Hello and Welcome to Anxious Attachment Solution! On today's podcast I am going to be continuing a series on breaking down the 4 obstacles of Anxious Attachment with obstacle number 3, the Fear of Abandonment

In the last episode, episode 40, I taught Obstacle 2 Uncomfortable Emotions. I taught about why learning how to feel hard emotions is the key to soothing our anxious attachment triggers, and how having a small capacity to feel uncomfortable emotions leads us to such BIG reactions when our feelings feel out of control or overwhelming. So if you didn’t get a chance to hear it go check it out.

If you missed Episode 39, Obstacle 1: Overthinking, then you definitely need to go back and listen to that one too, because I help you understand what overthinking looks like with anxious attachment and how to stop it.

Today I am going to be talking about Obstacle number 3 of Anxious Attachment: The deep rooted fear of Abandonment. I am going to be talking about how this fear is created and why understanding how this fear works will change your life.

Before we begin I do a lot of brain management work with the concept that my thoughts create my feelings, so as I share these teachings remember that this concept is the lens through which I teach.

If you want to learn more about how you can overcome these four obstacles of anxious attachment sign up for a free one hour consultation call with me. If you have been following me for a while now and you are ready to get started with my 1:1 coaching program so that we can help you rewrite your narrative and develop your skill to feel uncomfortable emotions without overreacting then email me at Amberlynn@takingbackherbrain.com and let’s get started, I can’t wait to see how much this work will change your life.

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Thank you so much for listening to my podcast and I want you to know your future self is thanking you for taking the time in your busy life to do this work because they know how important it is for your future and for your relationships in your life.

If you haven’t already, follow me on instagram at anxiousattachmentsolution! Can’t wait to see you over there. Now go feel uncomfortable emotions and message me on IG and tell me about your experience doing this work. I would love to support you through this process while creating a community of women who are doing this work.

Hello and Welcome! On today's podcast I am going to be continuing a series on breaking down the 4 obstacles of Anxious Attachment: Overthinking, Feeling Uncomfortable Emotions, Fear of Abandonment and Seeking Validation Last episode 39 was about overthinking so if you didn’t get a chance to hear it go check it out.

Today I want to talk about Uncomfortable emotions and why they trigger us with anxious attachment so much and how understanding the impact of uncomfortable emotions will help you take care of your anxious attachment and soothe your nervous system.

When I use the term uncomfortable emotions: I refer to rejection, fear of not being liked, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, disappointment, any feeling that you can not sit with, without taking action or without shutting down. I also use uncomfortable emotions to refer to the feeling of urgency- that we feel when we are consumed by a lot of negative emotions- urgency is often felt when our anxious attachment is triggered and we feel the primal panic of we have to hurry and do something now.

For example most of us right now are not able to sit with the feeling of urgency and do nothing, most of us can not stand to feel any form of rejection without trying to do something to “prove our worth” or seek out validation or connection, most of us can not just process and sit with anxiety, we either take action to feel better or we shut down and shut people out.

Processing your emotions allows you to experience different situations without so much fear, anxiety, it allows you to slow down and stop being so reactive. Learning how to feel and handle hard emotions allows you to comfort yourself and stop needing to reach out to others for comfort, validation or approval.

Since we do not have the skill to sit with these uncomfortable feelings because they activate our anxious attachment cycle- and sometimes activate our primal panic we feel that we have to hurry up and do something now because our brain has told us that we are in danger and it feels like we are going to die (even though we know we won’t die our brain is receiving all of these alerts like hey hey we are in danger do something now) so we have gotten into the habit of hurry up through emotions and taking actions without sitting with emotions and seeing where they are coming from.

We feel anxiety, we feel panic, we feel fear and our brain is like Oh Shit… get us out of here right now! (Literally freaks the f out) So we reach out to our partner,our ex, our friend, our coworker, we seek validation, we seek connection, or instead we shut down and close people off because we think that by doing this we will protect ourselves from further pain.

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.