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.

So to recap

When you get triggered- when you start to have a big emotional reaction- because of someone’s thoughts or behavior write it out

1. What happened?
2. What am I making it mean- about me, about my relationship?
3. How does that make me feel?
4. Is it true? Is it reality?

Other tools and strategies:

A thought download- write all your unfiltered thoughts down for 2-3 minutes. What happened, write it all down. Pull out one thought, how does that thought make you feel? What does it make you want to do? If you do that, what result will you get?

Ask yourself, is this thought serving me? Is this belief serving me? If not, what am I getting when I choose to believe it?

Thank you for listening. Please remember to share this podcast with your friend. If you found it useful or helpful in any way, I would truly appreciate it if you could like and rate it- this helps it get out to more women who could benefit from the information of this podcast.

I want to offer you to come and do this work with me in my one on one coaching program. If you are interested or have any questions please email me at Amberlynn@takingbackherbrain.com you can also find me on instagram @anxiousattachmentsolution I look forward to hearing from you.

To summarize- The thoughts we think often become beliefs. The thoughts we think also create our feelings. We have thoughts in our head that create our self concept and our belief of our lovability. Right now those thoughts could be telling us that we are not very lovable. So in order to stop believing that we have to create new thoughts on purpose and practice them in order to create new self beliefs, the belief you are lovable. Our brain does something called confirmation bias- where it looks for evidence to prove our thoughts true, so if you believe you are unloveable your brain will look for all the evidence to prove that you are unloveable. If you believe that you are lovable your brain will look for evidence to prove that you are loveable. That is why the questions we ask ourselves are powerful, because our brain is a problem solving machine and will offer us answers to the questions we present to it.

Homework:

Your anxious thoughts may be different from mine. So do a thought download. What are all the thoughts that come up for why you are not lovable? Write them down. What are all the thoughts about how lovable you are, write them down. What new thoughts do you want to believe? Write them down. Now pick two or three to practice this week. Each week add a new thought to your practice list.

If you want help creating lovability, or you want to learn how to do thought work come work with me, have questions email me at amberlynn@takingbackherbrain.com and set up a consultation call or dm me at TakingBackHerBrain

I realized today that my brain has been extra mean to me lately and I have been less proactive in thinking thoughts about myself on purpose to neutralize my mean brain. The volume of my negative self thoughts had been getting louder and coming more often, worse I could see myself start to believe them again. My insecurities started getting louder- and I started getting quieter- I let my brain talk to me and I stopped talking back to my brain. My brain whispered “you aren’t good enough, you won’t reach that goal, it won’t last, you’re too much, that isn’t for you, you will never get out of debt, you will never have enough money”... such scarcity, such fear… such sadness followed these thoughts.

Then I got angry with myself. I realized I felt shame and guilt and frustration for this experience- for believing my old thoughts- for allowing them to come on in again and stay for so long- I have worked so hard to develop a secure self worth, to increase my self confidence- and here it is just gone. My brain wanted to tell me that all my progress was gone, and that I was turning back into my past self.

But I wasn’t.

I can never go back to the person who didn’t know what I know now. Negative thought loops, negative self talk, and moments of regression can not take away the years of knowledge, wisdom, self compassion, self grace, and self development that I had created.

I realized the thought “It’s happening again. You haven’t made any progress”

Was a lie…

It simply means I am still a human with a brain and a brain with anxious attachment. It simply means that I need to get back to managing my mind and creating thoughts on purpose. (See past me didn’t know what I know now)

It simply meant that I had to also celebrate myself at this very moment. You see past me would have not known what to do, past self would have fallen deeper into depression and withdrawn instead of being aware of all the progress we have made and all that we now know- it would have just been consumed by these thoughts and feelings and let them take the wheel.

Instead I realized I had stopped using my thoughtwork tools, I had stopped my brain maintenance, I had gotten so busy being busy that I had stopped doing the inner intentional work to build my self concept and neutralize my mean brain.

So I just want to offer that if your brain is telling you that you have lost all your progress because some old thoughts have crept back in, or you are having more anxious attachment triggers, or anxiety is high, or depression is low, or life is life-ing, or you are just experiencing a human experience- remember that you can not go back to the person before-it is impossible- two steps backwards is not all progress lost- never is all progress lost.

So back to the basics-

If you want help getting back on track, or you want to learn how to do thought work email me at amberlynn@takingbackherbrain.com and set up a consultation call or dm me at TakingBackHerBrain

5 Steps to stop this cycle

1. You have to become an observer of your thoughts and feelings. What thoughts are you thinking, how do they make you feel?
2. You have to grow your capacity to feel the intense emotions without taking action. This looks like naming the feeling in your body, where does it sit, how does it feel, while acknowledging how uncomfortable it is to sit with these feelings.
3. You have to grow your capacity to feel the urgency to react and know that you are already safe and you can process these emotions before you react. This looks like practicing thoughts of “I am safe right now, my anxious attachment is triggered but I am safe, I feel the urgency and I do not have to do anything yet”
4. You have to learn how to feel urgency and decide to pause
5. You have to learn to give yourself compassion and love in this exact moment. This looks like acknowledging your anxious attachment has been triggered, validating your feelings because they are real for you right now in this moment and still deciding to pause and feel them. Creating safety with yourself. Letting yourself know that you are capable of feeling these overwhelming emotions and creating trust with yourself.