Anxious Attachment: Understanding and Managing Anxiety

Transcript

This is episode eight of In The Messy Podcast. I'm your host Janette, a practicing psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada. And this podcast exists because I 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 it if you could hit the subscribe button and if you want to make my day, please leave a review. Also I'm opening up my waitlist this September, 2025. So if you're in the province of Ontario and would love to work with me, you can put yourself on the wait list at Stan S-T-A-N, dot store S-T-O-R-E forward slash Janette Chu, J-A-N-E-T-T-E-C-H-U, and everything will be in the show notes.

Today we're going to unpack the complexities of anxious attachment and its impacts on everyday life, relationships, and mental health. Whether you're just beginning your journey of self-understanding or deep in the work of healing, stick around for practical insights and supportive conversations to help you navigate your anxious attachment style. And specifically, I'm gonna teach you how to understand and manage relationship anxiety, the manifestations of anxious attachment style in daily life, and how to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy expressions of attachment. We'll also dive into grounding techniques, friendship and romantic relationship dynamics, and the often overlooked positive aspects of anxious attachment. So you'll learn how to build a supportive community and create emotional safety, especially if you identify as someone with an anxious attachment style. So let's go.

One of my clients is a very anxious person. She came to me for her OCD, but I saw that anxiety was one of the topics, one of the main issues here, and actually contrary to what she believed, the anxiety was actually helping her. The anxiety helped her control many of the things that were uncontrollable in her life. Looking at her history and her family. Origin. I realized that after her mom and dad got divorced, she had to take control of her family, as the oldest daughter. She had to make sure everything was perfect, food was on the table, clothes were washed, her grades were excelling, and she was helping her siblings with their homework. Now as a corporate executive, she's realizing that this anxiety is really too much. But when you peel back the layers, you realize that the anxiety was adaptive. It helped her in a season of chaos and uncontrollable factors guiding her to figure out what to do next, what to plan, and how to excel. She is not just thinking about next week or the week after. She's thinking months ahead, and that's why she's an executive today because she can have that future thinking, helping her see that the anxiety actually helped her, allowed her to validate that part of herself that says, " I need you in these critical moments." At the same time, she recognized that, this is a different season. She's not in survival mode anymore. She's thriving in her job and the anxiety is not helping her as much. Actually, it's preventing her from living the life that she wants to.

And I'll share with you a little bit later about what I was able to do with her.

So let's just dive into anxious attachment, and it does get a really bad rep, but I just want to turn your attention to the positives of anxious attachment. When we think about anxious attachment, we feel like, oh my gosh, it's that clingy girlfriend and or clingy boyfriend. I never wanna be with somebody like that. But anxious attachment, as I shared with you before, is not something that you can control. It's something that was trained into you from your childhood.

Unfortunately, parents don't really get this education before they have children, and I wish they taught this in school at the same time, anxious attachment is developed by parents who, parents or caregivers who are not ARE, A is accessible, R as responsive, E is engaged and because they do not create a safe and stable environment, emotionally, physically, mentally, even spiritually. The child grows up confused and not knowing what to do about their inherent longing to connect with others, their inherent longing to feel safe and secure. So what comes about is this anxious attachment because they realize, oh, if I cry even more, I'm gonna get attention if I do something about it. If I, people please, if I, really try my best to take care of the other person, maybe they'll love me if I go above and beyond myself and maybe even burn myself, whether it's at home or at work or at school. Maybe it will give me some kind of return. And so that is the characteristic of an anxiously attached individual. It's more like, I will do anything in my power to make you love me. And it's not bad, I just wanna let you guys know. It's not bad, it's just a strategy. As I've been sharing all of these episodes and hopefully it's honed in. I want to focus on the other side, the positives of anxious attachment.

Anxiety can actually be beneficial when you look at the Yerkes Dodson law. So think about like an upside down you or upside down parabola when you have way too much anxiety and you're all the way on the right side of the parabola. You are not able to think straight, your productivity goes down, your emotions are all over the place.

You're not really in your sweet spot. Okay, think about any time when you feel burnt out and really stressed, no matter how much you stare at the computer, nothing's gonna happen. However, the opposite is true as well. If you don't have any anxiety at all, there's very little motivation to do anything. There's very little motivation to even get up and out the door. So the sweet spot is having some kind of anxiety, and how I'm going to talk about anxiety is this physical mental stimulation where your sympathetic system is activated. This helps you figure things out and makes you a little bit more alert and ready for whatever comes. And when you are stimulated it enough, awake enough, your sympathetic system is active enough. You do your best work. You are more awake, you are more productive, you're more motivated to do whatever it is that you need to do. Okay. That is the positives of your anxiety. Anxious attachment is not something bad. It's, as I shared before, a way, a strategy for you to get the support, the love, the respect, the peace that your heart desires. And everybody, all human beings, unless you have some kind of critical issue, are meant to connect with others. From cradle to grave, Dr. Sue Johnson always talks about how we were meant to connect with each other and we are meant to know that we are safe and secure, that we're not alone in this big wide world. But We do have our people, so let's keep on going with the positives of anxiety. Anxiety also alerts you, I don't know if you've watched Inside Out Two, it talks a lot about anxiety. Anxiety considers all the ways that things might go wrong or all the dangers that could potentially happen. These things are adaptive, meaning they're really important for our survival, and if we are not wary of our surroundings. Who knows, maybe something bad might happen from an evolutionary standpoint that totally makes sense. Think about, the show Naked and Afraid. Maybe a lion, maybe a bear might come and maul us. So it is actually really good when we have anxiety in those critical situations. And when you think about an agrarian society, shepherds tending their flock, need to be aware that, there might be wolves and other predators in the environment, and they need to protect their sheep and also themselves.

So it's good to have a level of anxiety so that you can get to safety in situations that are unsafe. But when we think of times now, we may feel like, we're not in a situation where a lion can maul us, or we're not living in bear country. However, our brains are still wired to detect any threat in the environment and when we detect some kind of threat, whether it's real or not. Our bodies gear into action and make us want to do something about it. We can see anxiety not as a negative thing, but actually as something that helps us get things done. I just want you to think about when you were in elementary school and had a huge project due the next week. You bet the night before it's due, you're massively trying to finish up that 3D model of the Egyptian pyramids or whatever project. When you're in university or college taking an exam, there is also a level of anxiety that helps you perform your best, helps you read the questions well, helps you to see the nuances. You're not yawning, you're not falling asleep. This is very important for your success. It is just that when too much anxiety happens that your body isn't able to regulate or even get rid of it, and that's the issue.

So I want you to pause and I want you to think about how anxiety has helped you in your life. Whether it's helping you excel at a presentation, get through a first date, prepare for the arrival of your kid, or negotiate a contract. Just take a few moments to think about where anxiety showed up and how it helped you get to where you are today. We are not thinking about the cons. I just want you to think about the positives and perhaps you can feel free to journal as well. So when you think about examples in your life, consider how your anxious attachment could be beneficial.

In my practice, I've noticed that many couples, whether dating, engaged or married, often have one partner who is anxiously attached, and the other one who is avoidantly attached. The anxiously attached person is often the one who pulls the avoidant partner back into the relationship. The avoidant person may feel that emotions are not everything and would rather be alone. Having learned over time that vulnerability can lead to hurt. The anxiously attached person will say, I really need you. I want to be with you. I want to spend all my waking moments with you. And the avoidant person gets an opportunity to break out of their shell, and they find each other in this beautiful dance. The anxiously attached person and the avoidantly attached person, they're working together, they're challenging each other in many ways. Sometimes the anxiously attached person may be a little too much, but for the avoidant person, that's okay because they have their own space that they can retreat to.

This is what happens at the beginning of insecurely attached relationships, this beautiful dance, and over time we're also going to talk about what happens when this dance is no longer beautiful. When the attachment wounds are being triggered in anxiously attached people, and also avoidantly attached people and what to do about it. And that's where therapy comes in to help each other come back to the love that they once had and to figure out, what can we do for each other to communicate our needs without feeling overly anxious or wanting to run away in the opposite direction.

Anxiety essentially draws people in, but too much anxiety, as I shared before, can repel people. You just wanna have that sweet spot in the relationship, and for every relationship it looks kind of differently, and that's what I see as the positives of anxious attachment. To a certain extent, anxious attachment is beneficial, but when it becomes severe, we need to be careful.

So how can we differentiate between healthy and unhealthy expressions of an anxious attachment? That's a good question, and I think you will know, because we talk about the window of tolerance. You know when you're not feeling 100%, fully in control of your emotions, your feelings, and also your thoughts. You know, that maybe you shouldn't feel these feelings, but these feelings are just coming and it's really hard to explain, but it's almost like the behavior is not proportionate to what is happening. For example, a guy goes out to a party and his wife blew up at him because she saw that there were women at the party. She's very scared that he's going to cheat on her, even though he already told her, Hey, I'm going to this party. There are going to be dudes there. There are also gonna be women there as well. I love you so much. I'm never going to leave you. There're just going to be a big hangout. We're just talking and chilling and we're just catching up because I haven't seen these friends in a long time, and she's like, okay. But afterwards, when she finds out that there are girls there, her anxious attachment got triggered.

You'll know. Because even though you try to console them, calm them down, it's hard. It's very hard to talk them down, and that's a sign of an unhealthy expression of anxious attachment.

A healthy expression of anxious attachment would be, "Hey babe, I'm worried for you. I know that there's a party and there's going to be women there, but at the same time, I'm okay. I know that you love me."

It's really important to care about others. In the wife's instance, she really cares about her husband. But at the same time, what I'm trying to get to is that when you are more secure inside, you can actually take words at face value rather than read between the lines and you can trust. I think the main part is being able to trust the other person.

So some practical examples of how an anxious attachment can manifest in everyday situations are you feel disgruntled when your partner doesn't kiss you goodbye or doesn't acknowledge you, or when your boss gives you a look and you're not too sure what that means, prompting you to ask your colleagues to suss out what is going on. You feel really hypervigilant. You feel like you can't really trust your gut, and you're always seeking validation from others, whether it's your partner, your boss, your colleagues, or even your kids. You desperately desire to be seen in a positive light by everyone. And when people don't respond to you according to your expectations, you become very sensitive and your behaviors, when your anxious attachment is triggered, are not proportionate to what the situation calls for. You're always seeking social support and you prefer to take advice of other people rather than trust yourself. And there's also a lot of emotional volatility. So I want you to think about where you are right now. Are you in a place of anxiety where it is healthy, it is helping you to thrive in your life, in your relationships? Or do you feel like, oh gosh, everything that Janette has said so far, I'm like, Ooh.

That's unhealthy anxiety. It's not where I wanna be. This anxiety feels yucky. I don't wanna be this way. I don't wanna be so emotionally volatile. I don't like myself when I get triggered. So if that is you, I have some techniques to help the anxiety. I think one of the most common misconceptions is that anxious attachment style will always be anxious. But there are always ways to make yourself less anxious and more secure. And these include grounding techniques, mindfulness, a solid social community, therapy and additionally, there are various dialectical behavioral tips that can be used.

There's also the safe, calm place, which is a grounding technique and the container method, which helps put all of those unwanted anxious feelings, thoughts, and memories into a box. Until you feel better about yourself and feel like you can handle whatever you're going through, then you'll be able to deal with the anxieties.

And I think the best grounding techniques that I've found to be most effective in managing anxious attachment is the container. This grounding technique involves creating a container that can hold your strong emotions, triggers, and memories. I am gonna teach you how to create this for yourself. In therapy, I would go way deeper and make this container very real. But for the sake of this podcast, I'm just gonna keep it as is. So the container operates as a two-way system. When you place items into it, they're willing to stay there. And when you're ready, you can take out as much information or as many specific memories or problems as you want to deal with at that moment. This container will not allow anything else to escape. Another important aspect of the container is that the memories or traumas you are experiencing are comfortable enough to stay in it until you're ready to confront them. It's almost like a treasure chest, or some people imagine a closed bookcase in their library filled with different memories while others envision a tipper ware container or even a storage unit.

What I found is that when I create this container for my clients, it's very personalized. No two containers are the same. So whatever you feel these thoughts, emotions, or memories, need to feel safe and comfortable, is what you should include to make it more positive and sturdy. Even the hardest memories can feel okay being there.

So why is this important for anxious attachment? It's important in many ways, and one of the main ways is that it calms you down. When you have an anxious attachment style, you may feel like everything is exploding, nobody cares, and that you're all alone. And many attachment wounds, traumas and hurts start to resurface, creating a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings.

And in that moment, your frontal cortex just shuts down. This frontal cortex, as I shared before, is responsible for rational thinking, logic and reasoning. And when you go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, the higher cortical regions of your brain start shutting down and your amygdala becomes hyper activated.

So when you use the container, it's almost like a vacuum. When you turn it on, everything gets sucked in and there's no way for the vacuum to throw anything out unless you manually open the vacuum itself.

This container can hold everything. When all those thoughts are raging, you can place feelings of being loved or alone into the container until you're ready to deal with them from a logical and realistic perspective.

So for example, if you're waiting for your partner at a coffee shop, they're 10 minutes late and your anxious attachment might lead you to think, did I do something wrong? Do they not care about me? Are they standing me up? Alternatively, you might think, how come they don't value my friendship? They should be early. They know that it's rush hour and they should be on time. Aren't I important enough? But if you say to yourself. I've already created a container for myself and I visualize it, it's there, and I'm gonna put each item, each thought into this container.

So for instance, you can place that feeling of being unlovable into the container for now until you feel a little safer and calmer. You could also put in the memories of all those moments where you got stood up or whenever your caregiver, whether it's your mom, your dad, your grandma, your grandpa, they left you to fend for yourself, you can put all of those in your container and then maybe when you are at home reviewing the day or the week, you can bring out your container. Notice where that container is in your mind. Notice what thoughts come up, what memories come up, whether they have changed, whether it is true, whether it's false, whether it's half truth, half false. And just observe, right? And be mindful about where we are and what our triggers are.

Another technique I really love to use with my clients is the safe, calm place. The human psyche is powerful. We can think about ourselves from a third person perspective. Even if we are sitting on the couch, we can pull ourselves out of our bodies and look at ourselves from a bird's eye view. In a similar way, we can create a safe, calm place in our minds to go to. Whenever we feel out of control or when our anxiety is triggered, I ask my clients to think of a place that they have been or imagine being that is safe, calm, and peaceful, like the mountains or the beach.

I guide them through visualization, noticing how their body feels, where their emotions are, and where their thoughts are going. And I try to really amplify all of those positive emotions. From a neurological perspective, you are strengthening the connections of your brain. HEBB's law states that whatever gets fired together, gets wired together. It's similar to working out a muscle, it gets strengthened. The body realizes that something is happening and needs to support that area. The same applies to your brain. Whenever you work out your brain, it gets strengthened. Which is a beautiful and wonderful thing. So the more my clients practice the safe, calm place and the container, the more they feel capable of handing anxiety inducing situations.

For example, going out on a first date and not receiving a call or a text back can be really overwhelming. In those moments, you need to return to your safe, calm place and feel those positive feelings. In reality, nothing has happened yet. It's just our minds going into overdrive activating our sympathetic system. So we need to calm ourselves down, get back into the window of tolerance, and then explore what is causing our anxiety. Why are we so anxious about not receiving that message? What about it is stressful for us? It might bring up memories of being excluded from parties or social groups, or maybe even getting stood up.

When you can take a step back and notice that your anxiety stems from deeper issues, that is a first step towards awareness and being mindful of your anxious behavioral patterns allows you to change them. These are the main two grounding techniques I find most useful, and there are many grounding techniques that are helpful, but these are the ones that I love that are most effective for my clients. So going back to the client that I was talking about at the beginning of our episode, I was able to get her to do these grounding techniques and to build it up just like how you would go to the gym and build up those muscles. We were making her brain work for it, and I wanna share with you what happened for her.

So we did a little bit of therapy, specifically internal family systems work where we talked about that anxious part. Similar how in inside out two. Riley had an anxious part that was going all over the place and getting frazzled. We were able to talk to that anxious part and say, "Hey, I see you. I know what you're going through. I know that you have a lot on your plate, and I get it. I don't want to stop you from doing what you do because it is helpful and at the same time, I don't think you realize that I am an older woman now. I have kids, I have an executive board, and even if I mess up and make mistakes, that's okay. It's not a life and death situation anymore." Over time as I worked with her, the anxious part of her started to quiet down and she realized that the anxiety is helpful when she needs it to be. She can turn that on quickly, but when she doesn't need to, she doesn't have to live with debilitating anxiety. And that's a story of how anxiety can help us and how to get through it.

Another way to manage the anxiety is to build a supportive social community when it comes to building a supportive social community. I find that it's hard, especially because anxiously attach, people get burned easily by others. A lot of the time when you're anxiously attached, you grab hold of anyone who's willing to listen or spend time with you, you seize hold of that. And I totally understand. It's almost like holding a handful of sand. The more you try to squeeze that sand, the more it's gonna fall out of your hands. But if you just let it fall into your hands and not move it, not touch it, then it's gonna stay.

So what I would recommend moving forward for those who have an anxious attachment is to spread it out between different friend groups. I know that sometimes it's really hard to put yourself out there in this day and age. However, if you're feeling this way, there probably many others who feel the. You are not alone in this, and there's a lot of different groups online. There are also various ways to connect, whether it's through sports, hobbies or even friends of friends. So try to find people by going to even like a community center and playing pickup basketball or pickle ball, taking a cooking class or even enrolling in a course, finding your people is very important for anxiously attached individuals. The main goal is not to focus on one person or two or three or one specific friend group, but to maintain a flow of people in your life. I know that some people enjoy going to community centers and hanging out there, libraries, interest group, or even small church groups. I found that these settings can be quite successful in helping you find a group of 4, 5, 6 people, and this will help you because when you feel anxious about things, you can reach out to one group, hang out with them, say, Hey, I wanna do something with you guys. You can come over to my place, we can go out, do something fun, whether it's board games, karaoke, or just taking a walk outside. Due to technology it doesn't even have to be in person anymore. It could be online. You could connect with people all over the world, and I know some people enjoy gaming and being in different discord groups, which is a very similar thing.

However, as a therapist, I would recommend seeing people in person if you can, because that intimate connection where you see each other's eyes and smiles is very important for the anxiously attached person to feel safe and secure. It's just not about saying, you're there with me, it's about being present with me. And this is what I would highly recommend in terms of finding your social group.

Perhaps in the future episodes we can talk about what to actually say, because I'm sure an anxiously attached person is freaking out because they don't know what to say. They don't wanna burn the bridge already, and they're probably thinking, oh my gosh, I hope they like me, but what if they don't? What do I say? What can I do to make them like me? Do they care about me or are they trying to just be nice? All of these concerns are topics that I could discuss in a future episode.

So now let's go to takeaways. Think about one thing that you can take away from this episode. What is one thing that I can challenge myself to do moving forward, whether it is looking at my anxious attachment more positively, or how do I calm myself down by using safe, calm place, or the container? Or you're feeling really lonely right now and you just need connection. How can I get out of there? And actually figure out what are the steps to do this hard thing. The one thing that I want to encourage you to do is to start thinking about your future self. That's kind of like what anxiety does thinks about the future. I want you to think about what your future self would say to you now. How would your future self encourage you? To do the hard thing.

And that brings us to another end of the episode. We talked a lot about anxious attachment, the positives, how to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy amounts of anxiety and techniques to help your anxious attachment style and how to create a supportive network for yourself.

I wanna thank you all for your time and your interest in attachment science, and it always brings me so much joy to hear how this podcast has helped you in your journey. So shout out to Joe, my amazing producer. You're awesome. And until next time, I'm here for you in the messy.