This book is great. It's clear, very well explained and offers exercises for learning and growing. About 2.5 years ago I was having a lot tensions in my relationship because of the attachment "issues." I'd read the classic book on attachment but it was more like a label and it seemed to offer the only solution of finding a different partner. It seemed quite prescriptive and not about what a person can do to heal or lessen the friction.

Did I probably have some childhood wounds with attachment? For sure. Who doesn't? Did I have a traumatic break up in my formative years. Yep--didn't you? I did therapy; I processed all the things years and years ago but I still had patterns come up that felt suffocating. Did I have to forever be trapped in reproducing those patterns. Absolutely not.

Read this book to learn how to step out of it. I believe I found out about it via lawyer turned life coach Kara Loewentheil's podcast (UFYB) or coaching on relationships. The book works very well with coaching because it gently shows you how there are other ways to be in relationships that aren't driven by an anxiety label and how to work with anxious attachment habits. (Yes, I mean habit and not a diagnosis.) There are exercises and a lot of concrete tactics for working with and learning from your emotions and notions of attachments and rejection.

As I learned and got curious, I learned how I was setting up / interpreting lots of things as rejection outside my relationship. For example, I am in a field that requires me to submit projects or proposals that could be rejected. If I don't pay attention, I can go through the rejection spin out here or in lots of other areas of my life. This is not a fun way to live and a sure-fire road to writer's block. This is pattern that I've largely unlearned and, when it does come up, I can recognize it much more quickly than before. It doesn't wreck my world.

[NB: I read this book first and most recently read the Bouncing Back from Rejection one so I might be conflating the two a tad.] In all honesty, I might even love the Bouncing back from Rejection book even more. The ways of processing emotions and related thoughts resonates with how I deal with emotions like these when they come up (usually through self-coaching). I more often return to the rejection one because it helps me distance my learning from solely looking at my intimate relationships. Iterations of this pattern come up in all sorts of relationships and life endeavors and it's worth investing in learning about how to shift it.

While not easy, these books and learning process have been life altering. They give you many concrete tools to unlearn these sort of patterns and can help you re-articulate your close relationship/friendships and your reactions to real or perceived rejection.

Brand	N/A
Rating	4.5 (1894 ratings)
Price	$18.95
Category	Anxieties & Phobias

Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It