You can read the poem, but if you don’t understand the language, nor do you have the actual felt experience of security, good self-esteem, and the experience of being securely attached.

This is not to discourage you, but this is to point you towards deeper work, and not work that leaves you disappointed that you can’t act or feel about things in a certain way, because in the end, one of the best ways to heal your insecure attachment is to slowly learn, word by word, the language of having most of your needs met, of connecting to another person, of resolving conflict in a healthy way, of being seen without being put in danger or having to perform, and of expressing emotion without being dismissed or punished for it.

In other words, if you are on the journey of healing your insecure attachment, if you have the means, the best way to start on your journey is by working with someone in a therapeutic relationship on your attachment wounds.

That being said, I know this is very challenging in itself, especially if you’ve been let down by others in the past, but returning to the language analogy, the best way to learn a language is to interact with a native speaker, and the best way to get securely attached is by experiencing secure attachment in real life, in a therapeutic relationship, as opposed to reading about it.

Did you ever have a conversation with a therapist, counsellor or coach and were simply handed, at the end, the discouraging, “You know, you could simply do X.”?

In my experience, handing out templates for behaviour not only leaves the other person feeling dumb, but also feeling like there is something morally wrong with them. If the solution is that simple, why can’t I just do it? Why am I so stubborn in my “wrongness”?

So if you think you have a behaviour that’s bothering you, and despite “knowing what to do” you don’t do it, I want to persuade you of something different today.

You aren’t applying the cookie-cutter advice because you are an intelligent creature thriving on pattern recognition, that knows, based on past experience, that the template advice may have unwanted side effects, and that, in fact, to achieve the results you want, at this point in time, you don’t have the solution. It’s not like you are a stubborn, morally bankrupt mule, you simply don’t have the complete answer.

Not convinced?

Thought so.

Let’s take an everyday situation, with a very simple solution, in this case, being able to say no to a friend because you are tired and can’t spend another hour over the phone after work, no matter how sad your friend is.

Easy peasy, right?

Let’s give it a go.

Why is it so difficult to say no

Annie is a 35-year-old lawyer. She works long hours but is generally happy with her career. What she is not happy about is her friendship with Suzanne. They’ve both met in college, and ever since they’ve been inseparable despite their paths being so different. Suzanne quit law school and decided to marry Harry, with whom she has 2 children. Harry is himself a successful lawyer, and she is a homemaker. However, they’ve always fought a lot, and Annie was the place where Suzanne went to vent, to complain, and to eventually return back to her situation.

Annie is already tired from work, and when she sees her friend’s name on her phone screen, her stomach is in knots. She knows it’s going to be another 1-hour conversation, at the very best, about how uncaring Harry is, and about how demeaning he is. What makes the situation even more complicated is that, at some point in her life, Annie herself was in a similar situation. In a relationship where she needed a lot of time with her friends to vent, to just let it out. In a way, that’s one of the ways Annie and Suzanne connected, but Annie left that relationship, and now she feels indebted to Suzanne to hear her as she heard her, yet at the same time she is resentful for using her free time, listening to her friend, vent about a problem that may never end, unless her friend decides so.

If we simply tell Annie, or Annie ends up telling herself this after a brief conversation with ChatGPT, that she simply needs to tell Suzanne to stop calling because she is tired after work and can’t deal with her relationship drama anymore, a couple of things may happen, especially if Annie feels incredibly uncomfortable doing this.

Let’s run a simulation and see what might happen.

Implementing the “good will advice”

Let’s remember the overall scenario. Most of their friendship is built on the way they speak about their relationships, mostly their negative experiences. Because Annie was also in a somewhat similar situation, there is some mutuality that Suzanne still expects.

Annie’s friend may also feel betrayed and like something has shifted and now is completely isolated.

Now you could make the argument that for Annie, Suzanne mentioning she wants to break off their friendship may be an easy way out, but for Annie, there’s years of investment in this relationship, and the guilt around the fact that, at some point in time, she was the one crying on the phone.

To make matters worse, Annie may feel bad for Suzanne for not having a financial safety net. Unlike her, she doesn’t work and is completely dependent on her husband’s income. Her way out of the relationship would cost a lot more, both financially and emotionally, especially since kids are involved.

How the cookie-cutter advice can make things worse:

Annie might feel very guilty, especially after being thrown in the face the fact that she was in a somewhat similar situation not so long ago, and the fact that her friend is in a more delicate situation. Keeping in mind that Annie’s problem is that she has far more compassion for others than for herself, her friend’s suffering and accusations of betrayal might make her feel incredibly guilty and selfish.

She might end up apologising herself for not being understanding enough, and might spend the same time on the phone, if not more, to prove to her friend that she is a good person.

Well, we’ve done it. We’ve given the “good glossy magazine advice.”

What happens when you don’t have the solution but rely on “good advice”

In reality, Annie has probably run through this scenario at an unconscious or conscious level herself, hence the resistance in placing the boundary.

In other words, when we force-feed people advice, or ourselves, we bypass our own knowledge and we gaslight ourselves with “simple wisdom,” which is basically just lazy advice.

So what can we do instead, when we are faced with a situation like this, instead of relying on a template that might not work?

The “problem” is the solution

People don’t just wake up one day and start doing things that make them more tired and resentful in relationships. Instead, what they might be using are solutions that work, but slowly damage them.

Think about dirty fuel. It makes the car work, but in the long term, it ruins the engine.

In this scenario, the solution that creates discomfort is accommodation of her friend’s needs to her own detriment. If we remove the solution, and we no longer accommodate those needs, Annie is still left feeling bad, but for a different reason, because the values that prevented her from interacting with people differently will stay the same, before and after setting a boundary.

So what is the solution?

The solution lies in helping Annie understand what makes her have loyalties against loyalty to herself.

Why has she maintained a friendship over the years based only on shared relationship troubles?

What’s her idea of friendship, loyalty and good behaviour?

Can she protect herself, all while being aligned with herself, if so, how?

The way we relate to others, the way we pick others to be friends or romantic partners is based on a set of internal models created in childhood. These internal models are based on the relationship we had with our parents. Unless we have a good understanding of why we developed certain views about ourselves, about others and how we can get love from others, each time we start applying advice from a different paradigm, it feels strange, even nauseous to us. And then we go back to what feels comfortable.

What can Annie really do about it

Based on the internal models she internalized as a child, Annie has a set of values about herself, others and how love and safety are acquired.

So if applying advice from a different paradigm will only make her feel unhappy with herself, what can we do?

Fortunately, neuroplasticity is on our side. The brain can change its internal models if it receives a different relational experience. In the case of Annie, her relational experience is built around friendship as a transaction. Meaning, one must stay loyal, beyond comfort, to someone else, and one cannot communicate discomfort without being put down or shunned.

In a therapeutic relationship, either with a psychologist, therapist or a coach, Annie could learn not only about her early patterns and why she feels the way she feels, but she’ll also experience connection in a different way. In a way, the therapeutic relationship is a training ground, where Annie can experiment with showing up as herself, with her needs, being seen, without putting the other person first, and risking losing the other person once she can no longer compromise.

The combination between psychoeducation, a new relational experience and tools she can use in other relationships as well, will slowly upgrade her internal working model, so she can expect friendship on equal grounds and not feel bad when placing a boundary. And only then, good advice actually feels like good advice, not as someone telling you why you didn’t escape the situation by helicopter when you don’t know how to drive a car.

When working with my clients, this is the first question that pops up.

So how will we go about this?

How long will it take?

Why certain types of therapy work and others do not?

Do I need to focus on somatic modalities instead?

In this guide I’ll cover what does it actually mean to have a secure vs an insecure attachment style, how they are formed, how are the patterns maintained, what are the blindspots of each attachment style, the opportunities for growth and what types of therapeutical modalities work and why.

Let’s begin.

What does it actually mean to be insecurely or securely attached

Many people end up repeating the same relational patterns. However, the problem is not at a behavioral level, although it’s expressed this way, your attachment style is an encoded way of feeling safe, strategies for finding safety, strategies to regulate emotions, strategies to find someone to attach to.

Your brain, learns from an early age about itself by the way your parents mirror back your emotions. In essence, when you smiled as a baby, your your parent smiled back and acknowledged what you did as a smile, you’ve learned over repeated actions, the skill of understanding your own emotions.

If the parent isn’t attuned to your emotional expression, or simply ignores your emotional expression, your own emotions become hard to understand, tangled, or sometimes even repressed, because nobody was there to mirror them back.

Another thing your brains learn early on, is how to get safe. Safety is primordial as an infant and is entirely dependent on the caregivers. As a consequence, over time the baby learns how he or she can act in the world so it has an impact on it.

If the baby is hungry and crying and the parent comes right away, the baby learns to expect care and love when they express needs, leading to the development of the secure attachment.

If the baby is hungry and crying and the parent comes but only after there’s a lot of crying, and insistence, the baby learns that in order to get their needs met, they have upregulate their emotions and “suffer a lot” in order to get their needs met, leading to the development of the anxious attachment.

If the baby is hungry and crying but the parent ignores the baby or simply feeds the baby on a schedule that is entirely made up by them without keeping track of the baby’s needs, the baby learns that there is no use to expect that others will come and attend to their needs, so is best for survival to cut off the need for others to reduce suffering, leading to the development of the avoidant attachment.

If the baby is hungry and crying but the parent acts in frightening , dissociative or inconsistent ways around the baby, the baby never learns what to expect, so he or she ends up wanting connecting but fearing it, leading to the development of the disorganized attachment.

Attachment styles are strategies infants develop to survive in their families of origin. Because these early relational experiences also shape the brain, how a person sees themselves, others, how they activate or repress emotions, the patterns stay unless changed by intervention with a different experience. A different relational experience that they are mindful of and able to digest so the brain re-organizes itself keeping in mind a new relational experience.

In some ways, becoming securely attached is a learning experience that makes sense of neuroplasticity to change emotional regulation, self image, predictions about other people’s intentions and predictions about the world.

It’s a whole revamp that can lead to a significantly higher quality of life, lower levels of stress, better self image, access to both positive and negative emotions, improved ability to focus and take better decisions and of course, better relational experiences.

As you already suspected, this can’t be done with a 30-day guided course, by yourself. Mostly because the brain was shaped in a relational context, and you will need a new relational experience to mirror you back, tag those emotions, fully express needs while this time having a new relational experience and experiement with new ways of being in the world.

The road to becoming securely attached: awareness stage

When we don’t know ourselves, we call our fate destiny.

Janet can’t make sense of her relationship and she wants more than anything, clarity. Her partner, Stephen, often likes models on Instagram, and lately she’s even discovered some images in his phone of his ex. When confronted, Stephen simply mentioned that the photos of his ex are some old selfies that he forgot to delete, and liking models on Instagram is what every man does, and doesn’t carry any malicious intentions, as proof he gave Janet his phone to check.

Janet feels guilty for acting paranoid, but at the same time, she can barely focus at work, her stomach is in a knot each time he replies late or has days when he is more distant. When he comes closer, she feels anger and sometimes even disgust. Other times she shuts down. When he is placing some distance, she is becoming very worried again, and the cycle never ends.

She’s been cheated in all of her previous relationships, but doesn’t want to charge Stephen for something she hasn’t done yet. Instead she blames herself for not making up her mind for what she wants.

Here we can truly see how complex the manifestation of a certain attachment style can be, in this case, the disorganised attachment.

On one hand, we have the deep craving for connection, that at times creates even physical symptoms, but on the other hand, we have the disconnect, when she feels she has her partner, she suddenly devalues his presence. The cycle continues, and she can’t make sense of the actual reality of the relationship.

Aside from the cycles of nervous system dysregulation, we often are attracted to the familiar. What has been shown in our childhood as love, is what we consider to be love as adults. Often times, we end up compulsively be attracted to people who resemble our parents.

In this case, Janet doesn’t only have difficulties with the ups and downs of relationship, she also has difficulties with “tagging” her own feelings and acting accordingly. Instead, she folds immediately when the threat of a potential break up appears and her own needs and desires vanish.

Janet also doesn’t know what to expect from a relationship, she has very little self confidence that she can ask or expect something that wouldn’t make her feel unloved, in this case, someone who doesn’t like random women on Instagram or still carrying the selfies of his ex on his phone.

In some sense, becoming aware of your attachment styles also involves the following:

• Becoming aware of your own needs and being able to express them, all while allowing others to either be a good fit for us or not

• Becoming aware of what sort of problem our current pattern solves. For example, if we choose partners that tell us “this how all men are.. “ or “this is how all women are..”, is it possible that we aren’t quite sure what is possible and we need others to validate our sense of reality?

• Becoming aware of who we are and the many posibilities of who others can be

• Becoming aware of what triggers us, and what we are triggered unto

• Bringing to the surface needs it may not be apparent that we have

In some sense, the awareness stage is ongoing, as you continue to learn how childhood experiences and later adult experiences shaped and maintained the same patterns. Making sense of the patterns may not trigger immediate change, but it can bring relief.

Making sense of our experiences and other people’s experiences is called metallisation, and it’s crucial at providing some context to our story and not allow only what was been done to us, to be the only narator to our lives, but also the intentions of the family system and the role we had to play in order to survive.

The road to becoming securely attached: active participation into the pattern

We don’t become more securely attached only by acting differently or “faking it” until we make it. Acting secure is a consequence of a high grade of mentalization and of a high grade of inner security.

But how do we reached the promised land?

First, we start with mindfulness. And I don’t mean mindfulness in the traditional sense of meditating or doing yoga. I mean, by focused attention on what bothers us and the focused attention on experiences go against our expectations.

The way security is being built up, is by having openness and seeking new relational experiences, by slowly showing up more authentically in a safe relationship. For most people, this usually happens in a therapeutical relationship, where the other person intervenes in the learning process of the person.

Implicit vs explicit learning in healing your insecure attachment

Some of the learning might be implicit, while other types of learning might be explicit.

Let’s start with the latter.

“You know, you’ve mentioned that is perfectly reasonable to be upset with my boyfriend liking other women on Instagram and still having photos of his ex, but in my experience, that’s just how it is. Maybe it’s not a big deal and I am making a big deal about it. I really don’t know anymore.

What do you mean by this is how it is?

I mean, you know, you just stumble the same experience over and over again, and you realize maybe you have Disney expectations and this is real life.

So in this case, real life means these sort of compromises?

Yeah, sure.

Does everyone makes these sort of compromises?

You mean, in relationships?

Yes.

I mean, most people I’m assuming they do.

But most people aren’t all people?

I am not in the other camp.

What’s the other camp like?

I mean, the other camp it’s my sister. She always had boys tripping over themselves to date her, to take her to dinner, she’s spoiled.

What do you think makes your sister special?

I don’t know really. She’s always been treated that way.

She’s always been treated that way?

Ahahahah! I can see what you are doing?

What am I doing?

So she’s been always treated this way and this created this sort woo woo unconscious expectation that makes her repel everything else?

I could be. I am not sure, but it could be. How would she react if she would have been in your shoes?

She would have never been in my shoes.

Why so?

She would have dumped him the moment he canceled our first date and then didn’t text for 3 days.

Ah, I see.

So is this one of those this that isn’t me, but it’s this expectation, self fulfilling prophecy woo woo?

I think could very much could be.

Ahahaha. I get it.

This is a small example of explicit learning, where the person who is going trough the therapeutical journey learns why certain things may happen, and is led to discover the answer themselves.

Sometimes psychoeducation can be even more explicit, where the coach or the psychologist explains how certain family systems work, how defenses work, what happens when someone in the family is exhibiting signs of a personality disorder, etc. This is one type of learning, but not the most important one.

Now let’s look at another type of learning, implicit, where nothing is actually taught, but something is truly learned.

I just feel really down lately.

What happened?

Well, to be honest, I haven’t been doing what I am supposed to doing.

Okay, that happens sometimes.

You have no idea what I have been doing. This is so bad.

Well, if you’d like we can talk about it, if not, that’s also okay.

I mean, you don’t want to know that shameful thing I’ve been doing?

I guess I want you to feel comfortable. It’s not mandatory to share something that doesn’t make you feel comfortable.

FINE! I’ll say it. I texted my ex. I texted my good for nothing ex. And you know what’s really horrible about it? He gave me the driest response, like a day later. A DAY LATER.

I’m really sorry that happened.

I mean, I promised myself I wouldn’t do it. This is not secure behaviour.

We all make mistakes sometimes.

But like THIS?

Yeah, sometimes, like this. Besides, I am not here to grade you. I am here to support you, guide you, but not grade your actions as if I am a teacher.

But wouldn’t you have wished I wouldn’t have done that and I would have kept up with my promise to go out more and meet more people?

I don’t know. I guess, in my mind, it’s better to aspire to be authentic, you did what you wanted to do, to test the waters and you’ve got an answer. I don’t think you doing all the activities but daydreaming of what it could have been to reconnect with your ex would have been productive at all.

At least now I know.

Yes, at least now you know.

So maybe that’s not that much of a big deal after all.

Not at all.

In here, nothing is explicitly taught, but the client is experiencing a new experience.

They have agreed beforehand on a little homework, the homework was to go out, meet more people, as a way to disconnect from the heartbreak of the breakup, however, Janet feels this deep pull, she wants to give it one more go, see if her ex misses her and maybe something different will come out of it.

She pulls the trigger, texts him, but his message is disappointing, increasing the amount of shame around, I shouldn’t be doing that, line of thinking.

Then the shame increases when she feels it’s her duty to “report” to her psychologist and tell her how she failed.

The response here is subtle, but very important. The psychologist is not grading her performance, it’s not gamifying the “act secure” pattern, instead, she is tending to her distress, which in this case, is related to shame.

Even further, she leaves the option, on the table, for Janet to not even share what happened unless she feels comfortable to do so. She doesn’t force a confession, she is not against Janet, she is not grading her, she is treating her as an equal and as a consequence, Janet has a different experience.

Instead of feeling shamed for not being “a good enough client” or have her worth determined entirely by what she does, she experiences being accepted, not receiving any pressure and being understood.

This micro moment isn’t life changing, but when enough micro moments add up, Janet will end up internalizing a new relational experience, namely: some people respect my boundaries and some people don’t shame me for my mistakes and moments of weakness, quite the opposite, they want me to feel comfortable, as a consequence, wanting this sort of behaviour in my life is an entirely reasonable expectation for others.

This repeated experience over time also doubles in the way Janet treats herself, not only in the way Janet expects others to treat her. Meaning, she may end up feeling less shame and feel more forgiving towards herself in moments when she is not feeling as she’s doing her best. This is the magic of implicit learning.

Multiply these moments by a thousands, in various contexts, with various emotional wounds and the brain will change.

The road to becoming securely attached: seeing changes on a visceral level

Seeing patterns helps, seeing where the patterns come from, what problems they solve and what problems they create is the basis of every healing journey, but at some point, things shift, not into just what is known, but unto what’s felt.

The change usually happens after the following:

• They learn to tolerate difficult emotions, all while knowing than an emotion is simply an emotion and not necessarily something that never ends or something that always must lead to action

• They learn to build a cohesive, coherent story about themselves in a way that makes sense, is not detached, but at the same time it’s not overly involved with emotion

• They learn how to self regulate when abandonment or fear of intimacy arises

• They learn what early life conflicts are being replayed in their adult relationships

• They learn to trust their own judgement about who they are not only the judgement of others

• They are open to having their judgements and worldview challenged if something changes

• They learn what needs are being met through their defense mechanisms

• They have at least once relationship where they learn how to express themselves and expect to be treated well, even when they show up wounded, imperfect, vulnerable, etc

Here’s an example of someone who is showing strong signs of feeling security on a visceral level.

I had the most mind blowing conversation with someone from a dating app last night.

Oh, really, how was it?

It’s was terrible. It was so terrible it could be a case study in itself.

Tell me about it if you want to.

Well, check this out. He calls me, we introduce ourselves, and automatically he starts with a rant about his friends, who never improve, but he always does. Then goes on, and on, and never asks me a question. He just never bothered to ask me anything. I was just an audience.

How did that felt?

I was angry. I mean, I felt like I am just a resonating board. And then get this, because I actually called it up, and mentioned he didn’t ask me anything about me, he laughs it off, and says he should start a podcast because he loves speaking. At that point I was done being an audience, but I barely got rid of him, because he kept going, and it only got worse.

What else did he say?

He said that he’s been working on himself and his need to dominate women, and now he wants someone who is his equal. Then he proceeded to criticize something about me, I can’t even remember what, then something else, then something about women in general. It was half hilarious, half tragic.

At that point, I said goodbye. But before I closed, he wanted to ask me out. I just closed the call and unmatched him.

That sounds like quite the experience. But I am wondering, he is just a fella, do you think there’s any reason why he got to you that much or he was simply annoying and that’s it?

He wasn’t only annoying, he was incredibly confident and deluded, and in his own words, controlling. I recognized that. A few years ago, his confidence would have made me feel safe.

As in, someone who is confident, knows how the world goes round or in other way?

Exactly that.

It reminded me of someone incredibly similar, and the fact that was happening to me again, it made me feel so angry. How dare you use me as a resonating board? How dare you told me you emotionally abused and controlled your exes and expect I am okay with that?

You felt threatened.

I think I was threatened.

But you acted fast. You unmatched him.

Yes, I didn’t lose any time, but how dare he?

Indeed, how dare him indeed.

When we feel someone is doing something wrong, and we really feel it, in our emotional self, it’s far easier to act. Being secure is not about not feeling any negative emotion, is about recognizing how something makes us feel and acting accordingly, in this scenario, in a self protective manner.

When someone deeply insecure meets someone who is becoming secure or is already scoring secure, the chances of those two people being together are very slim, simply because one person may cause distress that the other person doesn’t feel the need to tolerate anymore.

Which therapeutical modalities work best for healing an insecure attachment

An insecure attachment is an adaptation to an environment in which you had to survive around your caregivers and stay safe without challenging them too much.

As adults, attachment strategies become more complicated, and they can shift depending on the culture we live in, our relationships, our circumstances and the roles we take on. However, the underlying mechanism often remains similar.

For example, an avoidantly attached child may grow up to become a very busy business owner, because financial independence and self-reliance go hand in hand. An anxiously attached child may grow into a rescuer, constantly supporting and rescuing others in the hope that they will finally be seen for who they are and receive the love they have been looking for.

In other words, a therapeutic modality that is going to be helpful has to take into account both the early experiences that shaped the attachment strategy and the way that person uniquely adapted those strategies to the environment outside the home.

For exploring and making sense of childhood experiences, which is key to unlearning some of the “rules” that no longer make sense, psychodynamic and experiential approaches can be helpful. They can help us understand not only what happened, but also how those experiences shaped the way we understand ourselves, other people and relationships.

For emotional regulation and learning self-expression in a safe environment, experiential therapies can also be helpful. These approaches can create opportunities to encounter situations that contradict old expectations, allowing new experiences to gradually become integrated into the way we predict and respond to the world.

Mentalization-based psychotherapies can be helpful as well, as they increase our ability to stay present and identify our own state of mind, the state of mind of others, and the possible reasons behind our behavior and the behavior of others.

This can be particularly useful when we have developed rigid, black-and-white predictions about relationships, usually of the negative sort. “They don’t really care about me.” “If I show my needs, they will leave.” “Nobody can be trusted.” “I have to take care of everyone if I want to be loved.” When these predictions are experienced as facts rather than hypotheses, they can contribute to self-sabotage and the gradual destruction of relationships.

But there is another element that I believe is particularly important in a successful therapeutic intervention: being exposed to someone who can provide a secure relational experience.

It is not enough to be taught what secure attachment means. At some point, secure attachment has to become something that is experienced.

This means having a relationship in which you can gradually discover what happens when you express a need, make a mistake, disagree, become emotional, set a boundary or show a vulnerable part of yourself. You learn that the relationship does not automatically collapse and you learn that another person can have boundaries without rejecting you, and that you can have boundaries without rejecting them.

Over time, these experiences can become more than something you understand intellectually. They can become something you expect.

And this is perhaps the most important distinction between knowing about secure attachment and actually becoming more securely attached: at some point, the new way of relating has to become believable at an emotional and relational level, not just intellectually understood.

You can take the quiz here.

Find out what’s your attachment style

You can take the quiz here.

The ultimate guide to healing your insecure attachment

You can find the guide here.

Hi there,

At this time, I’m looking for participants who have been using the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol for at least 6 months and are willing to share their experience.

You can join the anonymous study by completing the form here.

If you complete the study, I offer a free 30-minute consultation where you can ask questions about the process, share your experience with the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, and learn more about your attachment patterns. This is not mandatory, but it’s a way for me to thank you for participating into the study and get some free insight and support.

To schedule the consultation, please email me at helpwithmiriam@gmail.com and include the unique ID you created when completing the form. This ID (a combination of letters and numbers) is used only to match your response with your request and does not identify you personally.

If you keep falling into the same patterns in relationships, even when you understand what’s happening, your attachment pattern may be part of the reason.

Free attachment style quiz

After completing the quiz, you can read more about your result below.

All results are personalized and while this isn’t a diagnostic tool I do take great care when I look over the answers.

Understanding your attachment style quiz results

You are probably wondering what else you can know about your attachment style. Here’s a breakdown of all the attachment styles.

Anxious preoccupied

If you find yourself thinking about someone constantly, needing reassurance, or feeling like your mood depends on how they respond to you, this is often described as anxious attachment.

According to John Bowlby, attachment develops from early experiences with caregivers. When closeness is consistent, the system learns that connection is safe and predictable. But when it is inconsistent, sometimes present, sometimes withdrawn, the system adapts in a different way.

Instead of relaxing into connection, it starts to monitor it. Attention shifts toward signs of distance, changes in tone, or anything that might signal loss. The goal is not overreaction, but maintaining proximity in an environment where closeness could not be taken for granted.

This is where a deeper explanation becomes useful. In the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation developed by Patricia Crittenden, these patterns are understood as differences in how people process information under stress.

When early relationships are unpredictable, a child cannot rely on stable sequences or clear cause and effect to understand what will happen next. In that context, emotion becomes the most reliable signal. Subtle shifts in closeness, attention, or tone carry important meaning, so the system learns to amplify and prioritize them. Over time, this leads to a style where feelings are intense, urgent, and difficult to step back from, especially in relationships.

Dismisive avoidant

If you tend to shut down emotionally, value independence strongly, or feel uncomfortable when others get too close, this is often described as avoidant attachment.

In early relationships, this pattern develops when emotional needs are not met consistently, or are discouraged altogether. The system learns that expressing need does not lead to connection, and may even lead to rejection.

Instead of seeking closeness, it adapts by reducing reliance on others. Attachment is about maintaining proximity, but when proximity is not rewarding, the system reorganizes around self-sufficiency.

In the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation, this is understood as a shift toward relying on cognitive information over emotional signals. Feelings become less accessible or less emphasized, while logic, structure, and distance become the primary tools for navigating relationships.

This is why avoidant patterns can feel stable on the surface but disconnected underneath. The system is not lacking emotion, but has learned not to use it as a guide. As Peter Fonagy suggests, this can also affect how one interprets both their own internal states and those of others, especially in close relationships.

Fearful-avoidant

If you experience relationships as both deeply important and but also pain-inducing, wanting closeness but also feeling overwhelmed or unsure, you could be having a fearful-avoidant or disorganized attachment.

This pattern tends to develop when early relationships are not only inconsistent, but also frightening. The same person who provides care may also be a source of distress, creating a conflict that the system cannot easily resolve.

Attachment systems are designed to seek safety. But when the source of safety is also a source of threat, the system struggles to form a stable strategy.

This results in more complex patterns that may shift between emotional intensity and detachment, depending on context. Both emotional and cognitive signals can become difficult to organize, leading to responses that feel unpredictable even to the person experiencing them.

Secure

When early experiences are consistent and responsive, the system learns that both closeness and independence are safe. There is no need to amplify emotion or suppress it.

This creates a stable expectation that others can be relied on without constant monitoring or withdrawal.

Ssecure functioning reflects a balance between emotional and cognitive information. Feelings can be experienced without becoming overwhelming, and thinking can guide behavior without disconnecting from emotion.

This balance allows for flexibility. Under stress, a person can reflect, adjust, and respond rather than react automatically.

Learn more about your own attachment patterns

The quiz gives you a general result, but attachment patterns are often more nuanced in real life. If you want a clearer understanding of how your pattern actually operates in your relationships, you can request a personalized attachment evaluation.

Feel free to contact me to schedule an appointment for a personalized attachment evaluation. You can learn more about working with me here.

Maybe the very things that you do, that you hate, are the very things that keep you afloat.

What if the very things that kept you looking disorganized, the underachiever, the does-good-but-could-do-better, are the very things that saved your life from slipping into so much pain your own body couldn’t handle it?

What if those times when you were fantasizing about someone you couldn’t have saved you from the emptiness of your existence at that moment, emptiness you had no solution for, and the focus on someone else, on this magical, shiny object, was both the source of pain and a strong antidepressant?

What if you could only remove yourself from the obsession when you could grasp a solution, a new way, another way to face your pain and place something in that place that appeared empty?

What if choosing the donuts was wise?

What if choosing to eat to numb yourself out was the only way to survive, to escape pain, to flip the switch from fight or flight to rest and digest? What if instead of punishing yourself for not doing better and adding more to the pain that caused seeking refuge in the first place, you asked yourself what food did for you as a wise survival strategy?

And it could be food, it could be binge-watching TV series, it could be giving relentless advice to other people as a way to escape the chaos from your own life and feel that you do have some competence.

What if choosing the healthy habits wouldn’t have saved you at that time? And all habits can become unhealthy. One can run for too long, one can meditate for too long, one can only write and never live.

What if instead of adding pain and shame to what you’ve done to wisely save yourself, you remove some of it?

The “unhealthy habits” are sustained by shame, by unmet needs, by loneliness, by pain.

What if you think like a strategist and simply acknowledge that at that moment, that was the best solution, and that some solutions are better than others for you? What if you don’t add to the pain? Instead, you slowly discern what you actually need and you slowly, and at a sustainable pace, remove the substitutions for something real

Why does being self aware isn’t enough to change your relationship patterns?

You might understand your reactions.

You might know your attachment style.

You might be able to explain exactly why you react the way you do.

And yet, when it comes to actual relationships, you still find yourself in the same dynamics. The same anxiety. The same difficulty connecting with others. The same sense that you are missing out on something you cannot quite grasp, and the grief that comes with that.

That’s usually not a lack of insight.

It’s usually a pattern that took root in your childhood. One imprinted into the relational parts of your brain that need new experiences to build new connections.

The internal “love & safety map

We all carry in our psyche a number of associations based on early childhood experiences with our caregivers, including the following:

1. Who we are attracted to

Chemistry often follows familiarity, not necessarily health.

If unpredictability, emotional distance, or conditional approval were part of your early environment, your nervous system may register those dynamics as “this is what my first experience of love feels like,” a pattern that only gets stronger as it is reinforced, even if your conscious mind knows “better.”

Often, this gets reinforced if we do not have the micro-skills to manage the relationships in our lives, or if we do not have at least one model of secure relating around us, so the feeling of familiarity never changes.

2. How we behave once we are attracted to someone

Aside from learning what is “good” and “attractive” to us, we also inherit, through repeated experiences with our caregivers, patterns of relating.

Do we shut down when the other person gets closer?

Do we anxiously wait for the next text, putting everything else in the background?

Are we constantly scanning for small shifts in tone and behavior?

Are we always expecting to be abandoned?

These responses are usually patterned and automatic. They activate before our conscious mind has time to intervene, and it takes nervous system retraining and conscious effort to begin dismantling these patterns.

3. What feels possible in love

We all “know” deep down what is possible in love. Through exposure to other relationships and through personal history, we might develop either a positive or a more negative set of possibilities.

What makes these possibilities become reality is our brain’s ability to detect patterns and keep us “safe” by following what feels familiar.

For example, if one of your parents cheated, you might become more lenient toward micro-signs of disconnection in your own relationships, which over time can turn into full-blown emotional or physical affairs. And once this becomes reality, the pattern gets reinforced into a solid belief: “all men cheat” or “all women fantasize about other men,” and so on.

Ultimately, when you hear about relationships that involve loyalty, you may find it hard to believe they exist, or perhaps you find it hard to believe someone would be loyal to you. That is how powerful these internal possibilities can be.

What makes change possible

By the time you have read this, you have probably acquired a few insights and maybe even a headache. But the good part is that the brain is shaped by relationships and can also build new patterns in relationships.

Meaning, no amount of reading, courses, and so on will help you as much as seeing your patterns activate in real time and observing your reactions in yourself and in another person, as it happens in a therapeutic relationship.

We learn who we are in close relationships with others, and we learn who others are in relationship with them.

Relationship patterns are relational by nature.

They were formed in interaction.

They tend to replay in interaction.

And they shift most reliably in interaction.

Reading about attachment, understanding trauma, or analyzing your own behavior can create clarity. But clarity does not always translate into new experience.

The nervous system changes through repeated, emotionally meaningful experiences, especially ones that contradict old expectations.

That is why many people find that real change happens not just through thinking differently, but through gradually experiencing connection differently, which for many people happens inside a therapeutic relationship that feels safe and steady.

That in itself is scary. The process of finding a secure attachment figure, the process of vetting people, the process of opening up slowly, and since many of us have experienced heartbreak in one way or another in our lives, it makes sense to want to do all the work by ourselves.

This new relational experience, when it happens, doesn’t change the nervous system overnight, but small, consistent new experiences and good tools, over time make changes that compound, shifting the internal map begins to adjust and adapt to a new reality.

And this new reality, this new map, becomes the lens through which you see yourself and others.

Next steps

If insight hasn’t translated into change, and you’re ready to actively shift these patterns in relationship, I offer 1:1 online sessions. Click here to learn more about my rates, my approach and how to contact me.

There are two main types of narcissistic abuse: one that happens in families, when one parent or both exhibit narcissistic behaviours, and one that happens later in romantic or platonic relationships.

Abuse that happens early on tends to become entangled with the psychological development of the individual. A child’s brain and sense of self develop in the context of unsafety, unmet needs, conditional love, overfunctioning, and overgiving to a parent who should have been the one giving to the child.

However, narcissistic abuse that happens later in life is not any less insidious. It can leave people feeling “crazy,” drained of energy and confidence, often struggling with body image issues or holding new beliefs about life and relationships that feel deeply damaging.

What I define as narcissistic abuse includes:

- Constant overfunctioning and compromising in the relationship

- Connection based on domination rather than authenticity (the other person must always “win” to maintain the connection)

- Gaslighting, lying, and deception

- Conditional “love”

- Emotional, psychological, and financial exploitation

- Constant erosion of self-esteem

- Social isolation

- Objectification

- Triangulation

This list is not exhaustive, but if I were to describe narcissistic abuse in one sentence, it would be: a relationship in which the other person seeks to exploit and dominate rather than connect authentically.

Of course, these relationships do not usually start this way. There are often “good times,” followed by the growing sense that no matter what you do, the goalpost is always moving, and you will never feel good enough around this person or truly loved by them.

In a relationship with a parent, this may look like constant pressure to achieve, followed by dismissal or lack of acknowledgment once achievements are reached. The goalpost keeps moving, making it impossible for the child to “win” the parent’s approval. The now-adult child may continue to work hard, yet their efforts are consistently minimized or made to seem insignificant.

In a romantic relationship, criticism and subtle seeds of doubt planted about your attractiveness, intelligence, or character slowly corrode your self-esteem. What once felt like a fairytale, where you were adored and placed on a pedestal, begins to feel insulting and destabilizing.

Triangulation, where a partner compares you to past partners or highlights their qualities, is also common.

These are only examples. There are countless permutations of how narcissistic abuse can unfold, far more than can be covered here.

How narcissistic abuse recovery looks like

Narcissistic abuse is not simply something that happens to us. It changes us.

The hurtful words we are told can haunt us for years. They make us doubt our qualities, slowly eroding our sense of worth, even long after the people who said those words are no longer in our lives.

A person who has experienced narcissistic abuse often feels a constant need to prove their worth, because the narcissist’s primary weapon is criticism. Through criticism, they justify their behavior by making it seem as though you deserve what is being done to you.

Some people collapse and stop trying altogether. Others become high achievers, fixers, rescuers, people who overfunction in relationships and take care of everyone else. But despite all their effort, despite everything they do to better themselves, they never quite feel better.

Internally, their representation of self remains organized around the narcissistic structure, meaning:

- Self-acceptance is based solely on performance

- Criticism resonates deeply, while acknowledgment does not

- Giving feels natural, even compulsive, while receiving feels dangerous

- Relationships are imbalanced, with one person consistently compromising and sacrificing

- Boundaries are followed by intense guilt and the feeling of being a bad person

- Expressing needs feels excruciating

- Trust in others is low, while emotional dependence is high

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What fuels recovery from narcissistic abuse

Recovery is tricky, because while it starts with awareness, it is not a passive process.

Knowledge needs to feel lived, true, visceral, in your bones. And as knowledge expands, it often opens the door to seeing even more ways in which old programming has been holding you back.

Recovery can feel like a journey through a dark wood while holding a lantern. The further you walk, the more you can see. But you can only see as much as you are willing and able to walk while holding the lantern.

Reading, taking courses, watching videos, journaling, meditation, and similar practices can all be valuable tools. But all tools have their place, and their usefulness depends on timing and context.

While knowledge can be acquired through study, hyper-personal patterns and unique defense mechanisms tend to come online only in relationship, both in relationship to others and in relationship to oneself.

Recovery is about having a different experience, not just about knowledge

It helps to read about the importance of feeling seen.

But what about actually being seen?

It helps to read about fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses.

But what about seeing them unfold in real time and having someone guide you through the process of returning to safety?

It helps to read about secure attachment, about what makes a relationship healthy, about what makes communication healthy.

But what about having someone offer you that experience and teach you skills with compassion, empathy, and patience for your own pace?

The therapeutic relationship, when it is with a securely attached provider, cannot be replaced by books or courses, because our psychological development is deeply linked to the quality of connection we experience with others.

Opening yourself up to such a relationship is not easy. It is difficult, and it requires courage.

The purpose of the therapeutic relationship is to slowly reshape internal models over time. This process prepares you, in real time, both to reject connections that are unhealthy for you and to become emotionally available for connections that are nurturing and reciprocal.

Even for those who are single or already in a relationship, changing the internal representations one holds about themselves can lead to a much more peaceful and grounded life, especially when the inner critic is no longer running unchecked.

Neuroplasticity in adulthood is supported through a series of small, repeated changes that involve focused attention, emotional engagement, and experience over time.

Next steps

If this perspective resonates and you are looking for support that goes beyond insight alone, you are welcome to to my about page where you’ll learn more about how I work and my rates.

If you have any questions or you want to schedule an appointment, feel free to email me at helpwithmiriam@gmail.com

One of the most used defense mechanisms is to change. And it makes sense if the environment tells us we are too fat, too thin, too loud, or too quiet.

When people give us reasons why they disrespect us, our first instinct is not to doubt their judgment, especially if they are our caregivers, but to doubt ourselves. And there is a real consequence to being what we are as well. Wouldn’t it be obvious to want to change?

Our reality is often shaped by our environment, and if we are surrounded by, and stuck in, an environment filled with criticism, we end up working overtime, hyperaware of our “flaws,” tortured by them even, despite seeing other people who have the same flaws as us achieve things or receive love we think we don’t deserve.

However, when the relational environment is filled with criticism, it is better to change the environment, not to change yourself. Repressing who you are or beating yourself into a shape you don’t fit comes with a price. You never quite feel loved, and when you come closest to love, what you end up presenting to others is a false self, built out of fear of rejection, still fearing and unable to endure the possibility of rejection, but now wearing a false veneer.

Maintaining the idea that you have to dress a certain way, earn a certain amount, or have a certain social status to be accepted and loved, and that losing those traits will leave you abandoned, takes up a lot of energy. And it hides the suffering of never actually believing there might be someone out there who could love you, a little flawed.

It may sound like a cliche, of course money buys happiness, it buys shelter, good healthcare, good food. But aside from covering the essentials and some more, achievement is often not the cure to low self esteem. Even worse, when people reach their goals and still struggle, they may feel even more hopeless.

As Matthew Perry, star of Friends, famously put it:

“Now, all these years later, I’m certain that I got famous so I would not waste my entire life trying to get famous. You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that.”

So what then? If success does not fix the mysterious problem, if positive self talk feels like a scam, if meditation is boring and daily affirmations feel like daily torture, where do we go from here?

What is there left to do?

Why high achievers develop low self esteem

In the last 100 years something astonishing happened. We now know about the brain and the psyche more than we had known for centuries. Sure, there were many roadblocks on our way here, including cultural biases and prejudices that always make their way into any science, social or not, but we have reached a point where we have found the red thread to what makes us more inclined to think, feel and behave in a certain way.

Research first in psychology, and then in neuroscience, found the following. Your sense of self is not something you are born with. You are born with a brain, but the way the brain develops is highly relational.

What does that mean?

Your sense of self emerges when your own mind is discovered through the mind of your caregiver. Your caregiver’s ability to connect, love, empathize, understand their own states and the states of the newborn all shape the brain of the newborn.

As researchers like Allan Schore and Peter Fonagy show, the child’s sense of self is shaped by how well the caregiver can attune to emotions, soothe distress and reflect the child’s inner world.

When a parent sees the child as a separate psychological being, the child develops:

• coherence of self

• positive self image

• stable identity

• belief others can be good and safe

• belief they are good and safe

• an overall sense of safety with regards to the environment

• a relationship model that emphasises attunement, presence, safety and care

This also happens through behaviours such as attunement to the child’s needs, creating a safe space for the child, being comforting when the child is in distress and being encouraging of their pursuits and exploration.

These experiences create both a brain that is structurally more able to self regulate and representations of themselves that are positive.

How negative self perception develops

When caregivers are overwhelmed, emotionally unavailable, unpredictable or unable to understand the child’s inner world, children borrow the skills and, so to speak, the brain of the not so functional caregiver.

Without emotional visibility, children develop what Daniel Brown calls pseudo maturity, an adult-like competence that hides an undeveloped inner self. Their confidence cannot be built based on who they are because the parent rejects that or does not understand what the child is. Instead, it is built on competence alone.

The child learns that by becoming something, they achieve the right to be something, which in many cases is what the parents believe about themselves as well. Hence the borrowed mind.

There is only one problem. The child and now the adult attempts to solve a problem that does not exist. Low self esteem related to your sense of self that does not improve with competence is not caused by poor competence but by flawed representations in the brain of what the sense of self is.

The more you try to prove yourself worthy by becoming more and more competent, the more you are shown that no amount of competence is fixing the problem. And perhaps because you think that is the only solution to the problem, dread settles in and helplessness.

For example, some of my clients lead teams, run companies, or make six figures, yet panic when they receive a short text like ‘We need to talk.’ Their competence is sky-high, but their internal map still whispers they are not enough.

Healing the root cause of low self esteem

Healing self esteem is not cognitive, it is relational. Your mind was contained by a mind growing up that did not lead to a positive self image. That is it. You do not have to earn it. Good self image at the baseline is not earned, it is relationally acquired.

Competence is earned, and guilt over things we have done can sometimes be a good thing because it teaches us what to do and what not to do. But shame, shame about who we are at our core, is not guilt, it is not a true representation of our actions or our history. It is a state that cannot be pinpointed yet it stays still, and is the wound of the insecure attachment to your caregiver.

Fortunately, we can slowly re wire those pathways based on new relational experiences that challenge old beliefs and their meanings.

These new relational experiences have to have the following features:

• are safe

• are able to slowly allow you to come out of your shell and speak your mind

• are corrective and able to show you new perspectives

• are corrective by allowing you to express negative emotions in a completely new and safe environment

• are able to guide new representations in your brain (this can be done via Ideal Parent Figure Protocol or coherence therapy techniques)

• are mirroring your own internal states and respond appropriately to them

• are done in relation with a securely attached practitioner

Most of this sounds like what a friend or a partner can do, however, there is a little caveat.

It may sound counterintuitive that something so deeply personal, your self esteem and your view of yourself, can be significantly changed by someone outside of you, but in reality our psyche was always the recipient of the environment. With the addition that as adults, we are no longer helpless toddlers and we can now choose, by our own will, to take steps in the right direction.

Next steps

Want to learn to embark on a journey of self discovery? Go here to learn more about me and how I help my clients change their inner map to change their life.

References

Brown, D. P., & Elliott, D. S. (2016). _Attachment disturbances in adults._ Norton.

Dana, D. (2018). _The polyvagal theory in therapy._ Norton.

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). _Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self._ Other Press.

Heller, L., & LaPierre, A. (2012). _Healing developmental trauma._ North Atlantic Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). _The polyvagal theory._ Norton.

Schore, A. N. (1994). _Affect regulation and the origin of the self._ Erlbaum.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). _The body keeps the score._ Viking.

Walker, P. (2013). _Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving._ Azure Coyote Press.

Wallin, D. J. (2007). _Attachment in psychotherapy._ Guilford Press.

In this short guide, I’ll teach you how to identify signs of avoidance right away—even from your first text conversation. I’ll also explain the anxious “mindset” that makes people who lean anxious more likely to overlook low engagement, low investment, and low capacity for connection.

How to Detect Avoidance From the First Conversation

Avoidants often fly under the radar when the person they’re dating is preoccupied with being liked and accepted—regardless of who’s doing the liking or accepting.

That’s the anxious bias: valuing other people’s opinions and attention, even before knowing whether those people are emotionally safe or capable of making sound judgments.

On one side, we have someone with a very positive bias and a strong openness to connection… but without much discernment. If that feels familiar, here are some clues to help you catch avoidance early and start asking the right questions.

Avoidant-Speak: Learn Their Language

The clearest clue with avoidants is lack of follow-up and frequent breaks between conversations.

For example:

• They text you one day, then disappear the next, only to reappear on the third.

• Conversations feel drained of emotion—they share what they did, but not how they feel.

• They rarely use your name.

• They don’t seem terribly interested in knowing you. They may ask questions, but their curiosity is limited.

• Their messages are shorter, flatter, and carry little emotional tone.

• They plan dates where real conversation is unlikely (like going to the movies as a first date).

• They struggle to commit to a specific day and time.

• They rarely reach out first—and when they do, it’s timid.

• They don’t often show enthusiasm, excitement, or warmth.

Now, this might sound like a very drab person. So why do people fall in love with them?

Actually, many do. Their calm, collected, almost stoic demeanor often attracts people who are high-energy, talkative, emotional, and eager to connect. Anxious partners can end up pouring all their energy into someone who doesn’t (or can’t) match that flow.

And here’s the kicker: the more aloof the avoidant becomes, the sweeter and brighter those rare moments of affection seem. The distance itself creates a fantasy that anxious partners get hooked on.

The Avoidant Illusion of Security

Another tip: most avoidants believe they’re secure.

If you’re dating someone who isn’t very present, doesn’t talk much, and appears emotionally cold—but insists they’re “secure”—be cautious.

Avoidants often mistake their emotional detachment and lack of conflict as signs of being grounded and secure. In reality, it’s simply connection and conflict avoidance.

That’s why quizzes or labels don’t always help. Stick to the clues you can actually see.

Final Thoughts

If you recognize yourself in the anxious bias, remember: awareness is power. The more you notice these patterns early, the less likely you are to invest in someone who can’t meet you where you are.

Want support on your journey?

Whether you are struggling with anxiety or dating makes you more dysregulated than 3 shots of expresso, I’m here to help. Head towards my about page for more info about working with me.

Friendship conversations are mutual, you take turns sharing and supporting. We also tend to choose friends based on our own emotional maturity. If we’re struggling, we may attract friends who are also struggling, which can create connections that mirror our inner wounds without helping us move forward.

With a professional, the focus stays on you. That focus exists for a reason: the goal is to help you close developmental or coping skill gaps so you can become more functional, adaptable, and ultimately happier.

Because of early developmental wounds, many people don’t have truly “safe” people in their lives. They may also have a pattern of choosing those who are neglectful or unable to truly see them. In some cases, a person may not even realize (especially early on) that they have been surrounded by unsafe people all along.

Speaking with a professional can be a break from that cycle, or even a break from your own loneliness.

The map childhood draws

As children, we unconsciously form beliefs about:

- Whether the world, and we ourselves, are safe

- Whether we are kind, capable, and lovable, or the opposite

- What love looks like (care and encouragement, or chaos and pain)

- Whether it’s safe to express our needs and desires

- Whether we can focus without scanning for danger

These early experiences shape how we connect, cope, and see ourselves. Time doesn’t erase them, instead, the effects compound. Unresolved wounds can snowball into patterns of low self-esteem, poor nervous system regulation, and reinforcing beliefs that keep us stuck.

The map is exactly what the professional works on. Ideally, a good professional knows what a healthy map looks like, understands the many ways development can go off track, and can provide solutions to improve that map, helping the client navigate the world with guidance that leads to greater happiness.

Tools beyond talk

While talk therapy or coaching is essential for building interpersonal skills and understanding patterns, many professionals (myself included) also use tools like:

Guided meditations to shift unconscious beliefs (for example, the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol)

Somatic techniques to release trapped emotions, regulate the nervous system, and create new bodily experiences

A resource I recommend

If you want to learn more about choosing the right professional, especially for healing complex or childhood trauma, Pete Walker’s _Holistically Treating Complex PTSD_ offers a practical and compassionate framework that applies to most therapeutic work.

Work with me

Looking for support? Check out my about page to learn more about my availability, pricing and focus. And as always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Anger is not abuse. Sometimes it can lead to abusive behaviours, but more often than not, anger is an emotion. You just feel it and ask a question, why am I feeling this way?

Am I being disrespected at the moment?

Do I feel in danger?

Is someone crossing my boundary?

Is what’s happening in the moment warranted to make me feel angry or is it a trigger that brought up something from the past that I can’t remember, but I can remember the anger?

Anger is a signal. Is your nervous system saying, look here! PLEASE, look here! I need you to look here, it's very urgent. And some ignore that signal, but the emotion doesn’t go away, instead it gets bigger and bigger precisely because you don’t pay attention and you aren’t “fixing” the root problem of the issue, you aren’t allowing anger to help you uncover what’s really bothering you.

As a consequence, you may end up suppressing anger and exploding in moments when your anger makes no sense, suppressing the anger with food or substances.

Or you may turn anger inward, towards yourself, becoming your own tyrannical voice. An abuser that is always there and never shuts up.

Another way unprocessed anger can show up is by giving you physical symptoms. Being constantly in fight or flight is a big stressor on your body.

Nothing good ever comes from anger, but how do we feel and process anger in a healthy way?

Well, I am glad you asked.

How to express anger in a healthy way

No, breaking plates is not on the list, but it could be!

Write your fears and resentments

This is a technique created by Anna Runkle, from the Crappy Childhood Fairy, in which she teaches people to self-regulate emotionally by writing down all of their fears and resentments, followed by a ritual of letting go and a moment of meditation.

The exercise starts by you writing down, on paper, why a certain thing makes you feel the way you feel.

For example, “I fear that my mother-in-law will make me feel small and insignificant again. I fear I resent my husband for allowing that to happen.”

And you go on and on. Some people, on particularly “busy” days end up writing pages upon pages. This doesn’t just end up improving your emotional literacy, meaning you finally give some meaning to your anger that you can later meditate over what can be done, it also functions as catharsis. The letting out of anger in itself can blow off some of the steam.

At the end of the exercise, you are asked to burn or shred the piece of paper (very important to be an actual piece of paper) all while ending the exercise with a few sentences where you express your desire to let it go. You write your name, the date and get rid of the paper.

Some choose to meditate following the exercise as well.

But perhaps the most important function of the exercise is to allow yourself to put some meaning to your anger and not run as a headless chicken. Why do I feel this way? Can I fix it?

If the mother-in-law annoys me, what can I do to prevent her from annoying me again?

And suddenly, you can now move from eating your feelings, distracting yourself away from your feelings, or downright avoiding them, into problem-solving mode which will eventually allow you to relax.

Mimic what anger feels like

Somatic exercises are great at allowing you to feel in a non-destructive manner.

Find yourself a quiet place, take a piece of cloth or a towel, and squeeze it hard, all while allowing you to make all the faces you would make when you feel really angry. Really focus your anger on that towel, and give it a good squeeze. A good example of this you can find here.

Other ways to express anger, in the body, in a safe way is to stomp your feet or simply mimic the movements and the facial gestures a child or perhaps you as a child would make if you were allowed to be angry. Stomp those feet and get it out. Allow yourself to feel it.

Long-term management of anger includes self-expression

Do you know what prevents anger from piling up and making you explode?

Assertiveness.

Yes, the long-term solution to suppressed anger is learning how to communicate with others and place boundaries with consequences. Anger lingers when the issue is not resolved. When you don’t know how to communicate or perhaps don’t know when is time to stop communicating with someone altogether.

You can’t walk through life achieving a state of complete safety, sometimes there will be people who will disrespect you, annoy you and trigger you - the trick is to not always be at war, and choose to surround yourself with people that make it safe for you to relax. And that’s probably the most important skill one can develop. I help my clients understand their needs, put boundaries and increase collaboration both in individual coaching sessions and in group sessions.

Anger is not the compulsion to act - angry people still have a choice

Anger is not a trigger towards action, although many people think they should act on their emotions right away.

Sometimes due to past experiences, we think people disrespect us and walk all over our boundaries, even when they don’t.

Other times, because we sometimes falsely accuse others of trying to harm us and we are in the wrong, we then swing to the other side of the spectrum - we never see anyone as harmful and we continue to rationalize and minimize what is done to us.

Anger and is cue’s is really something that needs to be explored in a safe therapeutic setting and why not, in your journal, where you can start investigating when you were right and when you were wrong about other people’s intentions.

Anger is not about aggressively - it is about discernment.

What do I mean by that?

Anger should be the signal that, in time, becomes more and more accurate at discerning who is safe and who isn’t and when people are stepping over your toes. But by no means, it’s a channel towards aggression. Anger is just an emotion, not a command to go and break a window.

And because it is an invitation, it must sound like one. What is being asked is often never directly said.

Manipulators can target anyone, but they only succeed with people who:

1. Want to solve other people’s problems

2. Have no boundaries around their empathy

3. See others as helpless—and believe them to be helpless if they appear that way

Here’s a clip that perfectly shows how manipulation works:
https://www.facebook.com/sbsondemand/videos/1903274950468416/

Let’s break it down:

1. She sets the hook
   Nicole Kidman reassures her teen lover that she only wants to be with him. That’s the prize—if only…

2. She presents the obstacle
   Her husband has a temper. She implies she’s stuck in a dangerous situation, hinting at the possibility of domestic violence.

3. She offers a false solution
   She says, “If nothing happens, I guess I’ll just run away with my kid.”
   (This creates urgency for the teen—he might lose her forever.)

4. He offers a rational alternative
   “Why don’t you get a divorce?” he asks.

5. She rejects it with a cost
   She says she’ll lose everything, including her home. Divorce is not a real option.

6. She returns to the hook
   With a seductive dance, she reminds him of what he stands to lose if he doesn’t act. She doesn’t ask for anything—she just leads him to imagine the solution.

She never says she wants her husband dead. But she doesn’t need to.
She plants the seed and lets his imagination do the rest.

This is one of the most powerful forms of manipulation—and it happens more often than you think.

Every day life example

In everyday life—especially in relationships—my clients often come to me and say their partners aren’t capable of doing X or Y, so they feel they have to do it for their sake.

For example, one woman started paying her boyfriend’s share of the rent after he had a breakdown, saying he’d have to work two jobs to cover his portion. This wasn’t actually true. But because she was so shaken by his crying and yelling, she gave in and started covering for him.

He never found a better job. She continued paying his share of the rent for the next five years. All the while, he complained about how hard the economy was, how hard everything was. Meanwhile, all of his income went into a savings account—money he kept after the relationship ended.

She had invested in him for five years, driven by guilt, compassion, and a sense of responsibility for his depression and anxiety.

And yes—mental health issues can be weaponized too.

I can help decrease your chances of heartbreak and increase your chances of not getting into a relationship that hurts you—and if you do, to be able to make a swift exit as soon as possible.

That being said, here’s what I think everyone should know before dating—and probably everything that’s enough to know to stay safe emotionally and psychologically.

1. Wants to get to know you in a healthy manner

No rushing intimacy—not even emotional intimacy. Just two people getting to know each other, starting with a casual conversation. And as the trust increases (if it does), the two people can increase the amount of vulnerability in the conversation.

Why it matters
Speaking too much about too many deep things creates the illusion of quick intimacy, when in fact you are attaching yourself to a stranger. You don’t know if they are safe to know your past trauma and disappointments. A real danger is when someone talks about everything they want in a partner during the first dates—if the other person has manipulative intent, they can use that blueprint to become the “person of their dreams” and get them hooked on an illusion.

2. Has pro-social feelings

Have you ever met someone who constantly speaks ill of others?
“Women these days are gold diggers.”
“Men these days are pigs.”
“And uh, relationships? Well, you know how they are!”

Is a complete Debbie Downer and absolutely nothing ever goes well in their life? If they’re constantly discouraged and distrustful of everyone, how can they truly connect with someone else? If they’re always blaming society, parents, or politicians—what sense of agency and responsibility do they have in their life? Probably none.

Why it matters
If they lack pro-social feelings and criticize everything, they’re probably lacking in the empathy department as well. RUN!

3. Lives a lifestyle similar to yours

I think this is more important than people realize. Imagine being someone who cherishes good food, relaxation, the occasional exercise, and just an overall chill lifestyle.

Now picture for a moment how frustrated you’d be with a partner who simply can’t see that booze is killing them, and their job is putting them into an early grave. You know that!
Well, you might know it—but they might not care about their life in the same way you do. And that’s their right: to conduct their lives as they want to and create change when and if they want to.

Why it matters
I think one of the biggest heartbreaks occurs when you love someone for just 50% of who they are and absolutely despise the other 50%, praying and begging they’ll change for you.

4. You can communicate to them

What is communication? It’s the ability to express feelings, including negative ones, and create bridges between people. Now sometimes, we do try to communicate with someone—and they show us that they can’t communicate back.

This usually shows up as avoiding difficult conversations. It can also look like getting defensive, ending the conversation, or being unable to take any accountability.

Why it matters
If someone can’t have difficult conversations, can’t take accountability, and can’t admit to anything—they’re not someone you can build intimacy with. That person isn’t open to connection, only to control. When things get rough, they won’t try to resolve it in a way that keeps you in mind, too.

And usually, that’s not something you can fix by explaining more or communicating more—because they don’t want to communicate back.

5. Has good enough self-esteem (oof)

This may seem a bit hurtful to type out, but hear me out.
People who are very insecure are the most dangerous people out there. Sure, we all have some insecurities, but when someone has built their entire lifestyle around managing those insecurities without actually addressing them… they’re just living in hell—and dragging others into it with them.

Why it matters
Due to insecurity, people can either become intense people-pleasers and mirrors to their partners (you never get to know them and can’t have real intimacy, because their sense of self is built around what they can do to seduce you),
or they are in a continuous search for validation, including by seducing others outside the relationship.

What if I am the insecure person?

And my last point is on staying safe while dating if you are the insecure person.

People with low self-esteem also make perfect victims for toxic types. Some people with low self-esteem fix their issues by people-pleasing, others by taking advantage of others and using them as a supply of validation.

So if you are dating and think you may need support, 12-step groups for codependency can sometimes be a good resource. If you are looking for in-depth, personalized support, feel free to head to my about page to learn more about my coaching services.

See you soon.

Before you go playing detective—examining all the red flags, the green flags, the unmet emotional needs, your attachment style, and how much that person resembled your mom—pause.

Remember this simple truth:
There are people who can love, and there are people who can’t.

You stumbled upon someone who can’t.

There are dictators and cruel soldiers. And there are strangers who jump into a river to save a drowning child, losing their own lives in the process.

That’s the confusing world we live in.And the sooner we accept that only discernment can protect us—the better.

You weren’t betrayed by the whole world.
You were betrayed by one person.

You don’t have to understand them. You’re allowed to feel angry.
But hold on to this: they might simply be different from you.

Grieve it.
But remember: this time, you didn’t stumble upon the kind of person who’d save the cat, jump into the water, or help the old lady cross the street.

That’s all.

It means opening up in front of a stranger, when historically, most of us who have been in therapy or have been looking for help were hurt by strangers. What makes matters even more complicated is that this particular stranger will know a lot about you, will get close—which could make the possible sting even more hurtful.

But as someone who was both in therapy and is now on the other side of the room, I think I’ve developed, over time, a pretty good intuition about what actually makes a good mental health professional—whether it's someone with a PhD or someone who finished a coaching course online.

So here are the 5 green flags to look out for:

1. Expertise is pretty clear

Working with a mental health provider is not merely a conversation between two people in which one asks from time to time, “So how does that make you feel?”

The person in front of you should be able to give you guidance, explanations when you ask for them, and paint you a pretty clear picture of why X leads to Y.

Of course, seeing the full picture means the person has some information about you, but after gathering the information—if you are comfortable and ask to know—the other person should be able to tell you why it’s likely for a certain coping mechanism to happen, how it manifests, and what would be a possible approach to treatment.

For example, I work with people who are coming from households in which at least one person was abusive. I also work with people with codependent patterns and people with attachment wounds.

All of the above involve very specific manifestations and some pretty clear trajectories, and by knowing this, I can tell when a client of mine is struggling—and as a consequence, I can guide them better.

Let’s take the following fictional example. Josh is in love with his wife but struggles with some sexual fantasies that involve his wife being with someone else. He feels a lot of shame around those fantasies, and they also tend to come up when he is more stressed out.

He has tried mindfulness meditation, journaling, etc., but nothing seems to make the thoughts go away—quite the opposite. He feels ashamed and stuck, and no amount of talking about it can make it go away.

After a few sessions, I learn that Josh, even though his parents covered all of his safety and physical needs, was mostly left alone. They were working all day, and he was mostly by himself. He was also ignored when big things were happening. For example, when they moved, they didn’t let him know until they were on the way to the airport. The emotional neglect had been severe.

As an adult, he learned subconsciously to detach himself from his friends and even his romantic partners. He never invested too much into them; he didn’t even allow himself to feel too much. He did this because he learned early on that feeling feelings was dangerous and that being connected to others would mean self-abandonment—just like what happened to his parents, who are still somewhat present in his life, continuing the same patterns.

In relationships, he found it hard to commit (he developed an avoidant attachment), but even when he did, his subconscious found a way out.

His sexual fantasies were his way of detaching himself from his wife because being too intimate with her felt threatening. The man in his fantasies, taking her away, was the way he was letting out some of the pressure he felt in the relationship. In addition, his affection and even sexual attraction were fluctuating based on how much space there was in the relationship. All things intimacy scarred him, even though he wanted things to be different.

In his case, starting work on his intimacy issues would be key to improving all aspects of his life.

Working with someone who has knowledge and expertise goes beyond the power of catharsis and being listened to—it offers a clear map. And when interviewing a potential mental health provider, it is important to look out for someone who does seem to have a map in their hands.

2. Can identify abuse

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this story repeating itself over and over again. Someone goes to their therapist, they speak about their abusive parent or partner, and all they get is invalidation—or worse, advice on how to forgive, how to move on, etc.

While sometimes clients can have skewed views on what is considered abuse, more often than not—at least in my experience—it’s quite the opposite. People put up with too much abuse to the point they no longer recognize it as abuse.

A therapist’s inability to identify abuse—or worse, encouraging the client to get in contact with the abuser (“It’s your mother at the end of the day, and she’s old now”) or the more subtle cues (“After all you’ve learned now, you should be able to tolerate them better”)—are not neutral. They are actively damaging, as they normalize abuse and prime the person in front of them for even more abuse.

Ideally, a therapist has a high standard for self-love and self-esteem and is able to see when their client is not holding themselves to that standard. They also indirectly hold up this standard by acting with genuine care, seeing the person in front of them, being empathetic to their struggles, and giving praise for their successes—not encouraging them to compromise and accept people in their lives who don’t love them.

A therapist who can’t identify abuse is also likely to be someone who can’t identify it in their own life (they could be a victim of it), or they could be on the other side of the table—as the bully. If your therapist can’t identify abuse when you present it—RUN!

Alternatively, if you are very well treated and they point out the ways in which you aren’t treating yourself well—or others aren’t treating you the way you deserve—you are probably dealing with someone who both has high self-esteem and wants to cultivate the same within you. Feel free to stay!

3. Shows genuine interest, comes on time, sees you and cares for your experience

I see this question on forums more often than I would like:

“Is it okay that my therapist is constantly late 5–10 minutes?”

“Is it okay that my therapist checks her phone during the session?”

“Is it okay if my therapist forgets important details about me on a regular basis?”

Well, we all make mistakes. But the key here is on a regular basis. Therapy and coaching are expensive, and even 5 to 10 minutes is quite expensive. So if it happens regularly, you are literally leaking money.

As for checking the phone or forgetting important details—well, sometimes people forget, and sometimes they may get an important message. But the general rule is: during sessions, the phone is on silent. And for deep work, the therapist needs to remember things so they have a full picture of what’s going on.

Also, when someone is constantly not paying attention, that’s very poor modeling. You might feel unimportant, disrespected, and so on. And clearly, we don’t want that, do we?

Part of what makes therapy so powerful is that someone gets really close to you and offers you a safe experience. You are seen, heard, on a regular basis, with no ups and downs. A good mental health provider knows consistency is amazing at building trust, higher self-esteem, and even helping people build a more secure attachment.

So yes, it’s not okay if a therapist does all of the above. But if you do have someone who shows up for you on a regular basis, in a positive way, your brain is going to love it.

4. Provides a clear path to solving the “issue”

Now, this is more of a personal green flag—meaning what I personally consider a green flag, what I needed in my own work, and what I deliver myself as a practitioner. That being said, a clear structure often leads to more progress.

Sure, because humans are so complex, we are constantly writing and erasing what’s next on the checklist, constantly adapting to the needs of the client. But that work in itself is very important, in my opinion, because we can see whether the needle is moving and how the client is reacting to certain approaches and techniques.

Also, even though psychology is a young science, it does have quite a rich history of tried-and-true approaches for a large number of issues. Why not draw inspiration from that instead of freestyling our way through crippling low self-esteem and emotional dependency?

5. Is able to repair ruptures in the therapeutic relationship and make you feel safe, even during conflict

Oof.

What conflict? I mean, we are talking about a therapist, right?

Please don’t leave the page yet. The truth is that every relationship—including a therapeutic one—at some point will encounter conflict, and successfully managing that conflict can be incredibly helpful.

Sometimes you might find your therapist annoying.

Sometimes you might feel the therapist thinks you are annoying.

Why is it important to address it and have someone mature and ready for that on the other side?

Because that shows you that conflict and tension can be solved without dissolving the relationship—which is essential in any sort of attachment work you may do. Not only that, but when we solve the conflict with someone successfully, the relationship gets even stronger, as we now have proof that the person is safe—even in stormy weather.

Therapeutic conflict isn’t about dramatic arguments—it’s about navigating moments of discomfort with mutual respect and maturity.

But at some point, there may be a small disagreement, and working through that successfully can actually teach you to have more trust in relationships and not fear conflict anymore.

It will also raise the bar with regard to conflict resolution in all of your relationships outside therapy.

Want to work with me? Have any questions?

Feel free to email me at helpwithmiriam@gmail.com you can also learn more about me and pricing by reading my about page.

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