3 Lessons When Moving Out of Insecure Attachment and Into Secure Love

What Happens When We Reprogram Our Chaos-Driven Minds

Attachment styles are protective mechanisms, forged by the brain’s of our earliest selves as a way to keep us feeling pain and ensure our needs are met. Even before we can so much as string a sentence together, our brain’s can sense rejection. We sense it in the way our caregivers may reject our needs, devalue our expression, and how society moulds us into the norms it see’s fit.

Be it the avoidant who is told their emotions are too much, and that they should be hidden; the anxious-attached who believes their attachment to someone else defines who they are; or the disorganised individual who is told to deeply fear love whilst also wishing to have it close.

However our patterning looks, all of it has one thing in common.

The loss of our authenticity, and the fear of expression.

The avoidant masks their authenticity through a wall of ambivalence. If they don’t show their emotions, then they need not risk being hurt, or having their feelings rejected. For the anxious-attached, fears of authentic expression often leads to shape-shifting and people-pleasing as a means to secure love. Rare do they lead with themselves, as that would risk losing the thing they cling to the most. The disorganised remains confused by their place in love. Should they fear it, or hold it close? And in what way does their identity fit with it?

Having made progress in healing my own attachment style, one thing has rang true upon securing healthy relationship. They’re difficult, and they’re far from easy. In fact, I’ve learned my attachment style has acted as a mask, keeping me distracted with anxiety whilst I hid my true-self from the people I loved. The real work begins when we let our guards down and welcome love in, for then someone needs to see us for who we are.

And that can be uncomfortable on so many levels.

Which is why I wanted to talk about this today. What happens when we begin to work through our attachment styles, and step towards real intimacy? What happens when we begin to show the real us, and how does that experience in love look like?

Here are a few things to consider.

1. You Recognise How Terrifying Intimacy Truly Is

As I spoke to above, one thing that attachment styles do very well is shield others from viewing our true-selves. Whether we have walls 10-feet high around our emotional body; whether we’ve shape-shifted into the person who likes ALL the things they do, or whether we’re caught in a hot and cold dynamic, all of these “games of love” keep others from seeing the real us.

And that’s okay. There’s a reason for that. Maybe it wasn’t okay for you to show up as the “real you” once upon a time and this adaptive strategy kept you safe in the face of potential rejections or pain.

However, there comes a point on the journey to healthy relationships where the guard has to come down. I remember listening to a podcast where the host defined intimacy as into-me-you-see, which is a great play on word to describe what intimacy really is. Others HAVE to see you — the real you for them to love you, and for a healthy relationship to bloom. Otherwise needs will never be met, resentment will grow, and things will stagnant permanently or eventually wither.

But showing who you really are is all well and good until you actually have to do it. Fear is tied to any unknown, let alone when we have faced trauma in our pasts. Stepping into love requires a huge amount of courage. To face one’s past pain in the current moment, and let someone else love you. It can be terrifying, and will require you to champion your own authenticity, in the face of potential rejections.

Which moves me onto point 2.

2. You Learn Rejection Can’t Be Predicted, Nor Controlled, and Must Be Felt

Attachment styles are ultimately adaptations to get our needs met in childhood which later become maladaptive. For example, if you have an avoidant attachment style, it’s likely you had to be suppress your emotions to gain acceptance when you were younger. This was necessary, under circumstances where we you were financially, emotionally, or even physically — when very young — dependent on your caregiver’s support. Rejection is painful, and it risks survival, so we adapt.

But there is no embracing love without embracing the fact that you may be rejected. Be it after 1 date, 5 dates or 5 years together, there is always the chance that rejection may come.

And that’s a part of life, unfortunately. We can’t control how others view us, and what may transpire down the line. All we can do is take the necessary actions to minimise these occurrences — like choosing people who can actually meet our needs and aren’t a walking red flag from day 1.

When we struggle to acknowledge the reality that we may be rejected, we risk shape-shifting and people-pleasing into how we think others want us to be, in order to ultimately be accepted. But again, you can shape shift all you want and that may still not guarantee acceptance.

As some form of emotional rejection is at the root of all insecure attachment styles, relinquishing the hold of these patterns means getting comfortable with the potential for rejection. There is always risk, and arguably the harder you love the more courageous you have to be with it.

3. You Recognise That Love is Not Chaos, As Previously Thought

In managing my own disorganised attachment style, I’ve thankfully got to a point where I am able to express my wants/needs, and choose people based on their compatibility to not only meet them, but also display the characteristics that increase the likelihood of a secure connection i.e, compatibility, communication, chemistry, empathy…

But if there’s one thing that’s clear in these healthy dynamics, is that love is not the heightened, anxious mess that I once thought it to be. I use to think that if someone didn’t light my insides on fire with excitement/anxiety that that must mean that person wasn’t for me. But that was just me playing into my an age-old pattern of insecure attachment.

When we’re consistently experiencing hot and cold dynamics, lowering our boundaries, allowing others to mistreat us, fighting stonewalling, and begging for validation, love will appear like a rollercoaster — because it is. Our fight/flight response goes crazy.

But in secure relationships; where you can express yourself freely and be met with true understanding and open communication, your body begins to calm. In this, you will notice that love is in fact much quieter, more subtle, and less compulsive that previously thought.

This can be triggering for many, as it has been for myself. We’re required in these dynamics to reprogram what we’ve previously believed to be love. We may even doubt if we’re IN love because of the absence of such emotional high’s and low’s.

It’s in these moments that we re-train a brain that has been conditioned for unhealthy love.

Thank you for reading this article. My name is Joe and I’ve been writing about personal growth for over 3 years. If you enjoyed this article then leave a few claps and follow Above The Middle for frequent updates. Let me know your thoughts below, also.