However, I think, as a sort of psychological, therapeutic modality, this book is not very helpful. It’s sort of bastardized internal family systems model that doesn’t resonate with any of the readings I’ve done there beyond just kind of holding space for your inner child. I think there’s a sort of mindfulness component of recognizing feelings and processing through them, but it’s just overly complicated and couched in this sort of need to be unique. Parts of this felt overly infantilizing. Generally, I thought that “actionable” parts of the book we’re pretty obtuse. The points about healing are disconnected. I did not find a through put on it other than to just deal with stuff as it comes up. Daniel J. Siegel, MD, executive director, Mindsight Institute; clinical professor, UCLA School of Medicine; New York Times bestselling author of IntraConnected, Aware, and Mind, and coauthor, Parenting from the Inside Out

Do you wonder if there is something about you that pushes them away? Maybe it’s that you love to spend time with them and get nervous when they want time away. You can’t help but feel jealous when your partner is talking to someone else. You try to not say anything because you know it’s going to make them mad, but you just can’t hold it in any longer! Then, when you share how you’re feeling, they shut down and you don’t know what to do. They might have even called you needy or clingy. My friend, this is all your anxious attachment.Transforming your attachment style is difficult and takes a lot of effort at first. But over time, it will get easier, and you will reap the benefits of having healthier relationships.

You can ask them how they manage their anxiety and difficult emotions and how they communicate problems to their significant others. Develop Self-Awareness If you have an anxious attachment style, you probably spend much of your time ruminating about other people, especially your romantic partners and close friends.Anxiously attached children become more sensitive to others so they can feel connected as much as possible. Being hyperaware of the feelings of our parents was a part of the way we adapted to their inconsistency. It makes perfect sense that when we attach to new people as adults, we respond in the ways we learned as children. Being able to gauge the emotional state of our spouse or partner becomes a way to protect against abandonment. While becoming self-full does not mean closing down our capacity for sensitivity or empathy, it is about learning to take care of and listen to our needs also, so we are able to give from a place of wholeness." The first step in transforming these beliefs into more helpful ones is self-awareness. That means becoming conscious of the maladaptive beliefs you may hold about yourself and others, as well as identifying your emotional triggers. When caregivers are unpredictable or anxious, children constantly monitor their closeness and behavior, preventing them from feeling safe to explore the world.

When anxiously attached people experience an emotional trigger, they are faced with an intense fear of abandonment that stems from traumatic or unstable childhood experiences. To avoid this feeling (and actual abandonment), they often go to extreme measures. Examples of hyperactivating strategies include: Through early life experiences, we have come to believe that we are being overly demanding if we have needs of our own. When we expressed these reasonable wishes, this was often met with what felt like disapproval or rejection by those closest to us, and so we came to understand, in the deepest way, that we will be met with more of the same if we express our needs to a partner. This means that as adults, we do our best to put our partners’ needs first, while ignoring our own. Because our needs were not allowed, our wounded Little Me believes that we are not inherently worthy of love, and so it must be earned by overextending ourselves in our relationships. We have come to believe that acts of selflessness must be what make us a “good person.” After all, nobody wants to be seen as selfish. But remember, there’s a big difference between being selfish and becoming self-full. At its core, selflessness stems from a deeply felt sense of inner abandonment.They may believe that the responsibility lies with their partner/friend/family member, and that if these individuals were more caring, supportive, and loving, they would not experience this kind of anxiety.