This week, I’d like to offer an NLP technique for anxious attachment.
Last week, I wrote an introductory article providing background on anxious attachment and NLP.
Understanding Anxious Attachment: Can NLP Provide Relief?
It should become clear that fixing your anxious attachment issues using NLP involves a few significant interventions on a values, identity, and source level, paired with numerous smaller interventions typically taught in NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner trainings that stay more surface-level. A single NLP technique for anxious attachment issues, would fall short.
NLP Techniques for Anxious Attachment Issues
Positive Intent
In NLP, there is a presupposition: “There is a positive intent that motivates every behavior.” You gain something from negative behaviors or thoughts on some level; otherwise, you wouldn’t be engaging in them. This could be as simple as wanting safety, security, protection, understanding, love, peace, or recognition.
Imagine you could externalize your attachment and place it in front of you. What shape does it have? What color? Does it make a sound? If you touched it, what would its temperature or texture be?
Now, ask it: What positive intent or value do you achieve by being anxiously attached? What is its answer?
Write down the answer on a piece of paper.
If you’ve taken NLP training and learned parts work, feel free to use any of those skills to engage with the positive intent. This is crucial when working with something as deep as anxious attachment.
NLP Technique: Chunking-Up
Hold the answer in the forefront of your mind. Ask yourself: What does this value connect to that is more important and bigger than that? Provide a one-word answer.
Write down this answer.
If you’re an NLP Master Practitioner trained in both values elicitation and parts work, feel free to sprinkle some extra magic here.
Rinse and Repeat to the Core State
With the answer you’ve just written down, continue the chunking-up process until you can’t go any further.
You should end up at the core state. For most people, this often resembles concepts like god, oneness, the universe, peace, love, etc.
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Never Taken NLP Training and Want to Address Anxious Attachment?
Sadly, this is as far as I can guide you. However, what you now have in front of you are the stepping stones from anxious attachment back to wholeness.
You could:
- Use each word as a journaling prompt.
- Focus all your personal development processes on these stepping stones.
- Direct your mindfulness practices toward them.
- Practice Loving-Kindness Meditation.
- Discuss them with your coach or mentor.
- For the brave, and those for whom it’s possible, work on these issues with your caretaker.
Taken NLP Practitioner Training and Want to Work on Anxious Attachment?
Grab your NLP Practitioner manual and, based on the outcomes you’ve written down, consider which techniques you could use.
Here are some options:
- Behavior Modification (New Behavior Generator)
- Using the perceptual positions of NLP in the past, present, and future
- Fast Phobia Cure (if there are significant emotional events contributing to the anxious attachment)
- Mapping Across Submodalities
- Anchoring and integrating anchors
- Meta-model each step found in the chunk-up
- If working with someone else, could you use the Milton Model and perform an eyes-closed process? (A more hypnotic approach)
- Create a series of anchors, like a Circle of Excellence, but instead of using values that bring excellence, use the words from your chunking-up process to the core state.
Taken NLP Master Practitioner Training and Want to Work on Anxious Attachment?
The ideal approach is to build your own intervention by combining elements such as:
- Negative Emotion Timeline (not a fast-food version, but a real process)
- Anxiety Emotion Timeline (same here)
- Core Change Work
If I had to suggest a generic approach, then below I will offer you my NLP technique for anxious attachment. I borrow heavily from the works of Connirea Andreas.
NLP Technique for Anxious Attachment
1. Discover the positive intent behind anxious attachment.
2. Chunk-up into the core state.
3. Enjoy the core state; create a bubble where the core state and all the values found in the chunk-up reside.
4. Chunk the core state back down into anxious attachment and transform each step.
Example sentence: “I want you to take the core state (name) into value X, and allow the core state to fully and completely transform that value.”
5. Continue this process until the anxious attachment is fully transformed.
6. While in the bubble, visualize a movie of yourself being born and living life up to the present time.
7. Metaphorically give your baby self the core state (e.g., white light).
8. Metaphorically give your caretakers the core state. If they had grown up with this bubble, they would have raised you securely attached.
9. Float into the timeline holding your baby self (gestalt) and re-imprint (reparent) yourself through all childhood events until the present. When the other you (the gestalt) has grown up, integrate this whole version of yourself with your present self.
10. Optional: Do another chunk-down with the core state, transforming each step as in step 4.
11. While in the bubble, move into the future, carrying out all the actions and steps in your personal development to continue your journey toward secure attachment.
Then, set goals immediately afterward. You can’t do enough goal-setting when it comes to becoming a better person, healing parts of yourself, or creating a space for growth.
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Conclusion
There are many ways to use NLP to address anxious attachment. The best approach is to combine the big Master Practitioner techniques with the tools suggested for NLP Practitioners. Using NLP to address anxious attachment is a journey and a process, not a quick fix.
