These 3 Strategies That Helped Me to Rewire My Attachment Style

The process of change of attachment style is like trying to fix a complicated circuit board while it is still functioning. Each day you are exchanging old contacts with new ones. All the while you hope your heart will not overload.

Your biggest challenge is not the environment you are in. But the grooves imprinted in your brain due to the numerous times you have done things in a particular way. In order to rewrite this code you need to be the programmer and the program at the same time.

The truth is, you can overwrite years of patterns in a relatively short period of time if you use the right strategies. okay but how?

Here are the three game-changing strategies, that worked for me.

…

1. Hijack your body’s stress response

Regardless, the majority of advices for changing the attachment styles are rooted on mental exercises.

But here’s what I discovered: Your body may respond physically first before your mind can even make a response.

I was forced to hack my own physiology.

Each time I experienced dreadful feeling of being anxious about the attachment — sinking feeling in the stomach, constriction in the chest — I promptly did a set of burpees. Yes, burpees.

Why? Intense exercise not only releases endorphins but also helps to metabolize the stress hormones causing anxious attachment behaviors.

In starting, I felt silly doing burpees while upset. But after 2 weeks something incredible happened. My body learned to connect the negative feelings of attachment anxiety with the positive feelings of exercising. This feeling in my stomach became my cue to action, not fear.

2. The “Secure Attachment Scavenger Hunt”

This technique was too good and kind of life chaging for me, as it changed the way I viewed interactions with people as opportunities for growth.

I like to refer to it as the “Secure Attachment Scavenger Hunt”.

And here’s how it works:

I came up with a list of 21 ‘secure attachment behaviours’ to do for the 21 days of the challenge. These were not huge acts, but minor activities which people in love usually engage in without even realizing it.

For example:

Eyes contact during the whole conversation.
Laying down a preference without having to regret for it.
Asking for help.
Sharing a personal story without downplaying its importance.
Disagreeing respectfully with someone’s opinion.

Every day, I tried to “find” a chance to naturally use day’s behavior in my interactions. It was important to discover the situations when these actions seemed natural and natural to do, not obligatory.

At the beginning of the course it seemed I was always on the lookout for opportunities to use these. However, as the days passed by something supernatural happened. I began to look for opportunities everywhere around me and I could see them. It was something one had to do deliberately and, at some point, it became so natural.

By the tenth day I realized I was subconsciously following some of the behaviors learned in the previous days even if it was not the focus of particular day. I started becoming more real in my interactions and I was able to connect with people.

3. Exposure therapy through micro-rejections

This one may seem rather odd but stick with me. A lot of attachment problems are rooted in the fear of being rejected, Specially for those who are introvert like me. I thus chose to build rejection as a part of my daily life rather than a poison one should avoid.

On a daily basis, I made sure I expose myself to a scenario I would suffer a minor rejection.

For example:

I’d ask for a discount at the local store
ask for a better room at a hotel
say what I think is wrong in a comment section of a social media platform.

It wasn’t to be rude, but to toughen myself up for the feeling of being rejected. Every micro-rejection was a well-calibrated exposure treatment session.

The first week was quite tough in all points of view. Each little ‘no’ seemed as if it was a direct assault. But as I kept on going, a change happened. This is when I began to change my perspective towards rejections and started to view it as a part and parcel of human interactions.

…

I hope you enjoyed reading. This blog post comes from what I’ve learned, what I think, and what I believe. Sign up for my Medium newsletter.

Here is my substack in case in want to read more of my works.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

***