Speaker A
hey guys heidi prep here today i wanted to talk about something that was brought to my attention when i was looking at the comments of an old video and it was i can't remember if it was just the four
Heidi Priebe explains six characteristics of securely attached relationships, including fighting fairly, healthy co-regulation, mutual trust, and realistic expectations. Gives a model for healing beyo
Key Takeaways
- Securely attached relationships do not avoid conflict; they handle it with bearable emotions and collaborative problem-solving
- Healthy co-regulation is coaching and encouragement that builds independence, not rescuing that creates dependence
- Trust in secure relationships rests on both emotional safety with a partner and confidence in one's own ability to cope
- Realistic expectations of a partner are a key foundation of a healthy relationship, and healing involves learning what healthy behavior looks like
What the video covers
- Heidi Priebe notes she has covered insecure attachment styles but rarely the secure style, and explains why she is addressing it now
- Secure relationships still have conflict, but both partners find the discomfort of conflict bearable and can stay regulated
- Conflict can be paused and revisited later, approached as 'us against the problem' rather than 'us against each other'
- Healthy co-regulation means supporting a partner as a coach rather than a rescuer, which fosters independence rather than codependency
- Secure partners empower each other to solve their own problems instead of depending on each other as the answer to everything
- Mutual trust in secure relationships comes from emotional safety and from each person being okay without the other
- A secure person trusts their own capacity to recover, like a bird trusting its wings rather than the branch
- Emotions are expressed directly and taken seriously, but not every emotion reflects the current situation, especially when attachment wounds are active
- Fights in secure relationships tend to stay about the surface issue, such as who does the dishes, rather than escalating into judgments of love or worth
- Secure partners give each other space during hard periods without taking withdrawal personally
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: Why Secure Attachment Is Rarely Discussed
- 01:00Characteristic 1: Fighting Fair and Bearable Conflict
- 03:07Characteristic 2: Co-Regulation and Independence
- 05:00Characteristic 3: Mutual Trust and Emotional Safety
- 06:40Characteristic 4: Emotions Expressed and Taken Seriously
- 09:00Characteristic 5: Space and Non-Personalizing Withdrawal
- 10:40Characteristic 6: Realistic Expectations
- 14:00Closing and Next Steps
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
attachment styles or the four attachment styles in relationship something like that but someone commented are you ever going to get to the fourth attachment style and i was like that's funny and a good point i usually label my videos the
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four attachment styles and then i go on to absolutely never talk about the secure style so there is a reason for this and the reason is that secures tend to need less resources when it comes to relationships than the other three
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insecure styles but it's also really important for us to be aware of what attachment security is and what it looks like because i think that a lot of us get to this point in our healing journey where we're kind of like okay i know
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what not to do like i'm very hyper aware of what i'm doing wrong but i don't necessarily have a model for what i'm supposed to be doing instead or for what a healthy and healed attachment style or healthy and healed attachment
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relationship actually looks like so today i wanted to go over a non-comprehensive list of some of the characteristics that you're likely to see in a secure relationship so here we go characteristic number one of securely attached relationships is that the
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people in the relationship know how to fight fair so it's not that there's never conflict in secure relationships all relationships have conflict conflict is actually a pretty healthy part of learning to live alongside someone else but in insecure relationships a lot of
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the time conflict feels very unbearable for one reason or another whereas in secure relationships conflict is very bearable it's not fun but it's bearable and what i mean by that is that for the most part both people are able to stay
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relatively regulated through conflict so even if emotions get really heightened or things get kind of heated it doesn't necessarily feel like okay my entire life is going to go out the window if we can't resolve this conflict which is
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sometimes what it feels like in insecure relationships especially when you have a whole bunch of wounds or traumas popping up for people through conflict so there will be tension that crops up there will be emotions that get heightened but both
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people are able for the most part to deal with the tense and uncomfortable nature of conflict so there isn't necessarily this urgency to sort out any conflict that arises right away or to push it completely under the rug right
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insecure relationships for the most part conflicts can wait both people can take a little bit of time to cool down think about what they want to say and then return to the conflict at a time when they're ready to work together on it and
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kind of approach it as us against the problem rather than us against each other so for both people a little bit of tension a little bit of awkwardness a little bit of space before the conflict is properly resolved is bearable it
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doesn't feel like those things have to be done away with right away and in the same vein a little bit of discomfort while the problem is being worked through also feels bearable it doesn't feel like disagreeing on some things or saying
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something that might be a little bit awkward and vulnerable to say are going to be the end of the world and those things often have to be said in order for both parties to understand where each other's coming from and arrive at a
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middle ground so it's not that secure people never have conflict it's that they find the feelings associated with conflict bearable therefore it's easier to deal with the conflict in a healthy way characteristic number two of a secure relationship is that
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co-regulation leads to more independence at the end of the day rather than less so what does this mean when you have an insecure relationship a lot of the time what we think of as co-regulation is actually just two people being in the
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drama triangle and one of them stepping in to savior the other so you often have one or more people in an insecurely attached relationship looking at the other person like they are the answer to all of their problems but in a healthy
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secure relationship both people know i am not the answer to the other person's problems i'm just the person who can support them while they go find the answers to their own problems so instead of stepping into that savior or rescuer
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position in the drama triangle when their partner comes to them with a problem they each step naturally into the coach position and they help each other work through their own independent issues in a way that does not create
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codependency you get this really nice situation where two people are empowering each other to live their independent lives in a better way rather than feeling like they have to retreat to each other because they're incapable of solving their own problems so
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co-regulation in a secure relationship can look like a lot of things but one of the things that it often looks like is kind of like a pep talk so it's not saying come in closer because you need me it's saying come in closer so i can
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remind you of all the ways that you don't and that you are okay and capable and fully able to tackle life i will just be here in the background rooting for you characteristic number three of secure relationships is that you often
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see a strong sense of mutual trust in a way that you often don't see this in insecure relationships and the reason that you get that sense of trust so naturally is twofold one is because insecure relationships for the most part
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people know where they stand with each other so in insecure relationships it often feels like oh my god is this fight gonna be the thing that ends us are we gonna break up in two days or at the end
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of this week if even one little thing goes wrong but in securely attached relationships both partners are more or less able to offer the other a sense of emotional safety so they both know save for something extreme happening i'm not
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going anywhere you're not going anywhere and so we can be comfortable being interdependent both people can be fairly calm in their feeling that they're a priority to the other one but the second reason why trust might feel more natural
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in a secure relationship is because both people know that they are okay without the other so there's a quote i really like that i'm going to read here that goes a bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because
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its trust is not on the branch but in its own wings and i think that that's a really good example of what it's like to be securely attached you know that of course the worst thing could always happen your
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partner could always betray you in a massive way but even if they did you have a full life of other people of other support systems that you could turn to and you also have a strong sense of independence so you know that even if
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the worst thing happened you might be heartbroken you might be really sad if things ended with your partner or if your trust was betrayed in a major way but you would also get through it right because you know that you have the
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capacity to do that so in a secure relationship there is an interdependent element to that trust both people have to be able to give each other reassurance and validation that they matter to each other but there's also that sense of i will be okay no matter
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what characteristic number four of securely attached relationships is that emotions are both expressed directly and taken seriously when they're brought up and i need to give credit where credit is due here which is to say that in insecure relationships it's often not
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the best policy to take every emotion at face value because not every emotion that's presented at face value is actually about the situation at hand so when you have attachment wounding it's very common for things like conflict to
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bring up emotional flashbacks from your early childhood or from past traumas or whatever it is which means that a fight between two insecurely attached people might on the surface be a fight about let's say one person not doing the
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dishes but when you look at both people's perspectives the first person has made that argument about the dishes to mean you didn't do the dishes because you don't love me just like my family never loved me and nobody respects me
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and nobody listens to anything i say so that's a very loaded argument from their point of view they're not trying to prove that their partner should do the dishes they're trying to prove that they are worth loving and respecting and
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valuing and that's a huge huge expectation to put on an argument right and then on the other side of things the argument about you should do the dishes to the other person might feel like i'm being controlled the way i've always
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been controlled i've never had autonomy over my own life or my own choices you can't control me so they might be on the surface fighting about the fact that they're tired and don't feel like doing the dishes tonight but under the surface
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they're trying to prove that they can't be controlled and that their life is their own and so now you have this fight that is incredibly weighted right because it's not just about the thing that it's about on the surface but in a
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secure relationship the fights for the most part are just about the things on the surface so they're a lot easier to resolve right it's not that hard to reach a resolution about when to do the dishes and whose responsibility it is to
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do them when but it is pretty hard for both partners to resolve a lifetime of trauma and attachment wounding through a single argument so you might find that in insecure relationships people aren't taking each other's emotions seriously because the emotions being presented are
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very out of proportion like someone is really mad about the dishes in a situation where it doesn't necessarily make sense to be that mad but because the fights are a little bit more present rational and focused insecure relationships it's not as difficult for
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the two partners to sit down hear each other out value what each other is thinking and feeling take that into consideration and then find a solution together because again both people more or less understand the balance between self-regulation and co-regulation so
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there's more of a natural understanding of what is mine to sort through on my own and when is it appropriate to bring something up to my partner and expect them to reciprocate and want to work with that on me and even that can be a
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process that gets negotiated over the course of a relationship right and on the other side of things it's also taken as a given that emotions are a normal part of life everyone has them there's no shame in having them and we can talk
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about these things with each other because we're both humans having a human experience and a very big part of that experience is emotional characteristic number five of a secure relationship is that each person is comfortable and capable of taking a turn at being the
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other person's secure base so what that means is that nobody is perfect no human is perfectly regulated even securely attached people so every once in a while one person in a partnership is going to be a little bit irrational they're going
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to be a little bit upset about something that maybe doesn't make that much sense they're going to come home from work one day super flustered and needing a little bit more comfort than usual and each person in a secure partnership is going
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to be able to handle to a reasonable extent their partner's dysregulation and what our partners need when they have these bad days or these tough periods of their lives is going to be dependent on what kind of person they are so some
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people need a little bit of extra space while they're moving through difficult periods of their lives or when they're having a bad day and a secure regulated partner is perfectly able to give their partner a little bit of extra space when
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that's what they need and on the flip side other people might want a little bit of extra company or attention or to spend some quality time together and make some jokes when they're having a hard day and a secure regulated partner
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is going to be able to shift some things around within reason to make that happen because again both people's emotional experiences matter to the other and they're able to meet each other's needs not based on what they would do but
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based on what their partner needs in that moment and the important thing here is that both partners are able to do it and that they can take turns doing this a secure relationship doesn't mean you don't need anything from each other it
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just means that there's a fairly even balance of giving and taking and also that that giving and taking is flexible so it's not one person can give but only in this specific way right it's both people adapt to each other's needs
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within reason and the sixth characteristic of a secure relationship that we're going to talk about today is probably the most important one and it is that there are realistic expectations placed on the relationship when we are insecurely attached by virtue of our
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insecure attachment we tend to have unrealistic expectations of a relationship so an anxiously attached person might feel like a relationship is going to take away all of my anxiety and insecurity and if it's not doing that it must be the wrong relationship or i must
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find a way for my partner to take away all of this pain and on the flip side of things an avoidantly attached person might feel like my partner has to be perfectly reasonable all of the time or else they are not the right partner for
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me my ideal partner would never get dysregulated even for a minute and both of these are unrealistic expectations to place on a relationship right relationships require self-regulation and co-regulation and any imbalance of the two so going too hard in one
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direction or the other is gonna make for a difficult to maintain relationship so i was at a 12-step meeting the other day and someone said something that i really liked which is i have to keep reminding myself that i can't buy milk at a
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hardware store and i think that that is a perfect example of what we're doing when we go into a relationship with the wrong expectations so if we expect a relationship to give us endless happiness fulfillment and self-esteem we
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are wandering around a hardware store looking for milk and we are going to be chronically disappointed because there is just not milk anywhere in that store okay so securely attached people have a more or less natural understanding of
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what a relationship is and what it is not so which needs it can and can't fulfill for them so a relationship is not the answer to all of their problems and they know that and they don't expect it to be so what you'll often see with
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insecure relationships that you don't see with secure relationships is the relationship itself cracking under the incredible weight of expectations that are not necessarily reasonable or even possible in some cases okay that is all i have to say for today on secure
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relationships but i want to spend a lot more time talking about them and talking about how to recognize signs of security within yourself within your relationships as we do attachment work because knowing what not to do only gets
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us half of the way and then knowing what to do and what behavior to model our own after gets us the rest of the way to secure so keep coming back we're going to talk about security insecurity and
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absolutely everything in between over the next year or two on this channel in the meantime i love you guys i hope you're taking care of yourselves and i will see you back here again soon [Music] you
Topics:secure attachmentattachment styleshealthy relationshipsconflict resolutionco-regulationcodependencyemotional safetytrustrelationship expectationsattachment healing
