But there is plenty you can do to feel stronger and more secure within yourself and improve the quality of your relationships. Expert psychotherapist and couples’ counsellor Jessica Baum has over ten years’ experience helping her clients discover the mutually supportive relationships they deserve. To cope with these emotions and to avoid feeling rejected, they subconsciously employ “hyperactivating strategies.” You can also observe and imitate their behavior and find out how they interpret ambiguous situations, such as when their partner does not reply to a text message or arrives late to a date.

Rationalizing (e.g., How likely is it because they are rejecting you? What other explanations might there be? What is the rational/ objective explanation?) This will empower you and allow you to communicate more effectively, thus improving the overall quality of your relationships. Create boundaries to safeguard their sense of self-sovereignty in relationshipsCommunicate to their partners what they need to feel safe and secure in the relationshipDevelop a secure sense of self-worth and emotional stabilityLearn the true meaning of a healthy/interdependent relationship and how to establish one with their partner or future partner.Discover a compassionate path towards healing through experiences like mediation practices where they can start to develop more insight into their internal landscape.Attain a deep understanding of the anxious-avoidant dance that is extremely common in intimacy struggles.Abandonment: They have an intense fear of being abandoned and rejected. To cope with this fear, anxious individuals tend to cling to their partners. They can be demanding, jealous, and controlling. Although the aim is to keep their partner close and avoid abandonment, this can result in their partner pulling away, confirming their fears. When anxiously attached people experience an emotional trigger, they are faced with an intense fear of abandonment that stems from traumatic or unstable childhood experiences. To avoid this feeling (and actual abandonment), they often go to extreme measures. Examples of hyperactivating strategies include: Jessica’s work is a breath of fresh air. Blending both a clinical and spiritual approach, this book helps us understand the nuances of modern relationships and provides a no-nonsense roadmap for healing our relationships by healing ourselves.” When someone does not reply immediately, let it happen, put your phone away, and do something else that will distract and calm you Communicate your feelings and needs to your significant other without becoming emotional – stay calm and assertive

Then, once you've established that you're in the anxious category, read this. It'll hurt like a bitch because this books leads you through a lot of self-reflection to see where your anxiety and wounds stem from, and how to sit and examine these feelings without having them take over. Basically, there are a lot of meditation practices to so. It's not a comfortable process but it's so so so helpful. The first step in transforming these beliefs into more helpful ones is self-awareness. That means becoming conscious of the maladaptive beliefs you may hold about yourself and others, as well as identifying your emotional triggers. You could also try a new hobby, like drawing, kayaking, or hiking. Anything that makes you recharged, nurtured, and healthy can be considered self-care and can help you on your journey to transforming your attachment style. Consider TherapyHaving an insecure attachment style is more likely an indication of having experienced difficulties in childhood and adolescence. Therefore, engaging with a therapist who can explore any unhelpful beliefs, emotional triggers, and anxious behaviors can be immensely beneficial. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. Because the anxious individual’s self-esteem is dependent on the closeness and approval of significant others, any instability will often lead to an undeveloped sense of self. It is hard, with topics relating to psychology, self, and love, to discuss them in a way that is gentle, informative, scientific, and also inherently spiritual. But Jessica Baum manages it here. Perhaps in part because it is coming from the perspective of both a therapist with case studies to hand, but also an anxiously attached human with her own personal experiences. It is both scientific and descriptive but equally empathetic, caring, and supportive. To change unhelpful beliefs, you need evidence that contradicts them, and this is best done through behavioral experiments.