A few weeks ago in therapy, I was complaining about my anxious attachment to my therapist and she said something that blew my mind…like journaling five pages in 20 minutes right after blew my mind. She said the insecurity of the relationship isn’t on me, it’s on the relationship.
I started learning about attachment styles after my first relationship ended when I was 22 and just starting to see a therapist. I immediately recognized myself as insecure anxious and projected insecure avoidance onto my ex. And on we moved.
When my third and most serious relationship ended, my new therapist and I found ourselves talking about attachment again. It came up in my psych classes. It came up when I worked in residential. It came up every time I started dating someone new and every time they disappeared on me, or didn’t.
In the last few months I think I’ve been experiencing a low-grade anxious attachment attack (this is a term I made up for it, it’s not clinical as far as I’m aware). It came from just being so alone all of the time. The combination of starting a job from home and rainy Portland winter and pandemic. Oh and everyone else also going through their own versions of dealing with coming on a year of pandemic stressors.
And so, when I found myself feeling crazy for not hearing back from a boy, I reverted. I reverted to young me who thought everything was my fault because if it was my fault then maybe I could fix it. If it was my fault then it was in my control. I wished and eventually said in therapy that I could just be more secure in myself and then I wouldn’t go crazy every time someone disappeared no matter if we had been dating for a month or friends for many.
And my therapist said–you are acting this way because your relationship feels insecure, not because you have insecurities.
Of course she said this in like the last five minutes of our session that week because I’d spent the first 50 minutes avoiding anything to do with this because I felt ashamed and embarrassed that it was all happening again.
And so, now I have come to understand attachment an eensy bit differently. And I’m still working on fully wrapping around what this all means but here goes a draft of it:
As someone who didn’t have a secure attachment with a primary care taker growing up, relationships need a bit more to feel secure to me and can fall into insecurity more easily if consistency isn’t present. My response to a relationship’s feeling insecure is anxiety–worrying that I’ve done something wrong, worrying that I’ve said something to push the person away, worrying that they’re never coming back.
And then, in response to that insecurity, I grab at everything. I described it in last week’s session as falling off a cliff and desperately grabbing at anything to try to get a hold of solid ground. Desperately being the key word here. In real life this looks like me trying to control people into staying, into talking, into missing me (lol I can’t control people into that). My therapist told me to sit with the desperation. This all thankfully happened 10 minutes into the session–I was over my own avoidance tactics. It’s easier to sit with the desperation when someone else is there. Even via video chat.
When I am at my best, love really flows freely. It sounds cheesy to say, but I can feel it. I love everything and everyone no matter how there they are for me because people are amazing and flawed and beautiful and so deserving of love. When I am at my worst, I try to suck all the love that I can towards myself. But that’s not love. And so it never does much aside from exhaust me and possibly hurt the people around me. So it never does much good.
I think I knew all of this already. A few years ago. I think I learned all of this and then promptly forgot it when I managed to build secure friendships all around me. Friendships are so much easier than romantic relationships for me. And even secure ones don’t feel secure 365 days a year.
But then this pandemic started. And then it kept going. And suddenly I was alone all the time and that part of me that felt abandoned as a child came up screaming. And I had forgotten what to do with her. With me. It had been so long since she screamed this loudly. Not since that break up. That one where I thought I was gonna marry him. I think he thought that too.
Life is weird. We learn lessons only to promptly forget them when the situation changes. I wonder what other lessons I’ve forgotten and when I will relearn them. I know that each learning is a little different. A little easier. A little more nuanced. I know there is purpose in that. And if not, I know it’s inevitable to learn, and forget, and relearn.
I have learned about attachment stuff three or four or five times now and each time I understand it a little differently. And then I wonder if learning and knowing it will change anything. Who knows really.
By the way, I played cards with her. With me. With the screaming child last week. When my therapist told me to close my eyes and try to hear what she wanted, that’s what came up. I played solitaire on my bed with a teddy bear I’ve had since I was born and a picture of 3-or-4 year old me looking over my game. It felt silly, but I think it’s what she wanted, cause I felt better after.
I think all I want is someone who will sit with me when I’m having an anxious attachment attack. And maybe play cards with me. We wouldn’t need to talk or anything. Just being there would be enough.
tmd 