Read Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It for Free Online Page A
Authors: Leslie Becker-Phelps
better, complete the next exercise.
Exercise: Looking for a Safe Haven in Your Relationship
How sensitive are you to either physical or emotional separations? When your partner is doing something outside of your relationship, how do you feel about it? Are you quick to feel abandoned, rejected, or just not cared about? If so, allow yourself to experience, acknowledge, and explore your reactions (for example, feeling painfully alone or vulnerable). Remember that whatever your reactions are, they have their basis in an attachment system that was evolved to keep you safe from harm. The intensity of your feelings is your attachment system’s way of calling out, “Hey, I need help here! If you aren’t here for me, I might die!”
If you are fortunate enough not to feel particularly sensitive to separations, consider what you do feel. How much are you comforted by a sense of your partner being with you (or by a sense of being part of a couple) even when you are physically apart? Or do you
not
feel comforted even when he is around? Consider whether you feel—or try to feel—detached so that you are relatively immune from being hurt by your partner. Take time to think about situations when you and your partner have been away from each other, and explore your reactions to them.
Secure Base: Support for Exploring the World
In addition to offering a safe haven in times of trouble, attachment figures also provide children with a secure base from which they can expand their experience. This is important because people are born with an innate desire to learn about and master their environment. When children successfully get support for this, they gradually become more independent and develop a sense of autonomy, an ability to act from their own inherent interests and values—for instance, a preschooler will curiously explore an unfamiliar playroom or reach out to a kid they don’t know on the playground.
To develop a secure base, children need to feel loved for who they are and for who they are becoming. They need to learn that tensions and differences in interest with their parents can all be worked through. In this process, children also learn that they can explore and venture apart from their parents, and still rely on them for support and acceptance.
To the extent that people are fortunate enough to have a secure base in their parents, they develop high self-esteem and a strong sense of autonomy that will serve them well through life. They are more likely to pursue their interests, be persistent in their efforts, and do well at school and work. In their romantic relationships, they tend to feel connected with, and supported by, their partners as they pursue their own interests. And more generally, they tend to enjoy healthy relationships and can effectively negotiate social situations. But this isn’t the case for everyone.
If you experience at least a fair amount of attachment-related anxiety, reading these benefits of a secure base might highlight some of your intense struggles—such as a failure to explore (or even identify) your own interests and passions, and a hesitancy to express yourself with your partner. As hard as it is to feel this distress, you’re already working on it just by being aware of how you would benefit from having a secure base. Later, in parts 3 and 4 of this book, I will guide you toward ways to develop greater security within yourself and your relationships.
Balancing Autonomy and Closeness
To recap the previous few sections: Children are motivated to stay close to their parents, whom they perceive as a safe haven. And children are motivated to explore the world away from their parents, whom they perceive as a secure base. When all goes well, children learn that they can have closeness
and
autonomy.
Your struggles with attachment-related anxiety can cloud your perception of these patterns in your relationships and make it particularly frustrating to understand what’s going wrong. To
Exercise: Looking for a Safe Haven in Your Relationship
How sensitive are you to either physical or emotional separations? When your partner is doing something outside of your relationship, how do you feel about it? Are you quick to feel abandoned, rejected, or just not cared about? If so, allow yourself to experience, acknowledge, and explore your reactions (for example, feeling painfully alone or vulnerable). Remember that whatever your reactions are, they have their basis in an attachment system that was evolved to keep you safe from harm. The intensity of your feelings is your attachment system’s way of calling out, “Hey, I need help here! If you aren’t here for me, I might die!”
If you are fortunate enough not to feel particularly sensitive to separations, consider what you do feel. How much are you comforted by a sense of your partner being with you (or by a sense of being part of a couple) even when you are physically apart? Or do you
not
feel comforted even when he is around? Consider whether you feel—or try to feel—detached so that you are relatively immune from being hurt by your partner. Take time to think about situations when you and your partner have been away from each other, and explore your reactions to them.
Secure Base: Support for Exploring the World
In addition to offering a safe haven in times of trouble, attachment figures also provide children with a secure base from which they can expand their experience. This is important because people are born with an innate desire to learn about and master their environment. When children successfully get support for this, they gradually become more independent and develop a sense of autonomy, an ability to act from their own inherent interests and values—for instance, a preschooler will curiously explore an unfamiliar playroom or reach out to a kid they don’t know on the playground.
To develop a secure base, children need to feel loved for who they are and for who they are becoming. They need to learn that tensions and differences in interest with their parents can all be worked through. In this process, children also learn that they can explore and venture apart from their parents, and still rely on them for support and acceptance.
To the extent that people are fortunate enough to have a secure base in their parents, they develop high self-esteem and a strong sense of autonomy that will serve them well through life. They are more likely to pursue their interests, be persistent in their efforts, and do well at school and work. In their romantic relationships, they tend to feel connected with, and supported by, their partners as they pursue their own interests. And more generally, they tend to enjoy healthy relationships and can effectively negotiate social situations. But this isn’t the case for everyone.
If you experience at least a fair amount of attachment-related anxiety, reading these benefits of a secure base might highlight some of your intense struggles—such as a failure to explore (or even identify) your own interests and passions, and a hesitancy to express yourself with your partner. As hard as it is to feel this distress, you’re already working on it just by being aware of how you would benefit from having a secure base. Later, in parts 3 and 4 of this book, I will guide you toward ways to develop greater security within yourself and your relationships.
Balancing Autonomy and Closeness
To recap the previous few sections: Children are motivated to stay close to their parents, whom they perceive as a safe haven. And children are motivated to explore the world away from their parents, whom they perceive as a secure base. When all goes well, children learn that they can have closeness
and
autonomy.
Your struggles with attachment-related anxiety can cloud your perception of these patterns in your relationships and make it particularly frustrating to understand what’s going wrong. To
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