Why You're Clingy (Or Why They're Cold) - Attachment Styles Explained

Do you find yourself being "too clingy" in relationships? Or maybe you're with someone who shuts down emotionally? You're not broken – you just have an attachment style.

In this eye-opening conversation with certified attachment practitioner Bev Middleman, discover why your relationships keep following the same exhausting patterns and how to finally break free.

What you'll learn:

• Why anxious people don't trust themselves but trust everyone else
• How avoidant partners learned that emotional connection equals danger
• The "hot and cold" fearful-avoidant pattern that creates the most relationship chaos
• Why half of North Americans struggle with attachment issues (and don't even know it)

Bev reveals the childhood experiences that create each attachment style and shares practical strategies for healing. Whether you're the one constantly seeking reassurance or you're frustrated with a partner who won't open up, this episode explains the "why" behind these patterns.

The breakthrough moment: Learning that attachment styles aren't permanent. As Bev says, "Love is learned. We learn how to love ourselves, we learn how to love others" – at any age.

If you've ever felt like you're repeating the same relationship mistakes, struggling with vulnerability, or walking on eggshells around emotions, this conversation offers hope and a clear path forward.

Ready to understand your attachment style? Take Bev's free quiz at securelyloved.com

Perfect for anyone tired of relationship patterns that don't serve them.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Attachment Styles
• 8:15 Understanding Secure vs. Insecure Attachment
• 14:20 Anxious Attachment: Chasing Connection
• 21:45 Avoidant Attachment: Maintaining Distance
• 28:45 Fearful Avoidant: The Complex Hybrid
• 36:15 Trauma's Impact on Attachment
• 42:30 Healing Your Attachment Style
• 48:45 Physical Touch and Communication
• 52:00 Final Reflections and Resources

Transcript

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 0:00

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. I'm your host, nat Nat, and today, as I said, we are changing the style of the podcast and I'm bringing people with different modalities, different practices, and today we are going to talk about attachment styles, and some might be like wait, I thought we're supposed to do connection, not attachment. Yet Bev is going to explain what she provides for her clients and have a better understanding of what your triggers possibly might be. And before we dive in, you, the listener, please help support the podcast. Could you like share and leave a comment so that we can grow the community and this conversation can land with somebody that actually really needs it. So, as we dive in, bev is going to introduce herself and let us know a little bit about who she is. So, bev, take the stage, please.

Bev Middleman: 0:52

Excellent, thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you and your audience. Thank you for the opportunity. So my name is Bev Middleman. I'm a certified attachment practitioner, and what that means is I work with people who have attachment issues, and in our community in North America, it's about half of the population who has some issues around attachment. So we're going to dive into what attachment actually is. But I tripped over this work many years ago when I was trying to understand my own mind and trying to understand why did I think the way I did, why did I behave the way that I did? And this particular work was so helpful and impactful for me that I dedicated my time, and people have to know about this that I dedicated my time and people have to know about this.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 1:48

So, before we do a deep dive, will you join me in a mindful moment so we can?

Bev Middleman: 1:51

ground ourselves With pleasure.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 1:53

And, as the listeners, you know what I always say safety first. So if you're driving or need your visuals, please don't close your eyes Yet the other prompts you're able to follow. So, bev, I'll ask you to get comfortable in your seating and, if it's safe to do so, you're going to gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose, bringing your awareness to watching your breath. You're not going to try and control the rhythm, you're just going to be aware of it, allowing it to guide you into your body. There may be some feelings or sensations that come up. That's okay, let them come up. You're safe to feel. You're safe to let go, surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be, be with your breath, drop deeper into your body. Now.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 3:00

There may be some thoughts or to-do lists that have popped up. That's okay. Gently, bring your awareness back to your breath, creating space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping deeper into your body, being in the space of being, of presence. Again, more thoughts may have popped up. Gently, bring your awareness back to your breath, creating even more space between the awareness and the thoughts and completely dropping into the body, surrendering into presence, being in the space of being now, keeping that awareness on your breath and coming into your senses at your own time and at your own pace. You're going to gently open your eyes while staying with the breath. How's your heart doing?

Bev Middleman: 4:20

good, it was calm, peaceful a sense of warmth.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 4:24

So I know many listeners are like okay, what is this attachment style and can you explain what these issues are?

Bev Middleman: 4:31

I absolutely can, and I want to say it is so relevant to what we just experienced together, and thank you for taking us through that exercise. The biggest thing about attachment styles is that our attachment style has a great impact on our personality needs, our communication style, our emotional patterns, our relationship to boundaries and on trust and our ability to emotionally regulate. And so our ability to emotionally regulate is a skill right, a skill that I learned much later in life and I wish they taught it in school. They don't, but it is very much tied to attachment styles. So I just wanted to make that connection for your audience before we dive into this.

Bev Middleman: 5:26

So attachment styles really is learned behavior. Just like you know, we learn emotional regulation. We learn how to interact with others. So essentially it's a template in our mind that gets created from the earliest interactions that we have with our caregivers. Like very, very young, like up until about five years old, we are most suggestible and those interactions form this template in our minds for how we interact and give and receive love, like a set of rules, right? So we have two broad categories. We have folks who are securely attached and folks who are insecurely attached, and in the insecurely attached bracket. We've got a bunch of subcategories. We have people who are anxiously attached or anxious, preoccupied. We have people who are avoidantly attached or dismissive, avoidant. And then we have folks who display anxious and avoidant tendencies all at once and they're what we call the fearful avoidance or the disorganized attachers. So we'll start with secure attachments. So if we go back into our earliest childhood years typically again before we can actually recall memory, even a lot of times before we're verbal right, the type of interaction that we have with our caregiver could be a mother, father, grandmother, doesn't matter. The primary caregiver sets out this template for what love is for us, right, what that interaction is going to look like. So if we are in distress as a baby and the caregiver is highly emotionally attuned, they coddle us, they meet our physical needs, they meet our emotional needs, they interact with us, they teach us about emotions through their own expressions and they teach us that it is safe to not only identify our own emotions but to express them. So, as a young child, if I'm angry and I express that and my caregiver responds in a healthy way, I learn that it is safe to trust myself and it is safe to trust others. That becomes my golden template, the utopia, really, what we all strive for. And that template that's in my subconscious mind follows me all the way into adulthood. And because it's in our subconscious mind, most people are not consciously aware of it, right, they don't know.

Bev Middleman: 8:02

So if we turn our attention to the folks who are insecurely attached, they didn't quite have the same upbringing whereby they were given, you know, a consistent level of emotional attunements. Right, we're never talking about perfection here. I'm a mother too. There's no such thing as perfection but we're talking about a consistent, predictive pattern of emotional attunement. So, those that were anxiously attached, or who grow up to be anxiously attached, they typically would have experienced a child like a childhood whereby the parent was, let's say, emotionally unavailable. So the parent was, you know, loving to the child sometimes, and sometimes ignored the child. Or maybe the child, maybe the, let's say, the mother, the father were alcoholic and sometimes they were loving and sometimes they weren't. And so the child learns that this is not a predictable pattern.

Bev Middleman: 9:06

Child learns that this is not a predictable pattern. They receive enough love to know that it feels good, but they get set up in this situation. Their template is they're constantly chasing that closeness. They know it feels good, but it's never given to them in a consistent way, and so they grow up being anxiously attached, and in romantic relationships, they're the ones who are often called I don't love these terms, but often called needy, right? They need a lot of reassurance, validation, a lot of attention, a lot of recognition. They are dealing with core wounds like I will be abandoned Now. It's sort of recognition. They are dealing with core wounds like I will be abandoned Now. It's sort of understandable because in their childhood years, emotionally to the child, the parent was there and then they weren't there and then they were there. It's that inconsistency. They couldn't predict it, and so that's what they believe love to be. So these are the folks that end up dating unavailable, unavailable people and when you say unavailable, that comes in many flavors, right. So they might end up dating like married people we see this a lot, right? Or emotionally unavailable, right. Or they might get overly attached to someone who really doesn't want a committed relationship, right. So they're sort of chasing love, right, they're the chasers.

Bev Middleman: 10:33

Someone who grew up in a home whereby there was emotional neglect, right. Or the child was left alone a lot, or the child was a alone a lot, uh, or the child. It was a very controlling, demanding environment like a level of enmeshment. Um, they could also develop problems with attachments, but typically they develop an avoidance. Attachments and that's no, and that's known as the dismissive avoidance.

Bev Middleman: 11:06

So a child who's left alone a lot has to figure things out on their own Right, and so they really don't. It's never modeled for them levels of intimacy like where they were talking about families, where they didn't hug, they didn't say I love you, there was no words of kindness, the children were maybe kept in a very strict schedule, were only applauded for their achievements that type of high demand family. The child learns really that any sort of emotional you know landscape that they are feeling, they have to deal with that on their own. They cannot go to their parents.

Bev Middleman: 11:51

Now these folks grow up and they have a very hard time moving into adult type relationships because they are used to emotionally being on their own and so they start to value things like freedom, autonomy, right. They tend to keep people at arm's length. They're very slow to make a commitment. Vulnerability and intimacy is really grinding for them. It's not, it's foreign. They don't have a template for it. It's like I sometimes talk about the brain being like a computer program. They don't have a computer program for it, right? So, and the interesting thing is, is that often the anxious attacher and the avoidant attacher, they often find themselves in romantic partnerships.

Bev Middleman: 12:35

Yeah which is it which is uh, oh, anyways, um, I apologize, there's someone, there's someone.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 12:45

That's where my dog is working oh, okay, that's why it's okay, because it sounds mumbled yeah, my, my dog is.

Bev Middleman: 12:53

My dog is barking. I'm sorry, I don't know if you can edit that out, but we'll just keep moving forward.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 12:57

You didn't hear it, it didn't come through, it just muffled your voice uh, okay, um, the third.

Bev Middleman: 13:04

The third category of folks are folks who are fearful avoidance or disorganized attachments, and what that means is, generally they grew up in homes where there was a very high degree of chaos, a lot of screaming, fighting, maybe a high conflict, divorce, oftentimes. Abuse can be any kind of abuse physical, emotional, psychological, could be sexual and what happens is that child develops a particular template and attachment style, known as the fearful avoidance, which in later years, in a romantic context, is often called the hot and the cold partner. So these folks really do crave, you know, love and attention, like everyone, closeness, but they're very much afraid of intimacy, and that's because the pattern that's been strongly imprinted into their mind is when they got too close to the person that they loved, I'd say their mother or their father, they were harmed, and so their nervous system is generally on high alert. These are folks who we often see as being in the medical world, you know, told that they have generalized anxiety, they have adjustment disorder, you know they're perceiving everyday things as being threats because their nervous system is on such high alert. We see a high degree of hyper vigilance with this group of folks as well Because, again, the people that they trusted the most in this world harmed them right.

Bev Middleman: 14:48

So when we go back to emotional regulation and trust, this is what's so important about attachment styles is that the person who's anxiously attached does not trust themselves, but they afford a great deal of trust to other people, and so some of the behaviors you'll see someone who's anxiously attached is if they have a decision to make small or big, maybe they have to pick a dress to wear for a date night or they're buying a new car, small or big they will seek the opinion of many, many people before making that decision, because they just don't simply trust their own ability to make a decision.

Bev Middleman: 15:29

Or they were heavily punished in childhood and so they're just afraid to sort of say, well, this is what I like, or you know, they're really heavily reliant on other people. They're also heavily reliant on other people for self-soothing. So this is part of the emotional regulation piece. They never learned how to just calm down their own nervous system. They are highly attuned to the people around them, so if someone else is anxious around them, or angry or frustrated, they almost take on that sensation. They themselves cannot feel calm until everyone else around them is calm.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 16:09

Would that self soothing be also where they always have to talk to somebody? They're always on the phone driving or going somewhere and they're always on the phone having to talk.

Bev Middleman: 16:19

Yeah. So this person has probably a group of 12 people that you know. Anything can happen in the day. Someone said something to them at work. I'm. Anything can happen in the day. Someone said something to them at work. I'm going to use a really silly example. Someone said they didn't like your shirt at work. Most of us would just go, okay, I probably own nicer shirts. But a person who is sensitive in this regard will actually really take it to heart. Because they have core wounds around. I am unlikable. So this is in addition to. I will be abandoned. I am unlikable, I'll be excluded, I will be rejected. So anything in that, like in terms of a criticism, they will perceive potentially as a rejection and, to your point, they will go out of their way to speak to 12 different people about the same incident, because that's sort of how they're they're regulating their nervous system yeah being alone for them is really difficult yeah, that's what I was going to say.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 17:19

Because the ones that always have to be on the phone, driving or grocery shopping or doing anything, and always not being able to just be with themselves and go through the experience and be curious, um, that anxiety, and I I know it, I've walked through it in my previous years and stuff. So I I've worked through that pattern and felt you know that, the heavy electrocution in your body, that, oh my gosh, and hearing the loud voices and everything else. Yet being able to draw in and go inwardly to regulate that nervous system and mature it, because that's part of that. You know, when people say the inner child, a lot of people see a person where it's like, well, no, that was the immature part of the nervous system that created these programs that you're talking about and you want to meet that part of the nervous system, to bring in those fragmented, frightened parts so that they can mature and everything is a whole with a W, not these holes, splintered parts that feel so uncomfortable.

Bev Middleman: 18:22

Yeah, so. So you know it makes sense that we get patterned with these different like. You know they're, they're like roadmaps, basically Right, so so. And then our nervous system tries to adapt and create these you know adaptations and strategies a lot of times they're maladaptations to deal with the sensations that come along with what we perceive as threats. Yeah, right, and unless you're actually doing the work to identify wounds and whatnot, the mind is not very good at discerning.

Bev Middleman: 19:03

Okay, I'm no longer six years old, under the care of my father who did XYZ, I now live alone, I'm safe, I'm this, and that your nervous system will continue to react in the way that it's been trained. And so you know, it's not uncommon to hear someone to say that they wake up every day, and you know their anxiety scale is like nine out of 10. Nothing's happened. They're just waiting for it to happen, right, because that might be mirroring, um, you know the level of their nervous system, by which it had to be that level of hyper vigilant when they were younger yeah yeah, yeah, this is, this is um.

Bev Middleman: 19:40

it's very important to understand and for me personally, it made a huge difference when I could understand. Okay, this is why I think the way that I do and these are my emotional patterns, and I know that I can work with my nervous system to calm it down.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 19:57

Yeah, it's to lean in and do that inner work and, as you said, it's we, you know, abandon ourselves in the trust of experiencing life. And, as you said, if we didn't have a safe space to feel these big emotions, then they were suppressed. And anytime they try to come up, the nervous system, which I call the ego of the defense mechanisms, push it back down, so you're not able to experience vulnerability. Vulnerability feels repulsive, it feels dangerous. Yet your vulnerability is your superpower. And some people, people are like I want to hear that shit, like that is not a superpower it is not and it's like well, it's just, you don't know how to return home.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 20:35

Yet you don't know. Your nervous system has created, uh, a normal and a safety in what is unsafe. It doesn't know that the unknown and the unpredictable is safe, because the nervous system always wants to predict where it's like I'm just going to take the old information and this is what's going to happen. It's going to pattern it out where it's like no, you, that that's not what possibilities are. And then there are some that are very anxious, anxiously attached, and they want to predict the whole future and they want to control everything. I'm going to find every little loophole, and that it serves. Don't get me wrong. It's good to have long planning and you know, see, certain things that could happen. Yet when you're hyper focused on that, you're missing out on the presence, you're missing out on finding safety of what will I experience? What will that process be?

Bev Middleman: 21:31

Yeah, I mean, you so beautifully articulate all of this, right? So the anxious attacher really, what they're trying to do is they're trying to plan out and they're trying to, in a romantic context, really please their partner to do everything perfectly so their partner doesn't leave them. Their strategy is usually people pleasing, or fawning, as we call it. Right, yeah, um, but our, our, those who are anxiously attached, are typically over feelers. There's a high degree of emotional volatility. Um, you know, they they're really over feelers, they, they, they're, they're big emoters. So they don't have, they're not the ones who are repressing their emotions. Um, it doesn't mean they're emotionally regulated, right, but they're certainly not repressing.

Bev Middleman: 22:17

Who you're describing when you're talking about repressing? And you it's a beautiful description you gave was the dismissive avoidance. So the child who was left alone, the dismissive avoidance. So the child who was left alone, the dismissive avoidance. They really learned to just push down their feelings and and they're very good at compartmentalizing they are very rational, very logical, they have a reason for everything. If you ask them about their childhood, they will likely not out of 10 times, say to you I had a great childhood, everything was fine, like.

Bev Middleman: 22:49

They are that disconnected and what's interesting is is that I've had so many talks with dismissive avoidance over the years and they've told me things like it's not that I have a trouble emoting, it's that I don't feel the emotion Like it is so bottled up, and so some of the work that I do with dismissive avoidance is to reconnect their emotions back into how does this feel in your physical body? Right like we're going to extend your emotional range from just like happy, content and sad, right more. There's more to that. So the dismissive avoidant, in terms of trust, they greatly trust themselves, but they do not trust others, which is the exact opposite of the anxiously attached person. The anxious person doesn't trust themselves, but they afford trust to everyone else. The dismissive avoidant person they trust themselves. It's me myself and I I'm, they learned I can only rely on myself. I can't trust that others will meet my needs, uh, and so they're usually very independent. Yeah, it's about hyper independent, hyper independence, hyper independence. Yeah, like they won't ask for help no, because it feels like a threat.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 24:09

I don't want to be disappointed because just the the mere fact of opening myself, showing that I need help and then not taking a consideration the person may want to help, but they're just not able to that just feels like a death inside. So it's like I'd rather just do it than even go through that. Steps of vulnerability.

Bev Middleman: 24:26

Yeah, and in terms of behavior, some people think that dismissive avoidance can appear secretive. Again, I don't love that, but they do tend to keep people at emotional distance and they don't really want to. Most of the time they're very afraid Subconsciously they don't realize this to connect with someone on an emotional level, like an intimate level. They have no problem connecting generally with people. When it comes to, like, intellectual intimacy, sexual intimacy, they're pretty good Emotional, emotional intimacy. Hold on a minute, that's good. They're gonna put the brakes on that one. Yeah, so, uh, they really. Because they grew up, you know, spending so much time alone. They're very good at repressing their feelings, ignoring their feelings. They will, of course, do the same to you. It's like they've got this unwritten expectation that well, I'll handle my emotions and you handle yours. Let me know when you're feeling better.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 25:33

Yeah. So what happens? You know you're speaking into parts of myself. I was an only child At times. My mother was not emotionally available, so I had to deal with my big emotions on my own. So now I hold as you.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 25:48

You know we started the podcast.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 25:49

You were like, you have like some depths of presence and you know there are a few people that I can show my emotions to and I can emote and express.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 26:00

Yet there's a lot of people that I'm not able to because it tilts the balance, that, because I feel so deeply, it rustles their nervous system and then I do not want to um, not a harm, yet the um, it can feel very inconvenient if you don't have the tools when your nervous system has been that activated. So that's where I take the responsibility of okay, I feel my emotions. I can, you know, let out tears when I need to, and I think now, because I can let that out, and people were like, oh, I'm so sorry that I asked you that question. I'm like, no, it's okay, I'm allowed to feel this and it can come out and I just come back into the conversation. Yeah, yet for the people that might think, oh well, I can't show any emotions. Yet they are aware that their emotions are very profound and when they feel it, it can disrupt a lot of people that are around them. So is that a part of maturity, or is that still a part of hiding?

Bev Middleman: 27:05

So I think the first person they're trying not to disrupt is themselves, right, Because they never learned how to work through and process their emotions right. It just feels really negative to them and they don't know how to work through it. So it's interesting People who are anxiously attached have a very hard time with boundaries, Very hard time. So they have a very hard time with setting boundaries and also respecting other people's boundaries. So it's not someone who's anxiously attached that's going to be worried that they're stepping on someone else's boundaries. If they overly emote, that is not a thought process that they will have. The dismissive, avoidant person will avoid that situation entirely, which means if they feel they're getting emotional, they will self-isolate right away. So they'll walk out of the room. They'll end a conversation. They won't text back. They'll go for a drive, they'll go for a walk. They will naturally retreat to spend time alone, because that's their, their point of safety. What you're describing how?

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 28:13

I must be a hybrid, because you're explaining both parts of me.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 28:17

I'm like I'm going through the process of my growth, where before I would emote and then people were like, oh, you're too cry, you're too needy, you're too this.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 28:27

Or when I'd be quiet, I would be called the storm cloud and I would dictate the environment of the room because I was silent. So people didn't like that presence. So it was like okay, I'm not allowing you to feel all my emotions, but then when I feel my emotions I'm being ridiculed or told it's too much. So now it's like I've found of not separating myself internally and feeling those emotions, yet being in a space with myself and really going profoundly, of self-soothing myself, validating myself and not abandoning myself, and then really feeling it and then when it gets touched, when I'm out, the tears can come out. Yet it's like I don't droop out like a puddle and I don't isolate myself. I do see those certain protective patterns where if I'm around certain people and it doesn't emotionally feel safe that I, I will be silent, I will protect myself of not being abandoned and not seeking to dim myself, to feel a sense of belonging, if that makes sense.

Bev Middleman: 29:34

It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. So first I want to mention we're talking like sort of in extremes, right. So attachment styles exist on a continuum and when we talk about healing our attachment style, what we talk about is really moving more towards secure attachments whereby you are emotionally regulated, whereby you can, for example, in a romantic partnership, enjoy independence and enjoy a partnership right. You can feel and you can communicate right, because the overfeeling and the emotional volatility and the underfeeling and the self-isolation, those are both techniques that don't serve us well. So, listening to you and your story, it seems like you've done a fair amount of work to bring yourself much more towards secure attachment, which is really the goal. So you know good on you, thanks. But I actually wonder if you started originally in that hybrid group of the fearful avoidant that we talked about, the disorganized attacher.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 30:37

I don't know enough about your background, but I would say there was a lot of anxiety and anxiousness and trying to feel safe because I was sexually abused at a young age.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 30:54

And then, yeah, it's. You know the more that I understand, you know the walk of life. It's not the experience. The experience was awful. It was the trauma that separated me from being in the space of vulnerability, and that's what trauma is. Trauma isn't the sexual abuse I went through, it was the narrative that my nervous system created that that space was no longer safe. But that's where my power is, is in that space between stimulus and response.

Bev Middleman: 31:26

That vulnerability, but it feels were you left alone to deal with this trauma yourself?

Bev Middleman: 31:32

yeah okay, yeah, so so we, we spoke really really early on, saying that generally, people who are fearful of avoidance have abuse in their childhood. I'm really sorry to hear this Like. And then, when you talk about how you didn't have support, you were left alone to deal with this, that just throws fuel onto the fire, right, because that's the real traumatic event. Right, there is that you have to then deal with. You know, processing the feelings by yourself. Yeah, exactly right. And the shame behind it, and so the core wounds of the fearful avoidance is not going to surprise you, as I will be betrayed yeah, all the time, all the time.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 32:21

And then I have no value. And then it's funny because when you understand trauma and your nervous system if it's in, you know fight or flight, it will go to validate that narrative, so you'll attract the people that will validate well, this is what the narrative is, so it will reinforce that. So you just loop in your patterns and now you know, coming out of that it's like, oh, I'm willing to see my part, no longer blaming the other people. Yes, everybody has their part in their actions. Yet my only empowerment is looking at myself and then connecting back into that part. You know, that is a big thing where a lot of people think their feelings, they don't know how, the process of coming back into their body, they're from the neck up. It's very easy to be cerebral about that.

Bev Middleman: 33:14

Yeah, intellectualizing your feelings, because you open up the portal.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 33:18

So I feel the tears and I'm like, oh, I'm being seen right now. So it's like, oh, she's touching the part and that nervous system of maturing it and letting it be seen and be felt and articulated, not being, oh, I gotta armor up and it's okay, it's. It was like, no, it was a tender moment. It was understanding the way, as you said at the beginning, how my brain functioned and how I interpreted things, and so, in that it's like, okay, it the work that I've done, profoundly, like when I've gone into my nervous system and dived in and and allowed the body's wisdom to communicate but allow that little immature part of separating from that space of vulnerability and being in the wholeness with the w, that was work to come back home to. And when I I jump out of it like I do, cause I'm human, I'm, I have such great gratitude for the tools of remembering come back in presence so the illusion can diminish. Right, it doesn't mean I don't make mistakes and go. No, we all make mistakes.

Bev Middleman: 34:43

Yeah, no, but that would have been extremely difficult for you, especially someone that suffered sexual abuse. I'm sure that at some point you disconnected as a strategy. Yeah, yeah, especially if you were left alone afterwards to deal with the event. That in itself is incredibly traumatic. So you know I would be curious. You know I would be curious. I think that you probably did. Start off, your original template was in the fearful avoidance side, which meant that you had some traits of the anxious and of the avoidance and, in terms of trust, you didn't trust yourself, but you didn't trust others either. And so you know, finding your way back to your body and to calm your nervous system, the fearful avoidance is really the most complex and difficult, uh, attachment style, um, because they have, um, the most amount of poor wounds, because they carry from both sides right, so it's not that go ahead.

Bev Middleman: 35:45

It's not that the it's not that it can't be healed. I'll share with you that I also spend a majority of my life as a fearful avoidant. So it can be healed in the sense that you can work towards secure attachment, but it's a little more complicated than the others.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 36:01

Yeah, do you know what my healing came from? I don't such a deep wound and life had to really present it and I had to come back in. I had lesions in my brainstem and in my cerebellum and I was told I was almost going to die. So that brought a significant surrender wow and I still don't have a diagnosis 40.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 36:28

It was 11 years ago, wow, and I was given six months. I was hospitalized for 40 days and I still don't have a diagnosis. And when they discharged me they were like if you don't have a diagnosis, you don't have a plan. So, thankfully, a year after I learned meditation and that's where I was able to really go in and I understood the language, that there was something in my nervous system that was seeking on the outside. So I had removed alcohol, I removed sex, I removed spending, I removed social media, I removed all the vices that would have me seeking outside for that safety that I would come within. And there was significant warrior work and, as you're saying, just reconfirms of how deep of a wound that is and to reconnect that it's profound. So it's like and I believe that I don't have a diagnosis so that it wouldn't give me a crutch of personalizing so when I hold presence for other people, they feel safe to inquire within what is this and everything else.

Bev Middleman: 37:56

How are you feeling 11 years later? Like how are you feeling now?

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 38:00

I'm great. I still have pain and the pain is energy levels, so it just turns off. Yet I was told I was never going to drive again, I wasn't going to function, I was going to need assistive devices and all that. My thyroid is still out of whack, Yet I'm able to navigate with it. Other people they wouldn't be able to because it can be very painful and debilitating in certain ways. So with that I changed my whole lifestyle. So, like you know, I'm retired.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 38:36

So taking it slow and steady and being able to cultivate a space to, you know honor my body, honor what? My navigation? And when I start spiraling into a pattern, you know be aware of it. And then you know, have amazing grace for myself, radical compassion and remind okay, come within. You're trying to go out again, grasping and your nervous system. What are you trying to protect yourself from what feels unsafe? And sometimes it's just the psychological suffering I create in my own mind and and the energy, like anxiety, is contagious, so when we walk it activates us. So it's very profound in that. So it's I understand. And when you said about you know the anxious attachment where they feel everything and it's like, yeah, they feel everything and they're not realizing. Some of the stuff they're feeling isn't there, so you got to give it back to the other people because it's not yours. You're intaking everybody's stuff and you're trying to fix everybody's emotional thermostat to feel yeah, but it's not altruistic, that's.

Bev Middleman: 39:40

That's the thing. It's not because you know they're so loving and caring, it's because they need other people to be calm so they feel calm.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 39:48

Yeah exactly Safety. And when I say this, it's not minimizing somebody that you should know it's like. Do you know how long it takes to really be in a space that your nervous system feels safe enough to reveal some memories, reveal the narratives, get the aha moments of oh. This is when I started constructing this narrative within me and then, just because you see it and you know it, the default of what your body viscerally will go into those patterns and then you have to bring it back into presence. That's where you work.

Bev Middleman: 40:23

Yeah, yeah. You're really such a beautiful example of how we can heal the mind and the body right if we're actually committed to the work. And I I'm sure you're familiar with dr gabor, mate, because he does a lot of this work. I'm actually seeing him live next week. I'm so excited to see him. Uh, my boyfriend got us tickets as a surprise. I didn't know, because he knows that I'm just a fangirl and he's in town and it's just, he is, you know, at the forefront of talking about, you know, physical ailments and then, of course, connection back to our nervous system right in our emotional states.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 41:13

So, yeah, when we started the recording. I'm going to bring it over to you now, with the vulnerability you had mentioned, that you know where you are in your stage and all the work that you do with yourself and hold space for your clients, that you are now finding language about touch and how that feels for you, where before you didn't have the language. So could you open up that space if you're willing to share that vulnerability and insight for some listeners that might be just talking my thing.

Bev Middleman: 41:44

Yeah, I'm happy to. So it's. I've really never spoken about this before because this is something that is sort of new. You know, I think we all when we go through the process, we start to understand our wounds and we start to understand our triggers. You know, people say certain things, or there's a tone, or there's, maybe there's, you know, auditory triggers, or we see something. You know auditory triggers, or you can see something, and I've started to notice that there are, for me anyways, physical touch triggers.

Bev Middleman: 42:12

So I have a certain level of sensitivity or defensiveness around certain levels of physical touch and when I think about it, really I have always had this feeling like I don't want to be touched. But what I realize now is that it's not, as you know, a broad, blanket statement I don't want to be touched. Some sensation feels really nice and calming and some sensation makes me anxious, irritable and feel unsafe, right? So? And I think that what we have to realize is is that this is different for everyone, but the more that you can understand your own body, you know, and the more you're able to put words to it and communicate, for example, to a romantic partner, the easier it is, right? So I'll use this as a very simple example um, I really, really love, like you know, the sensation of tickle. I love that on my back, but anywhere else on my arm, on my hand, on my chest, on my neck, everywhere it just drives me crazy, like it actually makes me very, very tense.

Bev Middleman: 43:27

And so I think that the work always continues. When you realize, now my work is to understand what am I connecting that to. And I'm still working through that. But, you know, instead of getting irritated in the moment, I just say to my partner you know, instead of stroking my hand, can you just hold it? That's fair, yeah, right. But but I think you know when, when I was younger, I certainly, certainly just didn't have the language, I would sort of pull my hand away and say I just don't want to be touched, or even that allowed to say what, what your preference was or even that allowed to say what, what your preference was right, yeah, yeah, so I, you know again this, this work in attachment styles.

Bev Middleman: 44:16

It has such a huge impact, uh, in a lot of areas in how we interact with other people. So the more you can understand your own, your own minds, your personality, needs, what feels good to you, what doesn't feel good to you, and communicate that calmly, right, you're setting yourself up for you know, a much more sort of, you know, beautiful relationship with anyone, with anyone. It could be with family members, it could be with you know a, it could be with you know a romantic partner with your colleagues. So a lot of this work is really just about understanding yourself.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 44:56

Yeah, exactly, I'm mindful of time. I think we could talk for you know we probably could, you and I. Yeah, it's going so naturally. Naturally, I want to ask you a reflective question. I want to ask what would your past self say to you right now?

Bev Middleman: 45:14

oh gosh, like my younger self when I was in the thick of things whatever you feel, that's coming to you, um, I think the only thing I ever wanted to know was it gets better. Like that's the only thing I think. When you're in it, when you're in any level of pain emotional, physical, psychological the only thing you're thinking is will this end, will this get better? Will tomorrow be better? Will I still feel the same next week? Right, because it's that not knowing that just sort of is all consuming, right, the pain and then the not knowing. So I think I would have gifted myself with the knowledge of it will get better. You won't always feel this way, way, and maybe that would have made it more tolerable in the moments, but, um, but what would your past self say to you right now?

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 46:20

not you talking to your past self. What would your past self say to you right now, in this present moment?

Bev Middleman: 46:32

My past self would likely have a bit of a sense of humor. Mine does as well. I kind of laugh at some things. I made, these changes in my life which were so profound in my 40s. I'm almost 50 now, and so the years from my teenage years to my early 40s, those were difficult years in which I suffered, asked me a question, you know, or said something to me. They would say do I have to wait until I'm 45 to make the changes, or can we start making changes now, because that would be great? I think that's what my that, yeah, that's what they would ask. Is there a reason we're waiting until we're 45? Exactly 45.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 47:33

Exactly, exactly Now.

Bev Middleman: 47:35

I'm going to ask you what would your future self say to you right now about fear? What would my future self say to me about fear? My future self would tell me, would tell me, that fear is debilitating in a way that it strips you of potentially incredible experiences, moments. Right, I'm reminded of the expression that you know we often don't regret what we do, but more so what we don't do. And for people who have dealt with anxiety, they will often put very strong boundaries around doing certain things, whether it be social or travel, or leaving the apartment or this or that, whatever it is Because they're afraid of being in a situation where their anxiety flares and they feel out of control and they're not at home, or they're around people, or they don't feel safe. There's all sorts of reasons, but that creates a very limited life, and so I think that, yeah, my future self would remind me that my fear is limiting to the life that I want to enjoy.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 48:57

Love that, Love that. So I know the listeners are like okay, where can we find Bev? So can you let them know where you are and what your?

Bev Middleman: 49:05

offerings are Sure. Thank you so much. So I'm the owner of securely loved. We're a group of practitioners that work with folks to help them overcome their attachment issues and move towards secure attachments. I do have a website, securelylovedcom site securelylovedcom. We're also on instagram, securely underscore loved uh, we are all over youtube, uh, and you can simply type my name into any browser and you will see lots of my stuff come up as well.

Bev Middleman: 49:41

Um, I'm on a bit of a mission to just get the word out about attachment styles, let people know. So I have a pretty heavy social media footprint. Generally, people don't have a hard time finding me and if what I've said here resonates with you, you certainly can go on our website again, securelylovedcom. We have a free attachment style quiz. It's just sort of a starting point to answer a couple of questions and then it'll tell you where you fall on the scale. Are you secure, are you anxious, are you avoidant, are you fearful, avoidant? And then you can book a free consult with me we do a free 20-minute consult or any of the other practitioners that work with Securely Love, who are also terrific, and we go from there.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 50:40

Okay, I want you not, I want you. If you could, please drop into your heart and bring out an intention you want one of the listeners to hear right now. Meet them exactly where they are.

Bev Middleman: 50:56

This took me far too long to learn in life, so maybe this will hit someone at the right time in their life. Love is learned. We learn how to love ourselves, we learn how to love ourselves. We learn how to love others. So, yeah, I think that, whether you know, regardless of your age, if you're dealing with these issues, you can learn with these issues, you can learn.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 51:35

Thank you so much for this vulnerable, real talk and thank you for the alchemy that you've done within your own life. You've taken those impurities and you've turned them into gold. Yet you haven't kept the gold for yourself. You're sharing it with others, and we didn't get too deep into your personal life yet. Those that go and research you. They're they're going to find out some more profoundness of why you do the work and why you're so good at it. So I want to thank you so much, bev so, for what you are contributing in the world in the light that you're shining those are such sweet words and I will reciprocate that to you as well.

Bev Middleman: 52:08

I said, before we press start, before we press to record, I said to you you have such a beautiful, calming presence and I meant that. So thank you for bringing that into the world and sharing yourself and for the listeners.

NatNat Be - LiftOneSelf: 52:30

As I always say, you know, these podcasts are here to help you reflect, to be able to do some inner work. Even if you just took that two minute pause and did that mindful moment, that is the change that you start to do little by little. It's not in the big things. So, again, if you can help the podcast, like, share and leave a review so that this conversation to get to people that really need it, and if you want to work with me, you know where to find me LiftOneSelfcom. Until next time.