Anxious attachment & an anxious attachment style: What is it?
Welcome to our Anxious Attachment Series- Part 1.
Episodes 38. 39 and 40 of the OPENHOUSE Podcast went viral talking about how to live with, and heal, from an anxious attachment style. If you are interested in what we are talking about here, head over to the OPENHOUSE Podcast on Spotify and Apple for more. In this blog post, we’re going to look at anxious attachment style. This is something that people don’t tend to talk about but is something a lot of people have to deal with. It is stressful AF and if you find it stressful, then you are similar to the 1 in 5 other people who do!
Truly, if you’re experiencing this anxious attachment style, you’re not alone. I’ve seen it with myself and with friends - they’ll be dating someone and the guy will leave or change their plans and their whole state of being shifts into this state of anxiety. Is he going to message? When will he message? What if our last date wasn’t good for him? Anxiety levels start to rise and you can quickly feel out of control. Your chest can get tight, you start to worry you did or said something wrong. You start to wonder if they’re going to text back, or they’re going to ghost you forever.
But what does it really mean to have an anxious attachment style? I asked head therapist at OPENHOUSE, Dr Tari Mack, Clinical Psychologist and Celebrity Relationship Expert, for her views - because everyone deserves access to a therapist!
So, what is an anxious attachment style?
Dr Tari explains “An anxious attachment style means exactly that. You never feel confident or at peace about your connection with somebody. It’s that anxiety that the other person’s feelings are going to change for you. You don’t trust that somebody’s feelings are stable for you. You don’t feel safe in our connection with someone and you’re hypervigilant to their cues.
You find that you’re constantly reading them and the relationship, looking for signs that their feelings are changing, that they’re thinking of leaving, that they have left us. You fear abandonment.”
What causes anxious attachment?
For me, learning that this was formed far far before we were consciously aware (often thought to be in the first two years of our lives) helped me understand that this was not something that anyone had chosen to take on. This really helps me in the moments that I feel anxious and start to talk badly to myself as if this is my own fault.I asked Dr Tari if I was correct around the way that I thought these anxious attachment styles had formed.
“Of course, like everything, this starts in childhood,” she says. “If our attachment figure, usually a parent, was not attuned to us emotionally or was not able to give us that stable, loving connection where we always felt seen and heard and safe in that relationship, we probably learned other ways to get that. What this means is that there might have been a consistent pattern of you crying, or needing something as a child, and your caregiver not always being able to help you. This is often just part of the busy lives that we live today (we are no longer living in caves where we can focus on our children all day long, we have jobs, and work to tend to, etc), but over time, the child could start to understand that sometimes their emotions may not be tended to, and this would make them more anxious and/or feeling like they need them more. It’s a really hard way to live because you’re not at peace. You’re suffering.”
A lot of people ask me how this can be the case when their parents were so perfect - and I explain to them, it can just be small moments, repeated over time. Dr Tari agrees - “it’s usually a pattern of behaviour over the longer period, rather than just one or two moments that define your anxious attachment style”.
How to deal with anxious attachment
Imagine you want to hang out with your partner but they have things to do. How would this make you feel? It can feel like a rejection, or like you’ve been lied to - what if they’re not just running errands, or going to the gym?
Dr Tari explains “When we have an anxious attachment style, we feel reassured and we feel safe when we're with that person. And so we always want to be with that person. The more time we spend with them in our mind, the better, because then we get to avoid that anxiety and that fear. That's why a lot of people with anxious attachment end up in codependent relationships, because you end up spending all your time with somebody so you don't have to face that part of you that needs to be healed.
If this sounds familiar, it’s a sign that you might want to start on your own healing journey.. Yes, we often compare our partner to us. Of course you'd want to spend the morning with him before he went to work or you'd want to have lunch with him every day, but when someone else puts a boundary in place, which is actually a very healthy response, it can make someone with an anxious attachment style thing ‘why doesn’t he want to spend as much time with me as I want to spend with him?”
The rejection comes from the thought “why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to spend time with me?” and then your brain starts to tell stories about it, This is a big problem, that we start to build assumptions and stories in our head, rather than being able to look at the objective reality,
In those moments of slight anxiety or panic, should you try to deal with this on your own? You can learn to self regulate, rather than relying on your partner to regulate you.
One way to deal with the anxiety that comes from this anxious attachment is to keep to your own routine. This is really important, and can be so empowering - rather than losing yourself in the routine of another. Another way to deal with the anxiety is to talk to your partner about it. Often, we are ashamed of these things, but we don’t need to be. Doing your attachment style questionnaires with your partner is a great way for you to both explore your attachment styles together.
In the moments that you feel super triggered, one breathing technique you might like to try is to take a moment on the sofa or somewhere quiet. The reason for this is that breathing is incredibly calming for moments when our nervous system is feeling dysregulated and stressed out. Put your hand on your chest and just breathe in and out. Focus on the weight of the hand on your chest and you’ll find your nervous system starts to calm down. This is known as regulation of our nervous system and when we often feel
Dr Tari explains “Awareness is the most important part to starting to break this cycle - being aware of what are the stories, what are the thoughts that are running these fears? The hand on the heart allows you to focus and brings you back to yourself. It gets you out of your own head where you start to build stories. When the thoughts start to kick in, be aware that you’re having thoughts that make you anxious, and you need to tell yourself a new story. Tell yourself nothing has happened. Nothing has changed. This is all. Remind yourself that everything is good, and you’re OK.” For me, that was a great starting point, and then I found it even more helpful to start to go into the stages of anxious attachment and to work out how it developed because behind every anxious attachment style, there is a fear, and that fear shows up as you trying to pull the other person closer, so you don’t have to come face to face with the fear.
A truth bomb from Dr Tari was that an anxious attachment style makes you feel only as safe as the last interaction and you feel dependent on those interactions to feel safe. If what you have read today resonates with you, this is not any way to live. You’re effectively giving away your power to someone else to control how you feel and you deserve to learn how to develop that stability and that positivity and that feeling of warmth and love from inside of ourselves.
Having an awareness of the triggers and the thoughts running the fears is the first step to healing from anxious attachment style.
For more resources to help you with an anxious attachment style, you might like to listen to the OPENHOUSE podcast where Louise and Dr Tari discuss anxious attachment in more detail.
I hope you guys have found this helpful.
Love Louise
x
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To read Part 2 of the Anxious Attachment Blog Series, head here where we discuss anxious attachment style triggers so you can understand what triggers your anxious attachment style.
To read Part 3 of Series, head HERE where we discuss whether you should communicate this to someone you are dating, or to your partner, as well as how soon into a relationship or dating experience to do this.
To read Part 4 of the series, head HERE where I give you a full script of how to explain to your partner, or the person you are dating, what an anxious attachment style is, what it makes you feel and how they can help you to work towards being and feeling more securely attached.
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Interested in the OPENOUSE Podcast and want to go deeper with Dr Tari Mack and Louise Rumball?
You can find Episode 38 HERE https://www.thisisopenhouse.com/podcast/anxious-attachment-style and
Episode 39 HERE https://www.thisisopenhouse.com/podcast/anxious-attachment-style-part-2
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Connect with Louise on IG: @IAMLOUISERUMBALL
Connect with Louise on TikTok: @thetherapygirl___
Connect with OPENHOUSE: @OPENHOUSELIFE
Connect with Dr Tari Mack on IG : @DRTARIMACK
Connect with Dr Tari Mack on TikTok: @DRTARIMACK
