AlexiaMcleod

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Control or distance: which one do you reach for when you don't feel safe? 👀 Warden or Escape Artist? Tell me in the comments. — alexia mcleod, lcsw #relationshipadvice #therapy #alexiamcleod #90dayfiance #emotionalsafety

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You didn't decide to stop checking his read receipts. One day you just noticed you hadn't. That's the part nobody prepares you for. You spend so long bracing for the moment your nervous system finally lets go of someone that you expect it to feel like a decision — a clean, dramatic release. It doesn't. It shows up quiet. A text you don't reread four times before sending. A silence you don't fill with a story about what it means. A version of you who used to need the reassurance and now just… doesn't. Anxious attachment isn't a personality flaw. It's a nervous system that learned, early and often, that love has to be monitored to be kept. So when that system finally softens, it doesn't announce itself. It just stops firing the alarm. Here's what I want you to sit with today: if you recognized even one of these five signs in yourself, that is not a small thing. That is months — maybe years — of a body unlearning a pattern it built to survive. You didn't get here by accident, and you're not "finally normal" now. You were never broken. You were adapting to what you had. The work now isn't staying vigilant so the old pattern doesn't creep back. It's trusting that the calm is allowed to stay. That's the part clients struggle with most in this exact season — not the healing, but believing they're allowed to keep it. I see this most in October, honestly. The air changes, everyone nests into their relationships for the colder months, and it stirs up old questions about who's actually safe to nest with. If you're noticing these shifts right now, it's not a coincidence it's surfacing as the season turns — transitions have a way of showing you exactly how far you've come, whether you're ready to look or not. If this is where you are right now, I built the workbook for exactly this stretch of the process — the part after the breakthrough, before it feels permanent. Link's in my bio. Tell me which sign hit hardest — I read every comment. 🤍 #relationshipadvice #therapy #alexiamcleod #attachmentstyles #anxiousattachment

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Okay, I had to pause this one. Oh, poor Debbie. I watched her ask for a conversation over and over, and every time, Mido pulled further away. I see this in my office all the time. When you're anxiously attached, distance feels like danger, so you chase. When you're avoidant, closeness feels like pressure, so you run. And the more one of you chases, the faster the other one runs… sometimes faster than you can say "visa." 😅 If this feels familiar, please hear me: you are not "too much," and they are not heartless. You're two nervous systems trying to feel safe in opposite ways. That pattern can heal, but only when both people are willing to slow down and do the work. So be honest with me: are you the chaser or the runner? 👇 — alexia mcleod, lcsw #relationshipadvice #therapy #alexiamcleod #90dayfiance #attachmentstyles