Attachment styles are like emotional blueprints we carry from childhood, silently shaping our relationships.
As a relationship therapist for 20 years, I've dedicated thousands of hours in understanding how these deep-rooted patterns influence our connections with others.
Imagine constantly feeling like you're walking on eggshells in relationships, perpetually worried about being abandoned or not being "enough." That's the core of an anxious attachment style. It's an emotional survival strategy developed in childhood, often stemming from unpredictable parenting. Our way of loving is formed in our very early experiences. You may think “this is just the way I love.”
Have you ever taken a moment to consider, for you love is mixed up with pain or love means taking care of the other person, even to the point of depletion?
Many of my clients have shared with me their reoccurring fear “if I love fully, they will leave me.”
Those with anxious attachment live with a deep fear of being abandoned. They often seek reassurance, along with an intense desire for closeness in the relationship.
When I’ve worked with clients who express avoidant attachment they emotionally distance themselves, fear intimacy, and struggle to connect deeply. Those who express avoidant attachment struggle with closeness due to early experiences in their childhood and often felt neglected by their caregivers. Experience taught them to self-soothe rather than risk depending on anyone else for support.
Those who express secure attachment in their relationships are individuals who feel comfortable with emotional intimacy, can trust partners, and maintain balanced relationships often because of their secure relationship with a primary caregiver, and they’re able to bring that acquired sense of security into their adult relationships.
On the other end of the spectrum those with a disorganized attachment are often those who simultaneously crave and fear intimacy, often resulting from traumatic childhood experiences.
Disorganized attachment happens when a child's survival circuits are screaming “get away from the source of terror, you are in danger” but the child's attachment circuits are crying out “go toward your attachment figure for soothing”
When the same person is simultaneously activating the brain's “go away” and “go toward” messages – this is fear without solution. This is why future relationships can feel so disorganized and disconnected due to these early experiences.
The best predictor of your attachment style is not necessarily what happened in childhood, but much more how you can make sense of those childhood experiences and eventually heal from them.
Anxious attachment can create a challenging romantic landscape.
It might look like:
Seeking constant validation
Feeling overwhelming anxiety about potential rejection
Struggling with setting healthy boundaries
Overanalyzing text messages
Being overly dependent on partners
Loving in a healthy, more emotionally available way is possible for those with anxious attachment by taking meaningful steps to improve their relationship dynamics.
Here are a few suggestions to get started, identifying root causes of attachment patterns, take some time to consider childhood experiences and how that shapes your loving relationships today.
Explore emotional regulation techniques so that when you feel triggered in your relationships, you have inner tools that can support you.
Experiencing a relationship with securely attached partners can create a healing environment for those with anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment styles.
Simply being in a relationship with someone who has a secure attachment style offers a model of consistent, balanced love and generate more security within you.
Over time, their reliability and emotional availability can help reshape the other partner's patterns, fostering a greater sense of trust and stability in the relationship.
Healing anxious attachment isn’t about becoming perfect or never feeling uncertainty again—it’s about learning to trust yourself and build relationships where you feel safe, seen, and valued. Healthy love has the power to heal, offering a space where your fears can be soothed and your emotional needs can be met.
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