Self-Protection, Mistrust & the Anxious/Avoidant Dance
Love emerges between two people as they get to know each other.
The way you light a candle.
The way you show your love.
The way you share your appreciation.
Your playfulness.
Your quirks and your vulnerabilities.
Your fears and your dreams.
In the dating phase of a connection, we allow more and more of these aspects of ourselves to show.
If we feel safe in ourselves - meaning if we have Secure Attachment - then we will feel safe enough to be vulnerable in these ways.
We will be present and open with the person in front of us.
We will constructively work with our fears, instead of react or project from them.
We have an inner sense that “I will be okay” even IF the other person ultimately rejects us.
Sure, there will be disappointment, but there’s a comforting sense that it’s not the end of the world.
We have decided we want to get to know this person better, and it’s worth the risk. The only way for them to also get to know us, is to let them see who we are.
We feel confident they will like what they see.
We feel confident to show up without excessive self-protection, nor the need to play it cool.
This is what happens when we have experienced Secure Attachment.
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The story is very different if we never got to experience Secure Attachment.
When a person develops Insecure Attachment (Anxious Attachment, Avoidant Attachment & Disorganized Attachment),
They often don’t feel secure enough to show their full self.
They never got to experience the security of knowing that who they are is deeply valuable.
They never got to experience the security of knowing that it’s safe to be vulnerable.
What this can mean is that instead of leading with openness and appreciation,
The person will instead lead with self-protection and fear.
They will lead with mistrust or anxiety.
They will lead with interview-style questions, instead of presence and openness.
This is understandable:
It feels vulnerable to truly open to love when you may be rejected.
This is even more so if love has not been a consistent, safe, reliable thing in our lives.
***
Yet here’s the thing…
When we wait until a future event in order to show up in our fullness (such as the commitment stage of a relationship) - we block love from emerging in the here and now.
Emotionally healthy, Securely Attached people are looking for partners who are like themselves: Open, authentic, and generous in their love.
When we prevent others from seeing, knowing and feeling the depths of our heart, we prevent them from being able to see us and love us in our wholeness.
A Securely Attached person chooses to be with another person because they can feel that person fully, and can see a future with them.
An Insecurely Attached person chooses to be with another person because they can’t really feel them fully, and it’s triggering their wounds.
That’s why Insecurely Attached people often pick each other: The common Anxious / Avoidant pairing.
***
So what’s the solution to this pattern?
Everyone is capable of becoming Securely Attached.
However, the most common ways of going about this don’t work.
Some therapeutic & personal development techniques address some of this, but usually it’s only scratching the surface.
People often find that they have improved after 5 or 10 years of self-development, but are still strongly entrenched inside their dominant attachment patterning.
Despite the improvements, they keep experiencing similar kinds of relationship issues - just in different forms and variations.
This is a sign that something new is needed.
To heal, an Insecurely Attached person needs to experience all the things that they missed out on so that they can develop the Security that they never had the chance to develop.
There is a powerful new process that I use that takes people through the 5 core experiences needed to become Securely Attached.
It’s the only process that has been demonstrated to help people become Secure within a relatively short period of time.
I won’t go into the details here, but I will say that when guiding people through this process, it’s truly moving and magical to witness the transformation in people’s relationship to themselves and to others.
When we don’t get what we need as children, we often try to get our adult partners to fill the missing pieces.
We will plead, insist, or blame others until we do this healing work.
Don’t wait until these wounds repeat another cycle.
Don’t wait until another round of pain, frustration and disconnect to take action.
I’ve seen the tragic outcomes time and time again when people put off this work.
When we were children, we didn’t have the power to change our circumstances. As adults, we have the agency to make new choices to create a new reality in our lives.
- Serdar Hararovich
