[00:00:00] Welcome to Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. I am your host, Nina Badin. Today’s topic is one that comes up all the time, even though we don’t use the words to describe it, and that is anxious attachment in friendships. Whether you are anxiously attached as you approach your friendships versus whether you are securely attached.
To give you a sense of what I mean and what others mean when we say anxious attachment style, it looks something like this.
If a friend doesn’t text back two days, somebody who’s securely attached to friendships and relationships in general, might think she’s busy. I hope she’s okay. maybe they might worry for their friend because they’re securely attached themselves and their own relationships. And somebody who’s more anxiously attached would think She’s mad at me. What have I done?
An anxious attachment style can really get in the way of your friendships. You can see how in just that one example, assuming the person is mad at you [00:01:00] versus, wow, I hope my friend’s okay, is a very different way of facing the world And listen in doing this work for as long as I have, I hear from a lot of people who suffer with an anxious attachment style because it’s a harder way to go about your relationships. It is, this is why I called in Rebecca Stambridge, who is known as the friendship therapist
you can find her. on Instagram. at the at symbol, the Friendship Therapist. In addition to being a psychotherapist, she’s also a mindfulness teacher, and she helps people overcome low self-worth and anxious attachments so that they can feel secure and at ease in their platonic relationships. Rebecca lives near Manchester, England.
I love her accent. When we were done speaking, she said to me, are you from Canada? And I was like, Nope. I live in Minnesota and I said to her. Listening to you. I feel like I’m sitting in an episode of Bridgerton, and she’s like, no, I’m from Northern England, which sounds nothing like that. How wonderful that I get to have this podcast and speak to people about [00:02:00] friendship from all over the world.
Nina: Rebecca, welcome to Dear Nina.
Rebecca: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m really excited.
Nina: before we dive even more into anxious attachment theory. What inspired you in your work to focus on this area so much friendship and anxious attachment.
Rebecca: A lot of it comes from personal experience primarily . I experienced a lot of struggles with friendship through my teens and twenties and thirties as well, actually, and didn’t know why I had these patterns that meant that I was pulling friends towards me wanting to be friends with people, anxiously kind of like, wanting to get close to certain people.
But then, then I had certain patterns that meant that I was them pushing them away. And I, and I didn’t know why just found friendship, stressful and struggled to navigate them and thought that I was the only one. I didn’t know anything about it. I thought I was defective, that there was something wrong with me.
And then when I trained to be a therapist, I [00:03:00] learned all about attachment styles and low self-worth. Then all of a sudden I felt like I was reading about myself. Although a lot of it applied to romantic relationships, I thought, oh my God, this is exactly what I’m like in friendships. , It helped make a lot of sense for me.
It made sense of my experience. And then when I qualified as a therapist, and I listened to clients, I realized that other people felt the same. It maybe didn’t manifest exactly how, my attachment pattern did, but there was a lot of people feeling very anxious about their friendships and, that they were the only one and, and didn’t understand it.
So I realized that, there was not a lot of information about this out there. And when I started to promote my business, write blogs and do content on social media, I realized that anytime I wrote about friendships, I just got a huge, response and identified that actually this is something that I feel needs more education about.
We need to be talking about anxious attachments and friendships just as much as we do in, in romantic [00:04:00] relationships. Anxiety and friendships. Becomes the thing that I work with the most now.
Nina: That makes sense. trust me, I see a lot of it too come my direction, but I’m not a therapist and so I was thrilled to see your work out there and I knew I wanted to speak to you on the show. I would love to keep this at first really basic, what exactly is anxious attachment?
Rebecca: Well, anxious attachment really just describes how we relate to other people close to us, just in general. So it would obviously show up in romantic relationships, but other close, connections and it’s defined by when I’m relating to this person,
do I trust that they will continue to be available to me and that I’m good enough for that person to continue to be available to me? And if you’re securely attached, you just have a basic sense of, I don’t need to try that hard. This person will be available to me anyway. But if anxiously attached, it’s completely different.
You know, that faith and that trust and that [00:05:00] expectation that people will stick around, that they’ll care about you, that they love you and they think that you’re good enough, that trust just isn’t there as much and it affects, a lot of what goes on internally, but also affects externally as well.
So in terms of how it would show up internally, one of the biggest signs is chronic overthinking. we all overthink, don’t we? To a certain extent. I think overthinking is a feature of, modern life we can’t help automatically wonder what’s happening to a friend.
If a friend’s being a bit distant, there’ll be a part of us that may wonder about that, think about that, and try and make sense of it. But if you’re anxiously attached, the overthinking is, all consuming. it will dominate everything. You can’t stop thinking about it, even if you want to, you know, a lot of my clients have a sense of just almost having a battle with their, mind. They can’t, stop thinking about this even if they want to. So all your attention is focused on that particular friend or, or friendships in general, but also it’s the [00:06:00] types of thoughts that you have as well.
So if you’re anxiously attached, you will automatically assume the worst. And that is a definite, sign a common feature of it. So if someone’s been a bit distant or they haven’t replied, your mind is gonna go to, they’re mad at me. they’ve gone off me. They don’t value me. They don’t care about me.
There isn’t as much capacity to just take a step back and have some perspective over other reasons. The mind will automatically think that it knows, think that it can mind read, and it will always be assuming the worst. Someone will feel a sense of dread in the chest, muscles will be tense, you’ll feel quite on edge. You might not be able to sleep , or focus on work. So there’s a lot of kind of mind and body sensations going on that, represent, internal anxiety, but then externally we’re looking at the behavior as well.
You know, what do those thoughts and feelings make a person do differently? you’re more likely to be, texting your friend even more. Asking for reassurance is the common one, but even not even [00:07:00] directly asking for reassurance. So subtly just trying to kind of get some contact from them by, texting them more, suggesting you meet up more.
So it’s things that someone is doing to bring that person close to them. Also things that someone is doing to maintain that closeness. So if someone’s distant, then there’s a feeling of unsafety, you’re trying to pull that person back, but you’re probably also engaging in lots of things to maintain the relationship.
texting back really quickly, dropping everything as soon as someone invites you anywhere pleasing, for fawning obviously pleasing, adapting your personality to be what you think that person wants. So a lot of energy is going into , trying to stop the person from leaving, as well as pulling them close. If you think there’s a sign that they might be going a bit distant.
Nina: It is such a familiar pattern. I know exactly what you’re describing. There have been times in my life I have felt that way too. a lot of the people who write to me, whether it’s in my inbox, [00:08:00] through the anonymous form or in my Facebook group, there’s a lot of discussion that amounts to exactly what you’re talking about.
Even though no one uses the term, I’m feeling anxious about this relationship. That is what is presenting. And sometimes there’s a lot of confusion about, somebody says they wanna get together, but they didn’t ask an exact plan. Like if someone says oh hey, you should call me next time you’re going to that place.
The person writing to me doesn’t always know, does that person really wanna get together? and they’re not sure how to proceed next, because I think people are aware that they might not wanna seem like they’re anxious about the relationship, and so they don’t wanna invite the person where sometimes I would say not as a therapist, just as person who’s been studying friendship for a long time.
Why don’t you say, I’m going to this place next Tuesday. Do you wanna come? sometimes we don’t know if someone’s interested in being friends, unless we actually issue a real invitation instead of doing all these other games in a way to assess the [00:09:00] situation. I’m just curious what you think about that.
Rebecca: well, that just shows you another way that anxiety is showing up in that in friendships, isn’t it? So sometimes an anxious attachment can make someone that. Opposite. They’re more likely to rush into friendships and invite someone to something too soon but you’re right. Also, the anxiety can make someone overthink so much that they’re waiting for absolute black and white reassurances that somebody definitely wants to be friends. And then That’s holding them back, isn’t it? and again, I suppose that, comes down to , if you’re anxiously attached, you have a negative bias in how you interpret that.
If It seems a bit vague or a bit non-committal. They might genuinely be inviting you, it’s how they, word it. Then someone who’s anxiously attached will just assume, oh, that person doesn’t want me to go. and that fear of rejection.
I wanna avoid rejection. So I’m gonna, hold back. But then that just reinforces that feeling of rejection, because you’re not establishing those [00:10:00] connections. Overcoming that fear of rejection can help to overcome the anxiety, but it becomes a vicious, cycle,
Nina: do you find that it’s coming from childhood experiences, relationships with parents and siblings? Can you talk about that?
Rebecca: A lot of things can cause this anxiety, this lack of confidence and anxiety in friendships. Loads of things can cause it including a DHD as well.
You know, it’s important that we recognize that it isn’t just about childhood because we don’t want people to come away thinking, well, if I’m anxiously attached, I must have had terrible parents. so it’s important to recognize that lots of things , can shape whether or not you feel confident in friendships, however.
If we are looking purely at attachments and people wanna understand more about that, then we really are looking at the quality of the early relationships. And it is really interesting sort of how nature has, created this perfect system where we, we’ve evolved to make sure that human beings have their needs met so that we’ve survived [00:11:00] as a species.
So obviously babies, human babies are completely dependent on their parents to survive, unlike other animals that can fend for themselves sooner. Babies and then children will be completely dependent on, parents.
So babies will if they have a need such as, being hungry or being cold, or just needing a sense of protection and closeness. A baby will start to cry when it notices a need. And that crying alerts the carer, that’s the attachment behavior. it’s attempt is to get the attention of, the carer.
And then when it does get that attention and the, and the carer and the baby are in close proximity. oxytocin is produced , for both parties and oxytocin is the love chemical. So it feels really good. And that’s where bonding comes from, from parents to baby.
We bond because we both feel oxytocin, so it’s very clever in a way because, we learn to associate love with survival. then an absence of love [00:12:00] is an absence of my needs being met and feeling loved makes us feel like we’re in danger.
So it’s clever from a survival point of view, but it obviously causes lots and lots of problems in all sorts of, relationships. and then if a baby isn’t getting their needs met, so if, for example, a carer is absent for long periods, doesn’t meet the needs quickly enough isn’t very good at soothing, isn’t confident or, maybe just completely unavailable then it makes sense the cortisol will be released and cortisol is the stress hormone, which signals to a baby that they’re in danger. So, all about the fight and flight system. the body will be flooded with fight and flight chemicals. The heart will be beating faster, muscles tense, all those kind of feelings.
And a baby will only stop being distressed when that contact is made. If it’s not available, a baby is just in that state of stress for longer. The threat system that’s producing the cortisol will learn to be bigger. It will learn this needs to be more active. I need to be more on guard and if a carer does [00:13:00] come, then I don’t trust that it’s gonna stick around. It might drop me very quickly.
So here you’ve got two differences in how that systems develop. If there’s inconsistency or, neglect, then a baby won’t learn as well how to activate their own soothing system and won’t learn that actually I can be soothed and then my carer can go and I trust that it’s gonna go away against, I can still say in soothing, whereas if it’s more inconsistent, it’s going to be activated.
Much more quickly and much more readily, so, yeah. Those needs from childhood to feel loved. And have that proximity occurs the older that a child gets. But then it, takes on different forms. It’s obviously not then about the physical needs. It’s more about am I listened to? Am I complimented? Am I supported?
Do I feel ashamed? Do I feel rejected? The child nervous system will remember those kind of interactions and is always on guard for what can I do to get love from my parents. It’s always trying to secure more love from their parents to [00:14:00] maintain survival. As a child, how can I adapt?
How can I please my parents in order to keep getting my needs met? And that becomes a blueprint then it’s known as the internal working model in attachment theory, that’s how we then expect all of our relationships to be.
It gets embedded in the nervous system. We learn are people gonna stick around? Will they meet my needs? Am I good enough? Can I rely on people? Can I feel calm in between seeing people because I know that they’re going to come back. Ends up affecting quite a lot.
Nina: And is that a pattern you see in your own clients that it’s stemming from childhood, or are there other reasons that somebody might come see you? And, an example might be just to give people something really concrete who don’t experience this. Although if you do experience this, you know exactly what we’re talking about without us explaining it.
Let’s say a friend cancels plans, how might a securely attached person react to that versus an anxiously attached person?
Rebecca: If you’re secure, you’re probably gonna be [00:15:00] disappointed but you don’t take it personally. You just assume I know my friend cares about me, and I know they wouldn’t cancel unless there’s a good reason. So I’ll just trust I’m gonna see them again when they’re ready.
They must be busy. There’s an ability to not take it personally. taking things personally is a really big part of insecure attachment. we can’t help it. there’s a phrase vulnerable self-centeredness. You know, not self-centered in the normal use of the phrase, but it’s self-centered in that we think everything’s about us.
As someone cancels it must be ‘ because they don’t care. They don’t want to be friends with me. And then because we take it personally, there’ll, be a sense of that doesn’t feel safe, that distance and that rejection is making me feel really unsafe.
It’s likely to trigger a lot of that overthinking. What have I done to them? Did I say something last time? So we’re really trying to overthink to make sense of the behavior so that we can fix it. In order to improve next time when there might not have been a problem in the first place.
Nina: I think what [00:16:00] people don’t realize sometimes is that if your fear is that the friend’s upset with you, that there is some, you know, new distance in this friendship that maybe didn’t exist before the attempt to fix it could create more distance because now you’re overly texting you’re overly making sure that the friend’s not upset.
And then what was actually fine? It had nothing to do with you. It can turn into, I hate to give a worst case scenario, but it can turn into the other friend being like, enough, the attempt to get reassurance from the friend can become exhausting for the person who has to constantly give reassurance.
Rebecca: Absolutely. and there’s a balance, isn’t there I think between healthy communication in friendships and healthy needs, saying to your friend, I’m disappointed. This is the third time you’ve canceled. Come on. You know, it is important to feel s.
Express yourself. but ideally, that’s coming from a secure base. That’s coming from a place of, I feel secure in this friendship so that I know that the person isn’t doing [00:17:00] this because they don’t care, but they are messing me around a bit now, so I, because I feel secure, I’m gonna express this. That’s totally different to a strong reaction from fear.
And it being quite an automatic assumption that someone is doing this because they’re not treating the friend very well. so if you are viewing the situation from that perspective that will completely change how you communicate. You may communicate with blame, perhaps with making that person feel guilty with making demands on the friendship and accusing them of not caring and that kind of thing.
It’s important in friendships that we, do want to have our needs met by friends, but if we’re putting too much pressure on a friend to meet our needs because we feel anxious and because we feel rejected, then it is putting pressure on that friendship.
You want the friend to get rid of your anxiety and soothe you. And that’s bound to put a strain and that it’s understandable in [00:18:00] those circumstances where a friend may, find that suffocating perhaps then want more space, which creates a vicious cycle. Someone is anxiously attached may end up creating the very thing that they’re scared of, which is people backing off from them and losing friends.
Nina: we talked a little bit just now that we should have some expectations of our friends, so that’s normal.
You absolutely should be able to expect that a friend will be there for you most of the time. We will have to cancel sometimes. We will be late sometimes. We will take a long time to text back. That’s all, normal human behavior when most of us are managing multiple friendships and other relationships. Possibly have kids or parents we’re taking care of, romantic partners. There’s jobs. Each friendship is just one of the parts of our life. I think what would be helpful to talk about is, what is a healthy amount of expectation and need of a friend, and what is asking too much really?
Rebecca: it’s such an important [00:19:00] question, isn’t it? And I think it’s in some ways quite a very complex picture and can be quite controversial in a way because you know, there is a lot of information online about, your friend should match your energy. You shouldn’t have one-sided friendships,
Nina: so glad you’re bringing this up. Yes,
Rebecca: if your friend doesn’t value you, that’s not a friendship. You should walk away. it’s a lot more nuance than that.
Nina: Rebecca, I try to be a voice of reason out there, in my own friendship content where I am a big proponent of. you should have your own way of being and your own energy, and you don’t need to match other people. If somebody is not doing as much for you, but you have a certain way you like to show up in the world, I don’t say do the lowest common denominator. I’m like, you show up as you. My point is I see so much of that online and people are all about you should only do for them what they’re doing for you.
Like, no, you lead the way, you be the leader. why do we want people to be followers? Anyway, I’ll let you talk.
Rebecca: , I could not agree more. It is a whole other episode that isn’t it [00:20:00] one-sided friendships and I, think something I’m really learning myself and how I show up to friendships and the expectations I have and how I can, misinterpret things. Is that we all show up differently. Absolutely. Because we’re all different. some people, planners. Some people are really organized. They’re the instigators. They’re the person that will reach out and say, Hey, do you wanna do this? Or, I’ve seen this play in three months time. Do you wanna go there? And that’s how you are and that’s fantastic and you should keep doing that.
And then you’ll have a friend who just goes with the flow, who lives in the moment, who’s really last minute, who will never think to reach out and say to you, do you wanna go to this thing? Because they’re not thinking ahead enough. It is like type A type B and yeah, , we can sort of, read that and think they’re not making as much effort. I need to walk away from that friendship. And will be a shame, wouldn’t it?
Nina: Yeah, and people are like giving up friendships that don’t need to be given up because it’s actually not personal. That person didn’t reach out and get tickets to a show for any of their friends. It’s not personal to you, [00:21:00] but depending on how you feel secure or insecure in the world, it can be taken personally I just want people to hear the message that I say all the time, but it’s more powerful coming from you as a psychotherapist. It really is probably not personal.
Rebecca: I would say 90, 95% of the time it isn’t, personal. because we have these negative bias our mind does not know the difference between a thought and reality. So if your mind is created a thought, which is that friend doesn’t care about me, it will feel real. You’ll feel rejected and you’ll feel physical pain.
So it’s hard to know the difference, unless you are a therapist or you are trained in mindful self-compassion, you aren’t gonna know the difference. so it is understandable why this is confusing ’cause our mind and our body is built to assume the worst and believe those kind of thoughts.
Most of the time, people, aren’t doing what our mind is telling us they’re doing. They’re just getting on with their lives and maybe being a bit thoughtless. But in terms of healthy need and, an unhealthy need. I mean, I suppose, it is important isn’t it, to [00:22:00] state that we still should have good quality friendships. we shouldn’t be advocating expect nothing, and being a friend with someone who clearly is not putting any effort in. like to think about it as, friend should be there for the highs and the low.
They should be there when you need them because you’re going through a difficult time. And if a friend can’t be there for you in those times or a certain history of not being available for you to show support, that’s probably a bit of a red flag. And in the highs, they should be there for you when you’ve celebrate birthdays and good times.
So highs and lows is a good way of thinking about it. And quality over quantity, I personally think is more important. And then anything in between is very subjective. one person may have needs healthy needs in a friendship, but to see someone a lot, perhaps they’re not in a relationship, they’re very sociable.
They like doing things with other people, so they have a healthy need to see a friend a lot. Whereas they may have a friendship with someone who is in a committed relationship, perhaps isn’t a sociable, and they have less needs, [00:23:00] that’s just as healthy. But the two people may have, different needs and sometimes that can obviously cause a problem.
Where it might be an unhealthy need, and this is, the thing to look out for that we’ve sort of touched on earlier, is if your needs are so high, because you are expecting a friend to get rid of anxiety, that’s one of the biggest things to look out for. So if you want to see your friend frequently, not because you are just sociable and you like doing, things often with a friend, but because you feel anxious
if they don’t want to see you because you’re assuming the worst, and therefore you need to see them frequently to feel reassured, I would say that’s an unhealthy need, and if that continues, it’s likely to put pressure on the friendship because you may be expecting more than that person can give because it is coming from a place of unmet need.
Rather than a healthy friendship. Or you may have someone who just wants their friend to reply more quickly. Again, and that’s because of anxiety. So I think anything where you are trying to [00:24:00] control the person to soothe yourself is probably, an unhealthy need. or you probably don’t realize that you are doing it, but you’re kind of trying to manipulate that person’s behavior ’cause that makes you feel okay rather than, being able to feel okay regardless of what your friend is doing.
Nina: Oh, that really makes sense to me. Yes. you need to learn to self-soothe instead of needing the friend to soothe that anxiety. And that’s different than wanting a friend to show up for you, like you said, and hard times and celebrating times. those are all absolutely normal expectations to have of a friendship.
That’s what a friendship is. neither of us are out there advocating that you should just never need your friend to do anything for you, and you should just be happy with any scraps you get. of course not. but coming Coming at it from a sense of fear. if you don’t see this person enough or hear from this person enough, then you are gonna be anxious and, you need them to quell that anxiety that would be asking for, too much.
So I think we should move on to [00:25:00] solutions I know it’s not so simple, people need to come see you, week after week after week after week for years to deal with it. But some of the tools that people could be thinking about maybe talking to their own therapists about I’m hoping that if somebody does recognize themselves, they can look for some tools.
Rebecca: definitely. and you’re right, it, it depend on the extent of the insecure attachment. Sometimes therapy is ultimately gonna be the most helpful thing. There is a school of thought and lots of evidence that the best way to heal an insecure attachment pattern is, with a secure relationship with a therapist, for example.
So there will always be an important place for that. But I’m a massive advocate in being able to learn evidence-based. ’cause I, this is probably mainly what I did really. Learn really effective tools to manage how you feel in those situations and, tool that I teach, one-to-one. And also my courses is mindful self-compassion, mindfulness, it’s based on Buddhism, so it’s thousands of years old.
It’s also very much at the cutting edge of a lot of [00:26:00] psychological interventions now. and the beauty of it is that you can do it yourself. You can learn this through meditations, through regular practices, that kind of thing. So the mindful part , it’s all about trying to turn a little bit more inward towards yourself.
when we’re anxious about a friend. So for example, if we’re spiraling at like, what in the morning ’cause a friend hasn’t replied, we may not realize it, but , we are very maybe aware of the thoughts and feelings, but we’re also kind of, looking outwards in a way.
We’re trying to get rid of these thoughts and feelings. We don’t wanna feel anxious. We want to push them away. we are reacting to them with a sense of aversion. And we’re also thinking a lot about the friend. All our attention is focused on the situation. So we’re focused kind of outwards, what can I do to fix this?
What have I done wrong? That is obviously creating a, vicious cycle. So with mindful self-compassion, what you can learn is firstly to turn inwards. is the noticing. It’s about saying, ah, I’m feeling like this right now. I’m [00:27:00] feeling anxious. So we, name it to tame it is quite a common phrase that, gets used these days with emotional regulation.
So noticing this, being willing to turn towards it and recognize I’m being triggered. I’m feeling rejected and we may not want to turn towards that ’cause It’s difficult, but we can just start getting used to naming our patterns, naming our reactions. And then the next part, which is really, really powerful, is then being curious about where we feel this and allowing it to be there. And this is so crucial in not needing our friend to get rid of our anxiety because if we can learn to tolerate that feeling and allow it to be there primarily in the body, we’ve got rid of the need for a friend to get rid of that feeling because we are learning to be with it.
And that is so important when it comes to learning how to overcome our automatic reactions with anxious attachment is tolerance. I’ve got this [00:28:00] horrible feeling in my chest of rejection, and the only thing that will get rid of it is if my friend texts to me. If we can learn to tolerate that feeling and allow it to be there, and know, actually this is an uncomfortable feeling, but I can feel safe within myself whilst it’s happening, then that really does make a big difference to, needing that person to get rid of that feeling.
Nina: That’s so powerful.
Rebecca: Yeah. and that skill you can learn that through mindfulness courses. Mindfulness teaches, it’s all about noticing the feeling. A lot of people think mindfulness is about clearing your mind of thoughts and being all zen and meditating. Uh, and actually it’s a lot more than that. It’s all about being nonjudgmental towards difficult feelings and, Useful in this circumstance,
Nina: So it’s sitting with the feeling and instead of trying to push it away, it’s just accepting, I don’t mean just like it’s so easy. I know it takes a lot of practice. It’s accepting I feel anxious right now Name it to tame it.
Rebecca: Yeah, I’m being curious. I mean, when I started learning this, I found it incredibly [00:29:00] powerful. you might need some support to learn to do this, someone can give it a go themselves. You find the discomfort in the body.
For example, availing of rejection tends to, if there’s like a punch in the gut or a knot in the stomach, we don’t wanna feel that. But we can be curious about it, and we find it like, where is it in the body? what shape is it? what temperature is it? you can’t be scared of something that you’re curious about. That’s where the acceptance comes in. You are accepting the physical sensations that you associate with that emotion.
Nina: that’s so helpful. Okay, and then, so moving towards self-compassion.
Rebecca: so the compassionate part is offering care to that part. mindfulness of compassion are like two sides of, Tara Black calls it two wings of, a dove, actually, which, is nice. they really overlap. And the compassionate part would start with something like, you know what, I’m feeling like this and I can’t help it.
I am not choosing to be anxious. I’m not , choosing to be needy or to be upset about this. You are reducing that self-criticism because we nearly always go down to self-criticism. Why am [00:30:00] I like this? we need to stop being like this. There’s something wrong with me.
Compassion. We say, oh, okay, this is difficult. I don’t like that i’m reacting like this, but I cannot help it. This is just how I’m feeling in the moment. So you offer yourself empathy and a sense of being nonjudgmental towards yourself. once you do that, these three key steps, you’re activating your own soothing system.
You go from responding to a situation from threat. And you start to be able to respond to it from soothing, and then you’re more likely to get different perspectives. You’re more likely to say, well, okay, now I’m feeling a bit calmer. I’ve validated my feelings. Maybe there’s a different way I can look at this, maybe they are just busy, there’s loads of evidence that my friend cares about me.
Why am I just taking this one example? And, taking this personally, so because we’ve activated the soothing system, we’re more likely to be able to develop different perspectives and then believe those perspectives rather than try to reframe too soon. When we’re really, really anxious [00:31:00] and we basically just have a battle with our thoughts in our heads.
If we go down the mindful compassion route, we get these different perspectives and we are more likely to be able to take it on board. Or it might not be about different perspectives. It might just be about, well, what do I need? it’s okay. you are cared for.
You are good enough, So it is tapping into that need that is there, but trying to meet it yourself with soothing, compassionate words rather than what we know is happening rather than trying to get that need met externally. you are able to meet that need yourself through these techniques.
Nina: I think that’s so positive. I love the message that you can come into the world for any number of reasons with a anxiously attached nature and you can work with it. You can have these tools to help yourself show up in the world with more security, taught through self-talk in a way, and through that self-compassion and mindfulness,
Rebecca: it’s useful to see if this is a skill that you can learn, you know, your, for whatever reason, your [00:32:00] threat system has become overactive and your soothing system is underactive. , And these are muscles in the brain, parts of the brain that we can build through a petition of these skills.
So the more you practice it, the bigger our soothing system is likely to get and the more in check the threat system will be. It’s useful to say that sometimes we can’t entirely get rid of our anxious attachment style. We are always gonna find friendship stressful.
I still do. You know, and I’ll say that I’ve been working on this for a long time and I still have certain friends that will trigger these, styles in me still.
Nina: the last thing I want to talk about is exactly that, what you just said. you can work on these skills and for the most part come to your friendships with more balance in terms of, I like what you said, the threat system versus the soothing system.
bring the threat feeling down and the soothing skills up, but still there might be that particular person. I think a lot of us have that you have one or two people that I know the common word now [00:33:00] is trigger my teenagers use it all the time, and they get it from TikTok they overuse it. But anyway truly in the true sense of the word, a certain person could trigger that anxiety in you where other people don’t. What’s happening there?
Rebecca: and I think that’s actually, as you said, it’s, very common, really. And when I first started doing this work, I think I expected I’d be working more on patterns in general with people, people who were just anxiously attached with lots of their friends. And, and I found that what.
The people that reached out to me the most, well, not the most, but probably just as much were one particular friend that they were feeling really anxious about that triggered their attachment style. And that makes perfect sense I really relate to that as well. And it’s because our attachment style is triggered by the behavior of someone else.
it’s nearly always about what’s that person doing. , And if someone is highly anxiously attached, then they’re probably going to react to nearly all behaviors. But if you have some anxious attachments, uh, perhaps, or you’re leaning towards that, that anxious attachment style, Then it can be triggered with [00:34:00] some friends and not others. I think what’s quite interesting is it can be like a secure friend they’re secure so they don’t feel they have to text back that much. ’cause they’re comfortable in their friendships. They feel that they can cancel and they know that they won’t lose you as a friend because they’re secure.
So ironically, sometimes someone who’s really secure in a friendship can trigger our anxious attachment style because of how we interpret that and it doesn’t mirror our behavior. What we are doing, because we are anxiously attached, is we are texting all the time. We always reply, we always show up because we care about that person.
So if the other person isn’t doing that, then there’s any one explanation to the anxiously attached mind is that, well, it must mean they don’t care and it isn’t, it can be that they’re. Possibly secure. ironically, if you’ve got a friend with, someone else who’s slightly anxiously attached, you may find that you don’t trigger each other as much.
’cause you’re both texting quickly, you’re mirroring each other’s behavior. Whereas someone who’s secure might confuse someone who’s anxious. there’s gonna be other times [00:35:00] when someone just is actually genuinely just very inconsistent. They may be just unreliable. A flaky friend.
Nina: We should pause for a second to just say there is such a thing as a person who is not treating you well. it isn’t always your imagination. This is what’s confusing to people of course, right? Sometimes it’s just that the person, like you said, is very secure and living their regular life and they do care about you and they do show up most of the time and you’re just hyperfocused on the couple of times they didn’t.
And then there really are times when somebody is truly. Not that nice to you. not just canceling or not replying back, but they say stuff that’s overly harsh and insensitive. there is a world in which sometimes it’s not a good match for a friendship. we don’t have to be friends.
It’s so funny, several of my episodes have ended this way. I don’t know what’s going on with me lately, but I do come to the conclusion that people need to hear sometimes that we don’t have to make every friendship work under all circumstances. Sometimes it really is not a good match. Sometimes this person actually shouldn’t be your friend.
It’s hard to know. ’cause I [00:36:00] don’t like people to just be canceling their friendships all over the place. ’cause I don’t think that’s a good idea. But you also don’t have to put up with nonstop bad behavior. It’s just that we have to know the difference between what’s coming from our own anxiety and what’s actually ill treatment.
Rebecca: and you know, I think that’s one of the reasons why it makes this whole thing so hard. ‘ cause you don’t necessarily know and you’re tying yourself up in knots thinking is this person a bad friend or are they just. A bit unreliable. I think we need to look at is this a one off? Or is this, a long term pattern? How do I feel when I’m around this person? am I just taking one particular example and blowing up into a pattern, but really, am I overlooking something?
And again, one of the problems with anxious attachments is you may be more likely to cling to that friend so it’s ironic. if you’re anxiously attached, you’re more likely to assume that someone is treating you badly, but you’re also more likely to stay with a friend that’s treating you badly ’cause you might not think you’re worth more.
So you can clinging to poor friendships and you may feel guilty for ending a [00:37:00] friendship because of all the same kind of, patterns. Sometimes working on active detachment is about having the courage to walk away from friendships that don’t serve us. And knowing we’ll be okay, we’ll meet other friends and I don’t need to be friends with them.
Nina: I could see how being anxiously attached would make you stay in a friendship longer than you should for that fear of, well, this person, actually knows me and has been around, and what if it’s so hard to make a new close friend, or there’s no such thing as a new old friend. So, you know, we might hold onto something longer than we should. Okay. Rebecca, we have to wrap up. Is there anything you wanna leave our listeners with at the end here?
Rebecca: The ultimate message to take away from this is just not to be ashamed about any struggles that you’re having with friendship. If you feel that you are anxiously attached or you, overthink your friendships a lot and you don’t know why.
It’s recognizing you’re not defective it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It’s actually a lot more common than you think. And the problem is that we don’t talk about it enough, attachment styles have entered the [00:38:00] mainstream in romantic relationships.
We talk about the clingy partner, the partner with trust issues . But then if we’re having problems in friendship who can we talk to? ’cause we can’t talk to our friends about it. So we tend to carry around this shame and that makes it worse.
So not only are we feeling anxiously attached or we, are feeling insecure with our friends, we also feel ashamed because we, are feeling that way. So that’s a kind of big part of this is first of all, just recognizing there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a lot more common than you think. Being able to be more aware of your patterns will enable you to start working on this because you are understanding why it’s happening rather than thinking it’s just you. that it means there’s something wrong with you.
Nina: That’s beautiful and very hopeful, I’m sure, listeners will have more episodes on, this topic. I mean, I’ve had several, but not all dedicated in one episode to anxious attachment. So thank you for breaking it down for us, Rebecca. I’ll have in the show notes where everybody can find you.
Rebecca: Thanks for having me. I’ve really [00:39:00] enjoyed it. Bye now.
Nina: You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at DearNinaFriendship. If you have anonymous questions you want to ask, you can do that in the Facebook group at DearNinaTheGroup, or there is an anonymous form, which you can find in the show notes, and I just might use that in my newsletter at dearnina.substack.com. Those answers are always a lot more intricate and thorough. But if you want other people’s opinions, I would put that question in the Facebook group.
See you next week when our friendships are going well. We are happier all around
