Fearful Avoidant
to Earned Secure
How to build healthy, passionate relationships
that feel good and can last
All you want is closeness, but the more intimacy is built the more stressed and afraid you feel. You want to shove them away for daring to try to love you, and at the same time you want to crawl inside their skin and never let go. You do neither. Because you know that whatever you do, in five minutes you’ll be pulled to the opposite extreme and they’ll see how unstable you are. So instead you put all of your energy and focus into trying not to run away and not move any closer. You are a magnet trying to hold still inside a magnetic field.
You think...
I just want to be loved as deeply and passionately as I love, without fear that I will eventually ruin it.
Complex trauma causes us to be split off from ourselves.
It puts the part of us that is wired for love & emotional closeness at odds with the part of us that is wired for safety & survival.
That is why...
The slightest shift in someone's face or body language can cause you to freeze and feel suspicious.
You pick a fight with your partner the night after you just shared the most amazing weekend together because feeling so connected must mean the other shoe is about to drop.
The constant battle between wanting to leave but needing to stay exhausts & depletes you. You're unhappy with your partner you but you have no other source of intimate connection.
You sometimes make cutting or antagonizing remarks to people to see how they respond as a way of gauging whether they're safe or trustworthy.
Agitated by the text that's still left on read, you write and delete four replies; pins & needles cause you to seek comfort in a third glass of wine.
Your relationships dynamics have sometimes left you feeling unsure if you were being abused, or if you were the abusive one.
You know you need help and healing, but...
Talk Therapy Doesn’t Touch the Root Cause
You’ve spent hours and hours in talk therapy venting your feelings and processing your confusion. It felt good to be heard and validated, and you gained awareness of why you people please, dissociate, or spiral. The insights can be helpful for contextualizing how you got here, but it doesn’t reach the emotional body or the subconscious mind, where trauma actually lives.
CBT & DBT Can Feel Invalidating
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Dialectical Behavioral Therapy are the gold standard for teaching upgraded coping strategies, but neither addresses the unprocessed emotions and core wounds that give rise to your thoughts and actions. As a result, you can be left feeling emotionally misunderstood and like you’re failing therapy when the conscious-mind level solutions don’t work.
Medication Only Manages Symptoms
Medication can be helpful for short-term symptom management during high-stress periods, but it isn’t a solution to the underlying reasons for your distress: the programming that lives in your subconscious, and the nervous system patterns that accompany it. Medications just do not reach the level where your conditioning lives.
Over-Emphasis on Mindfulness Can Lead to Spiritual Bypassing
Mindfulness and meditation are helpful tools, but telling someone with complex trauma to “just sit with it” or “watch the feeling pass” can feel re-traumatizing if they haven’t yet developed internal safety. Internal safety must be developed first so you feel safe to be fully present with yourself.
You're trying to control your attachment patterns with your conscious mind, which keeps you trapped in the same cycle of fear, confusion, and emotional whiplash instead of creating the calm, stable, deeply connected relationships you actually want.
Because the problem is not that you lack insight. The problem is that your subconscious survival programming is still running the show even though your conscious mind has decided it wants something different.
Imagine that you could reach into your own mind and scrub out all the negative conclusions you drew about yourself when you were too young to process the pain you were witnessing or experiencing, and provide yourself with a present, attuned parent to help you understand that it was never about you.
You CAN do this.
This is entirely possible.
You can learn the emotional literacy skills and the self hypnosis tools that leverage neuroplasticity to help you re-condition your subconscious mind for safety and dignity within healthy, passionate relationships that feel good and can last.
This is exactly what I teach in my Earned Secure coaching program.
I will teach you how to:
Clean the mud off the windshield of your perception so you can shake off the guilt and shame that causes you to self silence instead of expressing your truth, or over-give as a strategy to feel safe receiving from others.
Question the stories your mind tells about what you notice so that you stop interpreting every subtle shift in a pattern as a sure sign of betrayal or rejection.
Confidently communicate your desires and your boundaries and see them through so you can end the relentless tug of war about whether to stay or leave a relationship.
Vet new friends and romantic interests proactively before you get too close using healthy communication so you build trustworthy relationships that support you and help you thrive instead of holding you back.
Process your emotional triggers quickly and completely so that conflicts get resolved instead of being brushed under the rug. This means no more endless re-hashing of old arguments.
Finally feel like you can settle into relationships you can trust, and receive the depth of intimacy and unconditional love that you have been searching for your entire life.
How 1:1 Earned Secure Coaching Works
I'll ask you some questions about your present-life circumstances to draw out and isolate your patterns.
I will use this info to develop a personalized program that outlines how we will resolve your challenges using Integrated Attachment Theory tools.
Each session, you will be guided through exercises and tools that will help you better understand yourself, re-condition your self-limiting patterns at the root, and help you move in the direction of 'earned secure' attachment.
All of your work and the relevant exercises will be provided on a collaborative google doc, shared between you and me.
I will use the doc to teach and help you learn neuroplasticity tools & emotional literacy principles. With practice you will internalize them completely, and this doc will allow you to review them anytime you need.
In order to get the best possible results, independent work is essential. I'll work with you to streamline your necessary effort so that it fits easily into your morning or evening routine.
Typical Personalized Plan for FAs
We start with the inner work to neutralize your triggers, and spoil your inner child with love & kindness & attention
Sessions 1-2:
Discovery Questions & Goal Setting
Sessions 3-4:
Learn shadow work & self-hypnosis tools to reprogram your core wounds so you stop getting triggered.
Sessions 5-6:
Needs Literacy Training to help you get to know yourself deeply and pour into your unmet needs from childhood
Session 7
Learn the Emotional Processing Tool that will help you re-parent yourself and build a secure relationship to yourself.
Then, we take your regulated & nourished self into navigating healthy relationships with others
Session 8:
Learn how to properly vet people for trustworthiness before you get close
Sessions 9-10:
Life audit to discover what boundaries you need + reprogram any fears that prevent you from setting nuanced, empowered, in the moment boundaries
Sessions 11-12:
Become an expert in conflict resolution by learning powerful communication frameworks
12-Session Program - Paid Per Session
$159 / Session
Coaching sessions typically take place every 2-3 weeks
Expect a small amount of daily homework between meetings
All sessions take place via zoom. In-person sessions may be available for St Petersburg, FL locals.
"I have to try hard to remember the events surrounding the experience or even what my triggers were after the event".
"...while I can remember that these [traumatic] events happened, there’s no longer the ‘sticky’ tie or large emotional reactions. In fact, most of the time I have to try hard to remember the events surrounding the experience or even what my triggers were after the event. I’m grateful to Rachel for her understanding of early wounds and the impact on the subconscious; it has truly made a wonderful difference in my life."
- C.B.
Solution Focused
We don't dwell on the past. We work with how the past is showing up in your life & relationships today, and give you practical skills & tools that will make an immediate difference.
Bust Attachment Myths
Attachment styles aren't permanent. We harness neuroplasticity to rewire the subconscious beliefs and behavior patterns that create secure, fulfilling relationships.
Client Centered
You are the expert on your own life. I won't tell you who to be or what to choose. I'll help you turn the volume down on fear, and crank up the voice of your own inner knowing, so you can navigate life with confidence long after our work together ends.
Radically Effective
Over 35,000 users reported improved wellbeing and relationships from using principles of Integrated Attachment Theory through the Personal Development School - the same methods I will teach you.
You’ve spent your whole adult life trying to control which version of you shows up in relationships, hiding your needs until they erupt, overgiving until you shut down, and promising yourself that next time you’ll handle things differently. It hasn’t given you the steady, loving relationship you can trust enough to truly relax into.
Building an integrated, secure relationship with your emotions, needs, boundaries, and capacity for closeness will.
That starts with reconditioning the subconscious fears and protective patterns that keep pulling you between craving connection and pushing it away.