Ever felt the tug-of-war between the need for love and the fear of rejection, like waves caught in the grasp of the moon? That's the heart of today's topic: the anxious preoccupied attachment style. As we unravel the complexities of AP attachment, you'll discover not only its origins from our formative years but also how it stealthily dictates our adult relationships. I share a slice of my own journey, navigating the push-pull of craving connection while fearing abandonment, and how identifying this pattern can be a game-changer in your personal growth. We'll also tackle common misconceptions about emotional responsibility and set the stage to dive deeper in future discussions.
Moving on, we take a closer look at our body's alarm system—our stress and anxiety responses. From fight or flight to the lesser-known freeze and fawn, everyone's stress signature is as unique as a fingerprint. I'll guide you through understanding these reactions and introduce a self-assessment tool from our community resources, designed to help pinpoint your unique stress patterns. Embracing self-awareness is the first step in transforming our relationship with stress, allowing us to move from being its puppet to its master. Don't miss the empowering insights that await in this episode, as we pave the way towards a healthier, more self-assured you.
---CONNECT with Shero Cafe--- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shero.cafe.podcast/ Email: thesherocafe@gmail.com
Ever felt the tug-of-war between the need for love and the fear of rejection, like waves caught in the grasp of the moon? That's the heart of today's topic: the anxious preoccupied attachment style. As we unravel the complexities of AP attachment, you'll discover not only its origins from our formative years but also how it stealthily dictates our adult relationships. I share a slice of my own journey, navigating the push-pull of craving connection while fearing abandonment, and how identifying this pattern can be a game-changer in your personal growth. We'll also tackle common misconceptions about emotional responsibility and set the stage to dive deeper in future discussions.
Moving on, we take a closer look at our body's alarm system—our stress and anxiety responses. From fight or flight to the lesser-known freeze and fawn, everyone's stress signature is as unique as a fingerprint. I'll guide you through understanding these reactions and introduce a self-assessment tool from our community resources, designed to help pinpoint your unique stress patterns. Embracing self-awareness is the first step in transforming our relationship with stress, allowing us to move from being its puppet to its master. Don't miss the empowering insights that await in this episode, as we pave the way towards a healthier, more self-assured you.
---CONNECT with Shero Cafe--- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shero.cafe.podcast/ Email: thesherocafe@gmail.com
So this is a series of videos for the attachment style and today we're going to talk about the anxious, preoccupied or the AP. I have another video in the media section in the files section Now that would be media and then videos you can click on and it talks about an overview of the four attachment styles. So this is the second in the part, second part in the series, sorry where I'm going to break down some of these styles, and the four are anxious, preoccupied or AP, dismissive, avoidant, da, the fearful, avoidant, fa and the secure attachment style, sometimes referred to as SA. So today we're going to be talking about the AP, which is the anxious preoccupied, and some of the tendencies that go along with this attachment style. Now, I like to say tendencies because these are not written in stone, these are written in the unconscious mind and so much of it stems from childhood or things that happened in the home we grew up in or in things that happened with our brothers and sisters or school or whatever. That stuck with us, just really stuck with us, and we may not realize that we've got a trigger, but if somebody does something that either they say it or they act a particular way or don't act a particular way, it will remind our brain of this event that occurred a long time ago and we will have a Core wound trigger and it's like a reaction to something.
Debbie:
So I like to call it the domino effect because it seems to be a really, really good description of what it actually is or what's actually happening. So in a domino effect we all know about, you place all the dominoes right and you put it, and it could go on for just a little short period of time or a really long period of time, but once you hit that first one, they all just start going and with the attachment styles it's like this particular domino effect occurs over and over and over and over again and it upsets us and we're uncomfortable with it and unless we can really unravel that, that whatever it is that's occurring, we will continue to have have that domino effect over and over and over again. But let's look at that domino setup again. So we have domino domino, domino, domino and it goes on forever, whatever, forever long. Let's say there's like five dominoes in and then we pluck out one, two, three, maybe four, so that fifth domino, when it it falls, it just falls on the ground and the rest of the dominoes don't fall over. That's our goal. To it would is to feel the discomfort but understand what it is and where it's coming from, so that once it's in our conscious mind, once we pull it from the unconscious and we bring it forward, that we're actually looking at it, maybe writing it down. This is what I did, said, felt, thought. Now we can actually begin to change and shift that anxiousness, that upset inside of us. So there's hope is what I'm trying to say.
Debbie:
Okay, so most of us that have this anxious, preoccupied attachment style, I am one of those people. It's kind of like navigating through the ebbs and flows of this emotional sea. I like to think of it as the tide. The tide comes in, the tide goes out, the tide comes in, the tide goes out. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. So if you think, hello, how are you Kathy? Okay, great, I'm so glad you're here, thank you so much for being here. And, of course, if anybody else is here, please feel free to say hello in the comments.
Debbie:
So when we have a tide, the visual of a tide going in and out, the anxious, preoccupied, has a like, a strong longing for closeness. That's the tide coming in right and then closest in connection, and then it's combined with this fear of maybe being left alone or misunderstood. Tide goes out because we kind of like push away. We want to get close, but then we kind of push away. So I think of the tide, it's all the ocean, it's all the ocean, it's all of us, it's all within us, those of us that are the anxious, preoccupied type Goes in, comes out. So it's very challenging. It's like we thrive on intimacy but then often fear rejection.
Debbie:
Okay, so the attachment style, this particular attachment style, learns to like perform, even though we don't really think of it that way. It's almost like you know that anxiety kicks in and we perform in a variety of ways that give a sense, sometimes a false sense that we're in control and there may be, there's a worry that someone else isn't going to act the way we want them to and something doesn't feel immediately right or keep us settled. We begin to get like this upset and it shows up a lot of times as like stress, sometimes overwhelmed, like oh my god, I got so much on my plate. Fear, like I'm so scared that if I do this, this will happen. A lot of if-then statements too, like well, if they wouldn't have said that, I wouldn't feel this way. If they wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't feel this way. Therefore, it's their fault that I feel this way. So I'm not going to go into all of why that's actually not a true statement, because that's not what this video is about, but it is the feelings and the sensations of the anxious preoccupied.
Debbie:
I'll have to do another video on you know why it is that we may feel it's someone else's fault and not our own, okay. The brief of that is we've been trained to believe that, okay. So, like I said, that's a whole nother video. I don't even know what I'll call it, but we have literally been trained to feel if we have an uncomfortable sensation or feeling, it's probably because someone or someone or something else did something. It's exterior to us and they created our feeling, okay.
Debbie:
So what happens a lot of times is that the anxious preoccupied may say something like if I just knew what time my guests were coming, I would feel so much better. I wish they would like to text me and let me know. Oh, that's anxiety, right, the anxious preoccupied, so I'm preoccupied on that particular thought or concept. If only they would text me, then I wouldn't feel so nervous. Okay, and that may be true, but there's ways around that. But I'm trying to describe who the anxious preoccupied shows up as and what the tendencies are. Maybe you're dating someone and you just wish that your partner would just text you, let you know you're okay, that they're okay. You know it might be your child, your partner, your parent, whoever right. If only I knew, then I'd be okay rather than having the anxiety. Another one might be. You know, if only my boss would tell me what he wants, I wouldn't feel like I'm going to be fired when he yells like that. I just feel like, oh my God, they're going to let me go, when a different attachment style would be hmm, they must be having a bad day today and not really take it on as a personal sensation.
Debbie:
Another thing that the anxious preoccupied or the AP might say like you know, if my kids would just not fight, I wouldn't feel so helpless. I just, I really just don't know what to do and it makes me a nervous wreck, right. All of these out of my control sensations are very much part of the AP or anxious preoccupied energy field. And when our world runs just right and it feels like we're in control. We feel as though this is good and I want it to stay this way. But if someone or someone else comes in and our anxiety sensations grow or, you know, get bigger, we want to take control, because anxiety does not feel good. Our bodies are well. I'll get to that in a moment.
Debbie:
Sorry, so much of this attachment style again looks outside of themselves and wishes other people would change so that we can feel better. I wish that thing wouldn't happen, because then I would feel better. I wish that person wouldn't speak that way, because I would feel better. But I want you to know that if you are uncomfortable enough and you have to get uncomfortable enough or you're not going to want to do it, but if you get uncomfortable enough, there is a way out. There are some information and skills that you learn and then you put them into practice. Learn, practice, progress, okay. Into practice. Learn, practice, progress, okay.
Debbie:
So, um so, imagine someone with a heart that's just really full of hope, full of love, and they're always seeking assurance and validation from other people. It's like they're the nurturers to a garden, a garden of relationships, and they're always watering and tending and caring for so much so the other flowers and whatever is in their garden, they forget to tend to and nourish their own roots. So this attachment style also has a tendency to want to care for other people, take care of other people, fix other people's problems, rescue other people, be a people pleaser. I don't want to rock the boat. Very, very connected to other people, but always worried that maybe I'm too much, I'm doing too much, I'm excessive, and so they might find people pushing them back, when what they really, really, really want is for people to pull them forward.
Debbie:
If this is something that you, or as it as an AP does, it is there's a way for you to be able to find within yourself the ability to not have to need them so desperately but be able to weave that so that you can have, like there's an incredible. You have this incredible capacity to love and to feel deeply, and if you are an AP, you will know what that means. It's like we feel very, very deeply, but the challenge lies in that balance between trying to get that from other people, that love from other people, but not really knowing how to give that love to myself. So I want to be a little more clear about that. When we can balance loving ourselves, we're not as dependent on the other person to give their love to us. That's an awfully big ask of other people to say well, I don't know how to love myself, so would you love me for me? Would you love me for me? And it's like they've gotta love themselves and now they've gotta love us too. So it's a really, really, really big ask.
Debbie:
We can learn how to love ourselves. There's I even have a program called Learn to Love Learn to Love Yourself and it literally teaches you how to, step by step, learn to love your own self. Have compassion for your own self, have patience with your own self. You know how to give it to everybody else. How do you give it to yourself? I had a student one time and she said I just wish that I could give to myself all the kindness, patience, understanding and compassion that I've been given to others for decades, and that really got me thinking. We aren't taught to love ourselves. We're taught to love other people and to take care of their needs. And it's so interesting because it's like literally this amazing thing called the brain is wired to look out there to give and give and give, but we're not wired to look in here and see what we need to give to ourselves, and I just find that fascinating. But it's so true.
Debbie:
Usually, as we grow up and I'm talking our homes, our schools, our communities, our organizations, our work it's always what does that other person need and that other person need? And that other person is typically an authority figure. What do they need? What do they need? What do they need? And we don't look within ourselves. So this the feeling of not being able to take care of myself, not feeling like I'm enough because I need other people, I'm dependent on other people to give things like love or understanding or patience to me we grow up feeling as if we're not enough and we have a feeling of not being deserving or worthy. And when situations like that occur and we feel off, the AP has a tendency to have more stress, like we're not already stressed out enough. If we're feeling like, oh my god, I'm not doing it right, then our anxiety, and then it it goes up and then it seems to exacerbate, so it just gets worse and worse and worse. It's. It's so crazy, okay.
Debbie:
What's interesting is our bodies are very wired to perform admirably in stressful situations. But what I'm actually referring to here, is true dangerous situations where that stress is the healthy stress I don't know if you read it anywhere. It's like the healthy stress and unhealthy stress. Most of us live with way, way, way too much unhealthy stress, so healthy stress would be. There's a dangerous situation, truly dangerous situation, where we might be hurt physically in some way.
Debbie:
Our body is designed to stop certain functions, like processing the food we ate, send all of the blood out to the extremities, so all of our muscles are filled with blood and they can work their best. They can run faster, climb a tree if need be, run away from something, fight if they need to. So you've heard of fight or flight. There's also freeze or fawn, but those two are different. But the fight or flight is when we're in motion. We're like having to take care of ourselves and if we have healthy stress, our body should work properly. In those situations, unhealthy stress is Experiencing the fight, the flight, or the, the freeze, like I don't know what to do, and it's almost like we are rigid, like we're paralyzed with fear. So fight, flight, freeze, fawn, faw, and which is like the people pleasing, I got to take care of the other person, whether they take care of me or not.
Debbie:
So there's just so many of us who are focused on because we've been taught and trained to be focused on the stress. That's too much. We're focusing on the wrong things. We have anxiety at times that were normally not warrant being in anxiety. I think I talked about like if the boss comes in the room and I may not have talked about it in this particular video, but if a boss comes in and there's a room full of employees and the boss like yells at two people like get in here now, or something, one person may be like oh my god, I'm gonna be fired, I just know it, and they're freaking out and they're having the anxious, the anxiety and the stress. And the other one Literally, you may know people like this are like what's their problem? I don't understand why they're acting like that and they don't take on the stress. They're not stressed at all. They just go in like what's up, boss? Because they're wired differently, so it could be good. One could be an unhealthy one, all right.
Debbie:
So what I decided to do today, instead of just going on and on and on about what a anxious, preoccupied person is and have all these tendencies to is. I thought that I would go ahead and put in our Facebook group and you should be able to see it. I can't see it right now online, but it should say anxious, preoccupied. It should have gone into the group about noon well noon my time, so about 18 minutes ago. There's a download. You can also look in the file section. There's a download. The first page is statements and you can answer yes or no to the 20 statements and tick them off. And then the second page is the results page. See how many times you answered yes. Whatever that number is, go to the second page, look down that page, find where your number fits and you can get a sense of at what level you are for being an anxious, preoccupied.
Debbie:
Um, you know, when I say that, I should say a tendency toward, because we really, really these are unconscious behaviors. We have that. We don't even realize we have them other than when they show up, and then we're like, oh, there it is, I have that, but we don't even think of it as something that we can change because it is so ingrained and so programmed. It's become an automatic behavior and what we want to do is begin to learn to recognize. Oh my God, I did that the other day.
Debbie:
Every time so and so calls it makes me nervous. When I go to the store or whatever the thing is, I find myself feeling that feeling again. That's called self observation. You're just observing what it is that's going on for you. But as you keep observing it and you begin to see it's happening again and again, now it's becoming part of the conscious mind. Once it's part of the conscious mind, only then can you do something about it. When it's stuck back there and subconscious and unconscious, we don't know how to get to it really. But once we can notice things or read these 20 questions and be like, oh my gosh, like I don't remember how many I had now, but out of the 20 I had like 17, 16 or 17 something. It was like a lot. Now. No, now I have learned how to identify it, how to the questions to ask myself.
Debbie:
Look at it from the conscious point of view and embrace what's happening. And when I say embrace it, I don't mean, oh, I love what's happening, I mean embrace it by not trying to push it away, not trying to stop it, not trying to make other people change, but embrace it as in hey, this is part of my life and I'm gonna embrace this, I'm gonna see what it is and I'm gonna learn how to unravel this so that the conscious mind I can make some decisions about whether I want to stay that way or do something differently. Right? So I like? I like this saying. I saw this somewhere. I added a little to it, so it's kind of become mine, but I did get it from somewhere else.
Debbie:
The saying goes something like this your stress and your anxiety are lying to you. It's a lie. You don't have to be this, you don't have to experience this for the rest of your life when you understand why you experience your life, the way that you do, what to do about it and put it into action. So it's work, yes, it's work, but you can literally dissolve and, in many cases, eliminate some unhealthy habits and that that are upsetting and confusing. I call it sofa, because it's stress, overwhelm, fear and anxiety s o f? A, and when we have this, it's like I want to help you learn how to get off the sofa and maybe even get rid of the sofa, because it absolutely 100% is possible. So that's all I'm going to talk about the anxious, preoccupied today, next week in the series I, I'm sorry.
Debbie:
Next video in the Attachment Style series, I'm going to be talking about the dismissive avoidant and in the meantime, be sure to go and download the Anxious, Preoccupied assessment. Like I said, it has the two pages with the results already there and if you need anything, have any questions, reach out to me. If you put something on Facebook, please tag me so that I make sure I see it. It'll go on. My notifications get miss sometimes, so I want to make sure that I hear and see whatever you have to offer and, as always, I'm Deb Pearson helping you become more awesome on the inside. Until next video.
