#202: How Attachment Styles Influence Friendship Dynamics
When we think about attachment theory, most of us immediately connect it to romantic relationships. And for good reason—that’s where the framework was originally applied after its roots in infant–caregiver bonds. But here’s the truth: the same patterns that influence how we show up in love also shape the way we navigate friendships.
When we think about attachment theory, most of us immediately connect it to romantic relationships. And for good reason—that’s where the framework was originally applied after its roots in infant–caregiver bonds. But here’s the truth: the same patterns that influence how we show up in love also shape the way we navigate friendships.
Friendships can be some of the most meaningful and nourishing relationships in our lives—but they can also feel confusing, messy, and vulnerable. So, let’s unpack how different attachment styles might show up in friendships and what that means for cultivating more secure, balanced connections.
Anxious Attachment in Friendships
If you lean anxious in your attachment, you may notice that friendships feel like a constant balancing act. You might:
Be the one putting in most of the effort to sustain the friendship
Reach out frequently, seek emotional depth, and desire closeness
Take cancellations, distance, or lack of reciprocity very personally
At the root of this is often a fear of exclusion or rejection. Anxiously attached friends may worry about not belonging, being left out, or not being “liked enough.” And while the intention is to keep people close, the result can sometimes create imbalance—especially if paired with a more avoidant friend.
Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment in Friendships
For those with more avoidant tendencies, friendships often look different. Typically, avoidantly attached people:
Maintain lots of casual, surface-level friendships
Prefer activity-based connections over emotional depth
Value friendships that don’t demand too much emotional reliance
These friendships might look easy and low-maintenance on the outside—but the trade-off is often less intimacy and emotional support. If a friend becomes too emotionally intense or demanding, an avoidant friend may pull away to preserve their sense of freedom and autonomy.
Fearful-Avoidant Attachment in Friendships
Fearful-avoidant attachment often brings intensity and volatility into friendships. These friends may:
Crave deep, meaningful bonds but also carry fears of betrayal
Experience intense friendship “highs” followed by sudden ruptures
Be more prone to friendship breakups after conflict or disappointment
This push–pull dynamic can be exhausting for both sides. Fearful-avoidant friends value closeness but may also retreat quickly if they feel hurt or unsafe, creating an all-or-nothing pattern in their social world.
Why Friendships Can Feel Especially Vulnerable
One of the unique challenges of friendships is that they’re not exclusive the way most romantic relationships are. There’s no “cap” on how many friends someone can have—so if a friend pulls away or stops prioritizing you, it can feel deeply personal.
Add to that the layer of childhood friendship wounds—being excluded, bullied, or left out at school—and adult friendship challenges can reactivate old pain. This explains why something as simple as being left out of a group dinner can feel so raw and triggering.
Building Healthier, More Secure Friendships
The good news? Friendships don’t all have to look the same. Here are a few reminders as you navigate them:
Know what you want from friendship. Do you crave depth? Emotional support? Or are lighthearted, casual friendships enough in some spaces?
Let friends meet different needs. One friend may be your go-to for deep conversations, while another is your adventure buddy. Both roles are valid.
Recalibrate when needed. If you notice you’re doing all the heavy lifting, ask yourself what it would look like to pull back and allow more reciprocity.
Don’t avoid hard conversations. Just like in romantic relationships, honesty matters. If something feels off, expressing it (with care) can deepen trust and connection.
Final Thoughts
Attachment styles shape not just our romantic lives, but our friendships too. The way we connect, the insecurities we carry, and the patterns we fall into—they all show up with the people we call friends.
And yet, friendships also give us unique opportunities: to practice boundaries, to diversify where we get our needs met, and to build connections that reflect our growth.
Because ultimately, the goal isn’t to find “perfect” friendships—it’s to create relationships that feel mutual, supportive, and secure, in whatever shape they take.
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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.
[00:00:23]:
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 how attachment styles show up in friendships, which is actually a topic that's been requested more times than I can count. So I'm finally getting around to recording an episode on this, which I think is really something probably the topic of friendships more broadly is one that doesn't get enough attention and yet is something that a lot of people have a really hard time navigating. The focus tends to be so much on romantic relationships and yet friendships can be messy and friendships can bring up a lot of stuff and insecurities and fears and all of the things. So I'm hoping that in today's episode I can speak to some of those challenges and offer some insights so that you can better understand how you experience friendships, the things that you might be struggling with, and how you might approach that going forward in a way that feels a little bit more secure and grounded and empowering. Before we get into today's episode, a couple of quick reminders if you haven't already already check them out.
[00:01:30]:
I've released recently a couple of free trainings. One on how to heal anxious attachment, another on healing from a breakup. So those are both really great resources. If you're struggling with either or both of those things and you're looking for more support, a bit of a roadmap, understanding yourself, understanding what the next step might be. I really encourage you to check out those and my other free resources, all of which you can check out on my website. Second quick announcement is just a reminder about my upcoming London show. There are still tickets available if you're interested in coming along. It's going to be a lovely intimate event.
[00:02:04]:
I'll be giving a talk, then there'll be time for Q and A and meet and greet and it'll be lovely and casual and intimate and I would love to see you there. If you're someone who listens to the show, likes my work, and you're based in or around London, come and spend a Saturday with me in a room full of like minded others. But absolutely love to have you there. Okay, so let's talk about how attachment styles show up in friendships. Now I just want to frame the discussion a little at the outset. And acknowledge that attachment. Attachment theory as a body of work is not about friendships. It was originally developed in the context of infant caregiver relationships.
[00:02:40]:
And subsequently, many decades later, was adapted to apply to adult romantic relationships. Which is obviously the primary focus of my work. And is what a lot of people associate with attachment theory in its modern form. But friendships were not really within the contemplation or the parameters of attachment theory. That being said, I think when we zoom out a bit. And take a broader look at the purpose of attachment theory and the core teachings, we're really looking at the insecurities that we may carry. The wounds and burdens that we have around relationships. And the ways that we've learned to cope with those things.
[00:03:18]:
The protective strategies that have sprung from those wounds that we've become habituated into. That we reach for. As a way to try and prevent that pain from happening or respond to that pain. So I think when we take that more fluid and flexible lens. Which is really my preferred way of teaching about attachment in any case. And is more influenced by parts, work and other frameworks. We can see that, of course, the patterns that play out in our relationships. Can and do absolutely show up in other meaningful relationships, including friendships.
[00:03:55]:
So while attachment theory and attachment styles, you know, not originally about friendships. I think we can certainly apply it there by extension. And use it as a basis to form insights and understandings. So with that as the framing, I want to talk about how each of the insecure attachment styles might show up in friendships. What you might experience, the things you might struggle with. And how that might play out. So anxiously attached people in friendships, as in romantic relationships. Are likely to be the person who is more invested.
[00:04:27]:
Who's putting in a lot of the effort to sustain the relationship. There might be a perception of imbalance and lack of reciprocity. Like you're doing a lot of the heavy lifting. You're always the one reaching out. You're the one maybe seeking for more contact, more emotional depth, more connection. You always feel like you're closing the gap. You're reaching. And that might both stem from and elicit feelings of unworthiness, feelings of rejection, people don't like me.
[00:04:58]:
Insecurity, generally taking things very personally. So if someone's a bit distant or busy or cancelling plans. You might be very deeply hurt by that. And assume that you have done something wrong, Feel like they must not like you. All of those sorts of things. I think a fear of being excluded or not belonging. Is a really big One for anxiously attached people. So we can go to great lengths to try and prevent that from happening.
[00:05:24]:
Whether it's by trying to get close to people and keep them close, people pleasing, trying to fit in all of those things, or, you know, if we're feeling excluded, if we're feeling left out, desperately trying to figure out what's gone wrong, what we've done and trying to undo it, trying to repair what can happen. And I think that this is quite a common one. I've seen this quite a lot amongst students in my Healing Anxious Attachment programme is that you might find yourself in friendships with people who are more avoidant. Again, we can see the Yin and yang coming together as we do in romantic relationships, and your desire for more depth and maybe your tendency towards feeling hurt or rejected or neglected. If someone isn't putting as much effort into the friendship as you are, then you respond to that by wanting to have a conversation, wanting to tell them about your disappointment. You might then be met with someone's resistance or disinterest or almost like their impatience to hold space for that, to have that level of depth. And so that can further deepen the hurt and the sense of not being important to someone, not being a priority. So you can see that everything that I'm doing describing here, there are a lot of parallels in the dynamics that can play out here as compared with romantic relationships and for anxiously attached people, I'm sure a lot of what I'm describing will be familiar there.
[00:06:57]:
If we move over to a more dismissive avoidant look at friendships, what you're likely to see is someone who maybe has a lot of friends, but they're quite surface level friendships. So kind of low maintenance, not a lot of emotional depth, not really relying on each other for much. Maybe it's casual social, you can send them a message to go and get a drink or catch up for something, go to a show together. You might have a lot of like activity based friends or people that you catch up with casually. And so the dismissive avoidant might look like someone who's really popular and has a lot of friends, but they're less likely to have emotional depth in their friendships. And that's probably by preference. That suits them quite well because they don't then feel engulfed by their friendships. They don't feel this excessive reliance from other people that they don't really know how to hold or, you know, that then feels imbalanced to them because they know that they're not going to rely on the other person in turn.
[00:07:58]:
So it feels like it's all going in one direction. So those sorts of, like, easy, kind of distant, casual friendships are likely to work really well for someone with this sort of avoidant patterns. And as I said, there is a likelihood that the other side of the coin, that if someone's too emotionally intense, they're likely to. To have a bit of a reaction against that feel like that's more than they're willing to give. And they might distance themselves from a friend who is asking more of them than they're willing to give by way of emotional depth or reliance. Someone with fearful avoidant patterns is likely to sit somewhere in the middle, as is often the case, but with their own unique challenges as well. So the fearful avoidant in friendships is likely to value depth, value, but maybe also have casual friends as well. They can kind of straddle that.
[00:08:50]:
Whereas someone who's more anxious is unlikely to want shallow, casual friendships. In large part, the fearful avoidant craves that depth. But with that comes a level of vulnerability that can lead to friction and even conflict. And I think something that a lot of fearful avoidance will experience is friendship breakups. So they might have a really deep friendship and it feels really intense and they feel really connected. And then there's some sort of implosion and because they experience oftentimes like a sense of betrayal or when trust is broken, that they just want to get so far away from that, and maybe they have shame about how they acted in it all, so they might just draw a line under it and not talk to that person ever again kind of thing. So having that volatility around friendships, that simultaneous depth, but then also distance, if something goes wrong or if there is some sort of rupture or perceived betrayal or disappointment, that's often there for someone with more fearful avoidant patterns. So that's sort of a bit of a lay of the land on what attachment styles can look like as they play out in friendships.
[00:10:03]:
One thing that I did want to note is while for some people, your attachment style and patterns will be very much a continuation of what you experience in romantic relationships, meaning if you're anxious in romantic relationships, you might be similarly anxious in friendships. For others, you might be really anxious in romantic relationships, but more avoidant in friendships. And if that's you, that's fine. It's not something, you know, people always say, like, is this possible? What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you. It just means that you fear different things in different places and you respond in different ways. So all of that is part of the messy reality of our layered experiences of relationships as humans and the ways that we've learned to cope with that. But I did just want to acknowledge that it's not necessarily going to be exactly the same in those different types of relationships for you. Same goes as a side note for family.
[00:10:57]:
Sometimes people will be more avoidant with family, more anxious in their romantic relationships, or vice versa, some other combination. So some of the other patterns that we might see play out in friendship, again, we do always tend to find these balance points in our relationships. So we might have one friend who's the over functioner and one who's the under functioner, one who does all the heavy lifting and one who just follows along. One who's the caretaker and the other who's always been cared for, the rescuer and the one who's always in crisis. One who's the emotional dumping ground and one who's always offloading their stuff. Will often in insecure type friendships have these imbalance dynamics that can be certainly contributed to by or shaped by our attachment dynamics that we see play out in other relationships. I think one of the really complicating factors when it comes to friendships, and it's kind of a blessing and a curse, is the fact that friendships are non monogamous, so to speak, whereas romantic relationships for most people, obviously not all people, are monogamous. And so that exclusivity thing means that while rejection is really painful, we can sort of understand it.
[00:12:13]:
Whereas in friendships, if someone pulls away from us, doesn't want to be friends anymore, distances themselves because there's no upper limit on how many friends you can have, that can feel really, really painful. It can feel like. It's not like you can only have one friend and so you chose someone else instead of me. You just decided you didn't want to be friends with me because you don't like having me around. That can feel much more personal because of the different nature of friendships. And so I think that can in some ways feel like more of a rejection of who we are at a fundamental level and can really feed those wounds around people don't like me, people don't value me in ways that romantic relationships. We can maybe rationalise it more in the context of dating and romantic relationships if someone breaks up with us. Whereas in friendships that can really, really hur.
[00:13:07]:
I think another piece around friendships that we probably don't acknowledge enough is that we have a lot of inner child wounds around friendships most of us will have experienced dating back to primary School and high school, all of those fears around not belonging, around being excluded, around being left out. And so when those things get activated as an adult, it's touching into really old wounds and parts of us that are probably really young and that have those really big fears of not being liked, of being excluded at times in our lives where that felt incredibly vulnerable and where it felt like a survival need to fit in in a very contained environment of school or other community settings where we didn't have much control over that. Even though as an adult we have so much more agency and we can seek out friends in all sorts of different places and settings, it can touch into those really old wounds about exclus, not belonging, not fitting in, or if you were bullied or things like that, naturally you're going to have more sensitivity around adult friendships and navigating any struggles that you have there in light of those old wounds. Again, much the same as in romantic relationships, when we've experienced struggles earlier in life, we carry those into our relationships. Now what do we do with all of this awareness? Because it is a lot of awareness and there are a lot of layers and it might be the kind of thing where after listening to this, you start processing it and metabolising it and connecting dots, seeing patterns where maybe you weren't so aware of them before. I think that it's really important to know what we want from friendships. And the blessing that I was alluding to earlier of non exclusive friendships, meaning you can have lots of different friends, is that we don't need every friend to meet all of our friendship needs. So if you know that you're someone who looks for emotional depth and that connecting on a deeper level is really important to you, being able to pick up the phone and call someone if you're having a hard day is really important to, to you.
[00:15:11]:
Being able to ask someone for help if you're moving house or whatever, if like that level of dependability and trust and reliability and emotional connection is important to you and a friend, that's really good to know. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's just part of knowing what your emotional needs are and you don't have to get all of those needs met from every friend all the time. So you might recognise that certain friends who display some of those more avoidant patterns that I was speaking to, who maybe just have less capacity for emotional depth in friendships generally, or friendships with you, you might decide that you're okay to keep it kind of surface level and just send each other memes or go for a coffee and talk about work or keeping things kind of light might be okay. And that can still be a valid friendship. Not every friendship needs to look and feel exactly the same way. And I think it's only when we try and depersonalise it a bit that we're maybe more able to engage with that and see people's capacity not as a comment on us at a fundamental level, but more about their capacity. So recognising that because we can have lots of different friends and different levels of contact and closeness and intimacy and all of that that we can be discerning around like, yes, this friendship is meeting my needs and I want to keep investing in it, or maybe it isn't meeting my needs and I'm going to pull back a bit, or maybe I can just recalibrate my expectations of this friendship and allow it to be what it is, rather than trying to force it to be something that it isn't.
[00:16:45]:
So I think that's a helpful reframe on how we think about our friendships. And certainly if you tend to be on the side of the equation where you're the one over functioning, overinvesting, caretaking, closing the gap, doing all of the heavy lifting to sustain a friendship, you might think about what it would look like to reshuffle that so that it feels a bit more balanced. Particularly if you notice yourself being a bit resentful of the perceived lack of reciprocity there. That's certainly something to think about. What would it look like to pull back a bit and allow this to fall into a more mutual rhythm, even if that means that it's not at the level of depth or intensity that I would prefer if it were up to me. A final piece that I want to speak to is navigating conflict in friendships, because I think that, frankly, this can be really awkward for a lot of people. Again, I think the tendency towards conflict avoidance in friendships is much, much higher than in romantic relationships. It's almost like there's a threshold test below which we're not not willing to go there with friends.
[00:17:47]:
And maybe that's. If we're not confident that the friendship could sustain conflict and repair, if it is more casual or it feels a bit flimsy, or we feel like the other person, or we are not that invested, then conflict feels like a vulnerable place to go. Expressing disappointment or frustration or upset is a hard thing to do with someone that we're not fully committed to or that isn't fully committed to us. So there can be Real vulnerabilities around conflict in friendships. That being said, I think that it's important, as in any relationship, if it's an important relationship in your life, to be able to share honestly about how you're feeling and maybe something that doesn't feel great. All of the same communication tools and guidelines that we employ in relationships apply here too. So not blaming, not accusing, taking responsibility for our own stuff, but also sharing honestly about the way we might be feeling and maybe making requests, maybe sharing boundaries. For example, if you have a friend who kind of emotionally dumps all the time and offloads all of their drama onto you in a way that feels really draining and depleting and you feel like it kind of sucks all the oxygen out of your communication and there's no space for anything else, or you don't feel like they're really checking in on how things are going for you, you might share that, obviously in a sensitive way, but saying something like, like, I've noticed that a lot of our conversations recently are mostly you sharing stuff that's going on and I feel like it's become a bit imbalanced.
[00:19:21]:
Like I'm just holding space for you. And while I obviously want to be able to support you, I'd love if maybe we could talk about other things or if you'd check in with how I'm going, because I've had some stuff on my plate as well and it feels like there hasn't been much space for that. You know, those are the sorts of conversations that we want to be able to have in our friendships because ultimately they are facilitative of greater depth and honesty and trust and connection. And if a friendship can't survive a conversation like that, if it can't take honest communication, then that's probably quite telling as to the sturdiness of the friendship. So it's certainly something to think about if there are ongoing points of tension or friction or frustration for you in some of your friendships, considering what it might look like to have an honest, open conversation with that person or those people, people about what's been bothering you and what a better way might look and feel like from your perspective and obviously opening it up to them as well and inviting their perspective on what would feel good too. Okay, I'm going to leave it there. I feel like I could keep talking about this for a long time, so maybe we need to have a follow up. Or I could get some sort of adult friendship expert on to share their wisdom as well.
[00:20:36]:
But I do hope that this has been a helpful introduction at least to attachment styles and friendships and how those attachment patterns can show up in the domain of friendships, how we might navigate the various challenges that friendships can throw up what it might look like to cultivate healthier, more balanced, sustainable friendships. I really hope that it's given you something to reflect on and do. Let me know if you found it helpful and if you'd like me to revisit this topic or certain aspects of it, always open to your feedback and further suggestions so let me know. But otherwise, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys.
[00:21:18]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to 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 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
attachment styles, friendships, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, fearful avoidant, dismissive avoidant, relationship patterns, insecurity in friendships, emotional depth, friendship breakups, people pleasing, emotional wounds, non-exclusive friendships, reciprocity in friendships, friendship boundaries, conflict in friendships, overfunctioning, underfunctioning, emotional dumping, friendship dynamics, friendship needs, monogamous relationships, vulnerability, intimacy, friendship imbalances, communication in friendships, trust in friendships, repairing friendships, childhood wounds, friendship exclusion
#201: How to Actually Heal from a Breakup
Breakups are hard. Really hard. And if you have an anxious attachment style, they can feel absolutely devastating—like the rug has been pulled out from under you and you’re left spinning without an anchor. It can be tempting to scramble for control—ruminating, obsessing, even stalking—just to try to ease the pain. The truth? A breakup is not just something to “get through.” It’s an opportunity—a painful one, yes—but also a chance to meet yourself in a new way, learn important lessons, and create the conditions for healthier love in the future.
Breakups are hard. Really hard.
And if you have an anxious attachment style, they can feel absolutely devastating—like the rug has been pulled out from under you and you’re left spinning without an anchor.
When so much of our identity, safety, and stability has been tied up in a relationship, the ending can trigger deep feelings of loss, fear, and uncertainty. It can be tempting to scramble for control—ruminating, obsessing, even stalking—just to try to ease the pain. But while these coping mechanisms may offer temporary relief, they often prolong our suffering.
The truth? A breakup is not just something to “get through.” It’s an opportunity—a painful one, yes—but also a chance to meet yourself in a new way, learn important lessons, and create the conditions for healthier love in the future.
Here’s what healing with intention really looks like.
1. Honour Your Grief
We live in a culture uncomfortable with grief. We rush past it, numb it out, or analyze it away. But a breakup is a loss—and like any loss, it needs to be grieved.
Grief isn’t just about missing the person. It’s about mourning:
The routines and shared life you had
The memories you made together
The future you imagined but won’t live out
Grief comes in layers and waves. The more you allow yourself to feel it—safely, fully, without judgment—the more you give it space to move through you. Suppressing it keeps you stuck; feeling it helps you heal.
And remember: your grief is proof of your capacity to love deeply. That’s something to honour, not something to shame.
2. Watch the Stories You’re Telling Yourself
After a breakup, it’s easy to take what happened and make it mean something about you:
“I’m unlovable.”
“I’m too much.”
“Everyone leaves me.”
These stories turn pain into suffering. They chip away at your self-worth and set you up to carry low self-esteem into your next relationship.
Be mindful of your inner narrative. When you notice yourself spiraling into self-blame or shame, pause and reframe. Look at what happened more neutrally so you can learn from it without attacking yourself.
3. Find Closure From Within
For many people—especially those with anxious attachment—closure feels like something the other person has to give you. You want explanations, apologies, or one last conversation to “make it make sense.”
But true closure doesn’t come from them. It comes from you.
Waiting for the person who couldn’t meet you in the relationship to suddenly meet you in your healing is a recipe for staying stuck. Instead, shift your focus to what you can control—your choices, your actions, your acceptance of reality as it is.
Self-given closure is both empowering and freeing.
4. Reflect and Set Intentions for the Future
Once you’ve moved through the rawest stages of grief, turn toward the lessons. Not from a place of self-blame, but with curiosity and self-respect.
Ask yourself:
Where did I ignore my own needs or boundaries?
Did I tolerate behaviours that weren’t okay with me?
What signs did I overlook?
From there, define your vision for future relationships: your standards, your non-negotiables, your deal-breakers.
Love is essential—but it’s not enough without trust, safety, and reliability. Clarity here is what prevents you from repeating the same patterns.
5. Resist the Urge to Rush Into Something New
If you’re most comfortable in relationships, it can be tempting to attach to someone new quickly. But true healing happens when you give yourself time—to be with yourself, to build your self-worth, and to be discerning about where you invest your heart next.
When you’re anchored in your own standards and self-respect, you naturally become less interested in connections that can’t meet you there.
Final Thoughts
Healing from a breakup isn’t just about “getting over” someone—it’s about coming home to yourself.
If you can meet your grief with compassion, quiet the stories that diminish you, close the chapter from within, and get intentional about your future, you don’t just move on. You grow.
And that growth? That’s what makes you stronger, brighter, and more ready than ever for the secure, healthy love you deserve.
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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.
[00:00:23]:
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 how to heal from a breakup in the healthiest way possible. So let's just start by stating the obvious, which is that breakups are really, really hard. And particularly if you're someone with anxious attachment patterns, as I know most of my listeners are for an array of reasons that I've spoken to on the podcast before. Anxiously Attached people struggle so much with endings and, and particularly when so much was on the line, when we were working so hard to try and hold things together, to try and patch things up, to try and prevent that disconnection, that loss. It can feel like being plunged into a level of uncertainty and rudderlessness that we just don't really know how to hold.
[00:01:15]:
And all of that can obviously be exacerbated by our over reliance on relationships to provide us with a sense of steadiness and our difficulties in knowing who we are or how to feel okay if we don't have someone to lean on. And while of course that's a human thing, that we're all wired for connection, we know that anxiously attached people can over index on that to the detriment of their own sense of inner safety. So breakups really go to the heart of a lot of our wounds, a lot of our fears, a lot of our vulnerabilities in a way that can leave us feeling very powerless, very lost, very scared, very out of control. Now, what often happens from that place is in feeling so out of control, naturally we reach for whatever tools we might have in our toolbox to try and counteract that feeling, to try and protect ourselves, to try and undo all of the pain because it feels so overwhelming and we don't really trust ourselves to be able to hold it. And so we can find ourselves in all sorts of coping strategies, ruminating, obsessing, stalking, all of the things. And of course, while that might provide some temporary relief or a sense of being in control, in my experience with supporting thousands probably now, of people through breakups, is that that can prolong our suffering and really keep us from tending to the parts of ourselves that are longing for our care and attention after a breakup. So in today's episode, I want to Offer you a different way, an alternative path to going through a breakup that doesn't just look like frantically trying to your head above water. Because I know that that's what it can feel like for so many of us.
[00:03:02]:
A way that allows you to honour yourself, honour the pain. Certainly not just trying to skip past it all and feel better, but that equally calls on you to exercise self responsibility around your choices, around where you direct your time and energy. Because ultimately, and I've said this many times before, I view breakups as a beautiful opportunity. And I know that that can feel hard to hear when you're in it. And it feels like anything but a gift. But breakups really do bring us face to face with a lot of our staff. And you know, as with anything that holds up a mirror and invites us into deep reflection and intentionality, I think we can really make the most of that if we are courageous enough to do so. So in today's episode, I'm going to be offering some guidance around what that might look like to approach a breakup in a more intentional, deliberate, self honouring way, self supporting way.
[00:04:01]:
So that you're not just flailing around, treading water, trying to stay afloat until it stops hurting so much. Because spoiler alert. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but that approach, the just survive the breakup approach doesn't tend to impart many lessons. And I think that's a crucial piece of the puzzle when going through a breakup. And that's big part of making the most of it is actually engaging with our own pain and whatever went on in the relationship and whatever led to its ending. If we can engage meaningfully with all of that without self flagellating, without shaming ourselves, then we set ourselves up to do things differently next time. To the extent that there are lessons to be learned. And I think that there are always lessons to be learned.
[00:04:49]:
So all of that is what we're going to be talking about today. And in keeping with the theme of today's episode, I have a brand new free TR all about breakups. It's titled the Top 3 Mistakes keeping you stuck after a breakup. And it goes into a lot more depth than I'll be able to in today's episode on all of those things, the ways that we can unknowingly, unintentionally be prolonging our suffering and maybe experiencing these energy leakages, things like obsessively comparing our process to that of our exes, who's moving on quicker, what does it mean? They seem to be fine. Does that mean they never cared about me? Talking about how different IT attachment styles go through breakups and why it's therefore not very useful to engage in all of that comparison. You know how to move on even if you don't feel ready, and how to treat moving on as a choice rather than just waiting for a feeling to land in your lap. How to stop the endless cycles of rumination and why it's so easy to fall into the trap of just obsessing over someone and what purpose that might be serving. I cover all of this and more in my new free training.
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So if that's of interest interest to you, the link to sign up for that is in the show notes or you can head straight to my website and check it out there. Second quick announcement is just a reminder about my upcoming event in London. It's about a month away now, which is wild. So looking forward to meeting with you in person, those who are already coming along. And if you are in or around London on the 13th of September and you would like to come along, it's going to be a really intimate event. I'll be giving a talk on the path to secure love. So talking about all of the things that can get in the way of experiencing the healthy, secure love that we all long for and how we can start to do that work within ourselves and our relationships to facilitate the building of more secure, loving relationships in our lives. And there'll be plenty of time for Q and A and meet and greet and all of those things.
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So I would so love to see you there. If you're in or around London. The tickets for that are also linked also in the show notes, or you can find them on my website or send me a message on Instagram if you're having trouble. I'd be more than happy to help you out. Okay, so let's talk about how to heal from a breakup in the healthiest way possible. Now the first and most important step in this journey is that we have to actually grieve. We have to allow ourselves the space to feel, to actually give our pain an opportunity to be seen and felt and heard and tended to and understood. Now you might be thinking, if you're listening to this, like, yeah, I'm already doing that.
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I'm in so much pain. I'm in agony. This is like the worst thing I've ever felt. But I would hazard that if you're like a lot of people, particularly again, folks who struggle with anxious attachment anxiety, we do a lot of thinking about our Pain, but not so much feeling pain. And I think that's true more broadly. In our society. We tend not to provide much space, particularly for things like grief. I think we are collectively uncomfortable with grief and the bigness of it because it is such an all consuming emotion.
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It feels like, you know, once we open the floodgates of grief, we might never close them again. And so I think a lot of us keep our grief very muted. We try and turn away from it, we try and suppress it, because it is such a big emotion and it's one that we don't have a lot of practise with. But the reality is a breakup is a mourning process. It is a grieving process like any other loss. And so we really need to honour it as that and allow ourselves to feel the depths of grief that we might be holding. And there are going to be layers of grief. There's grief for losing the person, there's grief for all of the little bits of our lives that were intertwined with theirs that we feel we may have lost along with them.
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Grief for all of the memories, grief for the future vision that now won't come to pass. There's layers of that and it will come in waves. And rather than frantically being hit by that and then feeling like we have to distract ourselves or numb out or undo it, or backpedal to try and make the grief go away, actually allowing ourselves to feel it fully is a very, very powerful thing. And ironically enough, even though it doesn't feel like it when we're in it, the more we can fully go there, obviously in safe and contained ways, the more we allow ourselves to emerge from the other side of it. Whereas if we're just trying to bury it, we're turning our backs on it. It's still there, it's still within us, desperate to be felt and seen and acknowledged. And it does tend to keep us stuck in it and stuck in the coping mechanisms that we've reached for to try and solve it or get away from it for much longer. So a really, really big, important part of a breakup, as uncomfortable as it is, is making space to feel the depths of grief.
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And as I people, the bigness of your grief is a reflection of how deeply you love. And I think that grief is actually an incredibly beautiful human emotion. It only exists when we have deep love, care and depth of feeling. And I think that that's an exquisitely beautiful thing and something that we should absolutely honour rather than something we should try and stuff down or turn away from, because we don't trust it, or we think it's wrong, or we just want to try and solve it with analytical thinking or problem solving or whatever else. So step one is honour the grief, make space for the grief and really allow yourself to feel all of the layers of conflicting feelings that might be there in and around your breakup. The second really important piece in healing from a breakup in the healthiest way possible is keeping a close eye on the stories that you are telling yourself and really being very mindful of the meaning making that you're engaging in. So what I'm talking about here is the tendency that a lot of us have again, anxiously attached. People will relate to this, that when something happens, when a relationship ends, we're very quick to internalise however it went down, whatever unfolded as being about us.
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So if someone ended the relationship because they said, you know, I can't do this, or you know, I'm not ready for a relationship, or this is too hard, we take whatever happened and we make it mean I'm unlovable, or I push them away because I'm too much, or why am I so easy to leave? Everyone always leaves me or I'm going to end up alone. I'm going to be alone forever. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. I tried so hard and it still wasn't enough. Can be a big one. It can create this sense of failure and not enoughness, inadequacy. There are so many stories that we can feed and fuel after a breakup that again take us from pain, which is natural and normal, into suffering, which is of our own creation. And the trouble is there that in fueling all of those stories at a time when our self esteem, our self confidence is maybe already bruised and battered, we then make that so much worse because we punish ourselves, we blame ourselves, we shame ourselves, and that again creates so much suffering at a time when we're so vulnerable and we need love and care and support from ourselves and from the people around us.
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And unfortunately, it can also lead us into similarly unhealthy patterns in the next relationship. So if we maybe had patterns of self abandonment in the relationship that just ended, and then we tell ourselves all of those painful stories as we're processing the breakup and we're really hard on ourselves, then we eventually go to approach the next relationship from a foundation of really low self worth because we're harbouring all of these stories and beliefs that there's something wrong with me, I'm not lovable, people always leave me, I'm not worth fighting for. However it might sound for you. I know those are some really common ones. So it's really important that we are vigilant about monitoring those stories and interrupting them and course correcting when we see them popping up, because that's certainly something that, that we can choose to redirect. We can choose to offer ourselves different stories. And it's really only in looking more neutrally at what happened that we can seek to learn the lessons. And we'll come to that in a moment, what it looks like to learn those lessons.
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Okay, the next really important piece in healing from a breakup in the healthiest way possible is finding a way to reach a place of closure and acceptance that doesn't hinge on the other person giving you an explanation or agreeing with your version of events, or apologising or, you know, there being any sort of peace as between you. Really, what we want is to be able to find closure within ourselves in the sense of acceptance of reality. Again, if you're someone with more anxious patterns, it's really easy to push against reality, to feel like this reality is so intolerable. I'm in so much pain and so I have to scramble to try and change it or fix it or argue with it. You know, it's that classic stages of grief and we experience the denial and the bargaining and all of these things. We just can't accept reality as it is because it's too painful. And we want to have one more conversation with them. We want to, you know, close all of the open loops.
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We want to make it all make sense. But again, as I've said so many times before, the person who leaves you feeling that way, the person who maybe didn't have the emotional capacity or willingness in the relationship to have those hard conversations, you know, to communicate effectively, the likelihood of them appearing post breakup having magically developed emotional capacity and willingness that they lacked in the relationship and making themselves available for some sort of closure conversation that resolves everything for you and allows you to feel at peace. That's really, really unlikely. And even if there were some universe in which that was going to happen, it still places the ball in their court rather than yours. And it leaves you in this, this holding pattern, this story of I can't do anything, my hands are tied unless and until they show up and give me an explanation, tell me why they did what they did, tell me what they're really feeling. Like all of these things that we can desperately long for, but we're really unlikely to get. So shifting the focus instead to closure, being Something that I decide to give myself by way of accepting the reality as it is rather than as I wish it were. And that is challenging.
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And your anxious parts are not going to like that. But it's also very empowering because it places the ball back in your court. It focuses on the things that are in your control, the things that you have direct agency and responsibility over. And that is really how you get your peace back, rather than bargaining and fighting against all the things that you wish were otherwise and you feel are so unfair. All of that, that makes so much sense and we can have so much compassion for those parts of us. But ultimately moving forward and finding our centre again is about focusing on the things that we can control. Now, the final piece of the puzzle that I want to speak to around processing and healing from a breakup in the healthiest way possible is turning towards the future. And just to be clear, this is not something you have to do two weeks after your breakup.
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This might be many months later, but starting to really reflect on and engage with the lessons that need to be learned and having a level of intentionality around, okay, what comes next? What would I do differently next time? Again, never from a place of shame or blame, not about, you know, this was my fault or I messed everything up. But just looking, hopefully with a level of neutrality and honest engagement at what actually happened here. Where were the points along the way that that I may be self abandoned or that I wish I'd spoken up for something that wasn't okay with me, or I continued to tolerate things that I wasn't comfortable with, or maybe where I can see that someone was giving me clear signs that I was refusing to see or accept, where I sort of pushed past someone's lack of capacity and just kept trying all of these things, we can start to kind of reflect on and learn and develop a really clear framework or set of intentions for ourselves moving forward around okay, what do I want my relationships to look and feel like? It sounds so obvious, but most people who I work with don't have clarity around that. They just want a relationship with someone who loves them. And while of course we all want that, it's actually not a very reliable thing to have as your sole intention or your soul desire. Because love is great, but it's not enough. And I think when it doesn't have alongside it things like trust and safety and reliability and dependability and all of these other qualities that are so important in the overall picture of what it takes to build and sustain a healthy, secure relationship, we can become Very attached to people on the basis of intense emotions, intense love and attachment. But.
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But maybe we're lacking that solid foundation. So actually taking the time to get very clear on what are my standards, what are my non negotiables, what are my deal breakers, what's the vision? This is important work to do before you rush back into dating. And I know how tempting it can be to just want to find a new person to distract yourself with or to attach to. If relationships are really your comfort zone and you feel much more yourself when you're attached to someone, it can feel really hard to go slow, to take the time to be single and to be discerning about who and where you're going to devote your time and energy. But that is a very, very important part of not just repeating the same old patterns again and again, is getting so clear and being so steadfast and so committed to your own standards that you're actually not interested in entertaining connections that fall short of those standards. And of course, that's not about being, you know, overly rigid or guarded or kind of wary of people. It's just recognising the importance of your own wellbeing and knowing that relationships that lack certain qualities like trust and consistency and reliability, that those do more harm than good and that they're actually not worth investing in. So spending the time to go through that process for yourself will always pay dividends and will always be well worth the wait.
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Okay, I'm going to leave it there. I really hope that that's been helpful. As a side note, what I just stepped you through is more or less the structure of my Higher Love breakup course. So if you're nodding along and feeling like all of that makes sense and sounds like an approach that really resonates with you, consider checking out my Higher Love course. If you do my free breakup training as well, there's a special offer to join the course at a discount. So you might want to consider checking out the free training first. And so. And then perhaps looking at joining Higher Love if you're looking to go a bit deeper.
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Okay, guys, I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me. If you are going through a breakup, I'm sending you so much love. I know it's hard, but you are strong and one foot in front of the other. Not only will you get through this, but with a bit of intention and courage, you can get through it bigger, stronger, brighter, better than before. I really, deeply believe that to be true. So sending you so much love, and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys.
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Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to 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 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
breakup recovery, healing from a breakup, anxious attachment, attachment styles, relationship endings, grieving process, coping strategies, rumination, self responsibility, self-worth, lessons from breakups, closure after breakup, acceptance, emotional pain, grief in relationships, moving on, comparison after breakup, inner safety, heartbreak, relationship patterns, self care, self abandonment, self compassion, dating after breakup, intentional relationships, ex-partner comparison, future vision loss, self reflection, relationship standards, self honouring