5 Important Things To Know If You’re Anxiously Attached
How to find greater security and leave your insecurities behind.
If you’ve clicked on this article, chances are you have already identified your attachment style as anxious. Congrats! Not everyone is willing to look at their emotional wounds and be honest with themselves.
As you know, it’s not easy to navigate relationships when you have an anxious attachment style. You’re constantly looking for signs of rejection and you can’t effectively communicate your needs — instead, you use protest behavior like withdrawing or keeping score (more into that later!).
I’ve been there. I was incapable of having a normal, healthy, secure relationship. I’d either push people away or obsess over them trying to figure out if I had done something wrong.
But now that I’ve managed to change my attachment style to secure, I wonder how different my life could have been if I had come across attachment theory sooner, of if I had someone who helped me understand myself better.
To make it easier for you, here are 5 things I wish I had known, that I hope will help you navigate relationships smoothly from now on.
1. Get to know your (activated) attachment system
More than your attachment style, it’s crucial to understand your attachment system. According to the book Attached, written by psychology researchers Rachel Heller and Dr. Amir Levine,
“An attachment system is the mechanism is our brain responsible for tracking and monitoring the safety and availability of our attachment figures. If you have an anxious attachment style, you possess a unique ability to sense when your relationship is threatened.”
This means that you have the most sensitive system of them all. Even a slight hint that something may be wrong will activate your attachment system, and you’ll basically feel uneasy and unsafe until your attachment figure reassures you and gives you a clear indication that everything’s okay.
When that reassurance doesn’t happen, you’re left with activating strategies, meaning, thoughts and feelings that compel you to get close to your partner, either physically or emotionally.
The authors provide some examples of activating strategies:
- Difficulty concentrating on other things;
- Remembering only their good qualities;
- Thoughts like “he/she will change” or “everyone has problems”;
- Putting them on a pedestal: underestimating your abilities and overestimating theirs;
- An anxious feeling that goes away only when you are in contact with them;
- Believing this is your only chance for love;
- Believing that even though you’re unhappy, you’d better not let go.
Learning how your system functions is vital. Many people with anxious attachment style feel an almost constant threat to the relationship, which means that they have a chronically activated system.
This brings me to the next point.
2. Don’t mistake the emotional roller coaster for love
I used to do this all the time. Imagine the following scenario:
You’re dating someone. Quite soon into the relationship, you start getting mixed signals. You’re left guessing. Sometimes it feels like they’re interested, but then they fall off the face of the Earth. Every time this happens, you attachment system gets activated.
But… suddenly they text you saying how much they love you, or how beautiful you are. You feel calmer, you feel in love. Only to start getting mixed signals again. And this cycle never ends.
After living like this for a while, you start to equate this emotional roller coaster with love. You become emotionally addicted to the anxiety, and to the possibility of reassurance — which you never know when you’ll get.
Eventually, you also become programmed to get attracted to those very individuals who don’t have what it takes to make you happy.
3. Be aware of push-pull relationships, otherwise known as the anxious-avoidant trap
Besides the addictiveness of the emotional roller coaster, there are more reasons why you’re more likely to date avoidant individuals.
Although anxious and avoidant attachment styles are typically considered opposites, they can complement each other in a (unhealthy) way: each reaffirms the other’s beliefs about themselves and relationships.
“The avoidants’ defensive self-perception that they are strong and independent is confirmed, as is the belief that others want to pull them into ore closeness than they are comfortable with. The anxious types find that their perception of wanting more intimacy than their partner can provide is confirmed, as is their anticipation of ultimately being let down by significant others. So, in a way, each style is drawn to reenact a familiar script over and over again.”
Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller, in Attached
Had I know this earlier, I could have saved myself from the unhealthy relationships I got myself into. I never understood why I repeatedly found myself in a cycle of attracting people and situations that would make me feel miserable.
Now, I know it’s because we subconsciously like to have our inner stories confirmed. Familiarity feels safer, even when it’s the cause of our negative experiences.
If you want to stop feeling anxious, you need to be aware of the type of person you’ve been attracting into your life. Don’t ignore or romanticize the red flags and leave as soon as you start getting mixed signals. Avoidant individuals will never give you the security you need.
4. Your protest behavior can be harmful to you relationship
When your attachment system is triggered, you feel the need to resort to protest behavior. This can be:
- Excessive attempts to reestablish contact, like calling many times or loitering by your partner’s workplace in hopes of running into him/her;
- Withdrawing, turning you back on your partner;
- Paying attention to how long it took them to return your calls and waiting just as long to return theirs;
- Waiting for them to make the first “make-up” move and acting distant until they do;
- Acting hostile, like rolling your eyes when they speak, looking away or leaving the room why they’re talking;
- Threatening to leave, acting busy or unapproachable;
- Making your partner feel jealous;
Although protest behavior usually has the intention of reestablishing closeness with your partner, it can end up having the opposite effect. The good news is that instead, you can use effective communication.
You’re probably so used to resorting to protest behavior that you’ve normalized it. But it’s not normal, and you’d never need to act like this with a secure partner because you wouldn’t have doubts in the first place. Or, to put it better, you’d have doubts sometimes but you’d be able to communicate them and your partner would happily reassure you.
5. The key is to learn to appreciate the stability and love of a secure partner
Paradoxically, anxiously attached individuals often let secure potential partners pass by. Why is that? If you want intimacy and security, why would you let go people who are capable of giving you what you want?
Here’s the thing. When you meet someone secure, there are no mixed signals. Your connection is honest, straightforward, and consistent. This means there’s no tension, suspense or playing hard to get. Everything flows.
As a result, your attachment system remains relatively calm. And that’s good, right? Of course, it’s amazing! But because you’re used to equating an activated attachment system (anxiety, emotional roller coaster) with love, you think that this can’t be the one since there’s no anxiety whatsoever.
Once you’re able to catch yourself having these thoughts and exhibiting this behavior, it’s easier to get comfortable with true love — calm, deep, stable, healthy love.
Getting to know yourself and how your attachment style works is the first step to make your relationships better.
I know how difficult it can be to feel calm and undisturbed when you’re anxiously attached, but you don’t have to let it define your relationships or your happiness. It’s possible to find security — just be aware of the way your mind works and teach yourself how to appreciate secure love.
Love doesn’t have to be painful, uneasy or distressing. In fact, real love is gentle, peaceful and predictable, in the sense that you know it’s not going anywhere.
Still waters run deep.