Game for Life

• People with anxious attachment styles often fear abandonment and struggle with feeling secure in relationships.
• Childhood experiences, including inconsistent caregiving, can lead to anxious attachment styles.
• You can have more secure attachments over time with a committed partner and therapy.

Anxious attachment style causes fear of abandonment and insecurity in relationships. You may have constant reassurance-seeking and mistrust.

What Are the Signs You’re Anxiously Attached?

Having an anxious attachment style can affect how you behave in a relationship, how you respond to conflict, and how you feel about yourself.

A hallmark sign of an anxious attachment style is called hyperactivation, or constantly looking for signs that your partner is going to leave you.

This can look like:

• Needing frequent reassurance (e.g., asking, “Do you still love me?”)
• Obsessively looking for signs your partner is pulling away 
• Viewing small problems as threats to the entire relationship 
• Assuming the worst about your partner’s behaviors (e.g., assuming they haven’t texted you back because they don’t care about you, instead of considering other explanations)

Other signs you might have an anxious attachment style include:² 

• Constantly worrying about your relationship
• Feeling a sense of urgency about spending time with your partner
• Having a negative view of yourself 
• Not being able to solve problems without your partner
• Ruminating over worst-case scenarios
• Wanting to know what your partner is thinking or feeling at all times 

Receiving reassurance or having a positive moment with a partner can offer temporary relief. These gestures are often not enough to make people with anxious attachment styles feel secure long-term.

Someone with an anxious attachment style has a hard time trusting their needs will be met. This anxiety can cause them to behave in ways that seem mistrustful or “clingy.”

How Does Attachment Theory Affect You?

You develop an attachment style in childhood that is influenced by both genetic factors and the relationships you have with your caregivers.

As you get older, your attachment style shapes how you navigate close relationships.

There are four types of attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.

People with anxious attachment styles long to feel close to others. However, they struggle to feel secure in their relationships and fear being abandoned by the people they love.¹  

What Can Cause This Attachment Style?

When you’re a child, you rely on your caregivers for survival. This includes your biological needs (food, shelter, warmth) and emotional needs.

How reliably a child’s needs are met in distressing moments shapes how they develop a “working model” of attachment. This influences how they view themselves and relationships as adults.

Caregivers consistently meet both the physical and emotional needs of a child and give their child a sense of security. In this case, the child is more likely to develop a secure attachment style.

When a child’s needs are met inconsistently or not at all, the child is more likely to develop an insecure attachment style. This includes anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment.

Children with anxious attachment styles may have learned they need to perform perfectly, act out, or fight to keep their caregivers close to get their needs met. These behaviors might have helped them as children. They become unhelpful in adult relationships.

Additional factors that can lead to the development of an anxious attachment style include:

• Childhood abuse (especially from a caretaker)
• Genetic factors, such as having a family history of anxiety
• Lack of support from adults as a child
• Life stressors that made your caregiver less available to you when you were young
• Losing a parent or another caretaker as a child 
• Your caregiver’s attachment style

What Are Common Triggers?

For someone with an anxious attachment style, their anxiety may become heightened in intimate relationships.

Events that can trigger someone with an anxious attachment style include:

• Big relationship milestones (e.g., moving in together or getting married) 
• Conflict in the relationship 
• Entering a new romantic relationship 
• Stressful life events like job loss

Every relationship has some level of conflict. The stakes of these arguments might seem higher for someone with an anxious attachment style.

Conflicts, arguments, or inconsistencies with your partner might trigger a fear of abandonment. This makes them ask for reassurance, worry about their partner leaving them, or urgently need closeness to their partner.

Complications To Watch Out For

People with anxious attachment styles tend to report the following:

• A lower relationship satisfaction
• Less trust in their relationships
• More conflict with their partner

These effects could be a result of an anxiously attached person’s tendency to focus on negative events and assume the worst.

Hyperactivation behaviors, such as having a strong reaction to a minor conflict, can also cause stress in the relationship.

Outside of relationships, there are also individual mental health effects that you might have if you are anxiously attached. This includes anxiety disorders, depression, and low self-esteem.

Ways To Cope With Anxious Attachment

Having anxious attachment can sometimes make relationships hard. However, you aren’t doomed to be unhappy in relationships.

People with anxious attachment tend to show more appreciation in their relationships. They are often highly empathetic and in tune with their partner’s emotions.

You can try several things to help relieve your worries and feel safer with your partner:

• Communicate with your partner: Let your partner know what triggers your anxiety. Come up with a game plan for navigating conflict and discuss what you both need to create more security in your relationship.
• Find ways to self-regulate your emotions: Give yourself some space, listen to music, splash cold water on your face, practice deep breathing techniques, or go on a walk.
• Nourish your life outside of your relationship: Maintain your non-romantic relationships, engage in activities you enjoy without your partner, seek support from friends, and spend time with your family.
• Understand your anxiety: Acknowledging your attachment style and how it’s related to your childhood experiences can help decrease self-blame. Remind yourself that this may be an old wound resurfacing. Try to stay mindful and check the facts.

What Treatment Looks Like

Your attachment style can change over time. People with anxious attachment may begin to feel safer with a committed and secure partner after several years.

Healthy relationships that include clear communication and mutual respect can shift your working model of attachment. This gives you new experiences that contradict what you learned as a child.

Mental health treatment can support recovery, whether or not you are in a romantic relationship.

The following can help people develop more secure attachment styles:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy: This behavioral therapy focuses on the relationship between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It challenges negative thought patterns and feelings to help improve overall well-being.
• Couples therapy: This support for couples in committed relationships to help understand specific triggers, work through interpersonal conflicts, and develop coping strategies.
• Interpersonal psychotherapy: This talk therapy focuses on improving relationships. You work on difficult reactions, thought patterns, and behaviors that occurred in current or past relationships.
• Psychodynamic therapy: This talk-based therapy explores the unconscious forces and childhood experiences that affect your emotions and behaviors.

Tips for Supporting Your Partner

If you have a partner who has anxious attachment, it might be hard to know how to best support them while also maintaining your autonomy.

Here are some ways to support a partner with anxious attachment:

• Identify your own attachment style: Learn how your attachment style is showing up in the relationship. If you have an avoidant attachment style, you might be sensitive to your partner’s need for closeness and have a harder time meeting them halfway.
• Offer consistency and connection: Establish routines to help you and your partner connect in ways that feel meaningful to both of you. Connecting consistently won’t necessarily change your partner’s attachment style. It can create a stable foundation where healing can happen for them.
• Practice clear communication: If you can’t text your partner during the workday, communicate that with them. Avoid being vague about your boundaries to prevent miscommunication. This can make your partner assume the worst about the relationship.