Talking to Your Partner About Anxious Attachment: How to Start

**Episode 16 — Talking to Your Partner About Anxious Attachment: How to Start** *New to Steady and Connected? Episodes 1–15 set up the foundation — start there if you're new.* *You've decided to tell them. You've been deciding for about three weeks, and every time you get close to it, the sentence comes out wrong in your head. One version sounds like a complaint about them. The next one sounds like an apology for existing. A third one has the word attachment in it, and you can already see their expression change at a term like that.* There is a point people reach where they understand their own pattern and would like the person they live with to know about it — and every version of the sentence sounds like an accusation or an apology. This episode looks at why. Dr Narelle Duncan, Clinical Psychologist, sets out what the telling is actually for (and the three things it is not), five versions that reliably don't land, why timing does most of the work, and what tends to happen on the receiving side. It closes with one sentence you might say on a quiet day, with no request attached to it. **In this episode you'll learn:** - What the telling is actually for — and the three things it is not - Five versions that reliably don't land, and what each one asks of the other person - Why the moment you most want to explain it is the moment it can least be heard - What tends to happen on the receiving side, which is rarely what it looks like - How much of the weight is the privacy rather than the pattern **Chapter markers** 0:00 — Three Weeks of Deciding 1:06 — Welcome to Steady and Connected 1:49 — Where This Episode Sits 2:24 — What You're Actually Asking For 4:46 — Five Versions That Don't Land 6:57 — Why Timing Does Most of the Work 8:40 — Take the Free Attachment Quiz 9:09 — What Happens on Their Side 11:08 — Back to the Three Versions 12:23 — The Weight of Carrying It Privately 14:03 — The Practice: One True Sentence 15:17 — One True Sentence — Free Companion 15:44 — Coming Next 16:49 — Where to Go From Here **The one practice for this episode** — pick a calm moment, a drive, a Saturday, a time when nothing at all is going on between you, and say one true thing about what happens in your body, with no request attached to it. Then stop. There's a free companion guide for building your version of that sentence. → Free companion guide, *One True Sentence*: go.steadyandconnected.com.au/sentence — no email needed, just download it → Free five-minute attachment quiz 🤍: steadyandconnected.com.au If you'd like to keep going after the companion, the Anxious to Steady and Connected Workbook Bundle walks this same ground in depth — three workbooks and a Start Here guide, so what you learn here gets put into practice. If something in today's episode resonated: follow Steady and Connected wherever you listen, so the next episode lands automatically. And if someone came to mind while you were listening, share this episode with them. **About Dr Narelle Duncan** Clinical Psychologist with a PhD from Griffith University, drawing on 30 years of helping people understand themselves. Founder of Steady and Connected. Individual telehealth sessions available at getlifedirection.com. **Coming next:** the reaction and the response — the half-second the whole of this lives inside. *Steady and Connected provides psychoeducation content for general information purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual psychological assessment or treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.*