Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab

Anxiously attached? This is why you're at risk of codependency

Sarah Alsawy-Davies

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Let’s develop relationship fitness and cultivate fulfilling, secure, and loving relationships.

Specialising in relationships, attachment problems and trauma bonding, Dr Sarah is on a mission to help you end negative cycles, create a secure relationship template, improve communication, rebuild trust, and strengthen emotional intimacy. Stop self-sabotaging behaviours now and begin to self-actualise.

Working with business leaders, entrepreneurs, high achievers and perfectionists. Whether you are wanting to strengthen your current relationship and save your marriage, or you are healing from heartbreak to start a fresh, set yourself up for relationship success.

Get marriage counselling near you in person or online, sign up to one of Dr Sarah's luxury retreats, and continue your path to success.

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This constant need for somebody else to be by your side. And your identity becomes very much entangled with that identity. It's almost like you no longer exist as a full human being. Even though you might talk yourself into, you know, yeah, no, I kind of know that I am and did. But actually you very much merge with your partner and you become whatever it is that they are. Like, there is no line that distinguishes you and that becomes really confusing. And that becomes really unhealthy because what that also means is that. If your partner is feeling okay, then you can breathe a sigh of relief. But if your partner is not okay, because of whatever reason that doesn't have anything to do with you, maybe it's their work. Maybe it's a family. Maybe it's a friend's, whatever it is. If they're not feeling okay, you emotionally plummets. And you are working really, really, really hard to fix their emotions, but you're actually doing it in order to fix your emotions. And so it's really confusing to figure out how it is that you're actually going about this relationship or what it is that you're doing, because ultimately you become immeshed with this other being, and you lose your own sense of self. They lose their own sense of self. Because guest's waltz. If you're anxiously attached and you meet somebody who's securely attached. They're not going to want to maintain this relationship long term. And the reason being is because it's exhausting for them because they are saying, Hey, I'm feeling this thing and it's not about you and I need you to be patient or this or that. And actually it's really intolerable for you if you're anxiously attached. So you are going to constantly be pursuing. And they are going to want to parts from that because it's just a way to overwhelming and secure people. Naturally get attracted to other securely attached people. That that's the only template that works for them. But let's say you're anxiously attached and you enter this relationship and. You are constantly trying to make sure that your partner is okay, so that you feel okay. That's something that's a really common sign. Let's talk about another form of emotional regulation, which is actually known as emotional outsourcing. So emotional outsourcing is when you feel really anxious, you feel really disturbed. You feel distressed by something. You don't know what to do with that. And it's like this ball of tense energy that is physically inside of your guts or your chest. And you guess it. And you launch it at your partner in hope that they can solve it because you don't know what to do with this solution. And so you launch it at your partner. And you say he go, I feel this, I feel this. I feel this on you all looking at them to solve it so that they can eliminate that emotion for you. And give you something else that is wrapped up in a nice little package with a beautiful bow on top. And you can have that in return. But what you're doing there is you're asking your partner to rescue you. Emotionally all the time. And what you're doing in that moment is you are perpetually disabling yourself because you are never learning the skill. Of regulating your emotions. You are never lending the skill that you are, adults enough that you want big enough, that you've actually reached the stage of your life, where. You should be able to deal with your emotions. You've never been able to have the opportunity because what you've done is you have either. Regulated in versus quotes your emotions by making sure that your partner is always okay. And that they're always happy and you're avoiding upsetting them and you're avoiding them being upset by anything else. And, you know, you're scrambling around all the time trying to make sure that your other half is okay. And you're doing that as a way of you feeling okay. But actually that's never anything to do with your emotions, your kind of clutching onto straws here. Because like I said before, You no longer exist, you are part of them. You become immeshed with them. There is no defensive line between who you are and who they also you'll literally scrambling around trying to make sure that they're okay all the time. That's the way that you've learnt to feel emotionally safe. Or if it doesn't work and you don't know what to do with your own emotions, because you've experienced something, let's say it was your work or your friends or your family or something that happened to you. And you as a consequence, felt really distressed and. Really anxious, intense. You don't know what to do with that, because the only way that you know, how to calm yourself down is by calming other people down. But when it comes to yourself, what do you do? They don't, she, you take that emotional tension, that emotional distress, and you give it to your partner to fix for you. And what would you do if your partner wasn't that? Let's say if I came and I had a magic Teresa and I just erased your partner out of the picture frame. You would feel terrified. You wouldn't know what to do. It's almost like you've lost a limb. And there's this big void in your life. And that feels really, really daunting. Because in that moment, you feel like you've just dropped. And. You. Can't let go of this relationship. Because this relationship, this other person. Makes up who you are or who you believe you all. And that's because you've never really self discovered. You really struggle with that sense of identity in terms of who you are. What your real values are. What do you like, what do you dislike?