If you have experienced an anxious desire for love but at the same time, feel fearful of intimacy, and tend to sabotage your relationships, just when they are supposed to be getting good, you are going to want to read this email. Today, I want to clarify the difference between anxious attachment and disorganized attachment, and share a video on the subject.
First, its important to realize attachment styles exist on a spectrum between anxiety and avoidance. Anxiety usually manifests as a desperate need to cling to partners and obsess about being close to them, physically and emotionally, pretty much all the time.
Avoidance is when, while on some level you might enjoy closeness, you are preoccupied with the idea that love comes at the cost of personal freedom. And so, you tend to feel smothered by a partner, even if you still have positive feelings towards them, and want to put distance between you.
I want to emphasize, that BOTH tendencies are normal and healthy, when they are balanced, in a relationship. Its good to want some space to yourself, and its good to want periods of closeness and affection. But too much closeness or too much distance creates problems.
For the Spice of Lifer who struggles with disorganized attachment, they experience these two extremes AT THE SAME TIME.
Almost every anxious person is avoidant, SOMETIMES, particularly if they get involved with another anxious person...they are polarized to the other end of the same spectrum.
Same goes for someone with avoidance. They are avoidant because they are anxious about feeling too anxious in relationships! That is, often, until they meet someone more avoidant than them...then they find themselves being more clingy.
But for the Spice of Lifer, their volume is typically up to full blast, MOST OF THE TIME. Instead of only one radio blaring, they've got two different systems blowing their circuits, and both are playing entirely different songs. Thus, it sounds --and feels--like a chaos, inside.
One day, you are high on life, in love like never before, and the next, your feelings might turn off, just like that. There may not even seem to be an external trigger.
Or you may be overwhelmed by fears that you'll eventually fuck it up something awful, so might as well ruin it now, and stop anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Needless to say, its confusing for your partner, but also supremely frustrating and confusing for you too. Because wait long enough, and the feelings may start to come back with a vengeance, usually at a most inconvenient time.
(Like, when they finally decide to leave you alone, or go and start dating someone else.)
If you'd like to learn more about this, checkout this video clip I did from a Livestream Q & A, on the topic.
Join our community on Instagram.
👉 @brianamacwilliam 🌎
👉 @brianamacwilliam 🌎
👉 @brianamacwilliam 🌎
•
*********************************
Want to learn more?
WHAT ATTACHMENT STYLE ARE YOU?
Take the quiz:
========
OTHER WAYS TO CONNECT…
Instagram: @BrianaMacWilliam
Website:
0 Comments