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 are talking about what to do when life hasn't gone to plan. So how to navigate the

immense, confusing, conflicting emotions that can come with a life that is unfolding that has unfolded

in a way that's maybe really different to what you had imagined for, what you had hoped for.

I think this is incredibly common and maybe not talked about enough because for a lot of us, for most of us, probably,

the vision that we have for our lives when we are young, so maybe as a child in our teenage

years when we're in our early 20s, I think we can have these really

idealistic notions of what our life path is going to look like and that it's all going to be

quite linear and smooth sailing and picture perfect. And then when life throws its inevitable

curveballs our way, when we come up against challenges in our work or

in our relationships when relationships break down that we thought we're going to be for the

rest of our lives or maybe we struggle to find a partner altogether when we thought that we'd

be settled down with a couple of kids. Like all of these things

can leave us feeling really confused, disoriented and broken. I think the sense of failure

and unworthiness that these experiences can touch into is really, really profound. And so I want to

talk today a little about some reflections on when life hasn't gone to plan.

And it's a deliberately broad framing of the conversation because I don't want it to be

only about if you are still single in your mid 30s, for example, which is, I think,

a common expression of this. And a lot of people listening, I think will fall into that category.

...