Are You Securely Attached to Yourself?

When it comes to your relationships, do you bend over backward to please others in the hope that they’ll love you in return? Do you play it cool and silence your needs in the hope others will respect and admire how reasonable you are? Or are you able to interact in ways that embody trust and love for yourself and others?

“When we’ve grown up with predictable, reliable, loving relationships with our parents or caregivers, we learn from an early age that we are worthy of love, even when we’re struggling,” explained Sue Marriott, a clinical social worker and co-author of Secure Relating: Holding Your Own in an Insecure World, when we interviewed her recently. “This leaves us with the gift of a more regulated and connected nervous system that makes it easier to trust yourself and others.”

Studies estimate only 51.6 percent of children grow up securely attached, so what does this mean for the rest of us?

“No matter what our attachment history looks like, we can learn how to securely relate to ourselves and others,” reassured Sue. “By discovering how to support your nervous system as it fluctuates between your connection circuit—when you feel secure and want to bond with others—and your protection circuit—when you feel insecure and threatened by others—you can build the self-awareness and skills you need to stay grounded and connected with anyone. We call this ‘secure relating.’”

"Secure relating" is a state of mind—a way of thinking, feeling, and behaving—that helps us embody trust and love. Sue recommended visualizing the changes in your nervous system along a spectrum of colors:

• The Green Zone: This is your "secure relating" sweet spot in the middle of the spectrum where the temperature of your attachment system is just right. Your mind and body feel safe enough to allow your connection circuit to draw you toward exploration, bonding, and belonging. You can relax in your own company or with others, and even if you experience moments of struggle, you can approach your uncomfortable feelings with curiosity, compassion, and care. As a result, you neither abandon yourself or others when things get hard. We like to imagine a safety dial sitting at the base of our brain, with the arrow pointing straight up when we’re in the Green Zone. In this position, the blood and oxygen flow smoothly through to the thinking part of our brains—the prefrontal cortex—ensuring our curiosity, creativity, compassion, and flexibility are fully functioning. Tuning into where our brain’s safety dial is pointing has become a quick and easy way for us to gauge whether our connection circuits are online or not.

• The Red Zone: This is the far right of the spectrum where you turn up your attachment system. When your mind and body feel threatened, your protection circuit experiences upregulation, which intensifies your attention, emotions, and actions. Fearful and anxious that your connections are cooling, you try to heat up your relationships by abandoning your own emotional needs in favor of urgently pleasing or pleading with others, regardless of the costs or consequences. We’ve found it helpful to imagine our people-pleasing tendencies escalating from pink (“Please love me”) to fiery red (“Why won’t you love me?”) as we feel increasingly abandoned and our feelings toward the other person become more urgent. When we realize our brain’s safety dial is pointing to the right, we’ve learned it’s important to take a "cool pause" and bring the temperature of our mind and bodies down through breathwork, rehydrating, or bathing so we can do our own inner work.

• The Blue Zone: This is the far left of the spectrum where you turn down your attachment system. When your mind and body feel vulnerable, your protection circuit experiences downregulation, which causes you to avoid emotional connections. Scared and worried that your relationships are demanding too much, you cool your connections by silencing your own needs in favor of protecting yourself and others from honest conversations. We’ve found it helpful to imagine our protection tendencies dropping from turquoise (“I’m fine!”) to deep navy blue (“Leave me alone!”) as we feel increasingly vulnerable and turn away from others. When we realize our brain’s safety dial is pointing to the left, we’ve learned it’s important to "find a bridge" by realizing we have isolated ourselves on an emotional island and asking someone to help us find our way back to connection.

“When you move out of the Green Zone, it’s because your nervous system is doing what it learned was healthy and adaptive when you were growing up,” explained Sue. “So, when you find yourself in the Red or Blue Zones because your protective circuits have been turned on, try not to blame or shame yourself. Instead, see if you can experience what’s happening with openness and curiosity and let your mind and body know you can handle what’s unfolding. This is how you can build your ‘secure relating’ capabilities over time.”

A version of this post also appears on Substack. For more tips and tools on how we can hold our own in relationships, listen to the full podcast.