Book Review: "Attached" (CRITICAL depth review)

So I want to offer something a bit different today from our usual lesson because I spend a lot of my time reading and researching material that backs up what I teach on this channel and I want to do a review on this book attached because it's a very popular book that's being read by this community and I'm someone who's made the shift from anxious to secure myself and there are some really great points in this book but there are some pitfalls and I want to share with you these pitfalls so if you've read the book or you're about to read the book you'll know and I want you to watch the very end of the video because I'm going to share with you the mistakes that I made after reading this book and give you some really great tips on how to move forward with a better understanding of your attachment needs beyond the information in this book. Now if you're new to this channel welcome I'm Amy and I help women who struggle with insecurity, anxiety and low self-worth in relationships and I teach them to heal their past and connect to their true authentic self so they can create the healthy secure and loving relationship they desire and if you want more content on this topic please be sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the bell button so you get notified when I put up my new lessons twice a week. Now before we begin I want to announce that a few spots have opened up for the free one-to-one consult with me for the Love by Design program. Make sure you stick around to the very end of the video for the announcement on how to sign up for that. So if you're not aware of this book or haven't heard about attachment theory I want you to go check out this video in the link above which explains what attachment theory is and why it's not the be-all and end-all of solving your relationship problems and look I'm not dismissing this theory there are some incredible professionals out there who do fantastic work and my favorite channel is by far Alan Rabarge but it's a theory that's been put together from observable patterns over time it's a diagnosis not a cure and thinking it's a cure can really stall your healing. Now I'll go more into that in a minute but I want to dive into the great cornerstones that this book has to offer. It's a really great starting point if you're aware that you feel super anxious or needy and you have a pattern of attaching to partners that goes to you or pull away the first sign of conflicts and you have a habit of responding to them by pursuing them more which is the anxious style in this book or you're quick to find problems in someone and pull away and you just prefer your own space and you really want to wait for that perfect person who doesn't cause you any conflict and that's the avoidant tendency. So it's comforting to know that these patterns exist that it's not just you that makes you uncomfortable and unhappy in a relationship life and look we all love certainty right because there's not a lot of certainty when it comes down to finding a person that you're compatible with so there's a great little quiz that you can take in this book that will give you a quick diagnosis of your attachment style. There are some really cool stories that are relatable and look you'll probably feel like you're reading a biography of your own life at some point when you read it. You'll get a rundown of the three general types which are anxious avoidant and secure and there's also a chapter on the common push-pull dynamic between couples which they call the anxious avoidant trap. Now like I said there are some pitfalls in the way we can potentially read this book which is why I wanted to make this video for you because I don't want you to make the mistakes that I see some of my clients make which is this concept of fitting ourselves into a diagnosis. The book is not diagnosing you with a condition or a problem that you need to fix. We all have ways we attach to others and patterns of relating which is what the authors have grouped into these three styles. The patterns come from John Bowlby's original research into how children attach to their caregivers. You aren't going to be only either anxious or avoidant you're probably going to have attributes from both if you're insecure as well as sometimes being secure yourself depending on who you're with your partner can have a lot to do with them. So we really need to think of our attachment tendencies like they fall on a spectrum. Your pattern is going to shift and change throughout your life and it will be affected by the person you're with or your own internal resources and where you're at on your healing journey and if you've had trauma in your life and what that trauma was and how significant it was for you. This is not a static framework but a dynamic lens in which we can inquire into our own experiences and I really recommend you choose to extract information from attachment theory that really only applies to you. You see the origin of the anxious and avoidant style of relating is simply in our wiring. It's our fight or flight mechanism. Avoidant patterns are our flight response and anxious patterns are our fight response when you're pursuing the object of your affection far beyond what you should be. You're effectively fighting for that connection. So the point at which we perceive any threat to our connection with someone and we haven't learned the emotional intelligence and how to self-soothe and feel safe in our body and sit with uncomfortable emotions which is all the secure attachment style will get activated and go into either fight or or a combination of both. So there is some unpacking of this in the book but if you're too quick to put yourself or your partner in a box you might miss out on an opportunity to understand that all these patterns are actually natural and normal because attachment is a biologically wired need we all have. Our attachment to another person or to a community to feel belonging in that is essential for our survival. We can make a mistake after reading this book and think that we shouldn't be getting attached or we need to get rid of our attachment particularly if you're anxious and you fight for connection with someone. But the truth is your attachment needs must be met in order for you to survive. That is what your body is needing. So if you're suppressing that you might be causing a massive internal rift. If you suffer anxiety when your needs aren't met and you try and force or pursue people who aren't right for you there's some more healing work there to be done for you. Now there's this saying you're only as needy as your unmet needs. Now there's two sides of the coin to this statement and if you haven't heard me talk about the concept two sides of the coin before here's a link to a video on how to put boundaries around your emotions using this concept. So on the one side your basic needs must be met in and if they're not you're not going to feel safe on a biological level with that person which creates a whole host of problems for you in your relationship. On the other side of the coin you need to know how to meet your own needs particularly when you're not in relationship when you're single so that when you go into relationship you've got the internal resources to be creative when your partner can't meet your needs. Your partner is not superhuman no one is going to be able to be there for you all the time so we need to have this balance of having our relationship needs met and having the inner resources so that we can always meet our own needs regardless of what's going on in our relationship or life if there's any conflict or discomfort. Now that's a whole other lesson so please comment below if you want to know more about how to meet your own needs or really anything I've spoken about so far with this book I'd love to hear from you please comment below. And what this book only touches on a little bit is how to take responsibility for these fight-or-flight patterns your anxious or avoidant response tendencies. Rather than spending time on trying to figure out how you fit into these categories just use this knowledge to take ownership and responsibility for yourself. Acknowledge that your attachment needs are valid and in times of anxiety or avoidance you've been activated in some way at some level your threat system is working so get curious why is that what happened what got you triggered and what emotions come up asking these questions to yourself will lead you to know yourself better and where you're at in your healing journey because your internal warning system is exactly that it's telling you something is not right internally and if you don't do something about it set a boundary or walk away or unpack your trauma with a therapist your warning system is going to get louder and louder you can be sure and if you notice that you get triggered a lot at the moment in your current situation you are outside of your window of tolerance which is a term used to identify when we feel safe and when we don't feel safe so firstly look at the times in your life right now when you do feel safe in your life where are you who are you with are you on your own and then who are the people or the places and things that pull you outside of your window of tolerance you need to find ways to protect yourself and set boundaries so you can get back into your window of tolerance so healing can begin and if you don't ever feel safe or you've never felt safe with another person and you've never really felt safe in your body you need to start learning how to self-soothe how to bring your body out of the fight-flight response that your nervous system probably thinks is normal because you've been ignoring your internal signs for so long or you've been in fight-flight since you're a child so you need to learn how to let your body rest and give it nourishment help it relax and sleep well remind that it doesn't need to fight for your survival when you've been disconnected or disjointed internally and your head and heart haven't been in alignment for a long time it will take you a while to know what your needs truly are and you probably know what everyone else's needs are before you own you spend all of your time worrying about what everyone's needs are because you've been fighting to stay connected with people on a biological level so be kind to yourself get back inside your window of tolerance and learn what your body needs right now to feel safe and not activated in fight-flight now if you want to know more about that self-healing process and what i've talked about that the book doesn't really dive into i really recommend stan tapkins body of work and sue johnson's work around emotionally focused therapy or eft they've both provided me with a more holistic approach to self-healing and the power of building love and safety in a relationship and how powerful attachment can be and if you want to know more about how i've learned to heal my anxious attachment tendencies and the exact process i've used to do it i want you to join me in my free training to learn the exact three-step process on how to go from anxious and insecure to secure in relationships and you can sign up for that training in the description below you can also interact with me on a more personal level in my free facebook group and if you'd like to submit an application for the free one-to-one consult you can do that at the link in the description and please if you have any questions or any points about this about what i've talked about today and if you agree or disagree with how i've reviewed the book please leave a comment below i'd love to hear from you i will be in the comments and if you found this video helpful please hit the like button and subscribe to this channel to help us out and you'll also get notifications for more content like this because i post twice a week and in the meantime here are some great next step videos for you to watch so that you can move one step closer to an incredible relationship with yourself and the partner you desire for now i'll see you in the next video