughts and feelings. You may be surprised to find out that many people confuse them. For instance, it would not be uncommon for someone to say, “I feel like I was too quiet on that date.” This, of course, is a thought and not an emotion. Emotions are a combination of being aroused in a particular way and the meaning we put to that arousal. So you might
feel embarrassed
about not saying much on a date.

When people mistake their thoughts for emotions, their real emotions remain unexplored. Simply recognizing this mistake and then focusing on feelings often leads people to
experience
themselves in a more emotional way. For instance, once you realize you feel embarrassed, you might also realize you are afraid of being judged. And then you can seek reassurance or support; or you might realize that your fear is unnecessary.

To illustrate how poor emotional self-awareness can be a problem, consider a situation that frequently occurs in therapy. A woman—let’s use the name Maxine—is struggling with her husband’s infidelity. She says, “I feel like I can’t trust him anymore. And, really, how can I? He would tell me he was at work when he was really…” And off she goes, telling me all about the awful things he has done. Her speech is rapid and she sounds angry—the more she talks, the more upset, overwhelmed, and confused she becomes. Despite being emotional, her suspicions and the examples of his dishonesty are thoughts, not feelings. So I refocus her on what she is feeling. With some prompting, she acknowledges feeling angry, betrayed, sad, scared, and hurt. She cries as she connects with all of these emotions; and she feels heard. Despite the cliché of a therapist trying to get patients to cry, my focus (and the helpful part of this interchange) is to connect her with her feelings and help her feel heard; crying is just the inevitable outcome of her doing that. Whether or not she wants to work on fixing her marriage, she is in touch with the pain that needs healing, and so she can begin to work on easing that pain.

Exercise: Opening Up to Emotion

Intertwined with naming your emotions is the
way
that you identify them. You must step out of your experiences enough to be able to make sense of them. This stepping out lessens your immersion in your emotions—even if only for a moment. To help you understand, consider how you feel right now. Really, please do that right now. I can wait a minute.

Notice how you shifted from thinking about focusing on your feelings to paying attention to your feelings to thinking about the label for them. This ability to shift attention can be very helpful in allowing you to
have
your feelings while not getting
consumed
by them—especially when they’re strong feelings.

The best way to practice this is with low-intensity emotions, which have less of a chance of overwhelming you. Just as you stopped moments ago to consider your feelings, make it a practice to do this at different times during your day. For example, you can do it at mealtime, before leaving your house in the morning, or upon arriving at your office. The important point is for you to learn how to guide the way you experience your emotions—heightening your awareness of them, and moving between being
in
them and consciously
observing
them.

With practice, you will be better able to do this with more intense emotions. And the better you are at doing it, the freer you will be to view your situation with some perspective—and perhaps consider alternative ways to understand or respond to your situation.

If, like many people, you have some trouble identifying your specific emotions, don’t worry. That’s a common problem, and one that an exercise in the next chapter will address.

Awareness of Thoughts

How you experience yourself and your beliefs about yourself is affected by your thinking. For instance, you reinforce self-doubts and low self-esteem when you repeat beliefs, such as “Danny doesn’t really love me. He just stays with me because he feels sorry for me.” Those thoughts also trigger emotions, such as sadness and fear of rejection.

Whether you realize it or not, you have a running subtext of thoughts throughout your day. Bringing that subtext to consciousness can be extremely helpful in learning how you perpetuate unhappiness within yourself and your relationship. With that awareness, you also have an opportunity to work on change. Sometimes even just the awareness itself is enough to facilitate change.

Exercise: Experimenting with Your Thoughts

This simple exercise is a powerful demonstration of how your thinking affects you on many levels. Find a quiet place to complete it. It will take only a few minutes.

Sit comfortably, take a deep breath or two, and close your eyes.

Slowly scan your body from your toes up to the top of your head.
Be aware of any sensations, such as muscle tension, the sensation of breathing, or your heart beating.

Bring to mind a negative thought about yourself.
Pick one that you tend to struggle with. Hold it in your mind and repeat it.

Pay attention to how this affects you.
What sensations do you feel? How does it affect your emotions and your thoughts?

It’s likely that you will feel worse when you focus on negative self-perceptions. You might notice increased tightness in your chest or churning in your stomach. You might also be aware of feeling sad or angry with yourself, or of having a cascade of other negative thoughts.

Now do this exercise again—but a little differently. Before beginning, think of a time when you felt good about yourself. What positive thoughts did you have about yourself? Use these thoughts as the focus as you complete this exercise. If you tend to be self-critical or slow to appreciate your positive qualities, you will find this more difficult to do. However, in doing it, you will notice more positive experiences (even if they’re fleeting), such as more relaxed muscles, a sense of being lighter or happier, and maybe even more positive thoughts.

Mentalizing

The third, and last, part of self-awareness is mentalizing, which is a process associated with psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy and his colleagues (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target, 2002; Slade, 2008). They have explained this as a process in which people experience themselves and the world through their minds. This allows them to take a
reflective stance
—to think about the psychological reasons for their own and others’ behavior. Importantly, however, mentalizing also involves being emotionally connected while having that reflective stance. Those who have a strong mentalizing ability sense that they can change the very nature of their experiences by thinking about them differently.

Implicit in mentalizing is the assumption that people have shared experiences. This
common humanity
, as described by researcher Kristin Neff (2008), naturally gives people a sense of connection and understanding for themselves and others. They can feel empathy and compassion for those in pain because they can relate. (I will discuss this in detail later in this chapter.)

Too often, however, anxiously attached people don’t fully feel that they are a part of this common humanity. As a result, while they might understand why other people do and feel as they do (it’s only human), they don’t apply this same understanding to themselves. And though they have compassion for others, they experience themselves as flawed in a way that makes them feel undeserving of compassion—and too often inclined to fault themselves for relationship problems. Over time, though, their repeated experience of feeling rejected—even when their partners are not meaning to reject them—leads them to respond by being critical of their partners.

To help clarify how mentalizing can be affected by attachment-related anxiety, consider the way Sydney—a woman with a strong preoccupied style—reacts after a blind date ignores her obvious willingness to meet again. Understandably, she is unhappy about this. However, because of her weak ability to mentalize, she equates the feeling of rejection with her being flawed and unworthy of love. She feels despair and isolates herself. However, if her attachment-related anxiety were less intense, her ability to understand the situation with more perspective might not be so impaired. She could feel hurt while recognizing that not everyone clicks—and that being rejected does not make her a reject. She might even remember that there are men she’s liked or respected in the past who did not interest her romantically.

While strengthening her ability to mentalize can help Sydney to open up positive ways of thinking about herself and her relationships, it unfortunately does not automatically relieve distress. All too often people think that they should no longer be upset once they understand their circumstance. In my clinical practice, it is not unusual for patients to say something like, “I know I’m always afraid of being judged because my father was cruel when I was a child. But that was a long time ago and he’s dead now. So why can’t I just get over it already?” The answer is that some things in life are painful, and no amount of understanding will change that. But learning to respond with self-compassion can soothe that hurt and help you move forward in life.