On today's podcast I am going to be introducing a three week series on breaking down the 4 obstacles of Anxious Attachment. In these episodes I am going to talk about the 4 major obstacles I have noticed that people with anxious attachment have and how to overcome them using thoughtwork and learning how to develop the skill of feeling hard emotions.

As I really reflect on my life with anxious attachment I see these 4 obstacles over and over again. They are what keep coming up,they are why I am so thankful for the tools I have learned to manage my mind and be aware of my thoughts. They are what I need to know how to process and manage because if I don’t they can make little problems in relationships into big problems.

The first obstacle that occurs often when my anxious attachment is activated is overthinking of anxious filled thoughts, obsessive thoughts, that are most often are negative creating a lot of uncomfortable emotions. The second obstacle is the inability to feel the uncomfortable feelings these thoughts produce, such as fear of rejection or abandonment, overwhelm, and stress. Bringing me to the third obstacle our deep fear of abandonment, the fear that someone is going to leave, or reject us. Our fear of not being loveable and being left, is such a deep fear for people with anxious attachment that when we feel these emotions we don’t feel safe, our brain tells us that we are not emotionally safe and have to take action now to ensure that we stay safe. This inability to feel intense uncomfortable emotions often creates an urgency to hurry up and react to a situation. Which leads us to the final obstacle, the need for external validation, the need for other’s approval or praise to feel good enough, to feel loved, to feel secure, to feel seen or valued.

So to recap, the 4 main obstacles people with anxious attachment encounter are overthinking, inability to feel uncomfortable emotions without taking action, fear of abandonment, and seeking external validation.

This is why it is so important for us with anxious attachment to know what our brain is telling us, why self awareness isn’t optional it is imperative. We have to be aware of what our brain is telling us because these thoughts will run or ruin our relationships if they cause all these emotions undetected.

Lack of self awareness is not a luxury we are entitled to.

If we do not know what our anxious attachment cycle looks like. If we do not know that it is our thoughts that are creating these intense emotions and fears. If we are not aware of our thoughts- we will think it is the triggering event that is causing the problem. We will think our partner is the problem. We will put blame in the wrong place and we will not problem solve for the effective solution.

If I was not aware of my anxious attachment cycle, if I was not aware that my thoughts create my feelings, If I was not aware of all of my anxious thoughts if I was not able to know the difference between what thoughts are true and what thoughts my brain just likes to tell me when these events happen. I would have blamed my feelings on my partner communicating her feelings. I would have made this misunderstanding about her not understanding me, and either made her reaction to what happened the problem or made me the problem by in agreeing with all the mean thoughts my brain is telling me.

To put it simply- when we don’t understand our anxious attachment cycle, when we are not aware of our thoughts- we make problems bigger than they are- we place blame where it doesn’t belong and we justify or get defensive instead of getting curious.

People ask me Amber what is life coaching? I think of it as mental and emotional maintenance, where you learn mental and emotional tools and strategies to transform your life. its learning and unlearning thought patterns that are keeping you stuck, so that you can get unstuck and get the life that you want. It’s learning how to feel and process uncomfortable emotions so that your emotions don’t control you but you control them.

People ask me what do you get from life coaching? Why should I pay money and join your program? I tell them they should only join my program if they are ready to do the work, only if they are ready for their life to change from the inside out, only if they want to do the work to get emotional and mental freedom.

I share my personal experience, I tell them learning life coaching skills and concepts, being coached and really understanding my brain patterns and the emotions they caused changed my life, saved my life- and it can do the same for them. The value of life coaching to me as someone with anxious attachment, anxiety, and depression is higher quality of life - mentally and emotionally.

The value is being able to live in a body that can grow its capacity to feel hard emotions without being reactive or demanding. The value of life coaching is learning that even though my brain tells me one thing, doesn’t make it true.

The value of life coaching is learning to choose your life, choosing how you want to show up in it, learning what that looks like in real time. Learning about the brain, self regulation, understanding my emotional reaction, being aware of inner thoughts and dialogue that are creating your current life.

Amber you don’t understand I am so busy. Aren’t we all? For me it is worth making the time in my busy schedule to be coached, to listen to podcasts and to join coaching programs. The time I spend in those spaces reduces the time spent in mental and emotional overwhelm and stress.

The skills that I have learned have helped me manage all of the things that life throws at you, while already dealing with so much internally: anxiety, depression, low self esteem. To me, learning the ability to manage my thoughts in the moment so that I can turn the turmoil into peace, turn the chaos into understanding, is worth the time and the financial investment.

I come from a family where mental health challenges are frequent and can become severe and truly impact the quality of life so I wanted to make sure that I took care of my mental health. I wanted to do the work to heal, to understand why I do the things I do, why emotions are so hard, why I never felt good enough, why after all I have done and did I still couldn’t just love myself- and I found life coaching and it was the mental and emotional freedom train I was looking for. Doing the hard and good work changed my life and I know it can change yours too.

What if you are busy AND you can make time for something that will change your life? What if you are busy AND one hour of your life a week can truly change it?

What if it does cost money AND the money spent is an investment into your future self who is able to handle her emotions, who is able to stop her over thinking, who is able to truly believe she is lovable?

Who would you be if you were able to process your emotions? Stop your overthinking? Stop people pleasing? And truly believe you are worthy?

During these situations - I believed my feelings were true, If I have this feeling it must be true, it must mean I have to reach out- I must have to connect with them- I must really really love them. I really won’t be able to live without them. The hard part about “trusting our gut or our feelings” as anxiously attached people- is that we have to clarify is this my gut, my intuition or is this fear because of my anxious attachment?

You see our anxious attachment can be triggered or activated in situations where we think something is going wrong, where we think people are going to reject us or abandon us or not like us- and especially during breakups. And definitely a breakup because it is our brain's biggest fear coming true - someone is actually rejecting us and leaving us.

Here is the tricky part- we don’t always hear our brain going to this worst case scenario sometimes they are just covered up by thoughts like: “ they don’t like me” “I am not good enough” “ See I knew I was too much” I am too needy” - however these thoughts all lead to our biggest fear thoughts: They won’t stay, they are going to leave. They don’t love me-

When I am working with women who experience this primal panic- this urgency to do something now- they tell me I want to just not reach out, I want to not feel crazy when I don’t reach out-

So what I hear them saying is they feel crazy when their emotions are high, and their brain is consumed with anxious thoughts that make them want to reach out. They don’t want to reach out in a “needy” way.

Before I teach you these concepts I want you to keep in mind as I teach these concepts separately they are simultaneously happening at once. So much is happening at one time inside of our body when we feel this intense urge to do something- half why we feel crazy is because so much input into our brain and nervous system at one time.

I will do my best to break it down- but know when our anxious attachment is triggered we have a lot of things happening at once:

So I teach them a few concepts:

1. I teach them about this intense feeling called Primal Panic and where it comes from.
2. I teach them that all feelings are true but the thoughts creating them are not always true.
3. I teach them about their thought cycle- and how the thoughts they are thinking right now, are creating more fear on top of their primal panic
4. I teach them about the Urge Cycle and how our brain is seeking immediate relief.