1. Learning How To Be Secure For Myself and Build Self-trust

After spending time with mentors and having other secure women pour into me, I was able to trust that what I was thinking and feeling was true to me, even if it wasn’t always Truth. I learned that a lot of my pain stemmed from beliefs that I attached to as a young girl because I was experiencing pain. And now, as a young adult, I was still believing those same lies and they were keeping me stuck in cycles of pain.

To learn how to have a secure attachment, I had to first learn what was causing me to have an insecure attachment. And then address those beliefs and pain points from childhood and bring them to security and truth. I did this mostly with the help of secure and safe people first and then learned how to do it on my own with God and also for myself.

2. Learning To Feel Safe In My Body (trusting what my body I telling me)

After learning to trust my thoughts and emotions and bringing them to someone or to God for clarity and truth, I started to lose those thought patterns and big painful emotions that were keeping me stuck in an anxious attachment style.

I learned that I didn’t feel safe in my body because I didn’t trust my body. I often dismissed my emotions, shoved them away, and told them they weren’t allowed to be around. A message that I had been taught as a young girl. But learning to feel safe in my body, meant I needed to trust the emotions and thoughts that were bubbling up in me. I needed to allow space for sadness to be present. For anxiousness to be seen by me. For my anger to be allowed and not dismissed, but seen and acknowledged, and even validated.

I learned that any and all kinds of pain won’t fully leave our bodies until it is seen, heard, and validated. Once I began doing this for myself regularly, and allowing myself to not be okay all the time, I began to build trust with myself and my body began to feel safe. Which meant I began to feel safe in my body, even when threatening situations or circumstances came up.

3. Learning How To Bring God Into My Pain (building trust with God)

Early on in my journey with mentors, I was taught to “trust” God. Often times I was told just to trust Him, even though I didn’t really know Him. At that time, God felt distant and not very loving and close to me. I was anxiously attached as a child, which meant my security and trust in people wasn’t always consistent, I didn’t always get my needs met when I needed them to be, which caused me to also have an insecure attachment to God.

I didn’t grow up in church, and the older I got the more I heard from people who did grow up in church, that they also didn’t feel close to God. In fact, they had heard so many wrong things about God through the church, that some of them didn’t even want to be in church.

Learning to lean on the Lord in my worst was probably the hardest, yet most rewarding thing I could have done. It took lingering uncomfortably in emotions that I had tried so hard to put away. And being completely raw and unfiltered with thoughts and feelings I had that hurt to voice or even see. It took God inviting me into His presence in the midst of anxiety and fear, to see that He was truly still there. He wasn’t going to leave me. He wasn’t going to judge me. He was just there. Allowing myself to be taught by Him in my most painful moments, helped me to see His true character and heart for me. I learned who He was and that He was truly for me. And that helped me to feel more secure in myself (and with Him).

4. Learning Who Safe People Are (and who they aren’t)

This one took me some time to see and understand. I was often someone who just trusted that everyone was good and was for me. But through a season of getting to know myself and God better, I learned what safety trust, and true love for someone really looked and sounded like. And I began to realize that many people don’t know how to love well. Many people don’t know how to receive love, because they weren’t given unconditional love themselves. Most people don’t give love because they don’t know how to give love to themselves.

We give what we have received and we love others the way we love ourselves. I learned that some people were more concerned about themselves being loved than giving love. Mostly because there was a deficit of love towards themself. Safe people are people who know how to love, even when others don’t/ They have learned to love themselves, they receive Gods love, and they love others with the deep Love that God gives them.

5. Building Safe and Secure Relationships

Building safe and secure relationships with people who are already safe and I feel I can trust. This could be a therapist, counselor, mentor, leader, or teacher first. Then maybe it will mold into friendships and close relationships. I had mentors who were safe and they believed in me. They believed me when I told them I was hurting and I didn’t know what to do next. They were safe for me with any and all emotions and thoughts. And they were with me, supporting me through the messiness of pain that I was navigating through.

Because I had safe mentors, I was able to learn safety and healthy attachment. And when they couldn’t be there for me in a moment, they encouraged me to go to God. And trust that He would know what I needed. This not only built trust and secure attachments with others, it also helped me to trust my own emotions and start to build a secure attachment with God.