Insecurely Yours: An AEDP Perspective on Healing Together

“The child learns to not feel what she feels or know what she knows.” – John Bowlby

I have carried these words with me, not because I chose them, but because they were written into my nervous system before I had language to understand. I learned, in ways both spoken and silent, that my feelings were too much, that my needs were inconvenient, that what I sensed in the air around me was not real—at least, not real enough to be acknowledged.

So, I adapted. I learned to tuck away the fear, the longing, the ache for connection, and instead, I watched. I read between the lines. I learned how to anticipate moods, how to make myself smaller, how to seek safety not through being held but through being useful.

But now, with you, I don’t want to just survive connection. I want to experience it. I want to know, deep in my bones, that what they taught me isn’t true. That I won’t lose you by needing you. That I won’t be too much if I show you the parts of me that still tremble, still wait for rejection, still brace for impact.

I want to believe that secure attachment is not just an idea but a reality we can build together—one that lives in your steady presence, in the way your eyes soften when I falter, in the way you reach for me when my body remembers what my mind is trying to forget.

I know I don’t always make it easy. When I pull away, it’s not because I don’t want you close—it’s because closeness feels like a risk my body has not yet learned is safe. When I shut down, it’s not because I don’t care—it’s because, for so long, caring felt like a dangerous thing. But I don’t want to stay in that place.

I want to feel what I feel.

I want to know what I know.

And I want to experience that with you.

This is the work of healing, the work of turning towards instead of away. It is not just a shift in mindset; it is a rewiring of everything I was once certain of. And while I cannot do this work alone, I also know that I cannot force you into it with me. What I can do is show up. Name the longing. Let you see the parts of me that are still learning to trust.

So, if I reach for you, will you reach back?

If I stumble, will you stay near?

If I hand you the raw edges of what I’ve been taught, will you help me rewrite the story?

Because I want to know, in the deepest way possible, that what they taught me isn’t true.

And I want to experience that with you.