Can your attachment style affect your business?
This time last year my business was thriving, but I was drained.
Every time a student emailed me I felt stressed.
Omg, what did I miss? What typo did they find?
Oh man, they don’t know how to find the course and it’s my fault.
Ughh, they sent a five-paragraph email about all their struggles and it’s my job to remedy every single one.
I thought it was my perfectionism, but now I know it was a manifestation of my attachment style.
Attachment theory explains how we relate to others. Do we take too much responsibility and micromanage our clients? Do we surrender responsibility and blame others instead of being proactive? Do we feel confused and flip-flop between both?
I wanted to be a teacher who showed up fully and who trusted my students to do the same. I loved the online courses I was creating, but the way I was interacting with students was making the process exhausting.
These above scenarios are examples of the 4 attachment styles.
Attachment Style: The Ways we get our needs met as children which affects the way we get our needs met and relate to others as adults.
The 4 Attachment Styles
1 ) Anxious Attachment: You strive to be seen and appreciated.
In work, you might overdo it, people please, and become what you need to be if it means getting your client’s approval.
If you’re an anxiously attached person, you might heavily rely on the opinions of clients because you don’t quite trust your own opinion without that extra seal of approval. You may also feel that as long as you don’t have the right opinions on your side, you’ll never succeed because there’s an underlying self-doubt.
2) Avoidant Attachment: You might have an underlying sense that clients or colleagues are unreliable and need micromanaging.
If you’re an avoidant attachment style, you might feel that other people get in the way of your efficiency. You might overdo your work (not as a way to please but) because you don’t trust clients and colleagues to do the work themselves.
You might feel anxious when a client needs you because you learned from a young age that other people are needy and will take take take without giving anything in return.
3) Anxious Avoidant or Disorganized Attachment: A disorienting mix of both insecure attachment styles (above).
You might unpredictably seesaw between both scenarios.
At one moment, you might feel highly doubtful of yourself, desperate for the opinions, approval, or direction of clients. But, as soon as you get approval, you don’t trust it. Will they turn on you at any moment? Will they pay you and then deeply regret it and write a scathing review?
Disorganized attachment is rare. Even though you might resonate with some of the signs, it’s usually a product of growing up with a parent who is severely mentally ill or had a drug abuse problem that made them very unpredictable in how they showed up for you.
Most of you are either anxiously attached or avoidant.
If you’re lucky, you’re the fourth attachment style: Secure.
4) Secure Attachment:
When you are secure, you believe you have everything it takes to make your goals happen. You also trust that others have what it takes to show up and do their end of the work.
You easily balance a 50/50 reciprocal relationship with clients and colleagues.
You don’t feel the need to micromanage, because why would you micromanage someone who is self-reliant and responsible?
You’re probably securely attached if you had emotionally stable parents who met your needs consistently and empowered you to meet your needs on your own … instilling unshakable confidence in yourself and others.
If you didn’t grow up with that level of security it’s ok.
It’s normal.
It’s why I’m devoting an entire week to healing insecure Attachment Styles in my Heal Your Inner Child Workshop.
Ask yourself:
Which attachment style am I?
Which childhood experiences instilled this attachment style… whether it was not trusting myself or not trusting my caregivers?
I love my parents, but they were traumatized and grieving. They couldn’t always meet my needs or instill unconditional confidence.
The beauty of inner child work is that you can go back in time and be the parent you need.
Try these exercises:
Exercise for Anxious Attachment: Do you crave the approval of others to feel good about your work? If so, practice validating yourself. When you feel insecure, place your hand on your heart and ask yourself how old the feeling is. It’s probably a tween version of you that’s lacking confidence. What do they need to hear? What supportive words can you send their way? What they needed to hear THEN is probably what you need to hear NOW. The more you encourage your insecure inner child, the more secure you will feel as an adult.
Then tap away the imprint of memories that created this lack of self-trust in the first place.
Exercise for Avoidant Attachment (like me): Do you feel that if you don’t do it, no one else will? If so, practice delegating responsibility. The more you delegate, the more you’ll reprogram the belief that you have to do everything on your own.
Then learn to tap away the imprint of memories that created this lack of trust in the first place. I’m excited to do this in the supportive container with my workshop students.
Disorganized Attachment requires more in-depth training since it’s usually rooted in trauma. If you have access to my Inner Child course, you can find a full training on healing attachment styles.
What happened when I healed my attachment style?
The more I practiced delegating trust to others the more I learned that my clients and students would DO THE WORK when I stopped doing the work for them.
When I tapped through the belief that my clients needed hand-holding they suddenly doing the work, asking powerful questions, and taking the work into the world in ways I couldn’t imagine.
When I tapped through memories of having to be the adult (when I should have been the kid), I learned to surrender unnecessary responsibility. Like magic, I no longer had to send multiple reminder emails about expiring Sessions or workshop pre-work: They were taking initiative.
They no longer mirrored the adults in my childhood (who acted more like children).
As my inner world changed, my outer world, changed.
When I got a long email from struggling clients, I no longer felt responsible. I felt excited for them and all the ways they could begin working on themselves.
When a student couldn’t find a resource, instead of feeling a perfectionistic pit in my stomach, I would easily type an email telling them how to find it.
If a client didn’t use the last session in their package, it didn’t feel like rejection or lack of approval. It felt neutral: Maybe they just didn’t have the time or maybe they had grown so much they didn’t feel in need.
Knowing that a lot of my anxiety stemmed from an avoidant attachment style motivated me to reparent myself daily.
Reparenting is when you teleport back in time to care for yourself, mentor yourself, and meet your needs.
When you meet the needs of your younger self, you learn to feel secure: “I will always have what I need. Other people have what they need too.” As we learn to trust ourselves and others again, we see the fruit in our personal and professional relationships.
We’re spending an entire module reparenting a secure attachment in my Heal Your Inner Child Workshop. My intention: Tap back into the unshakable confidence most of us lose by the time we walk into school.
If you want to rewire the way you relate to clients, family, and lovers, come reparent yourself from womb to 21 at my Signature Heal Your Inner Child Workshop.
We meet on Zoom on January 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th @10 am -12:30 pm Pacific Standard Time.
If you want to come live, this is the last opportunity before I leave for maternity leave and take a year-long break from live offerings.
If you can’t come live, you get access to all classes, recordings, bonuses, and additions for life (just like live-attendance students).
Because I like to answer all of your unique questions and lead intimate one-to-one demos, I am capping the live attendance.
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