How to Know if You Have an Anxious Attachment Style
Do you find yourself worrying that your partner is pulling away, reading into changes in their tone, or struggling to feel at peace until you get reassurance? These experiences can be part of an anxious attachment style. Understanding how they fit together can help you make sense of what you feel and how you respond in close relationships. Common signs of anxious attachment include fear of abandonment, heightened sensitivity to changes in your relationship, overwhelming emotions, and difficulty recognizing or expressing your own needs.
Before we get into the signs, I want to clarify that an anxious attachment style is not a mental health diagnosis. It does not mean something is wrong with you. Attachment strategies can develop as ways of maintaining closeness to your caregivers, given the environment you grow up in. Even when those strategies create difficulties in your relationships now, understanding the purpose they serve can help you approach yourself with more curiosity and less judgment.
You may also see this style called “anxious-preoccupied attachment.” “Preoccupied” refers to a preoccupation with your partner’s availability and responsiveness. For simplicity, I’ll use “anxious attachment style” throughout this article.
You Fear Abandonment
At the crux of an anxious attachment style is a fear of abandonment. Separation and the possibility of loss can feel especially threatening, and regaining closeness can feel like the solution. However, the ways you seek closeness can sometimes create additional difficulties in the relationship.
You Are Highly Alert to Changes in Your Relationship
If you have an anxious attachment style, your attachment system may activate quickly and remain activated when you’re unsure about your partner’s availability. This means you may find yourself scanning for signs that something is wrong in the relationship. You may also become especially aware of your own thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations and interpret them as evidence of a threat.
The text that goes unanswered for a few hours. The time your partner needs space after an argument. A friend who seems a little too close to your partner. These situations may activate your attachment system, leading to intense emotions and a strong urge to seek closeness or reassurance from your partner.
You Are Overwhelmed by Your Feelings
If you have an anxious attachment style, you may experience emotions intensely, particularly when they involve your relationship. When you fear that your partner is pulling away or may not be available, those feelings can become consuming and difficult to settle.
Expressing your distress may also serve an attachment function: signaling to your partner that you need their attention, support, and reassurance. It can be a way of trying to regain closeness, and it may happen without you consciously recognizing it.
For example, if your caregiver’s responses were unpredictable, you may have learned that expressing distress more intensely made them more likely to respond. Over time, you may develop an expectation that you need to show just how upset you are for someone to recognize your need for care. That expectation can carry into your adult relationships.
You may also doubt your ability to handle difficult feelings on your own and turn to your partner for help regulating them. Seeking comfort from someone you love is a normal part of a close relationship. However, if turning to your partner feels like the only way to calm down, you may have fewer opportunities to discover and practice using your own internal resources. This can reinforce the belief that you need your partner’s response to feel okay again.
You Struggle to Recognize and Express Your Own Needs
When so much of your attention goes toward your partner’s availability and the security of the relationship, your own needs and wants can become harder to recognize. You may know that you want closeness but feel less certain about what else you need to feel satisfied in the relationship.
Even when you recognize a need, you may worry that expressing it, disagreeing, or asserting yourself could lead to conflict or rejection. As a result, you may hold back your preferences, accommodate your partner, or prioritize keeping the peace.
This is one way people-pleasing can show up with an anxious attachment style: you become so focused on preserving the connection that you have difficulty making room for your own needs within it.
Consider What’s Happening in Your Relationship, Too
I wouldn’t assume that difficulty trusting your partner or becoming highly alert to signs of abandonment automatically means you have an anxious attachment style. You also need to consider what is actually happening in the relationship.
If, for example, your partner has cheated on you in the past, your sensitivity to possible signs of infidelity may reflect that breach of trust. Similarly, if your partner is unavailable, inconsistent, or unresponsive, your uncertainty about the relationship may be understandable.
If your partner is generally consistent and responsive, but you still frequently fear that they’ll leave, an anxious attachment pattern may be part of what’s happening. These possibilities can also overlap: your attachment patterns and your experiences with your partner may both contribute to how secure you feel.
Understanding Your Patterns Is a Starting Point
If you recognize yourself in this article, you don’t have to judge yourself for wanting closeness or needing support. The question is whether the ways you try to protect your relationships also make it difficult to feel settled, express your needs, or trust the connection.
Understanding these patterns gives you a place to begin. You can start noticing what brings up your fear, what you expect will happen, and how you respond. Over time, you can develop more ways to manage difficult feelings and ask for closeness while making room for your own needs.
In my attachment-focused and psychodynamic therapy work, I help adults explore how these patterns developed and how they show up in their relationships now. We work to help you develop a more secure sense of yourself and your relationships. If you’d like support understanding your own patterns, you can learn more about working with me through online therapy anywhere in Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.
Source:
Wallin, D. J. (2015). Attachment in Psychotherapy. The Guilford Press.
