Love Better & Life Better

“Why You Give Everything and Still Don’t Feel Loved: Anxiously Attached

• Shazmeen Bank • Season 1 • Episode 17

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I SEE YOU. 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re giving everything in a relationship and still feeling like it’s not enough… this episode is for you.

Anxious attachment isn’t just about “needing too much.” It’s about core wounds that were formed long before your first heartbreak — and today, we’re going straight to the heart of it.

In this episode, I unpack the emotional and psychological experience of anxious attachment in a way you may have never heard before. We’ll go deep into three rarely-discussed core wounds:

🌙 The fear that if you’re not chosen, you disappear.
 🕯️ The belief that your worth depends on how others feel about you.
 🫀 And the panic that closeness won’t last — so you have to hold on tighter, even when it hurts.

I’ll also walk you through how these wounds shape who you become in relationships: the fixer, the self-silencer, the chameleon, and the one who overfunctions just to be seen.

If you’ve ever spiraled after a text, lost yourself in someone else’s world, or felt like love is something you have to earn — I want you to know: I see you. And this episode is your mirror.

You’ll leave with more than just awareness. I’ll guide you through a healing shift called secure self-attunement — a practice to begin coming back home to yourself, regulating your reactions, and choosing love from a place of worth instead of fear.

This episode is tender, honest, and real — and it might just change the way you understand your heart.

💌 For more healing tools:
 💬 Follow me on Instagram: @shazmeenbank
 🎧 Follow me on TiTok:@shazmeen_bank

You don’t have to chase love to be worthy of it.


 You are allowed to stay fully you — and still be deeply held! Its about time. 

Support the show

Please subscribe and help me reach more people that need guidance in their relationships.

Shazmeen Bank (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of Love Better. I am so excited to have you join me on this episode where we talk about anxious attachment and we feel proud about who we are as somebody that's anxiously attached and some of the traits that show up in our lives, which stem from the core wounds, which are just subconscious beliefs that have been set within us from childhood.

And our attachment style is never, ever fixed. It's understanding, especially you that's anxiously attached listening to this. know you're a self-help junkie. I know you strive for self-growth. I know you are somebody that voraciously reads or you're addicted to the podcasts and the YouTubes and wanting to just constantly shift your life by two degrees. And if that is what

constitutes of you being anxiously attached. think it's freaking phenomenal. I think it's amazing that you have a personality that is so hungry to want to grow and improve yourself by two degrees every single day. And the best part of you being anxiously attached is the fact that not only do you keep that information for yourself, you're somebody that wants to learn all of this and then you want to take it out there into the world.

and teach the people that you love. And I know if you are anxiously attached, one of the topics you are probably an absolute guru in is your partner's attachment style. And we will tackle that in the other episodes. But this episode is completely dedicated to who you are as somebody that's anxiously attached. The beautiful traits that you

the devotion that you have. And then also being able to see that you do hurt and you do feel extremely lonely. And you do feel that sometimes this anxious attachment is something you want to run away from because you've never really had somebody in your life see you the way that you see your partner, you see your friends, you see your parents and you see your siblings.

You've never had somebody pause and give you the depths of love the way you give it to other people, especially in your intimate relationships. So if you are somebody that is looking forward to just sitting back right now, grabbing a cup of tea and enjoying this episode, because I promise you at the end of this episode, you will either be wiping tears,

or feeling like you've come back home into your heart. And I will end this particular episode with a beautiful, small meditation to just bring you back into your heart and connect with your soul. So make sure you stay for the entire episode and get that delicious treat at the end of it. Now, the one thing I want to say about you being anxiously attached is

I actually feel you have some beautiful superpowers that a lot of the times we look at as traits that are negative or these are things you need to instantly work on. I actually think you have a couple of them that when moved from an intimate relationship and focused into your own private life, career studies, whatever it is that you're doing at whatever age it is that you're listening to this episode.

I actually feel it accelerates you. And one of those first traits I want to bring up is hypervigilance because you are somebody that notices every single thing around you. notice your partner's moods. You notice when they're off, you notice how they walk. You notice how they sit across you. You can feel the tension in the room. You...

as result of that are constantly living in survival and on eggshells because you are always looking for a way to keep the situation beautiful, at peace, or you're either in so much deep conflict with the pain that you feel about something going on in your life right now and you want to share that and you're hyper vigilant to, is my partner able to listen to it today? Is this the right time to bring it up?

Is this the moment that I'm going to ruin the weekend or ruin the day? Do I keep quiet? But I can't keep quiet. And that's the conflict I feel inside because I know that in a relationship, I should be able to voice what I want and I deserve the kind of love that I give out, but I'm terrified to voice it. And so you are extremely hyper vigilant, not only about your partner. If you pose to think about it right now.

Think about a time you've ever gone to a family setting or you've sat in a meeting or you've been around friends and you notice when somebody feels bad or you noticed when something was said the wrong way or you noticed when somebody pulled back or you actually noticed the person that doesn't take part in certain gatherings and you're the person that fills in a gap or will lean over to go make friends with somebody to not leave them feeling left out.

That hypervigilance is normally your nervous system constantly on alert and in survival mode, looking for when something could go wrong. And I want you to actually be able to turn that into a beautiful superpower because you can use that in the boardroom. You can use that in a classroom. You can use that in different

places in your life to get an edge up because not only are you hyper vigilant to what's going on you have the beautiful sensitivity and compassion and awareness of who you are and of your environment and the people in that environment and I feel that is one of the most incredible things that can actually take you and lift you up in life, but

If you are watching this episode, then you can see the massive smile on my face right now because in order, beautiful, anxious one, for you to excel at work, school, your career, your creativity, it requires you to be at peace with the relationship that you're in. And the relationship you need to be at peace in is the one within yourself. And you constantly feel.

that you can only ever be at peace inside of you if your intimate relationship is at peace, if it's finally where you want it to be, if it's finally loving you the way you want it to love you. And one of the ways that we start to embody loving ourselves as someone that's anxiously attached is really being able to step into the light to see

What kind of a beautifully amazing devoted partner you are. Because you're someone right now that's in a relationship and you are probably giving off yourself so much. So much to the detriment of the fact that you've let go of a career or if you are in a career, you cannot focus in it and excel if that relationship is not doing well or you both have a fight or there's conflict.

And I've seen this with people that are studying as well. When you are really focused on an exam or some of your work that needs to be done and you end up having a fight with the pest and that you're in a relationship with, or they ghost you and won't text you back, you now cannot focus. You can't sleep. You can't eat. All you're thinking about is what you did wrong, what could go wrong. Did you say something that made

things go wrong and you know that you have the ability to pull out all those texts and read all the messages or look at the last time you spoke to them and go through your phone log and think about how much you used to talk and how much you're not talking now and then jump onto their social media and notice that we talked at 148 and 58 seconds and

They've not called me and it's 420. And on social media, I can see they went out, they were with friends, they're living life. And we had a massive fight. And now I'm the person sitting here who cannot study, who cannot focus at work. I'm feeling down and lost. I actually just want to go back home and get into bed. I don't want to meet the friends after work anymore. I don't want to meet the friends.

after university anymore because all I can focus on is how sad I feel and the only person I want to connect with in this moment is my partner. And you don't realize that your beautiful devotion to your partner is also what brings you down and pulls you away from really being able to focus on yourself and being able to say that

I can love someone so deeply and so beautifully, but what would also happen if I started to love myself so deeply and so beautifully? Because one of the most beautiful things about you as someone that's anxiously attached is number one, you have the ability to anticipate your partner's needs in a way that they never thought was possible. You really see their heart.

heart and their soul, even when your friends and family are telling you, this person is not right for you. And you feel you guys don't understand. You cannot see the depths of the soul of this person. And that's because as someone that's anxiously attached, you beautifully see what's always right in people. Your empathy, your grace, your kindness is so profound.

that if being anxiously attached means you are such a gorgeous human being, then I want to high five you right now for being anxiously attached because those traits are untouchable. Your ability to see a partner, love a partner, be devoted to a partner, your loyalty to a partner, your ability to anticipate their needs, your ability to not only be such a devoted partner.

You have this amazing quality where you're devoted mother or father, boyfriend or girlfriend, brother or sister, daughter or son. You're devoted in the workforce and you have this compassion where even in the work area, it's not all about you. You want to lift people around you up. You see the people around you that struggle. You have such a soft, delicate heart.

You see the people that feel sad. You see the people that feel left out. You see the people that feel lonely. And you see all of that because that resides inside of you. And you in your life hope that the way I love people out there, if somebody could just love me the same way, then I would just feel like I finally belong and I finally been seen and

All this self abandonment that I don't even know that I do for myself is worth it because your primary focus in life when you are in a relationship is to have someone love you, nurture you, desire you, want you, put you first, adore you, want to spend all their time with you, the way that you give off in a relationship.

And I know that there are so many podcast episodes that would list a lot of the things you need to work on. A lot of the things you shouldn't do as someone that's anxiously attached. But I really wanted to do an episode that just had people go, ⁓ you know what? It's beautiful to be me. And it's so beautiful to take all these traits as someone that's anxiously attached and then grow.

into being more secure. And the reason you want to grow into being secure is so that you don't change the foundation of who you are. You don't grow to be someone that's secure. And when you're securely attached, you become cold and you're manipulative and you no longer want to be in a relationship. You take all this deliciousness, all these beautiful traits of being somebody that's anxiously attached and the secure

The part of you now just doesn't have fear. The secure part of you has more of a voice. The secure part of you has boundaries that don't terrify you anymore. And the secure part of you has this amazing ability when you really heal to be able to say, if the chairs at my table need to get less, then I'm fine to make my table smaller because I only want people in my life now that will love me and see me

and value me in the same way that I see love nurture and value them. I am never in my life going to chase love if it means that I will lose the core of who I am. If it means it pulls me away from being able to grow in my own life as well. And so coming back to somebody that's anxiously attached, your beautiful traits of

loyalty, your beautiful traits of this ability to want to really be there for a partner is really profound. I would only say that a lot of the times before you got into a relationship that was intimate, you were really someone that was so fascinated with life. You were

fascinated with what you could achieve. You have all these beautiful big dreams. You have this side of you that is so creative. You have a side of you that wanted to strive. But a lot of the times when you're anxiously attached and you get into a relationship, not only do you need a constant level of reassurance and you're always worried about being rejected, you're always worrying about

letting somebody down, you're always worried that what if I'm too much? I've been told when I was growing up that I'm needy, I'm too sensitive, I'm someone that should just stop crying, I'm someone that should be more independent. And so you really grew up sometimes feeling like you were a lot. You were the kind of friend that if you were friends with someone, you called them a lot. You shared your secrets with them.

You wanted them to share the same level of secrets back with you. You were someone that probably when you were a teenager, possibly really fantasized about love. You definitely were the person that believed in Disney's happy endings. You were definitely someone that lived with all this unbelievable inspiration in your life. And you...

had this fantasy about the person you wanted to be in a relationship with. And it all stemmed from feeling lonely. It stemmed from an inconsistency of love from your parents. And obviously your parents loved you in the best way they could with the knowledge of the times they had and the way they were loved or not loved by their parents. They've loved you with their own attachment, trauma.

And so when you're anxiously attached, if you're ever listening to this wondering, Shazmin, how did this begin? It just began with two parents that deeply loved you, but were probably busy in their lives. And so loved you one minute. And then when you wanted love in the same way again, were unable to consistently hit that level of a standard of love for you. And so in order for you

to feel loved and feel secure, you would either have this little protest behavior as a child and your nervous system was so confused. You were wondering why, what do I need to do to just have love consistently given to me? And sometimes I don't have to do anything as a child and I get seen and praised and loved and adored. And then other times when I really needed that kind of love and...

My nervous system needed that kind of soothing. My parent wasn't there to give it to me. And when you're really young as a child, obviously like your brain doesn't have a reference or a way to be able to make sense of behavior that says, my parent had to go to work. My parent is busy having to do something like cooking and taking care of the other children or a sick grandparent in the house. And so

You viewed that as I'm not enough. You took that as rejection. You felt that in your core as deep abandonment. You took that in your core as I am not worthy of being seen. And so the pattern of the giver, the pattern of the doer, the pattern of the savior, the pattern of the rescuer, the pattern of the fixer.

the pattern of the therapist, the pattern of the patcher began. And a lot of the times, anxiously attached people growing up were probably the child that was also very much a therapist to a parent or a parent relied very heavily on that child to be seen and to be loved.

And so the child, which is you, learned that in order to get love, I have to do something. It's not like the secure child who had big emotions and had a parent that really sat there and told them to self-regulate. As somebody that's anxiously attached, when you had big feelings, you were confused about

How do I make this okay? What do I do with these big feelings? If I brought them to a parent, they didn't sit down and teach me how to work through them. So you never learned how to self-regulate. That's how you learned to be codependent. That's possibly how you learned that you can only co-regulate. And that is why you need a lot of reassurance. And

You need a lot of reassurance from external people. You need a lot of validation because even if you do something and you're always getting praised for doing it, you feel that until a lot of people tell me that I'm worthy and what I do is great and you feel it and have to hear it number of times, that's when it sinks in. And even then, not really.

And that's why a lot of the times when you get into a relationship with someone, you need a lot of reassurance. And a lot of people will think, you need reassurance in how many times you have to hear, love you. And you need a lot of reassurance with someone texting you, but you just need a lot of reassurance with presence. You look for reassurance in how your partner shows up for you. You look for reassurance in the eye contact.

with your partner. You look for reassurance in love making or the physical intimacy or having sex with your partner. You're constantly looking for reassurance in moments with your partner where you're trying to get really deep levels of connection and you're only ever trying to get those deep levels of connection because you're probably with a partner that disassociates more and distances more and that

comes from attracting a parent again. You're an adult with an inner child that now is trying to put the words to the inconsistent love you received as a child, but you're still terrified in an adult relationship because you're showing up into that relationship with your inner child present.

You're showing up into your relationships as someone that wants to be picked up and held and nurtured and hugged. And so on my YouTube channel, I'm going to be putting up some separate meditations on inner child healing, just so you can use this podcast to grow and use all the resources that I put out there from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to be able to really find yourself again.

Now, coming back to what I was saying. So when you're in a relationship, could you almost pause to think about the fact that I'm an adult in this relationship and my partner's an adult, but we're actually two inner children trying to get each other's attention, but we're actually screaming for the love we did not receive from a parent or the love that we craved the most.

from a parent. And so we show up and start doing things in that relationship to be able to say, if I behave this way, if I push the boundary this way, if this happens to me in this relationship, will you walk away? Will you leave me? Will you not give me love like my parent did not? Even though your parent did the best that they could.

but you are screaming at your partner trying to make them apparent so you can complete these deep wounds inside of you. So somebody that's anxiously attached will normally always find a partner that you feel you have to work very hard for that kind of a love.

And I think one of the things you deeply feel so lonely and unseen about is the fact that you just cannot understand why can love not be so simple? It can when you're with someone that's securely attached. But then again, when you're anxiously attached and you're extremely anxiously attached and you've not ever been on the journey of healing,

Being with somebody that's secure can end up being very boring because secure is calm. And you didn't grow up in an environment that was calm. You grew up in an environment where there was a lot of tension. That's why you were extremely hypervigilant. You grew up in an environment that you didn't really get seen a lot, but you were seeing everything else that was going on. You were seeing

a parent not being loved. You saw a divorce. You saw a parent crying in private. You noticed the tension. You could see a parent struggling to be a parent and show up for you. And so even in those environments, as someone that's anxiously attached, you must have felt, I don't want to be too much because I can see that I have a parent that's going through a lot.

And I don't want to be the child that takes from them or wants more from them. And you probably had a parent that was just so exhausted emotionally. They didn't know how to just fill you to the beautiful level you need to be full. Because I want you to understand something as you listen to this episode. You are not too much. You are not too needy. You are a beautiful gallon.

that deserves to be filled with love to the brim, the way that you give and fill others with love to the brim. My deepest concern for you is I want you to just see how deserving you are of the kind of love you give other people. I want you to receive the love you give others from yourself.

I want you to receive the love that you give others to yourself. You are always there. You're always anticipating. You are always being perfect. And I want you to know that it's okay sometimes to honestly be exhausted and not be exhausted in private and not have any shame or guilt that you feel burnt out.

And a lot of the times anxiously attached people are so fixated on trying to make their dynamic and their intimate relationship work. And you feel the gap, you feel the loneliness in that relationship, but you're so fixated, you're on this hamster wheel to get that relationship to the place you want it to be. A place that you experienced in the romance phase of a relationship.

You want the relationship to go back there so that you could just breathe again.

And that can be really exhausting. And I want you to know that I see you. I see you because I have been you. I've been the person that understands that perfection can be so exhausting. Perfection's to the point where you don't have the energy to come down and socialize sometimes or

when you're thrust in having to socialize after a massive argument or you trying to be so perfect for your partner so everyone can have this amazing day because you feel that you want more out of that day. You want more closeness and then you have this internal conflict inside of you of like, why do I want more? Why can't I settle? What's wrong with me? Every time I go ask my partner for more, they're always like, I'm not enough for you.

And then you end up feeling guilty, like, my God, I'm making my partner feel like they're not enough. And then questioning that is what I want enough. Am I asking for too much? And then there's this massive disconnection in the relationship. And you probably have a partner that pulls away and needs to breathe. And you need to just connect because you're terrified of being abandoned. You feel that conflict.

and disconnection means they will leave you and you physically feel it in your body. You physically feel that your partner pulling away, not wanting to talk to you or needing space means that you are not worthy, means you are rejected, means you don't know what to do in this isolation. It means that if you're not working on the relationship and you're not showing up for this relationship, you don't know who you are.

because you've forgotten you're the person that dreams and has hopes and has a vision for their own future and is deserving of a beautiful life separate to the one of your relationship. And that doesn't mean if you go out and have your own world and you go out and live your own life and you do go and study and want to have a career that you will be a terrible mother or father and you will be a terrible husband or wife.

That's part of the healing that we will get from this podcast. So part of the exhaustion I was talking about is the fact that now when you have to socialize, you almost feel so introverted because you know you have to go down and put a mask on and carry that relationship that you know is not perfect and all the cracks that show because your partner is fine to be in a bad mood in front of people.

is fine to disconnect with you in front of people and you feel, can't let anyone see that. I can't let anyone see that we're not okay as a couple. I can't let anybody see that we're not perfect. So you go and carry this perfection and you could have had this massive argument with your partner, but now in front of people, you want everything to be okay. You don't want people to notice that you two are not connected, especially because if you've confided in some of those people,

They've already told you that they don't feel this partner is the person for you. And so that has probably also led you to feeling even more lonely because you feel that you would talk to people because you're someone that needs external hope, external handholding in tough times. You've never learned how to self-regulate. You externally...

need people in your life and then you feel like I've told all these people everything my partner does and I internally also know that the relationship I'm in and what I'm tolerating is really not worth it. My partner doesn't want to grow. They actually just want me to stop wanting more, stop being needy, stop being so insecure, stop being jealous, stop being possessive.

You know, they make you feel like you're controlling, you're manipulative, which yes, as anxious people can happen and you're only doing that because you don't want the relationship to fall apart. So fully understand all of that. But you don't want to confide in people anymore, which now means you end up isolating yourself. And when your friends or the people you meet say, how is everything? You have this big smile. Everything's amazing. We're fine.

my God, they did this amazing thing for me the other day. And then your friends are invested. They are like, you are so lucky. And now you feel even more alienated, even more isolated because now you think this relationship is bringing me down and I don't have people I can actually talk to. I don't have people I can confide in anymore because everyone thinks my partner is absolutely amazing. So learning to be comfortable.

with disconnection is one of the most beautiful things I can teach you because you equate disconnection to death. You equate disconnection to this physical pain in your body. And so it means even if you go chase connection negatively, you go chase connection with a fight or you pick a fight because you're just, both of you are now not talking.

You don't know how to be around them. They're comfortable with the distance. You don't want to spend the rest of the day like this because that means then you cannot work, you cannot focus, you cannot create, you cannot study. And they can go out, they can have their life, they can do what they have to do. And so you'll pick a fight. And this is why for anxiously attached people, a secure person is boring. Cause you mistake calm for... ⁓

they might not love me. You're always used to needing a certain level of disconnection as connection because when you go chase connection with the partner that you have right now, you think that that's connection. You're settling for what you previously had prior to the fight you just had because if you're with someone who's very punishing and very...

in a place of, I'm going to teach you not to have these fights with me. And if you have these fights with me, I'm not getting out of this mood fast enough. And I'm going to show you that these are not the things we should discuss. So now what you do as someone that's anxiously attached is you end up saying, okay, you know what? I'm so sorry. You apologize for things you shouldn't be apologizing for. You're no longer focused on what you brought to the table to have a healthy discussion about the relationship. It erupted into a fight.

Your partners made you feel like you're most ungrateful person in the world. You are now blaming yourself for being so needy and wanting too much. They are telling you that no matter what I give you in this relationship, it's never enough. You end up thinking, what the hell is wrong with me? I have a great partner. They work so hard. They give me a lifestyle. They take care of me. Why do I want more? And a lot of the times, you know what you want more of?

You want more of this deep, delicious connection you actually give them. They are thriving in life right now because they are so lucky to have you as a partner. They have you watch them, pick up after them, emotionally nurture them. You can see their downfalls. You advise them. You anticipate what could go wrong in their business life. You're there as an advisor.

I mean, if you took a step back and actually thought about the amount of times you have advised your partner from a business angle, you might not be thinking you're this incredible business person, but you probably are. You should probably charge in consultancy fees for you, intuition. That's what my son tells me. You should be able to show up because you are so connected to your partner in your body that you have disconnected.

from yourself, self-abandoned yourself, neglected nurturing yourself, because you've taken all these beautiful traits within you and you pump them in one direction. And that is with your friends, with the parent, with your intimate lover. And then when you lay down in bed at night, you're empty, exhausted, lonely, crying.

depleted, depressed. And guess what? You realize I have to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. But I'm going to do it with all the zeal because if I love my partner and I show up for them and I give them and I show them they can never do without me, no one can love them the way that I do. I can be sick and I'll be there for you. You can fight with me and I'll clean the house for you. You can fight with me and I'll still be the most perfect partner for you.

You can fight with me and I'll still show up for you. I will never let you down. I will never abandon you. And you wake up with so much energy to redo all that love again, all in hope that you could get a fraction of that love back. And when you get less than a fraction of that love back, because nobody ever told you, you are worth more, you are deserving more, the standards, God damn it, you have inside of you that you give as somebody else.

You should be on a pedestal being able to say, I'm not accepting less than the same love I give somebody else. I want a lot of reassurance. I absolutely worry about being rejected in my life. I'm terrified about abandonment. I don't know how to self soothe myself. I'm always seeking externally for that kind of reassurance. I come across jealous. I come across possessive. These are some of the traits that I do have.

I feel like I'm not good enough for my partner. We could be in a social event and I end up seeing how my partner's interacting with someone of the same sex and I'm thinking, do you want to be with them? Why are you talking to them like that? You never talk to me like that. Or if you've experienced betrayal with a partner and you forgive them and taken them back, very much I can assure you if you're anxiously attached, you never got to the root cause.

of that betrayal because you're also someone that was so forgiving, so willing to work on that relationship because you're terrified of this disconnection and losing them because you feel, if I lose this partner, I'll never find somebody else because they've also told me that I'll never find someone they can put up with all of what they put up inside of me because they've made you feel like you're too much and that's how you also grew up. And so you're terrified and

You put up with the betrayal and a lot of the times they probably betray you again and again. And you're just the sort of person that thinks, we'll work on it. Look, look how much I love you. I've stayed with you after you've cheated on me. Who would do that? Me. I'm the person that you should be putting on a pedestal and worshiping almost for the rest of your life. You know, we don't do that. We worship God, but you know what I mean? You should be worshiping me.

because nobody else will tolerate your crap. You turn around and say, tolerate me, but when you find your voice is an anxious person and those fights and all of that comes out and the truth comes out and you get to say what you get to say only in protest behavior, then your partner somewhere inside is terrified and gets scared because they know it's the truth. They know nobody could love them with the traits, the mistakes, the trauma, the way they show up.

in the relationship. They know that you fill the gap so much. They know that you're the glue. They know that you bring the zeal to that relationship. They know you do all the research on how to make anxious and avoidance work and how should I grow as an anxious person? How do I become less as an anxious person? How do I become less clingy? How do I become less jealous? How do I less possessive? How do I become more cool? You're always trying to metamorphosize yourself. You are the chameleon in that relationship.

You are the chameleon because you forget who you are. You forget to stay the colors that are true to yourself, have the hobbies you want for yourself, love the music that you love for yourself. You will do anything and everything. You lose yourself, especially in the beginning of a relationship, in order to be seen and loved. You lose the part of you that shows up and should...

really be authentic. You lose that part of yourself because you feel, I want this other person to see no one could love them like I do. I love the food they eat. I love the music they listen to. I meet them when they want. I'm sad and depressed when they don't want to meet me. I cannot tolerate when they don't text me back or want to text me back as much as I want to text them back. I want to sit on the phone with them all the time. They don't want to sit on the phone with me all the time. I

go through periods where I read all those messages and think, my God, I should have never said that. Are they not talking to me because I said that? Have they pulled away because I didn't say that? You are trying to shape shift yourself and you have been shape shifting yourself for such a long time to either be in the relationship you're in, to get closer to the person you're in a relationship that you're currently in with.

And I think I just want to say I see you. I see you for the love you give. And I also see this deep loneliness that you have inside. I really see you for this remarkable person, this self-giving human being, this unconditional, you're the epitome of the word.

unconditional, not only as a parent, not only as a daughter or son. You're really unconditional in your relationship. And the only reason you're constantly having conflict with your partner is because you do have a standard. It's because you know you deserve more. It's because you know

You want someone to love you the way you love back and it's not a fantasy. You shouldn't ever have to settle for someone who cannot have emotional conversations with you. You should not have to settle with someone that doesn't have the capacity to mend their betrayals with you. You should never settle for someone that screams at you, abuses you. Don't settle for the person that has a mistress.

or a mister and makes you feel guilty about it because you did X, Y, and Z. I know a client that I had whose partner cheated on her. She's allowed me to share this story and her partner had cheated on her and cheated on her because she was very sick and very ill.

and took her on a guilt trip that if you had not been sick and you had not been ill, look at the level of anxious attachment. If you had not been sick and you had not been ill, I would have never cheated on you. I would have physically been with you, but you couldn't physically be with me because you got sick. What did you want me to do? I'm a man and I have needs. And she apologized to him.

for getting sick and being in hospital and coming back home and not being able to be a wife and perform for him. She apologized. She's now well on her healing journey. She now has a voice. She now has forgiven herself for the numerous times she allow her husband to make her feel less than.

And she allow it. So she took responsibility for, he didn't make me, I allow him to make me. I didn't have boundaries. I didn't stand up for myself. So if you're wondering, where's their relationship right now? Well, he's fearfully avoidant. She's leaning to secure. He doesn't want to lose her. He's requesting sessions now to be able to learn how to grow more secure, but he's definitely in a place where now

his anxieties come in and he doesn't want to lose who she is. And guess what, dear anxious person listening to this, your greatest fear of losing someone if you find your voice again and use it and step into being authentic, you actually, a lot of the times don't lose somebody that loves you. They start to have a lot of respect for who they fell in love with. Because when they fell in love with you, had a voice, you were authentic.

You had dreams, you shared them. You had a career, you were great in university. You were not so anxiously bubbled by someone pulling away and distancing and the natural triggers that only an intimate relationship will bring up so that you can heal. And it's really amazing to see her go from someone who would apologize to her partner for them cheating.

to him being someone who is now endlessly in tears and crying and cannot digest that's what he did to her and that's who he was. So if you're listening to this and you're anxiously attached, I know that a lot of the times, you know, you feel comfortable wanting to be vulnerable and yet you don't. And I would challenge you that all this love you give, all this vulnerability that you want to have,

all these fears you have, that you start to tend them back inside and focus on you. And you might be so focused on trying to get this relationship right that you've forgotten getting a relationship right with yourself is the most important place for you to begin. You don't have to go far.

All this love, all this attention, all this devotion that you give someone else. I wonder if you only gave yourself 40 % of that delicious energy back to yourself. You could validate yourself. You could reassure yourself. You could be true and vulnerable to yourself. You stop being exhausted, putting up a front. You let go of this need of needing to be perfect.

And you can start asking for help and not feeling weak and not feeling that you, the perfect partner, you know, you have this persona, the perfect partner doesn't ask for help, the perfect partner does. But I want you to realize love doesn't come from you only doing and only serving and only giving because Julian Turecki says so well, she says, givers should find givers.

Givers should not be with takers. And your relationship sometimes is a lot of the times where it is because you've set the base for it. You've taught your partner bad behavior is okay. You have taught them that you'll enable it, you'll forgive it. Why? Because you've not got comfortable sitting with the disconnection. And I want you to listen to something I'm going to say really carefully. Disconnection.

I'm so sorry if you can hear those beautiful birds there, my kusukus. You are comfortable with disconnection and connecting back into disconnection because you don't really connect back into connection. Now, I'm going to say that again. You're already so disconnected to the partner you're with. You're trying to fill the gap to always get more connected to them. That's why you're always doing more and being more.

When you have conflict and fights with them, you experience disconnection. In order to go back to just feeling connected to them again, you actually think that you settle for the connection you had prior to that fight. So you never really resolve anything because you can't stay in that disconnection. Your nervous system is on fire. You've not learned how to regulate your nervous system and work with it yet and breathe through it and move.

through the different stages your nervous system's going through. So you just are so desperate to go back and connect with them. But the connection prior to the disconnection was also disconnection. You're never really connected to your partner because you're just settling for allowing them to treat you a certain way and allowing the relationship standard to be what it is, even though the conflict is because you want the relationship standard to be so much more.

But you're not assertive and then holding boundaries to what you're saying and then not moving from it. I've had anxiously attached people when they're healing their core wounds and they're healing their beliefs and then getting comfortable first with what boundaries are before they even practice them because it's terrifying to have boundaries because you lose love. It's okay to lose your love, right? It's okay to be disconnected from yourself, right?

It's okay to lose your dreams and your hopes, right? As long as we don't lose that person who's not seeing that you are losing yourself. And someone who's secure will see that. Someone who's secure will never allow you to lose who you are. Someone who's secure has endless tubs and buckets of love for you. They don't play games. They like you, they like you, they love you, they love you. They want to spend the rest of their life with you. You will feel it, you will know it. But that

Tom doesn't work for your nervous system. You are addicted to the highs and lows, the fights, the connection, disconnection, come back, go back at it because you never really feel connected in that relationship. The only way to feel connected to your partner is to disconnect with them, to reconnect with them and not really move anywhere in that relationship. The way that relationship grows is you get smaller.

You lose more of your voice, you lose more of your shine because that relationship teaches you the more conflict you have, the more you try to find your voice, the more you try to shine. All these fights, inevitably, they never solve anything. They don't show you that we can have this conflict and your opinions matter. What you bring to the table, Matt, is I cannot have you go to sleep upset, angry and sad and depressed.

I cannot have you crying in the shower. I cannot have you crying in a toilet. No, no, no, you matter. And we're going to resolve how you're feeling until you feel connected and better. That's what you get with someone that's secure. That's what you get with an avoidant that's in coaching therapy and wanting to heal and sitting with their discomfort. Not somebody that's running away.

and feeling that the more you chase them, the more you're bringing discomfort into their life. So you have to start getting comfortable with, okay, we've had a fight, we're disconnected, what if I don't chase them? What if I actually instead, right now, while my body is on fire and my instinct...

is I rather be screaming, shouting, and fighting with them because then at least we love each other. That's our love language. I rather that than sit with my body on fire, the discomfort, go have a warm shower while I'm consciously breathing through what I'm feeling, placing my hand on my heart, telling myself that this is going to be okay, that I don't need to be shouting. I don't need to go into protest behavior.

I understand my body is activated, but I'm going to self soothe and regulate myself now. I will definitely do episodes where I teach you how to grow into being more secure and then teach you some of the beautiful meditations you can work with that actually I'm going to put on YouTube. So next time you do feel disconnected from yourself, I promise you that

this coming week, I will put up a meditation on YouTube that if you're starting to feel activated, you can literally just go in press play and work through that meditation to get your nervous system back into the right place. So I don't want you using protest behavior anymore to be able to communicate or to be seen. I don't want you to come across controlling or pushy to get your agenda. I want you

to step into a light where you know that your voice matters when it's calm. You don't need a neon flag to have your partner go, ⁓ okay, this is serious. Like my partner is now going to start screaming and shouting and so I better listen. You need your partner to start respecting your requests when you ask for them from a really mature, level-headed place. I want you to think about the parts of you that

feel like I might not be good enough. I consistently feel excluded. have this fear that I'm always not being liked. I have this unworthiness and all of these traits that I have in my life. If you post think about what, what are the triggers? What makes me feel this way? It's normally when someone pulls away from you, even in friendships.

It hurts you when you see a group of friends together and you weren't included because you start to feel, I not worth being in that group? If people really liked me, if I did more, if I was more of a value to them, they would have invited me. And then the result of that means your behavior is you now go and try to do more. You cook, you take gifts, you try to do whatever you can to fit in instead of feeling like...

I'm so worthy in my time and attention and it's so nice they went and did something amazing and when they call me, they call me and maybe I might not even want to go. Maybe I could be the person that doesn't have to do things to fit in and feel worthy when people ask me to be a part of things. Maybe I'm worthy enough that I don't want to be a part of certain groups. ⁓ Wouldn't that be so freeing as somebody that's anxiously attached?

Also, one of the things you are not okay with in a relationship is inconsistency. Inconsistency in promises, inconsistency in communication, inconsistency in action, inconsistency in your sex life. You're either with a partner that, and I will really do attachment styles and sex for you. You are with a partner that, you know, has sex with you, doesn't make love to you.

or you're with a partner that does not have sex with you, has pulled away, will not touch you, is probably addicted to pornography and you have no idea and you are just constantly worried about why they don't desire you, what's wrong with you, if you looked a certain way, if you lost weight, you're always beating yourself up in that relationship. You're just feeling undesired, unseen and

What do I need to do to be like X, Y, and Z? Maybe they've mentioned somebody they find attractive on TV and it really does bring about such deep jealousy and pain for you. It makes you compare yourself to them. It makes you wonder that if you saw them and noticed them, I'm so invisible in this relationship to you.

So do I need to be like them? Do I need to walk like them? Do I need to have their level of confidence? And you're already feeling so low because you're so far away from being connected to your beautiful, authentic self that thoughts like that really bring you down. They make you feel like, wish I was doing more. I need to be more and to keep my partner's attention, I need to always be at the top of my game.

so that they're always worshiping me. And then one day at some point they'll love me enough and I'll be able to just breathe. You're always feeling, you know, that conflict will lead to abandonment and there's a need for conflict because you're trying to get your voice across and then there's this need for you to always apologize and say sorry and be the person trying to reestablish connection. Very often that

connection is at the cost of letting the argument go, pushing everything under the rug and constantly building this relationship on a foundation that's just waiting to topple over and the truth be told it's only not toppling over because of you. You're the freaking glue. Do you understand there'd be no relationship if you didn't put in the effort you put in? Do you understand there'd be no relationship if you didn't show up the way you do?

Do you understand you are your partner's greatest fear? Your partner is terrified of losing you. They know they will never find someone like you. And I want you to be able to think about the fact that I am someone phenomenal. I am someone great. I am someone worthy. I love like a penguin because penguins, pairful life, they are loyal.

Those beautiful penguin partners actually practice with a piece of ice in their feet before their female hands over the egg to them. They practice as a couple, as a team with a piece of ice so that the male penguin can get holding the egg right and that egg should not touch the ice because the baby inside it will die. That's how you love.

And that's the kind of male you want in your life. You want the male penguin that gives you the one rock because he adores you. He took the time to look for the most perfect rock. He wants to pair with you for the rest of your life. He will look after your children with the same nurturing you laid that egg and carried that baby with. And you know what? I'm here to tell you, why can you not have that kind of love?

Why do you feel you are undeserving of someone seeing you the way you deserve to be seen? Yes, you have these core wounds of abandonment, of rejection, of isolation, of low self-esteem, of low self-worth. Yes, you have triggers of someone pulling away. You are terrified of inconsistent behavior. Yes, you cannot tolerate broken promises. Yes, you don't like someone not approving you, validating you, seeing you, reassuring you.

Yes, you constantly feel unworthy of being in a relationship. You don't feel like you're important enough. If you were important enough, then it wouldn't be so hard. You are always ruminating the relationship getting better, or you're always picturing a savior coming into the relationship to give you the love that you finally want. You have a lack of physical closeness to your partner. You're constantly testing the relationship. But why? Why can't you?

Be seen the way I see you. Why can't someone love you the way that you deserve to be loved? And only when you stop being scared of being yourself, having a voice, setting boundaries, not being terrified to lose the love that you need to acknowledge is not even a relationship.

you would advise your best friend, your daughter, your son to settle in and be in is when you will start to be able to take a breath and say, a minute, I feel less than in this relationship. I'm bringing to this relationship. I feel unseen. Who sees them if I stop seeing them? I feel unworthy. I give them worth.

I feel unlovable, I love them to death. I feel constantly abandoned. If I stop loving them, they're literally abandoned. They don't even have friends in their lives or family that show up for them the way I do. That's when you start to notice, wait a minute, it's not about who should be scared about losing who, but it should be you being scared about constantly losing more of who you are.

So I want you to close your eyes and I want you to take a deep breath in and a deep breath out. And I want you to put your hand onto your heart. You can put both your hands. And I want you to just get really present to feeling your body. I want you to feel this golden light and beautiful energy coming in from the top of your head.

giving you a bit of a tickle, feel the top of your head. I want you to feel this golden light going down your face, down your neck. And maybe you can tilt your neck left and right, roll it around. Just feel so present to your body. Allow that light and sensation to move down your shoulders. And you can place your hands back down to your sides and just roll your shoulders around.

Feel this energy and tingle in your body. Be present to your body. Allow that light to move down your arms, into your elbows, down to your fingertips. And maybe you can move your fingertips around, wiggle them around. It be so present to the sensation in your fingers. Allow that energy to come right back up to your shoulders. And then go down the front.

off your stomach and down the back of your spine into your hips. And maybe you could twist your body a little bit. Just feel what does that feel like? Maybe it's a bit of a stretch you needed to get into your back. I know that I do. And then allow that sensation to go down into your knees, down into your ankles. Just sort of wiggle your ankles around if you're sitting or you're on the bed. And

Wiggle your toes and allow that energy to leave your feet.

And I want you to pour that love into that beautiful heart. I want you to tell yourself, I love you. I see you. You can put your hand back on your heart and just say, I really validate this pain in your heart. Of course it's there. Of course it's valid. And you know what? I'm here now. What are you feeling?

And I'm really sorry if I've ignored you and been so focused on chasing a love out there. But I want to make a commitment to myself that I'm going to start to love me and bring love back into me and be committed to myself. And if you're feeling any tension in your body, just put your hand there and just gently sort of tap that part. Just tap that dis-ease out.

and turn it into power or purpose or a message. Take my mess and make it a message. Because where I am right now is not only to serve me, but to serve others around me. And in order for me to be the best version of myself for everybody.

I need to first acknowledge being the best version for myself because I deserve my delicious love as well.

And with that, when you are ready, you can open your eyes. And I want you to breathe out and just sort of feel how grounded it is to just be present in your body.

And I want you thank you for joining me. Thank you for joining me on this episode. Thank you for connecting with me. Thank you for allowing me into your world and your space. Thank you for trusting me and listening to this episode.

I want to let you know that I see you. You are a beautiful human being that has so much value in this world and you have some insane things you need to start accomplishing. So if you are looking to build some self-confidence, then make sure you join me on Life Better this Thursday for an episode on how to build our self-confidence. And I'd love to hear from you.

Join me on my Instagram, write to me in my DMs, shazmeenbank, S-H-A-Z-M-E-E-N bank, or on my TikToks, shazmeen_bank.

And give me some questions you have. I'd love to read them out. I'd love to start my episodes with reading your questions, answering them. I'd love to get to know you. Write to me and tell me how this episode impacted your life and the difference you started to notice after this episode.

And until the next episode, want you to remember you are fantastic. You are enough. You are great. You are worthy. You are a superstar. So you better go right on your mirror. If you're female, write, I'm enough with your lipstick. And if you're a man, go borrow someone's lipstick and write, I am enough. And until the next episode, remember love better.

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