How to Overcome "Anxious Attachment"

How we can better tune into ourselves and improve our relationships.

Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.

Key points

• Anxious attachment often expresses itself as clinginess or jealousy with your romantic partner.
• Insecure attachments are often rooted in childhood patterns of attachment neglect.
• "Tuning" into your self can improve self-advocacy in a relationship and strengthen romantic bonds.

Insecure or “anxious” attachment most often manifests in romantic relationships in expressions like "clinginess," jealousy, emotional dependency, enmeshment, or generalized anxiety about the status or trust in the relationship. Many people who experience anxious attachment report feelings of not getting enough or "the right kind" of love and affection from their partner and often need frequent reassurance from them.

This anxiousness is often rooted in early childhood and an inconsistent or inadequate attachment connection with primary caregivers, like mom or dad. A child who did not receive consistent or persistent love or attention from a parent often finds it difficult to find secure and trusting adult attachments. One of the hallmarks of secure attachment is the ability to "internalize" a caring other and experience the consistency of their love, even when they are far away or entangled in other social spaces.

How Can It Be a Problem in our Relationships?

Anxiousness can affect relationships in many negative ways and can often "realize" someone’s worst fear by pushing away a loved one to the point of breakup. This is often an effect of long periods of jealousy or clinginess that feel to their partner as a smothering loss of self and independence. To the anxiously attached, however, this negative effect only confirms their worst fears and reinforces their mistaken belief that no one can be trusted to provide consistent love, or that they are, in fact, unlovable.

Ways to Manage and Overcome Relationship Anxiety

1. Radical Self-Attunement and Differentiation From Your Partner

One of the steps to achieving secure attachment is to tune inwards to the self and begin to get in touch with internal wants, needs, fears, etc. Many people who are anxiously attached are often very good at reading others and responding to their emotional cues. This can often lead to hyper-vigilance around micro changes in others’ behaviours, attitudes, and emotions, often confusing these changes with actions they themselves have taken.

As a result of being other-oriented, those who are insecurely attached are often less tuned into their own wants and needs and tend to be more accommodating and people-pleasing. They "go with the flow" more easily and want to keep the peace more often than risk antagonizing someone else, upsetting them, or breaking the attachment.

This kind of behaviour can be rewarded socially, which reinforces habits that ultimately disconnect the anxiously attached person from their authentic wants and needs. A big risk for someone here would be learning to say "no" to a social or romantic request when one does not feel authentic consent. Leaning how to say no and establish boundaries are crucial, however, to long term emotional mental health as well as relational health.

The paradox of intimacy, and especially sexual and romantic desire, is that it often requires friction, some distance, and, most importantly, differentiation between partners in order to thrive. An emotionally enmeshed couple rarely brags about their sex life. Rather, couples who are healthily differentiated — having independent worlds, interests, and desires beyond the relationship — are often those who have better romantic and sex lives.

2. Internalizing Parental Figures of Care

One image or metaphor I often use with clients is that of trying to imagine what an ideal father or mother would do for you when you are experiencing pain, sadness, or emotional distress. This likely has to be imagined and created by the client because this often didn’t exist in real life. For instance, would they tuck you into bed, get you a bowl of soup, and tell you to take the night off and watch Netflix? Or would they tell you to take a long walk in the woods, stop for a coffee, and call a friend?

Finding the right image and imaginary advice is key to attuning to your own needs and recreating the consistent attachment and care you didn’t receive as a child. It can be a difficult process to begin to imagine what it is that would make you feel better in times of distress and how to give yourself permission to enact it in real life.

Over time, however, this process can help you better identify and advocate for yourself and make your partner less responsible for these neglected parental roles. It then allows you and your partner to engage in more symmetrical adult forms of attachment and care that are not recreating neglected patterns from childhood. When one is better able to self-soothe and self-advocate, they feel less reliant on their partner and less resentful if they do not perform this role well.