#193: The Gifts of Anxious Attachment
We often focus on the challenges of anxious attachment — the overthinking, the fear, the insecurity. But what if some of your most “anxious” traits are actually your greatest strengths? In this episode, I explore the hidden gifts of anxious attachment and how, with the right support, your sensitivity can become your superpower.
When we talk about anxious attachment, the conversation often centres on challenges — the overthinking, the relationship anxiety, the patterns that feel difficult to navigate. But what if we've been missing something crucial? What if some of your most "anxious" traits are actually your greatest strengths?
As someone who works with anxiously attached individuals daily, I've witnessed incredible beauty in the way anxiously attached people move through the world. It's time we shift the narrative from what needs fixing to what deserves celebrating.
Understanding Anxious Attachment Beyond the Struggles
Anxious attachment develops when we learn early that love might be inconsistent or conditional. Whilst this can create challenges in relationships, it also cultivates remarkable capacities that often go unrecognised. These aren't compensatory behaviours or coping mechanisms — they're genuine gifts that make anxiously attached people extraordinary partners, friends, and colleagues.
Research shows that our attachment wounds and gifts are closely connected. The same sensitivity that can cause anxiety also creates profound emotional intelligence. The vigilance that feels exhausting can translate into incredible attunement to others' needs.
1. You Crave Deep, Authentic Connection
In our age of surface-level interactions and casual everything, your desire for genuine intimacy is revolutionary. You're not interested in shallow small talk or superficial encounters — you want the real deal. This craving for depth means you're more likely to:
Build meaningful, lasting relationships
Create emotional safety for others to be vulnerable
Invest in quality over quantity when it comes to connections
Refuse to settle for relationships that don't nourish your soul
While this trait can sometimes lead to disappointment in a world that often prioritizes casual over committed, it's ultimately what creates the deeply fulfilling relationships you're seeking.
2. You're Highly Emotionally Attuned
Your emotional radar is finely tuned. You can sense when something's off in a room, pick up on subtle mood changes, and deeply empathize with others' experiences. This emotional attunement manifests as:
Exceptional ability to read nonverbal cues
Natural capacity for empathy and compassion
Skill at navigating complex emotional dynamics
Talent for making others feel truly seen and understood
This is why many anxiously attached individuals thrive in helping professions — therapy, coaching, social work, healthcare. Your nervous system's sensitivity, whilst sometimes overwhelming, is also a superpower for connecting with others' humanity.
3. You're Committed to Growth and Self-Reflection
Anxiously attached people are often incredibly growth-oriented. You're willing to look within, question your patterns, and do the sometimes uncomfortable work of personal development. This commitment to growth includes:
Openness to feedback and self-reflection
Willingness to challenge limiting beliefs
Investment in therapy, coaching, and personal development
Ability to integrate new insights and make meaningful changes
Whilst this can sometimes tip into over-analysing or thinking you need to "fix" yourself, the underlying willingness to evolve is a tremendous asset for building secure relationships.
4. You're Deeply Loyal and Committed
When you're in a relationship — romantic, friendship, or family — you're all in. Your loyalty runs deep, and you're willing to work through challenges rather than giving up at the first sign of difficulty. This commitment looks like:
Dedication to working through relationship challenges
Reliability that others can count on
Willingness to invest time and energy in relationships
Persistence in pursuing meaningful connections
In our swipe-right culture where people often seek the next best thing, your commitment to showing up consistently is increasingly rare and valuable.
5. You Care Profoundly
Perhaps most beautifully, you care deeply about the people in your life. Your capacity for love is boundless, and you naturally want to support, help, and nurture others. This profound care manifests as:
Generosity with your time, energy, and resources
Natural instinct to support others through difficulties
Ability to celebrate others' successes genuinely
Willingness to go out of your way to help those you love
Honouring Your Gifts Whilst Building Security
The goal isn't to change these beautiful qualities — it's to build enough inner security that you can express them in healthy ways. When we lack self-worth or feel insecure, these gifts can sometimes lead us into unbalanced patterns:
Deep connection-seeking might become accepting less than we deserve
Emotional attunement might become people-pleasing or emotional caretaking
Loyalty might become staying in relationships that don't serve us
Profound care might become self-abandonment in service of others
Building secure attachment doesn't mean becoming less sensitive, caring, or invested. It means developing the inner foundation to love from a place of wholeness rather than need. When you feel secure in your worth, these gifts become even more powerful:
You can seek deep connection whilst maintaining healthy boundaries
You can be emotionally attuned without taking responsibility for others' feelings
You can be loyal and committed to relationships that reciprocate your investment
You can care deeply whilst also caring for yourself
You are not a problem to be solved or a project to be fixed. You are a deeply feeling, incredibly caring human being with remarkable gifts to offer the world. The sensitivity that sometimes feels like too much is also what makes you capable of profound love, genuine empathy, and meaningful connection.
The work isn't about changing who you are. It's about creating the inner security to be who you are — fully, freely, and without apology.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode we are talking about something a little different, which is the gifts of anxious attachment. I put a post on Instagram up a couple of weeks ago on the beautiful traits of anxious attachment and it really resonated with people and I received so many lovely comments of people thanking me for shining a light on some of the positive attributes of anxiously attached people. Because naturally we spend so much time talking about the things that are hard and the traits that might make relationships difficult or the low self worth, all of the things that we feel are quote unquote wrong with us as anxiously attached people. And so I thought it might be nice to shift focus to all of the things that are beautiful about folks with anxious attachment.
[00:01:13]:
The traits that I see as being absolute gifts and that make you a beautiful partner, friend, colleague, family member. Because there is truly so much goodness in anxiously attached people. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that and really own those gifts rather than always seeing ourselves as some sort of project that needs fixing or a problem that needs solving. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Quick announcement Before I do, my Secure Self Challenge kicked off two days ago. If you want to sneak in, I'll leave registration open for the next couple of days, after which I will close doors for this round until maybe end of this year or early next year is likely to be the next time I run the Challenge. So if you're interested in spending four weeks with me diving deep into building self worth in a really supportive community space, I would love to have you there. Second quick announcement is more in the vein of a favour.
[00:02:06]:
I've been working on growing my YouTube channel recently and I've been recording a lot of exclusive videos and content for YouTube. So if you're someone who enjoys watching YouTube, I would be so grateful if you could head over there and support my channel by subscribing, sharing, liking all of those things. That would be a huge help to me and hopefully you can get a lot of value out of the content that I'm creating there. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around the beautiful traits of anxious attachment and the way that I want to structure. This is sort of inspired by a quote that I really love from I believe Alexandra Solomon, who's a therapist and author, which is that our wounds and our gifts are next door neighbours. And so as I share each of these gifts of anxious attachment, I'm also going to talk about most like the underbelly side of it or what can happen when we maybe lack self worth or we are in less healthy relationship patterns. So sort of looking at the way that these traits can express when we've done the work and what can happen when we maybe don't have guardrail around that, when we lack that inner security. So I hope to sort of paint a vision for you of how you can really honour and own all these beautiful gifts that you have, rather than having them maybe lead you astray or lead you into patterns that are not serving you.
[00:03:17]:
Okay, so the first one is you crave deep, true connection. I think that in a world where there is so much casual, superficial everything, being someone who really values depth and intimacy and connection, that is a beautiful trait, that is an asset for sure. That is something that we want to honour and own. I think so many anxiously attached people make themselves wrong for that. There's this sense of like, oh, I should be more chill, I should be more open to casual sex or whatever it might be. But I think that your desire for and commitment to depth and intimacy and the fact that you don't want shallow interactions, you're not interested in superficial encounters, I think that we need more of that in this world. And so it's not something to make yourself wrong for at at all. It is something to own and honour.
[00:04:09]:
I think what we need to watch out for there around craving depth is that sometimes when we do have a deep connection with someone, it can blind us to other things. So we can be so fed by the depth of connection that that's all that matters and it becomes our whole field of vision. And we maybe lose sight of not only other things in our own life, but maybe things that aren't quite right about the relationship because the connection takes priority and deep connection feels so deep, nourishing to us that maybe we don't want to see things that might not be right there. But I think that as a starting point, our desire for and commitment to depth of connection is a beautiful trait and something to really be celebrated. Okay, the next one is you are highly emotionally attuned. So the EQ of anxiously attached people in terms of reading other people's emotional states, really deeply attuning empathy, compassion, the anxiously attached person's capacity for these things and skill at navigating complex and nuanced emotional dynamics is an incredible asset. Again, it's something that I think is increasingly rare. So if you're someone who can read the room, can sense if something's off, can know if someone's upset or something's bothering them, I think that that is absolutely a gift.
[00:05:28]:
It's not something that we need to pathologize or make ourselves wrong for. And when channelled and used with appropriate boundaries so we're not overstepping into someone else's inner world or making ourselves responsible for managing, managing everyone's moods or people pleasing, doing those sorts of things, the actual underlying ability to attune to other people, to make them feel seen, to empathise, to feel genuine compassion for what other people are going through, that is something that is so, so valuable. And I think it's why so many people with anxious attachment patterns end up in helping professions. So being therapists, being coaches, facilitators, social workers. I think that that's why is because we really do feel into the humanness of others and we have this gen desire to help and support and such a natural skill set in that area. Okay, the next one is you are so growth oriented, you're so willing to reflect and self explore and learn more and understand yourself and other people and what is driving your patterns. And that is such an asset, right? Having that willingness to look within and to question and to reflect and to integrate, that is such a valuable trait. I think the underbelly side of this is that we can maybe approach ourselves with an energy of needing to fix, thinking that there's something wrong with us.
[00:06:51]:
Like that desire to grow can almost feel like at a bottomless pit or a horizon that we're never going to reach. It's like we maybe think that if we can just keep taking in more information or keep learning more, then we'll be able to outsmart our anxiety or outsmart the things that feel hard. And so I think there is something to be said for the way that we approach all of that growth and the energy that it comes from. But at its core, I think the willingness of anxiously attached people to do that work, to look within, to reflect, to grow, is something that will stand you in such great stead in your own inner relationship and any relationships that you have, whether romantic or otherwise. Okay, the next one is you are loyal and committed. I think that again, in our modern world, loyalty and fidelity and commitment, these are really valuable and Increasingly rare, particularly in dating culture and even in relationships more broadly. I think people are pretty quick to jump ship and to feel like someone better. Something better is only a swipe away.
[00:07:56]:
This almost like fast food dating and relationship culture that apps and the Internet and social media has promulgated for anxiously attached people. There is this sense of I'm in this and I'm all in. And I think that can be a really important and beautiful trait because obviously relationships are hard. And so being willing to do the work and being in it for the long haul, being dedicated and committed and loyal is a really beautiful and again, increasingly rare trait. So that's not something to make yourself wrong for in and of itself. Again, the maybe not so healthy expression of this trait might be overstaying in relationships that are not working. It might be refusing to see the reality of a relationship that isn't meeting our needs, that isn't aligned, being loyal and committed in a really imbalanced way. So where someone isn't reciprocating that at all.
[00:08:49]:
But we struggle to not continue giving and giving and working and committing even when we're not being met in that effort. So I think that can be the underbelly side of this trait, even though the trait in and of itself, I think is a beautiful thing and a real asset. And last but not least, you care so deeply about the people that you love. And again, this is in romantic relationships, it's family friendships. You really deeply care. And what a beautiful thing that is. You are so generous with your love. You go out of your way to help people, to support people, to check up on people, people you want, to make people feel loved.
[00:09:26]:
And you really will go out of your way to do that. When someone's going through something hard, your instinct is to help and to support. And that makes you a beautiful friend, it makes you a beautiful partner, it makes you a beautiful family member and colleague. People know that you care. There's never a doubt in anyone's mind that you are there for them when they need you and that you will always be there as a shoulder to cry on or open arms, an ear for listening. And that is, is such a beautiful thing and something that you should really acknowledge about yourself and celebrate about yourself. Again, I think the only thing we need to watch for here is the tendency to invest so much in relationships that are maybe imbalanced, where you're maybe not getting that same degree of care back. And part of that can be our own difficulty in receiving, but part of it can be where we choose to invest our time and energy.
[00:10:18]:
So just being mindful of that potential for a mismatch in effort and care and attention. But fundamentally, your generosity of spirit and your capacity to care for and support the people around you is boundless and beautiful and something that you should be really proud of. Okay, so those were five beautiful traits gifts of anxiously attached people. I hope that if you're listening to this as an anxiously attached person, you're feeling really seen and feeling the love and maybe feeling encouraged and even uplifted by the recognition of all of that. Because I think we can so often fail to see all of that in ourselves. We do tend to focus on what feels hard or what we perceive as being our neg negative traits. But there is so much goodness in you. And really the work is not about being different.
[00:11:04]:
It's just creating enough security that we can love in a really healthy way. We can channel all of those gifts into relationships that feel safe and reciprocal and mutual so that we can be free to love and care generously without the fear and anxiety that can go along with it. So sending you so much love. And if you're listening to this and you're in a relationship with someone who's more anxious, I hope that this has shone a light on those things for you and you can give them some extra love and recognition of all of the goodness that they bring to your life. Okay, gonna leave it there guys. Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment.
[00:11:45]:
If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram at stephanyrigg or stephanyrigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grate. Could leave a review and a five 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
boundaries, anxious attachment, secure relationships, self worth, communication skills, setting boundaries, requests, ultimatums, deal breakers, threats, insecurity, self advocacy, core wounds, self compassion, self regulation, self care, integrity, self respect, self honouring, inner critic, non negotiables, relationship coaching, self trust, control, surrender, attachment patterns, emotional safety, unmet needs, self abandonment, personal limits
#192: Boundaries vs. Ultimatums
In today’s episode, we’re unpacking the subtle (but important) differences between requests, boundaries, ultimatums, and dealbreakers. While these words are often used interchangeably, they carry different energies — and understanding those differences can help you communicate more clearly, hold your ground with integrity, and honour your needs without falling into patterns of control, people-pleasing, or collapse.
If you’ve ever tried to set a boundary—only to be told you’re being controlling, dramatic, or making threats—you’re not alone. Especially for those of us with anxious attachment, the whole landscape of boundaries can feel confusing, fraught, and overwhelming. When we’ve spent a lifetime trying to keep people close, it’s natural that speaking up for ourselves can feel dangerous, even selfish.
But here’s the thing: it’s not just setting boundaries that feels hard. Receiving them can be equally triggering.
If you’re anxiously attached, someone setting a boundary with you can feel like a door closing, a rejection, or even abandonment. And in those moments, our nervous system goes into overdrive, trying to make sense of it: Why are they shutting me out? Why won’t they just let me talk this through? Am I too much? Are they done with me?
It’s important to understand this dual dynamic—that anxious attachers often struggle to both set boundaries and to be on the receiving end of them. So much of the work here is about learning to sit with the discomfort, to self-soothe, and to stay grounded in our own worth and resilience.
What is a request?
A request is a gentle, open invitation. It sounds like:
“Hey, it really doesn’t feel good for me when you’re on your phone at dinner. Would you be open to us putting our phones away so we can be more present with each other?”
Requests are important in any healthy relationship. They acknowledge a need or a desire and invite the other person to meet it. Crucially, a request doesn’t demand anything—it allows for a no.
For anxiously attached folks, making requests can feel incredibly vulnerable. There’s often a deep fear of being “too much,” of taking up space, of being rejected. But bypassing this discomfort leads to self-abandonment—and resentment follows close behind.
What is a boundary?
A boundary is not just a firmer way of asking for something. It’s not about the other person at all—it’s about you.
Boundaries are about your limits, and what you’ll do to honour them.
For example:
“If you continue shouting, I’m going to leave the room and we can talk when things have calmed down.”
That’s a boundary. It doesn’t require the other person to stop shouting. It simply states your limit and your follow-through.
When done well, boundaries are not a power move. They’re an act of self-respect. But many of us—especially anxious attachers—have learned to set boundaries from a place of panic or desperation. We say the words, but they’re hollow. We don’t really believe we can back them up. And when the other person doesn’t comply, we abandon the boundary to preserve the connection.
What about receiving someone else’s boundary?
This is where things can get really tricky. If your partner says, “I’m not available to talk about this right now,” your inner alarm bells might start ringing. You may interpret it as rejection, withdrawal, or a lack of care—when in fact, it might be them regulating their nervous system and protecting the relationship.
But if you’re not anchored in your own sense of self, it can feel unbearable. And that’s when we push. We protest. We override. We try to break through the boundary because the silence or space feels intolerable.
This is where real growth lies—learning to hold ourselves tenderly in those moments, rather than outsourcing our regulation to someone else.
Boundaries vs. Threats
Some people will hear a boundary and perceive it as a threat. And sometimes, it is.
The difference lies in the intention and the energy.
A threat is: “If you don’t stop doing this, I’ll leave you.” It’s controlling. It’s reactive. It’s about fear.
A boundary, by contrast, is grounded and calm:
“This doesn’t feel safe for me. If it continues, I’ll need to take a step back.”
And it’s important to note: if you’ve never had healthy boundaries modelled to you, even a calm, well-intentioned boundary can feel threatening. Your nervous system might register it as danger, even when it’s not. That doesn’t make the other person wrong—it just means your system needs support and rewiring to feel safe in secure dynamics.
What about ultimatums?
Ultimatums are often deal breakers wrapped in insecurity. They tend to come from a place of powerlessness, framed as: “You better stop, or else.” The content of a deal breaker and an ultimatum might be fundamentally the same. The difference lies in the delivery. A deal breaker is a clear statement of your limit. An ultimatum is often a last-ditch attempt to control the outcome through fear.
If you find yourself repeatedly issuing ultimatums with no follow-through, it’s worth exploring what you’re afraid of. What feels intolerable about actually honouring your limit? Which brings us to…
The power of follow-through
For anxiously attached people, following through on boundaries is often the hardest part. We fear being the bad guy. We don’t want to upset anyone. And, let’s be honest, we often hope we won’t have to.
But when we repeatedly state limits we’re unwilling to enforce, it erodes trust—both in the relationship, and within ourselves.
On the flip side, when someone else sets a firm boundary, we can feel hurt, shut out, and destabilised. The work here is to move from personalisation to understanding: This isn’t about me being unworthy. This is about them taking care of themselves. Just like I need to learn to take care of me.
The deeper work
If communication is the tip of the iceberg, what lies beneath is self-worth. You can’t just script your way to healthy boundaries. You have to believe you’re worthy of having limits. You have to trust yourself to honour them. And you have to accept when someone else is doing the same. That’s the work of secure relating. And it’s not easy—especially when your nervous system is wired for closeness at all costs. But it’s what allows us to show up in relationships with honesty, respect, and mutual care. Because ultimately, boundaries aren’t barriers. They’re bridges to better connection—when built from a place of grounded self-respect.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find it difficult to identify the difference between making a request and setting a boundary in your relationships? Can you recall recent examples of each from your own life?
When you set a boundary, do you notice a tendency to phrase it more like a demand or an ultimatum? Reflect on what the underlying emotions might be for you in those moments.
How comfortable are you with following through on a boundary if it is not respected? Are there certain situations or relationships where this feels particularly challenging?
Think about a time when you communicated a need or boundary. Did you genuinely feel that you were advocating for yourself, or were you hoping it would make someone else change their behaviour so you wouldn’t have to act?
Are you more likely to pursue connection at the expense of your own needs and boundaries? How does this tendency show up for you, and how might it relate to your attachment style?
Have you ever found yourself repeating a boundary or request over and over again, hoping for a different response? What effect does this pattern have on both you and the relationship?
Reflect on your relationship with self-worth: do you feel your wellbeing is as important as the desire to maintain connection with others? Where do you notice tension between these two values?
When others set boundaries with you, how do you tend to respond? Is there a part of you that feels rejected, controlled, or wants to push past their limits?
Can you identify any deal breakers for yourself when it comes to relationships? Are you clear about these—both to yourself and to others?
What does “embodied self-advocacy” mean to you in practice, and how might you begin to cultivate it, especially when it feels uncomfortable or uncertain?
Feel free to use these as journaling prompts, conversation starters, or simply as points of reflection as you explore your own relationship to boundaries, needs, and self-worth.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:23]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about boundaries, and in particular, distinguishing boundaries from all of the other buzzwords that fly around. So what's the difference between a boundary and an ultimatum? A boundary and a request, a boundary and a demand, a boundary and a threat. I think that for a lot of us with anxious attachment patterns, and probably other insecure attachment patterns as well, this can all feel really murky. And that makes so much sense because most of just did not have good modelling around boundaries. And if you are someone with more anxious attachment patterns, there's a good chance that your communication patterns have generally taken the form of, how do I get someone close and keep them close? And so that might look like suppressing your communication, biting your tongue, not speaking up until such time as you get so overwhelmed and so overwrought with unmet needs and stresses that you blow up and become very demanding and protesting.
[00:01:28]:
And obviously that's not a very healthy way of communicating a relationship. And yet what I see often happen is that people learn about boundaries, they learn about communication. They probably know they have a communication issue in their relationship, so that's a skill deficit. And so they set about trying to improve their communication. But if that's done in isolation, so if you're not working on all of the underlying stuff in tandem with that, so healing the core wounds and insecurities that lead you to communicate in those desperate, panicky ways, what can often happen is a bit of a band aid approach whereby you're saying the words that you've read in a book or an Instagram post, right? You're following the script, maybe quite literally, but it just doesn't have the sturdiness within to back it up. And I think what can happen there is when that self advocacy is not taking place on a really solid inner foundation, it can take the form of demands and threats and ultimatums rather than a really embodied self advocacy, which is what we want to shoot for. So in today's episode, I'm going to give a bit of a lay of the land as far as all of that different terminology. So just kind of running through, you know, what is a boundary, what is a request, what is an Ultimatum.
[00:02:39]:
What is a threat? What's a non negotiable? What's a deal breaker? What place do each of these things have in a healthy relationship as well as what you should really be focusing on in a big picture sense so that you can communicate and set boundaries and voice limits and be clear about what you want to need from a really grounded and sturdy place rather than one that feels like you're clutching at someone to try and get them to change so that you don't have to follow through on what you're saying. Which I, I think is often where it lands for anxiously attached people. Okay, so before we get into all of that, a final reminder about the Secure Self Challenge, which is my 28 day challenge which kicks off on Monday next week. So if you haven't joined us already, I would love to have you. We talk about all of the stuff we're gonna talk about today. We talk about self compassion. So if you have a very vocal inner critic, we talk about self care and self regulation, we talk about self respect and self honouring and boundaries and integrity. And we talk about self trust and control and surrender.
[00:03:35]:
All of those things in a really n manageable, bite sized format over 28 days in a nice group. So there's a really strong community component. If any of that appeals to you, you can sign up via the link in the show notes or head to my website. There's a few days left to sign up before we kick off on Monday next week. So I would love to have you in the group if that is interesting to you and you're someone who is wanting to work on building self worth. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around what boundaries are, what they aren't, how they're different from requests, ultimatums, all of the things. So let's start with a request because a request will often be the first step in the so something's going on in your relationship. There's behaviour that maybe doesn't feel good to you, there's some sort of unmet need.
[00:04:16]:
The first thing you want to do is make a request. A request is where you say to someone, hey, it really doesn't feel good for me when you are scrolling through your phone at the dinner table, would you be open to us putting our phones aside during mealtime so that we can actually be present with each other? That's a request, right? It's voicing. Here's how I'm feeling, here's what I would love. Would you be open to doing that? And a request can be used to make a request about a need. It can also be used in the context of a boundary. So that first example was more in the vein of a need. In the context of boundaries, expressing your limit might be, I'm not comfortable with you raising your voice, please stop shouting. A request is quite simply what you hope the other person would do, what you would like them to do.
[00:04:58]:
And it's an invitation to them to modify their behaviour in accordance with what you would like, feel more comfortable with, what would support you, whatever that might be. And that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. You are allowed to make requests of someone that you're in a relationship with to, to accommodate you. Even that might be really uncomfortable for you if you're someone with anxious attachment. Because there's this sense of like, I'm not allowed to ask for anything or take up any space or be difficult at all. I just have to be this quiet little mouse who's fine with everything. Obviously that is a one way ticket to self abandonment and unmet needs and resentment and all of that. So requests are step one.
[00:05:33]:
That's where we ask someone, you know, would you be willing to or can you please whatever. Now, a boundary is best thought of as the limit of what you can tolerate, what you will tolerate, what you are and are not available for, coupled with the thing that you will do if that limit is not respected. And really critical here is that a boundary, properly framed should not require that the other person cooperate or modify their behaviour or do what you want them to do. Again, that's the domain of a request. But a boundary is the thing that I will do if my limit is not respected, if the request is not responded to in the way that I had hoped. So going back to the previous example, that might sound like if you continue raising your voice at me, I am going to leave the room or I am going to hang up the phone and we can resume this conversation later. Or not recognising that initially we can make the request, please stop shouting. I'm not comfortable with it.
[00:06:30]:
If the person continues to shout in spite of the request that you've made, then it's over to you to do something about that, to honour your limit and take action that is in the direction of respecting your own limit of really following through on what you've said. Like I won't tolerate X, Y, Z thing because it does not feel good or safe to me. So here's what I'm going to do in response. Now you might be hearing that and going like, oh, am I really allowed to do that because that sounds almost like a threat. I actually got a couple of people commenting on an Instagram post I did on this topic a few weeks ago saying like that, that framing of if you continue to do X, I will do Y felt like a threat, felt controlling and manipulative. And am I really allowed to say things like that? And I think a lot of people was saying if I were on the receiving end of that I would feel controlled or manipulated, like the person was trying to prevent my self expression or something like that. What I would say in response to that is that if you are someone who has not historically had any sort of boundaries and your sense of taking care of myself is trying to get people to behave differently so that I feel better, then that kind of language may feel controlling to you, right? Because if it has always been used in that way, if it's always been wielded as a form of control, and if you know deep down that were you communicating in that way, it would ultimately be to try and elicit an outcome in them. It would be more like a threat, more like an escalation, saying if you don't stop raising your voice, I'm going to hang up the phone or I'm going to walk out the door.
[00:07:55]:
All the while hoping that you don't actually have to make good on it. That makes sense that you would have that response of like that feels manipulative and threatening. But the difference with a boundary is healthy. Boundary is really not about controlling the other person. If you are articulating here is the limit of what I will and won't have in my relationships, what I am and I'm not available for, then following through on your boundary is very simply an act of responsible self care and it is in service of healthier relationships. Because if you're saying I will not put myself in the situation where I'm exposed to this thing that does not feel safe for me, then that is your responsibility. If you are continually brought into contact with this thing that does not feel right for you, it is your responsibility to ultimately act on that and defend the boundary to the extent that you need to. This is the part that is so hard for a lot of people with anxious attachment because we default back to step one.
[00:08:51]:
If someone is not respecting the boundary, we just say it again and again and again and maybe get louder and bigger and more emphatic and more desperate trying to explain why the boundary is important and why they should change their behaviour so that we don't have to do the difficult thing, which sometimes is to remove ourselves from a situation, from a relationship, to accept the fact that someone isn't going to want modify their behaviour to accommodate us. And that will happen from time to time. And part of really mature and self responsible boundary work is that sometimes we will have to do that. Now let's talk about the scenario in which this does feel controlling or misused or you know, someone's weaponizing therapy speak to have the upper hand or to gain a sense of power in a dynamic. If this is happening to you, if you're trying to voice a need and someone's saying, I don't feel comfortable with this, if you keep talking about this topic, I'm going to walk away. And maybe you've tried several times to talk about out the topic and you feel like you're being pretty regulated. It feels like someone's just putting up a brick wall in a way that feels really unfair. That is entirely possible, right? Like, I'm not saying that that can't happen and I'm not saying that what they're doing is necessarily healthy and secure behaviour.
[00:10:01]:
But ultimately that's not for you to decide. You can't decide that their boundary is invalid and therefore you're just going to keep pushing past it or ignoring it or dismissing it. That is you not behaving in a healthy, respectful way. It's really up to you to decide whether you like their boundary or not. In the sense of if I like it and I think it's valid, I'll respect it, but if I don't like it and I think it's unfair, or I think you're just using that as an excuse, then I'm going to push past it. Again, this is a bit of a tough one for anxious attachers who are actually not great at respecting other people's boundaries. There's this sense of like, yeah, but I just need to say this thing. And so I'll keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
[00:10:40]:
If you don't like the boundary that someone's setting, then you can reassess whether and on what terms you want to be in relationship with that person. If you feel like they are blocking you from expressing yourself and keeping you at arm's length in a way that isn't working for you and you feel really silenced by them, for example, then that's good information. But ultimately it goes back to you to decide in light of their boundary, having regard to their boundary, what am I going to do? What are my choices? What's in the ambit of my control and responsibility. Their boundaries, their behaviour, their choices are over there with them. That's not something that's for me to control. I can only control what I do in response. And that is, is a really big paradigm shift. It sounds kind of obvious, but if you are someone who has typically been very anxious, very enmeshed in your relationships, who has this sense of, I need to make them behave the way I want them to so that I feel okay, that can be a real adjustment to start thinking about relationships and boundaries and responsibilities in this way of like, what is actually within my sphere of control and responsibility here.
[00:11:48]:
Okay, so let's move now to talking about ultimatums. And I want to talk about ultimatums by contrast to something like deal breakers. So again, when I spoke about this on Instagram, a lot of people were saying, isn't that an ultimatum? And aren't ultimatums bad? Isn't that the same as a threat? And as I reflected on this, I think an ultimatum is essentially a deal breaker, but maybe coming from a more unhealthy, insecure place. So I think the words could almost be similar, like the substance of a deal breaker being, this won't work for me. So if this continues to be present, I'm out. I can't do it anymore. I think the substance of it, a deal breaker versus an ultimatum, could actually be very similar or even the same. The difference is often the energy with which it is packaged and delivered, you know where it comes from.
[00:12:35]:
And I think a deal breaker is a really important thing to have and to know and to follow through on for yourself. I teach this all the time in the context of dating. If you don't know what your deal breakers are, you're going to probably end up pursuing connections that aren't aligned because you're just following things like chemistry and connection and feelings and romance without really knowing if there's underlying alignment compatibility. So knowing where are my limits, what am I available for? What's absolutely a no go zone for me, that stuff's really important. So I think like, fundamentally having these bright lines, these lines in the sand of like, if it crosses that line, that is a deal breaker. So I think all of that can certainly be healthy and part of a secure relationship. For me, an ultimatum is more of a power play. And so I think it's like wielding a deal breaker as a way to get someone on the right side of the line.
[00:13:25]:
So it tends to be coming from this energy of threat and demand and like, you have to do this or I'm leaving or I'm gonna do blah. And it's sort of designed to maybe scare or intimidate someone into doing what you want them to do. And again, I think that's almost always coming from insecurity when it is carrying that energy. And so that's really the distinction that I want you to be mindful of when it comes to ultimatums is like, am I actually just over there with them trying to change their behaviour, or am I here with me saying this is what's true for me in terms of what I'm available for and what I'm not. And if this is present in the relationship, that's a deal breaker for me. And I'm not saying that to jump up and down to make you not do the thing, I'm just telling you, like that's the line. And I'm like, no. So to think of an example here, so many women that I work with, like a frightening number of women that I work with will be in relationships where there's like repeated known instances of boundary violations around infidelity and talking to other women in inappropriate ways, whether that's sexual messages or actual cheating.
[00:14:35]:
And it happens multiple times, again and again and again. But from this place of hurt and fear and worry and low self worth, rather than saying initially when something isn't okay, like absolutely not, this isn't okay, and I will honour myself by, you know, maybe walking away from the relationship, depending on the circumstances, there's this escalating, you can't do this to me, you have to stop doing this to me. Why do you keep doing this? Oh, you've done it again. Like I've told you, you can't do this. Why wouldn't you know, like just continuing to go back to that, like, please stop, please change, please hear me. And again, like, I have so much compassion for this because I've been there. But that is a really disempowering place to be. And so often with these big issues in relationships, the communication piece is not so much about words, it's about action.
[00:15:24]:
I think self advocacy as more of an umbrella is oftent about taking action to back up what we're saying because it's so much easier to say the thing. But I think a lot of anxious attachers are all bark and no bite. And there's this great fear around actually having to follow through on the thing that we're saying. And that dilutes the power of our words because it does end up taking the form of empty threats over and over again. And People clock onto that pretty quickly. And so the unfortunate reality, of course we would love for everyone to, to be respectful enough and attuned enough to see the pain that their actions might cause in advance so that they never do it. But if people can have their cake and eat it too, if they can behave in a way and you get upset and then say don't do that again, but then they do it again and nothing happens other than you getting upset, that might not provide enough of an incentive, right? That just might not be enough. And so sometimes people do need to experience consequences to actually understand that certain things aren't acceptable.
[00:16:25]:
So if there is a bit of a track record of a lot of empty threats being made, I think we have to look at the part we're playing in continuing that dynamic rather than just pointing the finger at someone else and saying, how could you do this to me? Really the question is, how can I keep doing this to me? Because I'm the one who's still here, I'm the one who's still tolerating this even when I say that I won't tolerate this. So I think it's so important that when you say something is a non negotiable for me, something is a deal breaker for me me that you honour that because I think we, we do often say that in the hope that someone will respect it. But then we continue to tolerate whatever the thing is and that is where we abandon ourselves. And that's really, really big. That's a big important piece for anxiously attached people. It's like, I will not abandon myself by continuing to tolerate something that I've said I will not tolerate. So just before we wrap up, I want to talk about the bigger picture, which is like that if you're trying to do all of this communication, hopefully you've gotten the sense through this episode that this is not just about saying the right thing in the right way in your relationships. And then like, voila, I now have secure communication.
[00:17:26]:
Communication is just kind of like top layer, you know, it's the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that is all of the stuff that makes self advocacy really hard and scary because it brings us into contact with, you know, can I really take a stand for my needs? Are my needs valid? Am I allowed to honour myself by walking away from something that doesn't feel good? All of those things are really big and they do bring us into contact with some of our deepest wounds and insecurities. So trying to just solve for communication without also bringing these other parts along. For the ride and getting curious around like, well, what is stopping me from actually honouring myself in the first place? Why does that feel so impossible? Why do I revert back to step one and just go back to pleading and persuading and explaining myself for the hundredth time? Until we understand that, and until we really bring those parts along for the ride, it's unlikely that we're going to be able to shift those patterns in any meaningful way. Because really, boundary work to me comes back to self worth. Boundary work is really about honouring ourselves, and it's really hard to do that. To put your wellbeing above a connection. If a connection is a lifeline for you, if you have this sense of I am not okay without this person or this connection or whatever it might be, when that feels like a life raft and you're going to drown without it, then of course, of course you'll say you have a need, but as soon as the relationship feels threatened, you'll drop the need and hold the relationship.
[00:18:56]:
So that's always going to be the bigger work for anxiously attached people is like learning to stand on my own two feet so that I can come to a relationship from a level footing and feeling like if it's not right, if it's not working, then I am comfortable honouring myself and walking away. Of course, there'll still be sadness and grief that comes with a relationship potentially ending or changing in form or shape, but my wellbeing matters. I treat myself as someone who is precious and worthy of care rather than casting myself aside in favour of holding onto someone else. Okay, I'm going to leave it there you guys. I hope that this has been helpful. As a side note, I meant to mention earlier my free training around how to Heal Anxious Attachment, which is a 75 minute webinar if you want to check that out, it's totally free. And I do talk about this topic in more detail, specifically that last piece around. Like if we just try and solve for the secure relationship skills without those foundations of self worth, it tends not to land and it can actually backfire. So if you're interested in going a little deeper into that, you should check out my free training, which is also linked in the show notes or on my website. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me guys and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
[00:20:07]:
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
boundaries, anxious attachment, secure relationships, self worth, communication skills, setting boundaries, requests, ultimatums, deal breakers, threats, insecurity, self advocacy, core wounds, self compassion, self regulation, self care, integrity, self respect, self honouring, inner critic, non negotiables, relationship coaching, self trust, control, surrender, attachment patterns, emotional safety, unmet needs, self abandonment, personal limits