The 4 Obstacles of Anxious Attachment: Overthinking

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.