Are you mad at me? Am I bad? And what I am learning about loving with attachment wounds.

On relationship anxiety, "unmasking", when seeking reassurance feels like an addiction, and 11 relational practices that I believe support secure attachment.

Hi there, hitting the heart button is a free and beautiful way to support Beinghood and the Meeting Myself Again project, if you want to! Thank you so much for being here 💞

There is a study about a parasite called toxoplasma gondii, which infects rodents and alters their behaviour. The parasite makes infected rodents less fearful of cats, and sometimes even attracted to the scent of cat urine.

When I heard about this I couldn’t believe the invisible genius of the parasite. It actually makes rodents attracted to the smell of their predator’s pee—what the hell. Evidently, this increases the chances of the rodent being eaten by a cat, which is beneficial to the lifecycle of the parasite, as it can then continue living inside the cat’s intestines.

The first time I heard about the study, I immediately thought, it reminds me of love.

For some of us, love does genuinely does evoke equal parts love and fear. We are both magnetized and repelled by it. Trying to decode whether or not that terror is related to some kind of legitimate cause for concern, versus related to the baseline vulnerability of attachment is hard and confusing. My nervous system can interpret even minor ruptures in a relationship as a threat to emotional safety and security.

There is a huge portion of the wellness industry—relationship gurus, couples therapists, dating coaches, love experts—devoted to trying to translate the complexities of love, and all it evokes in the human emotional system, into terms that can bring individuals some semblance of peace or control. The problem is that for every piece of advice that exists suggesting we should go one way, there is something equally believable and resonant that suggests the opposite direction. I suspect this is because there is really rarely one way. Typically I find it is only when I begin emptying myself of intellectual input, that I find my own clarity. Never certainty, no. But clarity, yes.

I have read things online about love feeling like coming “home”. If that’s what love feels like for you, I am actually really happy for you and that sounds so nice. Continue onward and honestly, probably bypass this article. For many others, romantic love can feel like the terrifying process of being drawn towards something you fear might kill you. It can feel like wanting to be close, but also fearing that closeness may result in your end—typically either by means of abandonment, entrapment, punishment or neglect.