How I Use Attachment Theory

This post feels important to me. I hope it lands for you, too—and as usual, I am open to your feedback and thoughts. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for reading.

As a white woman creating material to support folks who are interested in healing their early attachment wounds and creating healthy adult relationships, I want to emphasize that I am not the end-all-be-all when it comes to this work. I approach attachment theory in a very specific way (one that I hope brings a lens of compassion and justice through relational health and fulfillment) and there are many other approaches that are just as valid and important.

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Flexibility and Secure Relationships

The themes of flexibility and patience have been up for me lately. Do you ever notice how the same lessons keep coming up over and over again until we finally learn them? For me, the lessons related to flexibility and patience usually have to do with reworking all of my big plans, pivoting last minute, WAITING (the worst!), and soooo many deep breaths.

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Attachment Work is Worth It

My partner and I were recently discussing our time in couples therapy a few years ago. I’m not sure how we stumbled on the subject, but it was sweet to recall where we were at that time in our relationship and all the progress we’ve made and the growth we’ve experienced since that time. I’m going to be honest—we were struggling. We had gotten married just a few months earlier and all of a sudden it felt like (pardon my language) shit got real. We knew that if we continued engaging in the pattern of having a big argument, feeling resentful and frustrated with no solution, moving on and trying to ignore the problem, then starting all over again, our relationship would be so damaged we might not be able to come back from it.

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Is there a problem in my relationship or am I just avoidant?

Hello! I received this question from someone I’m connected with and I wanted to spend some time answering. When we find ourselves at a crossroads in a relationship and we are aware of how our insecure attachment styles can arise and potentially sabotage us, it can be challenging to determine where the desire to leave a relationship is coming from. Let’s dive in!

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How Not to Lose Yourself in a Relationship

I used to be a person who would lose herself in romantic partnerships. And to be honest, over the past 14 months of being a mother and experiencing a global pandemic, I’ve felt whispers of those times in my life. Who am I anymore? What do I like? What is it like to maintain some of my energy for myself rather than constantly investing it in others?

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Do people with secure attachment even exist?

When we are working on our own relationship patterns, it can be challenging to see how anyone might be able to relate securely or fully show up in partnerships because it really does take conscious effort.

And of course, after you’ve been doing your relational work for a while and you’re looking for a relationship that is truly secure, you realize there are lots of folks out there who haven’t discovered attachment work just yet—and it shows.

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Are you intentionally cultivating healthy relationships?

One of the things I’ve learned as I have engaged in attachment work is that healthy relationships don’t just happen—we have to cultivate them. Even relationships that naturally fall into place in our lives require our care and attention. Eventually, they will need us to invest in them and devote our time and energy to helping them grow.

So why not start now?

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Healthy Relationship Boundaries for Secure Attachment

Today I want to talk a bit about boundaries in relationships—specifically, being part of a relationship where boundaries are challenging for all involved.

A lovely person on Instagram requested that we explore how to navigate a partnership where both families of origin experienced enmeshment.

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