Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It (9 page)

Mentalizing can sound complicated; and in some ways it is. But you already practice it in your life when considering your emotions as you think about why you do what you do, or why others do what they do. In the next chapter I will offer exercises to specifically develop your mentalizing ability.

Self-awareness—which includes awareness of emotions, awareness of thoughts, and mentalizing—is a powerful tool, but it can’t help you by itself. So let’s take a look at the other half of the formula for making effective, lasting change—self-compassion.

People don’t just
understand
themselves or
have
emotions or
think
thoughts; they
relate to
these experiences. When people accept themselves and befriend their emotions, it is natural for them to treat themselves with kindness and relate to themselves with
self-compassion
. Although people don’t talk much about
self
-compassion, they often do talk about compassion, which is something you feel for someone else who is in pain. It involves putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, or having empathy, and wanting to alleviate their suffering. Self-compassion is simply taking that same stance with yourself.

Researcher Kristin Neff (2008) is at the forefront of exploring self-compassion and its implications. She defines it as having three main parts:
self-kindness
,
common humanity
, and
mindfulness
.

Self-Kindness

This is just what it sounds like—being kind to yourself. People who embrace this quality are gentle with themselves when they experience pain, failure, or inadequacy. Rather than becoming angry with or critical of themselves in these circumstances, they respond with understanding and gentleness. They have a desire to treat themselves well, not just to fulfill immediate gratification, but to be healthy, happy people for the long term. So, while they are kind and accepting of themselves in the moment, they are also motivated to change for the better.

These last points are extremely important. Many people fear that self-kindness might lead to being lazy or complacent, or letting themselves off the hook too easily. But true self-compassion—like compassion in general—is not merely a pursuit of immediate gratification. Consider some well-known compassionate people whom you probably think of with respect: Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela. Their great compassion inspired them to work persistently in helping others experience a greater sense of well-being—and achieving ambitious goals can be part of that. In the same way,
self
-compassion will naturally inspire you to pursue inner growth.

It’s also important to understand that being self-kind does not mean being selfish. When you are self-kind, you care very much about other people as well as about your own needs. However, this sometimes means focusing on your own pain first. Christopher Germer (2009, 89) expresses this well in his book
The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion
: “In a room full of people, it makes sense to help the person who’s suffering the most, the one we know best, the one we’re most capable of helping. Sometimes that person is you…”

Common Humanity

This is the recognition that all people share common experiences, such as pain and suffering, weaknesses and imperfections. By feeling connected to others in this way, people feel less isolated and less lonely. They realize that their problems are just part of being human, and that these difficulties do not mean that there is something essentially wrong with them. So rather than being mired in self-pity, those with a strong sense of common humanity tend to feel more okay (though not necessarily happy) about their struggles.

Mindfulness

This is a nonjudgmental awareness of thoughts and feelings without attachment to them. Unlike the discussion of awareness of thoughts and feelings in the “Self-Awareness” section above, mindfulness focuses more on the process of awareness—how you approach and treat your experiences—than on exploring and differentiating the experiences themselves. When you are mindful, you are truly in the moment. You accept experiences without the need to deny, suppress, or exaggerate them. You also have perspective on your experiences, more self-compassion, and a greater sense of well-being during stressful times.

The benefits of mindfulness become especially apparent when you consider what happens when people are
not
mindful. For instance, people who are easily triggered to feel overwhelmed with a sense of rejection often lose perspective and overly identify with their thoughts and feelings. They react by being clingy or lashing out in anger. In both cases, they push their partners further away—the opposite of the closeness that they really crave. And if they try to suppress their negative feelings, those feelings often come back with even greater intensity. By contrast, if these people learned to be more mindful, they would feel less overwhelmed, even amid distressing feelings, and could understand themselves and their reactions better. As a result, they could respond in healthier, more constructive ways—such as by talking with their partners about their struggles and directly asking for reassurance (Wallin, 2007).

As Neff (2008) emphasizes, self-compassion cannot occur without self-kindness, common humanity,
and
mindfulness. People must experience self-kindness; they must be motivated to act on their own behalf toward a sense of well-being. They must understand and feel that they are part of a common humanity in which every person struggles just as they do. And, finally, they must be mindful so that they can be aware of their experiences without being overwhelmed by them. Together, these three elements can help you to nurture a positive sense of yourself, a greater sense of security with your partner, and a more effective way to address issues in your relationship.

Exercise: What’s Your Level of Self-Compassion?

Given the importance of self-compassion in alleviating attachment-related anxiety, you may find it helpful to assess yourself in each of the elements that make it up: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. On a scale of 1-5, rate how well you identify with the statements in an area. Then divide this by the number of statements in each area to get your final rating for the area.

Self-Kindness

___________ You are accepting and gentle with yourself in response to your imperfections or inadequacies.

___________ You are accepting and gentle with yourself when you make mistakes.

___________ You are caring and nurture yourself when you are hurting or emotionally upset.

___________ You want to treat yourself well so you can be happy in the long term.

Total: ___________ ÷ 4 = ___________

Common Humanity

___________ You believe others have weaknesses, imperfections, or inadequacies just like you do.

___________ You can see your struggles as part of being human; you realize that you are not alone in them.

___________ When upset, you can remember that other people sometimes have similar struggles and feelings.

___________ Remembering that other people sometimes have similar struggles and feelings helps you to feel less alone.

Total: ___________ ÷ 4 = ___________

Mindfulness

___________ You can accept your thoughts and feelings without judging them—even when upset.

___________ You can accept your thoughts and feelings without denying, suppressing, or exaggerating them.

___________ You can experience your emotions without becoming overly identified with them and losing perspective.

___________ When upset or during challenging times, you try to maintain a healthy perspective.

Total: ___________ ÷ 4 = ___________

The higher your score for an area (the highest score being a 5), the stronger you are in it. Keep these scores in mind when you consider the exercises in chapter 7: Creating Self-Compassion. For any areas of weakness, you might choose to focus more on the exercises that target strengthening them.

Benefits of Self-Compassion

To better understand the benefits of self-compassion, consider this example: Dan is at a party with his date Jill and her friends. He doesn’t know much about art, which is what most of their careers or interests seem to revolve around. Rather than risk losing Jill’s respect by saying the wrong thing, he totally shuts down and doesn’t say a word.
He relates to his experience of confusion with fear of being seen as incompetent.
By contrast, Lucas—who is with his girlfriend Sophie at the opening of an art show, though he knows little about art—isn’t worried about being viewed as incompetent. He accepts that all people have strengths and weaknesses.
He relates to his confusion about how to proceed by acknowledging his limitations.
So he asks thoughtful questions, appreciates the insights offered, and feels good about the knowledge he gains. Not surprisingly, Dan wins no allies among Jill’s friends, who view him as distant; while Lucas enjoys a pleasant evening with Sophie and her friends, who enjoy sharing their expertise with a willing and eager audience.

Lucas, who is securely attached, enjoyed a childhood of feeling accepted and comforted by his parents. He took in all of these positive interactions and developed a mental representation of his parents (his attachment figures). This mental representation naturally “steps in” when, as an adult, he feels uncomfortable or threatened in any way, reassuring him that he is a worthy person.

By contrast, Dan was raised by loving parents, but they were not able to consistently comfort his anxieties as a child. Still, he generally felt happy in relationships until his last year of college, when he developed his first serious relationship with Susan. She was highly critical and eventually cheated on him with his friend; and then she dumped him. Since that time—especially with women—he has tended to be self-critical, to feel extremely anxious with women, and to feel particularly fearful of, and vulnerable to, rejection. His way of coping with this was to keep quiet so that he didn’t reveal his inadequacies and could hopefully avoid rejection. This often backfired because women felt they couldn’t connect with him.

If—like Dan—you tend to doubt your worth and be judgmental of yourself, research in self-compassion offers you some good news. There’s strong evidence that self-compassion is related to the ability to see reality more objectively, have insight, and be motivated to achieve personal growth—all of which can help you overcome your tendency to self-verify your attachment-related anxiety. In support of this, there’s also evidence that self-compassion can help you to feel more socially connected, more satisfied with life, and to have a greater sense of well-being (Baera, Lykins, and Peters, 2012; Barnard and Curry, 2011).

Importantly, with self-compassion, you feel worthy of happiness, love, and affection even after failure, or when facing your limitations or weaknesses. So, in a sense, you can’t lose. You can put yourself out there, risk failure, wrestle with personal demons, and continue to view yourself positively as someone who is learning and growing. The result is a happier you with greater chances for a happier relationship. (I say greater
chances
for a happier relationship because, no matter what you do, you still need your partner to work with you to nurture a successful relationship.)

If you find it hard to be compassionate toward your own struggles, then you need to develop compassionate self-awareness. Each part of compassionate self-awareness provides an essential element to getting unstuck. To review, the main elements are self-awareness and self-compassion.

Self-Awareness

Awareness of emotions

• Identification of your emotions
  
• Conscious experience of your emotions
  

Awareness of thoughts

• Objective awareness of thoughts
  
• Allowing yourself to see how you perpetuate your attachment-related anxiety
  

Mentalizing

• Maintaining intellectual perspective about yourself while remaining emotionally connected to your experiences
  
• A reflective stance that allows you to consider possible reasons for your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, as well as those of your partner
  
• Understanding how your way of perceiving yourself and your partner might be biased
  

Self-Compassion

• Acceptance of yourself
  
• Compassionate response to your distress
  

People high in self-compassion go through times of pain and difficulty just like everyone else. They need help from others; they need connection, support, and advice. However, they have several distinct advantages. They are more accepting of themselves; they are better at nurturing healthy relationships; they can make better use of appropriate advice or feedback when they make mistakes or are struggling with particular problems; and they are more resilient.

If you do not have much self-compassion, you—unfortunately—cannot just will it to exist. However, through compassionate self-awareness, you can develop it and nurture a greater happiness within yourself and within your relationship. If you are not in a relationship, it can still help you to feel positively about yourself, as well as to approach finding a partner in a more effective way.

To clarify how this works, consider Peter. He is a forty-five-year-old bachelor who would like to marry. When he meets Amanda, he is enamored of her and decides to totally devote himself to this new relationship. He pours himself out to her, hopeful that she will accept and love him. He is able to be so open, in part, because he overrides and tries to ignore his fears that she might reject him. With time, however, he is aware that he’s beginning to feel distant from her (awareness of emotions). He’s conscious of being critical of her. He thinks things like, “She can be really annoying,” or “It’s not much fun spending time with her” (awareness of thoughts). At first he thinks that maybe there’s just not enough chemistry. But when she cannot get together with him one night, he misses her desperately, fears she’ll leave, and is anxious to win her love again (awareness of emotions and thoughts). At that point he realizes (with the help of mentalizing) that the problem is not a lack of chemistry between them. He can see that he has instinctively protected himself from getting hurt by being critical of her. With this insight, he can view his feelings and actions as understandable and human (self-compassion). So rather than ending the relationship as he had been considering, he has a new option—to face his fear of rejection. After much support and encouragement from friends, he talks to her about this fear, allowing himself to be truly vulnerable. This leads to them working together on building emotional intimacy—a connection beyond just sharing the details of their lives.

Without awareness of thoughts and feelings, mentalizing, and self-compassion, Peter’s story might not have ended so well. He might have concluded that there was simply no chemistry and broken up with Amanda. Or even if they had married, he would most likely have vacillated between being critical and distant, on one hand, and passionately engaged in trying to win her over or reassure himself of her love, on the other. Alternatively,
she
might have felt a lack of connection with him and eventually broken off the relationship. If he were still unaware of his struggle when she did this, he would have been left confused, unable to understand what went wrong. And if this was a long-standing pattern for him, he might then have questioned what was wrong with him that was constantly causing him to be rejected.

Compassionate self-awareness is effective because it provides a way for people to work
with
their inner conflicts, as Peter did. If you are extremely upset about some issues in your relationship, you or your partner demanding that you “stop worrying” won’t fix anything. It might even intensify your feelings—turning them into a tsunami that will overwhelm any positive effort to address the problems at hand. At times like this, compassionate self-awareness can help you to understand your struggles and approach them in a caring, gentle manner—ultimately allowing you to nurture the relationship you want.

I can think of no more succinct or more eloquent way to describe compassionate self-awareness than this statement (widely attributed to playwright August Wilson): “Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.”

In the next two chapters, I will help you with just that. Chapter 6 provides guidance for how to illuminate your inner experiences—the dark and not so dark ones. Chapter 7 offers suggestions for learning to approach yourself with forgiveness and compassion.