Can We Have An Insecure Attachment Style and Still Be Confident?
All my life, I wanted to be confident.
After all, confident girls were cool. Confident girls got the guys. And confident girls didn’t seem to need anybody to feel good about themselves.
People always used to tell me that I seemed confident because I am loud and outspoken. But I definitely didn’t always feel confident on the inside, especially when it came to dating.
I was always on top of my game for the first three dates or so. At that point I wasn’t invested yet and figured if they didn’t like me they were obviously lame.
But after date number three is when I’d start to realize if I liked them or not. And if I did, well that’s when my ironclad confidence would quickly start to crumble. In no time at all I’d become a nervous fucking wreck, questioning my every inclination, not trusting anything I said or did from that point forward.
This became a chronic cycle that, frankly, pissed me off. I had been doing so much work to love and appreciate myself, only to watch it all go out the window as soon as I really liked someone.
I couldn’t figure out why dating made me feel so damn insecure.
In this article, I’ll explain the difference between being confident and being secure, how the two are related, and how we can cultivate both even if we have an insecure attachment style.
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BEING CONFIDENT VS BEING SECURE
I used to think that being confident was the same thing as being secure. I remember hearing the phrase “she’s so insecure” being tossed around a lot about people I knew, and I wanted to avoid it being said about me at all costs (especially by a man).
Since working with Attachment Theory, however, (a psychological framework based on the concept of feeling safe in relationships) I’ve come to realize that while being secure and being confident are definitely related, they aren’t exactly the same thing.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CONFIDENT?
I used to think that to have confidence meant that you thought highly of yourself (turns out that’s called arrogance). Confidence actually refers to “the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust.”
So when we say we are “confident” in ourselves, what we’re actually saying is that we trust ourselves.
Learning this blew my mind because I always associated trust as being something we have with others; we trust those close to us to be honest, to keep our secrets, and to stay loyal. But trust with myself? This concept was completely foreign to me.
Based on this new understanding, I now know that confidence is something that largely comes from within. While the people in our lives, the media, and our culture at large may influence how we feel about ourselves, they cannot take the place of the relationship we have with ourselves, which includes trusting ourselves. Only we can do that.
I’ve always trusted myself with certain things: to pay my bills, to get my work done, to show up places on time, to be a good friend. But I definitely didn’t trust myself when it came to dating.
Instead, I blamed myself that my lack of confidence in dating was why guys didn’t stick around. (Some of them would probably concur with this).
What I didn’t realize was that my personal confidence was only part of the equation -- the other part was choosing someone who could help me feel secure.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SECURE?
If confidence is an inward trust we have with ourselves, security is an outward trust we have with the people in our lives.
The word secure is literally defined as, “fixed or fastened so as not to give way, become loose, or be lost.” So by its very definition, to be secure means that something else has to exist in order for us to be “fixed” or “fastened” to it. It follows, then, that having a sense of security relies on something else outside of ourselves in order to exist.
In the world of attachment speak, our sense of security comes from feeling safe within a given relationship. Which makes sense as the word security (the noun version of the word secure) is defined as, “the state of being free from danger or threat.”
No wonder we refer to all those people who guard our malls and homes and events as “security”! They are literally helping to keep us free from danger or threat. (Do you feel your world making more sense already!?)
When it comes to emotional security, we are also referring to freedom from danger or threat — the danger or threat that a person will abandon, reject, or hurt us in moments of vulnerability.
WHEN OUR SECURITY IS THREATENED
John Bowlby, the father of Attachment Theory, believed that emotional connections are as important to our survival as food and water. For this reason, when we feel the threat or danger of losing someone we’ve become attached to, it can quite literally feel like our very lives are at risk.
See, we humans all have something called an “attachment system,” which is made up of hormones like Oxytocin and Vasopressin that make us feel connected, loved, and territorial over those we’ve deemed significant.
When our attachment system becomes activated or has a flare up, it means we sense a threat or danger to that connection. In response, we engage in a variety of behaviors to re-establish that connection (known as protest behavior), which can include things like reaching out to that person incessantly to ignoring them completely to get their attention.
If we have an insecure attachment style, the impulse to engage in protest behavior arises because the person we are close to isn’t meeting our basic need of safety (which varies depending on your attachment style).
So what does this all mean?
It means that no matter how confident you may be as an independent individual, if your needs aren’t being met in a relationship—especially if you have an insecure attachment style—it’s nearly impossible for you to feel secure.
BEING SECURE IS NOT ALL ON YOU
There’s so much talk in the wellness space today about “doing the work.” This refers to the inner work we do on ourselves: uncovering our Shadows and attending to old wounds in order to create new, healthy patterns.
This Shadow work is vital to understanding ourselves and how we show up in relationships, and is much of what I focus on in my coaching practice. After all, the old saying that “you can’t love someone until you learn to love yourself” is still as accurate as ever.
However, I find there’s a slight misconception that just doing the work on yourself is going to lead to the relationship you’ve always dreamed of.
We tend to think that if we become the most actualized version of ourselves—if we learn to embrace our flaws, know our triggers, and hone our connection to that divine power inside ourselves—that we’ll eventually attract everything we want, including our ideal partner.
And while I wholeheartedly believe that women are amazingly intuitive, divine, powerful creatures who can put the possible in impossible, no matter how powerful we may be, we don’t have the power to control another person (nor is it our responsibility to).
This is especially important to note for us ladies who are socialized in this culture to take care of everyone and everything, which can sometimes give us a false sense of control or a belief that we should be able to control all things, situations, and people.
But in a relationship of any kind, there is another person—another something—thrown in the mix with their own baggage, stories, associations, expectations, and experiences. Another person we essentially fasten ourselves to in order to feel secure.
Remember venn diagrams? A relationship is like that, with you being one circle, your partner being the other, and that little space in between being the actual relationship. That in-between space is affected by our individual selves, of course, but there are other variables present that we can’t control.
My point? It’s not all on YOU to make a relationship work. It takes two people (and no less) to create a secure relationship.
HOW TO HAVE A SECURE RELATIONSHIP WITH AN INSECURE ATTACHMENT STYLE
Just because we can’t control our partner doesn’t mean there aren’t certain things we have control over in a relationship. Here are some things you can do on your own to move your relationship towards a place of emotional security:
Keep doing “the work”.
I know, I know, I said it’s not all about doing the work. And it isn’t—but the work is still important. Honing our confidence (our trust with our Self), consciousness (our awareness of our Self), and our intuition (our communication with our Self) is key to knowing how we feel and what we want (aka, knowing our needs) within a given relationship. And only when we know these things within ourselves are we able to communicate them to our partner.
Build your confidence in baby steps.
Confidence isn’t something that we develop overnight. Like anything, it’s something that’s built up over time with practice. The best way to build trust with ourselves is by practicing with little goals that we can follow through on without too much pressure. Not only does this release dopamine (which is part of our pleasure center so it feels good) but it also reminds us that we can trust that we’ll show up for ourselves. This trust will eventually help us to create boundaries that we can stick to, and that we’ll hold others to as well.
Let go of the impulse to control.
As we’ve talked about, females are magical creatures with an enormous power inside of us. However we are not omniscient and therefore have our limits. We may understand this in our minds well enough, but embodying this can be a little trickier. There is a pretty well-known mantra I love that I use when I’m wanting to surrender to something and let go of what I cannot control. Maybe you’re familiar with it already, but if not it goes like this:
God (universe, higher power, etc.), grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Choose a partner that complements your attachment style.
Depending on your attachment style, other attachment styles may trigger or dysregulate you more than others. Knowing yours can help narrow down the qualities or traits that you need in a person in order to feel secure in a relationship.
TO WRAP UP
While trust, which is the key to confidence, is very much a part of our sense of security, it’s only part of what we need in order to feel secure in a relationship. Confidence is an inward trust with ourselves, while security is an outward trust with the people in our lives. Knowing the difference can help you take some of the pressure off yourself for being “perfect” and start to identify the type of person who you can safely “fasten” yourself to for the best chance at creating a secure partnership.
