Are you securely attached? Do you generally feel safe, at ease, and emotionally connected in your intimate relationships? If not, there’s a good chance that you struggle with issues related to insecure attachment—often known as avoidant, disorganized, and anxious attachment styles. But take heart; if you’re wrestling with attachment issues, trust that it’s not your fault–your attachment style was on its way to being formed before you could even talk. Yet, if not addressed, attachment issues can manifest in many challenging ways throughout life. Perhaps you have a pattern of being plagued by chronic relationship anxiety, hyper-dependence, fear of abandonment, or irrational jealousy. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, maybe you’re consistently told you’re emotionally disconnected, dismissive, or hyper-independent. But no matter what you’re struggling with, I’m here to assure you that you can rewire your brain and create healthy relational patterns.

Today’s expert offers practical wisdom that can help you earn the secure attachment style—and healthy connection—you deserve. Join Dr. Carla Manly and expert Trevor Hanson for an empowering journey into what it takes to create healthy, safe relationships–starting with the relationship you have with yourself! Topics discussed include attachment style, attachment, secure attachment, insecure attachment, dismissive attachment, avoidant attachment, healthy relationships, communication, emotional abuse, abusive relationships, family of origin, family dynamics, avoidance, coping strategies, healing, inner child, boundaries, self-love, self-growth, inner-child healing, jealousy, conflict, triggers, ruptures, connection, and vulnerability.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

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Anxiously Attached? Triggered by Your Partner? Create Healthy Love with Expert Trevor Hanson

Understanding and Healing from Insecure Attachment Issues

Are you securely attached? Do you generally feel safe, at ease, and emotionally connected in your intimate relationships? If not, there’s a good chance that you struggle with issues related to insecure attachment, often known as avoided, disorganized, and anxious attachment styles. Take heart. If you’re wrestling with attachment issues, trust that it’s not your fault. Your attachment style was well on its way to being formed before you could even talk.

Yet, if not addressed, attachment issues can manifest in many challenging ways throughout life. Perhaps you have a pattern of being plagued by chronic relationship anxiety, hyperdependence, fear of abandonment, or irrational jealousy. At the other end of the spectrum, maybe you’re constantly told you’re emotionally disconnected, dismissive, or hyperindependent. No matter what you’re struggling with, I’m here to assure you that you can rewire your brain and create healthy relational patterns.

Stay tuned because our expert offers practical wisdom that can help you earn the secure attachment style and healthy connection you deserve. We’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question. “When we first met, I didn’t realize that my boyfriend and I are both anxiously attached. I read an article where you recommended journaling about issues. I started doing that. I figured out that what glued us together at first felt good and safe, but it’s toxic.

Our friends think we’re a great couple, but he’s getting more controlling and jealous. I don’t know what to do. Can you talk about this?” With that question as the focus of our episode.

I’m joined by a very wonderful guest, Trevor Hanson, who will be sharing his expertise as a licensed psychotherapist and anxious attachment coach. Trevor specializes in Anxious Attachment, Inner Child Healing, and Boundaries. Welcome to the show, Trevor. It’s a true delight to have you with us.

Thank you so much for having me.

What Makes Trevor, Trevor? The Power of Loving Connection

I’m excited to dive into this reader’s question and the issues being presented. I am such a fan of attachment theory. This is going to be a big delight and a very juicy podcast interview. Before we launch into that, Trevor, can you tell our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you?

I think what makes me me, and you told me you were going to ask me this question, I’m a deep thinker, and you said I didn’t have to think too deeply about it, but I cannot help but do it. I love thinking deep and answering this question, but I think for me, what makes me me is my love. At least the piece of me that I enjoy quite a bit. When I’m in my loving place and I’m feeling connected to others and I give them my love from not a standpoint of like overcompensating and people pleasing love, but like where I fill up my own cup and I give them what I have left over or the abundance.

That’s where I feel the most like myself. I guess I’m reflecting to answer that question in a moment when I feel the most like myself. What’s going on? It’s that I’m being loving and I’m not worried about myself. I’m not thinking about me too much. I’m just connecting. I don’t know, a surprising answer that came out of me. It’s like you’re doing some therapy on me, but I’m realizing that’s when I’m in my me. That’s when I’m being myself.

That is such a gorgeous answer. I’ve never had someone answer in that way. Not that anybody answers the same way, but with that theme. It’s interesting because your response gave me pause to think about that in my own life.  I think I’m much the same way. I didn’t ever think about it that way, but I’m most in my flow, most me when I’m doing for others, joining with others in that space of being love, like acting in love, whatever it is with animals, with people, with nature. It is definitely that’s such a beautiful way of looking at it. Thank you for that gift.

I hope readers that you got some of that energy to where you could reflect and think about when you have love and you’re acting in love, if that makes you feel like more of you, to a great gift. Thank you. It made me wonder then because often that sense of flow and that sense of being deeply grounded in love and living in love often comes from having been raised in a family where secure attachment was provided or from earning secure attachment, which might be the case for you.

The Spectrum of Attachment: Secure, Anxious, and Earned

It’s a bit of a mixed bag. It’s one of those things where insecure attachment is a spectrum. What does it mean to be fully secure? I don’t even know really what that means for sure. That might not be human. What does it mean to be completely anxious or insecure? We have some visions of what that might look like when we’re in relationships that are a little bit more rocky, or toxic, or whatever we might say.

For me, I’ve been up and down that spectrum a little bit more towards the anxiously attached in my years, where that started to present was even through like elementary school, into schooling, into college, even. I had a bit of a mixed bag. I was secure in some ways, anxious in others. I always felt secure in professional settings. I could show up and talk with people twenty years older than me and feel very confident about it. When it came to feeling like I fit in with like a group of guys in particular, or if I felt like I was enough for my dates and thinking that they were going to reject me or leave me, that was a whole different story.

I was a big puddle. I guess for me, it’s a mixed bag. The places where I lacked a lot of security, I’ve earned it since. I love the word you used. I haven’t used that word before of earning it, but that is a great way to say it because it implies that there’s some ownership and accountability and some work that’s involved. It’s a bit of a mixed bag for me. I’ve earned it and I’ve received it as a gift, both.

You’ve already said a couple of things that are going to take me into asking you some more questions and earned attachment. I wish I could claim that as something I coined. I use it a lot in my fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love, which is all about attachment and earning secure attachment. It comes from many people who paved the way in the attachment theory world. I love that you’re right. It gives the ability to not feel as though we are stuck in any form of insecure attachment.

If we do the work, which is your specialty, you help people do the work to get there, to get into that place. You’re right, it is a continuum. There are moments when a securely attached person and a very securely attached person can come home and find a partner cheating on them. That’s going to rock your world.

Workplace vs. Intimate Relationships: Why Security Shifts

That very sense of security can evaporate overnight, or you have a really strong and secure relationship with a child, and they go missing because you haven’t heard from them, they’re on a flight somewhere, and it’s 48 hours later. That can cause a rupture within you to make you at least temporarily anxious in that attachment there. I do have a question for you. I run a lot into this a lot in my practice, where it’s generally a heterosexual relationship.

Generally, the male is presenting as the one who’s saying, “I’m fine at work. I’m connected at work. I’m secure at work. My wife is calling me dismissive or emotionally unavailable, but I’m everybody else says I’m fine. My buddies say I’m fine. My work colleagues say I’m fine.” I know what my theory is on that. What’s your theory on how someone can present in a work or friendship relationship as being very strong and secure, but when they show up in an intimate relationship, they are, as you said, either a puddle or they’re just the most avoidant person on the block.

I think the word that you used to describe one relationship versus the other is the key here. You said an intimate relationship. Intimacy increases risk. The closer I am to you, the more you can hurt me. At work, there are a lot of barriers. There’s professionalism. There are all sorts of things. With friends, I mean, you don’t sleep in the same bed. You go home to your house, they go home to theirs, they have their lives, and you maybe only spend a couple of hours together in a given week, if you’re good friends, that is.

That’s a good friendship if you’re spending a couple of hours a week with somebody, and that’s pretty minimal, honestly. The closer you are, the more you have the opportunity to hurt me. The closer you are to me, the more it parallels my past relationships. Past relationships, like my relationship with my mom and dad growing up. Maybe that’s where this all started. Let’s talk about the avoidant partner in this example, going to work, saying, “Everybody thinks I’m great there, and everyone thinks I’m fine.”

At home, they’re getting this criticism that you’re not available emotionally. You always shut down this and that. Let’s reverse history, and maybe that early relationship looked like them being told, “You need to man up. Don’t have those feelings. If you’re going to cry, you go to your room.” Which is basically saying you cannot be part of what we’re doing. We’re going to pull back our love. You’re not part of this family until you squish out your emotions, until you stamp them out. Once you do, then you’re acceptable.

What did that guy learn to do? He learned to stamp out his emotions, pull them back, especially when it’s intimate. There’s nothing that comes closer to paralleling the relationship between a parent and a child as far as intimacy goes, as a close romantic intimate relationship. Those are some of my ideas, some of the theories. It’s very psychodynamic related. We’re looking back in history, and it’s very nerdy. Therapy speak when we talk about paralleling relationships, but it’s also just like you increase the risk, the more you commit.

I agree with you 100%, and that’s one of the reasons I’m a fan of attachment theory is it’s one of the most well-researched with longitudinal studies that show over time, decades and decades. We’re not blaming parents here, never any use in blaming parents, but there is good use in looking back, as you’re saying and saying, “Were mom and dad present? Were they attuned to me? Did they allow for emotions if I cried, regardless of my gender?” Did somebody come up and say, “What’s happening? What’s going on for you?” Did they, as you were giving the explanation, shut you down? “Men don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. Are you a sissy?”

Of course, that person presents in relationships as shut down as avoidant, or dismissive, whichever term you’re looking at using. Later relationships, the first romantic, second romantic, third one, then, often you experience someone who’s accusing you of being shut down or not available. It makes you even more afraid because if they don’t know how to encourage you forward in a non-critical way, and for someone who’s avoidant, dismissive. They often hear everything as criticism. If it’s not a pat on the back, they’re like radars up, “I’m being criticized.” Even if you’re saying, “I’d like more hugs from you. I’d like some kind words from you.” They may feel it as I’m not doing enough. What do you think of that?

The Anxious-Avoidant Dance: Criticism & Fear of Abandonment

It makes sense because they’ve most likely experienced maybe more criticism in their life. They have a heightened sensitivity to it. Everything starts to look like criticism. I also will say, though, that in a relationship, oftentimes you’ll get the anxious and avoidant matchup. They pair up together, and this is where we start flipping the coin to the other side and start seeing what’s going on with the anxiously attached partner, which is my zone or my specialty.

It’s funny, we’ve been talking about avoidant men, which I can help with, but I typically work with anxiously attached women who want to become secure. Men are part of our programs, too. Let’s flip the script a little bit, go back to our scenario of there’s an avoidantly attached male married to a more anxious attached female, on the subject of criticism is what we’re talking about here. The anxiously attached have this underlying fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, and fear of losing connection with another person.

This may became from having a dismissive father growing up. You feel this anxiety to keep the connection alive because it was really hard to do that with your dad growing up. Maybe it comes from having a highly critical mom who always made you feel like you had to earn love, and so you’re always really anxious about this. Either way, the anxiously attached feel like love is scarce, and they don’t feel like they can provide it for themselves.

There’s this anxiety to receive it from somebody else. It’s all external. “I need you to fill my cup.” When their partner does something that doesn’t fill their cup, or they feel like their partner’s not trying to fill their cup. They’re missing the mark. It could be something as simple as, “My partner keeps coming home late from work every day.” The story starts going off in their head. “They don’t love me. They don’t care about me. It’s a form of abandonment.”

You might not be so consciously aware of the stories in your head, but you’re making them. They’re happening. How it comes out is this self-protective behavior. The avoidant, we already know how they protect themselves. “I’m going to withdraw, I’m not going to say anything else, I’m going to pull back, I learned that in my youth, I go to my room until I’m done crying.” The anxiously attached see that lack of having their cup filled, that partner who’s coming home late, and they protect themselves from hurt, from abandonment.

It’s a pretty logical approach, honestly, and emotional at the same time, which is point out the thing that’s wrong so that it can be fixed. Oftentimes, when you point out the thing that’s wrong, as human beings, we do that very critically and judgmentally. It sounds like you’re always late. You’re just pointing out the gap instead of pointing out what you need. You gave beautiful examples that were a little bit more soft, a little bit more inviting, but I’m taking a step back and saying that there is a pattern usually for the anxiously attached.

They’ll point out, “You do this wrong. You come home late. You don’t show me that you love me. You don’t tell me that you love me. You don’t send me good morning texts anymore. That’s not even fun anymore. It’s not like we’re dating. When was the last time you took me on a date?” There’s the diagnosis that comes after, where you start diagnosing your partner as unloving. “You don’t even love me anymore. You don’t care about me. You like your friends better than you like me.”

It’s criticism and diagnosis that start flying at the avoidantly attached. I’m going to have a lot of compassion. That anxiously attached person is just grasping for safety. They don’t know how to get the safety. They’re just doing what their gut reaction is, which is the criticism, which is the judgment. They’re left scratching their heads, going, “I tell him what I need, but then he just withdraws and he pushes further away.”

I go, “My friend, you are not telling him what you need. You’re telling him how he is failing you and how he is not good enough, which is only triggering his wounds of rejection, his wounds that came from being criticized as a child.” Which you may shame yourself and say, “I don’t want to do that to my partner.” Before you go there, let’s just bring that back and say, “All it is that we need two things. We need to heal the underlying wounded part of you that seeks for safety through criticism. We need to find new strategies. Criticism is a strategy. Let’s just find another one, okay? It’s like casual. Let’s just find another strategy. It’s alright. I don’t know how we got there.”

That’s how that pattern of withdrawal and fear of criticism and heightened sensitivity to it, that’s how it happens for the avoidantly attached. I’m not blaming either side. You can see how they trigger each other. They do it. That’s a pattern that I think is important to observe. A pattern observed is a pattern that can be broken.

Breaking the Pattern: How to Observe & Shift Relationship Dynamics

Thank you for highlighting that because it’s something I do the same thing with clients, where I invite them to take a step back, because when we’re in it, it’s hard for us to think clearly. Our emotions are heightened. We’re afraid, we’re hurt. When we learn to step back and observe the interactions, which takes practice, it takes work. It’s a lot of work.

When you learn to step back and, as you’re painting the picture of what’s happening here, it’s not that one person is right or, as you clearly show, it’s more that the dynamic isn’t working. I love how you’re able to clarify that sometimes your plea for affection is criticism or interpreted as criticism.

Simply learning, just staying with this example so our readers can hear how it can conclude and shift it from “You don’t love me. You never do this,” to “I would feel so much better if you would tell me three things you love about me. I’d feel so much better if, when you are coming home late, you just send me a text two seconds to say 30 minutes behind and a heart emoji.” Anything like that, and that to me is one of the greatest privileges of intimacy.

We have the privilege to find somebody’s owies. We all have owies, we all have imperfections. In a mindless or heartless relationship, you’re just going to keep whacking at the other person. Sometimes purposefully, sometimes not. When you become mindful and you’re where, “My sweetheart is getting hurt when I don’t look him in the face and tell him I love him, or give her a hug when I come home, or say I’m going to be late. Why would I want to hurt the person I say I love so much?”

When we pause and simply don’t make about right or wrong, I call them reach towards or pushaways. In interactions, we have a choice. Most of our interactions, even with strangers, are not neutral. We are generally choosing, consciously or unconsciously, to reach toward a person with our actions or words or push them away. When we’re looking at this dance of avoidance and detachment, if we realize, “I can see into my partner’s eyes or words and see that they just want love, they just want safety, they just want security, what might I shift to give them a little bit more?”

It doesn’t take away from the part you point out that, at the same time, we need to be doing our inner work. We don’t want to be fully dependent on, as you say, another person to fill our cup. Part of being in a relationship is filling each other’s cups. That’s what we don’t want to rely on as our sole source. We want to be able to do things like exercise, enjoy our work, be out in nature, have time with friends to fill up our cups self in have that intimate relationship.

This is the beauty of the anxious dynamic that you’re talking about, not our reader, where there were two anxious that are detached. You and I are continuing to talk about the anxious and the avoidant, or dismissive. I think there’s such magic when you have two people who start becoming aware of this through that ability to be objective and say, “I can help heal my partner and my partner can help me heal by creating the safety.” What do you think of that?

Taking Control of Your Healing: Creating Emotionally Safe Spaces

I absolutely believe that. I feel like there’s so much depth to this, and it’s almost hard to approach it. You mentioned that what you do can help your partner to heal. I was thinking as we talking about this, the reader’s question, right around, what do I do? I think the end of that question was “We’re in an anxious relationship. He’s starting to get more controlling. I think this is not good, and our friends think it is. What do I do?”

The what do I do piece always comes back down to control the things you can control. At the end of the day, if you’re an anxiously attached person, your temptation will be to control outside factors. Maybe your reader, for some reason I’m thinking that it’s a she, I don’t know, we’ll just say she. She’s experiencing that maybe he’s becoming more controlling. She’s on the receiving end of that.

When she shifts towards saying, “I’m going to be fully responsible for my own deep healing, and for my strategies, meaning how I vocalize my needs, how I approach this, how maybe I tell my partner invulnerability, the ways that it hurts when my partner gets controlling. I’m controlling that.” That’s a level of healing on its own. As you start to interact with your partner in a safe and loving way, not responding from your fear but from your love.

At the beginning of this, I talked about how I am my most myself when I am responding out of my love. You’re responding from your love, then what can happen, it’s not your responsibility to heal the other person. What that does is that it gives them an emotional experience of being held, loved, nurtured, and safe, potentially for one of the first times in their entire life. Maybe their wounding has to do with not receiving love, nurturing, safety, and curiosity.

All the words that describe a secure, loving interaction. Just by experiencing that emotionally, they start to heal. I’ll wrap up with this. Anxious attachment and secure attachment are formed through emotional experiences. That’s why reading books and listening to podcasts, though they’re good and they give you good information, they don’t usually give you transformation until you feel something new.

Emotion creates attachment, whether it’s secure or insecure. When you create that safety, that’s an emotion that builds security in them personally and in your relationship together. The goal is always to create emotionally safe experiences for myself to heal my inner wounding, create emotionally safe experiences for my partner to help them with their wounding, and to help our relationship become more secure.

Beautifully said. I agree with that completely, that it is so many things. There are so many pieces, but yes, it’s not our responsibility to heal a partner or a partner’s responsibility to heal us. Yet within the context of a relationship where you have two people both trying to evolve towards secure attachment towards their best selves, you get those moments where there’s a rupture or a challenge.

There’s that moment do I go back to the old way of being, whether it’s very avoidant, dismissive, whether I get really anxious, or do I dig into my inner core, what I’m learning my strategies using I messages. I feel hurt, I feel scared, and saying what I need. If I’m the dismissive or avoidant person, do I run and turn my back on this person, or do I turn and listen and not? In those, there are micro moments within a relationship. I agree with you, we can read all the self-help books we want, but if we don’t, it’s why every book I’ve written has exercises, and ones that are couple-oriented have invite couples to do them together.

Why? It’s because in that experience, as you’re saying, of emotional attunement, emotional connection, where it’s authentically there. It’s not something that’s being forced. It’s the person wanting to look into the other person’s eyes and heart and be there for them. You’re right. Sometimes that is their first experience in life with someone slowing down and looking at them and being curious and not judging them. The healing power of those micro moments is incredible.

The Inner Child: Healing Through Validation and Trust (Chick-fil-A Story)

Yes, it is. As we talk about this, I cannot help but ask if I can share a little story that illustrates how you can create micro moments for yourself and healing.

Please do.

First, I want to set the stage a little bit, so this makes sense. When we talked earlier about our fictitious couple, and maybe we can even reference our real friend who asked this question, is that we’re making some assumptions. The person who has an anxious attachment, fear of abandonment, usually doesn’t have a high sense of self-worth. Those kinds of things define anxious attachment. They most likely had emotional experiences that caused them to feel that way.

Two examples that we gave, maybe dad was more dismissive and hard to reach emotionally, or maybe mom was hypercritical and made you feel like you had to earn love. Whatever your experience is individually, it’s your experience that created this underlying fear. A fear of abandonment. Big long list of what they could be, and I wish we had all the time in the world to list a bunch of them, just so people go, “That’s me.”

I think if you’re reading, you can maybe start to piece it together. What happened then is that your nervous system was wired together in a certain way. Your nervous system learned to feel on edge, anxious, and unsafe, particularly in intimate relationships. It was built into you. Your body grows up, but there’s a part of you that remains pretty much the same, which is that part of your nervous system. You’re no longer in a child’s body, but you quite literally have an inner child in your nervous system.

It’s not this metaphorical, cute idea, which is very cute and very metaphorical, but it’s also real. You have built into your nervous system this inner child, this little being that has unmet emotional needs. This is where the story comes in, and we’ll all tie it together. One day, I was sitting at Chick-fil-A of all places. I’m sitting across a booth and I can see in the other booth a dad and his daughter. His daughter’s probably maybe like five, somewhere around that age. She’s running back and forth from the playground to come and get a bite of food, and back and forth.

She’s in the zone of having the best time, bare feet, slapping on the ground. Doesn’t matter what’s on the ground. She doesn’t care. She’s barefoot. She’s running and she’s coming back. Dad pops a chicken nugget into her mouth. She’s back. She’s like getting sweaty. She’s having so much fun. Her hair’s sticking to her face, and she’s just stoked out of her mind. There comes that horrible time in any five-year-old’s life when you have to leave Chick-fil-A and you’re hearing dad say, “It’s time to go. Pack up your stuff. We’re going to go.”

She starts to feel the fear, the anxiety. “I’m leaving now.” Just like a child would, it’s very okay and very childlike for someone to do this, which is she started to have some irrational type fears. She hasn’t been on this earth very long. Of course, her fears are going to be a little bit irrational and a little bit sideways at times. She starts saying things, “Dad, we’re never going to come back.” “It’s irrational, we come back all the time.” “You’re so mean, Dad. I just want to stay here. They have red chairs.” She loved the red chairs.

I don’t know what that was about, but she loved them. All these things are coming out of her mouth. I watched Dad do something so cool. I didn’t see him grab her by the hand and rip her out the door and say, “That’s ridiculous. We come back. Come on.” There was no force. There was no pushing. There was such safety, and he modeled something that we can do for ourselves, and we’ll talk about how this looks, but he gets down on her level. He crouches over and he says, “Sweetie, you love it here, don’t you?’ “Yeah.”

She starting to feel validated and the yeah, that squeaks through the tears comes out and it’s like the cutest sound in the world. He goes, “You’re afraid that we’re never coming back?” She’s like, “Yeah.” You can see she’s like, “I’m realizing we probably will come back.” Based on the way she’s looking around, and knowing that she comes back all the time. He goes, “You’re thinking Dad’s being mean.” She’s like, “Yeah, you’re being so mean.” He’s like, “I understand that you feel that way. I know you’re having so much fun. It would feel really scary to think you’re never coming back.”

He just meets her where she is. He doesn’t tell her that her rational, irrational beliefs are true. He tells them that they’re important and they’re valid, and it’s okay that she thinks the way she does. He starts to then from that place of trust that he’s built with her through the validation, through the eye contact, through coming down on her level and recognizing her. He says, “I’m going to have this opportunity now internally to challenge her beliefs because she’s starting to trust Dad.” She’s leaning in, she’s nodding.

He goes, “Sweetie, we’re coming back. We always come back. How do we come here after the soccer games when your cousin plays soccer and we all have fun, and we come back?” She’s like, “Yeah.” She’s remembering things that are true. He goes, “We’ve got mom waiting for you at home, and I’m not wanting to be mean. I want you to go see Mom. You’re excited to see her. I know you are and your baby sister.” She’s like, “Yeah.” He goes, “Your princess bed, it’s not here. You want to sleep on these red chairs? The red chairs are cool, but you don’t want to sleep on these.”

She’s like, laughs a little. Like, “Yeah, dad, I don’t want to sleep here.” He goes, “How about we go home and we come back another day and we do this again.” She was so agreeable. She was so safe, she was so trusting, and she grabs his hand and walks out the door. From that experience, we can draw out a model or a framework for speaking to the inner child that lives within us. We said it lives in there metaphorically, but also physically. This looks like in those moments when you feel really anxious because your partner’s not texting you back.

You’re waiting for it. You’re feeling afraid, and you’re hearing those irrational negative beliefs that are going off in your head like, “They don’t like me anymore. I said something stupid. They’re not coming back.” You turn to that part of you and you say, “I see you. I know why you feel this way.” “You had people leave you in the past. You had people not respond when they should have responded. When you cried, maybe they didn’t listen. I get why you feel this way. I’m so sorry you do. I’m grateful for the warnings. You’re trying to help me.

I can hear that you’re trying to help me.” We’re doing validation at this point. If we want a framework, I’ll build one as we go. We’re recognizing, we’re validating. We’re showing gratitude for the good intentions. We’re not saying it’s true what they’re saying. We’re just saying, “Thank you.” We can challenge the beliefs based on a standpoint of trust, just like Dad had trust with the little girl.

He said, and that’s where you can say, “Remember, that my partner’s working late tonight and that they’re really busy, or they got finals, or maybe sometimes maybe their phone ran out of battery, or maybe they fell asleep because they’re working hard. I don’t know, there are a million other reasons. Remember that even if they don’t text back, you’re still lovable and still worthy and still okay, and life will go on.”

You’re reminding that part of you of all the hopeful truths that are real. You’re not telling yourself fake stories to make yourself feel better. You’re talking about reality. “The bed’s at home, mom’s at home, we’re coming back next week. You’re still enough. If they don’t text back, life is okay.” You’re challenging that, and the more you have these loving interactions where you build trust and then challenge, your inner child will heal, and quite literally, your nervous system will rewire.

If you were to take a scan of your brain, it would look different after doing this on repeat. You’ve got to get reps in, you’ve got to do it quite a few times. Even one powerful interaction can quite deeply change the nervous system. I know there’s a long answer, so I’ll pause there. It’s something that I’m just really passionate about, that story. It impacted me forever.

Navigating Abusive Relationships & Internal Safety

I love stories like that because they are reminders of how all of us, no matter our chronological years, no matter how much work we’ve done, we all have at least one inner child. Some people have one that’s stuck at 3 and 5 and 7, and 12. Some have just one more or less. The point is, as you’re saying, when we recognize that child and not judge it, but listen to it, come forward with compassion.

They do have to call out, Trevor, in your example, with a person who is erasing their mind because their partner is not responding to a text, which is very common. Partners, this can work even if you are in a relationship with a partner who is not behaving appropriately. If you are in a relationship with someone who’s emotionally abusive, I’m not saying to stay. I’m not saying to leave. If you’re with someone where there’s emotional abuse, conscious or unconscious ploys to not be respectful and responsible, and attentive and attuned.

That will make your work not stop, because you can still keep doing your work. If you are in a relationship where someone is consciously or unconsciously triggering you by being irresponsible or abusive, these simple exercises are more difficult and all the more important. As you pointed out, Trevor, if you’re in a relationship with someone who is, let’s say, very narcissistic and is just so self-absorbed.

They don’t care how they’re staying late or lack of accountability affects you. That will keep triggering your abandonment and worry wounds, but it doesn’t mean that you cannot do exactly what you were saying, which is, “Wait a second, this is what my partner’s doing. I’m in a relationship. I can do my healing. If worst case, they’re being inappropriate or disrespect or whatever, I can get to a point where I choose to leave the relationship. I have the choice to stay safe in me to make my internal world my safe place.”

The more that you do this, and I am saying it is a lot harder, it’s why, especially in abusive relationships, it’s often recommended to take a separation. Some pause, maybe living in separate quarters or something, so that your inner work is not so constantly challenging. As we are doing these brain rewiring, life rewiring exercises, it takes a lot of energy. If we’re in a supported environment, it’s less energy-sapping. If we are in a toxic or negative or destructive environment, it’s sometimes like swimming upstream. What do you think?

I love what you say there because the truth part of the interaction between you and your inner child, where you start revealing truth that brings hope, has to be grounded in reality. I’m not telling anybody to make up a story about your partner that’s not true. If they are being neglectful, then we need to honor that. If generally that’s not how they operate, then probably reassuring yourself away from neglect makes a lot of sense.

If there are questions about that, that’s where we look at that might be the truth. Not in a foreboding, fearful, anxious and bearing yourself way, but we look at it from an objective observational standpoint that says, “Even if that were the case, how am I going to be okay? What’s the of survival?” The truth is, people say like reality is, and then they plug in like a swear word, usually, I don’t swear. I’ll just say reality is a B.

I go, “I don’t think so. Reality is so comforting because reality is that no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay. For those who have a belief in a higher power, no matter what, I’m taken care of by something bigger than myself. The reality is, I’ve learned from hard situations in the past. I’m still moving forward. Reality is beautiful.” My hope is that in the revealing of truth, you are connected to the reality instead of getting sucked into the negative and fearful beliefs that drive your anxious attachment.

You said it so beautifully because reality, when we pare that back and step back and look at ourselves through a realistic lens and look at a partner through a realistic lens, it is a huge gift and so freeing. Sometimes that realism is hard when we see something about ourselves that is hard to take, like, “I tend to be clingy, or I tend to be rigid, or I tend to be hypercritical, or I tend to be very self-involved.” Those are hard things, but they pave when we are true with ourselves and true with our being able to see our partners for who they are.

It creates all sorts of possibilities for growth, for change, for acceptance, whatever path we choose. There’s so much here, as you said, we could talk for hours. I want to say it’s funny that you said you don’t swear because that’s my club as well. I love finding different words rather than swear words to express how I’m feeling. I think it’s not a big club of people who choose not to do that. That’s just an aside.

I do also want to say that if we look at the reader’s question, and this individual is saying, “Now I see that my partner and I are anxiously attached. It was okay at first.” Guess they’re doing journaling and figuring out some of these things, and your tips will help them even more figure out what’s going on, what that little inner child is saying. When we look at why this might cause a partner, it seems I’m conjecturing that this individual’s growing awareness is triggering the partner to become more controlling.

That was how I took it, was that, “I see that we were anxiously attached before, but now I’m getting some awareness how this is not necessarily healthy for us, and now my partner’s getting more controlling, more anxious.” What would you say to this reader, not only what you’ve said previously about attachment in the inner work, but also because you specialize in boundaries? How might this person help the relationship inside the self and with the partner grow to a more secure level?

Boundaries: Internal Commitments & When to Enforce Them

There’s sometimes when we do the secure thing because we feel secure and there’s sometimes we do the secure thing because we know it’s the secure thing and on the inside we’re freaking out a little bit and that’s okay. I would say don’t wait for your security to catch up to what is right and what is good for you. If you are recognizing that a relationship is, I don’t know if they use the word toxic, but if it’s unhealthy for you, if it’s holding you back from your healing, then there needs to be some serious consideration around what your boundaries do need to be and you need to get serious about enforcing them.

I will always say this, too. A boundary is not a rule for another person. It is an internal commitment that you make to yourself. All boundaries are internal commitments to the self. Sometimes they have an external presentation where you do ask for something or you let somebody know, “Just so you know, I only let this into my life. If we need this relationship to continue, then it probably needs to change because it doesn’t fit that description.”

This, for example, “I engage in relationships where we give each other autonomy, and controlling one another is not part of what we do. Right now, there’s control that’s happening in the relationship, and if there’s a way that we can work through it, I want to understand it, be empathetic to it, but I need you to know that for me does not work, and we need to work through it. If not, then that might mean things about our relationship that I would seriously need to consider. I might need to step out.”

Depending on the level of commitment in a relationship, is when you decide to verbalize a boundary. Let’s say this is brand new. It’s a new relationship. Everyone sees two anxiously attached people, love bombing each other, because they’re so afraid the other one’s going to leave, and everyone’s like, “They’re so cute.” “My friends think we’re amazing.” “They write each other notes. They’re so darling. They’re taking photos, publicly posting about how they love each other, and it’s so early in the relationship, and that’s so cute.”

Maybe behind it’s a bunch of anxiety. Let’s say it’s early. If it’s early and there’s not a lot of commitment, maybe you say, “This is an early sign, that control, that’s going to lead to hurt places. I’m going to go ahead and step away because that’s not going to influence my healing. My healing is my priority. I know that my healing will lead me into the loving, lasting relationship that I need. Though it’s really hard and I don’t want to, and I don’t totally feel secure doing this yet.

I’m going to do the secure thing, and maybe I’m going to take a step back. Maybe I am going to enforce a boundary.” There are a lot of ways that you can do this. I’m not telling somebody that there’s one answer, but something does need to be done, and something secure needs to be done, whether you feel like doing it or not.

Thank you for highlighting that, because you highlighted a couple of things that are extremely important. The piece that’s preeminent for me is the part where you’re saying sometimes you need to do this secure thing, even when you’re feeling anxious or insecure. People don’t realize especially if you tend toward anxiety or get into that fight-or-flight mode, you might be thinking, “I’m feeling anxious, so I’ve got to listen to that anxiety and run or fight.”

Often, the anxiety is just coming from a place that’s decades old, way before that relationship. When you do as you’re saying, Trevor, when you do the secure thing, which might be having a gentle conversation. It might be saying, “I needed a timeout.” It might be, “Let’s talk voice to voice, eye to eye when you get home.” It might be, “I’m feeling anxious right now.” Saying that to your partner, “Give me a minute to get a cup of tea, and then we can sit down and have a conversation.”

Every time you take that step toward what, not your primitive brain is saying run, fight, be anxious, but to that place in you that can find a bit of groundedness, that’s so important. Thank you for saying that. The other piece that you said that’s just gorgeous, you’ve said so many things that are truly wonderful, but the piece that boundaries have gotten, people use the word, “This is my rule. You must follow my rule. It’s my boundary.”

They’re misusing the term boundary so that they can get their way in whatever they want, rather than realizing, as you’re saying, what a boundary is for me, and it seems the same for you. It’s that part where I have this conversation with my husband every now and again, where it’s my biggest boundary is around respect.

If somebody, as long as I have a very strong need and desire to feel respected by people who are proximate to me or in general, sometimes I need to say to someone, “That feels very disrespectful and I can engage with you or do this with you if you’re not swearing at me or if you’re not being emotionally abusive, but that’s my boundary to feel safe and secure. I need to be with people who communicate with me. You can have criticism, you can have anything, but it needs to be done in a kind, compassionate way.”

For me, that’s a really good way of remembering and helping other people, that when we have a boundary for the self, we feel it inside the self. That is the place in the self that is saying, “I have these basic needs for respect, for truth, for integrity.” We get to let somebody in by opening the gate to our world of vulnerability when they show that they are able to give us that respect or truth, or integrity. Does that comport with your understanding, your beliefs?

Prioritizing Internal Healing: The Path to Secure Relationships

It really does. Those boundaries and those decisions, because I could almost imagine the person who asked that question listening and saying, “You’re still giving me so many options, I still don’t know what to do.” You could talk to them, you could leave, you could do this, you could do that. The good news is that the more you do your internal healing, the more you become secure, the more that inner voice of the inner child calms down, and they trust you. The more clear your answers will become on what your boundary should be. What should be your next step? My plea would be to make your internal healing your priority, and everything else you want, good relationships, clarity on what to do next, is a happy side effect that will come because of the work that you’ve done.

Said so perfectly because it all does start. As much as we want to make it about the other person, the strength, the security come from in here, in the self. Trevor, there’s so much to cover, but you’ve done a brilliant job of attending to our readers’ questions and so much more. Thank you. Are there any other key pieces that you want to offer our readers that we might have missed?

There are a lot of key pieces that I would love to offer your readers, but I think you would have the longest episode that you’ve ever recorded, and I don’t want to do that to them. I will tell you this because there is something that I created that can help as far as the next step, and it’s free. It’s a little 45-minute workshop, and it helps people who are looking to go from anxious to secure to do this healing that we’re talking about.

It helps them recognize these four, what I call essential elements, things that you need to have as part of your healing process. I will say that these four elements are the things that are most commonly missed. Even if you are in therapy, reading the books, doing the podcasts, everything you think you should be doing, and if you are, then still stuck, I almost guarantee you’re missing one of these four things.

In what we do, I didn’t mention, but I have a program that’s a four-month program with individuals who are looking to become secure, who are anxiously attached. In that program, we’ve sought to cover all four of those things, include those four elements, and we’ve found that it makes a tremendous difference. Whether you decide to be part of something bigger with me or not, I don’t care. I just want you to go and learn about these four things so you can stop feeling so stuck.

If you go to my Instagram or any of my social media, The Art of Healing by Trevor, that’s where you’ll find me. You’ll find the seminar there, or just send us a message. You’ll be like, “I heard about this seminar and Dr. Carla’s podcast. Where is it?” You can go to TheArtOfHealingByTrevor.com, and the seminar is called From Anxious to Secure. I’m sure you’ll also include it in whatever notes are on this show and things.

Readers, do not worry. No pen needed, especially if you’re driving. All of this information will be permanently in the show notes. Let me spell Trevor’s name. It’s Trevor at the Art of Healing by Trevor. We will have all of his work in the show notes so you can readily access it. Don’t worry about it. You’ll just go to the show’s site, it’ll be there. Anything else, Trevor?

No, I’ve enjoyed the conversation so much. Thank you for having me on.

It has been such an enriching episode. Good for the soul, very grounding. To all of our readers, I thank you for joining us. I thank you for your commitment to your work, for growing and transforming just one tiny step each day. It’s such a pleasure to be part of your journey. Thanks again, Trevor, and this is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Trevor Hanson
• Trevor Hanson on Linktr.ee
• Secure Self Club Program
• From Anxious to Secure
• NAMI Help Line
• National Domestic Violence
• Dr. Carla Manly Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on Twitter
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Trevor Hanson

Trevor Hanson is a coach and founder of The Art of Healing. He teaches relationship and attachment skills through the Secure Self Club.