Do you go through the ending of relationships and wonder why you have the same emotional struggles at the end?
You can be the one who initiated the breakup or received the news that someone no longer wants to be with you.
It can feel the same.
Breakups are painful. We know that.
Our pain comes from losing a bond with another person. It also derives from our connection to our emotional attachment.
Yes, our attachment style.
Breakups hurt for many reasons; loss of love, feeling alone, a sense of no future, lack of closure, and many similar reasons.
We don’t discuss how each of these components causes attachment styles to react differently.
What do I mean?
Breakups and separation trigger us. Even an extremely secure person feels triggers to some degree. They have better response mechanisms.
So, we dig into each attachment style set of triggers and see the behaviors.
The result is the recognition of behaviors, and you can adapt and change your response mechanisms.
Remember, we are on our way to a secure attachment style. We are on this journey together.
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Another side of the spectrum
The first section might make you feel the title was misleading, but stick with me.
Anxious individuals struggle to respond quickly to breakups because they act too quickly.
Breakups are an immediate trigger to the anxious individual, and it hits the core wound of rejection and not being good enough.
You might notice something if you are an anxious person or a partner of one.
They go right into repair mode when moments of conflict arise.
Although it might sound like a positive attribute of wanting to resolve conflict immediately, it can be overwhelming for both sides.
You have not taken time to process the core of the conflict, and you have just gone into panic mode and want to fix it.
You are fighting for someone who has told you they no longer want to be in a relationship.
Engaging to save the relationship pushes the other person farther away.
You are trying to save the relationship, but at your core, you are trying to protect yourself from experiencing your core wounds.
When relationships end for anxious individuals, it sends them back to their past, and they re-live pain from past experiences.
The anxiety that it will be the same experience again triggers them to go into hero mode and preserve what they have.
Settle in
The next phase is a result of the first section of the article.
The anxious-preoccupied spent the initial portion of the breakup doing everything to save the relationship and not experience the negative feelings they were trying to dodge.
The result is that they now have to confront those feelings.
Before I make this sound like a complete negative spiral, I want to give the anxious-preoccupied some positive credit.
Unlike the avoidant attachment styles, you are the first to address and take in your feelings.
I want to reign that back a little, however.
Because anxious people quickly address their feelings, they deal with ranging emotions.
It is multifaceted.
You are dealing with feelings of loss and separation.
You also feel like you have never been worthy of a relationship.
We have to reprogram that frame of thinking. You have to separate past experiences from the current situation you are experiencing.
You are too quick to think the breakup is about you and how you failed.
You were in a partnership, and that other person brought behaviors that resulted in the breakup.
You’re not doomed
The last reason anxious people struggle to respond positively to breakups is at your core being newly single make you feel isolated.
You are in the snowball of the other pillars.
First, you are fighting for the relationship to avoid feeling negative emotions.
Then, you accept them.
Lastly, you think those emotions are why all your core triggers of abandonment, loneliness, rejection, and feeling less than others get hit.
At this point is where I want you to reprogram and focus on reframing your thinking.
You are worthy of love, and your value has not changed.
Look at your view of the relationship and how it ended. Throughout this article, you will notice a trend.
You have made this all about you, what you did wrong, and how to fight and fix it.
Your breakup is not all about what you did wrong. It is about the misalignment of behaviors and responses.
The key to maneuvering the overwhelming emotion of loneliness and isolation is to release dependence on another person for validation.
You allow your relationship status to define you like you’re worthless when you are single.
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I am not here to tell you to jump through hoops and outgrow these behaviors overnight.
Step one is to recognize your triggers and develop healthy mechanisms to deal with the emotions that come.
You are stronger than you think. I do not say that lightly.
Once you recognize these behaviors, you can develop habits that remove your negative responses.
My attachment style series is a journey. We are going to dig into this and build for years to come.
As I said, we are in this together.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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