Attachment Styles Explained in Real Life (Secure, Anxious, Avoidant)

Have you heard of attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant)? Most people only understand them in theory. In this episode, I break down what they actually look and feel like in real life. How a secure connection feels steady, why anxious energy can feel intense and reactive, and the subtle ways avoidant behavior shows up early on. My goal here is to help you recognize these patterns so you can stop guessing, clearly see what’s happening in real time, and decide if a connection is actually worth your time and energy.

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Transcript

Speaker 0:04

Welcome back or welcome to the Securely You podcast. My name is CT. I help you understand why you love the way you do. You've heard about attachment styles? Secure, anxious, two different types of avoidants. Most of it gets talked about in a really conceptual way. And I want to use this episode to bring it home to ground it so that you can actually see it in real time. Before I start, I want to say this isn't about labeling somebody in two seconds or trying to diagnose the person that you're seeing or that you connect with in the future. It's more just being aware of the patterns and how people show up in connection. So I'll just bring it down secure, anxious, and avoidant. So with secure, they are consistent without you needing to think about it. There's no guessing, there's no games, there's no BS. You don't have to wonder when you're going to hear from them or where you stand. It just happens naturally. They address things instead of avoiding them. When something fills off, they're most likely going to say something, or at least acknowledge it. Maybe you don't take care of it right away in that moment. You're aware of it, they're aware of it, and there's an understanding around it, you know, that you'll come to a resolution or talk it through. There's nothing being brushed under the rug. And you feel relaxed around them. You're not overthinking what to say or replaying conversations, looking at your phone 24-7, looking at those messages and trying to decipher what does that emoji mean? Uh, what does that Instagram story like mean? Or anything like that. You're just in it together in a really cool space. Secure is always going to feel steady and not intense. You could meet somebody that's very intense, but then you may also be intense, and so then you feel steady together. It's not that intense is bad. I just want to throw that out there. Being intense isn't a bad thing. I'm a Scorpio, I'm a pretty intense kind of guy. Hell yes or no. But I just wanted to say it doesn't necessarily mean uh a negative. So again, secure connection, it's not gonna feel intense to you, it's gonna feel steady. Now, anxious is where things can feel really strong, but also really up and down. So with somebody that's anxious, they're gonna be looking for and needing a lot of reassurance. They might ask things like, are we still good? Do you still like me? Or just need confirmation through your actions. Their energy can shift quickly based on yours. Because and I I can speak from this from speak on this from experience because I once was anxious and working towards secure, is we are hyper-vigilant. We can see changes in other people in a very kind of under-the-radar way, it doesn't need to be big grandiose gestures, it can just be the way that somebody ends a phone call or ends a text or does this or doesn't do that. We can just feel those things immediately. So with somebody that's anxious, if you pull back even a little, they're gonna feel that immediately. And they may overthink those small changes. It may mean mean nothing to you. You may not even realize it, but they're gonna they're gonna notice that and pick up on that. And so if there's a slower response or a different tone, it's suddenly gonna mean something bigger to them than it may be to you. So it's just something to be aware of. With somebody that's anxious, it can feel really good when it's good, and then also a little overwhelming at times. Lastly, with avoidance, this is where I think it gets misunderstood the most, to be honest with you. Avoidance are gonna want to keep things at a certain distance, at a certain pace. Things feel can feel good, but there's always just a little bit of space that they're gonna try to put between you and the connection. They don't naturally go deeper. So you can talk, you can hang out, but it doesn't progress emotionally. I think this is really, really important because I didn't realize this before, and now I can see this really clearly, is when I have connected with avoidance in the past, and I'm feeling this cool connection, what I've noticed is I'm the one that's that was carrying that depth and carrying that emotional vulnerability of the connection. They're open to receiving that from me, but not necessarily participating in the co-creation of that. That doesn't mean that they won't. I'm just saying more from an early dating perspective, it's something to be aware of because they don't naturally go deeper. And if we we think about avoidance, I mean that that makes sense because they they have been taught their whole life to suppress emotions and vulnerability, not talk about it. So, like I've said in past episodes, it's a muscle that they haven't worked. So that makes sense. They wouldn't actually go deeper, but I just wanted to I want to explain this like real-world scenario because I think it makes a lot of sense and it's kind of missed in this. So you can talk depth, you can hang out, you can connect on like a deeper level, you can share some you know, emotions, vulnerability, all that stuff. And you actually may feel really good in the moment that they are meeting you there. But the key insight here is to look at how they're participating, view it, like see it from that lens, because they may receive it from you, but they're not actually co-creating and participating with you in that space. Not saying you have to go and share your innermost, deepest thoughts and feelings about the world right away, but uh I just think that that is something that to be aware of that you may, or at least in my perspective, in my experiences, it's been a case where I feel like they're receiving me and that feels really good in the moment, but they don't actually participate in that, and that is kind of a tell um that they may be leaning avoidant. Lastly, they pull back when things start to feel real. So when there's more consistency, there's more connection, that's usually when they want to create more distance. And that that's so confusing because you feel like, well, if we're getting closer, like why are you pulling away? Because it it feels like it feels invalidating to the connection, but in reality, it's because they are having more feelings for you, they're they're feeling things on a deeper level that then is making them feel the need to pull away. They don't want to lose themselves in the connection. So with an avoidant, it's not that they don't like you, it's that the closeness can feel uncomfortable for them. To bring it all together. The the point of this isn't to sit there and go, this person is anxious, this person is avoidant, you know, label and all those things. It's just, again, just noticing the patterns. I want we're living in a of a world of everything is so casual, non-committal, so surface level. Learning about attachment styles is really helpful, but it's only going to help when you can see it and feel it and diagnose it in real time, not just to understand it in theory. So it's my belief that if the generations after me have a much deeper understanding and can see those patterns at a much younger age, they won't even entertain connections and relationships that don't meet them where they need to be met, don't fulfill them in the ways that are meaningful to them. What I'm trying to say is that I knew then what I know now, then my relationships for the rest of my life would have been a thousand percent different. I'm super passionate about bringing this work to colleges. So if you know someone or if you're in college yourself, I mean you would like to have me come and do a workshop around these dynamics to guide, facilitate the conversation around these types of relationship dynamics, I would love to do that. You can reach out at my website, the mindfulspx at any time, or connect on social at the mindful spx. But either way, that's all I got for you today. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for listening. Until next time, take care of the