591 - Shift Anxious Attachment with Your Body, Not Your Brain (with Orit Krug)

Welcome back, Orit!

We’re excited to welcome back Orit Krug to talk relationship anxiety with us. Orit is an award-winning Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist and Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, and today she’s offering her perspective on anxious attachment and relationship anxiety, and how it often lives in the body and nervous system, not the mind.

When we feel anxious in a relationship, maladaptive behaviors can arise, such as excessive reassurance-seeking, which researchers categorize differently than asking your partner for support (a healthy mechanism).

Healthy support seeking looks like partner reassurance working, helping you feel better, and sticking when provided. Excessive reassurance is occurring when the relief doesn’t stick, and the pattern shows up repeatedly, with repeated requests despite receiving reassurance previously.

Throughout this episode we discuss the research available and Orit gives her input as a movement therapist, doing a live reflection towards the end of the episode as well.

Find more about Orit and her work on her website, follow her on Instagram, access free somatic meditations there, and visit multiamory.com/retreat to learn more about the somatic retreat in Italy that Orit and Dedeker will be co-hosting in September 2026!

Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Orit: What I feel is a necessary practice is, can I just let myself feel this without needing to understand it or fix it or make it go away? Can I stay connected to myself while uncertainty exists? And if we can, we will get to the core of the wound that is driving that excessive reassurance seeking and the anxiety. And because I think that becoming more secure isn't becoming certain. There's nothing certain in this life. The healing and becoming more secure is learning that I can remain connected to myself even when certainty isn't available.

Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jace.

Emily: I'm Emily.

Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.

Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.

Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

Dedeker: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are talking about relationship anxiety and anxious attachment and why understanding it intellectually may not be the thing that actually shifts it. So maybe you've recognized this pattern in yourself. Maybe you seek a lot of reassurance from your partners. Maybe you feel preoccupied with your partner's whereabouts or their feelings toward you. Maybe even moments of connection or words of affirmation that you get from them, they can feel good in the moment, but then the impact fades the second that your partner is out of sight or they're spending time with somebody else. And you know that this isn't who you want to be in a relationship, and maybe the people you love are even starting to feel the strain of your reassurance seeking or anxiety cycles. You've read the books, you know the terminology, and yet the pattern persists. Well, today I'm going to be joined again by friend of the pod, dance and movement therapist Orit Krug, to talk about why anxious attachment and relationship anxiety often lives in the body and in the nervous system rather than just in the intellectual mind, and what it actually looks like to work with it there instead. Orit Krug is a Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist and a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist specializing in somatic approaches to relationship anxiety, attachment wounds, and trauma healing. She helps people move beyond intellectual understanding into lasting change through the body. Orit also brings her lived experience navigating polyamory, partnership, and parenting. And since 2024, Orit and I have been twice a year running these amazing somatic healing retreats for polyamorous folks. We'll talk about more of that towards the end of the episode, but Orit, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Orit: Thank you for having me and for calling me out already in your introduction.

Dedeker: So really quick, before we dive into this, I want to give a note on language. In this episode, we'll be talking about relationship anxiety and anxious attachment. I tend to prefer to use the term relationship anxiety, although we'll be using both. People who have an anxious attachment style are more likely to engage in relationship anxiety behaviors, which we'll get into later. But my personal opinion is I think the online discourse on attachment styles is oversimplified. People can feel like their attachment style is their whole identity, or like it's a death sentence, when the reality is that our attachment style and behaviors can change depending on context and relationship, which is something I think that poly people understand very well. So that's why we're using this language, because I want to make this episode accessible to anyone, not just someone who identifies with having an anxious attachment style, but anyone who's ever felt anxious or insecure within a relationship. Have you ever felt anxious or insecure within a relationship, Orit Krug?

Orit: I have, yes. And I also want to clarify that there is a difference between normal relationship anxiety, which is human, and then intense, almost uncontrollable relationship anxiety, which is more where I'm going to be focusing on in this episode. And when my relationship anxiety spikes, it can feel like I've almost lost my sense of self. Like, there's no ground beneath me, and I'm floating in space desperately trying to tether onto something, which is usually a sign from a partner that they're not leaving, they're still here, and I didn't do something to ruin everything. And in these times, intellectually, I know everything is probably okay, but my body and nervous system are just not convinced.

Dedeker: Well, can you talk a little bit more about how you make that distinction? As a side note, I'm working on developing an episode on relationship ambiguity, and I think you make a good point that relationships put us into situations of uncertainty and anxiety at times. I think especially when you're in early attachment formation, especially when you're dating non-monogamously. And so, yeah, how do you make the distinction between, okay, I'm feeling this anxiety in relationship, but that's normal, that's well within the scope of what would be considered my capacity as a human being, versus what is— I don't want to say pathological, but maybe something that's becoming a big enough issue that it's interfering with your ability to have a relationship and live your life?

Orit: I think that the most defining difference is how we feel in our body and whether the sensations we're feeling, they feel intense, more than just, "Oh, my heart's beating faster," but I'm having a hard time breathing. There is this tightness in my chest, my shoulders, and throat, and all the resources that I have and I know are not alleviating that. And the mind is ruminating, "Are they mad? Did I do something wrong? Are they thinking about me?" And that might lead you to check your phone every minute. I've never done such a silly thing. I mean, this is just a story. It's just an example.

Dedeker: Just an example.

Orit: Yeah, I will check my phone and I will analyze the texts and try to get an answer when I'm in that uncertainty. And with our clients, I often see similar behaviors, even if the behaviors vary a bit, they all have one thing in common, and they are attempts to create safety within. And like you were talking about, to get certainty from the ambiguity. And the problem is that these behaviors, trying to seek safety, they often only give temporary relief without actually creating that deeper sense of security.

Dedeker: What are the things that you've discovered about yourself that you know don't work when you're in that state? Because as you said, there's a lot of tools, there's a lot of mantras, there's a lot of ways to reframe this. There's just a glut of social media information aimed at people with anxious attachment for how to manage this. And of all the tools out there, are there things that you know just do not work for you?

Orit: Yeah, well, first I had to discover that no matter how much reassurance I received it was just a temporary fix. The discomfort with ambiguity is such a huge thing, and I know you're going to do an episode on it, but when we have experiences— most of them are from a much younger age— there's neglect, misattunement, abandonment in the form of unpredictable experiences with our caregivers. That relationship to uncertainty is so uncomfortable. And that's not even the deepest thing. Once you start tolerating uncertainty and you don't go into the mind trying to answer all of those questions, I found that there are so many deeper feelings that have been buried underneath that rumination. For me, I felt a lot of grief and sadness and anger, anger about things that have happened in the past that I never had a safe space to truly process. And yeah, so no matter how much reassurance I received, it didn't actually help because I needed to do this deeper work of processing these deeper emotions and being with myself through the anxiety. The way I see it is that I have put this job onto my other partners for my entire life, this job of proving that I'm worthy, that I'm safe, that I matter. I even have put that job onto my career, onto my physical appearance, just anything else and anyone else besides me. And there is no one else other than me who can permanently fill that role. There's only so much someone else can do to cover up that deeper wound that I never got that experience as a younger child to really internalize that I matter, that I'm worthy, that I won't be forgotten. So I have taken that job back, and I have to stay with myself through all of those feelings, which I know sounds abstract right now, but I'm happy to give examples.

Dedeker: I was gonna say, it doesn't just sound abstract. It sounds like a really terrible sales pitch. Because it makes sense on the surface where if you think about, okay, if I choose instead of reassurance seeking, instead of certainty seeking, if I choose I'm actually going to explore this anxiety, I'm going to explore what's there. Yeah, there it is, the childhood wounds, the grief, the anger, the ways that I was let down. I think it makes total sense why instead of doing that, my brain is like, no, you should just look at the text messages again. That's going to be easier. That's going to give you this weird, effed up little hit of dopamine that again is not going to be lasting and it's not going to fix what's underneath, but it's going to feel a little bit easier to turn towards that particular maladaptive behavior rather than actually sit with the stuff. But before we come back to that, I guess I'm curious. So we've talked about obsessively checking the phone and checking the texts, asking for a lot of reassurance that doesn't last. Do you have other examples of maladaptive anxious behaviors that either you've seen in yourself or that you've seen your clients do?

Orit: Yeah, I would love to share a little example from one of our clients who came to the Portugal Retreat back in March. Her name is Kira, and she had carried this deep wound of feeling unlovable, and she often made herself smaller so that she wouldn't give people a reason to leave. And during conflict specifically, Kira described this painful experience of feeling emotionally abandoned and alone. She wanted someone to cross the divide and find her and just hold her hand, but at the same time, she would often feel angry and resentful and thinking, why can't they see me? Why can't they come find me? So during a session in Portugal, we did an embodied conflict exercise where people explored their protective patterns through movement instead of words, and they embodied how they typically approach conflict. And then the person that they were paired up with, whether it was a partner they came with or just another participant on Retreat, that person responded from their own body. So when Kira did this, she embodied all of this conflict, inner conflict that she has during relational conflict, and she slowly moved towards the person she was paired up with, and she reached out with both arms, almost touching them, but not quite being able to cross the divide. And she believed her body was communicating, "Please find me," just like this happens in her real-life relationships. But her body was communicating something different. And when the person she was paired up with responded, he took a deep breath and he said the word "space." And Kira was like, "What? That's the opposite of what I want." And that was the breakthrough, is that she wanted to connect desperately, but her nervous system was protecting her from rejection in a way that actually made connection harder. So in that moment, reaching out with her palms face down, she turned her palms face up and he immediately put his hands into hers and she sobbed. She got what she had been wanting the whole time. And I think that's just such an important piece of relationship anxiety, or whatever we want to call it, other forms of anxious attachment. It's that sometimes our protective patterns are unintentionally communicating the opposite of what we're really deeply longing for.

Dedeker: Yeah, my God, I think that I see that pattern play out so often in couples that I work with, how our anxious behaviors that we think are meant to draw someone closer to us or to tell them, hey, please see me, please come closer to me, please wrap me up and make me feel safe, that those attempts come out either in the body language or in the words or both at the same time as sometimes very intense, very overwhelming protest, really, right? Where there is that anger, like that really angry child essentially, that can come out and can have that unintended effect of pushing someone away or making someone feel really overwhelmed or really scared to actually come close. And I see this, I know you see this, I know we've both lived this, right? That this can be a cycle in relationship that just goes around and around and around and around.

Orit: Yes, I have absolutely lived it. And for me, I've discovered a history with really the only safe person I had growing up being my main source of love and words of affirmation and physical touch. Like, this person was the one person I could go to to share my feelings and be held. And at the same time, this person dismissed my trauma when I expressed what it was to them. And it makes it really confusing because even if I deeply trust a person in my life, including my partners, there is this part of me that says, "I can't. I can't trust you." And so it will come out for me as sort of half asking for help, but also being like, "Well, you can't help me anyway." And then I don't get the help I receive, just kind of like Kira's story. And it—

Dedeker: Yeah, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of, "Okay, well, they're not gonna see me anyway." Because it's like a help you wrapped up in like a fuck you at the same time. Maybe that's an extreme way of putting it, but I do think our partners pick up on those little nuances.

Orit: Yeah, yeah. And it's absolutely caused friction in my relationships, especially when my partners do want to help but they don't know how.

Dedeker: This is a little bit of a side tangent, but I get people asking me questions similar to this all the time. Have you ever worried that experiencing intense relationship anxiety or having a more anxious attachment style might quote unquote disqualify you from practicing non-monogamy. I think I get a lot of people who think, oh no, what if I'm just too anxious for this, right? This feels like this is me, but maybe my body or my system just can't handle this.

Orit: Yeah, I have had many moments where I've wondered maybe I'm not cut out for non-monogamy. But even when I've spiraled in those moments of maybe I should break up with my partners, or maybe I can't do this, I've realized that my anxiety was here long before I started practicing non-monogamy. And actually, my experiences with non-monogamy has not only revealed the wound that's been here my whole life, but it is the vehicle for which I am practicing and healing the wound. So whether I'm monogamous or not— and I am polyamorous— this is something that's here. It may not be as— it may not be screaming at me so much, but the deeper wound, I still have to— I don't have to, but as you said, I'm making this choice to work through it. And I'm taking this job back, and it's so hard, but it is incredible to finally give myself what I've been searching for in other people all along, and to give myself the experiences that I am worthy and lovable and safe. And maybe even if I was monogamous, it would spill out more into my career, it would spill out more into a rigid fitness routine and making sure that I've got my six-pack. So I don't think that it even really relates to my ability to practice non-monogamy. It is that this path is showing me the way to heal what's been here all along.

Dedeker: I love that insight about how your anxiety has been there since long before you were in any adult relationships. Literally just yesterday, I was working with a client on this where normally her pattern has been that, you know, she's been in the process of dating, kind of having these short-term relationships for a number of years now. And normally her pattern has been around people who are very inconsistent, not very responsive, even a little bit mean to her. And so normally her own relationship anxiety circles around that, right? Like checking the texts, blowing them up with texts, or blowing them up with calls, or wondering, "Do they like me? I'm not sure if they even like me anymore." Like, a lot of reassurance seeking. And then now, just recently, she's in a new relationship with someone who is not that at all. Like, this person is showing up very consistently, very responsive, very warm, very kind, can respond to feedback, can apologize, like, all these things that have not been her normal pattern in dating. And we discovered in the session that it is just that the anxiety is still there, but now it's flipped into this, like, Oh, but is it too good? Are we seeing each other too much? Are we texting too much? Am I getting too close to this person? Should I trust this person? Why isn't this person being mean to me? Surely they're going to be mean to me, right? That sometimes we can identify— I do think that different relationships can bring out different wonderful aspects of ourselves and also different pieces of our baggage. But it is so interesting to see how fundamentally we can have these wounds around uncertainty, ambiguity, feeling unloved, feeling unworthy, that are going to find a way to show up regardless of what the context is, even when things are feeling freaking great sometimes.

Orit: Yeah, I can relate to that too, because my newest partner can abundantly give reassurance in a way that I haven't experienced before. And that is why it's led me even deeper down this healing journey. And one of the ways that my relationship anxiety has shown up over the last few years is really, really great, really fun. It's these occasional nights where I can't sleep no matter what I try to do.

Dedeker: Of course.

Orit: Yeah. Good, good. And for so long, I fought this so hard. I would become anxious about becoming anxious and staying up all night. And I'd just be in my thoughts like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I sleep? Why is this happening again? I'll never get better. But over time, I started realizing that this was almost a perfect container that was created for me to finally meet this part of myself that had felt alone for so long, which is the part that felt abandoned and scared and literally alone in the dark when nobody else was available. During the day, I can reach out to people. I can take a walk and get some sunshine. Like, it's like this was so perfectly created for me. And I think it's kind of beautiful that our journeys unfold in this way, just like your client, to see something new. But I wanted to share that the last time that this happened, I was up all night at my partner's house, and instead of spiraling or trying to force myself out of the experience, I just left him a note and I was like, "I'm going to see the sunrise. I'll be back soon." And I went to the beach and I watched the sun come up. I cried, I held myself, I meditated, and I didn't try to convince myself that I shouldn't feel that way. I didn't say, you shouldn't be upset, you're more healed than this, you should be able to handle this. I just stayed with myself. And it was such a profound moment because I realized that this younger part of me needed this all along.

Dedeker: Not someone to make sure that I never felt scared, but someone who would say, "I'm here and I'm not leaving, and you don't have to go through this alone anymore." Okay, that is a perfect segue because I want to spend just a little bit more time talking about reassurance seeking, because I think that we can see from lived experience, and this has also been documented as well, that when you're anxious, reassurance seeking can become a feedback loop, almost the same way that when you check your phone, you get that little bit of dopamine, right? That it's like the reassurance seeking from a partner drops in a little bit of the sense of safety, but that it doesn't last, right? And that if anything, you start to associate the reassurance that you get from your partner with even this kind of brief respite from the anxiety. And so that's why you keep coming back to it. That's how partners can start to get frustrated, right? Of like, literally yesterday we were talking about this and I thought things were good. Why are we bringing it up again? And so I was like, okay, so we can see that maybe reassurance seeking isn't going to be the thing that's going to heal your anxiety. However, I was like, well, but it doesn't feel like it's the right message to tell people, never seek reassurance from your partner. Like, that seems like that's also like a normal part of relationship. And so of course I had to do the Multiamory treatment and figure out, is there research on this, and I found that there is— that basically the researchers distinguish reassurance seeking, or sometimes it's even called excessive reassurance seeking, or ERS. They distinguish that versus support seeking, essentially. And the functional difference is that support seeking is about getting comfort from your partner while you are coping with distress. And the important part is that it is not aimed at eliminating the threat or eliminating the fear. It's just soothing it and being emotionally focused. And that in the research, they see reassurance seeking behaviors as being threat focused. So as in, it comes from believing that whatever situation you're in, it's more dangerous than it actually is. And you're getting stuck trying to get your partner to make the threat go away entirely. And I think there's, we can really split hairs here. But I think what you just said about, yeah, I didn't need someone who was gonna make the threat go away. I just needed someone who's like, yeah, I'm here. I'm here, and I got you. Which over time, I think that does land in our systems a little bit differently versus reassurance seeking of, tell me that you're not going to leave me, or tell me that I don't have anything to worry about with this new relationship, or tell me that you still like me, or, you know, these sort of things that can be nice to hear but aren't quite sending maybe the same message.

Orit: Yeah, if the wound beneath the excessive reassurance seeking is to ensure or get clarity that I am worthy of love and therefore won't be abandoned, then there can be a temporary relief with getting that reassurance from someone else. But it's not lasting. Like you said, it's a hit and it can last for— I mean, you can even close your eyes and imagine and visualize that your partner, or whoever the attachment figure is right now, sends you a text and says, "I miss you so much. I've been thinking about you all day." Just thinking about that, and if possible, feeling in your body, if that shifts anything. I think about that and my heart flutters a bit, in a good way. Or in a way that feels good or pleasurable. I feel a sense of expansion just imagining that. And I think that's pretty powerful because the text didn't even happen in real life. It just happened in the imagination, and your body has shifted in some sort of way. And that to me shows that nothing on the outside necessarily needs to happen to change the way we feel on the inside. And also, if the wound is stemming from this deep fear and insecurity of not being enough, not feeling worthy of love, it's like, how are we going to believe that? Our bodies need to feel that. We need to embody that. And it is a sense of safety that I think our nervous systems need to solidify and have a foundation that I don't think anyone else can give to us forever.

Dedeker: For sure, yeah. And again, to kind of keep going on the research train, there are a number of studies that also confirm this, that in relationships where there is these excessive reassurance seeking behaviors, they're correlated with lower relationship trust. And they find that, so I'm looking specifically at this study by Evraire and Dozois. It's called The Contribution of Attachment Styles and Reassurance Seeking to Trust in Romantic Couples. This is a 2022 study that was published in Europe's Journal of Psychology. They had these couples do these diary studies, right, where they're tracking day to day how, if they seek reassurance from their partner, how they seek reassurance from their partner, and what their feelings of trust are in the relationship. And they specifically found that if on one day somebody was seeking a lot of reassurance from their partner, the next day they would actually rate themselves having lower trust in the relationship. So again, it was kind of like, I imagine that immediately afterward you'd probably feel higher in trust, but by the next day, that was all evaporated essentially. And they found that this was the case regardless of attachment style, actually, that even the people who identified as anxious or as avoidant, if they said that they sought reassurance, that they actually felt lower trust over the course of the study. And now, so again, some of that can be contextual— again, this is correlative, right? So it's like the feeling lower trust in the relationship can also be feeding into that. But I do find that really interesting that we do have this documentation that it's like the reassurance seeking itself is not the thing that's gonna help you. But what's also interesting is related to this is that I found a couple of other studies specifically looking at how our sense of relationship anxiety and attachment style connects to what we feel in our bodies. So the two studies that I'm looking at, one is from Ferraro and Taylor. It's a 2021 study called Adult Attachment Styles and Emotional Regulation: The Role of Interoceptive Awareness and Alexithymia. That was published in Personality and Individual Differences. And then I'm also looking at this preregistered study from 2026 from Steinmassl and Paulus called Attachment Representations Associated with Interoceptive Accuracy, and that was published in Attachment and Human Development. And essentially what they're starting to find is that people who exhibit both anxious attachment and avoidant attachment styles have a worse ability to perceive bodily sensations, or seem to exhibit that, and have more difficulty identifying what they're feeling, when they're feeling it, describing their feelings. I have my pet theories about why this is, but I thought I'd toss it to you first of what do you think is going on here?

Orit: That is so interesting, all of that. Yeah. And I want to distinguish that from intellectual insight, which I know we do a lot. And that I think that a lot of people who are experiencing this, and especially who listen to this podcast, are incredibly insightful cognitively. They understand their attachment patterns, they know where their triggers come from, they listen to the podcast, they read the books. But their body still reacts. And it does feel like— it can feel like, what just happened with my body? And I want to come back to the ambiguity piece because I do think that is the most challenging obstacle, is not knowing. And that is why reassurance can feel so powerful in the moment, because it can genuinely help get that hit of certainty but the relief often fades when uncertainty comes back, which can happen the next day. And I can see why it wouldn't necessarily create more trust in the relationship, because it's— it comes back to our own bodies and our own nervous systems. Like, I'm still searching for safety. And on the note of ambiguity, again, when we've experienced a lot of unpredictability from our caregivers, the uncertainty itself feels threatening, and we escape that feeling in our bodies. And we escape it through ruminating, through analysis, checking our phones, and that excessive reassurance seeking. And that is where I think there are multiple layers, because underneath, when we stop escaping to the mind and stay in the body, we will feel those deeper feelings that feel so uncomfortable to so many people. I mean, people come to our Retreat and they reflect after where they say, you know, everyone's just like, feel your feelings, and I never knew what that meant. I don't even know how to do that. And I think we have to first start by breaking that pattern of escaping through the mind and then starting to learn how to feel those sensations in the body that are buried underneath that ambiguity. And one thing that I wanna point out is that there's a fine line here where a lot of people do turn to somatic practices, and it becomes just another way to analyze, to overanalyze and ruminate. Like, where do I feel this in my body? And what does it mean? And why is it there? And how can I make it go away? And it just becomes that same pattern of trying to fix ourselves like we're broken.

Dedeker: That's funny because I feel like since I started doing somatic work with people starting 3 or 4 years ago, maybe actually 5 or 6 years ago, I've really had to develop my skill to lovingly get people to shut up, basically. Yeah, because we're so, we're so primed, especially in a therapy context, we're so primed, okay, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to analyze, I'm going to intellectualize, I'm going to talk through it all, right? It's a conversation. And that can be really helpful, it can still be a helpful way to process things. And also, yeah, that is something that we're trained for, is that we can, at least in Somatic Experiencing, the modality that I come from, I call it like an overactive meaning-making channel, essentially, that's actually pulling us away from what's happening in the feelings and what's happening in the body.

Orit: Well, we work with the discomfort of ambiguity in real time instead of it being projected onto a relationship. It's like, why is my body feeling this way? How can I release it? How can I make it go away? Is this the right thing? Am I doing the right thing right now? We get that a lot when we first introduce the somatic approaches to people, and I find it so powerful to just say in your mind or out loud, I don't know, and like breathe in and out. I don't know. If you have to do that so many times over, it's a pattern interrupter, and this leads to the real, what I feel is a necessary practice, is, "Can I just let myself feel this without needing to understand it or fix it or make it go away? Can I stay connected to myself while uncertainty exists?" And if we can, we will get to the core of the wound that is driving that excessive reassurance seeking and the anxiety. And because I think that becoming more secure isn't becoming certain. There's nothing certain in this life, right?

Dedeker: Sorry, mind blown. Wow. Okay, say— sorry, can you just say that one more time just for all of us?

Orit: Becoming more secure isn't becoming certain.

Dedeker: Oof. Yeah.

Orit: And that there's nothing certain in this life. The healing and becoming more secure is learning that I can remain connected to myself even when certainty isn't available.

Dedeker: Okay, yeah, so I really want to drill down on that, on how becoming secure doesn't necessarily mean becoming more certain. I do think there is a lot of not necessarily incorrect advice out there that talks about how our attachment wounds and insecurities may be healed through a secure relationship, and I think that sometimes, especially looking at more traditional monogamous culture, we associate a secure relationship means the certainty of you're on this particular pathway with this person, you're going up the relationship escalator, you know, you're headed towards cohabitation, marriage, maybe building a family, whatever it is. And I think we tend to associate— well, we do kind of blend together that certainty with security. But again, it's not wrong that our access to security and our ability to heal can come through relationships. I'm curious about your take on that.

Orit: Yes, I think it's important to discern here. In terms of our personal relationships, I think there can be so much repair that happens, and at the same time, we do not want to make our partners or our friends or whoever responsible for building our own worth. Because like I've said before, it doesn't seem possible that someone else could hold that job forever, and that person is going to get burnt out. And like you said, like, "Well, I just told you yesterday that I'm not leaving." So there is a certain level of repair that I think is so essential, and then the rest I think have to be in different containers. And I do believe that relational experiences are essential for earning more security. We often need new lived experiences that directly contradict the old stories that our nervous systems have been building. And because so many of our deepest wounds happen in relationship, they often need to be healed in relationship too. And I love what one of our retreat participants had experienced around this. Her name is Corinne. She's publicly shared this in one session during one of our recent retreats. She shared that her deepest fear was that she's not enough. I may have cried a little bit when she shared this because I resonated.

Dedeker: Yeah, and I think, I think ironically, I think common even for people who are choosing non-monogamy.

Orit: Yes. So after she said that, I had invited the rest of the group to embody what they felt and sensed as they witnessed her saying this, so that they could reflect back to her, her fear, through their movements. And there was this moment between her saying, "I'm scared I'm not good enough," and before anyone responded, where she had to sit in that uncertainty. She didn't know how that would be received. She didn't know if being that vulnerable would lead to the same experiences that she had before, mainly rejection or shame or needing to hide. But instead, she was met with a lot of love and acceptance because the movements that people reflected back to her, they captured both sides of her experience. They were reflecting this part of her that wanted to shrink and make herself small and protect herself from rejection. And there were also people moving this part of her that deeply longed for love and connection and self-compassion through the self-hugging and, like, just these softened, warm movements. And she really felt truly seen and truly witnessed in this. And she had said afterwards that she had never experienced that level of being seen and held in a group before. And she was like, I just couldn't talk myself out of not feeling loved anymore.

Dedeker: Wow, what a quote.

Orit: Yeah. And, you know, she felt that she was broken and she just had a different lived experience, and that's the repair. It's not just tolerating uncertainty, it's staying present long enough to receive a new story.

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Dedeker: Some people may be aware of this, some people may not, but therapists, coaches, practitioners, podcasters, we are often the people who are the worst at taking our own advice and following our own guidance that we give to other people. And I'm definitely one of those people. So, Orit, part of why I'm excited to have you on the show today is I'm actually hoping that you might just personally help me out a little bit on some relationship anxiety stuff that's been coming up for me recently.

Orit: Is that okay? Yeah, I'd be honored.

Dedeker: And everyone— and everyone can be kind of a voyeur listening in on my experience.

Orit: Yeah. So also the pressure is on.

Dedeker: I've been having like— I don't know what is going on with my attachment style this year in particular. I feel like I've uncovered whole new parts of myself that have been previously undiscovered. For some context, where I'm at right now is I'm sort of in this like double NRE situation with two new people, which is another very uniquely polyamorous experience and something I do want to do a whole other episode on at some other time. Now, for most of my adult life in relationship and in NRE, I trend towards avoidant behaviors or maybe disorganized behaviors. So most of my adult life, when I'm having feelings or starting to get attached to somebody, usually it manifests in protecting myself by trying to push them away, by keeping my distance, by being cold, by keeping my cards close to the chest. I've had so many experiences in my life of people telling me, oh my God, I had no idea that you even liked me that much. Like, that's happened multiple times. I finally started to think, maybe I should be a little more open about these things. But so that's kind of who I've mostly been, or what I've known myself to be for most of my life. But this year, and I don't know what it is, I don't know if it's because I have not been in NRE for a while or what it is, but it is landing on me in the complete opposite fashion of like, I am so much more anxious than I have ever been previously, manifesting in checking texts, manifesting in even when someone can be very complimentary or very warm, or say really nice things about me, that will feel really good. And literally it could be like 10 minutes later, I'm back to, oh no, oh no, oh no, but what if, but what if, but what if they don't actually mean it, but what if they've already changed their mind in the past 10 minutes, but what if I'm completely invisible to them? And so instead of just sitting and feeling all of it, as you talked about at the top of the episode, I've been deploying my usual anxiety and ambiguity-reducing behaviors which is usually like write a podcast episode about it, which is to go super intellectual, right? To just be like, what does the research say? What is that? What do the experts say? Okay, where are the tools? What's this? What's that? And again, it's not like I'm finding stuff that's like total bullshit or these tools aren't helpful at all, but it's definitely not actually fixing the problem, I would say, of going through these loops with people. So where would you start with somebody like me.

Orit: I'm finding this so fascinating. I'm sorry, this is just my commentary first, because first of all, welcome to my dark side.

Dedeker: Happy to be here. Happy to be here. I will already drop in some side commentary that already earlier this year I've reached out to Orit personally to talk through some of these things or work through some of these things. And you said to me, or you're like This is the least composed I've seen you the whole time that I've met you.

Orit: Yeah, we talked a lot about that. And I mean, that's kind of what comes up for me, is you sharing about playing in the mud. And what's coming up for me is that at some point— I'm wondering if at some point you did lean more anxious attachment style in your relationships to your attachment, major attachment figures. And that the avoidance that you described having more so in your— would you say in your adult life?

Dedeker: Yeah, teenage to adult life.

Orit: Teenage to adult life is kind of like an overcorrection of, well, I can't rely on anyone else to soothe me, so I'm just gonna rely on myself. I'm the only one that I can take care of. And as I'm saying this out loud, I know that I've been saying that a lot during this podcast episode, like I'm the only one who can truly show myself, and I don't want to get that mistaken for I can't rely on anyone else and I don't ever need support or reassurance. There is a difference.

Dedeker: It's a good distinction.

Orit: Yes, because when you classically define avoidant attachment, a lot of resources say that that was developed because they learned that they cannot rely on anyone else for emotional fulfillment or safety. So I want to distinguish that first, and I'm also curious about these different parts of you is how I want to frame it. As you know, I'm really a big fan of Parts work, so I'm curious if you would be willing to explore these two different parts in a more embodied way.

Dedeker: Oh yes, I will. I'll bring all the parts to the yard. Yes. Oh, so it's— sorry, not all of them. I'll bring some of the parts to the yard. You don't get to see all the parts.

Orit: Good distinction there too. Okay, so I'm gonna try to do a shortened version of the embodied Parts work that we usually do on Retreat. And I think that if anyone is feeling willing to follow along, you know, if you're not driving or it's not a potentially dangerous situation, feel free to just listen, but also you can try your own version too. So I'm hearing two different parts: the part of you that you're identifying as more avoidant, and the part of you that you're more recently discovering that you're identifying as anxious. If you are going to do this along with us, you can choose any two parts that feel in conflict, or that you— maybe not even in conflict, but that you just want to explore. Let's start with the avoidant part since I'm guessing that feels a bit more familiar to you, more comfortable. So you can close your eyes or lower your gaze. You can also keep them open if that feels most comfortable. And I say, let's take a breath together, breathing in and out. And if you could visualize or focus or imagine this part of you that you identify as avoidance, and almost picture her on a movie screen in front of you, How is she moving through the world, holding herself in her body, interacting, gesturing towards other people or away from other people?

Dedeker: Can I reflect back a little bit just to bring people in? What's interesting is that, when I imagine that version of myself on a movie screen and also what I feel in my body at the same time, is she looks like a very glamorous, put-together movie star. And I can feel this sense of solidness in my body of like, oh yeah, we got this. Like, we got this. Like, that super avoidant part feels like she has it all together. That's what I see and what I feel. Like smoking a cigarette, black and white movie, you know.

Orit: She is so composed and cool.

Dedeker: Yeah, exactly. Butter would not melt in her mouth.

Orit: Okay, so if we had more time, we would explore a lot of that in movement in your body, but maybe you can just find a pose and for the sake of the Podcast describe it.

Dedeker: Yeah, yeah. So it's like I feel this again, it's very like 1940s Hollywood starlet, like leaning on a cool car, like acting like I didn't practice this pose before you walked in the room, you know, like making it just seem like, oh, this is how I happen to be leaning on this cool car. Like, that's— yeah. That's how my body's manifesting it right now.

Orit: So once you have that solidified, see if you can imagine taking this part of you— we're naming it the avoidant part— into your right hand. It's all imagination, so it doesn't have to make sense. Just as if you're taking it from your body and holding it in your right hand. And once you have that, just place it down next to you somewhere where you pick it right back up in a few minutes. And now the anxious part of you, can you connect with that part of you? You can visualize her on a movie screen in front of you, how she's holding herself, moving through the world, how she holds herself and her body as she interacts with others. And how old is this part of you? Just identify the first number that comes up. Go with that one.

Dedeker: Yeah, so what I see— what I see and what I feel. So it's what I see on the movie screen is like this really, really tiny, almost like a little mouse, but not even that cute, just like this really tiny little furry creature that's like covered in mud and a little bit gross and really, really tiny, like maybe the size of your fist. And what I feel in my body is like this collapsing in my solar plexus, right? Like a pill bug. Just like collapsing and being small. And the first age that came up was like 3.

Orit: So can you take that part of you and hold that part of you in your left hand and pick up the avoidant part of you back in your right hand. Do you have an age that comes up for the avoidant part? First number?

Dedeker: Yeah, I want to say like tween, teens, maybe 12, 13.

Orit: Okay, so you're holding the avoidant part of you in your right hand, the anxious part of you in your left hand, and invite them to move. No expectation. Nothing needs to happen. Nothing needs to be fixed. Just invite these two parts of you to move. And just for the sake of the Podcast, you can narrate out loud what's happening.

Dedeker: Yeah, so I'm bringing my hands together sort of along the blade where my pinkies are. The feeling that I get with these two parts is I get this image of two stray cats circling each other, really suspicious, but a little curious but also suspicious at the same time. Like, it feels— oh, like, kind of bringing those two things together feels definitely a little uncomfortable.

Orit: Yeah, I keep exploring that. If you can stay with that discomfort for a little bit longer, and I see you swaying and breathing through it too, and see what happens when they do interact.

Dedeker: Yeah, the avoidant part is like definitely disgusted by this weird little mud ball creature, like disgusted and embarrassed by it. And it's reminding me of literally last night I was on the couch having a conversation with Jace talking about dating and talking about these things, and I said to him, "Dating's embarrassing," and he was like, I don't think it actually is. I think that's maybe some of your own stuff that's coming up, and I feel that sense of that judgment and that embarrassment around that tiny little vulnerable, anxious self.

Jase: Hmm.

Orit: Nothing has to happen, but if they did come together in some way, don't rush it and don't make something happen just for the sake of it happening. But if they could come together How might that happen right now?

Dedeker: Yeah, I feel the sense of this avoidant part of the self sidling up to the sort of tiny little anxious self. It feels too weird and too uncomfortable to kind of face each other head-on, but there's something about sort of being in parallel and sidling up to each other that feels a little bit more tolerable. And there's something interesting there.

Orit: Let's take another breath together, breathing in and out, and find an ending pose for your hands.

Dedeker: Yeah, so I'm bringing them together again, sort of over my solar plexus, over this area that was wanting to collapse, and just kind of holding that area, soothing that area. Protecting that area a little bit, letting it soften. That's where I'm ending on this one.

Orit: Your hands are one on top of the other?

Dedeker: Uh, they're sort of like overlapping a little bit. Yeah.

Orit: Are there any mantras or words that come up naturally for you? And it's okay if there isn't.

Dedeker: I mean, it's super simple and not very profound, but like just a little bit of like, it's okay, just like, it's okay, it's okay.

Orit: Who's saying that?

Dedeker: I don't— the universe, something cosmic. That's what it feels like, something's kind of like a bigger, deeper wisdom, right? That's just like, yeah, it's okay, it's okay, you know? Like kind of bringing these parts closer together. Like, yeah, soothing two stray cats that are circling each other, right? Like that sense of it's okay. That's right.

Orit: Has anyone said that to you in the past? Like, it's okay, it's okay.

Dedeker: I mean, sure, people have said it to me, but if we're going back to kind of the deeper stuff or the childhood stuff, no, not really. That doesn't connect to— that feels newer. That feels like a newer message.

Orit: That's kind of what came up for me. Like, oh, it's okay. Like a parent would say to a kid.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Orit: That reassurance, right?

Dedeker: Yeah. Well, there was a lot there. Now my brain is coming online and being like, tens of thousands of people are listening to this. I hope that some of you were doing this along with us and also making some interesting discoveries. Wow. Sometimes people don't really believe me when I say this, but when Orit and I do these retreats together, something that I love about it, not just holding space for people and guiding people through this kind of work, but the two of us individually pretty much always bring our own shit too, right? It's like, you know, when we participate in each other's sessions, there's no real way of faking it. Just then for the podcast, there's no way for me to fake these sensations that are coming up in my body or the movements that are coming up in my body. It's so much easier to sort of intellectualize yourself through something and distance yourself from it when you're not— again, when you're kind of cutting yourself off from that body experience. And so that's why I also find on our retreats, I work through a lot of my own personal stuff too, not just helping other people work through it as well. And I know that's been your experience as well.

Orit: Absolutely. And I wonder if you're willing to— I mean, either I could reflect to you any ideas or thoughts, or, or do you have any sort of meaning coming up for you? I'm sure there's a lot, but Oh, I definitely could.

Dedeker: That's why I would love for you to reflect instead of for me to reflect, because I could take, I could take this. Yeah, and that's, that's a little bit of the— I don't want to say the danger, but kind of what we were talking about earlier, is that sometimes if you're inclined towards intellectualizing, that the insights and the stuff that comes up in somatic work can be very easy to like, great, I'll take that and run with it and just chew on it like a dog with a bone and try to extract all this meaning from it instead of just having the felt experience. So I would love your reflection.

Orit: And I think I can generalize the reflection so that it's not even all about you so deeply, but just a takeaway in general that it's so common. I think especially when people come on retreats, which is a big investment in all ways, they often have a sense of there's this problem I have that I need to let go of. And maybe in your case it's like there's this anxious part of me that just showed up and I need to get rid of her. She's—

Dedeker: I'm already sick of her.

Orit: Yeah, she's just like, no, no, no thank you. And when we do the Parts work, and this was just a little snippet, they do end up realizing that it's not about getting rid of this anxious part. And it definitely doesn't help to judge or shame it or try to talk it out of existence, especially because this part of you, whether you call it an anxious part of you, or we could just say a younger part of you, it's not trying to sabotage you. It's trying to protect you, and it's probably just using strategies that may no longer be serving you. And it just wants the same things that your wiser older part wants. It wants love, it wants to be seen, it wants to be accepted. And you saying, "Oh, it's okay, it's okay," and saying that that's something you didn't hear when you were younger makes me wonder if it's helpful. Yeah, let's not even intellectualize this deeper. Can you just— can you continue to truly show yourself and embody that it is okay, that this part of you is okay, and not trying to fix this part of you like a project, but see it as this part of me may have not often been met, accepted, loved, or validated. And maybe because of that, this other part of you started taking over. But both parts, all your other parts that many people haven't seen here, they're all valid and they all deserve love. And this is kind of the point that we've been driving this whole time, is that we can continue to try to search outside of ourselves for other people to tell us our whole selves are worthy of love, they deserve to be seen and accepted. I'm imagining that this anxious part of you needs to know that it's okay, it's okay. And even if that part of you shows up a lot, you are still worthy of dating, and even deeper, being loved, and being loved by multiple partners. And reassurance absolutely helps when it's healthy, but it can't be the only thing that's convincing you that you are worthy of love.

Dedeker: Yeah, well, I think my takeaway, even from doing just this tiny bit of work, something that I've been realizing has been happening these past few months that I've been going through this NRE and developing new relationships is I won't even realize until I've already spent a couple hours obsessively checking the texts or whatever. It won't be until I've realized, oh, I'm already engaging in these behaviors, that I'll realize, oh, you're feeling anxious again. It's like there's this feeling that's been there the whole time, but I've been cutting myself off from it and distracting myself from it and seeking these different channels to make it feel better. But I feel like in doing this work right now and getting a much more, I guess, present and focused sense of what that anxious self actually feels like in my body, I think that that might enable me to first recognize it sooner. First of all, I think this ties to what the research was saying about interoception, right, and having more of a sense of what's actually happening in your body, being able to feel that feeling identify it as, oh, that's the anxiety, that's the anxious self. I can offer it soothing, and I can be like, oh yeah, it's okay, it's okay, and do that before engaging in the 16 different ways that are not going to fix it. I feel like that's sort of the pearl that I'm taking away from this, is having that felt sense and being able to recognize it.

Orit: That feels really important.

Dedeker: Well, for all of you listening out there, if you're hearing this, if you did some of this exploration along with us and this feels like this is your jam, as I said at the top of the episode, Orit and I, twice a year, we've been holding these Somatic Retreats that's specifically for polyamorous people. We absolutely love them. They have been a great success every time. Every single time we finish a retreat, I think, oh my God, that was the best one ever. How are we going to top that? And then somehow we do top it. Um, so Orit, can you give us a little bit more information about our next one?

Orit: Yes. So as we've been talking about today, a big part of why we created this retreat is because understanding these patterns intellectually is only one piece of the puzzle, and the deeper shifts often happen through embodied relational experiences, really being witnessed, practicing new ways of connecting, and having the experience of, I can show up as my full, whole self and still be loved, still be accepted, and belong, which speaks to the community part, especially as non-monogamous folks who don't often feel accepted for the way that we are in relationships. So we are headed to Piedmont, Italy, September 22nd to 25th, 2026. It is 3 nights blending these somatic-based sessions. We're really cutting through the intellectual analysis, trying to think myself better, and really getting to the wounds a lot more directly and quickly so that you can build a sense of safety in your body. And no matter what you feel, you feel safe, you feel worthy, and you're important regardless.

Dedeker: Yeah, and like I said, we hold these twice a year, and we really specifically try to pick out like really beautiful locations surrounded by nature, really comfortable venues, so that when you're there, you are able to just drop in, have some of that relaxation separated from daily life, surrounded by nature. Anyway, we have a lot of information, a lot of testimonials from people who've been on the retreat before. If you go to multiamory.com/retreat, that's going to redirect you to the website that has all that information. Also, if you're listening to this after the fact and you can't make it to the Italy Retreat, you can go to, again, to multiamory.com/retreat, and you can sign up to be notified about our future retreats as well. So, Orit, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you so much for being there with my parts. I'm so looking forward to this next retreat with you. And yeah, hopefully we can have you back on the show again.

Orit: Thank you so much for having me. Honor to be with all your parts.

Dedeker: So all of you listening, I'm curious to hear, what is one thing that you have asked a partner for reassurance about recently? So this is a question that's going to be up on our Instagram stories the day that this episode comes out. We're also going to be putting it up as a post. I'm just really curious to know the things that people are asking their partners for reassurance about. Some of those we will share anonymously. But also, the best place to share your thoughts on this episode with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel that's in our Discord server, or you can post about it in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @multiamory_podcast.

Dedeker: Multiamory is created and produced by Jace Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston. Our production assistant is Carson Collins. Our theme song is "Forms I Know I Did" by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. Full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.