"Anxious Attachment: Why You Panic, Feel Unloved & Overthink"

In this episode of the Love Better podcast, Shazmeen Bank delves into the complexities of anxious attachment, exploring its roots in childhood experiences and its impact on adult relationships. She shares her personal journey of recognizing and healing her anxious attachment style, emphasizing the importance of self-love and understanding in building healthier relationships. The conversation highlights the emotional toll of anxious attachment, the cycle of self-sacrifice, and the challenges faced when navigating relationships with avoidant partners. Shazmeen encourages listeners to break free from people-pleasing behaviors and to seek stability and security in their relationships. In this episode, Shazmeen Bank delves into the complexities of anxious attachment in relationships, exploring how it manifests in behaviors, triggers, and emotional responses. She emphasizes the importance of self-love and understanding one's own attachment style to foster healthier connections. The conversation covers the impact of conflict, the patterns of jealousy, and the significance of building self-connection and safety from within.

Takeaways:

• You are not alone in this journey.
• Understanding anxious attachment is crucial for healing.
• Childhood experiences shape our attachment styles.
• Self-sacrifice can lead to emotional exhaustion.
• Recognizing patterns in relationships is key.
• Anxious attachment often leads to people-pleasing behaviors.
• Stability is essential for securely attached individuals.
• Self-love is a foundation for healthy relationships.
• Breaking the cycle of abandonment is possible.
• Healing leads to more fulfilling connections. Anxiously attached individuals often feel a heightened sense of danger when their partner pulls away.
• Self-love is crucial for those with anxious attachment; it is the most important love.
• Anxiously attached people may overlook their partner's negative behaviors due to their empathy.
• Conflict can leave anxiously attached individuals feeling empty and confused without resolution.
• Recognizing triggers is essential for managing anxious attachment responses.
• Chemistry in relationships should not be confused with safety; true connection is stable and nurturing.
• Anxiously attached individuals often overgive in relationships, hoping to change their partner.
• Jealousy can stem from insecurities and the fear of abandonment in anxious attachment.
• Building self-connection helps in managing anxiety and emotional responses.
• Practicing self-regulation techniques can help restore a sense of safety and calm.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Anxious Attachment
• 6:12 The Cycle of Abandonment and Self-Sacrifice
• 11:57 The Emotional Toll of Anxious Attachment
• 18:11 The Journey to Self-Discovery and Healing
• 20:10 The Importance of Self-Love
• 29:57 Finding Stability in Relationships
• 44:27 Navigating Anxious Attachment
• 51:44 The Impact of Conflict on Relationships
• 1:01:54 Recognizing Patterns of Jealousy and Sensitivity
• 1:09:10 Guided somatic breathing exercise to ground you

Transcript

Shazmeen Bank (00:00)
Welcome back to the Love Better podcast. This is your host Shazmeen Bank and you know that you can bank on me. And I am really excited about honestly just starting to grow this community, listening to the requests you have on what you want to hear more about, which is anxious attachment, how to heal it, how it's working relationships, how do I get more secure.

And it's also been really nice to see some of you subscribing to my YouTube channel, Shazam Bank, And the most important thing about this particular episode in anxious attachment is I really wanted whoever was listening to really feel seen and heard and

to be able to just start to understand yourself better and most importantly, know that you are not alone. I used to be so anxiously attached as well and I did not know actually until certain events would happen in the relationship that were very drastic that brought out even more of my anxious tendencies. I never

knew before that my need to constantly call my partner a couple of times during the day and always try and just reestablish connection in really weird funny ways. My ability to want to read a book and really want to read a book and then need to read it around them. My ability to let go of a lot of my hobbies, a lot of my drive, my

ambitions for my career. I didn't know that I had stunted all of that. I didn't know that I put all of that on the back burner under the disguise of I'm a wife and I'm a mother and so this is my focus right now and there'll be a time when I can do all those other amazing things. I had no idea that I had this pattern running.

at the back of my subconscious. I didn't know that there was an imprinted blueprint that happened in my life between the ages zero and two. And then all these different patterns and disconnection after that from being a toddler to being a teenager to the different experiences in my life. I didn't know that all of that kept reinforcing my anxious attachment until

Something about four years ago happened and there was a massive shift in my marriage that started to bring up sides of me and parts of me that I sat with so much shame about because I thought, ⁓ I don't react that way. That's not me. How did I talk like that? I'm someone that communicates so well. When did I start to lose vulnerability and

have this protest-y kind of behavior. And there was a lot of shame with behavior that was happening. And then when something a lot more extreme happened in my marriage, I would say from 2023, I was completely blindsided by...

something that had been going on for years that I didn't literally put my finger on. And I could see that it was also because I was so focused on being a giver. I was so focused on being a fixer that it was almost like a piece of cloth. And every time a tiny hole just starts to form, you take the needle and thread and you just go stitch it up. You never let anything ever tear or get too big. You're so focused on

looking for these tiny holes everywhere and just stitching them all up. And then one day you look at this piece of cloth that you have and it's a mess. And it's a mess because you didn't allow what had to unfold, unfold in the way that it should have happened. And my anxious attachment went skyrocket through the roof from 2023. And with something that I found out that really hurt me,

deeply broke me, shattered my world, had me pull away from podcasting and TV and radio and all my clients because I went into a place in my mind where I couldn't believe that all the abandonment of self that I'd ever done that I didn't know I did resulted in me being abandoned.

And I had felt that I had been abandoned for years now. And I thought I was doing everything in my life to not be abandoned, but I didn't know that's what I was doing. That was the blueprint I operated out of. I don't want you to leave me. So I will be perfect. I don't want you to walk away from me. So I will be the perfect wife and the perfect mother and the perfect chef and the perfect business partner.

and the perfect nurturer and the perfect best friend and the person who is the light in your life when you need it. And all of that, did I not realize was at the expense of myself until I started to work on my own journey from healing my own anxious attachment to becoming secure? Did I or was I able to see

the difference in who I was. And in learning to become so much more secure, did I ever recognize how exhausted my nervous system was, how fired up my nervous system was? And when you are now more securely attached, you crave stability, you will do anything for stability. It is so important that your nervous system is feeling safe.

When anything happens that now sort of sends a shockwave to your nervous system, you can see it. You can see the difference. And it blows my mind sometimes to think that was the norm for me. Survival was the norm. Being a fixer was the norm. Being this emotional provider was the norm. Being somebody that overlooked bad behavior was the norm.

because anxiously attached people come with bucket loads of empathy and so much empathy that you don't realize they are core wounds going on within you and they are these traits that are imprinted inside of you and you go against the grain. You don't realize you're operating from not feeling whole.

You don't realize that you're operating from a place where your power is lost, where it's always out there. And when it doesn't come back and fill you in the way that you feel you deserve to receive that love, you feel broken and empty and lost and confused. But as someone anxiously attached, you know that you get up the next day and you go out there and redo it all over again.

Become this perfect person, put on this mask, get ready to save the relationship, be the glue, not focus that it's one sided. All, all of this is going on. Not without you ever recognizing this is happening because you are terrified of being abandoned. And I thought,

Knowing that I'm married and we are committed to each other and we are working on certain things in the relationship, like every single relationship, I didn't realize when it wasn't healthy. I didn't realize when it stopped being healthy. And I didn't realize when I was not healthy. I didn't realize when I stopped paying attention.

to I needed in order to abandon myself to get what I thought I needed. And to get what I thought I needed, I thought, I need to fulfill the other person's needs completely, fully. And then when they see that I'm worthy, I'm someone they never want to lose, then they'll finally shower me with the love and they'll finally give me all the needs I want and

There's this punishment game that goes on when you don't want to be abandoned as someone that's anxiously attached. And that's the first call we wound we look at is because when you don't want to be abandoned, you don't recognize that in order to not be abandoned, are this consistent performer. You are always looking to patch things up.

to perform so you don't lose love and you are always looking to provide an endless bucket of love to the person you're in a relationship with. But nobody ever stops to tell you that you don't do that at the cost of yourself because you think that you are going to be selfish if you stop loving somebody the way that you only know how to love.

And when you're anxiously attached, that's in gallons full. When you're in a relationship, you are giving this person all your time, all your attention, all your focus. You will neglect everything that was important to you. You will drop friends and family that could possibly be telling you, you don't seem to be in a healthy place or this isn't even the right relationship for you.

you go out and you put a fence around this relationship and you put a fence trying to protect this relationship and it's almost like you don't seem to understand that you're the person that built the fence between you and the person in the relationship. How is it that every single day they escape? How do they dig this hole? And when I wake up in the morning and I'm exhausted from trying to spend the

whole night keeping this fence safe, keeping us protected, making sure our relationship is perfect. Nothing penetrates it that could break us apart, separate us or hit my worst fear of abandonment. How is it that you as an avoidant, because very often you'll attract an avoidant, how is it that you dug this hole and you're on the other side of the fence?

And then as someone that's anxiously attached, you're going to turn around and think, right, it was my fault. I didn't dig it down deep enough. And this cycle of blaming yourself sets in because you are terrified of being abandoned and rejected together at the same time. And so you spend your whole life moving this fence. You undig it and then wherever your partner is gone,

You go with this big fence and you place it right around the two of you again. And the next day they're out again. And it is exhausting. And I believe that people who are anxiously attached only come into the recognition of, I'm anxiously attached after deep pain, a breakup, being abandoned. Their worst fears coming true in that relationship where

the person cheats on you or will just stop showing up. They quietly quit that relationship. And in your mind, you're thinking, Why is my relationship failing when I am showing up every day, loving you, doing all the things you could dream of? I'm being the partner that I saw my

parents not be to each other. If I grew up in a childhood where I watched my mom treat my dad really badly, then I said to myself, I'm never going to be that person. When I'm in a relationship, I'll never treat them the way my mom treated my dad. Or if you saw your dad not do certain things to your mom, then you took on that role as well and said, and I'm also not going to do that to my partner. And so

Because you grew up with such crazy hypervigilance watching the dynamic of your parents play out in front of you, their relationship unfold. One day they're happy, one day there's tension, one day as a family you're talking, you're all okay on the dinner table. The next day you remember hearing some doors slam at night. Now there's, you know, this painful silence in the house.

or a flare up or screaming. You didn't see where the screaming came from. It doesn't make sense why mom is screaming or dad's upset because you missed their dynamic clearly just being the child that you are in your own world. But it just draws this focus inside of your nervous system where you're on alert all the time. And that alertness is what's playing in the background.

It's this hyper vigilance that plays in the background. It's this blueprint that's set inside of you as someone that's anxiously attached where you don't even recognize all of these things are just not being fed and they don't come alive. Your core wounds don't come alive until you get into an intimate relationship. when you get into this relationship, what are one of the first things you're craving is connection.

You're in a relationship because you couldn't get this sort of connection from your parents. You couldn't get seen and loved from them. Forget attachment theory between the ages of zero and two. But when you started to be cognitive of needing attention, of needing a parent's love, of needing nurturing and emotional attunement from them, and you couldn't get it from them, and you didn't have parents that sat down and instilled inside of you, this is how

You attune to feelings where you're feeling neglected by us or where you're feeling a fear of mom or dad will leave. The fights in the house are so bad, someone's going to abandon me. Either my mom's leaving, my dad's leaving, a divorce is about to happen, but I'm going to be inevitably abandoned. And all of these things end up I would say, sparking off.

when you're in an intimate relationship, you didn't know there's a foundation being laid inside of you, a pattern that was being formed, subconsciously you're operating a certain way and then boom, you get into a relationship and you turn around the most common thing anxiously attached people tell me is, I was never this person. And I remember relating to that. I remember that

Before I was married, I remember being someone that wanted to be a fashion designer. I wanted to study. I had dreams of living in another city. I wanted to be recognized for the talents that I had. I was creative. I wanted to paint. I loved to read. I had the self-confidence within me that I'm

polite and I speak well and I'm kind and I'm loving and I'm warm and just all these traits that you notice within yourself and then suddenly when you're in a relationship and things start to go wrong all those traits that you loved about yourself you don't realize that now they feel like they're the death of you because you abandoned yourself in order for someone to never abandon you you abandoned

loving yourself, focusing on yourself, holding on to your dreams, not going into the role that that relationship required you to take on, which are a lot of roles because very often when you end up in a relationship with somebody that's avoidantly attached, be it fearful avoidant, be it dismissive avoidant, you end up carrying such exhausting roles to hold that relationship above water because when you're not

It starts to sink. And if it starts to sink, you can't breathe. If that relationship starts to sink, they could leave you. If that relationship starts to sink, you failed. You won't be loved. You will end up being alone. They will dismiss you. You will never find love again. And so the journey of your anxious attachment comes to light. It is born between the ages of zero and two.

by caregivers and parents that were inconsistent in their love to you, inconsistent in emotionally showing up to you, doesn't mean because they did not love you. It just means the love they showed was inconsistent. And so your nervous system was just wired that when I need love, it's not there. And when I need love, it's there. And then it's not. And then it's there. And then I don't know what I did.

to have had it when it was there and then I don't know what I did when it's not there. And so your nervous system just ends up getting wired for survival, but it starts to live in survival when you get into a relationship now that has you walking on the wire and all your focus and attention is on not falling because if you fall, it is the death of you.

You don't trust the harness that you've attached to catch yourself because all the investment that you should be making in focusing on self-love, self-validation, self-reassurance, fulfilling a lot of the deep needs for yourself as well. Those are foundations that are thrown out the window the minute you get into a relationship. And the minute you get into a relationship, you have your first fight, they break up with you, they woke out on you. The conflict was so bad.

And suddenly your nervous system as someone that's anxiously attached, it's literally like it gets lit up and all your boundaries, all your rules, the person that said, I will never be hit. I will never be cheated on. No one will ever treat me that way. It's all gone. Suddenly the cost of holding onto this person.

Even if it means you look ridiculous chasing them, typing endlessly to them, apologizing for something you didn't do, blaming yourself nonstop is gone. And this persona of I have to save this relationship because if this relationship goes away, then I will lose myself too. If I lose this relationship, I don't exist.

And so when we are understanding our core wounds, abandonment is at the core heart of somebody that is anxiously attached. You are terrified of losing more love because you already feel like you weren't absorbed and loved as the child that you wanted. Not like

someone that's securely attached. Somebody that's securely attached doesn't have to cause a fuss to be loved. They are taught how to go within and think about how they feel and they are talked to, they're nourished when they feel emotions. The parents or caregivers stop to address those emotions, to make room for those emotions. But someone that's anxiously attached, you literally grow up learning that

In the room, my room, I am a room, it is not a room for me. It's not a room that I fill with love and my needs and my nurturing. It's a room I fill for the other person, their needs, their wants, their demands, their desires. And then I have something to do. Because when you are anxiously attached, you feel that in order for the next core wound,

in order for you to not.

feel unworthy, you must do to get love. You must be needed to get love. And there's this deep core wound of, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. I haven't done enough. And that's why anxiously attached people are perfectionists. They're perfectionists in their craft. They're perfectionists as a parent. They're perfectionists in their relationships.

unless that relationship drains them so that they can no longer be a perfectionist as a parent and in their craft or their career because now survival kicks in to just be a perfectionist to hold on to that relationship and keep it alive. And so it sucks all the life out of you in order to literally you take all the oxygen from yourself, you take your oxygen mask and you go put it on the other person.

and you think that if they can breathe, you will live.

That's anxious attachment. And when someone starts to say, need to put on my oxygen mask first before I can address the issues of this relationship, before I can show up in this relationship, before I can discuss the terrible things I've done in this relationship, I need to focus on myself. You're thinking, what the hell? And the rage sets in and anxiously attached people think, I was never angry. I'm not angry.

I'm not an angry person. Ask any of my friends, ask my family members, ask my staff, ask the people I live with. I'm not an angry person, but the rage sets in because the resentment is lit. And that spark, when a partner decides they are not going to focus on you and they need to focus on themselves first, you are thinking,

How? Because I have spent my whole life in this relationship abandoning myself, not breathing enough, not giving myself the attention I needed, losing self-care, not doing things that I felt were important to do because it would create distance between you and I. And I didn't know I'm doing all of those things because I'm terrified of being abandoned by you.

And now you are telling me when I need you the most, when I'm suffocating, when I'm drowning and I need you to pull me out because I perceive I've built you enough. I've stored enough inside of you that when I need you, you should be able to be there for me. And you're not, you're going to take all my energy, my love, my resource inside of you.

and pour it back into yourself and anxiously attach people cannot understand that because they feel love is losing self to fulfill someone else fall in love with potential build up that potential and when the potential doesn't know it's being built up and now you're hoping to get the rewards of your hard labor

They don't have the capacity and ability to be able to give it to you and you're thinking, wait, now I have to reflect and you land on the ground with the biggest thud and that's when you start looking for the podcasts and you want to read the books and you're trying to understand why am I going crazy? Why am I raging? Why am I shouting?

Why am I throwing something across the room? Why am I breaking something? This isn't me. When did this rage build inside of me? And it's stacked up resentment. And the resentment is stacked up inside of you because you stop loving yourself, focusing on yourself, fulfilling yourself, doing the things that were important to you, putting yourself aside to love somebody else completely.

unconditionally in hope that when it's time for you to receive, you will get. And when you don't get, there is an anger that is stored in your nervous system. And unless you somatically know how to release that, it is going to come out in you screaming, in you protesting, in you hitting them in frustration, when they shut down, when they're aggressive, when they're rude to you.

You are sitting there thinking after everything I gave you that they feel was their right. Because as anxiously attached people, we enable them to not have to give so much. We enable them to push our boundaries and for us to say it's okay. And you go through the pattern as someone that's anxiously attached that

You feel enough's enough, I'm going to set this boundary. And then when they come in hard with their hot love for you, before they go cold, all your boundaries melt away. And you think they love me. They see me, all the screaming, all the chats, all the sacrifice. my God. Now they got it. We had the most amazing chat. We had sex. We connected. It's going to be great. They heard me. They've given me the reassurance. They're never leaving.

They've told me now that they understand where they were and why they couldn't do the things that the relationship needed and all my self-sacrifice to sit and talk to them and chase them and have them see it now they see it and they're like, I realize and you're finally breathing out thinking, ⁓ they get it. So that groundedness, that control you started to build when you were low, when they go cold on you.

And you start to say, I've had enough, no more. I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. I can see that it's painful. I can see it's one side. I can see I'm so codependent. I can see that I'm struggling and I'm not receiving and my needs are just not being met unless there's a fight, unless I keep quiet. And so this uncertainty, this other core wound that you're

terrible at having in your life is you can't take the uncertainty of them not showing up and doing the things they should. And here's the thing, in healthy relationships, there's always consistency. But a core wound for someone that's anxiously attached is you notice any inconsistency. And

You have the ability when you notice this inconsistency to vocalize, to verbalize it to your partner. But when they are avoidantly attached, they slowly train you and teach you that these are not conversations we have whenever you want all the time. It's too much for me. Therefore, you're too much for me. Therefore, your needs are too much, which now takes you into the spiral of thinking, am I too much? Am I too needy? my God. Like,

They're being an amazing partner, they're showing up, they're doing their best and at the end of a long day for them, I want love, I want hugs, I want touch, I want attention, I want affection and you start to think something's wrong with me. I am too needy and I want this consistent everyday kind of a love and it's not that you are being unreasonable. It's because if you're in a relationship with someone that has a consistent hot cold behavior,

Your nervous system is going, ⁓ this feels really familiar. This feels like something I've gone through in my childhood. Love was not consistent. And therefore, if love was not consistent and I would be abandoned in order to not be abandoned, to not be rejected, to have this closeness with my partner, to live in constant connection with them, then I should be doing.

more. I should be a people pleaser. And this pattern of you turning all the blinkers off on all the other areas of your life that need attention, it goes off. And you turn around and say, when my relationship is perfect and my relationship's good and it works, then I can go out into the world and succeed.

You're somebody in the relationship that you can't take the silence after conflict. You need to sort it out right then there. Even if it means in conflict, you have to have another fight. Let's have another fight, but they should be no disconnection. We should be connected. We should fight until you fight the fight out of your partner. They're exhausted and now they also just want to connect with you. So the fight goes away and you settle for that.

You don't realize nothing got solved, nothing got resolved. They're looking for the connection of the stability of peace. You are ready to settle for that and take that because now you're exhausted trying to convince them and prove to them of what you need. It's turning into an argument. It's turning into a fight. It gets deflected. You end up being told, I'm not good enough. Nothing I do is enough for you. You end up thinking, okay, how do I?

express my needs in a softer way, in a better way, and you go around this vicious cycle where

These conflicts of you needing, wanting to talk, wanting to create more true connection is met with a blow up. And therefore you end up being this person that can't take this connection. So you have to text everything you feel to them. They must know how you feel. You have to check your phone 17 times to see if they called, if they messaged. You will check their live movements.

to see are they partying? Are they happy? Have they moved on? You follow them and stalk them on Instagram. You look at little signs like, okay, if they haven't taken me off this, if they've not taken our videos off, if they've not changed, things that showed we're a couple, ⁓ we're good. And somehow that convinces your brain to say, so they still love me. Like, why am I fighting with them? I want this fight to just go away. I want it to be over. I just want to be with them.

This is how we enable bad behavior in the relationships, but we don't know that we're doing it because it's driven by these core wounds inside of us of being rejected and neglected and left alone and abandoned and I'm not good enough and I'm not perfect enough and I have to do more. I can't operate from being myself because myself means what if I'm strong and I say,

I'm not going to tolerate that. Don't talk to me like that. I think I deserve a relationship that really sees me. I do not actually think I'm too much. I actually feel you're blessed and lucky to be with someone that really their entire world is to have a relationship, to want it to work, to want to nurture it, to want to keep pumping into it. And you end up instead thinking, okay, I need to take a step back from myself.

And this entire process pulls you away from even getting to know who you are even more. Because as someone that's anxiously attached, when there's disconnection, you're not taught to self-regulate. You're not taught, go have a hot shower. You're not taught, go for a walk. You're not taught, leave the vicinity, leave them. Go out, meet some friends, get into the gym, put a podcast on, go for a run. Your entire nervous system is...

I need to be in proximity to them. So if we've had a fight and they're in the other room and you're in another room crying, miserable and upset, your mind is just, your nervous system is looking to connect right back with them. You've not learned how to regulate and connect to your own body and truly as boring as it sounds, breathe in to calm your nervous system, change the story that you are running within your head.

that they're going to leave me, I'm not good enough. The story you're building to probably leave them that they're not good enough. They're an evil partner. You're making them the villain, then you're making yourself the villain, then you feel bad they're now the victim and then you're the victim. That exhaustion loop, no one's taught you to slow that voice down, to slow all that noise down and connect with the body. What is the body going through?

It's in fight and flight. And for anxiously attached people, fight and flight means flight towards the avoidant partner. For someone avoidantly attached, fight and flight means get out, safety's outside. It's not in connecting again in this moment. But someone anxiously attached, it's I need to be in close proximity and then when I'm going through all this pain, I'm working up the guts to either come fight with you again and tell you how I feel or

I'm going into extreme being apologetic because they are punishing me with the distance, they're punishing me with the silence. You cannot take it as someone that's anxiously attached. So you have to fill the gap of the silence by saying sorry, by apologizing, by sometimes humiliating yourself when you know it wasn't your fault and you don't need to be the person saying sorry.

You're always thinking in your mind, did I do something wrong? Did I say something wrong? Should I have not done it this way? Should I have waited? Should I have talked to them at different time? What's wrong with me? Why do I bring things up the way that I do? Why couldn't I be softer? Why can't I have been more polite? Was I rude? Was I not rude? You're in a constant fight with yourself and your nervous system is in a constant state of shock, just looking for relief.

from what it's feeling with you.

How do you know if you're also anxiously attached? Because you are a deep performer emotionally. You are always thinking, I need to earn love through fixing, through pleasing, through caretaking of my partner. That's why you become their mother, then you become their rescuer, then you become their personal PA, then you become their therapist, then you become their advisor. You're playing all these roles because you feel

If I perform emotionally, then they won't neglect me. And it's a deep sign of people that are anxiously attached. They do in order to get love. They feel that in order to be needed, I have to be something worth being needed. And anxiously attached people don't understand. You end up in relationships where someone does need you. They need you because they're not feeling whole.

And when you feel needed, you think that that's love. Love is not someone just needing you. Love is someone when they can come to give you, when they want to just love on you without taking back from you. And then also when they need you, it's the most beautiful feeling in the world. But you're in a state as someone that's anxiously attached that you confuse someone needs me means they love me.

You also confuse stability with disconnection. You can't stand stability. You grew up in an environment that was not stable emotionally. And so when there's no stability in your relationship with your partner, it is just home. They are a reflection in that moment of your mom or your dad or of both parents together in one. They are just bringing up the environment of home.

But instead, as Anxiously Attached people, no one's taught us to stop and think, my God, okay, there is clearly a blueprint that was formed. There were patents that were developed. And I have this belief that I'm not good enough, that I will never be loved, which is universal, by the way, according to Tony Robbins. ⁓ You have these beliefs that I can't achieve anything. I will never be seen.

unless I'm a people pleaser. And that's why performers emotionally, especially when you're anxiously attached, you tend to overshare information. You close the gap with a disconnect, even with people you meet that are new by oversharing. I just got divorced. I just lost my child.

I just lost my job. This is what I'm going through with management. You don't understand how hard it is right now in my life. And you're only doing that from the sweetness and the beauty of wanting to connect with another human being because you're used to being so open. You're used to being so vulnerable, but you don't recognize that sometimes that's pushing a lot of pressure on other people to feel

a relationship or a friendship when they're not even invested. They didn't even know one was happening right now. And so this tendency of people pleasing and oversharing is all so that you build connection, all so that you don't get abandoned.

You very often end up with someone that is avoidantly attached and cannot love you back in the most fulfilling way. And that's not just because they're avoidantly attached. That's also because their love gets stunted by your anxious attachment. When you grow to be someone that's more secure, you will be showing up in your life 100 % for yourself emotionally.

for yourself physically in your career, you know what you want. And then when a different kind of love comes along, if it's 20 % or 30 % and you're at a capacity where you love yourself 100%, you're not going to get into a relationship with someone that gives you 20 or 30%. You're looking for someone that's 100 % or more. But when we're anxiously attached, we don't recognize that we love ourselves at

30 % or 40%. And then when someone comes along and they love us at 45 % or 50%, we think, wow, I met the person of my dreams. But we don't recognize that they come with a limited capacity. So we're always attracting somebody that is not bringing on a full 100 % because you're also not 100%. Can you imagine when you...

firmly know what your boundaries are, when you firmly can speak your needs and you actually are aware of them and you know how to meet them, you can ask your partner what you design a relationship without feeling scared that they'll walk away or not. Because as someone secure, if you can't meet my needs, then I don't think the relationship would work because as someone secure, I'm a hundred percent willing to love you at a hundred and twenty percent. So I don't expect less. I'm not going to settle for less.

And that's the game changer when you start to heal to become more secure and you find your voice. You're not scared to lose someone because they can't love you the way you are trying to train them to love you.

The other sign of noticing if you're anxiously attached or not is this deep hypervigilance. You are hypervigilant to people's mood, to their tone, to their body language. You can tell if someone is closed off or open. You are hypervigilant to when they're in a good mood and they're happy and...

There's the hot love pouring in and the attention and they want to be around you. They're hugging you and now they're kissing you and now they want to spend time with you you're thinking, my God, like I didn't do anything. I guess all these chats are working and my perfectionism behavior is paying off. And then when they start to pull away or there's a distance and you really feel the minor gap, you start to go, my God, your nervous system goes into alert and it's almost like

It like the siren is going off, says disconnect, disconnect, disconnect. And you're thinking, okay, I have to pull them back in. What do I need to do? Can you imagine the exhaustion? Your nervous system is going through just trying to hold on to someone, not allowing someone to distance. Go, you need space, go. And I'm not talking about, please, like someone who needs space days on end from you, that's...

something you should not be tolerating. But I'm saying the little distance, the little disconnect that they probably have things going on in their own minds and they naturally don't even notice that they're disconnecting and pulling away and spending more time on their phone because they just have their own way of filling up and recharging and anxiously attached people come to recharge in their relationship with the other person. The other person recharges with themselves.

That's why when you're anxiously attached, your body and your nervous system is constantly on fire when someone pulls away because you sense that as extreme danger. You think that if they're pulling away, my job's to pull them right back inside. My job's to hold onto them. I will lose them. If I lose them, I lose love. If I lose love, they will leave me. If they leave me, I will be alone. If I'm alone, I'll never find someone that can love me again. All forgetting.

The most important love, the most important love is you. Is you seeing yourself and loving yourself. And that's why I was so excited about this episode because when I personally recognized my traits as someone that was anxiously attached, number one, I felt I am not crazy. There is nothing wrong with me. I just have an attachment system that is wired.

for consistent connection, honest love, dependable warmth, someone that passionately wants me and there's nothing wrong with that. That was freeing. And so when we start to recognize some of the signs that we are anxiously attached, it is a beautiful place to go, ⁓ that's why I do what I do. You're not now punishing yourself.

for why you do what you do. The other thing is when there's conflict or an eruption in a fight, you you can see what they do wrong for certain amount of time. You can list everything they do wrong. When they don't come back to you to connect to you, now you throw everything they're doing wrong, all their bad behavior out the window. Now you start to make excuses.

This is where your delicious empathy will mask all the things you know are not right and all the things you know you should not be tolerating. And it will now mask it to make it okay. And you will overlook some of the hurtful things they've done.

And a lot of the times when these been distance after conflict, they want to come back and connect with you, but they want to connect with you without discussing the problem, without diving back into the problem. if they're mature enough, let's discuss it, but also again on their terms. There's always this hollow, empty feeling inside of you as someone that's anxiously attached and you're always thinking what's wrong with me. It's not that anything is wrong with you.

It's that there is a hollow void that you've not filled off yourself with your own love, your own affection, your own time, your own care. Being selfish with loving and doing the things you need. You've not filled that void inside of you. And so someone else's love that's already at a capacity because of their attachment style isn't going to be enough for you.

So you have a void that they are doing everything they can in their way to fill. They also feel exhausted. They feel tired. They feel depleted. They don't know what else to give you as someone that's anxiously attached. It's because you're this beautiful, like I've said before, gallon and you're not thinking of how to fill your own gallon up. You're not doing things that keep you alive. You're miserable, angry, unhappy, full of resentment because

you are waiting on a love in another person to love on you the way you are loving them. And you're depleting yourself by holding on to those sort of thoughts and that kind of an energy in loving someone. Love is supposed to be this beautiful gift that you give someone, but when you're anxiously attached and you've been in a relationship for a long time that is not seeing you the way that you need to be seen, it's really

going to turn your anger into rage and you don't know if that rage deserves to come out on you or on them. And you're now like this wound and anything they do, even a feather touches you and you're going to spark off and blow off. And if you have an avoidant partner that is not conscious of caring to fulfilling your needs and listening to you and

talking to you and communicating with you and wanting this relationship to work, that's when you end up sitting in so much self-hate and it brings down your self-esteem and it cracks down on your self-confidence because you are wired to think, what else do I do? What else do I do when I'm down, exhausted in the trenches and I have no energy?

And I still know I have to go out there and fight and give this relationship everything and revive it. As opposed to having a partner, even if they're avoidantly attached, that can turn around and say, I need to do my part too. It's not fair that you are just the glue all the time. I know I might not be the glue to the stickiness that you need, but I want to start getting better.

You're always replaying the conversation back in your head. You're thinking about what did I say? What did they say? What did I say that was wrong? What did I say that pushed them away? Why can't I be better at my communication? Why do I hurt them? And then if you have a partner that's telling you because of their deflectiveness, because they have to protect their sense of ego and their sense of

intention of not wanting to hurt you and it comes out explosive and in their own anger. As someone that's anxiously attached, you have these traits where you're very soft and you're very empathetic and you're very kind and you're known as someone that speaks slowly and speaks softly. You're not aggressive. You're not brash. You really are this comforter. And so when they come at you really hard,

At first it hurts. first you cry. At first you feel broken. At first you can't focus. But don't think anxiously attached people are not people that are going to fight back and they don't bite. They bite. But when they bite, it's going to leave the other person really wounded and you end up biting because of all this stacked pain inside of you that you tolerated. You allow for

behavior to consistently go on in that relationship. You taught them that every time you fall out of line, I'm going to be the person that's going to come and have us talk about it. You weren't confident and secure enough to let distance take its toll and allow them to come back to you to communicate. You weren't secure enough to see if this distance goes the mile and we break up, then I really feel I'm deserving of so much more.

You don't sit in that place. You sit in a place of fixer, rescuer, saver. And you need to start turning that role into fixer in your heart, savior into your heart, and rescuer into your heart, because you need that love right back. And your beautiful nervous system needs to understand stability can come from you.

The environment can be chaotic. Someone can be screaming. Someone can be narcissistic. Someone can be avoidant. But what goes on inside of you is you are secure and you don't get pulled into their energy anymore. You're not driven to hold their moods and keep them in a good mood so you can be in a good mood. You can still be in a great mood. Not that you're turning around to say as a partner, if you're in a bad mood, that's a you. No, but when you're in a better mood, then you're a better resource.

to your partner who's in a bad mood. But when you're deeply entrenched in anxious attachment, you end up thinking that when they're in a bad mood, I'm in a bad mood. When they're sad and down, I'm sad and down. When they don't want to do something, I don't want to do something. You don't come with the energy to be able to say, you're going through life? Come, I have capacity to hold you. You're already drained and depleted trying to fix someone else.

It's like injecting someone when nothing is going into them and hoping that they're going to feel better. Whereas instead when you nurture yourself, you love yourself, you can regulate your body, can fill your day by doing things that are important to you too that bring satisfaction, fulfillment, make you feel achieved, make you feel so proud of yourself for your own world.

then you start to feel like, my gosh, I am someone and I am someone that wants to love someone and I want someone to love me back in the way that I love me with the respect I give myself as well.

How does being anxiously attached play out in your relationships? Well, first of all, you are the over giver and you believe that if you love them enough, then they will change, they will stay, they will see you, they will rise to your potential and the relationship will flourish. You end up staying in relationships way longer than you should.

The relationship ended eight years ago. It's been 20 years. You're still there. The relationship ended two months ago. If you're dating, you're still there. You shouldn't have got engaged to them. You are now a fiance and you know you shouldn't be. You should have walked out of this relationship. It is draining you. There's something inside of your gut that says, don't do this. You're already not happy, but you keep thinking that

Unhappy is part of a normal relationship. You keep changing the narrative of the truth so that you don't get left behind and you don't get abandoned.

You chase emotionally unavailable people and then you call it chemistry. You think that if I work hard for love, love is not when we just see each other. Love is home. And at home, it was hard to get. It was inconsistent. It was volatile. There were times I was not seen. I would isolate. Love was doing things on your own. Love was not asking for help.

Love was doing everything for everyone, but still doing things for yourself. And you end up thinking that chemistry is instability. Chemistry is friction. Chemistry is working hard to make a relationship work. Chemistry is fighting and coming back together and no one walking out. Whereas you don't realize chemistry and connection is safety. And

that relationship already doesn't have safety. But you confuse chemistry and safety. You think chemistry is safety. There has to be sparks. I've got to work hard. I've got to prove to them that I'm worthy of being seen and loved. And I don't want them to be with somebody else. I want them to be with me. And so I'm going to be more sexy. I'm going to be more flirty. I'm going to be easier. I'm going to show them.

that I can be wifed up, I can be husband up, that I am their dream partner, that whoever they ever dated, hell never stood a chance because the room needed to be open for me to walk through. when you can settle and understand as someone that's anxiously attached, stability is easy. Stability is someone that loves you, that does things for you without you asking, that brings out parts of your personality.

You didn't know were there that wants to touch you, that desires you, that wants to make love to you, that wants to be around you, that cares about your well-being, that you can turn around and say, I'm not feeling well. And to an old partner, they'd be like, oh, really sorry. But to a new partner, safety is someone that goes and buys you the medication or Googles how you're feeling or books the appointment to the doctor. And you did nothing but be yourself for that kind of a love.

And that's what we want to grow towards. We want to grow towards being comfortable to not ignore the nice guy, to not reject the nice guy,

What are some of the triggers that you would notice if you're thinking, okay, I want to start spotting when I spiral. I want to start spotting when I'm going to react. I want to start spotting when I disconnect with myself to start changing them. What are these triggers, Shazmin? Well, the first one is when they start to act aloof, they get distant. They pull away from you.

You're being ignored and they're not responding back to you immediately. They didn't text you straight away. They didn't pick up your calls 12 times. They didn't reply the 200 texts that you sent in 30 seconds and you start to feel something's wrong. They're having an affair. They're cheating on me. They fell off a bridge. They just died. And listen, I really get that as well because I noticed that my anxious attachment really triggers with

also like different things. And I start to notice what's the story that I'm saying to myself. So for example, when my son decides to go hiking and he's in LA right now. So when he goes hiking, he goes hiking in places where there are these bears and he loses connection on his phone. And I really appreciate as a very independent boy, that he lets me have his live location. And that's

so that I can just check you're safe, you're okay, you're good. And when he goes hiking, the story in my mind when I can't see his location anymore triggers this deep anxiety. And when I stopped to think, what is the story? The story is he fell, he rolled down, there's a bear, he's gone so late. Why is he hiking? What's he doing? You know, I joke with him so many times. I'm like, my God, can't you just like sit and read a book, even though that's

Obviously not what I want him to do, but that's my anxiety and I notice it and he's safe enough and beautiful enough to allow me to like voice all my crazy mama bear thoughts. But some of that anxiety, it's natural, it stems from that, but we have to be able to discern what is the story I'm telling myself and is not true building more of my anxiety and what's the natural anxiety. Okay, he's going to climb a really crazy

I don't know, 800 meter, a thousand meter mountain and I'm nervous and he's not going with friends. He's doing this solo naturally. That's going to bring anxiety to me as a mom. What's the story? He's going to get eaten by a bear. He's going to fall. He won't reach out for the pepper spray fast enough. The bear will chase him. He doesn't know how to climb a tree. There's a difference with the stories making me more anxious and natural anxiety.

that will come out that is normal for people.

But the point being that there was a way to work through that anxiety that I was feeling, which is what happens to us in relationships. We feel we're being ignored. We feel we're not being responded to. They're late coming home. Their phone has died. There's a difference with starting to say, OK, is there a pattern to their behavior where they've cheated in the past or they've done things that are giving room to a lot of my thoughts or

On the other side, is there a story that I'm creating that isn't true and is making my anxiety worse? And I can just stop chasing them, stop calling them, give them some time. And I know that they will get back to me.

when they give you the short dry responses. You write out a whole message, you wake up in a really good mood or you go down and you hug them, you kiss them. You're in a great mood today and you get the, yeah, okay, love you back, thanks. And that just starts to trigger your anxiety and you don't even realize. You're now instinctively trying to bridge the gap back between the both of you.

somebody needing space, biggest trigger for someone that's anxiously attached. When they need space, you think they're gonna leave you. You think they'll realize something and not wanna be with you. In that space, what if they go find someone else? And this relates into something else, which is the amount of jealousy you feel. You are the person, I can see you, that checked out who their ex-girlfriends were.

You've scrolled and made sure you've sort of SWOT analyzed the fact that you're better and you're more beautiful and you're more amazing. You're more handsome. You're more talented. You know, the jealousy of who did they date? Why did they break up with them? There's an obsession about their ex. And sometimes you can also get obsessed with the person that they're working with. They're giving attention to you.

get really jealous, you think that you need to make them jealous back in order to want you, you sometimes feel I need to make them feel like they could lose me in order to want to hold onto me and realize what my value is because hey, there are a bunch of other people out there in line that are ready to take your space, whereas instead you're like, no, I only want you. I only want you to want me. I don't want all these other people and I don't know why I play these jealous games with them. I don't know why.

I can be jealous and I don't know why I try to make my partner jealous as well.

Another trigger is when there is conflict and no resolution. You cannot take being left in that uncertainty with all right. And these triggers are not to make you feel wrong and they're not like, they're not to make you feel you're, the learning about your triggers is not to make you feel you're doing something wrong. It's just such a beautiful insight into going right. If I can notice my triggers,

then I'm in charge of my responses to how I behave. So when there's no resolution, when conflict has happened, you don't know how to move forward with the relationship. You don't know how to move forward with your day. You don't know how to move forward with feeling better because how you feel is all reliant upon them. Your good day, your bad day, your ability to smile, to get out of bed and not feel depressed is solely upon

how they make you feel and how they show up in the relationship and what they give to you and how much they see you. And so when there's no resolution and conflict has taken place, it just has you feeling empty and sad and confused and this needs to happen today. I mean, we could have been fighting till five in the morning, but the resolution has to happen now. You're not comfortable with going to bed and

trusting we can wake up the next day and be in a better head space and a better space in our bodies to handle things. When you're anxiously attached and you've not noticed these patterns and triggers before, you will notice that your partner at some point is like, you can go on and on and on. This cycle goes on and on and on. You can talk forever. You want resolution until you feel this is the resolution that's going to make me feel better. And they're already drained.

from the fight, they're exhausted from the fight, they're depleted and they don't know how to just show up and give more.

And the last one I want to talk about, well there's so many, but the last one I want to talk about is when you're being told that you're too sensitive, you're very intense, and you're overreacting. Anxiously attached people can turn around and go, I will truly show you what overreacting can look like. Don't tell me I'm overreacting. Or they can go into a place of deep shame and deep guilt where they feel, did I overreact and I shouldn't have shouted, I shouldn't have screamed.

or I shouldn't have brought up the situation the way that I did in the place that I did. I'm already living on eggshells. It's so exhausting for my nervous system. I'm already terrified that anything I do makes you angry and you're already shouting and you're already angry. And then when you tell me I'm too sensitive, I end up feeling because I trust you. Your entire opinion is my life. My whole self-esteem is dependent on your opinion of me. So if I'm too sensitive,

there's something wrong with me. I need to be less sensitive. I need to overreact to things that hurt me less, even though we don't talk about, and I'll do it in another episode about you overreact because you're fed up of the situation not changing. You were not that person in the beginning. And when someone tells you you're too intense, it confuses you because as someone that's anxiously attached, you do love intensely. You love with everything. You want physical attention.

You want the touch, the hand holding, the hugs, the kisses. You want the great ⁓ daily sexual experiences. You want to explore sexually. You want to feel connected to them in every single way possible. And it's unbelievably painful when someone that you're in a relationship with will make you feel like your love language should be punished.

it shouldn't be expressed or it's being expressed in a way that makes you feel a lot of shame for having.

So you have to be able to remember when you're anxiously attached, it's not just what happens that hurts. It's also the meaning that your nervous system attaches to it, kept attaching to it, and it became this pattern to attach. That's the meaning to what is happening in that scenario.

And you have to be able to remember that not everything that feels like rejection is rejection. There's another human being who's not figured out their attachment style and needs to be able to work that. And it's not, it's not because you're not worthy or they don't love you. It's not because if they break up with you, something was wrong with you. You have to learn to just not take things personally and be able to see someone's behavior and the way that they act has everything to do with them.

their patterns, their belief, their blueprint. It isn't a lack on my side, especially when I'm going to start learning how to be more securely attached.

So this whole episode was really designed to get you to see what can trigger you, what are the core wounds that go on inside of you. And if I look at the core wounds and I look at the triggers, then I can start to just get a sense and understanding of who I am in a relationship and who I am with myself. But I very much want to end this episode with taking you through a very easy somatic exercise that

you can actually use right now because I don't want to leave you with, okay, great. just recognized all these things in myself and now I feel I don't know what to do when I'm being triggered or I can sense something is going on inside of me and I don't want to turn to them anymore to have to fill that gap for me. How do I fill it for myself first so that I'm regulated enough then to show up better for the relationship?

if you're feeling anxious right now or you're feeling anxious later on, I want you to come back to this pot. I'm going to market in YouTube. I'm going to market on whatever episode format you're listening to as a chapter Marcus. It's just really easy for you to just keep coming back to and being able to practice. So I want you to be able to close your eyes and take a really deep breath. And I want you to place one hand on your heart.

and I want you to place the other hand onto your belly. And I want you to take a really deep breath in through your nose.

Pause for four seconds once you breathe in.

and I want you to slowly exhale out through your mouth like you're fogging up a mirror.

Breathe in through your nose.

Hold it for four seconds. Breathe out from your mouth.

And I want you to do that one more time. Inhale.

old.

I want you to gently press your hand into your chest and I want you to feel the weight of your own hand, the weight of your own touch on your body and I want you to let your nervous system know I am here, I am safe.

and I don't have to earn love. I am already love.

notice if your breath slows down and say to yourself softly, even if they pull away, I don't have to abandon me.

Stay here for a few more seconds, breathing.

Feeling very grounded.

You are not broken. You are whole.

All the love that you want to give yourself is right here in this beautiful heart.

Right now, your body is so grateful for the attention, care and love. Feel deeply grounded. Take another deep breath in.

a simple breath exercise like this do. It engages the vagus nerve, its parasympathetic activation to restore the nervous system back into safety

most importantly will reorient the nervous system from feeling this deep panic to understanding it can internally ground itself and the very nervous system that we're going to fight and fight can also learn to be restored into the ventral state of calm.

groundedness of peace of ease within the body as well and you can do that for yourself.

It helps you replace emotional abandonment or perceived emotional abandonment with self-connection. So you're slowly learning to teach yourself that you can come back into your own body and you got yourself.

And most importantly, this is teaching you to build safety from within yourself, as opposed to always thinking that in order for you to feel safe, you've got to seek it externally. need validation externally. You need reassurance externally.

this is how you start to show your own body and train your own body and start to build new patterns and rewire your own conditioning that safety comes from deep within my body and myself first.

I just want to say thank you so much for joining me on this episode and please don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel Shazmeen Bank. Don't forget to follow on Instagram, Shazmeen Bank, follow me on TikTok, Shazmeen_bank and connect with me in the DMs. Come talk to me in the comment section of YouTube.

And don't forget, every Thursday is going to be an episode where I answer your questions. So write to me and it would be an honor to get to help you in depth. It would be an honor to help you with the questions. It would be an honor to help you with the questions that you have. And I want to say thank you.

For just the support that the last three months this podcast has gotten. The countries that we're in is phenomenal. I can't even believe it. And I just want to say thank you all for downloading, subscribing and following even on Spotify. It really means a lot to me. It's so encouraging and it really helps me eventually to be able to grow to get this podcast to a different level and

That's all going to be because we're building this incredible community together.

So thank you for listening to this episode of Love Better. I am your host Shazmeen Bank and you know that you can bank on me