3 Strategies To Manage Your Anxious Attachment
Transcript
Shauna Niequist once said, “I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go.”
This is episode 3 of In the Messy Podcast. I’m your host, Jan, a practicing psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada. This podcast exists because we envision a future where every relationship, no matter how messy it may seem, has the potential to evolve into something beautiful and thriving. If you like this podcast, I’d love if you could hit the subscribe button and if you’re extra generous, please leave a review. It’s one of the only ways I can interact with you all. In today’s podcast, we will dive into 3 strategies to manage your anxious attachment style. These strategies will help you better understand and manage your anxious attachment, so that you can cultivate healthier, more secure relationships with your partner. If you haven’t listened to the first and second episodes, I highly recommend that you listen to it before you come here. You’ll understand how important these attachment strategies are and how it impacts your every day life. So if you’ve ever felt overly concerned about your partner’s feelings, worried about abandonment, or found yourself craving constant reassurance, you might be experiencing an anxious attachment style. But don’t worry—you’re not alone, and there are ways to manage these feelings. Let’s dive in!”
Understanding Anxious Attachment
A big part of what makes people adopt an anxious attachment strategy is largely due to their upbringing. They didn’t have consistent caregivers who were A (accessible), R (responsive), and E (engaged). They’ve learned over time that if they want to feel safe and secure, they need to almost prove to themselves and to others that they are deserving of love and care. Maybe when they were a child, they learned that if they made a big deal about something, that they would get comforted. Perhaps they would cry even more so that others would pay attention to them. Perhaps they strived to get good grades so that their parents would approve and give them love. On the flip side, they would act in certain ways to avoid certain behaviours from their parents. For example, a child might feel unsafe when their dad or mom would yell and scream. The yelling makes them feel very anxious. And so to try to prevent their parents from lashing out, children learn to do everything that they can to manage their parent’s emotions. The children would eventually adopt a script that says, “If I don’t feel safe, I need to do something to make sure I’m not going to be abandoned. Because being abandoned and alone is the worst feeling. It’s inherently wounding to feel that in this big world, you’re all alone.
Because their parents weren’t ARE, people with an anxious attachment style often have a deep-seated fear of abandonment. This fear can lead to behaviors like seeking constant validation, becoming overly dependent on others, and experiencing intense emotional highs and lows in relationships. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and often get deep into relationships from the start.
People with anxious attachment styles are often misunderstood because they’re constantly trying to please other people. They almost become a mirror of the other person that they’re trying to emulate. They don’t have opinions because they’ve learned over time that it’s better to stuff it down than to risk any conflict in the relationship. They prefer to do what the majority wants to do even though they couldn’t care less. They don’t speak up because rocking the boat is dangerous. Don’t ask an anxiously attached person what they like or dislike because they are also looking at your face, your mannerisms, your behaviours, and your words to assess the best answer so that they would be liked. Some of them don’t even know who they are because of the years of putting on a mask. At the end of the day, there are many fears that the anxiously-attached person faces…but the core fear is being abandoned and all alone.
Sometimes, anxiously attached individuals can say to themselves, “Well, if I want people to like me, I need to give 120% of my energy. I need to make sure that people know how fun and amazing it is to be with me. When they’re with me, they know that they’re gonna have a good time…I’m going to make it worth their time.” It’s almost like they don’t see their inherent value as an individual and question whether people are with them just because they’re them. Many times, it’s great to give 120% to make your significant other or your friends happy. At the same time, it gets exhausting. After all, you’re a human being, and not a human doing. If you’re giving so much time, care, and attention, what’s left for you? Who has your back at the end of the day when you have nothing left to give?
It’s very easy for anxiously-attached people to start feeling resentful of the fact that they give so much to the relationship while it seems like the other person isn’t giving as much as they are. And when the effort doesn’t seem to be reciprocated, then anxiously-attached people start to feel used and to question the relationship and to criticize their partners for not doing the dishes, the laundry, for making more money, putting more effort in the relationship, matching the level of commitment…you fill in the blank. When people who are anxiously attached get to that point of over-exhaustion, constantly giving more than they have, that’s when things go south.
So is this manipulation, putting on different masks depending on who you’re with? Are anxiously-attached people just “pick me’s”, attention-seekers, actors? I would say that they’re more like chameleons. They’re so incredibly beautiful, blending into their environment no matter what colour it is. They’ve evolved over time to emulate the environment around them not because they want to manipulate but because they want to survive. When we see anxiously-attached people as individuals who were forced to adapt to their environment to survive, we start realizing how hard it was for them growing up. And if this is you or your partner, please take a moment just to say to yourself, “I had to do what I could to survive and I am also going to start making a change so that I don’t just have to survive but to thrive”
Strategy 1 – Cultivating Self-Awareness
Let’s begin with our first strategy: cultivating self-awareness. Awareness is the foundation of change. I keep on saying this but I cannot emphasize this enough. If you can recognize the patterns of anxious attachment in your behavior—such as the urge to text your partner repeatedly or feeling devastated by perceived rejection—you can start to manage these impulses.
What you can start doing is to notice what is going on in your brain when your anxious attachment is triggered. What are the thoughts in this moment. If it’s easier for you, I want you to go back to a time where you were anxious in your relationship. What happened? Notice the volume of thoughts. Is it one or two or too many too count? Our brains are wonderful processors and it is sometimes really hard to capture it all if you’re doing it for the first time. Perhaps try to pay attention to the loudest thought or a theme that pops up. Notice what that thought is saying. Don’t try to control it or diminish it. It’s just a thought. No need to judge it whether it’s right or wrong.
Now as you’re focusing on this thought, notice whether there are any emotions that come up for you, whether it’s happiness, sadness, frustration, you name it. Even if you don’t know…that’s also a feeling too. And when you can locate that feeling in your body, what you can start doing is figure out where that emotion sits. For some people, it sits in their chest, in their heart, in their head, in their gut, in their hands…wherever that is for you, I want you to explore that feeling. Does it feel heavy or light? Does it feel hollow or full? Does it feel dull or painful? You fill in the blank.
Now what I want you to do is just to sit with that feeling for a moment. Take it in and explore it slowly. What you are doing is expanding your tolerance for negative emotions and cultivating self-awareness. After all emotions aren’t good or bad, they’re neutral. They just let us know what’s going on inside of us. What you are doing here is a powerful tool for identifying triggers and patterns in your relationships. The more aware you become of your thoughts and reactions, the more control you’ll have over them.
Strategy 2 – Building Emotional Resilience
Our second strategy is building emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is the ability to recover from setbacks and maintain emotional balance, even in the face of challenges. A lot of the times, anxiously-attached people are quite critical of themselves and blame themselves for outcomes that sometimes they have no control over. Since they grew up without receiving consistent safety and security, it’s hard for them to feel emotional security within themselves. It’s easier for them to get validation and comfort through others than from themselves.
There are so many ways to build emotional resilience. One way you can start the process is by practicing self-compassion. When you catch yourself falling into anxious thoughts or behaviors, notice it. Bring in your self-awareness first. What’s important here is to not judge your anxious thoughts, emotions, or behaviours. Don’t allow yourself to be your worst enemy. Instead of being critical of yourself, start cultivating the ability to be self-compassionate. You can say to yourself, “Wow, I’m going through a really hard moment right now. I feel like if I don’t get a text from my partner, I feel like my world is crashing down. It makes me feel so scared and so alone. This moment really sucks.
If it helps, you can imagine a close friend, a family member, your partner, or even someone that you really look up to whether it’s a religious figure or a celebrity. Imagine them right next you to, comforting you. Imagine what they would say to you. Perhaps a hug is all it takes. Whatever it is, you can use this resource to help you in this very painful moment.
In romantic relationships, it is important to know that they are inherently unpredictable. You can’t always control everything. You can’t force your partner to do things that they don’t want to do. Yes, it’s important for you to get reassurance, to feel safe and secure. At the same time, learning to embrace this uncertainty can reduce the anxiety that comes with needing constant reassurance. Remember that healing is a process, and it’s okay to take small steps.
Strategy 3 – Developing Secure Habits
The final strategy is developing secure habits. This means intentionally creating behaviors that reflect a more secure attachment style, even if they don’t come naturally at first. For example, instead of seeking reassurance from your partner whenever you feel anxious, practice self-soothing techniques. Gradually, these new habits will start to replace the anxious ones, leading to more balanced and secure relationships. I’ll talk about this more in the future!
Conclusion
As we wrap up our third episode, we talked about 3 key strategies to manage your anxious attachment style which are cultivating self-awareness, building emotional resilience, and developing secure habits. These strategies aren’t about eliminating anxious attachment overnight; rather, they’re about creating a healthier, more secure relationship with yourself and others over time.
I know some of you are keen to make immediate improvements right after you listen to this episode. Don’t feel like you need to force yourself to change. Moving from an anxious place to a more secure one takes time and effort. And don’t worry, I’m going to be here on this journey with you…teaching and showing you how you can shift your attachment patterns toward greater security and peace. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, share, or leave a review. I’d love to hear your thoughts and any questions you might have. In the next episode, we are going to apply what we’ve learned today. So stay tuned for Progressive Muscle Relaxation and Visualization. And until next time, find beauty in the messy.
Disclaimer:
As a disclaimer, In The Messy Podcast aims to provide general information only and does not serve as a substitute for psychotherapy, counseling, or any other professional health care service. It is our personal mission to offer relationship insights so that you can have a thriving romantic relationship of your dreams.
