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 how to stop the anxious spiraling.

So this is one that I know will be very broadly applicable and familiar terrain for so many

of us who struggle with anxious attachment patterns and anxiety in our relationships.

This sense that one small thing can trigger you and very quickly you'll find yourself snowballing into a

full-blown panic, really, really activated nervous system, feeling really out of control,

feeling really, really stressed and not really knowing what to do with that.

I think for me, that's really one of the hallmarks of

these kinds of patterns for people with anxious attachment is not only that it feels like you're

almost possessed by a force greater than yourself and you can see it happening in real time,

but you also feel really powerless. You feel like you're at the mercy of this thing that's happening to you.

And that in and of itself can be even more distressing because really our nervous system

responds very well to having a sense of choice and agency and really spirals very

understandably when we feel helpless or powerless.

And so the very fact that we don't necessarily feel like we're in control of these triggers tends to exacerbate the emotional

response that we're having. So it becomes this really vicious cycle where one thing sets us off and

then it picks up some steam and then it sets off this whole cascade of

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