Are your relationships not always fulfilling? Do you constantly fear being abandoned? Do you feel that your happiness depends largely on the attention you receive from others? Do you find it difficult to feel secure in a relationship? Anxious attachment is probably the cause.
Our subconscious programming, developed primarily during the first years of life, plays a crucial role in the way we relate to others. Attachment styles, in particular, shape our reaction in situations of interpersonal stress, since they determine our perspective on relationships, the way we live them, and the expectations we develop around them.
It is as if we carry a “deep subconscious programming” that determines the bond we develop with our parents, children, partners and even friends and coworkers. Anxious and ambivalent attachment, in particular, can become a time bomb that makes our relationships “explode.”
What is anxious and ambivalent attachment?
Decades ago, psychoanalyst John Bowlby realized that the relationships babies establish with their parents or caregivers at an early age impact their psychological development and permeate their emotional well-being for a long time afterward.
Attachment theory suggests that these early interactions shape the way we perceive and form relationships throughout our lives. Obviously, these bonds will be more or less developed and mature depending on the type of attachment we have developed.
Anxious or ambivalent attachment style is characterized by insecurity. The child, and later the adult, experiences an “insatiable hunger” for connection, which comes from their constant need for reassurance and validation from others.
How is anxious attachment formed?
When parents behave unpredictably and their parenting style is inconsistent, children tend to develop anxious attachment. In these cases, parents are likely to support and meet the child’s needs at times, but not at other times.
This inconsistency prevents the child from anticipating his parents’ behavior. Not knowing what response to expect, he ends up scared, expectant and confused, always afraid of being abandoned or rejected, which generates that deep desire for attention and connection.
In other cases, anxious attachment is due to the parents’ own “emotional hunger.” Sometimes, caregivers seek the closeness of their children to satisfy their own emotional needs, falling into parental overprotection. These parents often have an anxious attachment style that they “infect” on their children, generating a relationship of dependency.
How does anxious attachment manifest in adults?
In childhood, children with anxious attachment often display dependent behaviors: they constantly seek attention and approval from their parents because they feel very insecure if they do not receive enough affection or validation.
In adult relationships, this pattern continues. It is often accompanied by:
- Constant need for validation. People with anxious attachment continually seek approval from others. They need constant reassurance that they are loved, worthy, and good enough, whether from their partner, their boss, or anyone else with whom they have a close relationship.
- Intense fear of abandonment. Adults with anxious attachment continue to fear that significant others, such as their partner or children, will abandon them. The fear of not being important enough in their lives creates a fear of being left alone and causes ongoing anxiety in their relationships.
- Hypervigilance in the relationship. People with an anxious attachment style are very sensitive, always on the lookout for signs of rejection or distancing from others. The problem is that this apprehension often leads them to exaggerate and interpret any behavior as a sign of disapproval that threatens the relationship.
- Seeking closeness. The need for attention and approval generates an overwhelming desire to be close to a partner or other significant people, to the point of becoming invasive, taking away their psychological oxygen. They demand constant displays of love and loyalty, which is emotionally exhausting for others.
- Emotional dependency. Often, the happiness and emotional stability of people with anxious attachment depend heavily on the attention and affection they receive from others, which in the long run can trigger a toxic dynamic of dependency or even possessiveness.
- Affective instability. Because anxiously attached people rely heavily on external approval, they often go from moments of intense happiness when they feel safe and loved to states of anxiety, fear, and despair at the slightest sign of distance. They go through cycles of idealization and disappointment in which they idealize the other at first, but quickly become disappointed when their needs are not met.
- Difficulty trusting others. Another manifestation of anxious attachment in adulthood is mistrust. These people often have difficulty trusting their partner, friends or children. They doubt their affection or love, which leads them to experience insecurities and often leads to pathological jealousy that suffocates the relationship.
- Overreactions to conflict. The insecurity generated by the anxious attachment style often causes the person to perceive small conflicts as major threats to their emotional security and the relationship, which often triggers exaggerated and impulsive reactions that others often fail to understand.
Having an ambivalent attachment style is exhausting. It’s like being on an emotional roller coaster all the time. It also often causes anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction. By seeing relationships as a “lifeline,” that desire to connect often backfires, so you end up suffocating the other person. This is the cycle of a self-fulfilling prophecy: in your attempt to build bonds, you end up dissolving them.
In fact, research has found that adults with an anxious attachment feel more dissatisfied and frustrated in their relationships. Another study conducted at the University of Catania also found that this attachment style affects emotional well-being in the long term, so it would be better to work with a view to a secure attachment.
How to overcome this dependency?
The good news is that you can change your attachment style. Sometimes, change can happen naturally, such as when you establish a secure attachment with your partner that creates a sense of calm and stability. That new experience can be enough to produce a change in perception and generate new habits and patterns.
In other cases, it is more complicated, so it becomes necessary to work on anxious attachment in adults at a deeper psychological level. What can you do?
- Remember that you are not your past
Regardless of what caused this attachment pattern, it is important to realize that you are not tied to your past. Your past relationships do not have to define your future connections because you are not a fixed version of yourself, but rather a person who is constantly evolving.
Just because you’ve had experiences that fostered this anxious attachment doesn’t mean you’re doomed to repeat history. Think of it as a kind of “emotional reset”: it’s about closing a chapter of your story so you can write a new one, this time without fear or insecurity. Realizing this possibility will free you from old emotional ties.
- Recognize your triggers
If you have an anxious attachment style, you are likely to react to different triggers in your daily life that evoke the feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and fear of abandonment that you experienced in childhood. In fact, many of these triggers depend not on what the other person does, but on how you interpret what is happening.
If you’re sensing inconsistent signals, if you feel like you’re not getting enough attention, or if the person simply took too long to respond to your message, those old attachment patterns can be reactivated. The trick is to understand that the alarm going off in your mind isn’t always connected to reality. Knowing your triggers is the first step to deactivating that automatic response that causes you so much harm.
- Change your thought patterns
It’s difficult, but not impossible. Anxious attachment often distorts reality . Suddenly, a lapse or forgetfulness becomes a big sign that everything is about to fall apart. At this point you should apply cognitive restructuring for anxiety by questioning your thoughts.
Avoid jumping to conclusions or making a mess of things. Analyze your thoughts rationally. Are there objective danger signs, or is your mind exaggerating things? Ask yourself, “What evidence do I have that this is going to end badly?” When you reflect on the situation from a more rational perspective, you can get off the emotional roller coaster. Of course, it’s not about ignoring emotions, but rather balancing them with facts.
- Dare to feel vulnerable
Although it may seem counterintuitive, the path to developing greater emotional security is through vulnerability. To feel more secure, it is helpful to focus on what makes you vulnerable. Step out of your comfort zone, feel vulnerable, and understand that even if it is uncomfortable, it is not the end of the world. Dare to express your emotions or share your ideas without fear of rejection.
Instead of looking for security from others, look for it within yourself. This will break the cycle of dependency. As you accept that it is normal to feel vulnerable or insecure, you will realize that you do not desperately need external validation. You will develop the ability to emotionally support yourself and gain self-confidence and self-esteem.
- Express your needs assertively
Deep down, many anxiously attached adults are still nurturing a scared child inside who believes they are unlovable. In fact, one of the main pitfalls of anxious attachment is that, rather than clearly expressing what you need, you tend to wait for the other person to guess or intuit it, for fear of being rejected. That, obviously, leads to misunderstandings, creates frustration, and ultimately reinforces the cycle of insecurity.
Instead, communicate openly what you need. Instead of holding back fear or anger, speak assertively about what you don’t like and share your expectations with those close to you. This will help you lay a solid foundation for building a more open and mature relationship, rather than nurturing resentments or unmet expectations by placing the responsibility for your happiness on the shoulders of others.
Obviously, in some cases these patterns and emotional responses may be so ingrained that it is best to enlist the help of a therapist to guide and support you in exploring this intricate relationship between longing and fear in relationships. This will help you better navigate the complexities of attachment insecurities and traumas so that you can free yourself from their heavy burden and achieve truly satisfying, mature and developing relationships.
References:
Sagone, E. et. Al. (2023) Exploring the Association between Attachment Style, Psychological Well-Being, and Relationship Status in Young Adults and Adults—A Cross-Sectional Study. Eur. J. Investig. Health Psychol. Educ.; 13(3): 525-539.
Candel, O. & Turliuc, N. (2019) Insecure attachment and relationship satisfaction: A meta-analysis of actor and partner associations. Personality and Individual Differences; 47: 190-199.
Read, D. L. et. Al. (2018) Adult attachment and social anxiety: The mediating role of emotion regulation strategies. PLoS One; 13(12): e0207514.
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