118. Secure Attachment: What No One Tells You About Feeling Secure in Love | Somatic Attachment Series Part 4

What if feeling secure in love doesn't mean you stop feeling anxious... it just means you stop letting anxiety make your decisions? 

In this episode of the Speak Honest Podcast, Jenn Noble wraps up the Somatic Attachment Series by taking you inside what a secure nervous system actually feels like in real life. Not the Pinterest version where everything is calm and easy, but the real, honest, in your body experience of feeling something hard and staying with yourself anyway. Jenn walks you through her three part framework, identify, intervene, and integrate, and shares a powerful client story that shows exactly what it looks like when you stop abandoning what your body is telling you and start bringing that truth into your relationship instead.

You might want to listen if:

• You have read all the books and understand your attachment style but still cannot stop reacting the way you do.
• You feel like you are always either panicking when someone gets too close or spiraling when they pull away.
• You keep finding yourself saying things you do not mean or shutting down when you most want to connect.
• You have been told to "just communicate better" but nobody has ever shown you what to do in the moment your body takes over.
• You are tired of feeling like you are abandoning yourself in your relationships and you are ready to actually feel safe in love.

FIND OUT MORE!

• Join the Speak Honest Academy 
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DISCLAIMER:  Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable f...

Transcript

Welcome And Why You Feel Stuck

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Hello, and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal. What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve? Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now, let's dive in. Hello,

Somatic Attachment Series Recap

SPEAKER_00 0:39

ladies, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jen Noble, your go-to relationship coach and author of the best-selling book, Dance of Attachment. And on today's episode, we are finalizing our time in the world of somatic experiencing. So over the last few weeks, we have been looking at what different attachment styles feel like in the body. We talked about anxious attachment, that urgency, that tightness, that feeling like you need to do something right away, or else you might explode. And we also talked about avoidant attachment, the disconnection, the numbness, the feeling like something is off even when nothing obvious is actually going wrong. And then we talked about disorganized attachment, that push-pull, the wanting connection, and then wanting out of it at the exact same time and the chaotic feeling that feels inside of you. And today I want to show you what this looks like when your nervous system is more secure. A secure nervous system still feels activation. I think it's so important that we always remember that. It still notices when something shifts. You still experience moments where your chest tightens, your stomach drops, or your mind starts to move in a certain direction. Those sensations are still part of your lived experience. The difference shows up in what happens after the sensation begins. Now I want to bring you into a moment, if you will. You're in a relationship, something small happens, maybe there's a shift in tone, maybe there's a pause in communication, or something just feels a little off, and you feel it. And there's that familiar sensation in your body. Maybe you have a little tightness in your chest, maybe your hands start to shake, or you get that flicker of anxiety. But instead of immediately turning into action,

Three Awareness Prompts To Practice

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there's space, there's a pause. You don't jump to fix it, you don't immediately pull away, you don't make a decision about the relationship in that moment. You sit with it. Even if it's uncomfortable. Even if part of you wants to do something, you know you're safe not to do anything yet. Now from the outside, that might look really simple. It might even look like nothing at all. But from the inside, it's everything. Because what's happening in your body, it is experiencing activation and you're not letting it run the show. You're allowing the feeling to be there without immediately reacting to it. That's the difference. It's not that secure people don't feel anxious. It's that they can feel anxious and then stay with themselves before they act. That's the part I want to explore today. Because everything we've been talking about in this series, anxious, avoidant, disorganized, it's all leading here. Not to getting rid of your feelings and sensations, but to creating space between the feeling and the action. And I want to walk you through what that actually looks like in your body so you can start to recognize it and build towards it in your own life. And I'll tell you more about how we go deeper into this work inside of the Speak Honest Academy at the end of this episode. But for right now, as you're listening, I want you to pay attention to these three things. First, notice the moment you feel something before you do something. Second, notice what it feels like in your body when you allow that sensation to be there without reacting or judging it. And then third, notice any small moments where you already have that space, even if it's just a few seconds. Now, let's dive in.

What Secure Attachment Actually Feels Like

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So when we talk about secure attachment, most of the conversations out there are talking about how calm and unbothered and perfect everyone is in their relationships all the time. And while that might sound nice, that's not at all what secure attachment actually feels like in your body. A secure nervous system still feels. It still feels activation, it still feels anxiety, it still feels scared, fear, all of that. And it still notices when something is off. That's important. You still have moments where your chest will tighten, or your stomach drops, your throat closes up, or you want to cry. And that part is so important because what changes is what happens next. There is a moment that happens. And you have probably experienced this, even if you do not fully identify as secure yet, something in the relationship just changes. Maybe there is a pause in the text that he sends you, or he stops sending you good morning texts, or you know how he sends it sometimes with a pink heart, but this time he sent it with a red heart, and now all of a sudden you're looking into that? You know, the tone is different. Maybe you did something that upset him and and now he's a little bit mad and you feel all of it. And that sensation, it shows up in your body. But instead of immediately reacting when it pops up, there's a pause. There's control, there's regulation. You notice it you stay with it. You let yourself feel it, and then you get curious and compassionate. Maybe you put a hand on your chest and you say, Oh, sweetheart, what do you need right now? I can tell you're sad. And this is what we are walking through today. We are going to look at how to identify what secure somatic awareness actually feels like, how to work with those sensations, and how to actually bring that into your relationships so you are responding from a grounded place instead of from reacting from feeling.

Alexis Learns To Trust Her Body

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So let's start with identifying, all right? The first key point here is learning how to identify what this feels like in your body when you are operating from a more secure place. And I think the best way to explain this is going to be talking about my client Alexis. She came to me wanting to fix her marriage. And she had spent years trying to communicate better, trying to understand, trying to make it work, and she could feel that something was off, but she kept pushing through it. So during one of our sessions, I asked her, well, what do you feel in your body when you think about your relationship? And since Alexis and I had been working with each other for about a year now, she was used to this question that I always ask people, and so she paused and said, Okay, well, it feels heavy. Like there is a weight sitting on my shoulders and my chest. And that feeling that had been there for actually quite a long time. But she had learned to ignore it. So we slowed it down and stayed there. That's the first part of secure somatic awareness. You can notice what is happening in your body without immediately needing to override it or taking yourself out of it to fix it. From a nervous system perspective, your body is always giving you information. And that secure attachment allows you to actually receive that information instead of bypassing it thinking something is wrong with you. Now the second part is learning how to work with it. See, Alexis did not need to get rid of that heaviness in her chest and her shoulders. She needed to stay with it long enough to understand what it was telling her. So instead of distracting herself or pushing through, we sat there together with it. I asked her to notice where in her body, her chest and her shoulders. I asked her to breathe into that space in her body, let herself feel it. And what started to happen was that alongside the heaviness, there came a sense of clarity. There was relief in acknowledging that she had been feeling this for a long time. Her body was learning that it could feel something uncomfortable without needing to immediately escape or shut it down. This is when the shift happens. You're not trying to stop the feeling, you're building the capacity to get curious with it. So she was able to check in, get curious with what's going on, and asked it what it needed. And that's a huge part of secure somatic awareness, getting curious with our somatic parts. So after she was able to identify the sensation and work with it, that's when she learned she could integrate it. So she got curious with the feelings and she realized, oh wait, she needed to tell her husband something pretty big. See, in our sessions together, what we had found out was that her husband had been working these long hours at his job, but she kept telling him it was fine because she wanted it to be fine. Logically, in her brain, she wanted to be supportive and say it was okay. She wanted it to be okay, but her body was telling a different story. So even though she told herself it was fine, and she tried to make it fine, that massive weight in her chest, the one that made it hard to breathe, was telling her something very different. Her mind was trying to make it okay, but her body was saying, no, this is not okay. So once she was able to identify what she was feeling and then intervene by actually staying with that sensation instead of overriding it, now she was able to integrate it. Because now, instead of brushing it off or pushing it down, she brought it into the relationship where it belongs. And the conversation she had with her husband, it was not easy, trust me. It was not one of those moments where she told him what she was feeling and immediately he was like, Oh my gosh, of course, sweetheart, I'll stop working so much. Because that's not how real relationships work. But what was different was how she showed up. She was clear, she was grounded. She didn't blame him, she didn't project onto him, she didn't believe that he didn't love her. She was connected to what she was feeling instead of trying to minimize it or make it easier for him. And that created a completely different type of conversation. They were able to have a collaborative conversation together. They were able to meet somewhere in the middle, and more importantly, she felt safe, seen, and secure again. That right there is secure somatic awareness. It's not that the situation magically changes. It's that you stop abandoning what your body is telling you and you start bringing that truth into the relationship in a way that allows connection to actually happen. So

The Space That Changes Everything

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when you think about everything we have talked about in this series, anxious, avoidant, disorganized, this is where it all leads. I want you to remember that you will still feel activated. You will still feel anxious and scared and disappointed and sad. You will still cry. You will still scream. You will still want to bury your head in a pillow and just feel your feelings. In fact, that's healthy. Because these feelings tell you what you need to know. The difference is that now you have the space between the feeling and the action. And that space is what allows you to show up in a secure way. That is actually what allows you to align with who you are and what you want.

Support Inside Speak Honest Academy

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All right, everyone, as we wrap up our series today on our somatic attachment awareness, I want you to really just take all of this in. If you need to, go back and listen to the series again so you can understand each attachment style and how they show up in your body. Now, if you are someone who wants to understand what it actually feels like to be secure in your body and not just in your mind, but in your lived experience, then this is exactly the work that we do inside of the Speak Honest Academy. This is where we take everything we talked about in this series and actually apply it in real time with real support. We slow those moments down. We look at what is happening in your body, and we build your ability to feel something without immediately reacting to it. This is also where I teach my signature somatic affirmation practice. This practice, ooh, it is changing lives, y'all. I am so excited to be able to teach this inside of my Dance of Attachment course. And inside of the Speak Honest Academy, you get access to all of my courses, all of my workshops, and any masterclass I've ever given. It's all yours right there. And you get access to not only all of that, but to both group coaching that we do twice a week and one-on-one coaching with me. So you do not have to figure this out on your own anymore. Trust me, I remember how lonely healing felt back when I was doing it. You don't have to do this alone. And if you want to know what it feels like to have space between what you feel and how you respond, if you want to experience what it is like to stay with yourself in those moments instead of getting pulled out of them, this is where I help you build that step by step. Now, if that sounds interesting to you, then we would love to have you inside of the academy. You can go to speakhonestacademy.com or just scroll down to the link in the show notes, click on that to sign up. And now, as a special gift for anyone that has been following along with the Somatic Attachment series, I want you to be able to try out the Academy for a full month before deciding if it's right for you. One of the best things you can do to earn your secure attachment is to decide what is right for you, just like in any relationship with any decision. And I want to make that decision as easy as possible. So I want you to use the code SECURESTART, all one word, and then you are going to be able to try out the academy completely free for a full month. That is my gift to you because it is my mission in life to help as many women as possible heal what's been holding them back. Now, we do meet every Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern. So if you are able to join us, you literally can come and join us this week if you want to. We would love to see you there. And remember, you are not trying to become someone new. You are learning how to stay with yourself long enough to respond in a way that actually feels like the you you were always meant to be. All right, everyone. I will speak with you all next week. Take care. As

Final Reminder And Subscribe Request

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we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination. And it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we cover today, be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.