ATTACHMENT DISORDER: INSECURITY ABOUT BEING LOVED Are you struggling with relationships? Or have a partner who doesn’t seem to be able to connect with you? Perhaps you’re dealing with attachment disorder. Adults with insecure attachment don’t have enough experience of love, so they don’t recognize it when someone loves them, they can’t commit, or they cling way too hard, and expect the partner to do all the loving. They don’t feel loveable or connected to anyone, including themselves. They often have a wounded inner child, left over from a dysfunctional early life. By-products of insecure attachment can be alcoholism, promiscuity, or agoraphobia. Because the cure for attachment disorder is learning to connect with self, the current focus on imitation of others via TikTok and other social media can make attachment disorder worse. As an adult, you can change your attachment style and develop secure attachment. You need to start by learning to connect with yourself. 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health takes you, the reader through journaling prompts designed to correct your attachment to yourself, enhance your ability to love and improve your mental health. I have helped many clients develop more secure attachment, and consequently, healthier relationships and a happier life. To begin improving your attachment style: 1.Take a break from audio input. Take some time off from being constantly wired for sound: take off the earbuds, turn off the TV or radio disconnect from social media and just be with you and with other people without all those distractions. There is a time and place for a soundtrack, but it shouldn’t be drowning out your interactions with yourself and with others. 2. Practice asking your own opinion. What do you think about what’s going on? How do you feel about it? What do you want to do? Learn to pay attention to your own wants and needs and feelings. Try beginning each day with a planning session: what you do want to get out of the day, and how do you plan to do it. Is anything coming up today that could be a problem? How do you want to approach it? Try ending each day with a debriefing session: review your day, and have a discussion with yourself about how it went, what you will do differently next time. 3. When you’re around other people, practice really paying attention to them, and to how you feel about being with them. This may change your relationships drastically, but it will be a change for the better. Listen to others’ opinions, wants, feelings, and also know your own. 4. Allow yourself some “down time” from constant activity and stimulation. Learn to meditate or just relax and focus on the moment. Learn to still the mindless chatter in your head, and create calm there. Negative self-talk brings you down and distracts you from actually being present in your own life. At first, all this may feel very awkward and uncomfortable. You’re used to drowning these things out. But, you’ll get results quickly, and feel calmer, more relaxed and less anxious when you’re alone and when you’re with others. Loneliness will transform in to being with yourself, and you’ll never be lonely again, whether others are with you or not. ©Tina B. Tessina, 2023. Adapted from: 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health: A Guided Workbook for Self-exploration and Growth Author Bio: Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D.is a licensed psychotherapist in S. California since 1978 with over 40 years’ experience in counseling individuals and couples and author of 15 books in 17 languages, including Dr. Romance’s Guide to Finding Love Today; It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction; The Ten Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After Forty; The Real 13th Step; How to Be Happy Partners: Working it Out Together; How to Be a Couple and Still Be Free; Money, Sex and Kids, and her newest, 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health. She writes the “Dr. Romance” blog, and the “Happiness Tips from Tina” email newsletter. Online, she’s known as “Dr. Romance.” Dr. Tessina appears frequently on radio, TV, video and podcasts. She tweets @tinatessina.
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