Coffee Chats w/Dr. D-When Safety Feels Unfamiliar

Hey cadre, what's up? It's me, Dr. D, and I'm back. I know I missed last week. I was forcing myself to rest. So anybody else struggle with that? Because it's hard for me to just sit still. Although, let me show you something. I don't know if you can see it, but my tattoo says be still. It's my daily reminder and I don't do it. And I've had this tattoo for years. So I need to do more of that. So hello everybody joining. So I'm talking about being still and that's something I had to do last week, which is why I had to miss our coffee chat.

But I am back and we are still on the topic of safety and relationships. And today I want you to think about attachment styles. So I will give you a quick little background of the different types before we get into it. And so let's just talk with, hello there. Let's just talk about, I like to start with anxious attachment. So people who identify as being anxious, have an anxious attachment style, typically are the ones that are always trying to find out what's wrong with the relationship. What's going on?

What did they do wrong? They might feel this pull that their partner's always wanting to leave them. There's this fear of abandonment. And then there are people who identify more with an avoidant attachment style. So if you're avoidant, you want relationship, but when someone gets a little too close, you might sabotage a relationship or do something to push that person away from you. Or you just end it because you don't know how to deal with all those emotions. And then there are people who are secure, which is our goal, where you can be yourself in that relationship, you can handle other people's emotions, you want closeness, you want connection, you sense when things are wrong and you address it instead of pulling away or just chasing so much, right?

And so if you identify as not being secure, so not having secure attachment style, you might not always recognize when you're experiencing safety in relationships. And having safety in relationships might be a little scary. You might not know what to do with it when you get it. So I have a couple questions for y'all. So I want you first, if you can put in the chat here, what feels more familiar to you in relationships? Do you feel it's more familiar to experience chaos or calm? So drop that in there, chaos or calm.

And think about not just romantic, this could be friendships, it could be any type of intimate relationship, okay? Are you more familiar with experiencing chaos or calm? And I will say, you know, from my relationship history, and I think it's different with the different types of relationships, but with romantic relationships, I am more familiar with chaos but I am leaning and learning how to navigate the calmness, right? I think in friendships, that's also been a thing. I'm familiar with chaos and friendships where there's ups and downs in how I feel or ups and downs in how the other person feels.

And I don't necessarily experience the calmness unless I know me and my friend are on the same page. Does that sound familiar? All right. So once you recognize if you're more comfortable with chaos or calm, I want you to think about this. So when someone shows you love or care and concern without the drama, okay, how do you respond to it? So when you experience someone's love for you or concern for you, and there's no drama backing that up, so they're not doing anything to manipulate you, to make you feel that way, they're not overly excited, or they didn't show you this love and concern after you did such a grand gesture, whatever it is, right?

Or it doesn't show up after a fight. If they're just naturally being loving towards you and showing this concern for you, how do you typically respond? Now that might be, I would say most people will respond based off their attachment style. So if you are anxious in relationships, when you get the love, it might feel good for a moment, but then you might notice that you instantly revert back to that anxiety where you're wondering how long is this gonna last? Why did they do that? Are they trying to play games with me?

Are they only being nice to me because they did something? You're always looking for something that's wrong in the relationship. Or you're trying to seek, what did you do to deserve it? And you don't always trust that it's going to stay. And if you're the person that is more avoidant, when someone is showing you love and concern, Although you want that, like who doesn't want that? But when you struggle with avoiding attachment style, you might tend to pull away like, oh, they want something from me and I'm not ready to give it to them.

I gotta pull back. I gotta ghost them, or I need to cancel that date that we have, or I'm gonna maybe be around them, but I'm not gonna talk to them that much 'cause I don't want them to get into me. I don't want them to get to my heart. That sound familiar? So chaos or calm. Chaos is showing up when there is anxious attachment. We do feel calm sometimes when we have this avoidant attachment style because we want things to be even and smooth in the relationship. And so when someone is showing us love, that doesn't feel good to us if we're dealing with avoidant attachment.

And so we might want to regulate ourselves by pulling away. All right? So think about this idea of how when there is safety in relationships, why that feels unfamiliar. So when you get with a secure partner or secure friendship, that might not feel good initially because you may not be able to trust it. If you've never experienced that, in a relationship. When someone is being genuine with you and showing concern and love for you, might not trust it for a while until you experience it over and over and that person is consistent with you.

So if you watch some of my old chats here, I remember, I can't remember what time of year it was. It was sometime last year where I talked about There has to be longevity and consistency to know that things have changed, to know that things are trustworthy, right? Longevity and consistency. So when there's a partner or friend that shows up in our life that is consistent with how they love us, and there's longevity backing that up, so over a period of time, that's when we can start to calm down and relax in that relationship and really trust that person is not gonna switch up on us or even trust ourselves that we don't have to do anything to earn that person's love and concern.

Okay? Now y'all are just dropping all these comments in here. Let me see if I can go back. Jules, you said in the past you like chaos, but now you would say more calm. Junk food junkie, how you doing there? For you, it's the calmness 80% and chaos 20%. Okay, we need to get you some more calmness. But that's a good balance, I think. And I think for people, so I'll say I struggle with anxious attachment. When there is not chaos, that doesn't always feel good to me because I'm like, I don't know what to do with this.

I feel like I got to fix something, right? So I need a little bit of spice in there. But I'm learning to accept that not having that chaos is actually a good thing, and it does help me rest, but it's hard for me to rest. So when there is chaos, it doesn't bother me. I hope that makes sense. You also said, or they're being nice because they want something from you. Yes, the games that we play, right? So I want you to think of people in your life, and maybe if it's just one person, Do you have one person in your life that you would consider to be safe for you in relationships that they are calm, like they experience calmness in relationships, even outside of you, right?

They just are generally a calm person or they know how to navigate chaos in a way that does not create more chaos. And if you can identify that person, if you can drop in the chat for me, What is it about that person that does create a sense of safety for you? Okay, so there's one particular person that I'm thinking of. It's one of my good friends. And I would say that person lets me know that I'm safe with them because I know that whenever I reach out, they respond. I know that when I reach out and they're busy, they still respond and they let me know, hey, Can we talk a little later?

Because I'm busy right now, but I do want to hear what you have to say. So that helps me stay regulated. And I know that person is still available to me, just not at that moment. So that doesn't leave me with a cliffhanger, if that makes sense. I will say this person also shares with me. So it's not just a one-sided relationship where I'm always sharing what's bothering me, but I get to hear it back from them as well. And I think that's also important when we're looking for safety in relationships, that it's not one-sided.

Miss Brittany, you said being grounded no matter what's happening. Yes. So when you can see someone that they are able to regulate themselves, and sometimes it's tricky to catch because there are people that appear to be calm and they are struggling in the inside, right? And I think people see that in me, just being honest, like I can navigate chaos because I was just trained to do that with my career. So when there is chaos, I appear to be calm to others because I know I am a regulator for other people.

But at the same time, I am just like, bubbling inside. Like there's so much going on in there, but no one would ever know unless I'm in a relationship, a friendship, or even a co-worker relationship where I feel safe enough to share, hey, I'm not feeling good. Hey, I'm stressed out. Hey, I'm anxious right now. I'm scared, right? And I think we need that. We need to have that safety and security in different relationships. All right, y'all. We are getting to the end of this. There's so much I can talk about with this, but I love this topic.

I love trying to find where we see the safety in relationships because I don't think we don't look for it all the time. I think sometimes we just recognize when we're not safe and then we want to do something about it, but we don't always savor. Let me use that word. We don't savor the safety and security that we do have sometimes. junk food junkie. You said your wife of 34 years is your rock. I love that. And she's the most calm person, you know, with everyone. you should ask her what helps her stay so calm or Is it that she just displays calmness and is she dealing with things on her own?

I would love if you could have that conversation with her. You probably already know, you've known her for a long time, but that's beautiful that you have that. And I think having that one person that is your rock is so important because so many people don't have that. So that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. All right, guys, I will be back next week with more coffee and another topic related to safety and relationships. If you look at my post in here, I did put out a schedule for the month.

I'm trying to stay organized, y'all. It helps me. It probably helps you too. So check that out and see what our next topic will be for next week. But I will see you there. All right, y'all have a wonderful day. Bye.