#191: Pleasure, Rest, & Feeling Good in a Culture of Chronic Stress
In a world that glorifies hustle and productivity, prioritising pleasure, rest, and feeling good can feel radical. This episode explores why so many of us struggle to let ourselves feel good — and how reclaiming joy and nourishment is essential for healing, regulation, and self-worth.
If the idea of prioritising pleasure or rest feels foreign—or even uncomfortable—you’re not alone. In a world that celebrates productivity, busyness, and relentless striving, the notion of slowing down and simply feeling good can seem radical. But what if that discomfort wasn’t a personal failing, but a natural response to the culture we’ve been shaped by?
In this post, I want to offer a gentle invitation to reimagine your relationship with rest, pleasure, and feeling good—not as indulgences or luxuries, but as essential components of wellbeing. Because I truly believe that when we stop outsourcing our vitality to achievement and start reclaiming our joy, everything shifts.
We Weren’t Meant to Live Like This
Before I became a relationship coach, before I spoke about attachment and self-worth, I was a corporate lawyer. I lived in the heart of hustle culture: long hours, chronic stress, and the unspoken belief that burnout was a badge of honour. For a while, I played the game. Until I realised I didn’t want to anymore.
Once you see the cost of that way of living, it’s hard to unsee it. And while not everyone is in a position to overhaul their life overnight, I believe we all deserve to question the systems we've inherited—particularly the ones that tell us feeling good has to be earned.
Because the truth is: you don't have to "deserve" rest. You don't have to prove yourself to earn pleasure. These things are not conditional rewards—they’re birthrights.
Why Pleasure and Rest Feel So Hard
There are many reasons we struggle to access rest and pleasure, even when we’re exhausted or depleted. Let’s unpack a few of the big ones:
1. Chronic stress as a baseline
If your nervous system is constantly in overdrive—always anticipating the next thing, bracing for impact—it’s incredibly difficult to slow down and feel good. Pleasure requires presence. And anxiety is the antithesis of presence. If you’re always rushing, mentally elsewhere, or feeling like you need to be productive to be safe or worthy, there’s little room left to feel.
2. Internalised beliefs about worth
Many of us carry deep scripts like: I have to earn rest. I’ll feel good once I finish everything. It’s selfish to prioritise myself. These beliefs often have roots in childhood or cultural conditioning and leave us in a state of perpetual self-abandonment. We care for everyone else first—and often, there’s nothing left over.
3. Hustle culture and identity
In our society, “busy” is code for “important.” We wear exhaustion like a badge of honour. And stepping outside of that can feel like a threat—not just to our sense of belonging, but to our identity. Saying no to overworking can feel rebellious. But it’s also the first step toward reclaiming your life.
Rest and Pleasure Are Not Luxuries
What if rest wasn’t something you earned at the end of a long day, but something you were worthy of—right now? What if feeling good wasn’t frivolous, but deeply regulating to your nervous system?
This isn’t about quitting your job and moving to the forest (although if that’s calling you, go for it!). It’s about small, meaningful shifts:
Drinking your morning coffee in the sun rather than at your desk.
Putting on soft clothes and actually noticing how they feel against your skin.
Pausing to inhale the scent of jasmine as you walk past a blooming bush.
Looking up at the sky. Really looking.
These are moments of nourishment. And they’re available now—not once everything is done, not once you’ve earned it.
Why This Matters (Especially If You’re Anxiously Attached)
For those with anxious attachment, life can feel like a constant scramble for safety and connection. We over-function, over-give, and overthink. We orient our nervous systems around others—trying to earn love, prove our worth, and secure our place in someone else’s life.
When you start to orient back toward yourself—your own pleasure, your own regulation, your own joy—you stop looking outward for all of your needs to be met. You stop outsourcing your sense of vitality. And that, quite honestly, changes everything.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
What is your relationship to pleasure, rest, and feeling good? Do you find it easy or challenging to prioritise these in your daily life?
How has your upbringing or family culture shaped your beliefs about rest and pleasure? Are there messages you internalised about deserving (or not deserving) to feel good?
When, if ever, do you notice yourself feeling guilty or “lazy” when you rest or prioritise your own comfort? Where do you think these feelings come from?
Can you recall a recent moment when you truly slowed down and savoured something small (like a hot drink, a beautiful sunset, or a comfy pair of clothes)? What was that experience like for you?
Do you ever use busyness or constant activity as a way to avoid being present with yourself? How does this impact your sense of wellbeing?
In what ways might chronic stress or anxiety be keeping you from feeling at ease in your body or accessing pleasure in the present moment?
How does productivity culture show up in your life? Do you wear “being busy” as a badge of honour, or do you resist this cultural pressure?
Are there specific beliefs or stories you hold about what it means to take care of yourself—such as it being selfish or indulgent? Where do these stories come from?
If you could give yourself total permission to feel good for even five minutes a day, what might that look like? What might get in the way?
What small, specific adjustments could you make this week to orient more toward comfort, ease, or pleasure in your daily routine? How might these changes nourish you?
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about pleasure, rest, and feeling good, and how you can use these things as tools to increase your sense of joy, well-being, and vitality. Now this as a topic might seem a little bit random for some of you, but this is actually one of my favorite things to speak about and teach on. And as a little fun fact, when I first started coaching, long before I had a podcast or even really spoke that much about attachment, this was the kind of thing that I was focusing on because I had just come from being a corporate lawyer, and I was perhaps in reaction to everything that I saw in that environment, which was the opposite of pleasure, rest, and feeling good. It was an environment that was characterized by burnout and overworking and hustle, and I had such a visceral reaction to that. As much as I spent a few years participating in it and being very much swept up in it all, as time went on, I really felt like my eyes were opened to how much I didn't want that for myself, how costly it was to operate at that level of chronic stress and busyness and burnout. And I think once you see it, it's kind of hard to unsee it.
[00:01:51]:
And personally, even though I did live like that for probably the better part of a decade, I think that deep down I've always had a baseline orientation towards pleasure and joy and spaciousness and rest and ease. That's a very comfortable home base for me, and so I definitely experienced a level of incongruence in being in that environment, and I'm so grateful that I listened to that and that I made some really big choices in my life to change pace, to reorganize my life around feeling good as a priority. And as we're going to talk about today, for a lot of people that is utterly foreign, And it may be that you have some really heavy conditioning around feeling good, whether that's coming from a worthiness place, like I don't deserve to feel good, or a place of productivity culture, hustle culture, like feeling good is a luxury, and maybe I will make time for pleasure or rest or joy when I finish all of the things that I have to do. And we all know that that probably means never because the to do list is never ending, feeling like those things are selfish or lazy. These things are heavily laden with conditioning and shame and so much density that it can be really, really revealing to examine our relationship to pleasure, to rest, to joy, to feeling good. And the reason I talk about this, I personally think that these are an end in themselves. It is not about using rest as a way to become more productive or some sort of mechanism to achieve more, to increase our capacity to keep pushing. I think that these things are essential just for our sense of well-being, which I think is a very worthy goal and something that deserves prioritization independent of anything else.
[00:03:53]:
But if we were to look at the bigger picture, it is undeniable that pleasure and rest and feeling good are incredible tools for nervous system regulation, for signaling to your body that you are safe. And we know that that is absolutely paramount in our overall sense of well-being, not only within ourselves, but in our relationships as well. And as we'll talk about today, when you struggle a lot with anxiety, it's almost like anxiety and pleasure are separate pedals. Anxiety is the brake and pleasure is the accelerator. It's an imperfect analogy, but point being, when anxiety hits the brakes, it's really hard to access pleasure because pleasure is all about presence, and anxiety is the opposite of presence. Anxiety takes us out of the present moment, out of our bodies, and makes pleasure and feeling good really, really hard to access, and fuels the belief that it's not a priority. Feeling good is a luxury that we don't have time for because we are in danger. Right? So I want to talk about all of the different reasons why pleasure and feeling good might be challenging for you, some of the different ways that we get conditioned around this, and give some suggestions on how you can start to incorporate more of this into your life in a deliberate way, in a really nourishing way.
[00:05:16]:
And I should be really clear, I should have said this at the outset, when I talk about pleasure here, I'm not talking about sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure can obviously be a part of pleasure, but that's not the focus here. I'm talking about pleasure really in the sense of feeling good, things that bring me pleasure, and that might be savoring a delicious piece of chocolate. It might be literally stopping to smell the roses. It might be turning your face to the sun. It might be putting on a really comfy pair of pants and getting into bed when you've just changed the sheets, and it just makes your body go, Ah, how lovely. Right? But so much of the time, we're in such a rush, in such a hurry, or we're so preoccupied with all of the things that are going wrong that we don't actually tune into all of the pleasure that is available in the present moment, and so we rob ourselves of the opportunity to enjoy all of that. Okay.
[00:06:08]:
So that's what we're going to be talking about today. This has been a very long introduction. I feel like I've already done half the episode before I've even started the episode. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you about my Secure Self Challenge, which kicks off in about ten days. If you are someone who struggles with self worth, and what we're going to talk about today absolutely ties into that, the Secure Self Challenge is a really great one. And actually, one of the weeks of the challenge is all about self care and self regulation. And really not in the sense of self care, having a perfect morning routine or whatever, but like, what is your relationship to taking great care of yourself? Is that something that you perceive as being a luxury? How good are you at turning towards yourself and saying, what do I need? How am I today? How could I make little micro adjustments in the direction of more comfort, more ease, more pleasure, more spaciousness, and how might that nourish me today and every day? So that is something that we really work through in the challenge, and you'll be invited to figure out, like, what does that look like for me, and how can I bring more of that in? And I find that when we do that, when we get really well practiced at nourishing and nurturing ourselves in that way, it really does increase our capacity. It really does change the way that we relate to ourselves and other people and makes us less likely to be really dependent on others from this needy, desperate place because our baseline starts to rise.
[00:07:34]:
And when we are accustomed to feeling bad all the time, whether that's emotionally or physically or both, we tend to expect to feel bad, right? When that's the baseline, when we always feel a bit rubbish, then bad things happening or high stress or being treated poorly by someone, that's just part of what we've come to know. Whereas when we really start to orient towards feeling good as our baseline, it becomes clearer what is not in alignment with that and what are the things that bring us down rather than contribute to our sense of well-being. So that's part of what we do in the challenge, among many other things, around self compassion, self respect, self trust. We cover a lot of ground in four weeks in a really nice, easy to consume, digestible way. So if you wanna join us for the challenge, link is in the show notes. It's also on my website. I would love to see you there. Okay.
[00:08:27]:
So pleasure, rest, and feeling good. So let's talk about a few of the reasons why this might be hard for you. I touched on this in the very long introduction that if you are someone who struggles with anxiety, from a nervous system point of view, pleasure and rest and feeling good is really the domain of a broadly regulated nervous system. I mean, there can be some activation in pleasure, obviously, if we looked at a sexual a sexual context, but chronic stress is the opposite of pleasure, rest, and feeling good, because those things really require that we're in that parasympathetic state where we're not mobilized into needing to do something to deal with a threat and deal with pressure and deal with stress all the time. And so if you're someone who spends most of their time in that state of activation, of mobilization, of go, go, go, I need to do something, and even if it's not coming from a consciously anxious place, if you just at that level of constant busyness and constant rushing, constantly needing to be somewhere else, that is mutually exclusive with pleasure and rest and feeling good as far as I'm concerned, because as I said, that takes us out of presence. It takes us out of feeling. We are so disconnected from our bodies and our senses when we're in that mode, and stress, when it's in that state, is a really powerful numbing agent. And that's why some of us can be almost addicted to stress and busyness and work.
[00:09:55]:
Maybe you distract yourself constantly if you do have spare time rather than actually being present and resting, you busy yourself with things, right? You can't actually sit still, you can't actually just do nothing, you can't just be, because all of that doing distracts you from what you might find in the being. And for a lot of us, that's really hard and that's really uncomfortable. Some people might even find that if you are good at just doing nothing, it's still lying on the couch with your phone in your hand and scrolling, right? It's still stimulating something that takes you out of your body rather than being fully present, being fully tuned in. So if that's you, that might be part of the equation for sure, that whether you like it or not, you rely on busyness, you rely on chronic stress, on always rushing from one thing to the next, and that robs you of the ability to tune into pleasure because there's not enough space and presence to be actually, like, here and now in my body in this moment. I'm always thinking about the next thing or rushing to the next thing. I've got 5,000,000 mental tabs open, or maybe actual tabs open, but all of that can really inhibit our ability to tune into pleasure. And as a side note, if we were to talk about sexual pleasure, you'll see the same things. People who struggle a lot with anxiety tend to be really cerebral during sexual encounters.
[00:11:24]:
So you're thinking about the other person. What are they thinking? Are they having a good time? What does my body look like? Your mind's going at a million miles an hour, and I don't know if you've noticed, but that really hits the brakes in terms of your ability to be in your body and experience pleasure in a really embodied way. So this operates on all levels, right? When we're so stuck in our head and so stuck in anxiety and stress, that really inhibits our ability to feel, for better or for worse. So that's one of the the main things that might be getting in the way of pleasure and rest and feeling good. Another one is more of a worthy and deserving thing. So for a lot of people, there can be this sense of I don't deserve to feel good, I don't deserve to be taken care of, I don't deserve to rest, I don't deserve to relax, I don't deserve to feel pleasure. I don't deserve to feel joy. And that can come from deep shame around those things.
[00:12:24]:
Maybe you've got conditioning around what your parents' relationship to those things were, and maybe in your family of origin or your community that you've been raised in, those things are seen as synonymous with laziness or selfishness or indulgence or any number of other things that have strong negative shame based connotations. Or you might have just this sense of, I don't deserve that because I'm not good enough. I am not worthy of that. I deserve to feel bad. I deserve to struggle. I have to do all of that in order to prove myself in some way, and it's only once everyone else is taken care of that maybe I get the scraps. I know a lot of women in particular struggle with that kind of relationship to rest and pleasure, this sense of it's so hard to put myself above anyone else. And you know, if you're operating from that place, there will always be people who could come before you, or things or tasks or to do list items that could come before you.
[00:13:26]:
And so what often happens is that that never arrives, that moment where everything's done and everything's taken care of and everyone's taken care of, and you finally get a moment to yourself. So if you've got this imprinting around taking care of myself, putting myself first, asking for support, asking for some time to myself, if that's selfish, if that makes me bad, if that makes me a bad partner or mother or friend or whatever, then I'm not gonna do that because that feels like it's risking connection or risking belonging or risking some sense of identity that I get from being endlessly selfless and caring and self sacrificial. So you can see there's so much in this, right? There's so much emotion tied in with pleasure and rest and feeling good. The other main bucket that I wanted to speak to is around productivity culture, hustle culture, burnout culture, like really, and I spoke about this earlier in the context of my background in corporate law, it's so normalized. A level of overworking, of pushing ourselves to the brink, and just operating way beyond a reasonable capacity. But because it's normalized and everyone else is doing it, we're looking over our shoulder feeling like, if that person's working that hard and pushing that much, then I have to do that as well. How many times have you run into someone on the street or at the coffee shop and you ask how they are and they answer, Yeah, busy. Good, but busy.
[00:15:00]:
And you say, Yeah, me too. I've been really busy. You know, that that's just expected almost. You're following the script and you talk about how busy you are, and that's the acceptable answer. If you were to answer that question by saying, actually, I haven't been busy at all. I've been taking things at a deliberately slower pace and really enjoying just prioritizing rest and pleasure and taking great care of myself. I'm sure that you'd get a look, right, from that person that would be really departing from the socially acceptable script of we're all busy, and that signifies that we are important and that we are doing well, we're successful, we're ambitious. Busy is worn as a badge of honor in our productivity culture.
[00:15:46]:
And so it is a radical act of rebellion almost to opt out of that system. And for me, to be fair, I still have a lot on my plate. I obviously run a business. I have a baby, but I really actively organize my life around trying not to overextend myself because I have no interest in being chronically stressed. I have no interest in being burnt out. I have no interest in being depleted. I don't think that that serves me. I don't think it serves my family.
[00:16:18]:
I don't think it serves all of you. Right? And I really treat my well-being and my vitality as an absolute priority, very unashamedly. And so I really feel like in the past few years, I have very intentionally unsubscribed from that kind of culture, and it takes courage to do that, but gosh, is it liberating to say, Actually, no, I'm not going to live like that. I'm not going to just run myself into the ground. To say, No, actually, I don't want to work as much as humanly possible. I want to be present enough to actually enjoy my life. I'm not going to work like a dog just to climb a ladder to accumulate stuff so that I can then maybe feel happy and fulfilled. And for me, success looks like being able to take an afternoon nap and have a bath every day and go to the farmers markets at 2PM on a Wednesday and buy fresh flowers and food and cook for my family.
[00:17:22]:
Like, that to me is more a picture of success than working in a high rise building for twelve hours a day and then going home to sleep and waking up and doing it all again. Anyway, I should stop myself because you might be sensing that I feel quite passionately about this, and it really is one of those things that when you take a step back from it, you really see it for what it is, and you can see that we were never meant to live like this. And so maybe the anxiety and the stress and the depletion that you're feeling isn't signaling that there's something wrong with you, but rather that there's something wrong with the way that so many of us live, and that the way we're feeling is a very natural response to the way we are living. And so if all of this is resonating with you and you're feeling like, yes, that's all well and good, but how am I meant to make any changes because this is my life and I have a job and I have obligations and responsibilities. I get it. I know that not everyone is going to make as radical a departure from that system as I maybe did. And the good news is that this doesn't have to be drastic. Bringing more pleasure and slowness and space and ease into your life does not have to be drastic.
[00:18:35]:
It can be as simple as drinking your coffee in the sunshine rather than rushing back to your desk or rushing to get in the car. It can be as simple as stopping and inhaling as you catch a whiff of jasmine in the breeze on a beautiful spring day. It could be the moment when you get into comfy clothes at the end of a work day and just taking a moment to notice how good that feels in your body. All of these things are oftentimes things that you might be doing anyway, but we're in such a rush and we're so mentally distracted that we're not present enough to actually take in the pleasure. And so just trying to be more aware and more present and more attuned to your senses. What can I feel? What can I see? Isn't that beautiful? To look up at a tree as you walk underneath it and look at the sky as it peers through the leaves and just soak in the sense of awe and wonder at how majestic regulating if only you slow down enough to actually take it in. So please know that this doesn't require that you quit your job and completely overhaul your life, although secretly I would be delighted if you did that. It really just does require that you slow down and that you give yourself permission to feel good. And what might that look like to give yourself total permission to feel good even if it's for five minutes a day? Starting small if this feels really challenging for you. And if it does feel really challenging for you, that's super interesting as well, and that's something to reflect on. Why might it be that pleasure and rest and feeling good feels so hard for me? What are the stories that I carry around this? Where did they come from, and how are they serving me? Okay. I'm gonna leave it there, guys. I really hope that this has given you some food for thought.
[00:20:26]:
As I said, it's one of my favorite topics and one that I don't get to talk about enough these days, so I'm hoping that something in that has landed with you, and I'd love to hear from you if this resonated. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, guys.
[00:20:43]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
pleasure, rest, feeling good, nervous system regulation, anxiety, burnout, chronic stress, productivity culture, hustle culture, corporate law, self care, self regulation, self worth, self compassion, self respect, self trust, busyness, presence, mindfulness, worthiness, shame, conditioning, self nourishment, well-being, joy, spaciousness, relaxation, embodiment, slowing down, work-life balance
#190: How to Stop the Anxious Spiral
If you find yourself spiralling into anxiety — overanalysing a text, catastrophising worst-case scenarios, or feeling like your nervous system is in overdrive — this episode is for you.
If you've ever found yourself spinning out over something that—at least on the surface—seemed small, you're not alone. For those with anxious attachment patterns, it often doesn’t take much to send us into a full-blown spiral. A delayed text, a different tone, a subtle shift in someone’s behaviour, and suddenly we’re flooded with fear, shame, and a sense of helplessness.
These spirals can feel like being hijacked by your nervous system. One moment you're fine, the next you're on high alert, convinced something is wrong. And what makes it even harder is that you know you're spiralling. You can see it happening, but you feel powerless to stop it.
Let’s talk about why this happens—and more importantly, how to interrupt the spiral before it takes over.
Why the Spiral Happens
Anxious spiralling is usually triggered by something relatively innocuous. Maybe you haven’t received a response to a message, or your partner is quieter than usual, or a social media post leaves you feeling unsettled. These moments can activate deep-seated fears of rejection, abandonment, and not being enough.
Your nervous system kicks into gear, scanning for danger. You go from “something feels off” to “they’re going to leave me” in seconds. And because your system is already primed for threat, everything starts to confirm the fear: they didn’t reply → they’re losing interest → I’m about to be left. The spiral feeds on itself.
At the same time, your mind is looping through painful core beliefs—things like:
I’m too much
I always care more
People always leave
I have to be perfect to be loved
The combination of nervous system activation and painful stories is potent. It leaves you feeling unsafe, unworthy, and out of control.
The Problem With “Just Calm Down”
In this state, logic rarely helps. You can know something intellectually and still not be able to feel safe. That’s because the body is calling the shots. Your system is mobilised, your heart rate is up, your breath is shallow, and you're interpreting the world through a lens of threat.
That’s why telling yourself to “calm down” rarely works. What you need in these moments is regulation—a way to bring your system back to safety, so your brain can come back online and help you make sense of what’s really going on.
How to Interrupt the Spiral
The goal is not to never feel anxious. It’s to recognise when you’re spiralling and offer yourself the tools to shift course. Here’s how:
1. Notice and name what’s happening
Catch yourself early. “I’m starting to spiral. My heart is racing. My mind is going to worst-case scenarios.” Name it gently, without shame. The earlier you catch it, the easier it is to interrupt.
2. Create space between you and the trigger
Put your phone down. Walk away. Step outside. Whatever the trigger is—especially if it’s a digital one—create physical and emotional distance. This helps widen the tunnel vision and gives your system a chance to recalibrate.
3. Ground into the present moment
Use your senses to bring yourself back. Look at the sky, feel your feet on the ground, take a few deep breaths. Remind yourself, “Right here, right now, I am safe.”
4. Challenge the urgency
Remind yourself that you don’t have to act immediately. That text can wait. You don’t need to send another message or demand answers right this second. The sense of urgency is coming from fear—not fact.
5. Interrupt the behaviour loop
Spirals often lead to compulsive actions—scrolling, texting, over-explaining. Interrupt that loop. Get your body moving instead. Go for a walk, shake out your arms, or stretch. These small resets can help discharge the anxious energy.
The Deeper Work
While these in-the-moment tools are incredibly helpful, they’re only one part of the puzzle. The deeper work lies in healing the core beliefs and building a more secure relationship with yourself. Because if you’re constantly walking around with the story “I’m not enough” or “Everyone leaves me,” you’re going to feel triggered by even neutral moments.
That’s where self-worth work comes in. That’s where nervous system regulation becomes part of your everyday life, not just something you reach for when you’re in crisis. And that’s where you start to show up as your own source of steadiness.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Highlighted Links
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
When you notice yourself starting to spiral into anxiety in your relationships, what are some of the earliest signs in your body or thinking patterns? How might you intervene more lovingly at this stage?
How do feelings of helplessness or a lack of control show up for you during moments of relationship anxiety? In what ways could reclaiming even a small sense of agency make a difference in your experience?
Think of a recent scenario where you found yourself catastrophising or making negative assumptions about your partner’s behaviour. What core beliefs or fears do you think were triggered in that moment?
When you’re feeling distressed by a perceived threat to your relationship, what kind of self-talk do you notice? Are you able to differentiate between what’s actually happening and the stories your mind is telling you?
Have you ever tried pausing and physically removing yourself from the source of your anxiety, as suggested in the episode? If so, how did it feel, and what did you notice about your ability to regulate your emotions?
Reflecting on your attachment patterns, what role does self-abandonment play? In what ways do you find yourself ignoring your own needs or soothing yourself during anxious moments?
What would it look like for you to act from your “inner wise adult” when you’re activated, rather than letting your fear drive your choices? Can you imagine an example from your own life?
How do you typically respond to shame when it arises about your attachment-related behaviours? Is there a kinder or more supportive way you could show up for yourself in those moments?
When you begin to feel anxious, how often do you focus on regulating your nervous system before taking action? What practical strategies could you experiment with to build this habit?
Looking at the bigger picture, how might shifting your relationship with your own self-worth and sense of safety impact your experience of romantic relationships? What’s one step you could take towards nurturing this inner security?
Feel free to use these for journalling, discussion with a partner, or simply as prompts for deeper self-inquiry as you reflect on the episode.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, we are talking about how to stop the anxious spiraling. So this is one that I know will be very broadly applicable and familiar terrain for so many of us who struggle with anxious attachment patterns and anxiety in our relationships. This sense that one small thing can trigger you and very quickly you'll find yourself snowballing into a full blown panic, really, really activated nervous system, feeling really out of control, feeling really, really stressed, and not really knowing what to do with that. I think for me, that's really one of the hallmarks of these kinds of patterns for people with anxious attachment is not only that it feels like you're almost possessed by a force greater than yourself, and you can see it happening in real time, but you also feel really powerless. You feel like you're at the mercy of this thing that's happening to you, and that in and of itself can be even more distressing, because really, our nervous system responds very well to having a sense of choice and agency, and really spirals very understandably when we feel helpless or powerless. And so the very fact that we don't necessarily feel like we're in control of these triggers tends to exacerbate the emotional response that we're having. So it becomes this really vicious cycle where one thing sets us off, and then it picks up some steam, and then it sets off this whole cascade of responses in our body, which in turn shapes the thoughts that we're having, which in turn, you know, further activates our nervous system.
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And it's really, really hard to shift out of it once you're in it, particularly if you don't have the tools and awareness of what's going on. And I think all of this is made more difficult by the fact that so many people struggle with shame around it. I think in any circumstance where we feel like we're behaving in a way that we're maybe not proud of, and we feel helpless to stop that behavior or to do something differently, that tends to produce shame, which again, tends only to exacerbate the whole thing. So, if this is something that you struggle with, know that you're far from alone, and in today's episode I'm going to be sharing a bit of context for what's actually going on when we get stuck in these spirals from both a nervous system point of view, so looking at the body, but also looking at the thoughts that we're having. So both a bottom up and a top down point of view. And sharing tools from each of these perspectives so that you can interrupt those patterns and actually feel like you have a bit more capacity to do something about it, so that you can actually step into the driver's seat of your experience rather than feeling like you're a passenger and you're going somewhere where you don't want to be going. I think, again, that is one of the hardest things is we can almost see ourselves hitting the self destruct button in real time, sending the message, doing the thing. But again, it's like we're possessed by a force greater than us.
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And I know how hard all of that can be. I have certainly been there in the past. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Before I dive into that, just a reminder in case you missed it, that my secure self challenge is coming back in a couple of weeks time. On the June 16, we'll be kicking off the next round. Super early bird pricing is still available for another day, so you can join the four week challenge for just 97 US dollars. And that includes all of the challenge materials, a pop up community space for accountability and connection, as well as support from me, and two live Q and A calls with me as well. So it's a really great value offer, and a really nice way to hit the reset button on your inner relationship if that's something that you've been struggling with.
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So if you're interested in joining the challenge, I think we've already got 50 or so people signed up in the last couple of days, which is amazing, it's going to be a really great group. And you can head to my website or click the link in the show notes if you're interested to join us. Okay, so let's talk about what's going on when we get into these anxious spirals. So as I said, this will be a very familiar experience for a lot of us. So something maybe fairly innocuous happens. You're waiting for a response to a text message, or your partner gets home and they're a little quieter than usual, or you see something pop up on social media that activates something within you. A lot of the time, the initial trigger is not some big dramatic moment, but it doesn't take much. We know that about anxious attachment, that we have this hypersensitivity, this hyper vigilance to threat.
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That means we are always poised and at the ready, and our radar is very, very attuned to anything and everything that could signal impending abandonment, disconnection, any sort of rupture. And so even if everything is ostensibly okay, you are probably very, very attuned to, you know, usually my partner responds to text messages right away, and they've read this message, but they're not responding, or their tone is slightly different to usual, or maybe they usually put an x at the end, but they haven't today, or I called them and it rang twice and then stopped, which means that they rejected the call rather than letting it ring out. What would that mean? Who are they with? What are they doing? Why wouldn't they answer the call? And then it starts, right? And before you know it, without anything really having happened necessarily, it's like the snowball has started to roll down the hill. And it's amazing how quickly our own system can heighten that threat, can add fuel to the fire, and increase the momentum of that spiral. So, to break this down in terms of what's actually happening, and I should say, I go into this in a lot more detail in my new free training around healing anxious attachment. The interplay between our nervous system and our core beliefs, and how they kind of bounce off each other. So our nervous system perceives a threat and goes: Oh, something doesn't feel right here, something's dangerous. This is reminding me of some thing that I've experienced in the past that led to pain, disconnection, loss, disappointment, or whatever the thing might be.
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So, if someone doesn't respond to a text message and you've got deep seeded fears around abandonment, rejection, that I can never really trust in the steadiness of relationships because it always gets taken away from me, people always leave me. If you feel that there's a difference in your partner's tone, you know, that they're suddenly being a little less warm towards you or less responsive, your nervous system that is so primed to look out for threats to the relationship goes: That's the sign we've been looking for. I told you this was going to happen. This is it. They're going to leave us. Something bad is about to happen. And start sounding the alarm. Right? For people whose system tends towards hyperactivation, it's really hard to just switch the alarm off when the alarm starts ringing.
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It's sort of like, if your smoke alarm was going off really, really loudly, very hard to ignore, and it does mobilize so much of your body's resources. The tricky thing about all of that is once we are mobilized, once we're into this stress response, that really profoundly shapes our perception of a situation. It's almost like we put on a pair of goggles, and everything we see through that is tinted with stress, danger, threat. And so, when our body is in that mode, and that's where we're coming from, then everything that happens subsequent to that is going to be filtered through this lens of something bad is about to happen. And so, of course, if we're looking for clues for that, if we're looking for evidence to support the story that something bad is going to happen, we're going to find it. So if your partner is a little slow to respond to a text message, and then you ring them and they don't pick up, all of a sudden them not picking up is confirmation that something bad is absolutely happening, right? So recognizing that the state of our nervous system really profoundly affects our perception of things. And then looking more at the cognitive piece to all of this, our negative core beliefs, many of which are deeply woven into our subconscious, although they may be close to the surface for you. Things like I'm not good enough, things like people always leave me, things like people can't be trusted, maybe I'm always more invested in the relationship than the other person, I always care more, I always have to work so hard in order to be loved, I have to be perfect in order to be loved, if I make a mistake, someone's gonna leave me, I'm too much, I'm too needy.
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All of these beliefs that sit underneath our anxious attachment patterns, those beliefs also act as something of a filter through which we interpret things. So if that's our blueprint for the way that we relate to ourselves and other people, and the world, and our relationships, then something fairly neutral happens and we are taking that and making all of this meaning based off what we believe to be true and what we expect. So again, your partner might be untalkative after a long day, and you take that very personally to mean that they don't care about you, they're not happy to see you, they're never putting in effort. If they loved you, they would whatever, right? And it might just be as simple as they're tired. But because we have all of these stories, that really profoundly shapes our experience, and then again, those stories have us primed to look for threat, rejection, abandonment, all of those things that triggers our nervous system, and then the nervous system triggers all of the stories. So you can see again how the interplay between what's going on in our nervous system and all of those subconscious beliefs, how they sort of bounce off each other to create these spirals that once they kick off can be really really hard to interrupt if you don't have the right tools and awareness to be able to see it for what it is, and change course. So let's talk about how to do that, because it is absolutely possible. It's not something that you have to be at the mercy of, because really, understanding how to work with your nervous system rather than just let the train pull away from the platform and derail you, is such a powerful thing and it's really at the core of so much of what I teach.
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Being able to distance yourself a little bit, to really know what the cues for dysregulation in your own system are, so that you can go: Ah, yes, I know what's going on. I'm feeling a bit dysregulated. My heart rate is increasing. Maybe I'm feeling some tingling in my fingers. My breath is shortening. I'm feeling some heat in my face. My stomach is clenching. All of these cues of I'm going into a stress response right now, my body is perceiving some sort of threat or danger, and it's trying to prepare me to deal with that.
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Even just being able to notice that, rather than being swept up in it, and feeling like we're a passenger, going like, Oh yeah, look at these things that are happening in my body, isn't that interesting? And really just slowing down, and taking a breath, and really consciously orienting to the experience that we're having, rather than resisting it and going, what's going on? Oh, this is so terrible. Something really bad is happening. Being able to recognize like, oh yeah, my nervous system is dysregulated, and that is why I'm having all of these thoughts, and that's why I'm perceiving all this danger. I can see that for what it is without having to take all of the thoughts that I'm having as fact. I can actually recognize that those thoughts are a very natural byproduct of the state that I'm in, and that if I can make it my priority to bring some more regulation into my system, to down regulate, to move some of that energy if I need to, to complete that stress response rather than just acting on all of the impulses that it might be serving up to me, then that's going to free up a lot more choice, and that's ultimately what we want in these spirals, because it's almost like we're in a tunnel and it's really narrowing our choice. And again, our nervous system doesn't like a feeling of not having choice, of having our back up against the wall, and that creates this mounting urgency and stress and panic. So what we want to do is consciously orient back out, so slowing down, pausing, reminding ourselves that there is no urgency, we don't need to take action. If you haven't got a response to a text message, or your partner hasn't called you back, you don't need to ring them again straight away, nothing bad is going to happen, it's okay.
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And really just reminding ourselves, like, right here, right now, I am safe. What do I really know here? What are the facts? Can I just ground myself in reality and trust that I have enough time and space to take a few breaths? Nothing could possibly be so urgent that I can't put my phone down and take a few deep breaths, or go for a walk around the block, get some fresh air, look at the sky, look at the trees, and just remind myself that actually, I'm safe. Because really your body is telling you, you are not safe. And as much as that can feel so real and true, and of course relational challenges are really hard. It's registering in your nervous system, like I'm in danger. And so we need to find ways to remind our system, like I'm not in danger. I'm okay. Right? Even if the worst thing were to happen in my relationship, I'm not in danger.
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And the more that we can bring that loving presence to our own system, that reassuring, calming, grounding sense of security, that is a very, very empowering thing to be able to do for yourself. So that's really what you want to be able to do in the short term, is to bring a little bit more space, a little more regulation, so that you can interrupt that spiral rather than just riding the wave, right? So as soon as you notice yourself starting to spiral, you want to interrupt whatever it is you're doing. So if you're on your phone, as I think is so often the case, these spirals start with something to do with our tampons, put the phone down, like you really have to be self responsible and boundaried here, I know it's so addictive and hard to do, but put the phone down and walk away. You need to create some physical space between you and whatever the trigger is that is leading you to spiral. Similarly, if you're in the physical company of someone and maybe they've said something or done something, or they are being a bit disengaged and that's triggering you and you're starting to spiral and you notice yourself wanting to react or lash out, pause, walk away. Right? Not in a dramatic way, not in a punitive, protest y way, just in a way where you're extricating yourself from the situation that is triggering you, so that you can create a bit of breathing room, and you can again, I want you to think about that, like, rather than the tunnel narrowing, I want to widen out my lens because that's going to be really, really grounding. And actually, literally doing that by going outside and looking at the horizon, looking at the sky, looking at the trees, that can often be a very, very grounding resource for you that is almost always available. And so then, the other big piece of this, that's kind of the emergency response stuff, right? It's like, what do I do in the moment to interrupt the spiral? And if you can just do that, you're going to be a lot better off than not having that in your pocket.
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I think the broader work is around understanding what the core beliefs are that are triggering us all the time. What are those sensitivities that are leading us to be so hyper vigilant to threat? And again, I talk about this in my free training, but I like to use the analogy of that kind of nervous system stuff you can think of as using a fire extinguisher. And as a side note, I think nervous system work is so much more than just in the moment reactivity. I think it should be a part of your everyday practice of self care, to be building your capacity and really nourishing yourself. But in this specific context, those kind of nervous system pattern interrupts, like using the fire extinguisher, and then our core belief stuff, so really digging in, like what are the underlying wounds here that I'm working so hard to protect all the time? That's the longer term work, that's how we stop lighting the fires all the time, so that we don't need to rely on the fire extinguishers so much. And that is really the longer term work of building self worth, of understanding those abandonment fears, those rejection fears. And really I think a big part of that is all the ways that we abandon and reject ourselves because invariably that is there. I've never in all the thousands of people I've worked with met someone who has these really big, deep abandonment and rejection fears, who doesn't routinely abandon and reject themselves.
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And so almost always the work does begin with us, and rewiring that inner relationship. Again, this is at the very heart of everything that I preach and teach and share here and everywhere else. It really, for anxiously attached people, the work starts within. As much as we want to look out there and control everything out there as a way to create safety for ourselves, we have to build up that inner wellspring of self trust and this sense of, I will have my own back, I am capable, I'm safe, everything's going to be okay. We need to be able to give that to ourselves before we can ever hope to really feel that and trust that in our relationships. So I hope that that's been helpful. This feels like such a big topic, and I know that it's a really hard one, but I'm hoping that in giving you a bit of a bird's eye view on, like, what's going on there in your system, the interplay between your nervous system and those core beliefs, and how they tend to reinforce each other and fuel these spirals, and what you can do in the moment to just pause, slow down, interrupt, zoom out, and really exercising a lot of maturity and self responsibility around that, rather than just chasing that feeling, chasing the fear, and acting in these really, maybe impulsive ways that we even know in the moment are going to backfire. We know that they're not going to be the thing that's going to help us or bring us relief, but we tell ourselves, I can't help it.
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And I think that really, finding a part within you who can be mature and self responsible, your inner wise adult who says, Okay, I'm going to try and do something differently this time, that is such powerful work and it really that is what change looks like in those moments, pausing, slowing down and saying, I'm going to try and do something differently rather than doing the thing I've always done. And then the aggregation of all of those little moments of exercising choice and agency in the direction of a new way of being, that compounds over time and it really does pay dividends in terms of not only your relationship to other people, but I would say most importantly, your relationship to yourself, because you stop feeling so helpless and powerless, and at the mercy of someone else to make you feel better, and that is truly liberating. Okay, I'm going to leave it there. If what I've talked about today has resonated with you, I really do encourage you to join the Secure Self Challenge. We talk about all of these different expressions of self worth, as well as self regulation as part of that self care, self respect. These are all the themes that we work through in a really tangible, actionable way over a twenty eight day period. It's It's not too content heavy. It's kind of short and sweet audio lessons, and again, there's a live community and stuff like that.
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So it's a really great little bite sized intro to all of this stuff if you are wanting to go deeper. And if that's not for you, at the very least do check out my free training, because that does go deeper into what we've talked about today, and give you a little bit more context as to all of those pieces, the nervous system stuff, the core beliefs, and how they interact to produce these experiences of dysregulation that we all know so well, and where we need to focus our energy and attention in shifting those patterns. Okay. Thanks so much for joining me, guys. I look forward to seeing you again next week.
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Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
anxious attachment, anxious spiraling, nervous system regulation, attachment styles, relationship anxiety, insecurity in relationships, self regulation, core beliefs, abandonment fears, rejection sensitivity, hypervigilance, emotional triggers, self worth, building self trust, healthy relationships, breaking negative cycles, emotional dysregulation, practical tools for anxiety, self care practices, stopping negative thoughts, interrupting emotional spirals, nervous system dysregulation, overthinking in relationships, emotional agency, relationship coaching, shame in attachment, self responsibility, Secure Self Challenge, healing attachment, creating emotional safety