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Do you have an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style? If you do, how does your attachment style make you feel?

(If you’re not sure what kind of attachment style you have, you can learn more about the 4 main attachment styles right here.)

Your attachment style influences how you approach and navigate relationships, especially in terms of emotional bonding, intimacy, and conflict.

This means that it can shape the type of romantic partner, family member, friend, and parent you are to those you love.

So if you know that you have an insecure attachment style, you might think that you’re doomed to have unhealthy relationships and continuously struggle to feel safe, satisfied, and happy in them.

But do you know what, my dear?

Just because you developed an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style as a kid doesn’t mean that you have to have this attachment style forever.

Because there are steps that you can take to develop a more secure attachment...

If you’re a parent, I want you to take a quick trip down memory lane and answer this question for me:

Before you had kids, was there something that your parents did that you swore you would never do with your own kids?

For example, maybe you told yourself that you would never ignore your kids’ requests, let stress about your own problems take attention away from them, compare them to siblings or cousins, or discourage them from pursuing their interests.

But now that you’re a parent, you might be realizing that as much as you told yourself that you would never be the kind of parent or caregiver that your mom, dad, or grandmother was, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Recently, I’ve chatted with you about attachment styles and how they affect your current close relationships, such as your romantic and non-romantic relationships with other adults.

But what if you’re the parent of a kid or adolescent? How does your attachment style influence...

How much do you think that your early relationship with your primary caregiver (e.g., your mom, dad, grandparent, or foster or adoptive parent) matters today?

If you’re like many people, you might think, “not much” or even “not at all,” especially if this person isn’t a regular part of your life right now.

But if you read my last post on attachment and attachment styles, you discovered that the way that we approach and navigate relationships in our life, even as adults, is heavily shaped by the early relationship that we had with our primary caregiver.

Specifically, if we developed what’s called a secure attachment to our caregiver, then we may trust others easier, form healthy relationships readily, and be resilient in the face of relationship conflict.

However, if we instead developed an insecure attachment to our caregiver, we may be anxious and clingy with our partners, shy away from close relationships, or both crave and intensely fear...

Have you noticed that you tend to do the same thing over and over again in different relationships?

For example, maybe you get jealous easily in relationships.

Perhaps you cling to partners and loved ones almost to the point of driving them away.

Or maybe no matter how awesome someone seems, you never want to get close to them.

In my last post on inner child work and relationships, I talked about the benefits of identifying patterns in your relationships and how they may be linked to your childhood.

One specific link that’s especially helpful to explore is the one between your current relationship habits and patterns and the first relationship you were ever part of: the one you had with your primary caregiver.

Why is this first relationship so important—even if you don’t have any contact with this person now?

Because according to psychological theory, the first relationship that we form with our primary caregiver influences the relationships that we form later on...

Loving someone who won’t change can be incredibly tough. On the one hand, you really care about them and want to keep them in your life. But on the other hand, the relationship often leaves you feeling drained, resentful, disappointed, sad, and maybe even angry.

In recent weeks, I’ve shared how you can navigate a relationship like this in a healthy way. And I’ve chatted about ways to maintain your relationship with your loved one while nixing or at least reducing the stress that it may be creating for you.

But what if the relationship is really taking its toll on you?

What if you don’t really look forward to spending time with your loved one?

What if you just can’t look past the things they do that really bother you or that you don’t agree with?

Or what if having them in your life is starting to eat away at your mental health or affect other areas of your life?

Are these just a “normal” part of having a challenging relationship with...

No matter how much you want to, you can’t change someone you love.

You’ve seen me talk about this on my blog. And you’ve probably heard it from someone else in your life too.

But you might still think, “My situation is different. Because I just KNOW that if I try hard enough or stick with it long enough, I can get my loved one to change. And then everything will be better.”

My dear, if that thought has run through your mind even while reading my post about why you can’t change other people, I don’t blame you.

Because I know from my own experience that our desire to change someone we love can be so, so strong.

In fact, it can be so strong that even when we’re told that we can’t change our loved one, we might still believe that we’re the exception or that our relationship is the exception. We might think that even if other people usually can’t change their loved one, we can. (And if we believe in it so much, surely we...

Have you ever had someone in your life who you desperately wanted to change? Or have you ever been in a relationship where you’d often say to yourself, “If I just wait a little bit longer, encourage them more, or try harder, they will finally change and everything will be better”?

My dear, having a relationship like this in your life is exhausting, and I get it.

And I can tell you that your experience definitely isn’t unique because I’ve been there myself.

In fact, many of us have someone in our life who does something that bothers us on an ongoing basis—whether it’s someone who chronically violates boundaries, is emotionally closed off or unavailable, has a quick temper, or engages in self-destructive behaviors.

In my case, this person was a romantic partner. But it can be anyone we love and care about, such as a parent, sibling, child, extended relative, or friend.

When we have someone like this in our life, it can be really tricky....

Did you catch what I shared in my previous blog post—the one about how to set healthy boundaries with your parents?

In that post, I shared that for a long time, I didn’t know that my relationship with my parents lacked healthy boundaries. And I didn’t understand that the relationship and my own well-being were suffering as a result.

I’ve also shared with you before that it’s important to know the signs that your relationship with your parents lacks healthy boundaries. Because it’s only once you realize that these boundaries are missing that you can work toward putting them in place and enjoying a healthier and less stressful relationship.

But here’s what some of you might be thinking:

My parents do give me unsolicited advice or call me out of the blue all the time. Up until this point, though, I haven’t really set any boundaries with them about it because it seemed easier to just put up with it. But now I have a romantic partner. He...

In my last blog post, I shared that I didn’t always love going to family gatherings. In fact, I would sometimes dread them because I knew they would inevitably end in conflict, stress, and a lot of hurt feelings.

If you dread getting together with your family—whether it’s for the holidays, a relative’s milestone birthday, or “just because”—you might find that one of the most stressful parts of a family gathering are the uncomfortable, boundary-crossing conversations that can catch you off guard.

I’m talking about when…

…your aunt comes up to you and asks why you still don’t have kids.

…your mom tells you in front of everyone that you’ve gained weight.

…or your drunk uncle makes an inappropriate comment about your body.

Whether the conversation is intrusive, emotionally painful, or downright inappropriate, in the moment, you probably feel desperate to make it end. But you also don’t want to...

You’ve probably noticed that I spend A LOT of time talking about how to set boundaries clearly and confidently with the people in your life. And I’ve even shared some of the personal struggles that I experienced when learning how to set healthy boundaries in my own life.

But the reality is that the healthiest relationships are the ones where both people set boundaries with the other person and respect the boundaries set by the other person.

That’s why it’s important to learn not just how to set and enforce boundaries that you want other people to respect but to learn how to respect the boundaries that other people set with you.

Because when both you and your loved one respect each other’s boundaries, you let each other know that you love each other, that you respect each other’s autonomy, and that your relationship is a safe space for both of you. You also boost the trust and intimacy in your relationship and make it a “place” where...