Healing Insecure Attachments In Relationships

Healing an insecure attachment is key to developing healthy long-lasting relationships with others. Those who have been raised by emotionally abusive, or neglectful parents, have been conditioned to live in fear. Childhood abandonment wounds that go unresolved manifest as codependency, insecurity, a need to please, and a fear of abandonment. One who suffers from an insecure attachment will find it impossible to trust. They may become jealous and seek constant reassurance from the ones they love. To heal, from an insecure attachment style, it is essential to identify this in yourself as a starting point. From there, recognizing the behaviors that drive people away, and fuel your need for reassurance can be accomplished through a commitment to healing the wounded inner child, as well as consciousness. In reality, all beings are enough and the only thing that is wrong with them, is their programming. The journey back to the divine self, requires an awakening from the false self.

Transcript

So let's talk a little bit about what an insecure attachment style is.

What is this attachment style?

Let's put it this way.

If you came from a home where you felt seen,

Where you felt like the people who raised you were reliable,

If you grew up in a home that was consistent,

That was supportive,

A home that was nurturing,

A home that taught you that if you had an emotional need,

There was someone that you could turn to that would validate your needs and set time aside to make sure that you felt seen and that you felt heard.

If you grew up in this type of a home,

Then the parents who raised you were emotionally regulated.

They were not codependent.

They were not narcissistic.

They were not unable to regulate their own emotions enough so that they could tend to yours.

When you grow up in a home that has allowed you to develop a secure attachment to others,

There's a sense that you've grown up believing that you are good and you are worthy to receive.

You are good enough.

There's a sense that people are trustworthy and that if you have an issue,

If you have a need,

You can turn to your friend without worrying about what they think about you,

Without anxiety,

Without the worry of coming off like a burden or feeling weak,

Or without the constant rumination and the constant emotional stress over what people are going to think about you presenting with a need.

If you grew up in a home,

However,

To the contrary,

Where things weren't always predictable for you,

Perhaps you experienced abandonment.

Perhaps your dad left the family when you were young.

Perhaps there was a death in your family.

Perhaps,

God forbid,

Mom passed away when you needed her the most.

Or perhaps your parents were dysregulated.

Perhaps your parents were narcissistic.

Perhaps you had emotionally immature parents.

Perhaps you were a child of alcoholism.

Perhaps there was some addiction issue in your home and therefore unpredictability.

When children are raised in a chaotic,

Unpredictable home that does not foster a sense of consistency,

Then the child can develop what's known as an insecure attachment style.

We come to planet Earth knowing and needing an attachment to others.

It's a prerequisite for a happy life,

For mental wellness,

For a healthy overall life that's full of satisfaction.

We come here to attach.

And when that goes awry,

When we are not permitted for whatever reason to attach,

Then that doesn't mean that our brain doesn't continue to seek to attach.

But it does mean that we will have anxiety around a number of things.

In other words,

If we are securely attached,

The prerequisite for being able to securely attach as an adult has been satisfied.

We didn't have to prove that we were worthy of a secure attachment.

We didn't have to prove that we were worthy of love.

It's just a given.

We were given all the things that we needed when we were children.

And so now we can go out into our everyday life.

We can experience ups and downs.

We can tolerate people leaving us,

Because we know people have a right to leave us.

And we don't associate someone leaving us with our self-worth.

We don't make this one person who doesn't want to be with us anymore the entire universe,

Which is what someone who has an insecure attachment will do.

We have an issue with a friend,

And suddenly that person becomes an example or actually the manifestation of the entire world.

We feel like everybody hates us.

Nobody wants us.

And that's a cognitive distortion.

And so that's where our anxiety comes from.

And so when we have a secure attachment,

Everything that we need to go out into the world and to function and to trust people,

To allow people to come and go into our lives,

To develop this sense of emotional resiliency,

It implies that I have a grounded sense of self.

I know who I am.

And the I am that I psychically or psychologically believe I am is worthy of the good in life.

That's my grounding wire.

That's my,

I call it the inner golden Buddha.

That's the pillow that my sense of self sits on as I go about my day and I interface with other people.

And without that,

We're pushed off that pillow.

What's pushed off that pillow?

Our sense of self.

And we can,

Thank goodness,

Regain a sense of self.

We can develop this idea in ourselves that we are good and that we are worthy to receive.

And we can develop a secure attachment within ourselves to our inner child,

With our higher self.

And we can experience integration.

But I always say you can't fix a hole in the wall that you can't see.

And those of us who have an insecure attachment,

Those of us who are codependent in our relationships,

Because that is what codependency is.

It's an insecure attachment.

I was unable to attach securely to the mother and the father that I love,

And specifically the mom.

And somewhere along the line,

I learned to believe that not gaining that attachment was my fault.

Here comes the insecurity.

Here comes the shame.

So when you think about an insecure attachment,

Think about what are the emotions that represents that insecurity.

It's shame.

It's my fault.

It's fear.

They're going to leave me.

And it also is a mix of the behaviors and the cognitive distortions that we pick up along the way as children that we believe falsely,

But it's not our fault that we do this because we're children when we are developing our subconscious beliefs about the self and subconscious beliefs about others and our place in others' worlds.

So it's not our fault that a very young child created these faulty beliefs or these maladaptive behaviors,

For instance,

People-pleasing and fawning and the need for approval,

The constant need to check in with our partners and ask them,

Do you love me?

Are you mad at me?

What do you like about me?

What do you not like about me?

This constant need for us to look to our partners for this admiration piece or this validation piece because it's not coming from a sense of entitlement.

It's coming from a place of insecurity because those of us with an insecure attachment,

We don't know that we are worthy.

So we're always looking outside of ourself for a sense of worthiness.

Now,

How we show up in relationships is very insecure.

We can also appear very jealous.

We have a very difficult time regulating our emotions.

We say yes when we really mean no.

We are constantly agreeing with our partners,

Even though we might want to disagree with our partners.

We're too afraid to tell the truth.

And so we're living below the veil of consciousness.

We are so afraid of being abandoned.

We're so afraid of being left.

Why?

Because that is a mirror for the inner child and the inner child's emotions that have been repressed and suppressed in childhood that we as adults have yet to figure out.

So in relationships,

We are the partners that are always checking in with our partner.

We are constantly texting our partner,

Especially in the beginning of a relationship.

And it doesn't matter how old you are.

You can be 20.

You can be 60.

You could be 70.

You could be 80 and still have an insecure attachment style,

Meaning that you can have this budding relationship.

And how the insecure attachment style will show up is you needing to text this person all the time.

You needing validation from this person all the time.

You needing to check in with this person,

Say,

Are you sure you're not mad at me?

What can I do for you to make you happy?

It's this constant check-in.

It's you driving past their house to make sure they're home.

It's you checking their phone,

Wanting to check their phone.

Why?

Because you're so afraid that this person is lying to you.

Of course you are.

It could be no other way,

Dear one,

Because you never learned that people were trustworthy.

The people that you loved abandoned you.

The people that you love lied to you.

But biologically and spiritually and psychically,

You are still seeking that attachment outside of you.

Unfortunately,

And I think it's the nature of reality because we tend to attract the familiar.

We end up attracting into our life those people who very much mirror the energy of the person who abandoned us the most,

Or the person that we feel we never gain the attachment from.

That becomes problematic because we show up as children in these adult bodies.

And so we're not in our own power.

We're not in relationships knowing that we are enough.

And how you overcome an insecure attachment issue is that you recognize that you have a problem in the first place,

The signs and the symptoms of being codependent,

The signs and the symptoms of a toxic relationship,

The signs and the symptoms of emotional neglect or abandonment,

The signs and symptoms that you have lost yourself in a toxic relationship,

And you might not even know that you have.

Because you cannot fix a hole in the wall that you can't see.

If you have an insecure attachment style,

You can go for the rest of your life and never acknowledge what's really wrong.

And that's really sad.

Because this is someone who hasn't found their inner self.

This is someone who,

Below the veil of consciousness,

Is struggling with feeling insecure,

Feeling unworthy of love,

And who,

At the level of the 3D,

Is manifesting as someone who is highly codependent,

Someone who is very self-critical,

Someone who is very critical of other people,

Somebody who loves,

Hoping that they will be loved in return.

This is somebody who will be conflict-avoidant.

This is somebody who will be self-sacrificing.

This is somebody who feels that in order to be in a relationship and to ensure that they are not left,

They can't exist.

When you're codependent,

The programming below the veil is,

For me to be in a relationship,

I cannot exist.

That's why I always say that a codependent person is other-focused.

And what does a codependent person generally attract?

Generally attracts a narcissist.

Why?

Because a narcissist is self-focused.

Two people,

One relationship,

Two people focused on one person.

That is the crux of the dynamic of the codependent narcissistic relationship.

But you can be codependent.

You can have an insecure attachment style and push people away.

Very interesting.

As you go from having an insecure attachment style to a secure attachment style,

You start to see the insecurities in other people.

And I think it's really interesting,

Because you then don't have a tolerance for the insecure person who is trying to attach to you,

Because energetically,

It doesn't feel authentic.

And that was really hard for me to admit in myself that I was somebody who had an insecure attachment.

I did do things for other people,

Expecting that if I did these things,

Then I would naturally be loved in return.

I did not know,

I lacked the awareness that it was coming from such a wounded place.

Why?

Because I was taught that what was going on inside of me was irrelevant.

So I did not have an inner eye.

My eyes were all outside of me.

What do you need?

What do you think?

I was severely hypervigilant.

If I saw my partner's face change,

I was like,

What's that face about?

What's going on?

Are you upset with me?

I began to scan his entire being.

It was the same with my mother.

It was the same with my brother.

I was so sensitive because I was tuned up for the system in my mind,

The gatekeeper in my mind.

The id,

The ego,

And the superego were all lined up with,

Uh-oh,

You have to scan the environment to check,

To see if people are displeased with you.

Because the first sign that someone is displeased with you,

You've got to make a correction in how you show up.

You have to lose yourself more and become more of what you think this other person needs you to be.

But it's a hamster's wheel.

And it's a terrible place to live.

And you can live your whole life that way.

And that's why I believe to overcome an insecure attachment style,

You have to have some type of awakening.

A cognitive awakening is no different than a spiritual awakening.

When you are awakening,

You are developing metacognition,

Which is the ability to observe the way that you think.

It wasn't until I began reading about codependency and reading about childhood trauma,

Reading about what it was to be raised by two unrecovered adult children of alcoholics,

That I realized that I had this thing that was abandonment trauma.

And it went from there,

Where I was like,

OK,

Abandonment trauma,

How does that show up?

I've been doing this a long time.

Now,

Over the years,

We've developed language according to attachment styles.

There is no doubt in my mind that I had an insecure attachment style.

There is no doubt in my mind that the way that I showed up,

Especially at the end of my first marriage where I was frustrated,

I was angry,

I was ticked off,

I was looking for things to pick on about him,

There's no doubt that that was me at the end of my rope.

The latter stages of insecure attachment trauma,

The latter stages of my insecure attachment style,

The latter stages of codependency,

Where I felt like I was losing my mind.

It was so bad at times where I was so hypervigilant,

Especially towards the end when my ex didn't say what I thought he was going to say,

When he didn't respond the way I thought he should respond.

It was like I was burning in acid.

And my body paid the price because I ended up with asthma,

Migraine headaches,

Rashes.

I was tested for cancer.

I was tested for all lupus.

I was tested for so many different things.

And at the end of the day,

What I've come up with is this idea that I wasn't securely attached to myself.

I wasn't securely attached to my inner child.

And that's where I have focused most of my work.

So these days,

I know that in order for me to have a secure attachment with my husband,

A secure attachment with my children,

I had to do the work.

I had to understand what codependency was.

I had to identify the traits in me that made me codependent.

I had to develop a hope for what my life was going to be like once I recovered from codependency and I developed a secure attachment style.

And in order to jump that ship,

Because you have to face the lion inside of you,

You have to face the behaviors that you've created or have manifested inside of you.

And that's where all the spiritual work is.

That's what spiritual work is.

It's me saying,

I was doing this,

And it doesn't work anymore,

And I need to change.

And I'm going to take control over what I can change.

For me,

It was recovering for codependency,

Which is you coming from below the veil to above the veil,

Recognizing your insecure attachment,

And then developing the skills and the resources you need to stop self-sacrificing,

To stop being afraid of conflicts that are necessary.

What someone who has an insecure attachment will do is they will not have the conversations they need to have in their relationship.

They will avoid them.

If they feel like this conversation has any potential at all to make this person angry or to cause their partner to say,

I'm done with you,

They will avoid that conversation.

And you know what that looks like,

Dear one?

It looks like 10 years,

20 years,

30 years,

40 years of marriage,

Two kids,

Three kids,

Four kids,

Five kids,

And you're exhausted at the end of the day.

And now the window of your life is closing,

And you're like,

What did I do with my life?

That's what happens to my mom.

That's what happens to a lot of people who have an insecure attachment style and who are codependent.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

So some of the tips that I have for you for overcoming this insecure attachment is you have to see it.

That's probably the biggest step that you can take is ask yourself,

Do I show up this way?

Do I text people looking for that immediate gratification,

Looking for that instant validation?

Do I tend to worry and ruminate and spiral when I don't get the response that I need right now?

When I give other people,

Is it that I'm really giving with an open heart,

Or does it have a strain attached to it?

That's you seeking that validation that you're OK.

That's you saying,

If this is valued by this other person,

Then I'm OK,

Then I'm worthy.

That is codependent.

You're codependent on this experience outside of you to give you a boost,

A sense of self.

The problem is it's like a drug.

It's only lasts temporarily.

What happens if this person that you've attached to in an insecure way that you have believed in your head is going to be there for you and make up for all the love that your mother and father didn't give you?

What happens if they decide to leave you?

Then there goes your happiness.

There goes your love.

There goes your sense of self.

And you,

Once again,

Are fragile again.

You're out of sorts.

You're out of control.

You stay there for a while.

And once you've been there long enough,

Then you start the process all over again,

Trying to attach to another person.

So you want to identify the fact that you have this issue in the first place.

And it doesn't matter how old you are.

Like I said,

You could be 50,

60,

Or 70,

Or 80,

And still have this issue.

So you want to be honest with yourself.

The next thing that you want to do is you want to start paying attention to the people in your life that you put pressure on to validate you.

Do you put a lot of pressure on your kids to validate you?

Do you put pressure on your grandchildren to validate you?

Do you take everything personally?

I'm talking about adult children.

If your adult children have things to do,

And they're taking their kids to soccer,

And they don't have time for you,

Does that make you feel insecure?

Does that make you feel angry?

Do you try to control them?

Do you try to guilt them?

Do you try to shame them?

If and when you meet a new friend,

Do you find yourself wondering if this friend is going to leave you?

Do you find yourself distrusting people,

Like right out of the box,

Just waiting for the next shoe to drop?

It's hard for you to settle in.

Now,

If that is you,

And you're honest about it,

Then some of the things that you can do is you have to work on your anxiety,

Because you have a predisposition to be anxious.

You're going into a relationship anxious.

So I highly recommend meditation.

If you get nothing else out of this session,

Then please hear what I'm saying about meditation.

Because once you identify that you have a problem,

Then what you need to do is become aware,

Which is metacognition.

I didn't make it up.

It's neuroscience.

You become highly cognitive of your behaviors that indicate that you are showing up in an insecure way,

Making other people responsible for your happiness,

Seeking their approval,

And then getting angry when they don't give it to you.

And that just keeps you on this hamster's wheel.

So through meditation,

You can become more aware of the way that you're showing up,

Which is beautiful.

I recommend meditating for at least 40 minutes a day,

Because research proves that you need about 20 minutes to calm the mental chatter.

And I will be doing another session on mental chatter,

Because that's huge.

The mind doesn't shut off.

It has to be turned off.

It has to be trained to turn off.

Your mind is sort of like a rushing river.

It doesn't shut off.

But what you want to learn to do outside of conscious awareness is you want to tap into consciousness from a higher state of awareness.

And you want to learn to calm that river.

And you have the ability to do that,

But not without training,

Right?

You didn't learn to ride a bike by sitting on a bike and just going.

You had to fall a couple of times,

And you had to not give up.

And so now,

You cannot ride a bike for 20 years,

But your brain stores that information.

Your brain understands,

Oh,

I've done this before.

And immediately,

You get on a bike,

And you can ride a bike.

You don't have to relearn that process.

Well,

The brain is the same way.

The mind is the same way.

You have to train it.

If you're serious about healing from an insecure attachment,

Meditation is one of those things that's going to help you slow down your mind so that you can catch a thought that you deem is insecure.

The next thing that you want to do is you want to start paying attention to the things in your life that you've regularly ignored.

I'm a big fan of inner child work.

I don't say that we do inner child work to hold on to trauma and to drama.

I say we do inner child work so that we learn to validate the inner child.

I find a lot of people want to spiritually bypass.

They don't want to do that piece.

They want to forgive the person who abandoned them.

They don't want to turn over those rocks.

They don't want to feel those feelings.

They don't want to process it.

They want to put a period at the end of the sentence.

Not everybody,

But I find sometimes people want to put a period at the end of the sentence and say,

That was then,

And this is now.

I'm not a big fan of that.

I think that healing comes from acknowledging my inner child,

Validating my inner child,

Having empathy for my inner child,

And then processing the emotions that are tied to these experiences,

The ones that I can remember,

And then allowing myself permission to let them go.

No different than when I was raising my youngest daughter,

Because I was the most aware when she was little.

And she came out of the bedroom one day and said,

Mommy,

I'm so mad at you.

And I was aware enough at that time,

And I knew that I had to validate her,

Not judge her,

Not criticize her,

Not send her back to bed.

I had to spend a few minutes validating her emotion.

And so I've learned to do this with my inner child.

So I said to her,

Why are you so angry?

Why are you upset with mommy?

And she said,

Because you didn't let me have ice cream.

And now it's time for bed,

And you're not going to give me ice cream now.

And I said,

Well,

You know what?

I would be angry,

Too.

If my mommy promised me ice cream,

And I forgot to,

And she forgot to give me ice cream,

I would be upset,

Too.

And then I just validated her.

And the next step I did was resolution,

Was how about we put a note on the table,

And tomorrow after school,

You do your homework,

And then we have ice cream.

And she said,

OK.

It was beautiful.

I validated her emotions.

It was like me validating my inner child.

I know that sounds odd,

But it could be very cathartic.

As you validate the emotions of your own children,

It can help you recognize what you didn't have and help you develop empathy for the inner child inside of you until you've developed the psychological wherewithal to be able to validate you.

So I'm not a big fan of bypassing my emotions,

Swiping things under the rug,

And saying,

Oh,

That was then.

This is now,

You know,

Time to move on.

I think that there's a process in validating the inner child as part of that process until we become more of our adult self.

As you move forward with this process,

You're going to understand the need to feel seen within yourself,

The need to validate your inner child over and over and over.

That doesn't mean you react.

It doesn't mean you kick the dog.

It doesn't mean that you take your emotions and you scream them from the top of the Empire State Building.

It means that you are learning to regulate your emotions by looking within the self,

By securely attaching to this inner being that you have,

Or this concept of this inner child.

It can help you become more securely attached.

And I have found that the more I securely attach to my inner being,

The more I securely attach to my inner child,

The more love I have for myself.

So as you work more consciously,

Again,

You have to raise your consciousness around this.

I don't believe that you can heal trauma.

I don't believe that you can heal anything in your life without raising your conscience around what it is that you want to heal,

What it is you want to correct.

Like I said,

You can't fix a hole in the wall that you can't see.

So being conscious and more conscious,

Making that your goal,

Today I'm going to be more conscious and aware of my behaviors and my thoughts.

Today I'm going to be more conscious and aware of my behaviors and my thoughts.

Today I'm going to be more conscious of how I speak to my inner child.

You have to gain control of your inner narrative.

You have to be more compassionate.

Work towards compassionate self-talk.

Before you look to please anyone else,

Look to please your inner self.

Be grounded in your own power.

Don't put yourself in the position where someone else is your ruler,

Someone else is your master,

Someone else is more important than you.

Because when you have an insecure attachment style,

What you do is you subjugate yourself to others.

And you do it all the time.

And you're not even aware that you're doing it.

So you want to raise your consciousness around that.

The more you're securely attached to your inner child,

The more you get in touch with your feelings,

The more you honor yourself,

The more you validate yourself,

Then the more securely attached you're going to be within yourself.

So suddenly you have become the divine mother.

You've become the divine father.

Suddenly you're getting all of your energy from within yourself,

Because you feel connected to yourself.

If you're really lucky and you're staying in the path long enough,

You get to a point where this is all past you.

And you see that you're connected to everything.

And that this idea that you were separate from anything was an illusion.

Because ultimately,

If you stay in the path long enough,

You come to a place where you realize that you're an extension of everything and everything's an extension of you.

You are never not part of the whole.

But when you come to planet Earth and you experience a disconnect from the people who are supposed to connect to you,

Yeah,

There's a fracture inside of you.

Yeah,

You're insecure.

Yeah,

Your attachment to the outside world has been threatened.

It's fractured.

It's insecure.

Of course.

And then you have an insecure attachment to the self,

Because that's a mirror.

What I experience on the outside becomes a mirror for what I'm experiencing on the inside.

And then when I grow up and become,

At least chronologically,

An aged person,

I create that in the outside world.

That insecure attachment now is projected on the outside.

And now I need validation.

Now I need to people please.

Now I'm worried about what people think about me.

Now I'm jealous.

Now I'm checking on people.

And ultimately,

I'm pushing good people away.

The person who will stick around is the person who will exploit those needs inside of me.

That's a narcissist,

A person who will see that I'm insecure.

They will smell me out walking down the street.

And they will exploit my need to be needed.

I will be gaslit.

I will have tremendous cognitive dissonance.

I will be fractured on the outside,

Fractured on the inside.

And I can stay in this type of a toxic relationship for many,

Many years.

And so I hope that this session has given you some insight around what an insecure attachment style is and what you,

Dear one,

Can do about it moving forward.

It is possible to outgrow this insecure attachment style and attach to your inner self so that you are getting all the love that you need from the inside.

You're standing in your own personal power.

And then when you meet someone,

You are not looking to please them from a place of neediness.

You're looking to be yourself.

And you're looking to appreciate that person as themselves.

And you recognize that this person is free to come and free to go.

And whether they stay or whether they go,

You will always be good.

That is super powerful.

And that is the benefit of codependent recovery.

Namaste,

Everybody.

Until next time.

Reviews

Thank you for this beautiful and genuine reminder. I am finding my self after 72 years an it's very encouraging for the next 72 more. It is never to late. Thanks again Ms. Romano

Fantastic! TYSM

Thank you for this. And thank you for calling us Dear Ones ❤️. Also, for acknowledging that it doesn't matter how old we are (it's never too lste). You described me and my wonderful but now Ex girlfriend perfectly. We've both had trauma and I've had childhood abandonment. She had an abusive Ex husband. I think she was somewhat anxiously attached, but strong enuf to look secure. My being fearful avoidant didn't help. There was a lot of love and tenderness, zero abuse, but I wasn't able to show up for her consistently. Her no contact has been, and is, extremely painful, but I'm respecting the boundary. It really sucks. I am doing the work and have been for a year. I want her to come back but have no control over the free will of another.

Brilliantly helpful and to-the-point, as Lisa A. Romano always is with these subjects❤️🙏✨”I am worthy to receive”was a concept that struck me like cosmic lightning in this talk. I have a better grasp now on where to go within me to try and nurture the places that still feel frozen in fear🪷

Wow this whole talk spoke to me so clearly. I appreciate your thoroughness in the descriptions especially in the first half of the talk. Thanks for all the support with solutions. I love that you said 40 minutes of meditation a day is needed. I really agree that it takes 20 minutes just to calm the nervous system. Great great insights thanks again.

Great talk, I enjoyed it a lot

Excellent explanation of how codependency can lead to insecure attachment which I've never heard before!
Now it makes sense!

Even though I already had an understanding of attachment styles, this provided helpful new insights and inspiration for the future

Awesome clear concise information for insecure attachments and how to heal from it.

Great job sharing your experience with me
I’m getting closer to being free bit by bit
Thanks again 🙏

💜