If there is one thing that I don’t know anything about, it’s gardening.
(Although I did just figure out how to finally keep houseplants alive-the main ingredient turns out to be light, who’d a thought?)
But what I do know is that the beginning of a gardening cycle comes with the spring. It’s time to prep and plan, and a lot of energy goes into figuring out what to plant for the year.
AND it turns out that taking time to plan what to grow in a relationship can make a HUGE difference if you want to see a securely attached beautiful connection grow and stay strong.
Lucky for you, healthy relationships ARE something I know a lot about.
And because most of us could use some more beauty/health/joy in our relationships, I’m going to focus the next 4 weeks on different things we can plan/plant in our relationships to make them more secure.
Ready? Let’s go!
Part One: Planting BELIEF
Let’s chat about planting belief in secure attachment.
It might sound a bit odd at first, but hang with me for a moment.
I hear from clients all the time, “I am constantly disappointed with dating (or in my partner), and really most days I just don’t believe that what I want is out there or possible.”
And when I start talking to them about what a secure relationship is like, they will OFTEN ask, “But does that even exist? Are there really securely attached people out there?”
To which I say YES! 150%!
Close your eyes and envision me dancing around my office, making ‘YES! YES! YES!’ gestures.
Need a visual? Here it is!
In fact securely attached people are about 50% of the population.
To which people will often say….
“So then, WHERE ARE THEY?”
You see, it is super common for folks with anxious attachment, avoidant attachment or disorganized attachment to NOT SEE securely attached people around them.
And this my friend, is where we get back to our spring-time planting.
Because when you first start planting your garden, and you are putting these tiny seeds in the ground, you might think, how the heck are these itsy bitsy little seeds going to grow into food?
Is it really possible?
AND you have to BELIEVE.
You have to trust that it’s possible.
You get seeds ready and you plant them deep in the soil.
And you don’t see them, you don’t see the shoots yet.
You have to water them. You have to give them the right conditions.
You have to do that consistently.
You essentially have to believe that something will grow before you ever see proof.
That’s the first step, and that’s the same thing that needs to happen with relationships.
Understanding the Importance of Believing in Secure Attachment
One of the first things that we need to do when we’re planting for secure attachment is we need to plant some belief. We need to plant some hope.
Having hope is crucial because, for both anxious and avoidant individuals, there can be a feeling of incredible disappointment in the past that leads you to not have hope for the future.
You may have never had a securely attached relationship.
Or maybe your parents didn’t model secure attachment.
or maybe you never felt like someone got you, fully understood you as a child.
And maybe you have never experienced someone TRULY getting you in a romantic partnership.
Maybe you have never experienced being in a relationship where your partner is a full teammate.
And if that’s true, it would be hard to believe that it’s possible.
It would be hard to picture secure attachment.
Going back to our garden metaphor…
If you had never planted a seed and seen it grow before, and someone told you, “Hey put these seeds in the dirt and then tend to them every day.”
…..And you do, day after day…
But for a long time nothing happens. (Nothing that you can see anyway.)
And if you didn’t know that there was something happening, you might give up.
Why on earth would you keep going?
If you’ve never seen it, you’ve never experienced it.
But, you know, then there’s this miraculous moment when something starts to shoot out of the earth.…
And you’re like Wow, all that work-It ended up somewhere.
And not only that, you realize that NOT SEEING is part of a natural cycle. That it’s natural to not see what you are cultivating for a while.
And then you might realize that planting belief is just like that, that seeds take a while to show up on the other side of the soil.
The Oscillation of Belief:
When you go in and out of believing in your capacity to have healthy relationships, you reinforce your insecure attachment.
For anxiously attached individuals, they oscillate between believing it’s possible, having hope, then losing it, and then having hope again.
For those who are more avoidantly attached, they might have a cynical perspective on relationships in general, feeling like it’s unlikely they’ll ever get the kind of relationship they hope for in their heart. In other words, they have decided they are NOT going to be able to have a garden, and question whether a healthy garden even exists.
And for those with a disorganized attachment, the experience of hopelessness is even deeper due to the trauma they’ve experienced, leading to a chronic crisis of belief.
Cultivating Belief, Cultivating Hope
Look, if you are going to have a healthy garden (or healthy attachment) you have to decide that that’s what you are going to do.
Full stop.
This is the year for a beautiful garden. YOU ARE COMMITTED TO PLANTING IT.
This is the year for secure attachment.
You are going to COMMIT to believing it’s possible.
Because the thing to remember is….
Securely attached individuals firmly believe in the possibility of nurturing, fulfilling connections.
They just know that it’s a natural, expected part of life.
People who grow up with secure attachment know that the plants will grow if you keep watering them. And watering them is just a normal day-to-day activity, they just keep showing up for love and keep tending their garden.
They keep tending to that spot in the ground.
And so that’s what I invite you to do this spring.
To plant the belief in secure attachment.
The belief in a healthy, fulfilling, supportive, they’ve-got-your-back kind of love.
PLANT the belief that secure attachment can grow.
AND THEN we can talk about what watering that belief looks like.
Cheering you on,
-Sefora
PS: I’m putting together a small group of people who are single and have anxious attachment, to show them how to meet someone secure.
