''Where are you going?
Who are you with?
What time will you be back? ''.
Are you checking up on them constantly?
This clinginess often comes from a fear of abandonment.
You can become so focused on avoiding rejection that you become overly needy and demanding of the other people in your life.
And as you might guess, this can create a lot of havoc in relationships.
Abandonment fears often become a self-fulfilling prophecy either because you're choosing the person that's going to be more likely to abandon you or because, to avoid abandonment, you try to control the other person too much.
You don't allow them to be spontaneously enjoying their lives basically, and you're checking up too much or you're too needy and in a way that you are seeing the other person only in terms of your own needs and you are not seeing them as separate and what their needs may be.
This doesn't make your partner joyful and often causes resentment or drives them away.
This can end up becoming a bit of shitty loop that only serves to strengthen your fears.
The way it ends up playing out is that the person who is fearing abandonment starts to have jealous fantasies; where were you last night? What were you doing? Are you thinking of leaving me? Do you not love me anymore?
This pushes the other person away.
So how do you interrupt this?
1. Identify it all.
To see them when they are happening, I suggest beginning to observe the dance where both of you are trapped.
So the more you do this, the more the other person does that, which has this recursive pattern.
Make notes, and start to be the observer of your body's sensations when you enter into clinging mode.
Also, check in do you have unrealistic expectations of others?
2. Notice when the fear of abandonment set in
It's often a childhood developmental fear pattern when this "clinginess" came into play.
Guided inner child breathwork can often assist with this to locate the root cause that's trapped in your nervous system.
We often need support to find the part of us that holds that fear and to find out what that part needs.
The idea of letting go can be one of the most frightening things for a person who fears abandonment.
And what makes it even more challenging is that your body has often adapted to latching on.
3. Resolve the physiological wounding
Once you have recognized what's missing from within yourself that you are trying to get met through a partner, usually, one of Maslow's basic needs: love, safety or belonging or all 3!
Then, its time to resolve the core physiological wounding in your nervous system through safety meditations, breathwork and daily rewiring exercises.
4. Experiment with letting go
You can experiment with letting go and work with a process called pendulation, which takes your nervous system from safety to moving towards and releasing the fear and back to safety.
5. Communicate
Communicate what comes up with your partner and work together to build a 'pre-negotiated response that will help you find a better solution.
Now let me get a little geeky.....
From our nervous system response comes our automatic emotional reactions. Feelings of agitation, frustration and anger often come up to protect us from feeling the vulnerable emotions of fear.
Going into a "fight" state, ''Where are you? What are you doing?'' etc., is much more power-giving and safety-provoking than being in an immobilized state of fear where there is nothing you can do to change the circumstance.
Once our body responds automatically, it sends the message up to the brain and our brain must make a story of what's going on.
The story we make can determine the degree of fear or defence states we go into or assess the degree of safety we can feel at that moment.
So, it's not your fault your being clingy and controlling, but there is something you can do about it, and it all stems from the body and nervous system.
If you need support with this give me a shout!
Wishing love, safety and belonging for your nervous system.
Angharad