BEING HER with Margarita Nazarenko - 8: Your Anxious Attachment Is Ruining Your Relationships

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

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Welcome to Being Her, the ultimate guide to living your best life as her. Join me, Margarita, on an empowering journey to discover your feminine energy, build meaningful relationships and find your purpose. Let's dive in and explore all things womanhood together. On today's episode, I'm going to be touching on a subject that is Near India. By Near and Dear and Dear, I don't mean I am in love with this subject. This has been a pain point for me for, I would say, my adolescent, since my and my 20s. It is attachment.

Attachment theory, secure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment. If you're not familiar with those terms, I would suggest getting familiar because it will change how you see your reactions to your partners, how you see your interactions with your partners and the world in general.

I came from a place of really strong anxious attachment, especially and mostly to men. Why did that happen and why does that happen with children? Is chapters and chapters and hundreds of theses written on it. But in my case, to give you an example is I grew up without a father. I moved to a different country at a young age, so I didn't have those male role models. So when it came to me creating partnerships with men essentially, they were built on very rocky, unstable ground. I did not know how to to interact with people without trying to cling onto them and second guess them and we'll go on to anxious attachment and what that means for you and how to get through it and how to heal it.

But it's a really painful position to come from. So one might say that attachment usually breaks down to 50% of us are securely attached, which means we got the love we needed from our parents. Yes, everyone's got traumas in their life and things go left and things go south. a lot, but basically, you got your needs met. The other 50% breaks up into several categories, but I will just call them anxious or avoidant. There is also ambivalent and all these different categories, but for the sake of this podcast, I'm going to focus on anxious. So let's just say half of us are secure. That means we trust people. That means we can form relationships. That

means we don't overanalyze situations. That means all those good things can happen and we can spot red flags and we can walk away from people at a due course, we can set boundaries. It's just a healthy relational style because our parents gave us the interaction that we needed and everything was gravy. For half of us, for the other 25% who have the Angkorishish attachment, life is not as black and white. And the reason I decided to make this podcast is I get a lot of emails from many women who are asking me about what their partner did, how their partner, how their partner

acted or what their partner said. And after having received several emails from the same woman, I'm starting to see that it's the anxious attachment flaring and not so much what her partner does. Because a lot of times, it's not about what the partner does. It's about the reason that you are in that relationship in the first place. Because if I've had 10 emails from you with different reasons, well, he didn't say I love you on my birthday. He didn't buy me a present on my Christmas. he still follows women. He looked at me wrong. There is always going to be a reason when you anxiously attach for your anxious attachment to flare. The other 25% is, of course, avoidant attachment. And usually, lo and behold, all the secure people get together, leaving the anxious

and their avoidance to get together as well. So what happens is this limbic dance of the anxious person grasping for their attention, the approval, and the soothing words of the avoidant person, and the avoidant person feeling engulfed, controlled, and basically eaten alive by the anxious person. And having been an anxious person and healed myself and put myself in a secure position, I can now see how difficult it is to be with a person with anxious attachment. When I read my comments on my YouTube videos or emails from women, I can even see these behaviors towards me. When someone has an anxious attachment, they will want more than is reasonable from another

person to fulfill their whole need for engagement and time and soothing from another person is so deep and so vast that there is nothing that another person can do that can satiate it. And I suppose if there was something they could do, it would literally take up their whole life and their day. So what they do is they find an avoidant person who basically affirms to them that what they want is too much. Their avoidance spends their time being affirmed in the fact that everyone just wants to control him, let's say in this instance, and take away his time and ask for too much. And the anxious person is affirmed in the fact that everyone just wants to leave her and run away from her. So it becomes this dichotomy of a really unhealthy relationship. And my belief is a lot of avoidant people have a way of healing or a way of surviving,

which means that they just put their head down and they hide from it. And they are actually comfortably numb, is what I would say. They can actually survive in their life. They maybe had very critical parents. They maybe had people who wanted too much from them. Maybe they were abandoned. Maybe they had these things. and what they decided the avoidant people is that essentially I can do it for myself and I don't

need anybody. And if anybody wants to get too close to me, I don't want to deal with it. Whilst an anxious person decided that they will make it their life mission to have that hole in them fulfilled by another person. And so if you are that anxious attached person, you are not comfortably numb. You're always slightly raw and slightly in pain. And it's most likely that you are listening to this podcast. The likelihood of an avoidant person listening to this is slim. Not zero, but slim. So this podcast goes out to the anxious lovelies out there because I was one and I know what it feels like. So this is from me to you, an ode as it was, a conversation to discuss how to go from where you are to where you want to be. And I hope to, not for me, I don't mind receiving

these emails. They don't take out of my day. It's not an issue for me. It's not an issue for me but I hope for you to reduce these emails of well he didn't do this he didn't do that he didn't do another one what does it mean and to focus the light of attention onto your own self because that's where healing comes from you will never find a perfect partner who perfectly fulfills you everyone's going to have deficits even in attention I always say that some people need a shot glass of attention and some people need a pint so once the people the person with the shot glass is fulfilled the person with the pint still has loads to go so you need to fulfill you need to fill that with friends and other things.

For a person to meet another person who needs the same amount of attention is rare, the same amount of time, the same amount of hobbies, the same amount of interests. It's rare, so you need to work on yourself. The first place to start, I guess, is how do you know if you've got anxious attachment versus you just with the wrong partner?

Because both of them could be mutually true, but I will start like this. If you are anxiously attached, you have extreme emotional discomfort at being alone. When I was at... If you've ever wanted to make a podcast, if you've got something to say,

which I think all of you do, Spotify has a platform for you that you can do it really easily on. All in one place, it's free, and you can even earn money. Spotify for podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts right from your phone or computer,

which is what I do. So no matter what your setup is, it's not complicated to start creating today. Then you can distribute it everywhere that podcasts, I'll listen to. Then you can even monetize it. You can do a Q&A section. You can do polls and all these amazing things. Basically, it was really, really easy for me to do. For me, the obstacle was the tech aspect. And I know a lot of you wanted to hear from me. So Spotify made it possible for me to create

this podcast. So I'm really grateful. Download the Spotify for podcasters app or go to www. Spotify.com podcasters to get started. When I was anxiously attached, I remember vividly not being able to be in my own presence and now it's literally my favorite thing to do. I love to be alone. When everyone leaves me alone, I'm like, yes, leave me alone. They need to feed their energy from other people. They are codependent and codependency is another podcast title that I need to make because that's a big one. but codependent basically means that their emotions, actions and everything is dependent on the wants and needs of the other person of catering to them. You also can't set boundaries.

I remember the hardest thing for me used to be to set a boundary in fear, subliminal fear. I didn't know that that was the fear, but the fear that if I set the boundary, then that person might not like the boundary, observe it and therefore I'll get left, which brings us on to the next thing. fear of abandonment. I would say that is the operational center of people with an anxious attachment style, that you are fearful, that any actions that your partner does will inevitably lead to the demise of your relationship and your abandonment. But the incredible thing when looking at it from the side is that all the actions you are making in pestering them,

not letting them breathe, looking at every action that they make is the reason that they will eventually walk away because nobody can fulfill that deep hole that you have in you except for your own self. A core to it is a feeling of unworthiness that you've always got to prove yourself to be needed and useful and somehow important. You will ask people of what they think of you and how you look in things and you will base your whole existence around the opinion of that person that you've chosen. You feel dependent on others. You feel like you will not be anything without that person. And you constantly need that validation. I think that this, to me, is literally the core of anxious attachment, that you cannot see yourself through your own merits and your own eyes.

It's like when a teacher grades the paper at school, you cannot grade yourself. You always need to be graded by that person. You need to know that you're valuable and you are somebody through that person's eyes. You have an intense desire for closeness and almost like an alarm system for any time that the person you're with needs any space, alone time, or thoughts on their own, where they just want to sit with themselves. You will people please to a demise where you will do what that other person wants and then hold resentment. I think this is the ugly side of anxious attachment. that if this person was just like Santa Claus, ho, ho, ho, so happy, wanting to give, give, give,

and happy in that, that's fabulous. But what anxious attachment leads you to is people pleasing in order to receive something from that person. You will have low self-esteem. You have sensitivity to others' opinions and what they say. Things hurt you. If somebody says, no, I don't like both of the dresses you're wearing, maybe let's try something else.

You don't see that as them commentations. on the dresses, you see that as them commenting on you, on your core self. You don't trust. You think everyone's going to cheat on you. And lastly, and this is the saddest part, I guess, you tolerate unhealthy relationships. As much as you go on about all these red flags and signs, and I see that you're not responded to me and you haven't been as warm to me as you usually were, and what does that mean? You didn't say I love you. You are the one that will tolerate it. you were securely attached, you would not persist with this person and questioning them, asking them all these things, but you would leave if eventually you were not happy in the relationship.

But the anxious attached person, they won't leave. They will just keep noticing these things, picking on those things, and going round and round in that pattern. If you're still not sure if this is you, let's go through some anxious behaviors. Calling and texting nonstop, you don't have boundaries, but you also don't respect people's boundaries. If somebody isn't available to you, you will go off calling them and texting them nonstop because what to you is most important is that soothing. It's almost like a drug whereby you need to be soothed with that person answering you, even if it's them saying,

leave me the hell alone, go away, you smelly cow. You don't care what it is. You just need that response from that person. You constantly check their social media. You're always checking, where are they? Where are they going? You're tracking them. That's anxious behavior. You're also suspicious when life is good. If your relationship is going well, you will start subliminally picking at that person and seeing what it is and when it's all going to fall apart and fall away and fall down. This is so exhausting, honey, honestly, remembering being in my 20s and having this feeling of doom that everything is going to eventually go wrong because you will be abandoned and that is just what happens is really, really difficult and so hard to live with. And we will go on

to developing secure attachment. But when you are secure and it's hard work, but you can work on it, life does get hard when things are hard, but you know almost that you have your own back because you know that the merits that matters is your own self-worth, not someone's worth of you. Another anxious behavior is going along with what others want and not what you want. It's times when you know to your core that you don't want something as small as eating somewhere or as big as living somewhere, but you will just go along with what people want because you are terrified of saying no to them and boozing them. You also can't say no. You are scared that somebody will perceive that as their needs not being fulfilled. It literally makes you itch when you say no

and you see any kind of discomfort in that person, it makes you feel so vulnerable like you're going to be replaced. And it's a really tough position to be in because I don't feel this way now. I can easily say no now, and I have been able to for, I don't know, seven years, it's been a while

that I've not felt this way, but feeling that way is exhausting. Another behavior is asking the partner if they like you or find you attractive. I think anxious attachment is often, something that flares up for women in their late teens and early 20s. And it's very hard for them to see that the behavior that they are exemplifying is not going to get them the reward that they want.

They want to be adored, admired, and appreciated, and they're asking their partner, oh, do you like me in this dress, or what do you think? Am I prettier than her? But literally, it will do the opposite. And what I wish I had is someone like me back there. to tell me how to act in order to get what I want because all of this rhetoric about just be yourself, just be authentic, just be this, well, you know what, babe? Anxious attachment is authentic to a lot of people because they've been forced to be anxious in life because they didn't

receive that interaction and love they needed as a child through no one's fault and sometimes through a lot of people's fault. But that is who you are now. Should you continue being that person that you are? No, we all need to work on ourselves, self-developed, and especially in this woman, female environment, where often Molly Caudle and said, you're great the way you are, yes, Queen, go off Queen. Well, if Queen's got anxious attachment, then Queen needs to change because it's not going to get you what you want,

and I'm here to tell you with behaviours and things that you can do, how you can gain what you want, how you can build the life you want, and asking your partner how you look, and if you're more attractive than Susan over there, is not the way to do it. I'm sorry, if anything is going to make you unattractive. And that's not what you want.

and all you need is some guidance. Another thing you do is you avoid breakups, even if it's a bad relationship, because you would rather be in a bad relationship, then alone. And I can pass this for somebody who is in their 50s and has seven children, and now that person is probably not their ideal,

but they've been together and there's history there. But if you're 21, and you met this guy somewhere, and he's completely not for you, you don't even share children together. You don't have a future together, but you don't want to leave him. because you're too scared to be alone, it's a problem. Anxious attachment can sabotage your relationship.

It can literally take a relationship that's good, and this is the reason this is so important, and make it bad. Sometimes when I see these emails that I get, I see myself in them, and I think, my God, this is what's happening whereby I cannot even tell through these emails whether the guy you're with is doing something wrong or right, but all I can see is your anchored. attachment because guess what if you develop secure attachment the errors or the goodness of this guy

would come to the forefront so clearly we wouldn't even have to question ourselves if you're confused and questioning that means your attachment is slightly off because if you were secure and you knew who you were and you knew your worth it'll be very clear who this man is and if he's for you because margarita can't tell you from an email if he's for you she doesn't know if he's a good guy if he's a good man and what he promised you and what he's going to do and what he does in the daily. I can't tell you that. But if you had your secure attachment, it's like putting on clear lens glasses. Anxious people cannot be in the moment.

They are anxious. It's anxiety. It's driving you to look into the future. And I guess depression makes you look into the past. There is a way that men will also treat you. If you're constantly called needy and clingy, if people often ghost you, and if they argue with you and try and end the relationship,

and it's not just one person, it's many people, then it's a likely chance that you've got anxious attachment. Because if one person who's a jerk calls you needy and clingy and you're secure and you know that you're not and you're like, okay, Derek, next, and then that never happens to you again, then that was probably Derek. But if everybody says, look, I can't give you this much, it's too much, you're infringing on my time, friends, boyfriends,

then we know that there is some error here that maybe you're asking for too much and there is such a thing because in our culture, you know, everyone needs to be molly coddled and loved. But sometimes you're not searching for the love that you want from him. You're searching for the love that you want from you. If people ghost you also, and I don't mean you met them on Tinder and then they ghosted you. I mean you have several relationships and after a while people just disappear. It means that you're hard to talk to and there is nothing.

By the way, this does not make them right. If I was talking to them, I would tell them a completely different thing. I would tell them that is disrespectful. They're not right in all these things. but I'm talking to you and I want to improve your life, not theirs, because they're disrespectful to ghost you. So the point being is that maybe sometimes people aren't versed in conversational skills and they don't really know how to be honest and frank, and you're just too difficult to speak to and let know the truth. In order to change, you need to start practicing the art of secure attachment.

You need to delve into attachment and learning everything you can about it, how I dealt with it, is by one simple method, and that is looking at secure attachment and acting as if I was for a year. I didn't put the time of a year in my head, but you can. You could put three months, six months, put a timer in your head whereby you say, I will be secure attached, no matter what. I will not act in the behaviors of anxiety, but I will act in the behaviors of security because you know a magic thing will happen. because the sad thing is when you act anxious, what you're actually looking for is love approval and validation. And how you will get love approval and validation is by being secure. The only way I can prove that to you and you can prove that to your neurology and build new neuralinks in your brain is by actually doing it.

And wow, suddenly when you act secure, people reply to you. Suddenly when you act secure, men chase you. Suddenly, when you act secure, people don't call you needy. They don't ghost you. They don't argue and leave you. They lean into you, not away from you. And every day you wake up and you're thinking, oh my God, Margarita was right. Because you're going to be thinking, wow, I am right.

Look at this. And then something's going to flare up and you're going to be like, oh, I'm going to call them off the hook. I'm going to keep sex in them. Then you're going to say, no, no, I promise myself three months of secure attachment. And again, a good thing will happen. You will prove to yourself through the actions of acting secure, acting as if, faking it until you're making it, that this is the right strategy, because the only reason you're using anxious behavior is like a child that you used to be, you don't know how to get respect,

worth, and trust from people. You don't know how to do it. So like a toddler, you act in these grasping ways, because that's the only thing you know, because sometimes it works. Sometimes a person in exhaustion turns to you and goes, yes, what is it that you want? And you're like, oh, I'm soothed. But trust me, if you lean into secure attachment, you will get the love that you want. Learn about it. Read the books attached. Read the book Getting the Love You Want and read the book How to Be an Adult in Relationships. I'll put those in my description of this episode. You need to practice that. Practice secure attachment. Learn about it. So in order to practice something, you need to know what it is. What is a person with secure attachment? Someone with secure

attachment has the ability to regulate their emotions outside of someone else, especially if that person is someone who they don't know from a bar of soap. It's hard for me to say regulate my emotions if I've had an argument with my mum who I've known for my whole life for 30 plus years because that's a real person in my life. And let's say we've had an argument about something tangible and real. It's hard. But if you've met Josh and you've dated him for three months, and he's done something bizarre. You need to be able to sit in your own space and come to a place of calming down

without calling him off the hook. Secure people trust others until they don't. It's a really hard thing to master, but you have to in order to preserve your sanity and then as you must trust people until they prove otherwise. The reason you don't trust is someone hurt you in the past. Someone really hurt you in childhood or adult life.

But I want to tell you that if you therefore don't trust anybody else, you're letting that trauma and you're letting that person win. You are strong enough to handle if someone breaks your trust again. But you are not strong enough to live for the rest of your life, not trusting anyone else and punishing people who you should have trusted. Because you're punishing yourself because of that person who hurt you in the past. Don't do it. Don't let your life go because of that. Secure people have effective communications. skills. They are able to speak without blaming. They are able to say, hey, when I don't hear from you for

weeks, that's not the kind of relationship I'm looking for. I respect if that's what you want to do, but I just want to let you know what I want. And then if that person does not communicate with them anymore, they leave them. They communicate what they mean and they mean what they say. They don't blame the person. They don't say, who do you think you are not communicating with me? Off and not calling me, no. You've met this person, you don't know them. You're telling them what you are, and they're telling you what they are.

The person they've showed you who they are is that they don't like to text you more than twice a week. But you want daily contact. You've told them, they don't want to. Good. Bob's your uncle. No problem. Secure attached people can seek emotional support. A key that I never realized when I was anxiously attached is that secure people are vulnerable.

They can be vulnerable. A big part of the artist coming to someone and saying, hey, you know, when you follow all these women online who are naked, it's not really how I envision my relationship and my future and I really like you, but this makes me feel sad and bizarre and weird. I'd really love it if you wanted to make me happy that you didn't do that. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to be insecure.

It's okay to be these things, but it's not okay then to keep checking that person's phone and all these things. if that person keeps going on with that behavior you didn't like, you need to be able to walk away. Secure people are comfortable being alone. I can't tell you that once you get that practice of this art of being alone and actually liking yourself, then I think that is the core of it. That is the core of security is comfort in knowing that you've got your own back to know that that child that was scared, it shouldn't be scared anymore that you used to be because now you're an adult and you've got yourself, then you can look after yourself, because we go around a lot as women parading the fact

that we're independent and we can pay for our own sandwich at lunch. But what we should really be parading is that we are independent spiritually and emotionally. That's the real independence. Financial and life independence isn't where it's at because we're interdependent creatures. We live in communities, one person hunts, another person foragers, another person looks after a baby. If you have children, you'll soon discover that you can't do it alone. it takes a village but real independence is comfort in being alone relying on people but knowing how to self-soothe secure people are not defensive this has only come to me recently if somebody says to me somebody that i like a man says to me oh you looked better in something else or you know something

like that not to go what do you mean by that what did you say where were you looking just don't be defensive expect and accept people for who they are and what they said let it secure people show empathy. Often people with anxious attachment are in the victim role and I get it because I used to be there. But the reality is that they can't put themselves in other people's shoes either because they are so overwhelmed with what they are going through and who it is they are, that they can't put themselves in other people's position. Secure people know when to compromise. they know if they've met someone else and that person really likes hiking or something that takes them away to do that. Secure people can evaluate that person for who they are and not try and break them and think, is this person for me?

And if they are and they're a good person, they know how to compromise. This person is going to go hiking. I don't like it, but they're going to go and do that by themselves. Secure people are straightforward. They say it how it is. They don't try and sulk. They don't play games. They're not trying to get a reaction out of you.

It's not tragic. It's pretty clear. They have and they respect boundaries. This is a big one. If you haven't listened to my boundaries podcast, it was a few episodes back. Listen to that. You need to develop your own boundaries and not be afraid that if somebody does not want to observe them, that they'll disappear. If they are going to disappear, it's better they disappear now than when you are 10 years into your marriage with children.

And they also know how to respect boundaries. Now that's pivotal. Knowing how to respect someone's boundaries is something that anxiously attached people really lack. And that is my pet peeve with them. I used to be one remember. So I'm speaking at myself in the past and I'm speaking at people who are still feeling this way. They will bombard your messages. Christ, they do it to me.

I don't mind. I'm not attached to them in any way. So it is what it is. But they will not understand how it's not someone else's prerogative to, to fulfill their needs once and requests in that moment. Secure people can disagree and not lose control. They can have a discussion with someone, disagree on something, walk away and have that discussion again later. They don't lose control.

They don't go crazy. They don't feel like the connection with that person is the pivotal part of their life. They can accept everyone's humanity as it is. And secure people are free of old baggage. this is, I suppose, my favorite part of secure attachment, and that is I refuse to bring old baggage or things that have happened to me in my life, forward for the person I'm with now to pay for them. They didn't cause those things. Why should they pay for what it is that you went through? And yes, therapy is something you need to address and do. If you cannot get over these things, if you cannot act as if, like I advise, and if you cannot read those books, books and and manage it. Therapy, therapy, therapy. I did a few sessions. To me, I'll be honest,

it wasn't useful because I don't think I found the right person for myself, but I think it's pivotal, vital, useful, amazing. All in all, I wanted to make this podcast because the way you move forward, the way you create your life you want, the way you create the person you want to be, the way you self-manufacture is by looking at the self, ironing out the bits. and moving forward. The centric relationship view of he did this, he did that, is he the one, is it red flag, is he this?

Forget him. Let's look at you. And when you are secure, it becomes so much clearer whether he's the right person for you or not because you will have known your values, you will know your boundaries, you will know who you are,

and you will also see that people react to you so much better with so much more respect and so much more openness, because when someone's grasping for love, it's hard to be open with them. Maybe next week we'll talk about avoidant and avoidant men and how that feels and how to deal with that.

Thank you so much for listening. And everybody who subscribes helps me so much. That is the most incredible thing to watch the subscribers grow on this. And it means that I put so much more time, effort, energy and love into this podcast. thank you so much i'll see you in the next one love you lots