EP 692: Secure Attachment is Your Birth Right

What if secure attachment is not a prize for only the people who had perfect childhoods? What if you don't have to become prettier or less needy or more successful or more and more healed in order to deserve it? What if beneath insecure attachment styles, that anxious pursuit or hyper independence, overthinking, fear, what if beneath all of that, there is already a part of you that knows how to love in a secure way.

And I think this is the most important takeaway.

If you only get one thing from this episode, I need you to know this, that you were never born with an insecure attachment style.

You were never born automatically believing that you had to perform for love or chase love or abandon yourself in order to keep love.

All of that was learned.

And remember, anything that is learned can be questioned, it can be updated, and it can be completely transformed.

When you were born, you were born with an attachment system.

You were not born with your predetermined attachment style.

I think sometimes we think, oh, I guess I'm just anxiously attached.

We start identifying it.

We start to say, oh, I'm an avoidant.

Oh, I'm an anxiously attached person.

No, you're born with an attachment system.

The design, the intention of that attachment system is secure attachment.

You were biologically equipped to seek proximity, protection, soothing, and connection from others.

And when you developed attachment insecurity, whether that's anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment, that simply developed as an adaptive strategy.

That was a learned coping skill, right? That developed because closeness was inconsistent.

It was unavailable.

Maybe it was even scary or it was emotionally costly, right? The insecure attachment patterns that you learned, this was not a character defect.

This was an intelligent adaptation that served you at the time, right? And the reality is, I just, I really want you to get this, your nervous system, your attachment system knows the truth biologically that you were never designed to to do life alone.

You were never designed to associate relationships with fear.

And I need you to hear me on this.

If you have an insecure attachment style, whether you're cognizant of it or not, you have associated relationships with fear.

And the goal in healing is not about, oh, I'm so healed that I don't need anyone, right? I'm so independent that I'm just fine on my own.

No, the goal is to return home to secure attachment, to become secure enough that, yes, you can need people and you can associate relationships with love and with support, with intimacy, with safe vulnerability, with joy, with connection, with partnership, with shared experiences.