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I would like to ask some advice about building a secure attachment style while being single any of you have any of you been through that any suggestions I'm on seventh months since a breakup and I still feel triggered by thoughts about my ex the relationship talks at critical thinking about myself longing some days having the fantasy of getting back together but the truth is I want to be myself and love myself regardless of the relationship I want to feel good being single and start to accept myself and to recognize my own needs if I go back with an extra start a new relationship I would like to be aware of my boundaries and needs because I don't want to experience it again and again the same old pattern okay it's a great question okay um this may just be my own personal experience and inevitably it is but I think that there's no like hard and fast rule about how you develop your own boundaries and and find more of a sense of security within yourself meaning whether you have to be in relationship to someone or whether you are single or have to be single I think it just depends on your temperament and how well you can discover source and find your own boundaries whether you're in the context of a relationship or not in my own personal experience it was a lot easier when I was single to accomplish this so it's interesting to me it's almost as if you're asking the question like is it even possible while you're single for me it's been more oh my god is that even possible in relationship so that's kind of interesting I think it may be that there's a temperamental aspect to that but you know I absolutely believe yes it's possible the other thing you mentioned okay advice about building a secure attachment style so first I would I would have you think about of course these things are gonna mean something different to everyone on some level but I would have you think about what is a secure attachment to you what for you when you say the words secure attachment what are you attaching to that definition so you would probably want to go through what you value and one of the ways that you can do that is you can take a look at what were some of the points of contrasting contention in these previous relationships what what and where were the areas that you felt were painful what were the areas in which you felt you know oh I wish they wouldn't do that or I wish they would do this instead and to start to create kind of an inventory of those things and of course it's not this isn't to say that you have to blame the other partner for not being any of these things that you want but also you know to to become that's part of also discerning your boundaries look having the vision of what it is that you really want the essence of what it is that you really want because sometimes you'll ask people what do you want in a relationship and then they'll start to read you a litany of the things that went wrong with the last one but they don't they don't they're not focusing on the vision of what they actually do want and there's this this sort of um expectation we all know it when I see it the problem of that is you're always sort of at the mercy of the conditions around you and the thing is is that you know law of attraction will still work for you and it will send you more and more relationships to help you become more and more discerning about what you want but the less effort you put into naming and claiming envisioning that the more painful relationships you'll have until you name claim that name and claim that so so part of it is taking a look at where you've been so that you can have a better vision of where you want to go the other part of that is then having the sense of bringing that into residence within yourself because as is within so is without and so if you can hold that feeling place of to be a little cliche becoming the change you want to see then that's how you call it in and the only way you can do that is if again if you create a kind of inventory of the things that you value in relationship and they could be things that you would view as secure right um-hmm incidentally people are at different stages of readiness for the it doesn't make them more or less enlightened or expand it or whatever in the way that you know you wouldn't expect an toddler to salsa dance before they even have learned how to crawl or walk right it doesn't make you make that child more or less you know enlightened it's just where they are in their process so some people feel like well I value this this and this but then they'll say something like oh but you know I say I don't want drama in my relationship but then when the relationship becomes too too regular routine or boring I create drama in my relationship and that makes me excited about it again right and so then they're like so do am I really valuing drama even though I say I don't want it you know that's that's that's a process of taking a look at how you are responding to things how your synaptic pathways have been created and then and then you know some people they have to experience that enough until they feel as though ok I've hit a threshold and I'm just I'm done with that some people don't reach that threshold so easily and and that's okay you know you can't push somebody to be where they are in their process of expansion until they're ready to be there and they will let you know because they will know and then that's when you start stepping into the processes like the ones that we talk about here on this group and also in my online courses right that process of bringing the head and the heart into a state of integration where you're ready to let go of the the drama and you're ready to sort of commit your time energy and effort towards shifting your synaptic pathways because you've just reached a threshold with it right and that's just kind of unfortunately that's kind of the way we start to change is that we have oftentimes you know transformation is stimulated through something that is painfully catalytic but it doesn't have to be and I think I think that sometimes people will go through that process and then they'll reach a place where they're like you know I don't I want to continue to change and transform and grow and expand and fill up my circumference but I don't want it to be sourced from a pace place of pain but we question that because so much of what we're conditioned to believe is that you know that our pain is romantic and that it means something and that we have to earn love and we have to earn the things that we the pleasurable things that we have and that's it that's an ideology that we have to learn how to step out on if it's all about them mindset reset stuff because you can change from a place of inspiration versus a place of fear and suffering and or struggle fear suffering struggle can induce change like the way we just talked about being catalyzed to change because you just I'm just not going to take it anymore but it can also be sourced from a place of being inspired from a place of creativity right from wanting to contribute something that's also something that can be equally as catalytic and if you can move into a place where that is as stimulating for you as it is to wrestle with the self-sacrifice and the pain and needing to earn things then you'll find a shift in your quality of life and I would say you would probably also find a deeper sense of faith in the universe um the other thing I wanted to mention about this question I get triggered by thoughts of my ex and toxic critical thinking by myself there's something I want to say about the word trigger people use the word trigger a lot what do you mean by triggered right so triggered when people say triggered they are often saying I'm having a feeling I'm having a feeling that's hard that I don't want to feel and so I'm gonna push it away again but when we say the word triggered we're sort of saying here's this feeling that just will not be pushed away and I'm pissed off about it and I want to get rid of this feeling any way that I can and so well when we when you say things like they trigger me they trigger me really you want to ask yourself are you just avoiding your feelings are you just too afraid just to lean into that feeling and to look at what is that feeling trying to communicate to you if there are our intrusive thoughts about an ex specifically critical thinking then there may be a part of you that's asking you to look at this critical thinking that you have can you lean into the critical thinking where is that critical thinking coming from what are you doing to pay attention to it and to work with it what part of you lies beneath that layer of critical thinking that is saying please look at this thinking and please process it so that I can come out because it's like locked me in here and I want to come out so I need you to acknowledge this critical aspect of yourself so I can become integrated into you as a whole and you can now step into a place where you're accepting me oh but it but if we just call it being triggered and then try to find some resource to get rid of the feeling or to suppress it or bury it or to ignore it for a while so you can just feel a momentary relief that's kind of a short-term escape and it's kind of like you know the messenger comes and knocks on the door if you ignore the messenger it's just gonna knock harder right now that's that's that's something I've noticed a lot about people who talk about being triggered I don't know if that's your circumstance truly being triggered is kind of like like a true trigger is when you're sent into a flashback it's like it's it's an a sense oriole experience that is embedded in your amygdala and you are quite literally in that time and place and from a past experience sensorially psychically you you believe think feel that you are there so so and that's not to say that maybe that doesn't happen for you but I would just maybe have you raise a little bit of awareness around the eye and not just for the person who's asking this question but I'm sure a lot of other people have the same kind of approach just to think about when you start to when you start using words like oh my god I'm triggered try to think about maybe replacing that with oh I'm having a difficult feeling and rather than saying what can I do to fix this triggered feeling might say I wondering about this feeling and I'm it's feeling I'm noticing that it's somewhere in my body right now and if I go and I touch that part of my body and I go into it oh yeah that's where it is and oh that feels like a dark murky feeling and I'm really curious about what that feeling is trying to tell me because when you have a feeling this is the voice of your inner being and in the way that I approach these things some might refer to it as your unconscious self some might refer to it as your wounded inner child but there's a part of yourself that is looking to have a conversation with you and you know the way I think of it it kind of works is that your soul your essence your inner being or higher knowing whatever you wanna call it basically is responding to some slot that you're having some perception you're having some way that you are moving through the world and it's saying whatever it whatever it is that you are subconsciously putting into action here as interim so if you're having a toxic critical thought you may have internalized this ex-boyfriend as being the point of focus for that toxic critical thinking because as we mentioned in the previous question he's carrying a kernel of that so this is not to say that when you say your partner has toxic is a toxic and critical person there's an element of that in that person but now you've taken it in right and it may be then you are attracted that person for all the good things that they reflect in you but also for all the some of the bad things that they reflect in you and so maybe his criticism are stimulated and brought up within you and brought to your attention your own critical inner voice and so where does that come from where does it reside in your body and how can you now start to organize that so you learn where and how that has protected you and then you give it a new job so for example how could a critical voice be protecting you these are questions wouldn't ask yourself how is this feel how has this feeling protected me even it's an icky feeling it's it's it's protecting you from something if he feelings you have them because it's trying to direct you a weight away from something that it thinks is not good for you so if you've been taught for example that drama is good in your relationships or you've been taught that that certain things are dangerous like love and intimacy then you your your subconscious limiting beliefs will create a key feelings to protect you from what it thinks is it is a threat okay and so unless you go in and you start to talk to and find out where that icky feeling came from and let that icky feeling no we don't have to you don't have to protect me like that anymore I'm not a child anymore and I'm not in that relationship anymore and it's okay it doesn't mean just because it was that was the situation then that it has to be the situation now and it doesn't mean that the world isn't full of an abundant source of resources of love and affection and attention and success for us it's just that's an erroneous belief and we have to let go of that okay so to bring this all back if you find yourself feeling like you're triggered by something I would encourage you instead of trying to move away or escape that feeling to try to lean into it and find out what is then what's the part of you that's looking to be integrated there I want to be myself and love myself for God yes yes so that that's the process that we that we're talking about you know I have I do a lot of demos of ways you can put this into practice on my You Tube channel if you go to the playlist for spirituality and attachment I would recommend checking that out also I happen to be running a special right now on my 7 week a self-directed online course it's called healing attachment wounds with mindfulness and creative arts therapies it's 76 percent off right now until the end of December and it the whole the whole seven week curriculum is all the ways in which I would encourage you how to lean into your feelings and to integrate the parts of yourself that they're representing instead of escaping into short term escapes and saying I'm triggered I need to get away from this right