How Attachment Styles Impact Love, Dating, and Ghosting

Attachment styles profoundly impact how we experience love and relationships, particularly regarding ghosting. Understanding these dynamics helps heal emotional wounds and pave the way for healthier future connections. Bev Mitelman, M.A. - Certified Attachment Practitioner & Founder of Securely Loved, shares profound insights about dating, ghosting, and attachment in this show. 

Tune in and learn about:

• Attachment theory and its origins in childhood 
• Secure vs. insecure attachment styles and how they show up in dating, and which style ghosts the most
• How to weed out potential ghosts in dating 
• Why you long for the person who ghosted you
• What draws people to "bad girls," "bad boys," and so much more!

Bev's areas of expertise include attachment styles in the workplace, romantic relationships and sexuality, and respectful parenting. Bev offers a variety of corporate training programs and individual counselling.

Connect With Gretta:  

Heal and Move on After Ghosting | Coaching Sessions
Free and Private Facebook Support Group |  Instagram | YouTube | copingwithghosting.com

Coping with Ghosting offers high-value 1:1 coaching with Vogue-featured expert Gretta Perlmutter, delivering evidence-based strategies that transform personal betrayal into a powerful catalyst for change. Gretta’s platform empowers individuals from diverse backgrounds to heal, build renewed confidence, and experience breakthrough personal growth.

Connect With Bev Mitelman, M.A.:  

Securely Loved Website | Instagram | YouTube

Music: "Ghosted" by Gustavo Ramos

Disclaimer:  This information is designed to mentor and guide you to cope with Ghosting by cultivating a positive mindset and implementing self-care practices. It is for educational purposes only; it solely provides self-help tools for your use. Coping With Ghosting is not providing health care or psychological therapy services and is not diagnosing or treating any physical or mental ailment of the mind or body. The content is not a substitute for therapy or any advice given by a licensed psychologist or other licensed or other registered professionals. 

Chapters

• 0:17 Attachment Styles and Ghosting in Relationships
• 7:53 The most likely attachment style to ghost- dismissive aviodants and ghosting
• 11:22 Understanding Insecure Attachment Styles
• 15:29 why is being ghosted painful for some people and not others
• 29:39 Healing From Ghosting - Group Support
• 31:35 Why do I like Bad Boys or Bad Girls?
• 40:51 Understanding Attachment Wounds and Ghosting
• 42:48 Missing the person who ghosted v. Missing the Feelings You Had With Them
• 46:42 Why we want to know WHY we were ghosted
• 1:00:46 Online Connection and Support Resources

Transcript

Gretta: 0:17

Welcome to Coping With Ghosting, the podcast that provides hope, healing and understanding for anyone who's been ghosted. I'm your host, Gretta, and today we're diving deep into attachment styles and the complexity of ghosting in love, dating and romantic relationships. We're going to be touching on everything from why dismissive avoidance tend to ghost to who's most affected when it happens and why we often find ourselves still longing for someone who's long disappeared. And that's just the start. There's so much more we're going to explore throughout the show, and I'm thrilled to introduce my guest, , certified Attachment Practitioner and founder of Securely Loved, which is a network of relationship and attachment trauma experts working with clients worldwide. Welcome,Bev.

Bev Mitelman: 1:12

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you and your audience. Thank you.

Gretta: 1:17

We're thrilled you're here. Everybody loves hearing about attachment. I feel like this is like the most trending topic, so for those who might not be familiar, could you please explain what attachment styles are and how they impact our romantic relationships?

Bev Mitelman: 1:35

Sure, so the idea of attachment is really an emotional bond that we we have to someone else, right?

Bev Mitelman: 1:42

So in our earliest years, the patterns in terms of how we interrelate with others and how we give and receive love, those patterns are formed in our earliest years vis-a-vis the relationship that we have with our caregiver. So if you, as a baby, uh are taking care of someone who uh is taking care of your physical needs and is highly attuned to your emotional needs, um, generally, that person will grow up to have what's called a secure attachment. Now, um, I'm sure lots of your audience, you know, are parents, and I want to just mention that you know I'm a mother too. We always talk about being, you know, predictable and consistent with our children. Not perfect, right, we can't emotionally attune to our children all the time. But what essentially you're trying to do with that child is create a safe environment where they feel secure to be themselves, to express themselves whether they're sad, angry, frustrated, and for the child to learn that the other person is going to respond to them in a healthy way.

Bev Mitelman: 3:08

So that's what we call secure attachments and you can imagine that these children who have that type of environment they grow up and they do very well in the world. They have generally a very easy time interrelating with other people. They have a good sense of self, they trust others, they do very well in romantic relationships. They're communicative, they're in touch, you know, with their emotions. They tend to do very well in long-term relationships, partnerships, marriages very well in long-term relationships, partnerships, marriages. So this is what we strive for in terms of that balance of good sense of self and trust in others. So that is in a capsule secure attachment.

Bev Mitelman: 3:59

Now there are, as you know, of course, individuals, many of us, who did not grow up in homes where we got that level of attunement as very young children from our caregivers, and that creates a completely different set of patterning in our minds for how we give and receive love. So this is learned behavior, right? Everyone has an attachment style. It's not a personality disorder, it's not a mental illness, like we don't diagnose this, but it's a set of learned behaviors and how we interact with others. And so on this side of insecure attachment there's a spectrum, and on the spectrum, on one side of things, we have what we call the anxious attacher, sometimes called anxious preoccupied, and on the other end of the spectrum we have the avoidant attacher, also called the dismissive avoidance, and somewhere in the middle, with traits of both the anxious person and the avoidant attacher, we have the fearful avoidance, which is also called the disorganized attacher, the disorganized detacher. So just to give your audience a sense of why these patterns come about, we're talking about children who grew up in a home where there was a level of unpredictability. There was lacking emotional attunement. There wasn't that level of consistency, emotional attunement. There wasn't that level of consistency. Generally high degrees of chaos.

Bev Mitelman: 5:49

So some common examples that we see are children who are emotionally neglected. Right, maybe a parent is very stoic, doesn't hug the child. If the child is upset, the child has to learn on their own to just handle it. Maybe the child is part of, let's say, a high demand religion where there's a lot of expectations put on them. Maybe the child feels that they've been abandoned in some way. Maybe there's too many children in the home. Maybe the parent themselves is emotionally unavailable and the child is trying to connect emotionally but the parent can't connect in a healthy way. Sometimes the parent has mental illness. Sometimes the parent is dealing with addictions, sometimes there's abuse in the home. Sometimes there's abuse in the home. So that's just a general sense of all of these different scenarios that can come about, whereby the child didn't get the emotional attunement that they needed to create these healthy patterns in their mind to become securely attached.

Bev Mitelman: 7:04

To become securely attached Now, before we go any further, I want folks to know, like I mentioned, this is learned behavior, which means that anything we learn can also be unlearned. So if you didn't have the most favorable childhood, we can in later years, in adulthood, work with you to identify your attachment issues and help move you towards secure attachments. So I just want folks to know that that is possible. Like, your childhood definitely impacts you, but we can work with this right. It certainly can be improved.

Gretta: 7:46

That is good news. Do you think people who have a dismissive, avoidant attachment style are most likely to ghost, and if so, why Such a?

Bev Mitelman: 7:56

great question. So let's dive into some of the patterns of these insecure attachment styles, because I think it'll be apparent to you. The answer is yes. If there's anyone that's going to ghost in terms of attachment style, it's the dismissive avoidance and or the fearful avoidance, right? So someone who is leaning on the avoidant attachment style, ghosting would be part of their playbook. Okay, now, ghosting isn't really a new phenomenon, right? Ghosting just means that I'm stonewalling, I'm refusing to engage Something. You know, I see something as being maybe triggering to me, or I don't want to deal with it, or I don't like conflict, so I'm just going to walk away.

Bev Mitelman: 8:50

People do this to other people all the time, with ghosting, which is a horrible behavior. By the way, we know that. We see this in the you know electronic forum, because there's this sense of there's no consequences to doing it, right? So it's like I may never see this person again. We don't have any friends in common, so there's no consequence to me, just cutting off communication. So that's where we see the rise in frequency. But the actual behavior of I don't want to deal with this, I'm just going to stop talking to someone. That behavior isn't new. That's been around for a long time. It's one of the ways in which humans deal with what they perceive as stressful moments, what they perceive as stressful moments. Now, it's not a healthy tactic. There are far better ways, and I think that ghosting and stonewalling and ignoring are terrible ways of communicating. And I want to tell your audience I have been ghosted myself and it's not fun, it's very disrespectful, but I want you to know that I promise you when you are being which most of the time is something like I've enjoyed meeting you, but I'm not feeling a romantic connection Like it can be said in two sentences right, yeah, exactly yeah. And so someone's inability to just say those two things gives you so much insight into their level of emotional intelligence and maturity, right? So when someone ghosts me, I almost sort of look up and I go thank you for showing me who you are Before I get too deep in, before I start to develop an attachment or I really start to like you. Thank you for showing me your limitations, because now I can see clearly you're not for me. So that's how I look at it.

Bev Mitelman: 11:22

Let's step back for a moment and talk a little bit about the different patterns of those who are insecurely attached. So we have. We talked about the anxious, preoccupied. So the anxiously attached person, this is an individual who would have experienced abandonment or perceived abandonment in childhood or, for example, would have been, you know, trying to connect to, let's say, a parent who was emotionally unavailable. They're the individual who are constantly yearning for closeness. They are trying to connect with others. They are the folks, especially in romantic relationships, that need a high degree of validation, attention, recognition. They need reassurance. So they tend to be classified as people who are needy or clingy. I don't like those terms needy or clingy. I don't like those terms. I've seen people use those terms. I think all of us, as humans, have needs.

Bev Mitelman: 12:32

So you know this cohort of people who are anxiously attached. They're very, they're generally very warm, they're friendly, they're good people and they really just want to be loved. But the idea of abandonment because they experienced that in childhood and they carry that as a core wound the idea of abandonment is so frightening to them. Right? And so another thing from childhood is that these individuals generally did not learn how to regulate their own nervous system and so they're very, very reliant on other people to help them. So their entire focus is generally focused on other people's needs and, on having other people in their circle, help them regulate when there's a moment where they can't self-soothe.

Bev Mitelman: 13:33

So these are the people who generally grow up to be what we call people pleasers. So they're the first ones who are going to volunteer to do some job, or the first one in a friend group that'll say I'll make the cake, right, no problem, I'll help set up. They're also the ones who you know, in a relationship, will want to spend a lot of time with their romantic partner. So quality time is really important to them and unfortunately, you know they they have, you know, emotional patterns where they often feel sad and lonely and worried, and so they'll. They'll often seek out that reassurance again from their romantic partner like are we okay? Did I say something wrong? They've got this lens that if someone is angry with them, it's because they did something wrong. So when we talk about something like ghosting, who is that going to impact the most? It will absolutely impact the anxious attacher, because if anyone in this grouping of people is going to take that personally, it will be the anxious attacher, because they believe that they did something wrong, right, which is not true.

Gretta: 15:07

I'm totally relating to everything you said because I've worked hard on shifting my attachment style to more secure. But I'm definitely the person who was the one volunteering to do, you know, to make the cupcakes or whatever for my work event, and I was always people pleasing people, which I don't think is the healthiest of behaviors, and I wonder why is being ghosted for somebody with preoccupied attachment like so deeply painful?

Bev Mitelman: 15:43

If you have, let's say, a cut on your arm, you have a wound that's already there, and let's say you get hit in the arm with a baseball and it hits right on the place where you're already wounded oh my God, that's going to hurt. Versus, if you got hit on the other arm that didn't have the wound, you'd be like, oh, that was a bit, it wouldn't hurt nearly as much. So the reason it hurts so much is because it's triggering a wound that's already deep inside of you, and that wound is I will be abandoned. This is a pattern, a limiting belief that you adopted early in childhood, and this pattern lives deep in your subconscious mind, which means that you may not be aware of it. It's not top of mind, it's not in your conscious awareness. Now that's the big core wounds for anxious, preoccupied folks I will be abandoned.

Bev Mitelman: 16:52

But there's a whole host of other ones. For example, I am unlikable, I am unlovable, I will be excluded, I am not good enough. So all of these messages that we tell ourselves again wounding, that we're carrying from our childhood puts the emphasis on there is something wrong with us, and so when someone ghosts us, it hits right into a wound that we already have, and so that's why it's so painful. And for others who don't have that wounding it won't be as painful. So it actually it really does matter.

Bev Mitelman: 17:40

You know they've done studies on this where they send soldiers overseas to war, and they've studied. Let's say they send 100 soldiers overseas for combat and in their studies 20 of them 20 out of 100 come back with PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder and scientists are trying to figure out they all witnessed and experienced the same trauma. Why are only a fifth or 20 of the soldiers now experiencing PTSD? And what they've discovered is because those soldiers already had wounding emotional wounding from their childhood or from years previous that when they went overseas it got re-triggered and brought to the surface. So the way in which you're able to handle certain traumas absolutely depends on what you've already experienced and the wounding that you have from childhood. So that matters.

Gretta: 18:58

That's such a good explanation.

Bev Mitelman: 19:01

Thank you, and you know I want to sort of jump and talk a little bit. Because I've talked about the anxious preoccupied, I want to talk a little bit about the dismissive avoidance. The dismissive avoidance is often cast in a very negative light. Right, who are narcissistic and they could be both, but they're not the same thing. They're often cast in a light of being just not good people, and that's not true. They also experienced a difficult childhood where they grew up emotionally neglected. So again, this is the child that was often left alone with their own emotions. They were given no modeling for how to deal with emotions. These children weren't hugged. There were no I loves you's, like I love you's, yes. They were fed three meals a day, but there was no emotional attunement there, right, and so these children learned that they were on their own, like there's almost like a feigned helplessness, like why would I bother to ask someone for help? They're just going to say no anyways. They're not concerned with my emotions.

Bev Mitelman: 20:23

And so what dismissive avoidance do in order to survive is they push down all their emotions and so they're really disconnected and disassociated from their own emotions, let alone a romantic partner. And there are certain, you know, emotional patterns that are very difficult for them. They often feel overwhelmed, irritable, they often have low levels of anxiety. They really dislike conflict. Conflict to them means pain, and so if conflict or they perceive there's going to be conflict, conflict or they perceive there's going to be conflict they will run the other way, they will stonewall, they will avoid, they won't text back. There's no excuse for this, because any mature adults should know that their behavior has impact on others.

Bev Mitelman: 21:20

But what I'm telling you is that what we know from dismissive avoidance, depending on how far they are on the scale, they really do have limitations in this regard with dealing with emotions their own or with other people's emotions and so, yes, they are absolutely the cohort of people that you know. If I have something difficult, I have to say, like you know, I've been dating you for a month and I don't think this is working out. Having that conversation might feel so painfully frightening to me that I just, I just will like run away. So does it make their behavior acceptable? No, it doesn't. But does it give us some sense of understanding that they're so emotionally dysregulated that they're almost incapable of having that conversation? Yes, and it also reinforces the idea that it's not something you did or you said. The limitation is on their end, right, and that's so important.

Gretta: 22:41

Exactly, I have compassion for the ghost and the ghosty.

Bev Mitelman: 22:45

Yeah, yeah, I do too. Now, you know I was married a long time. I was married 23 years and I've now been separated four years. So I'm back in the dating realm and so I, you know, I've been experiencing this phenomenon myself. I can tell you there are ways to identify early on. Myself, I can tell you there are ways to identify early on people who may be less serious about dating, may have more of an avoidant personality or attachment. So I have taken my lessons learned and my knowledge, and you know I'm getting better at identifying people who are more likely to ghost right. So I can, I can, share some of this stuff with you, because you know it's great to to understand all of this, but if you can prevent yourself from getting into this situation, all the better.

Gretta: 23:42

So I'd love to hear it yeah please share.

Bev Mitelman: 23:45

So one of the things we know about those who are insecurely attached whether you're anxiously attached or avoidantly attached or a fearful avoidant is that they really struggle to regulate their emotions. So they are often emotionally dysregulated. So what does that mean? If you're paying attention, it comes out in lots of different ways. You can notice this on a first date, on a first phone call, on a second date. So someone's ability to, for example, remain in the same state, right. So someone who has the who jumps from being really happy to really upset to you know, if you're in someone's car and all of a sudden you can see they're becoming rageful as they're driving, right, these quick shifts in mood, that is a flag, right, because that's often an indicator that they're not emotionally regulated. Someone who's dealing with something stressful and has a hard time coming back to a baseline level. Someone who doesn't respect your boundaries. Someone who tells you, for example, that this is a big one.

Bev Mitelman: 25:02

I don't like drama. If someone tells you right off the bat, I don't like drama. What they're saying is they're uncomfortable with emotions. Right, and so and it's fair to a certain point, right. I think everyone desires to be with a partner who can regulate their emotions. But they're telling you right off the bat, right? I'm not good when emotions, when you know emotions are in an heightened state. Right? If someone tells you I'm emotionally unavailable, believe them.

Gretta: 25:35

Yeah.

Bev Mitelman: 25:36

Yeah, Believe them, right, or I don't want a relationship. You know, believe them. They're telling you I can't give you what you need. Lying, Lying is an interesting thing. Generally, someone who is securely attached will be forthcoming and honest. Someone who is insecurely attached might be a little looser with lying or exaggerating the truth. So there's something that I do on my dating profile now because I don't tolerate lying at all, Like, not even little bits of lying, Just I don't tolerate it.

Bev Mitelman: 26:18

So you know, one of the frustrating things is that I was getting, seemingly, messages from people who were just looking at pictures and not reading my profile. And how did I know that? Because in my profile I would specify looking for a long-term relationship, looking for this, looking for that, and I would get messages that were clearly not aligned with what I was looking for, or messages like what are you looking for? And it became very frustrating because I'm like is anyone reading this? So what I did now your audience is going to love this is on the last part of my profile, after all the pictures, I have a little sentence that says I am looking for someone who will take the time to read my entire profile and feels that they are aligned with what it is that I'm looking for. If that's you, please send me a little unicorn emoji when you say hi. And so now I have.

Bev Mitelman: 27:26

I know, now I have people who send me a little unicorn and a hi I know they've read it and other people they just send me like hey, how's it going? Like their regular messages. Sometimes I'll give them a second chance. Sometimes they'll say, hey, nice to meet you. Have you had a chance to read my entire profile? And they'll respond really quickly, going yeah, of course, Of course I have, and I know right away they're lying to me. So delete, Because for me I don't have time to.

Bev Mitelman: 28:01

I have no desire to deal with people who lie about the smallest things because to me that's, that's a value, right? Like you're going to lie about that, what else are you going to lie about? So, um, and, by the way, I lived most of my life as a fearful avoidance, uh, and I moved towards secure attachment. But my attachment style has a big impact on the things that I need in a romantic relationship to feel safe and secure, and one of those big things for me is honesty and transparency. Right, Because the fearful avoidant has a core wound of, I will be betrayed, and so I need people to be straight up with me. If I feel like you're trying to deceive me, I pull back.

Gretta: 29:02

I think what you did is brilliant, honestly, and I think that anyone who's listening to this and is online dating should immediately go to their profile, edit it and implement that system.

Bev Mitelman: 29:14

Thank you, and I'm telling you I'm actually getting much better matches right now. Now I'm like flooded with matches, but of people who, instead of me having to ask them 20 questions I know they're aligned with what, because otherwise don't respond, right. Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy for others to use it too. It's been working well, that's great.

Gretta: 29:40

Hi, it's Gretta. Have you been ghosted and feel like you just can't move on? Maybe you're feeling anxious, struggling with trust, dealing with gut issues or even having trouble sleeping. If any of these symptoms sound familiar, they could be a sign of post-betrayal syndrome the emotional, mental and physical aftermath of betrayal. The truth is, these symptoms won't improve until you heal from that betrayal.

Gretta: 30:08

I'm a certified PBT coach - that stands for post-betrayal transformation and I've created a seven-week group coaching experience designed to help you move forward and reclaim your life after being ghosted. In this program, I'll guide you through a proven, research-backed framework to rebuild your confidence, trust and emotional well-being. Starting Thursday, February 20, 2025, we'll meet weekly for live one-hour coaching sessions that all lead online. You'll also connect with others who understand your journey in a private and supportive online space, who understand your journey in a private and supportive online space. I know life can get busy, so if you can't attend a live session, I'll send you the recording to watch at your convenience. By the end of these seven weeks, you'll have clarity on what you need in your relationships, the boundaries you want to set and how to move forward confidently, even if the ghost resurfaces. Confidently, even if the ghost resurfaces.

Gretta: 31:05

This is a small, intimate group with limited spots. If you're ready to stop letting past experiences hold you back and start living with confidence, I'd love for you to join us. Visit copingwithghostingcom slash group or click the link in the show notes to reserve your spot. You deserve this healing and I'll be here to guide you every step of the way. Let's do this together. There's so much I wanna ask you. You had talked about how you know there's all these flags, right, that like people could look out for, but I know that many people are drawn to bad boys, bad girls. Like what? Why? Why do you think these dynamics are so appealing, despite the challenges?

Bev Mitelman: 31:58

Attachment styles are not gendered. We often see the discussion revolving around men who are avoidant and women who are anxiously attached, and there may be a slight disparity there, but it is not gendered, which means there are plenty of men who have an anxious attachment, plenty of women who have an avoidance attachment. It has to do with how you were raised, and I talked about how I spent predominantly my life as a fearful avoidant before moving, you know, doing my own personal work and moving towards secure attachment, but I leaned heavily on the avoidance side. So, you know, I want to be sort of really clear that. You know, we can see multiple different pairings of this. Right, we talk often about the fact that an avoidant person will keep people at an arm's length because their core wound is actually a shame wound. Right, it is. I am defective, so I'm going to keep people sort of at bay because if I let you get too close to me, you will also see that I'm defective and you will reject me in the same way that my caregiver once did, same way that my caregiver once did. So avoidant people tend to be perceived as secretive and you know, again, this is one of the strategies just to keep people at emotional, you know, an emotional distance, but I think our mind likes to fantasize that, as you know, mystery, our mind likes to fantasize that, as you know, mystery, and so that's part of the attraction. Now, uh, dismissive avoidance and fearful avoidance. You know, like all humans, they do want love, and so they can be very charming, they can be very present, um, especially in the beginning, they can be a whole lot of fun. And what we have to realize is that some of these behaviors that we dislike come online when a person feels like they're starting to emotionally bond to another person, when there is an attachment so early, early on in that relationship, when there's not a lot at stake, you know, you can have a lot of fun with an avoidance right, and so it's easy to sort of, you know, get attached to, or really like, or even fall in love with, someone who appears to be, you know, have a level of confidence, who appears to be emotionally stable, which they're not actually. They spend a lot of time alone trying to regulate their nervous systems, but they're very good with their boundaries. So they come across as being, you know, confidence, and so there's a high degree of what we would find attractive in someone that is more avoidantly attached.

Bev Mitelman: 35:20

Now there's another concept called intermittent reinforcement. There's another concept called intermittent reinforcement, which is a scientific concept that was studied years ago and it's the principle. We find it, for example, in gambling. So when you go to a slot machine and you put in a couple of quarters and you lose, lose, lose, and then you and there's a dopamine drop right and it feels so good. So you go back and you put in more quarters and more quarters and you can lose another 10 times, but then you win. So it's called intermittent reinforcement and this is very common with someone who's more avoidantly attached, which means that someone is drawn to them.

Bev Mitelman: 36:13

There's these really great moments together and then not so good, not so good, not so good, but great moment again. Not so good, not so good. We get addicted to what's called that dopamine drop right, those moments that feel so good and our mind focuses on those trying to continue to reap that reward, even though there's these moments in between where we're not feeling good. Right, and it's so interesting because one of the ways and I'm sure everyone has experienced this before one of the ways that you can tell really early on if someone is triggering your attachment system in a healthy way or an unhealthy way is to pay attention to your own emotional response vis-a-vis texting.

Bev Mitelman: 37:10

So let's say you've been texting for a couple of weeks with this person you don't really know them all too well, but a text comes in and you're like, oh my God, and you feel yourself, get excited. Right, there's the rush of dopamine, right, it makes your day the thing. You don't hear from them for three days and for three days you feel sullen and you feel like what did I do wrong? Why aren't they contacting me? I guess they don't like me. Pay attention to that, because that is a sign that they are triggering your attachment system in an unhealthy way. This person that you are texting with is not a healthy partner for you, because true companionship, true partnership, should feel consistent, predictable, loving. So a lot of these behaviors it's like a grouping of behaviors that we would see commonly with a ghoster. So pay attention to all of this and make a decision as to whether you really want to get connected to someone, because the probability that they turn out to be a ghoster is high in this cohort of people.

Gretta: 38:36

I've been there, done that. I felt so anxious after somebody I was newly dating didn't text me after a week, right after a special event in our relationship. So I was just yeah, I've. I've felt the pain of this before.

Bev Mitelman: 38:55

Yeah, and it's, it's all consuming, right, like, and it is real pain and I don't I don't dismiss this at all, because the reason that, and because you've shared that you are more on the anxious attachment side, the reason to bring this home again, that it hurts so much for you, is because you already had this abandonment wounds, right, so it was so. That's why we tell people that, in order to move towards secure attachment, the work that we do is we identify these core wounds. You know your thought patterns, your emotional patterns that are showing up for you in today's world, that you're still carrying from maybe 30, 40 years ago. Go and we help to create new patterns, healthier patterns, which change your thoughts, your emotions and then your behavior. So, like, I see a lot of dating coaches that are like, just put down the phone, don't worry about if a person texts you or not, if you're anxiously attached, you can't do that. Your subconscious mind will continuously force you to look at the phone because you're waiting for that moment of the intermittent reinforcement to get that feel-good sensation, that dopamine. So it's not enough to just take advice, right, Just put your phone away. Why don't you go read a book? Why don't you think about something else, because you can't. Your mind is consumed with this.

Bev Mitelman: 40:51

What we have to understand is that these core wounds that we carry from childhood, they carry a lot of weight in our thought patterns and emotional patterns, because these are. You know, when we were really, really young, these were threatening to our survival. Right, because we're so. We're 100% dependent, as babies, on our caregivers. So if we felt abandoned, it threatened our survival and your subconscious mind holds onto that pattern, not recognizing that. Okay, you're now a grown woman, you don't need that pattern anymore. So, on autopilot, you're still running that pattern, as if your survival is being threatened, but it's not. That's why it feels so important and so overwhelming to you and it's so frustrating when someone's like just go watch Netflix for an hour, you'll forget about them. No, you won't.

Gretta: 41:57

Right. Yes, a lot of people don't understand what it's like to be ghosted and have an attachment wound.

Bev Mitelman: 42:10

They don't, and that's exactly right. So the people who are like and they're well-intentioned, right, go for a nice little walk, go for a drive, you'll forget about it. These are generally people who don't have the I will be abandoned, wound, and so for them being ghosted wouldn't hurt, they wouldn't understand it. So they don't have that lens and that perspective. It's impossible for them to really relate to really the level of pain that that would cause.

Gretta: 42:48

Right, and when a person feels hurt after being ghosted, are they actually missing the person or is it more about missing the feelings we had?

Bev Mitelman: 43:00

Right. So our subconscious mind is always seeking to get our needs met Right, and so we have different needs as humans, and my needs would be different from your needs, right? So someone who's anxiously attached? They have a need for closeness, they have a need for certainty, validation, safety, and so when they feel like they're getting those needs met by a person, regardless of who, when that person is no longer in the equation and they feel like their needs aren't getting met, they also don't know how to. They haven't learned yet how to give themselves those needs right, how to reassure themselves, how to self-soothe, how to regulate their own nervous system without having other people around them.

Bev Mitelman: 44:02

Like, I had a friend at one point in time who was quite anxiously attached and we used to have lengthy conversations. The idea for her to be alone, to spend a night alone, was treacherous. That was a fate worse than death. She could not be alone, which meant that on any given night, she was like you know, babe, why don't you come over and hang out? And I'm like I don't want to? Because she always needed to have a friend there, which meant that she had 500 friends and 12 boyfriends and because she always needed someone in her presence, she couldn't be alone. When she was alone, she didn't do well.

Bev Mitelman: 44:47

And so you know, when we are looking outwards to have our needs met instead of inwards, and then that person who's meeting some or all of our needs gets taken out of the equation. What we're missing is we feel dysregulated, right. Like well, how am I going to get that need met? And so there's like a panic, right? So you'll often see this behavior like they'll pick up the phone and they'll talk about it for an hour with one friend, and then they'll pick up the phone to another friend and talk about it for another hour and because they're trying to regulate their nervous system, or they'll invite another boyfriend over for the night, or they're constantly cycling more and more people into the equation Because, again, being alone is so difficult for them.

Bev Mitelman: 45:38

But that's not how everyone thinks, right? Like, for example, those that are more on the avoidance side. I love being alone, that's how I relax, that's how I decompress, right? So what's really helpful is to speak with people who have a similar attachment style to you, but not get too into the weeds, right? There's rabbit holes on the internet. If you connect with a group of people who are anxiously. You know, attached, you could spend months sort of like going down a really, really deep rabbit hole, which is, it's, helpful for your understanding. But I always say to people pull yourself out and now let's work towards secure. Let's talk about what it means to meet your own needs. Let's talk about what it means to not put yourself last right, because when you're always focused on other people, you're abandoning yourself.

Gretta: 46:42

Everything you've said is just so incredibly fascinating. And when someone's ghosted, why do they often feel compelled to seek out the reasons for being ghosted?

Bev Mitelman: 46:57

So there's a really interesting thing that we do. It's part of the grieving process. It's almost like a yearning and a searching right. What we're trying to do, unfortunately subconsciously, is validate what we already believe to be true. So if someone, for example, has the core belief, a core wound that I am unlovable, it becomes almost a mission on their end to find out why that person would have ghosted them because they're trying to validate what they already believe to be true. It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy right. It's like we believe it to be true and then it happens, and then we need to validate that.

Bev Mitelman: 47:48

And our mind does this fascinating thing that when we don't have the answers, when we don't have a clear picture of everything, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories, right, and we convince ourselves that they're true. Like you know, oh, I should have never said what I said, or I knew I shouldn't have worn that dress, or I knew I texted too many times. What I want people to know is that you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. I want people to stop, you know, really, with thinking that they did something wrong. Again, the onus is on the other person, their limitation to be able to clearly communicate that attraction is personal, right? So, like even when I got ghosted, I had to catch myself in my thinking pattern, like awareness is really important, like to be to stop and think when you're really upset. Okay, what thoughts are flooding my mind, right? What am I thinking? So when I got ghosted, you know, it did hurt me for like a day or two and I caught myself thinking what am I not attractive enough? Did they not enjoy being with me? Like asking all of those questions, right? And so it's important to catch those stories, because nine out of 10 times we make up stories, right? It's not about your level of attraction or how enjoyable you were to be with or not be with. We tend to personalize the topic of attraction. Attraction is not really a choice, right? So who we are attracted to or not attracted to, again, it's not so much a choice. There's all of these interesting things that happen.

Bev Mitelman: 50:16

Your nervous system actually plays a little bit of a role in identifying who you're attracted to, your pheromones. Have you ever noticed that you come into the presence of someone and you feel this little tingling, this little, and Disney will call it the butterflies in your stomach? You feel like a little nervous you feel. So that's your nervous system coming online, right. So it's interesting because there's a fine line between feeling a little twinge of oh, I feel excited in this person's presence versus I have the butterflies, I feel nauseous. I, you know, I'm so attracted to them. That is your body indicating to you that there's a threat, that they perceive it as a threat. So you have to be able to distinguish the two a little bit of excitement or an overwhelming response, right. So I don't think that when you meet someone and you get this overwhelming butterflies that you're like I'm so attracted, we tend to think it means that we're attracted, but it's not. It's actually your nervous system going. Pay attention, something doesn't feel right. And if you actually think back to and you become more in tune with your emotions and physical sensations that your body tells you, you would have realized that you actually experienced that butterflies in your stomach, nauseous feeling, before, like for me, for example, I've experienced it when I was on a roller coaster and we got right to the top and right before we dropped, I was like that and and. So when you and, and it's a combination of excitement, but it's more like threat, threat, right. And so you have. It's so important to become aware of your emotions and how your emotions present in your body, to be able to discern you know what is healthy for you and and what isn't. That's essential. It is essential, and attraction also like so.

Bev Mitelman: 52:37

So there's other reasons that we're attracted to some people and not others, right? So again, I mentioned pheromones. There are some people that were attracted to their sense. Other people were just not. They could be, you know, objectively, very good looking and a wonderful person. We just we're just not attracted to them. So is there anything wrong with that person? No, we just we're just not attracted to them. So is there anything wrong with that person? No, we just we're just not feeling it Right. We tend to select partners also based on something called trait variety, meaning it's like the opposites attract thing, right. So if we're very you'll often see this in couples you know someone who's very like logically thinking and is very calm will end up with someone who's much more intuitively thinking and much more outgoing, like that opposites attract type of thing. Sometimes we actually will connect with a partner based on a dynamic that we once had with our caregiver. We see this commonly with those who are insecurely attached.

Bev Mitelman: 53:48

So if you were a child who grew up with an emotionally unavailable parent and you developed an anxious attachment. The likelihood that you're going to choose an emotionally unavailable, avoidant partner is really high, and that's because you have a pattern in your mind that says well, we understand this dynamic, we've lived through this dynamic before, and so you're attracted to what's familiar, right. So you might, you know, in this scenario you might have, you know, two people in front of you who are both objectively very good looking and who are both solid people, let's say, but one is secure and one is more avoidant in their attachment style. And if you yourself have an insecure attachment style, you might very well find the person who is secure. You may perceive that dynamic as boring because you're used to the chaos of the intermittent reinforcement, the on, the off, the push, the pull. That's what love feels like to you, because that's all you knew in childhood, and so we get again sort of drawn towards.

Bev Mitelman: 55:13

Our subconscious mind always takes us to what is familiar, regardless of what is best for us. So you know, even this is why I say, even if folks have the best of intentions, right, like I'm no longer going to date someone who is emotionally unavailable unless they do the work themselves to become more securely attached, they will continue to find that type of person attractive. When you become securely attached, that type of person becomes unattractive to you. Like that does happen, and I've seen it in myself, I've seen it in my clients, and so that's where you need to break the pattern is in the subconscious mind.

Gretta: 56:07

What are some key steps that somebody could take to become securely attached themselves.

Bev Mitelman: 56:14

Take to become securely attached themselves? Great question. So it starts with awareness. If you go on my website it's securelylovedcom there's a little attachment quiz. It's free, the results don't come to me, it's just for you. There's a button right on the homepage. You can take an attachment quiz and it'll give you an insight onto where you fall in the attachment scale.

Bev Mitelman: 56:39

I have lots of resources on my website, or even a Google search. There's lots of books on the topic. There's lots of YouTube videos. So you know, if you're interested in starting to become aware of attachments and the impact that it has on all of your relationships, especially your relationship to yourself, I would start there and then my company. We're a collective of practitioners, so we offer individual counseling, couples counseling. We have group workshops. Some people really do prefer to learn in a group environment. I have online courses on the topic in terms of attachment styles and communication or working through heartbreak, you know, depending on your attachment style. So there's so many resources and options available any resources and options available and if people just want to book a 20-minute free intro call with me or any of the other practitioners that I work with, they can also do that. That's all available on the website.

Gretta: 57:48

Oh, I love that and I did have the pleasure of checking out some of your online courses and they are excellent and I highly recommend them.

Bev Mitelman: 57:56

Thank you, thank you so much. That means the world to me. Really, I do this work because when I found Attachment Theory years ago, it helped me on my personal journey so much. It was so impactful that I thought, okay, other people need to know about this. And so when I hear someone say that it was helpful or they enjoyed the content or they learned something, that means the world to me. I just want people to know about this.

Gretta: 58:27

Yeah Well, is there anything else that you'd like to share real quickly about being ghosted or ghosting in general?

Bev Mitelman: 58:38

I don't condone the behavior. I think it's quite immature. But I also believe that in some sense it's a gift, in that the individual is revealing to you their limitations relatively early on. You their limitations relatively early on, because ghosting usually happens in the dating phase, right? So before you're getting to anything too serious, they're showing you where their limitations are, and so I think it's as much as it hurts. I like to look at it as a gift and thank them for revealing themselves at this stage.

Bev Mitelman: 59:18

And you know, remember that it has nothing to do with you. It's not what you said, it's not that you're not attractive enough, it's none of those things. And you know, use some of the tips that I have talked about to put yourself in the best scenario, where you're not interacting with folks who might potentially ghost you, because people who are securely attached they're not the ones who are going to do this. They have no problems communicating, right. They're not afraid of having a difficult conversation because they don't see conflict as a point of pain or fear. So you know, like if you and I were dating and it wasn't working out, I would say to you Gretta, you know, I think you're great, I just don't see it working, and that's where you want to spend your time is with people who have those skills right, and the way to do that is to level up yourself right. If you level up yourself, all of a sudden, what you're going to attract and what you're going to find attractive will change. So the key is always within yourself.

Gretta: 1:00:41

Thank you so much for those comforting wise words. I love it. In addition to your website, is there any other way that you'd like listeners to connect with you or follow you?

Bev Mitelman: 1:00:53

We are on YouTube at securely loved. We're on Instagram at securely underscore loved Um. My adult children have taught me tick tock. We are also on tick tock and securely underscore loved Um, so we're sort of all over the place. So, yes, I would be thrilled. You know, I try my best to put out useful content and again, just to get the word out about attachment and so, yeah, any of those platforms would be great, thank you.

Gretta: 1:01:34

Thank you for being here and sharing all your knowledge with the listeners and friends. I'd love for you to follow at Coping With Ghosting on social media. Join the free and private Facebook support group and, if you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating and a review. I hear from so many people who wish they would have found coping with ghosting way sooner than they did, so your review is going to help coping with ghosting become more visible for the people who really need it. And, finally, when you're ghosted, you have more time to connect with yourself and people who have stellar communication skills. You deserve the best.