For the next two months you and I will be traveling on a path that involves immense levels of self reflection, vulnerability, conviction, and a flurry of thoughts and emotions. You and I will be on a journey filled with healing, newness, and hope. You and I are going to heal. This series, Secure in Christ, is inspired by Insecure in Love by Leslie Becker-Phelps and is designed to assist us in healing from our anxieties about relationships and to discover our secure identities in Christ. I am working on a devotional of the same name and that looks more at the spiritual side of finding our identity in Christ, but the bulk of this series will be psychological. I wholeheartedly believe spirituality and psychology should be married because we are not just spiritual beings, we are also formed and shaped as psychological beings as well. Accompanied with each post will be an exercise(s) to challenge yourself throughout the week.
Words to Lnow:
negative-core beliefs (NCBs)
_________________
I’m most secure in my knowledge. I’m a theologian and I pride myself in that. I love to study and learn about God, it’s something I feel I’m good at. I feel competent, capable, challenged, and even changed. I enjoy being a seminarian and I’m looking forward to the next semester of seminary, where I’ll be in an Old Testament course that I’ve been wanting to enroll in for over a year. As much as I appreciate the opportunity to teach I value being taught. I’m currently working on a book entitled, The Many Faces of God, and it’s a theological exposition of the various ways God interacts with humanity throughout Scripture. I’m secure in theology, I’m secure in my head. But I’m taking a break from theology. I decided this was best for me about a month ago and I won’t be doing anything theology related until September 13th. I’m taking a sabbath from reading theological content, writing, researching, and planning my book, and I’m focusing on myself. I’m breaking from something I’m so secure in because I’m insecure in my heart. At the end of time when I stand before Yahweh, He’s not going to quiz me on the hypostatic union, my eschatology, or if I believed the earth was created 6,000 years ago or not. He’s not concerned with what’s in my head but what’s in my heart and for the longest it’s been insecurity. To be even more specific with you—I’m anxious.
I suffer from attachment-related anxiety. It’s an anxiety triggered by relationships, or the ending thereof. The anxiety is present even in a relationship in retrospect— it all begins with me. Relationships are so vital to the human experience that our need for relationship and love begins at birth. Infants are reliant on relationships, love, and affection, so much so that without them they die. The need for relationships we start off with is healthy and holy; how do we get involved with these unhealthy, insecure, and damaging relationships later in life? It typically begins in childhood. Others’ messages towards us, both explicit and implicit, their responses to our needs and requests, and events that have happened to us shape the narrative we not only believe about ourselves, but how we see others and ultimately, how we live. Neurologically what happens is the brain interprets these beliefs and messages from others and adopts them as something called an attachment system. Attachment systems are our unique network of how we engage with the multifaceted relationships in our lives. The purpose of our attachment system is to keep us safe, they protect us from potential harm—both real and imagined threats.
All of us struggle with some sort of insecurity, the difference is our individual responses to them. Our responses lead us to develop our attachment patterns. According to attachment theory, there are three attachment patterns:
ANXIOUS-ATTACHMENT
People with this form of attachment are typically people who were raised in a single-parent home. They typically wrestle with negative thoughts about themselves and that affects their perceptions of others, particularly their significant other. Their greatest fear is rejection. Their common feelings are sadness, unwanted, undeserving, abandoned, depression, hatred, bitterness, and resentment. People who struggle with anxious attachment battle thoughts such as: “I’m unlovable,” “I’m not worthy of good,” “Everyone is the same; they wind up leaving me,” “It’s my fault,” “What’s wrong with me?” They are also fixated on their mistakes and mess ups, they believe everyone around them sees them how they feel about themselves—they project and this increases their anxious thoughts about those around them. Because of their anxiety, they are typically pursuers in relationships; they love deeply and when it’s not accepted they feel rejected and they fault themselves. The bigggest challenge, or step of faith anxious people can do to reshape their beliefs is to change perspectives. The default mindset is to be critical of the self and take on more blame than they should, therefore, anxious people should change their default beliefs by realizing that just like tango, every conflict and breakup takes two. This is not to place blame, but to shift perspectives that the anxious person is not the problem for every issue in their life.
AVOIDANT-ATTACHMENT
People with this form of attachment are usually people who were raised in a two parent household, but they have a turbulent relationship with one, and in rare cases, both of their parents. Usually it’s conflict between daughters and mothers and sons and fathers; there is usually a control issue between parent and child. This is not limited to parents in the home; it’s possible for a parent by marriage to be in the home and a child have conflict with a biological parent not in the home. People who were raised in a two parent household and experienced the death of a parent in childhood or adolescence tend to suffer from avoidant attachment as well. The narrative for “avoiders” in childhood is that weakness is bad. They are taught to be self-reliant and independent, they are taught vulnerability is a sign of weakness, that you should not let others see certain emotions, and not to let others do for them. This narrative, though it can boost self-esteem but ultimately it cripples them relationally. It strips them of receiving and accepting love, even if they know they are worthy of it. It teaches them to hide when there is conflict between them and their significant other. Common emotions that avoiders struggle with are regret, loneliness, frustration, disappointment, confusion, failure, and even defeat. They tend to wrestle with thought such as “Why don’t they get it?” “What if…” “What’s mine will find me,” “If I listened to my head I wouldn’t be in this place right now,” “I wish things were different.” Avoiders’ greatest fears revolve around their worth, ironically.
Interestingly enough, avoiders are attracted to anxious people. Why? As stated above, anxious people are pursuers and because avoiders tend to hide from their emotions, they run. Avoiders love to be pursued. The belief for avoiders is that they attract and they aren’t chasers. Here’s a little bit of self disclosure— my therapist was laying out the characteristics of each attachment style for me in preparation for this post and my therapist mentioned that avoiders’ language about relationships is self-centered: they are the prize, not the both of you, they eventually become consciously aware that they are worthy and deserving of love (dependency), but their language is still rooted in the narrative of self-reliance and independence. Anxious people and avoiders tend to be in a cycle of breaking up and reconnecting. The start of this cycle is conflict—something avoiders do not do well. Avoiders live their lives on a spectrum: at one end there is their parent with whom they have the turbulent relationship and at the other is their anxious lover.
As we mature and experience love from others, the love we experience starts to reshape our default narratives about ourselves. The avoider begins to become securer in love when their relationship is well, but when conflict arises with their anxious lover, that conflict heightens their fears. As a result, the avoidant person tends to separate from their partner. This breakup reinforces NCBs for both parties—the anxious person is convinced they are unworthy, unlovable, and they don’t have any value. In the avoider it reinforces all that they were taught as children. This causes a level of uncertainty within avoiders because they are reverting to their unconscious patterns of independency and running, which is in direct conflict with their newfound conscious thoughts that they are worthy of what seems to be out of their reach.
SECURE-ATTACHMENT
This is the rarest group of people on earth. The overwhelming majority of humans are not secure in their relationships. Securely attached people are commonly people who were raised in a two parent household where emotions are expressed and accepted from both parent and child. Reassurance and love were staples in their homes, and their parents tend to have a long lasting marriage. Securely attached people mostly come from bigger families with multiple siblings and cousins around. There is a myth surrounding securely attached people: they’re better and wiser than everyone else. Securely attached people suffer from the same anxieties as the two groups above, but they respond differently. That is because their core narrative about themselves has become one that includes an awareness of themselves that anxious people and avoiders do not have just yet. They have NCBs as well but over time they have adopted methods that reinforce positive thinking and healthier ways of living. Even secure people can become anxious and avoidant, but they willingly confront obstacles and emotions. Common emotions for securely attached people are: gratitude, contentment, hope, empathy, compassion, love, and acceptance, Common thoughts are: “I’m enough,” “How can I make this better?” “What’s my role in all of this?” “What am I feeling currently?” “I think I should set boundaries for myself.”
Securely attached people have reached the place you and I will get to eventually, they practice self-awareness and self-compassion. They face conflict, but they challenge themselves to overcome them and improve themselves. Securely attached people know they are loved in the face of conflict and arguments. They are willing to assist their partner in improving their relationship out of love for themselves and their partner. Securely attached people have a sense of self-worth that comes from more than just saying they have self-worth; this takes a lot of work to achieve but it’s doable! Due to this sense of self-worth, their attachment system are healthy and functioning properly. Their worldview is positive and they assume the inherent goodness of others. They are optimistic and hopeful about the future, even in light of the current circumstances. Perhaps most importantly, they are happy in love because they are objective. A huge part of the success of relationships is the effort to improve them when things are going south and they are aware of the possibility and they work with the partner to improve it.
EXERCISE: HOW MUCH ANXIETY AND AVOIDANCE DO YOU FEEL IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS?
This exercise is designed for you to assess your own anxiety and avoidance. You can complete this in your devotional time within the next week and record your results in your journal. Keep them in a place you can find them because we will be looking at our results next week where we find our attachment style. This exercise is taken from chapter 1 of Insecure in Love by Leslie Becker-Phelps.
Rate yourself on a scale of 0–10, with 0 being not at all and 10 being that you completely relate. Hold on to these numbers so that you can use them later in assessing your attachment style.
Attachment-Related Anxiety
“Being totally emotionally close with my partner means everything to me. But other people don’t want to be as close as I would like to be, and my desire to be so close often scares them away. When I have a partner, I question myself and am concerned that I’m not as good as him or other people. I’m always worried that he doesn’t care about me as much as I care about him. And I also worry all the time about whether my partner really loves me, will stop loving me, or will decide to leave me. I’m especially worried that he’ll find someone else when we are not together.”
Rating: _________
Attachment-Related Avoidance
“I am an independent, self-sufficient person, so I don’t need to be in a close, committed relationship. When I am in such a relationship, I prefer not to depend on my partner or to share deeply personal thoughts and feelings. And it makes me uncomfortable when my partner wants to depend on me or to talk a lot about his thoughts and feelings. When I have problems, I tend to keep them to myself and figure them out on my own, and I’d prefer it if my partner would do the same.
Rating: ________
Here are my results:
Attachment-Related Anxiety: 6
Attachment-Related Avoidance: 2
Next week we will dove deeper and see what our attachment styles are and how we can relate to those we love. Like everything else, our attachment patterns can chnage; our story can be rewritten and we can live a life of healing and newness. That is what this journey is all about. The love you and I deserve begins with us.
Until next time, continue to stay guided by grace,
Tra
Guided by Grace 