Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love

Faced with difficult emotions, the common response is to try to fix them as quickly as possible—whether this means medicating them away (with alcohol or prescription drugs) or simply putting on a brave face and pretending that everything is okay.

we soon learn which of our behaviors lead to our parents’ disappearances and begin to suppress those parts. With no thought involved at all, we can begin to stop ourselves from healthy expressions of joy or sadness or anger in the effort to keep our parents with us.

The busier and more distracted we are, and the more we continue to look for love outside of ourselves, the harder it will be to hear Little Me, let alone to call on the love and support of our Inner Nurturers.

It’s important that you take your time and go at your own pace as we begin this work together. There’s no goal to be reached, and no gold star for getting it right.

My gut would fall through the floor, as if something was being ripped out of me. Since our second brain, the one in our belly, is concerned with safety, this dramatic feeling was telling me that I felt in great danger of being abandoned. When we feel this way, rational thinking goes out the window and the protective fight-or-flight survival state k

“I am learning safe new ways to experience my inner world, which will allow me to experience true love.”

More and more, you will be able to respond consciously when big feelings are activated in your relationships rather than reacting from a sympathetic state.

they find something wrong when there is any lapse in idolizing them. This justifies them actively rejecting us.

It’s as though half of us, the intellectual part, is supported, while the other half, the emotional, relational part, is neglected.