Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It by Leslie Becker-Phelps Page B
Authors: Leslie Becker-Phelps
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part of self-awareness is mentalizing, which is a process associated with psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy and his colleagues (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target, 2002; Slade, 2008). They have explained this as a process in which people experience themselves and the world through their minds. This allows them to take a
reflective stance
—to think about the psychological reasons for their own and others’ behavior. Importantly, however, mentalizing also involves being emotionally connected while having that reflective stance. Those who have a strong mentalizing ability sense that they can change the very nature of their experiences by thinking about them differently.
Implicit in mentalizing is the assumption that people have shared experiences. This
common humanity
, as described by researcher Kristin Neff (2008), naturally gives people a sense of connection and understanding for themselves and others. They can feel empathy and compassion for those in pain because they can relate. (I will discuss this in detail later in this chapter.)
Too often, however, anxiously attached people don’t fully feel that they are a part of this common humanity. As a result, while they might understand why other people do and feel as they do (it’s only human), they don’t apply this same understanding to themselves. And though they have compassion for others, they experience themselves as flawed in a way that makes them feel undeserving of compassion—and too often inclined to fault themselves for relationship problems. Over time, though, their repeated experience of feeling rejected—even when their partners are not meaning to reject them—leads them to respond by being critical of their partners.
To help clarify how mentalizing can be affected by attachment-related anxiety, consider the way Sydney—a woman with a strong preoccupied style—reacts after a blind date ignores her obvious willingness to meet again. Understandably, she is unhappy about this. However, because of her weak ability to mentalize, she equates the feeling of rejection with her being flawed and unworthy of love. She feels despair and isolates herself. However, if her attachment-related anxiety were less intense, her ability to understand the situation with more perspective might not be so impaired. She could feel hurt while recognizing that not everyone clicks—and that being rejected does not make her a reject. She might even remember that there are men she’s liked or respected in the past who did not interest her romantically.
While strengthening her ability to mentalize can help Sydney to open up positive ways of thinking about herself and her relationships, it unfortunately does not automatically relieve distress. All too often people think that they should no longer be upset once they understand their circumstance. In my clinical practice, it is not unusual for patients to say something like, “I know I’m always afraid of being judged because my father was cruel when I was a child. But that was a long time ago and he’s dead now. So why can’t I just get over it already?” The answer is that some things in life are painful, and no amount of understanding will change that. But learning to respond with self-compassion can soothe that hurt and help you move forward in life.
Mentalizing can sound complicated; and in some ways it is. But you already practice it in your life when considering your emotions as you think about why you do what you do, or why others do what they do. In the next chapter I will offer exercises to specifically develop your mentalizing ability.
Self-Compassion
Self-awareness—which includes awareness of emotions, awareness of thoughts, and mentalizing—is a powerful tool, but it can’t help you by itself. So let’s take a look at the other half of the formula for making effective, lasting change—self-compassion.
People don’t just
understand
themselves or
have
emotions or
think
thoughts; they
relate to
these experiences.
reflective stance
—to think about the psychological reasons for their own and others’ behavior. Importantly, however, mentalizing also involves being emotionally connected while having that reflective stance. Those who have a strong mentalizing ability sense that they can change the very nature of their experiences by thinking about them differently.
Implicit in mentalizing is the assumption that people have shared experiences. This
common humanity
, as described by researcher Kristin Neff (2008), naturally gives people a sense of connection and understanding for themselves and others. They can feel empathy and compassion for those in pain because they can relate. (I will discuss this in detail later in this chapter.)
Too often, however, anxiously attached people don’t fully feel that they are a part of this common humanity. As a result, while they might understand why other people do and feel as they do (it’s only human), they don’t apply this same understanding to themselves. And though they have compassion for others, they experience themselves as flawed in a way that makes them feel undeserving of compassion—and too often inclined to fault themselves for relationship problems. Over time, though, their repeated experience of feeling rejected—even when their partners are not meaning to reject them—leads them to respond by being critical of their partners.
To help clarify how mentalizing can be affected by attachment-related anxiety, consider the way Sydney—a woman with a strong preoccupied style—reacts after a blind date ignores her obvious willingness to meet again. Understandably, she is unhappy about this. However, because of her weak ability to mentalize, she equates the feeling of rejection with her being flawed and unworthy of love. She feels despair and isolates herself. However, if her attachment-related anxiety were less intense, her ability to understand the situation with more perspective might not be so impaired. She could feel hurt while recognizing that not everyone clicks—and that being rejected does not make her a reject. She might even remember that there are men she’s liked or respected in the past who did not interest her romantically.
While strengthening her ability to mentalize can help Sydney to open up positive ways of thinking about herself and her relationships, it unfortunately does not automatically relieve distress. All too often people think that they should no longer be upset once they understand their circumstance. In my clinical practice, it is not unusual for patients to say something like, “I know I’m always afraid of being judged because my father was cruel when I was a child. But that was a long time ago and he’s dead now. So why can’t I just get over it already?” The answer is that some things in life are painful, and no amount of understanding will change that. But learning to respond with self-compassion can soothe that hurt and help you move forward in life.
Mentalizing can sound complicated; and in some ways it is. But you already practice it in your life when considering your emotions as you think about why you do what you do, or why others do what they do. In the next chapter I will offer exercises to specifically develop your mentalizing ability.
Self-Compassion
Self-awareness—which includes awareness of emotions, awareness of thoughts, and mentalizing—is a powerful tool, but it can’t help you by itself. So let’s take a look at the other half of the formula for making effective, lasting change—self-compassion.
People don’t just
understand
themselves or
have
emotions or
think
thoughts; they
relate to
these experiences.
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