Today we're gonna be talking about how to deal with and how to end anxious attachment.

Now this is a man's guide to and it's going to be approaching this from a very male-centric point of view.

But if you are a woman listening to this or watching this, there is going to be a lot of this that applies to you.

If you haven't seen my other parts of this series, I have done a man's guide to ending codependency which is about an hour long.

I do a deep dive into it and I've done a man's guide to ending avoidant attachment.

I will be doing others in this series so stay tuned.

Make sure you hit the notification to subscribe on whatever platform you are tuning in to me on so that you get notified of these videos.

And let me know, message me, hit me up whether it's on Instagram or you can email me through the website and let me know if there are other versions of these a man's guide that you would like me to dive into.

I will be covering a ton of psychological topics.

So with all that said, let's dive in to a man's guide to ending anxious attachment.

Now, where do we begin?

I want to begin with the sort of core essence of anxious attachment.

What is actually at the core of this attachment style?

And at the very center of it is a very simple notion.

And that notion or belief or that physical experience that people have who have anxious attachment is I'm not okay unless you're okay.

Or I need you to be okay in order for me to feel okay.

So there's this dependency that has emerged for the anxious person that says I need to make sure I'm constantly hypervigilant on you, how you're feeling, what you're thinking, what you're doing, how you're relating to me, and how you're doing will predicate and dictate how I'm doing.

Now, as we are going to talk about, as you're going to discover, this essence, this core of anxious attachment is developed early on in life.

And there's a lot of different factors that can into a person's development of anxious attachment.

But at the very essence of it, what I want you to take is that for the anxious person, their needs, their wants, their desires, their sense of safety even are always secondary to someone else's.

They've been trained in childhood.

They've gone through experiences that have led them to believe that my desires, needs, and wants are secondary to yours.

And the only way for me to get mine met are to make sure that you're getting yours met.

So there's this very hypervigilant external focus that can happen.

Again, their sense of safety, their well-being, their sense of worth and value can also be externally dependent.

And again, like I said, this is a very much a learned behavior.

And it's usually something that is sometimes witnessed in parents.

So that person may have seen this behavior played out in a parent.

They maybe were raised to do so, like a child having to parent their parent in some way.

So constantly having to caretake one of their parents in order to make sure that their safety as a child or their needs as a child could be met, but it was always on the other side of caretaking a parent.

And it could have come from a bunch of other things that we're going to talk about in a moment.

But the main point here is that you were probably, if you are an anxious person, or if you have a partner who is an anxious person, because this video is going to be very helpful if you are with an anxious person.

If you were or if you are an anxious attachment, the point is that you were a child who was probably put in impossible situations in some points.

Impossible for you to solve a problem between your parents, and it caused you an immense amount of anxiety, right?

Maybe there was volatility or, you know, they were constantly arguing and you couldn't de-escalate them.

Or it was impossible for you to fix a financial situation that your parent was going through.

Or is it possible for you to get it right, right?

You constantly felt like you were walking on eggshells because no matter what you did, you didn't know if you're going to yell that or if you're going to get approval.

And it was very unclear as to what would result in you being okay.

Or maybe it was impossible for you to save one of your parents or one of your siblings.

Maybe you grew up with a sibling who had an addiction.

Or maybe you had a parent who was struggling with addiction.

And so that anxiety was you constantly trying to figure out how do I get them to be okay?

How do I save them?

How do I solve something?

But again, behind the anxious person is this impossible situation of I have to give you something.

I have to do something for you.

I have to solve something or figure something out for you to make sure that you're okay before I can be okay.

And that's at the very core of it.

And when I say okay, it can mean a number of things.

It can be safety, security.

It can be okay in the sense of worth or value.

It can be okay in the sense of, you know, worthy of being loved, worthy of being happy, okay to be happy.

All of those different pieces.

So the anxious person is constantly sort of like laying in wait, right?

Their whole physical system is spun up saying I have to make sure that everything's okay outside of me so that I can get my needs met.

And I want you to remember one thing because this is going to be very, very helpful as we talk about moving towards secure attachment.

And it's the simple idea that secure people seek support, whereas anxious people seek validation.

Secure people seek support, whereas anxious people seek validation.

So the anxious person, whereas the avoidant pulls away and isolates, the anxious person is hyper externalized, hyper externalized.

So the avoidant person is more internalized.

They're more recluse.

They're more aloof.

There's a less likelihood you're going to know what's going on with them or what's happening inside of them.

The anxious person has a hyper vigilance to the external world.

They have been, I use the word trained, you know, but they have been conditioned is another life circumstances that a lot of their sense of being okay in the world requires them to have a very real hyper vigilance, right?

What are you thinking?

What are you doing?

Are you okay?

Are we okay?

And if you and we are okay, then maybe I can be okay.

And so there's this constant focus.

And this can be very frustrating for the partner, right?

If you're with somebody who has a very high level of anxiety or anxiousness or their attachment, their sense of okay and belonging within the relationship is very externally focused and they're constantly asking you, what's wrong?

Are you okay?

How are you feeling right now?

They're text bombing you, they're love bombing you, all those types of pieces.

That can be very frustrating.

And so again, coming back to this one notion, secure people seek support while anxious people seek validation.

They want validation.

They need validation from outside of themselves that everything is okay, that they're safe, that they belong, that they are loved, that they're okay.

All of that, all of those different pieces.

So let's move into talking about the causes of anxious attachment.

What actually develops anxious attachment?

Because again, knowing what causes it, being able to identify it within yourself or within your partner and having that conversation with them, not that it's your responsibility, right?

This is something that you should probably get into with a therapist or a well-trained coach or a psychologist.

But understanding the causality of it will give you an indication of what needs to be healed in your life and will probably give you a very clear insight into how it's showing up in your present day relationship or past relationship.

So I'm going to give you the causes, but I'm also going to give you examples of what that would look like in your present day relationship.

So let's just start at the very beginning.

One of the primary causes of an anxious attachment are inconsistent parental responses.

Okay?

Inconsistent parental responses.

This is when caregivers are inconsistent with meeting their child's needs, with responding to the child's emotions or what they're asking for, sometimes being unattentive when a child is needing nurturing or care.

It might be that, you know, the parent is constantly distracted and unable to give that child attention.

And so the child's constantly trying to get attention, right?

They might be acting out, they might be asking for food, they might, you know, be needing something from a parent and it's very few and far between.

And the child isn't able, and this is the really big piece that's important, the child is not able to figure out what is going to get attention from the parent.

So that's inconsistent parental responsiveness.

Because for secure attachment to build between a child and a parent, there has to be some level of consistency.

There has to be some level of, because kids, you know, they're trying to figure the world out.

And you were once a child trying to figure the world out.

And your sense of safety and belonging, again, was dependent on your parent.

And so as a child, you went through a period, a phase of life where you tried to figure out, how do I get my needs met from mom and dad?

How do I get my needs met from my caretaker, right?

Whether you were adopted or in a foster care system, whatever that looked like, whether you were raised by grandparents, etc.

You went through a period where you tried to figure out, how do I get my needs met from my caretaker?

And if your parents or your caretakers were inconsistent in responding to your needs and responding to your desires, then, you know, again, it could be you asking to play, it could be you to read a book or whatever it is.

If they're very inconsistent and you aren't able to figure out a consistent method of getting attention, of getting your needs met, what will happen is, within a child, they'll start to code that as something's wrong with me.

There's something wrong with me and I can't figure out how to get your attention.

And later on in life, you know, this one's a very clear through line, later on in life, this will show up in relationships where you will be very anxious, you're not certain as to whether or not you're going to get the attention, whether or not your needs are going to be prioritized.

And so, for example, your mother and father may have had pretty wild mood swings.

This can be a really good example, where they're loving and joyful in one moment and then, like, the next moment they're, you know, they're abusive and yelling.

And they may have been caring and attentive on a regular basis, but then they might have also been completely disengaged and cold.

And for you as a kid, it was very unclear as to which one you were going to get, right?

You weren't sure if I act in this way, am I going to get joyful caregiver, am I going to get joyful dad, joyful mom, or am I going to get hostile, cold, shut down, yelling parent?

And it almost didn't seem to matter which one you operated from, right?

Whether you were acting out or whether you were acting in line, whether you were misbehaving or you were behaving, it didn't seem to matter.

And so, it was very confusing because you could never get a consistent result from that parent.

And so, an example of what this might look like in your modern day relationship is that you might constantly seek reassurance or validation from your partner if you're the anxious person, or if you're the partner, you're constantly feeling like your partner is asking you for validation, fearing that your partner's feelings or that their level of commitment, closeness, connection can change at the drop of a hat, can just change in a dime.

And this is mirroring the unpredictability that you experienced in childhood, right?

So, for a lot of anxious attachments, this is a very primary driver of what creates that anxiety, right?

It's this massive level of unpredictability.

So, if you are an anxious attached person, I'd love for you to just write down the question, how was my upbringing unpredictable?

Or where were my parents unpredictable?

Where were my caregivers unpredictable as parents?

And that might be unpredictable with their emotions, unpredictable in when they would shut down, unpredictable in when they would punish you, unpredictable with their moods, but start to examine what role, and this is a really good way of putting the question for you to journal on, what role did unpredictability play in my childhood?

And that's going to start to inform you as to how that anxiety started to form in the first place.

This is talking about like the roots of your anxious attachment.

So, start to dig in that question because the likelihood that it's showing up in your current day relationship, or if you're single in your previous relationship, is very, very high.

And it might look like you over texting.

It might look like you over sharing.

It might look like you constantly checking in to make sure that what you think your partner is feeling or thinking is right.

That's a very big one for a lot of anxious attachments, not just this one.

But there's this need for the anxious attached person, the anxious person, to constantly verify, are you thinking what I think you're thinking?

Are you feeling what I think you're feeling?

Because if I can get that right, then maybe there's a chance that I'm okay, that I'm safe, that my needs are being met or can be met.

And so, there's this external validation or verification that is constantly going on within the anxious attached person.

And you need, in order to uproot that, you need to start to identify where did that actually begin?

Where as a child did you actually need to constantly verify where your parent was at?

Where your caregiver was at?

And where were you trying to overcome uncertainty as a child?

So, that's number one.

Number two is overly intrusive or overbearing caretakers.

Now, this is another interesting one because there are caregivers who are very intrusive or overly involved in a child's life.

I think modern day commentary calls it like helicopter parenting, right?

Where they are swooping in at every drop of a hat, right?

And they're constantly worried about whether or not a child is going to get hurt.

And these caregivers often do not allow the child to develop a sense of agency, sovereignty, or independence.

And there's this dependency that's created between the child and the caregiver.

You may have had a parent who is constantly checking in on you.

You may have had a parent who didn't let you take any risks whatsoever.

They were constantly worried like, oh, don't touch that.

Oh, don't do that.