29. The Buddhist Approach to Attachment Panic
Catherine Roebuck joins me to discuss Chapter 2 of Bruce Tift’s book “Already Free.”
James Christensen: https://jamesmchristensen.com
Catherine Roebuck: https://catroebuck.com
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Transcript
Catherine Roebuck: The fruitional view is about how, in every moment and circumstance, you can have access to an experience of freedom or peace. One of the ways to do that is by first committing to your experience. Whatever it is, your reality is what it is. You are anxious right now. Embody it, feel it on a visceral sensation level, and then find a way to be kind to that feeling.
James: What I feel right now is a tension and maybe an emptiness in my chest area, and a very slight burning or tingling in my face. My chest feels tight and uncomfortable, and the feeling in my face feels fearful, I guess. They're both unpleasant.
Catherine Roebuck: I see the traditional view as connecting with that experience of being the witness. When you connect on an embodied, sensation level, you are the one experiencing it. But when you start practicing kindness toward that experience, you become the witness.
James: Okay, so being the witness is an easier place to be.
Catherine Roebuck: Yes, there's less of an emergency when you're the witness to something intense and difficult.
James: That's a good way to say it. When I feel these kinds of feelings, it does feel like an emergency.
Catherine Roebuck: Right. I had an experience last week where some pretty acute attachment panic came up. There's the part of me that is feeling five years old in that moment, sobbing and feeling like the world is ending. Then there is the part of me that is showing up for that five-year-old experience and offering unconditional presence, kindness, and love. That supportive, caring, loving aspect does not have a lot of distress in it. It's a much more settled, relaxed place where the predominant experience is kindness and compassion. Even though there is this intense thing going on, my main experience, as long as I'm relating to the intensity with kindness, is an experience of compassion instead of an experience of panic. They're both happening, but it's about what perspective or position I am taking.
James: I used to try a visualization where I would imagine wrapping my discomfort in a warm blanket. The warm blanket has a very particular quality; it's fluffy and very soft, like a cloud. I would imagine wrapping this discomfort, this anxiety, this pain in a warm, fluffy cloud blanket, which represents kindness, and just holding it. It's very similar to what you're saying, but for me, the visual and tactile idea of being warm, white, soft, and fluffy helps me go through the process of offering kindness to the difficult feeling.
Catherine Roebuck: Right. I do that on both a psychological level, through what I'm thinking, and also on an embodied level. You're describing some tension in your chest. I would be visualizing that warm, fluffy blanket while breathing warmth into the area that feels tense, tight, and strained. I would imagine that the breath is delivering that warmth and care. There's something happening on a physiological level there as well. When you breathe into an area, you direct more oxygen to that area; you really do help it relax or provide some kind of a gentle stretch. But there's also just a sense of being really kind. If this was your little child coming to you and saying, "I feel really anxious, I don't know why," what would you do? You might offer a hug or some kind words. You probably wouldn't start panicking and saying, "Things will never get better! This is the end of the world!"
James: That is what I start doing when it's me, though.
Catherine Roebuck: That's what you do to yourself, but you wouldn't do that to your little child, right?
James: Hopefully not.
Catherine Roebuck: There's a story from Richard Schwartz, the IFS author who wrote No Bad Parts. He tells a story about a near-drowning experience where he thought he might die. In that moment, he committed to his immediate experience. He embodied it and thought, "This is my reality. I might be dying right now." Then, he offered himself warm, compassionate presence. He talked to himself, saying, "If I'm dying, I'll be right here the whole time. I'll hold you. I'll love you. I'll be right here with you the whole time." I feel like that is what this is about: the experience of learning to offer compassionate presence to yourself no matter what's going on.
James: I love that. It's interesting; when you were talking about breathing into what I'm feeling, that actually did help. That's not something I normally do, but I tried it in the moment and I do feel a little bit better. It'll be something I'll have to practice.
Catherine Roebuck: That's one I use a lot. The view is that our circumstances are what they are, and we can gradually do things to try to change them. But in any given moment, the real question is: if I'm ever going to be free, I have to be able to feel free regardless of what's happening that I can't control or change in real time. You can practice that in any circumstance by relating to your current reality with a sense of ease, compassion, and warmth, and just accepting it as what it is. "I don't like this, I don't want to feel this, but this is what I'm feeling. This is what's happening."
James: So one way of expressing it might be that instead of seeking freedom by changing external circumstances, I'm pursuing freedom by changing the way I relate to my life or my reality.
Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and it's also about wiring in an experience. If you want to feel free, you have to give your brain and nervous system many experiences of being free, which only ever happens in real time. All the things we want to feel only happen in real time. We can work toward future circumstances that we think will make it easier to embody our experience, be kind, and feel free. At the same time, the only way our brain and nervous system ever develop the capacity for it is if we practice that experience in real time with imperfect circumstances—which are the only circumstances we'll ever get.
James: There will always be limitations.
Catherine Roebuck: That's been my experience. I've found that this has made a larger overall difference in my baseline mood than changing circumstances have. I can say that with some confidence because even when really difficult things hit, my baseline experience is less troubled than it used to be.
James: That makes sense. I have an interesting experience along those lines. What I perceived to be the source of my suffering for most of my life has been a difficult marriage. My difficult marriage has improved dramatically over the past couple of years, yet I still experience a lot of anxiety. It's almost like my brain has a certain level of anxiety that it wants to experience, and it will find reasons to experience that anxiety. If you had shown me my marriage today three years ago, I would have thought, "Oh, that would solve all the problems." But guess what? I still feel like there are problems. So there's some wisdom in what you were saying. Do I actually know how to feel free? Because it's fair to say that objectively, there is quite a bit of freedom in my life. Not limitless freedom, but there's plenty of freedom, and I think I very often feel more constrained than I actually am.
Catherine Roebuck: Particularly in close relationships. You might have a lot of freedom in other areas. You might be able to feel free if you're out in nature on your own or with friends. I would guess that you've been able to feel free in those circumstances since you were a kid. The thing that would bring up a feeling of not being free is being close to important others.
James: Absolutely.
Catherine Roebuck: So your brain has all this wiring that says, "Being close to the most important people in my life is a very fraught experience. It's difficult, it's stressful. I have to monitor myself and them all the time." This is about experimenting. Does anything get worse if you try dropping that and experiment with a different way of relating? For instance, "Being close to important people is an experience of openness, which brings up panic in me. This has nothing to do with the other people and a lot to do with my own difficulty tolerating the openness of reality."
James: So it's about looking at my response to reality as opposed to the actual difficulty of reality. It could be more beneficial for me to put effort into looking at how I respond to what happens in my life, as opposed to putting that same amount of effort into trying to change the actual circumstances. There could be a better payoff.
Catherine Roebuck: Yes, and how you think about your position in your life. If you're thinking, "I feel this way because of these problems, and if I can solve these problems, I won't feel this way anymore," that's what you're talking about. If you could go back three years and show that guy what your marriage is like now, he'd say, "Problem solved. I'll feel great when it's like that."
James: He would definitely say that, yes.
Catherine Roebuck: But then there's the other piece, which has a lot to do with brain wiring. Think of your brain as a giant field of tall grass. How many times have you walked a path where you are walking toward an important person in your life and experiencing freedom at the same time? If you've only done this five times...
James: That's a beautiful way of saying it: approaching or getting close to an important person in my life and feeling free. That's really wonderful. My wife and I had an experience like that last night. We had some really good conversations, and then we spent an hour or so just practicing being open with each other and trying to remain calm, just being close in a very calm way. This is not habitual for us; there's usually a ton of anxiety there. But we were both practicing exactly what you're saying. I was practicing opening myself up to her, approaching her, stepping into intimacy with her, and feeling free at the same time. I experienced that for quite a while, and it was remarkable. Like you said, maybe I've experienced that five times before. It felt so unusual, and it really was unusual. But it makes sense that I have a habit or a pattern where my brain is used to feeling a certain way when I'm in proximity or intimacy with an important person.
Catherine Roebuck: You've got this one path in that big field of tall grass that you've walked 20,000 times. On that path, you routinely ran into loud noises, snakes, and scorpions. It was a pretty difficult experience. So you've got all of this brain wiring, an easy, intuitive, automatic pattern for your brain to follow, that says when you approach an important person, the path is fraught. It's a very high-anxiety experience, and you're constrained. You have to be really vigilant, on alert, and defensive. Now you're wanting this experience of freedom and being relaxed. The more times you walk this new path where you're approaching and you feel free, the easier it is for your brain to do it. The grass gradually gets trampled down, and the path becomes clear. You don't have to wonder with every step if you're still on the path. At the same time, as you don't walk that reactive path, it starts to grow over and becomes less automatic for your brain to take. So you can work on your circumstances, but you also have to work on your ability to tolerate the openness of walking a new path and not knowing if there will be snakes here or not.
James: I just don't know.
Catherine Roebuck: The only way to experience more openness is to expand your capacity to tolerate more panic. You have to tolerate more panic to experience more openness. Openness and freedom are essentially the same thing.
James: I was imagining an exercise last night to try to expand my capacity to tolerate panic. I imagined writing out, "If this scenario happens to me, this is how I'm going to handle it." Specifically, scenarios that might happen in my marriage where my wife might have a bad day, be critical of me, be unhappy, or withdraw. I have an anxious attachment pattern, so when she withdraws, that's difficult for me. If I could write down how I could respond in a healthy way to that scenario, I saw it as helping my brain make a new pathway in the tall grass. It provides evidence that I will take good care of myself in that scenario should it happen, as opposed to the other pathways in my brain, which were often formed when I was too young to really take good care of myself.
Catherine Roebuck: I really like how you're phrasing that: "taking good care of yourself." It's also building trust in yourself. When you say there's evidence that you will, you're saying you trust that about yourself. The only way to trust that is to give yourself many real-time experiences of doing it. I do think the exercise you're describing would work for the same reason that mental practice works for musicians or athletes. I used to be a violinist, and you can practice by playing a literal violin, or you can do mental practice where you're thinking your way through the piece. That has been shown to be effective. Professional athletes do this. That's what you're describing: mental practice of having a plan for how you'll take care of yourself and have a better experience even if things outside of your control go badly.
James: Yes, and it could be me imagining how I might relate to that reality if it happened. I had a panic about a month ago. You talk about abandonment panic; well, I had one. Mine was kind of silly, but it did happen. My wife stopped at Target on the way home from work. It sounds silly, but I was pretty anxious to see her. Because of our work schedules, we can go all day barely seeing each other. She sometimes works pretty late, so it was 8:30 at night, and I was really excited for her to come home. She went to Target instead, and I had an abandonment panic. It was pretty intense. The way I relate to that experience matters a lot. That's what I think of as taking good care of myself in that moment when I'm experiencing an abandonment panic because my wife is at Target.
Catherine Roebuck: Right. And that example can sound silly because you're a full adult and can handle her being at Target. But it's the same muscle you would use if she disappeared, if she left you and never came back. It is the same thing. We practice this in our daily life because the only way to know that someone is going to be there for you is for you to be there for you, over and over. That's it. That's all you get as a guarantee. It's lovely when other people show up, but this view is about how you give yourself the assurance that you'll always have access to compassionate presence. The only way to give yourself that assurance is to give yourself that compassionate presence. You can't control another person being your on-demand comforter or companion. Best-case scenario, you've got a really kind partner, but you're still not going to spend all your time together. Nobody does.
James: And someday they might die. There is no free pass. Tift mentions three unconditional commitments that he thinks are useful. Can you tell me about those?
Catherine Roebuck: He talks about unconditional immediacy, embodiment, and kindness. Immediacy is what is happening right now, what my circumstances are. Embodiment is what's happening on a sensation level, on a visceral level in my own body. Your body is your home. Whatever your circumstances are, you exist in both your own embodiment and in the larger container of your circumstances. Then the unconditional commitment to kindness is: "I will bring kindness to every moment regardless of the sensations in my body and regardless of the circumstances that I find myself in." I see that as aspirational, but I see no downsides to it. It's only helpful to practice it, even though nobody manages to do it all the time.
James: I have found immense benefit in practicing kindness. I have a theory that unkindness slows down neuroplasticity and kindness accelerates it. I don't have any real scientific basis for that, but it is my experience that when I can practice some sort of kindness or sweet love toward what's happening in me, my brain seems more willing to adapt to my present circumstances. When I practice something more habitual, which is a harsh, judgmental stance toward what is happening and toward myself, I feel like my brain locks up and doesn't want to change or grow.
Catherine Roebuck: I like how you're framing that, and it makes complete sense to me. Neuroplasticity means we have a huge impact on the brains we're closest to, and we're impacted by them. If you're tracking kindness in someone, it's a much safer thing to accept influence from them. It's a much better idea.
James: Absolutely.
Catherine Roebuck: Neuroplasticity is basically the process of accepting influence.
James: So you're comparing this to others. I was talking about it with myself, but you're saying it's the same principle. That makes a lot of sense. If I track kindness in a person, then I'm much more willing to accept their influence. In the same way, if I track kindness in myself, then I'm much more willing to accept my own influence. Oh, that makes sense.
Catherine Roebuck: Yes. This is part of what makes it hard for people from backgrounds where they didn't experience a lot of kindness to grow. Accepting influence is very threatening when you track that the people around you don't mean well and they're trying to change you. Of course you'll resist it. It's an intelligent thing to resist being changed by people that don't mean well toward you.
James: If I'm working with a person who comes from a place where there's not much kindness, they're going to be very resistant to my influence. If I don't offer that kindness or show that I mean well, it's really hard for that person to take what I'm saying and accept it. When I was a young therapist, I had so many experiences of saying something that was spot-on and having the person reject it completely. It was because of a lack of kindness. I didn't care enough about the person I was talking to to make it easier for them to accept what I was saying. As I've gained experience, that happens less and less. People are much more able to accept the things I tell them, even when they're quite difficult, because I've learned to accompany my words with more kindness and caring.
Catherine Roebuck: Yes. This is how the fruitional view and the developmental view intersect. As you develop this capacity to relate with kindness to your immediate, embodied experience—your reality, whatever it is—you make it much easier for your brain to map out new possibilities and solutions to your problems and to actually improve your circumstances. You need neuroplasticity if you're going to improve your life; you need your brain to be malleable. The most sustainable way to achieve that is to mean well toward yourself and build trust with yourself so that you can count on your ability to follow through on your goals. The fruitional view is what makes that possible. It's this practice of being kind now.
One thing I've thought about with the embodiment piece is that I have a fair bit of chronic pain. The idea of going into my embodied experience has been pretty difficult for me. I'd rather stay out of it. But even there, I've found it's only helpful when I'm willing to do it. It isn't about having a good experience; you just have to be patient and kind with the experience you're having.
James: The way I've heard it explained is to ask, "How harmful is this?" or "Is it actually harmful?" I compare this to eating a hot pepper. I was having Chinese food a week ago and there was a little red pepper in it. I thought, "This won't be that bad," and took a bite. I'm salivating just talking about this. Within 30 seconds, my mouth was on fire. But it wasn't really on fire. I immediately thought of what Bruce says: "Is it really harmful?" My mouth was screaming, "Harmful, harmful, harmful!" I decided to run an experiment and find out how harmful it was for as long as the sensation lasted. My instinct was to drink milk, eat ice cream, put an ice cube on my tongue, and run around the house flailing my arms. I really wanted to do all those things we do to try to escape from the intensity of the feeling. But I asked myself, "Can I just stand here and feel what it feels like to have a hot pepper on my tongue for a few minutes?" It lasted about three minutes, and I just kept asking myself, "Is this harmful?" It felt like it was, but I was looking for evidence. Is there any evidence of harm? If you're actually burning yourself, there's evidence—your skin will blister or there will be tissue damage. I could have looked in the mirror at my tongue and asked if there was any evidence of harm. It would have been fine. My intensity tends to last for about three minutes, just like the hot pepper.
Catherine Roebuck: That is such a good metaphor. Your instinct is, "I have to immediately change my circumstances. I'll drink milk and run around."
James: None of those things really work, but at least it feels like I have to do it. I was literally wanting to jump up and down.
Catherine Roebuck: There's a Buddhist saying: "Don't just do something. Sit there."
James: Oh my gosh, yes. That was exactly what I decided to do, but it was so hard. I wanted to go through the drama of addressing the problem, when, as I found out, there isn't really a problem. One thing that stands out to me is the advice not to just say there's no problem, because you don't know. It's almost like you're honoring your feeling by saying, "I agree to look at this." My mouth says there's a problem, and I'm not just going to dismiss it or pretend it's not hurting. I agree to pay attention to the warning, because burning is a warning of tissue damage. I will look diligently as long as it happens and ask myself, not in a dismissive way, "Is there any damage occurring?" It's a way of caring for myself. "This feels really dangerous to me. I'm going to pay attention to that, but I'm not going to accept it without investigating, and I'm also not going to dismiss it without investigating." It's a non-judgmental approach.
Catherine Roebuck: And there's no harm if, while you're doing that, you also want to run an experiment on whether it helps to drink some milk or have some ice cream. There's no harm in that. I think there are a lot of things we can do on a comfort level that may not be necessary or even change anything. But if you prefer to have something you're doing while you find out if this is harming you, that's okay. It's just about whether you can choose this instead of automatically rushing into it.
James: In a relationship, the equivalent of drinking milk and eating ice cream can be things that are quite harmful. If I feel intensity and I blame it on my wife, and then I try to address it externally in the relationship, that tends to make things worse.
Catherine Roebuck: Right. A lot of this stuff with relationships is basically this very core attachment panic. When that was coming up for me recently, I tried to take a direct hit on it as a conscious choice. There were different comfort things I could do to distract myself, but I chose not to do them because this is basically a question coming from a part of my brain that is really young and hasn't been updated since I was about five. It is still asking, "Is there anyone I can count on to be there for me? Am I all alone in this?" By just staying present and not getting myself out of that intensity, but instead committing to it and saying, "I'm going to be right here and I'm going to be this compassionate presence for myself throughout," I feel like I could settle that question at a level I've never been able to before. The answer was, "Yes, there is. I'm here."
James: You just said that with so much confidence: "I am here." That's beautiful.
Catherine Roebuck: It is the most comforting thing. It's actually more comforting than having a partner be there for you because, again, your partner is not always there for you. Even if they're the best partner on earth and you have the happiest marriage ever, sometimes you're driving alone and you get in a car accident.
James: Or they go to Target.
Catherine Roebuck: How dare they. Sometimes you're at your job and you get fired. They'll be there when you get home, but they won't be there in that acute moment. Who's going to be there for you then? The only option is you. I think that's why it's so worthwhile to develop a deep compassion for yourself, because you always have access to it. There's no other way you could always have access.
James: I think we should leave it there.
Catherine Roebuck: Okay, great talking to you, James.
James: This was such a great conversation. Thank you, Catherine. I'll talk to you again soon.
