Anxious Attachment 101 Chapter Four: How to Heal From Anxious Attachment
Become “Inner-Focused” First
When those with anxious attachment feel triggered, they often react impulsively without tuning into their inner experiences. This reactivity can alternate between pressuring their partner for change and harshly criticizing themselves. The intense emotional response, while well-meaning, is often a way to force change externally. However, true growth comes from first sitting with and acknowledging your inner feelings.
For example, imagine you feel insecure about your partner and repeatedly check your phone for a response to a text. As anxiety builds, you become more fixated, leading to anger that eventually gets directed toward your partner. While this anger has valid roots, the way it is communicated may not benefit you, your partner, or your relationship in the long term.
This is what we call an “outer-focused” response—attempting to regulate your emotions through external actions. Shifting from this reactive mode to an “inner-focused” approach means acknowledging your inner discomfort first. By addressing the bodily sensations and emotions beneath the surface, you can communicate more effectively and with less reactivity.
Self-Regulation
People with anxious attachment often struggle with self-regulation due to a lack of emotional support during childhood. Learning to self-regulate as an adult involves calming your nervous system and managing triggers in healthier ways. Somatic work, which focuses on calming bodily sensations, is one highly effective strategy. By practicing self-regulation in minor, everyday frustrations, like dealing with traffic, you can better manage the high-stakes emotional triggers that arise in your relationships.
Co-Regulation
Co-regulation occurs when partners help each other manage emotional triggers. Anxious partners thrive in relationships where this mutual support exists. To enhance co-regulation, you can:
Make a plan with your partner to hug each other for a few minutes when feeling triggered.
Practice soothing touch or sex as a way to bond, if both partners are comfortable.
Validate each other’s feelings to maintain emotional safety.
Use supportive communication skills, like listening and reflecting.
Work on Timing
Anxious attachment often brings with it a sense of urgency. Partners may feel the need to address concerns immediately, even in heightened emotional states. However, waiting until both partners are relatively calm and private can lead to more productive conversations. Any self-regulation technique that provides space between the trigger and your reaction is beneficial in this regard.
Make Sense of Your Anger
Those with anxious attachment tend to either react impulsively to anger, suppress it, or alternate between both extremes. To handle anger healthily, it’s crucial to understand what it’s trying to communicate. Is it seeking validation, understanding, or change? Once you can sit with your anger and explore its roots, explaining it to your partner in a non-reactive way becomes easier.
Be Patient with Change
Instant results can bring temporary relief, but lasting change requires patience. The urgency that anxious partners often feel is rooted in a mistrust of long-term change. Instead of focusing on immediate outcomes, it helps to view change as a process of planting seeds for the future.
Communicate Outside of Negative Cycles
Anxious-avoidant dynamics can create negative cycles where one partner's emotional heat is met with the other’s withdrawal or defensiveness. To break this pattern, it’s important to communicate from a place of self-expression rather than blame or protest. For example, instead of accusing your partner of being emotionally unavailable, try sharing how their actions make you feel disconnected and work together to address the issue.
Learn to Trust “Good Enough”
Anxious partners often struggle to trust that good things will last, leading to a desire for perfection in their relationship. Learning to trust “good enough” involves accepting that no partner or relationship will be perfect. It’s about giving grace to the person behind the behaviors, not settling for less but recognizing that mistakes happen and don’t define the entire relationship.
Recognizing Emotionally Available Relationships
Healing from anxious attachment requires being able to identify emotionally available relationships. Emotional availability starts with being present with yourself. If you often feel a sense of unease in your relationship, it’s a sign that emotional safety may be lacking. Developing a clear, felt sense of what emotional availability looks like is crucial for creating or recognizing a healthy relationship dynamic.
For more information on healing anxious attachment or finding professional resources:
Read Secure Love by Julie Menanno for a deep dive into attachment styles and healing insecure attachment.
Join one of my online workshops.
Explore traumahealing.org for somatic therapy to help with self-regulation.
“By addressing the bodily sensations and emotions beneath the surface, you can communicate more effectively and with less reactivity.”
Other Posts You Might Like:
Discover why self regulation might feel out of reach, the barriers that hinder it, and actionable steps to build emotional resilience and connection.