Taking Back Her Brain From Preoccupied Attachment Style (Anxious Attachment Part 2)

Taking back her brain from Insecure Attachment Part 2

Hey there and thank you for joining me today for Taking back her brain from Insecure Attachment. This podcast was inspired by the book Insecure in Love by Lesile Becker-Phelps. If you don’t have it you should definitely get it. I recommend reading Insecure in Love and doing the exercises if you want to have a deeper understanding of your own attachment style, as some people have attributes of more than one attachment style. On last week's podcast I introduced words to know about Insecure attachment, how it affects our brain and what these behaviors look like. Today I am going to be talking about what Preoccupied Attachment Style is and what it looks like.

Well if you are like me and the other 40% of the population who experiences insecure attachment here are the three different types: Preoccupied Attachment, Dismissing Attachment, and Fearful attachment

Preoccupied Attachment- This attachment style is when you find yourself desperate for love, those of us with preoccupied attachment look for our worthiness outside of us, and we are only worthy when we are being loved or in a relationship. We look to our partners to show us or reassure us that we are worthy of love. We may have surface self love, but we have inner beliefs that we are not worthy of love, and that once someone really knows us they will leave. Unfortunately these inner beliefs mess up our reality, as our brain looks for evidence that these subconscious beliefs are true. These underlying beliefs mess with our interpretation of a partner's affection or attention.

One of the challenging aspects of Preoccupied Attachment is that we are so desperate for love and affection but once we receive it we don’t know what to do with it because it doesn’t fit our self concept- or our self- perception: that no one could ever truly love us. Once someone truly loves us, they will leave. (this is what our brain is constantly scanning for, evidence to prove this belief true)

I am going to pause here and share strategies if you notice that this is you:

Our first step in developing a less preoccupied attachment style is to discover all these beliefs we have around us and around our lovability. Then we work to develop a new self concept around our worthiness and our lovability, however we can't do this until we practice noticing what thoughts our brain is offering to us, and what evidence we are constantly looking for:

Are you constantly looking for evidence that your partner is losing interest? That your partner is rejecting you? That your partner is going to leave? That your partner doesn’t really love you ? Write down all of your thoughts about you and your ability to find love or be loved.

Journal Topics:

What if I told you right now that you are inherently worthy. You can not action your way to being loved. Self Love and Love from others is all an inner belief, and is created by our own thoughts that we have about ourselves and we have about our partners. So what thoughts do you want to believe about you, your lovability, and worthiness? How are you worthy of love? How can you start to develop a self love concept?