It’s Sunday afternoon and I was beginning to think about my schedule for Monday. I remembered my friend always goes to the gym Monday mornings and thought I’d love to join her. Picking up my phone I texted: Would you like a ride to the gym tomorrow cuz I’m planning to go. I hit send. Bam! It was done. 5 seconds. My eyes got big and I was suddenly hit with the significant contrast of those 5 seconds to the previous 3+ decades of my life. I thought about how different that 5-second process was even a year ago. When did it change and how I did I not notice?
I have a disorganized attachment style – made up of 2 other styles. This means that I can be incredibly dismissive with people and no longer feel I need them in my life (this piece is the dismissive-avoidant attachment)…yet with others I latch on so tightly it feels like I will die if I cannot sustain this relationship (the anxious ambivalent attachment piece). With this particular friend, like with many key others in my past, the anxious ambivalent style arises with a force from within so strong, it’s nearly impossible to act in a way that does not align with this attachment style.
That 5 seconds to have the thought and hit send on my text made me realize my trauma strategies, the extreme ones that come with my attachment style, are finally becoming more relaxed and flexible.
This is how sending that text would have played out just a year or two ago…
Saturday: The constant emotion inside makes me feel panicked. Good or bad, tolerating any emotion is too much – anxiety hits and it just feels like panic. I don’t question it…don’t even notice that my body is battling against any emotion. I shove the emotions away, push them down, stuff them tightly inside…and if there are times I cannot…usually because my husband is being intense, or we are fighting, or my kids needs feel like too much, or simply my mind is fighting to avoid memories…any of it feels too distressing and causes my mind to quickly switch to what feels safe – like a chance to spend time with my friend.
Before this friend there were others. I can see each face. Each strong attachment in my life. Usually female, my husband and one male coworker being the exception. Usually older than me. Always someone I viewed as more intelligent, wiser. Only one strong attachment at a time.
Each lasted for years but as I realized each individual could not rescue me from the intense emotions that overwhelmed me, could not calm my mind’s rigid and complicated “strategies” that were suffocating me, could not alleviate the desperation that left me considering suicide…I would eventually give up on each relationship and spend several years avoiding new friendships before the cycle happened again. For over 3 decades this has been my cycle. Again and again and again. This is what it’s like to have an anxious attachment style.
My nervous system craves the co-regulation my friend can provide. Throughout my day my mind latches onto whatever is the next opportunity for help with this regulation…meaning be near my friend. I immediately want to reach out to her and get reassurance of when I will see her next but then I am filled with anger at myself for this need. I want to at least send q quick text. Shame hits me hard for needing her. I think about it until evening when it is finally appropriate to have several glasses of wine so that I DON’T think about it. In my mind, going to bed WITHOUT reaching out to my friend = a beautiful success! That’s always the goal…even if it comes with the price of poor sleep, a headache in the morning, and increased anxiety.
A powerful voice inside me is saying: Good job! You did it! At least you didn’t embarrass yourself! At least nobody knows the REAL you. That would be horrible.
Sunday morning – My mind is still attacking…needing to know whether I can see her in the morning …my body craving at least a brief amount of time together to feel grounded. My mind has learned that even a little bit of time is sufficient to become fairly regulated again until the next attack of emotions surfaces…and the miserable dysregulation to my nervous system that will surely come.
The voice inside: Don’t worry so much. You’ll be fine on your own. Act like you don’t care. Act like you don’t need her. You don’t need anyone! Mostly DON’T BE TOO MUCH!
I go to church with my family and I do my best to shift my mind to God, but instead my mind is exploring the simplest way to word a text message to make it sound like it’s no big deal if we don’t get together tomorrow.
Sunday afternoon – My heart is racing. There is a battle being waged inside me. I don’t want to send the text, but I need the battle to end. My mind is relentless and I can’t focus. I pick up the phone and I text
Hey girl – I can pick you up for the gym tomorrow if you want, if not no big deal!
Tears come to my eyes and I erase it and throw my phone down. This process repeats at least 5 times over the next few hours, wording the text differently each time.
You are so stupid! You are childish! You are dramatic! You are too damn much for anyone!
Sunday evening: I can’t take it any longer, my ruthless brain won’t let me rest. I go ahead and send the text and then the tears come because I’m ashamed of who I turned out to be.
But Today it is Different…
…there was no long process that dragged out for 2 days just to send a text. Not even a 2-hour process like it was 6 months ago. Today it was 5 seconds. The realization took my breath away and I had to sit down and think about this shocking difference. As “stupid” as all this feels, I don’t think I have the power to make anyone understand the sort of prison my mind has kept me in all these years. The change I just noticed is one I never expected to have in my lifetime, for I’ve watched myself play out this process with important people I latched onto since I was 15 years old. For the first time I had the curiosity to wonder what exactly were the fears that came with that grueling process in the past.
Fear #1: I am seen as emotional
The first fear that always surfaced was that my friend will know I care about her.
Why is that bad to let someone know you care?
For me, my main strategy to navigate my trauma, my shame, has always been to not have emotions. I equate being emotional to being childish…dramatic…stupid…and too much. I continued my curious questioning….
If she knows how much I care about her she will stop being my friend.
Thinking about it in those words made me finally see the irony of my unconscious beliefs. I remained curious and kept looking inward.
Caring is love. Love is an emotion. Emotions make the people I need most lose interest in me.
I immediately knew this was stemming from my childhood…from growing up with my mom, whom I love with all my heart, but I learned early she could not tolerate any emotion. Her face does not show emotion. Her voice has no intonation. She’d quickly distance herself, even from her children, if we got emotional. She couldn’t make eye contact with me or stay in the same room if I was an emotional person. This is where I began to develop my disorganized attachment style. I employed each style when I needed it…whatever worked to keep me functioning. The abuse I experienced throughout life reinforced my unconscious strategy of conflicting behavior and made it far stronger and more necessary to keep my infuriating strategy of “don’t be emotional”.
I delete the text and do not send.
Fear #2: “No” Means the Friendship is Ending
Sometimes I could force myself past that 1st fear but then I was always met with a 2nd fear, a bigger fear: That my friend would say “no”. My head knows she may need to say “no” – this is basic logic.
It’s normal for her to have other plans or her schedule just doesn’t match up. It doesn’t mean she won’t be your friend any more. It just means she’s busy!
But my body holds a different belief and I immediately spin a different story until I am in tears.
She never actually liked you. She’s so sick of you trying to spend time with her each week. She’s too kind to just end the friendship so she has to nicely back out of this request. She has real friends. You are taking up too much of her time with your neediness. She doesn’t care about you one bit. You are too broken, too messed up to accept the truth. You’re so stupid!
Oh I have always hated my brain and it’s relentless attacks! My fears overwhelm me. Many times it kept me from ever sending a text at all. It was not worth the risk. I knew what my brain would do to me once I got that “no”. Everything I was already telling myself would be screaming in my head 10X louder. The result? A deep dark depression that would last for days. There is no anger toward her or anyone else as it is only safe to direct the anger at myself. I couldn’t possibly risk returning to depression. It feels like death. Horrible. Dark. Sinking. Death.
The extreme strategies that come with an anxious attachment style are an internal prison.
I delete the text and do not send.
I cannot risk moving into depression. Except sometimes all the self-hatred generated in this process sends me into depression regardless. Knowing this, I am determined to push forward and send it anyway.
Fear #3: The Hidden Meaning Behind “Yes”
Forcing myself past the first 2 fears, I am always met with a 3rd fear: that my friend will say “yes!”. The voice switches to:
She agreed because she pities you. You are that pathetic. She doesn’t care about you, doesn’t have time for you, and yet she is so good of a person that she said “yes”!
This 3rd fear increases my shame tremendously. It knocks me off my feet and sends me into my bed because now I am out of options. Now I’ve moved into the hopelessness of my life.
I do not want to be pitied! That is worse than alone. I will find my own way to become regulated again. I can do this alone! It is wrong to need others to get healthier. I must be strong! I must learn how to handle this on my own! When I am strong I will be ready for real friendships! Do not risk losing this friendship before you are healthy and strong!
The surest way to activate shame in a person is to provide love.
I delete the text and do not send.
But today?
Today it was 5 seconds! The whole process! What happened??? I realized that as I hit send that I was OK with whatever answer I got back. I suppose this change has been in place for months now. How did I not notice? I mean sure I would be a little disappointed if she said “no”, but only because it’d be nice to see her. I would not doubt her words that the timing just wasn’t good or question whether she cared about me. She cares! Whether it was “no” or “yes” I am at last feeling safe enough in my own body to belief that her potential unavailability is just life and she still wants to be my friend. If she is available, she says “yes” because she enjoys our time together. I am not too much for her.
The rest of my day I had a smile on my face realizing how far I have come in this journey. I feel genuine. Honest. I can have emotions and move through them even if others see. I can let people that I trust know that I have needs, that I love and care and I need to be loved back, that I get hurt and angry and I need them to love me anyway. Maybe it won’t always be this easy. On days when I’m struggling I may go through the more drawn-out process again because it is the “strategy” my mind created long ago, but I don’t believe it will last days or even hours.
this feels like freedom
Co-Regulation of the Nervous System
We all need to co-regulate our nervous systems with other humans we trust. The need starts in infancy when our nervous systems develop safety and connection only through those who care for us. We need parents to stare into our eyes, touch us lovingly and often, show us emotions through their tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language.
When you have a parent that cannot tolerate her own emotion, express it on her face, have inflection in her voice, or want to spend time just being with you – your nervous system is likely to be in a chronic state of emotional dysregulation. Add in the feelings of betrayal from trauma, abuse, or neglect and this dysregulation is further reinforced, rigid, and complex. Forming healthy relationships throughout life becomes a difficult process.
Therapy has taught me that to accept my need for people that I love and trust to help me co-regulate my nervous system. My need to connect is innate. This doesn’t make me weak or unstable. It doesn’t mean I’m slipping backwards. It means I need to process my emotion…and I might need some help doing this. I’m learning how to feel all of it. The grief, the anger, the rage, the frustration, the love, the joy, the excitement.
What once felt intolerable to fully feel now makes me feel alive.
Parts & Strategies
We all have parts of us, parts of our mind that formed in childhood…it is normal human development. But the trauma we experienced causes these parts to become fragmented and act in extreme ways with complicated and rigid strategies that feel vital to survival (AKA…beating myself up with layers of shame for 2 days in order to send a text!). My strategies were once beautiful gifts that allowed me to cope, adapt, and function through my distress…even if it feels like they are ruining my life now.
Without disconfirming experiences, like the consistent love and acceptance from a friend, a partner, a therapist, or another trusted other…these strategies that once worked, can leave us feeling like we live in an internal prison.
Our strategies are deeply rooted in the fragmented parts of the mind and body. These parts will use their strategies to fight tooth and nail, clawing against everything in you, to continue being employed – even when the trauma has long been over and life is safe again.
These parts inside us are not bad – they just don’t have to work so hard anymore. But I had to recognize them, bring awareness to them, and give them compassion for how much they want to protect me. It doesn’t matter how much logic you bring in when the strategies are held in the body. What changes the strategies are self-compassion for these parts and experiencing love, connection, safety and consistency from someone we trust.
We need loving experiences to disconfirm the need for strategies. Years of trauma therapy and an amazing reliable friendship have made my strategies relax. My strategies are becoming more flexible, softer. They never go away completely...and are available when needed to serve in healthier ways...but they become less complicated and less in control of running our lives.