What Is Anxious Attachment?

Written By Ashley Gray, LCSW, MFTC

We hear a lot about attachment styles in the therapy world nowadays. While attachment has been studied in the field of psychology for quite sometime, talk of attachment styles has only grown in everyday conversation in the last several years. It's popularity has been fueled by the fact that understanding attachment styles has helped people demystify their relationships. Understanding attachment patterns has decoded partner motives, thoughts, emotions and moving through these things in a compassionate way can lead to great closeness. Who doesn't want that!?

So, this post will cover anxious attachment and future posts will look at the other attachment styles: avoidant attachment, disorganized attachment and secure attachment. Anxious attachment, avoidant attachment and disorganized attachment are the insecure attachment styles. While covering the nuts and bolts of these, I will also share free resources such as an attachment quiz to help you better understand your own attachment patterns and guides for managing different parts of attachment. Let's jump in!

Anxious Attachment Overview

Anxious attachment is the term used most often, likely because the behaviors of this attachment style often look rather anxious. This attachment style is also known as an ambivalent attachment style. I will use the term anxious attachment style in this post.

An anxious attachment style is characterized by a strong desire for closeness and a frequent fear of not feeling close enough. Those with a predominantly anxious attachment are often reaching for their partner, many times, out of fear that they may not be close enough to them rather than from a place of securely savoring closeness.

It is not uncommon for someone with anxious attachment to pair with someone with a more avoidant attachment. Someone with a more avoidant attachment often tends to lean out of the relationship for fear of losing themselves in the relationship even if these concerns are unfounded in their current relationship. This type of a relationship often starts to feel like a bit of chase where it feels like the more anxiously attached partner is constantly chasing after their more avoidant partner.

When a person with this attachment style fears that their partner may be distant within the relationship, they can become highly critical of their partner, suspicious and, at times, overbearing. They may push for proof that their partner loves them. Sometimes that proof might be showing a particular level of commitment, or they may ask for their partner to more outwardly or publicly declare prove their love or they may ask for more physical affection or sex. Any types of lapses in the aforementioned behaviors may cause the person with a more anxious attachment to fear that there is a problem in the relationship.

When someone has a more anxious attachment it can feel scary to calm down on their own and they prefer to calm down with their partner through conversation, touch, time together, etc. Calming down together is known as co-regulation. This can be tricky when they are with a more avoidant partner who feels more comfortable calming down on their own, which is known as self-regulation. It can be helpful for each person to gain greater comfort in the regulation style that feels more difficult for them. Check out my free self-regulation and co-regulation guides as a place to start.

When this anxious attachment is in a particularly difficult place, their requests may seem instatiable. This is because the need is much deeper than just what they are asking for. What is truly needed in these moments is feeling safe and secure in the relationship by way of feeling emotionally attuned with their partner. This means that it isn't just about completing a particular task, it is about deeply understanding the need, validating and being emotionally present with your partner in a way that is empathetic and responsive. If it feels difficult to achieve this with your partner, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) will allow you and your partner to learn and practice this emotional attunement in real time. I am trained in EFCT and the closeness that can be achieved is truly amazing.

Some want to judge these anxious attachment behaviors and create distance between them and their partner who is doing this, but something really important is happening here. They are asking for closeness in the relationship and while the methods may need some fine tuning, they are fighting for something that is important in the relationship. Again, this is not to say that every way that they go about getting this need met is healthy for the relationship. However, it is important to remember that the person with the more anxious attachment may be accurately picking up on things that could use work in the relationship. Their desire to make things better in the relationship is admirable, it is just also important that the person with the more anxious attachment is also aware of the impact of their delivery. Working with an EFCT therapist can help the two of you learn how to hold space for both what the more anxiously attachment partner is bringing up in the relationship as well as hold space for the emotions of the partner hurt by the anxious attachment patterns.

Anxious Attachment Patterns in Relationship

Practical ways that a person's anxious attachment can show up in relationship is ....

• Texting or calling excessively given the circumstances

• Often pushing for sex or physical affection as a means of validation that the relationship is okay

• Asking a lot of questions to gauge if their partner is trustworthy

• Insisting on defining the relationship or pushing for commitment even if it is too early

• Engaging in lots of criticism as a way to get ahead of any problems that may arise in the relationship

• Pushing for more vulnerability often without fully engaging in vulnerability themselves

• Having difficulty calming down on their own and deeply desiring to calm down with their partner instead

It is important to note that sometimes these behaviors are very fitting for the circumstances. Sometimes it is very understandable to continue to reach for your partner, especially if they are pulling away excessively.

Patterns of anxious attachment aren't always a problem, sometimes they are really helpful information. Sometimes these patterns come up because the person experiencing the anxious attachment is sensing that something is legitimately off in the relationship and their response brings attention to it. This response can be healthy and normal.

How It Started

You may wonder where this anxious attachment came from. These anxious attachments are most commonly formed in childhood. This looks like the parents sometimes meeting the child's needs and other times not meeting their needs. This causes the child not to trust caregivers to show up. Then they become anxious as to whether their needs will be met or not and they learn to protest to get the attention that they need.

However, sometimes a person can have had a very secure childhood where their parents were responding to their physical and emotional needs at least a third of the time and still develop an anxious attachment. This is becuase they have had a significant attachment injury with important attachment figures that are not their parents. This could be from other family members, trusted adults, friends, neighbors, etc. Anyone that is responsible for meeting some sort of need for them can count.

Nuances and Changes in Attachment Patterns

You may also notice that you have anxious attachment with one person, but not another. You can have different patterns with different people. This is because you are responding differently to what is occurring in the relationship. Some relationships might feel so secure that you don't feel the need to pull away or reach for them in excess as you would with a more insecure attachment style.

Attachment can change over time as well. For instance, perhaps you had an ideal childhood, but some really rough romantic relationships or friendships, this can create a more insecure attachment style. Similarly, healthy relationships can help you have a more secure attachment style, even if you previously had a more insecure attachment style.

Overall, the anxious attachment pattern is formed when a person's needs are not being met in a reliable fashion. Conversely, when a person with an anxious attachment works at reliably meeting their own needs and their partner is making an effort to meet their needs and they begin to trust that their needs can be met, then they can achieve an earned secure attachment.

Now, this is, of course, the over simplied version of what happens. There are a number of different things you can do to achieve a secure attachment in your relationship. For instance, you can read books about attachment together and talk through the material, there are courses and books that can help you understand your own individual attachment style and figure out how to work through what you experience. What I highly recommend is working with a couples therapist who is trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT). In EFCT you will learn your attachment patterns, learn how to interact with your attachment patterns differently and learn to show up for one another's needs more effectively. You will learn and practice these skills in session. I believe it is one of the best therapy models for learning how to attune to one another in real-time and create a more securely attached relationship.

If you're not able to do this work yet, but want a place to start, I recommend taking the free attachment styles quiz to learn your style and then using the free self-regulation or co-regulation guides to help you learn how to calm down on your own or with your partner when you're in your attachment pattern.

Knowing where attachment patterns come from can help you better understand yourself or your partner and extend a great sense of compassion and empathy.

Perhaps this post has helped you realize that are some things that you might like to work on regarding attachment. If you would like me, as your therapist, to do individual or couples attachment work, use the contact buttons at the top of the page to send me an email.

I'm wishing you the best on your journey! :)

This post is written by individual and couples therapist, Ashley Gray of Arvada, Colorado. Ashley works with her clients using Gottman Method Couples Therapy, EMDR Trauma Therapy, Prepare and Enrich pre-martial therapy, attachment focused therapy and trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy, Couples Intensives and EMDR Intensives. As a therapist, she is passionate about helping people build healthy relationships and supporting people with the resources they need. In her free time, Ashley hikes, paddle boards, reads, spends time with her husband and her cuddly dog. For more information about Ashley and her practice, click here.