By Lenni Ferren, LPCC
As previously discussed in the first article in my series, attachment theory focuses on the bond in intimate relationships, starting in the early stages of life between parent and child and later in life among partners and even friendships. Understanding how your attachment style affects your relationships can help you understand your own behavior in relationship to yourself and others, how you relate, react, and respond to intimacy, as well as your partner’s attachment style. Let’s explore anxious attachment: how it is formed, how it shows up in your life, and how to heal.
Anxious Attachment
IN CHILDHOOD
Anxious attachment develops in early childhood when your caregivers did not consistently attune to your emotional cues, and to your physical and emotional needs for love and safety. Your parents or primary caregivers may have struggled with addiction, mental health issues, overwork, abuse, or hospitalization or death in the family, which affected their ability to meet your needs consistently. They may have been there for you and been attuned and present some of the time, and then distant or cold to you at other times. Due to the unpredictability of getting these needs met as a young child, you may have felt confused about your own emotional cues and bids for connection.
You may also have learned that you had to focus on your parents' needs and abandon some of your own needs in order to get some of your other needs met, like connection. This becomes a cycle of prioritizing the attachment bond over your own autonomy and fearing that if you choose your own needs and autonomy you will lose your attachment/connection, a recipe for codependency.
Anxious attachment forms when you internalize the idea that it was your fault, that there was something wrong with you, or that you were not enough when your needs did not get met.
Another pattern that may have developed was internalizing that it was your fault, that there was something wrong with you, or you were not enough when your needs did not get met, especially when you were tending to your parents and still not getting your needs met. Unable to understand that your parents’ inability to meet your needs was about them and not you. You may have felt unseen or unheard and deeply lonely at times. You may have had increased behaviors to get those unmet needs met, which led to others further labeling you in a way that contributed to your feelings of inadequacy. Anxious attachment in childhood may have manifested as separation anxiety, self-esteem issues, difficulty focusing, behavioral issues, difficulty being soothed, or soothing self when alone (depending on age and developmental stage).
Anxious Attachment in Adulthood
IN ADULTHOOD
As an adult with an anxious attachment style, trusting intimacy might feel challenging. Because you grew up not being able to trust your early attachments, your own cues and needs, and struggled with the pattern of connection and abandonment. You may find yourself in similar patterns in your relationships as an adult. You may find yourself with partners or friends who inconsistently meet your needs or show up, wanting to be close but afraid that the other person does not feel the same, and continuing to open that old wound that there is something wrong with you if your needs are not being met.
Anxious attachment manifests in adulthood in a variety of ways. Here are some examples:
Difficulty being alone
Low self-esteem and self-worth
Difficulty trusting yourself and others
Fear of abandonment
Boundary issues
Difficulty understanding and communicating your feelings and/ or needs to others
Forgoing your emotions and needs in order to prioritize the attachment to your partner, even if it is not healthy
Unrealistic expectations in your relationships
Difficulty with emotional regulation and self-soothing
Hypervigilance or being highly sensitive to others’ emotions and behaviors
Preoccupation and overthinking about other people
You tend to repeat patterns and wounds from your childhood relationships in your adult relationships.
When you struggle with these issues that stem from having an anxious attachment style you may abandon yourself, your emotions, and your needs in order to get your unmet needs met through your relationships, this focus on others to meet your needs further perpetuates the cycle of insecurity, low self-esteem and self-worth that leaves you abandoning yourself. Most importantly, you have a tendency to repeat patterns and wounds from your childhood relationships in your adult relationships (for example, finding a partner or friend who is inconsistent in the ways they show up for you, or relationships where you find yourself in a cycle of “chasing”).
Developing an anxious attachment style can make relationships feel more challenging, and it does not mean they have to be. You can work and heal toward having a secure attachment with yourself, and in your relationships.
Healing Wounds from the Anxious Attachment Style
Feeling Your Emotions and Tending to Self
Healing anxious attachment wounds starts with feeling difficult emotions and forming a new relationship with them, to start seeing them as friendly instead of threatening. Emotions are your cues to help you understand what you are feeling and what your needs are. In childhood, you learned that your emotional cues and needs were not important, wrong, or punishable leading to disconnection. You learned to prioritize others' needs instead of your own in order to get your needs met, to abandon yourself in order to maintain attachment.
When you get in touch with your emotions, feel them in your body, and allow them to provide insight about your needs, you can reconnect with yourself, your own needs and start to prioritize them. That shift will have a massive impact on your nervous system and your ability to regulate and self-soothe when difficult emotions arise. As you begin to tend to yourself and your emotions, prioritize your needs, and communicate them to others, you will begin to feel more self- confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. You will find that you can maintain attachment and connection while also advocating for yourself. You reconnect with yourself, your values and make aligned choices from this place. You will begin to notice that trust and safety are an inside job that ripple out into your life and your relationships.
ASKING FOR SUPPORT IS THE FIRST STEP
Creating secure and safe attachments with others improves your quality of life and sense of fulfillment and wellbeing.
Therapy is a safe space to process painful childhood experiences, explore your emotions, learn about your needs and wants and practice communicating them effectively, work relationally in real-time with another person based on your anxious attachment style, learn emotional regulation and self soothing, and nurture healthy self esteem, self confidence and self worth. These areas of growth will foster more fulfilling relationships with yourself and others, and create a better quality of life. Here at Evolve in Nature we have trained therapists who specialize in attachment and childhood trauma and use somatic practices to help you get in touch with yourself and your emotions. We look forward to supporting you.