You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships.

I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg,

and I'm really glad you're here.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we're talking

all about emotional availability or emotional unavailability.

I think that this is one of those terms and one of those concepts that's thrown around a lot,

particularly in the world of Instagram and social media, more broadly when we're talking

about dating and red flags and what to look for and building healthy relationships.

And I think that's with good reason, but I also think it's really important, as always, to approach these sorts of

big labels with a level of nuance and articulating, you know, what does it really mean when we're

talking about emotional availability? What are we looking for in other people?

And I would argue more importantly, what does that look like within us? Because I think it's really

easy to focus on the ways in which someone else might be quote unquote emotionally unavailable

and almost distract ourselves with all of their shortcomings and everything that we want them to change

while overlooking the ways in which we might be exhibiting certain signs of emotional unavailability,

albeit maybe taking a different form. I think that a lot of the time the trope of the

unavailable person is someone who is more avoidant and aloof and hot and cold

and you can't really seem to crack them and you don't know what's what. And so while if you're

more anxious leaning, you might not fit that description. I think there are some less obvious ways

that we can ourselves be emotionally unavailable and in so doing can prevent the kind of deeper,

more authentic connection that we really crave. So I'm going to be sharing some thoughts on that

today. Before we dive into that, a quick announcement that Healing Anxious Attachment is still open for

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