Being anxiously attached in relationships

My 5 tips.

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A couple of years ago whilst in Thailand travelling on my way back to Bali I read a book called “Attached” by Amir Levine. I was in a relationship with someone who had started off by being incredibly available, loving, supportive…. and slowly I had felt a withdrawing of love. I was desperate not to make the same mistakes as I had done in my failed marriage so I was trying to figure out whether this had more to do with how I was behaving or to do with him… or just the fact that the relationship was not working.

I remember reading this:

“Instead of thinking how you can change yourself in order to please your partner, as so many relationship books advise, think: Can this person provide what I need in order to be happy?”

Amir Levine

A couple of months later I ended this relationship that truly had actually been over for a while. I was no longer in love. I was no longer willing to accept the breadcrumbs that had been offered to me and I was no longer willing to accept that my needs were not being met. I was no longer willing to think that this was just up for me to solve and “do better.”

I had always been the woman in every relationship who was trying to change herself in order to be loved. Not only romantic, but I realised in many friendships too. My deepest fear was never being enough and so I would constantly try to live up to standards I had placed on myself.

What did this cause? A never ending loop of “not enoughness”, anxiety, insomnia and I truly believe actually it was the cause of my physical health problems too.

Do you resonate? (Please comment below - it’s good for us to all feel seen and heard and not alone in this.)

So let’s break some of this down.

1. What is anxious attachment?

2. How can we start to heal it?

3. What does it mean for our relationships?

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Anxious Attachment

In a nutshell, this is someone who feels insecure in their relationships due to fears around rejection, abandonment and feeling not enough. Anxiously attached partners ultimately have unmet needs. As a result, they feel the need to prove how worthy they are.

This can look like: needing constant reassurance, codependency (for example feeling responsible for how their partner feels), unable to sit in the discomfort of an argument (needing it to be solved straight away), being passive aggressive, or when things go wrong at work or with a friend they call up their partner straight away.

This can also show as high emotional reactivity - not being able to take a moment to pause or making extreme plans in their heads (for example thinking “I’m leaving, I’m going to run away where they will never find me!”)

Anxiously attached partners will ruminate instead of having open conversations. They will make assumptions that their partner doesn’t care. They struggle with having calm and honest conversations about their feelings. They also have the tendency to blame themselves and see everyone else in a positive light. They deeply care about someone else’s experience and tend to negate their own pain.

Why does this happen? John Bowlby did extensive studies that looked at anxiously attached infants:

“Retrospective studies of individuals who are deemed to be over- dependent show that cases fall into two unequally sized groups. The majority group comprises individuals who are constantly apprehensive about the whereabouts of attachment figures. They come from unsettled homes in which they have been (and perhaps still are) subjected to one or more of the following—irritable scolding, disparaging comparisons with others, quarrelling parents, threats of abandonment or loss of love, changes from one mother figure to another, periods of separation with strange people in strange places.”

American Handbook of Psychiatry Vol.6

Anxious attachment will stem from a caregiver not showing love in a dependable, stable way. This can also come from other people in their lives, it doesn’t have to always be a caregiver. Ultimately, the baby / child will learn that they cannot trust that their needs will be met.

Plus, the really frustrating thing is, we seek the familiar. So until we heal these wounds, we tend to look for partners who will make us feel similar to how we felt as a child. So for example, if you felt you had to prove yourself, or be a “good girl”, you will seek out a dynamic (subconsciously) where you are looking to prove yourself and feel the need to be a “good girl” in a romantic relationship too.

Watch this short clip with Dr Julie Smith who explain this really succinctly.

How can we start to heal anxious attachment?

“If you're anxious, when you start to feel something is bothering you in a relationship, you tend to quickly get flooded with negative emotions and think in extremes. Unlike your secure counterpart, you don't expect your partner to respond positively but anticipate the opposite. You perceive the relationship as something fragile and unstable that can collapse at any moment. These thoughts and assumptions make it hard for you to express your needs effectively.”

Amir Levine

1. Needs

Firstly we have to get good at asking for our needs to be met. Which means we have to figure out what our needs actually are. Tony Robbins says that we have 6 fundamental human needs:

1. Love/Connection

2. Safety

3. Significance (feeling important)

4. Growth

5. Contribution to others

6. Adventure

Once we find out what specifically meets these needs for us - for example, I feel really connected to my partner when he calls me during his work day. I feel really loved when he gives me his hand when we disagree over something - even if we haven’t figured it out, when I feel his touch I know he isn’t going anywhere. I feel safe when I mention something small has upset me and he reacts kindly and wants to comfort me instead of getting defensive. At the same time, he will kindly challenge me if he feels that I have made an assumption that isn’t correct. I feel adventure because we always have some kind of plan for something fun booked in the diary - whether it’s a concert, a trip abroad, a 10km run together….

There are going to be many specific ways that help you feel like your needs are being met in a relationship and it takes time and effort to figure this stuff out.

We also MUST learn how to meet our own needs and not simply rely on a partner. This is huge. Whether that’s choosing to run a local book club for significance, volunteer for a dog’s shelter for contribution to others, or perhaps joining a choir for connection.

When we learn to meet our own needs, we start to build our sense of worth and we start to build our sense of self-trust… which means two things:

1. If you trust yourself more, you will trust others more.

2. If you build your own sense of worth, you won’t rely on so much external validation.

My rule for external validation - of course it’s wonderful to have validation from others and it’s part of meeting our needs. But ultimately the most important person that needs to be validating yourself, is you.

2. Learn To Self-Soothe

How many times do you reach for your phone when you are going through something difficult and call up your mum, best friend or partner? How many times do you get so caught up in your head that your nervous system feels completely out of whack - raised heart beat, shaky, sweaty palms, angsty feeling in your body? How many times do you try to distract how you feel by scrolling through social media?

If you are anxiously attached… probably many, many times.

Learning to self-soothe is deeply, deeply uncomfortable. It’s something that should have been taught at school because it’s one of the most important skills to develop when it comes to personal growth.

Instead of looking to offload or suppress or distract, you actually have to sit with yourself and the horrible emotions that you feel! Sounds fun huh?!

I learnt this skill in Bali. I would take myself off to be alone somewhere - in my room or on the beach… and I would breathe deeply. Breathing in for 4 and out for 6. Saying to myself with my hand on heart “I am safe.”

This starts to deactivate the fight and flight mode and puts us into more of a place of rest and digest. What this does for the brain is it moves us from the amygdala - our fear response, towards the pre-frontal cortex - the part of the brain that allows for rational thinking. Rational thinking is not something us anxiously attached lot tend to do!

Self-soothing will start to create a different response when we practice this time and time again. It will move us out of emotional distress more quickly. It will rewire the brain so that when fear is activated, the signals start to divert towards the part of our brain that will help us regulate and process emotions as well as problem solve in a rational, more aligned way.

3. Compassion

I know I come back to this time and time again but if we are harsh on ourselves, if we expect ourselves to just do better and be better, this will cause us to become more anxiously attached. Compassion can be learnt especially when we understand the psychology of why we feel the way we do. As my amazing mentor Emma Cannon said:

• “Compassion, curiosity, responsibility.”

• “We are not to blame but we are responsible.”

Both these statements basically mean that with any problem going on in your head find compassion for yourself, get curious as to where this pattern comes from, then take responsibility to change it.

Meaning: own your stuff but don’t blame yourself!

What Does This Mean For Relationships?

Remember I said above that we tend to seek the familiar?

What this can often look like is:

The anxiously attached and the avoidant tend to be in relationships with one another!

The avoidant tends to be uncomfortable with intimacy or too much closeness whereas the anxiously attached tends to need intimacy and a lot of closeness and reassurance. This becomes the anxious / avoidant dance:

“anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back; avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.”

Amir Levine

So the anxious one explodes whilst the avoidant retreats. The anxious one wants to talk it all through which makes the avoidant retreat even more…

Because we are not used to higher standards in a relationship, it’s hard to know what to look for.

These are my 5 tips for the anxiously attached when looking for a partner:

1. Are they comfortable with intimacy? Be really discerning - this person may be great but are they good for your nervous system? Or do they pull you close then push you away? Be careful with hot / cold behaviours.

2. Are they consistent with their words and actions? Do they make plans and then cancel? Do they say they will do something and follow through?

3. How are they with their friends? Do they have deeply connected and loving relationships around them? Do they show up for people in their lives? Do they make commitments with them and stick to them?

4. Do they make a real effort to get to know you? Do they listen to you intently or are they distracted by their phone? Do they ask lots of questions about the things that are important to you?

5. Do they respond well when you set boundaries / ask for your needs to be met? “Hey, it’s really important to me that things feel consistent between us. I have felt you pulling away. I would like to know whether this is progressing forwards as right now this doesn’t feel great for me.” If they pick up the phone, call you, get curious, apologise, make a plan with you straight away and appreciate you being so honest with them, then that’s a great sign.

As always, all of this is a work ing progress. Whilst I have healed a lot of my anxious attachment - meaning it doesn’t show up as much / my nervous system isn’t derailed so often, I have also chosen a relationship that helps me feel more secure. At the same time, I still get triggered and I notice old patterns come up. It’s at these points that we have to be vulnerable, honest and open, and speak up for our needs.

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Next week

I will be talking more about those who are avoidant in relationships. As a free subscriber today’s post is available to you. However next week’s post is only available for those who pay to subscribe.

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Big love,

Sophie xx

PS Don’t forget to sign up to my workshop on October 15th:

Finding Your Inner Compass

3 steps to transform your anxiety into a superpower