We all have our own personal emotional triggers, which are often as unique as our fingerprints. The phrase “Knowing how to push someone’s buttons” is essentially saying ” to become aware of that person’s emotional makeup and intentionally triggering them into reactivity.”  Not a very nice thing to do.  Not only do adults come equipped with “buttons” created in childhood, but we also have a particular attachment style that developed in our, you guessed it, childhood. If you aren’t in the 60% of people lucky enough to have a secure attachment style, you may have an anxious, avoidant or disorganized style. In this post I’ll highlight the anxious attachment as I may know a thing or two about it.

First thing’s first: becoming aware of your emotions and triggers is key to understanding yourself and your attachment style in relationships. For example, if you feel anxious or “off” when your partner is away or out with friends, you may be likely to cast those feelings aside, wondering what’s wrong with you, OR conversely you might act out, attempting to control your partner or make them feel guilty. In either case, you’re not fully acknowledging how you feel. If you begin to notice how certain circumstances make you feel, and pause to acknowledge the emotions as sensation in your body, you come to understand that it’s not so much the situation that’s causing you to feel bad but rather your own emotional wiring. In this case, it’s an anxious attachment style that developed in childhood as a result of your primary caregiver’s parenting style in combination with your inherent sensitivities. By listening non-judgmentally to what your anxious part has to say, instead of discounting it or reacting from it, you connect with your wounded inner child and eventually come to accept these feelings in yourself. As you accept them, you gain insight into the places you are hurt and thus come to know and understand yourself more deeply. Tuning into how you feel, through cultivating mindfulness in each moment, is the beginning of the path to deeper self understanding, self-acceptance and ultimately self-love – for all your parts, wounded and healthy.

Often the “need” to be with someone or the desire to be close is a result of an insecure attachment style developed in childhood, rather than a feeling of love and connectedness. As humans it’s a necessity to feel love and belonging but there’s a difference between those needs and the craving and desire that stems from woundedness. Standing in our confidence and a secure sense of self, we can love others without grasping for their love in return. On the other hand, when there’s pain behind our love, we cling to the desire that the other loves us back. If they do, we feel at ease, but it’s a false sense of security reliant on their unpredictable actions. And no one can be loving one-hundred percent of the time.  If they don’t direct love and caring towards us we may feel broken, scared, or unworthy. The truth is, each one of us is loveable and worthy of love. Our upbringing may have told us otherwise, especially if we had parents who were unable to mirror our divine spark and lovability back to us. If such were the case we may feel unloveable or inferior and we come to take on these qualities, often unconsciously, as part of our identity. We come to look to others for validation as our fragile identity was formed from a place of lack.

Healing our attachment wounds isn’t an easy undertaking. Our emotional development is so deeply etched into our psyche to the point that it becomes the lens through which we see the world. It’s like the air we breathe, so prevalent we don’t even know it’s there. The first step is therefore recognizing discomfort in our relationships. Once we recognize this we can acknowledge our emotions and allow them to exist without the need to push them away. The pain is a messenger, alerting us to where we are stuck – where we didn’t receive the love we needed in childhood to thrive. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, though your mind may tell you that. After we recognize and allow, we may be able to listen. Listen to the pain of the child within; compassionately acknowledge how they are hurting and inquire into what they need from us. If we can come to see our pain as that of our child rather than there being something wrong with our person, we become better able to attend to the needs of that child. To give ourselves the love we so desperately needed but never received growing up. As we become more adept at this process, our clinging to the love of others dissolves. Yes, we still need to feel loved but we receive that love from a place of warmth and caring that comes from our soul, rather than a place of a lack that comes from our woundedness.