Insecure: Unpacking Attachment Styles
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Relationship coach and expert Amanda Blair Hopkins is on the podcast this week for the second time ever! She is a previous guest on episode 36: How to Pursue Wholeness Before Pursuing a Relationship. She is a relationship coach for Lacy Phillips’s To Be Magnetic (who is a TRC Podcast guest as well: episode 46: How to be 100% in Your Worth.
It’s in the first few years of our lives that we learn how to relate and attach to the people we love. We learn patterns and behaviors that become so familiar to us they can be hard to identify. There are multiple different “attachment” styles in relationships. Do you know which one you are? Amanda unpacks what the four main attachment styles, and we both share personal stories as examples of our own.
We also compromise in real time about the matching tattoo we’re going to get!
What Are Attachment Styles?
John Bowlby, author of Attachment and Loss, found the way you attach to your parents/caregivers in childhood is the way you attach to your romantic partners later in life.
Essentially, your attachment style is built on what you learned love is.
Changing your attachment style is possible, but it takes hard work and consistency.
“Realizing what your attachment style is offers you a lot of freedom. It gives you a way to remember that at your core you are whole. You are love. You are divine. That idea that you could be broken is false.”
Don’t let your type become an excuse not to grow.
Breaking Down The 4 Attachment Styles:
1. Anxious (Insecure)
When you were a baby through 14 years old, it was the way your parents attuned to you. They weren’t always meeting your needs, so you learned that love is unstable and untrustworthy.
If you’re anxious, work through this exercise here.
2. Avoidant (Insecure)
The parent wasn’t getting their own needs met, so they didn’t meet their kid’s needs. The kid shuts down to their needs so they shut down their emotions to avoid rejection. They keep love at arm’s length to avoid being engulfed by it.
Ex: They’ll say they’re very independent because they learned early on to shut down their needs. In relationships, they’ll have walls up, fail to be vulnerable, and they may come on super strong in the beginning and then as soon as it gets real, they pull away.
3. Anxious/Avoidant (Insecure)
A combination of Anxious and Avoidant.
4. Secure
Parents were attuned to the child, so their needs were met and there was a trust there. Then, in adulthood, they trust that people mean what they say and that they will do right by them.
The Healing Journey
“It is progress, not perfect. You have to look for the progress because that is what will help you along this path.”
We talk about how sometimes you have to really run into the fire to learn your lesson, instead of going through a bunch of minor lessons that never really stick. Running into the fire could be an important part of your healing process.
6 Practical Ways To Become Secure
Read Attached and do more research on attachment theory.
Take inventory of your last five relationships: what happened, how you felt, what you feel you did, what you feel they did. Notice any patterns and moments when your attachment style activated in those relationships.
Walk through this process with a coach (Amanda takes one on one clients!)
If you’re anxious, start speaking up, communicating your needs, understanding your boundaries, and holding your boundaries.
If you’re avoidant, get out there, get seen, be vulnerable with friends or online.
Support all of this work with the energetic work Amanda teaches with To Be Magnetic.
Feeling Stuck?
Work with someone along the process—we were never meant to go through life alone. We all need guidance.
“If you have hit a wall, get someone to help you climb over it or see that there’s no wall there, or climb underneath it or walk over it. That help will get you so much further, because you could stare at that wall for three years.”
A virtual ACA 12 Step rooms (Adult Children of Alcoholics) is a great place to start if finances prevent you from investing in the process. It is for anyone who experienced dysfunctional family relationships.
What happens when you get triggered into old behavior?
Awareness
Self Care
Practice Calming Techniques i.e. EFT tapping, breathwork, meditation, + anxiety relief exercises.
8 Resources to step into more Secure Attachment Styles
You can find Amanda on IG at @xoamandablair and her blog AmandaBlair.org.
To schedule a coaching session, go to tobemagnetic.com and book her through the one on one menu page. She is not a Christian, but I trust her to coach me because she honors that part of me.
Listen to Amanda’s first episode of The Refined Collective here.
Listen to Lacy Phillips’s episode of The Refined Collective here.
Buy the book Attached here.
Interested in learning more about EFT Tapping? Listen to Jackie Viramontez’s episode of the podcast here and check out her Etched Daily resources here.
For a Christian perspective on attachment, check out How We Love here.
Check out our resources for anxiety and meditation for beginners.
Did you know we have a Patreon page? Patreon is a platform that lets listeners financially support their favorite podcasts for as little as $5/mo. (That’s cheaper than a cup of NYC coffee y’all!) Head over to Patreon.com/therefinedcollective to see how you can support the podcast (and get some pretty awesome goodies as a thank you)! Another way you can support the podcast is by sharing with friends! Just copy this link and then paste into the group chat with your besties: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-refined-collective-podcast/id1348034641#episodeGuid=30c48f6a66bb4bfca88b0f6522037407
Single ladies— do you feel stuck, lonely, discouraged or frustrated by your dating life, or lack thereof? This is brought to you by my free guide called “6 Tips to Activate Your Dating Life with Intention and Clarity.” These resources propelled me from sitting on the couch to out on a date. Head over to Bit.ly/trwdating to check it out!
XO,
Kat