Anxious Attachment 101 Chapter Three: How Anxious Attachment Shows Up in Relationships

All attachment styles, including anxious attachment, are going to show up in their most extreme form in relationships in which the emotional stakes are highest (higher attachment and emotional needs, higher expectations, higher fear of loss).

It's common for those with anxious attachments to have problems in relationships in the following areas: over-controlling, being critical and/or blaming, people pleasing, difficulty feeling lovable and trusting good things will last, fears of abandonment, and/or difficulty finding emotionally available partners (but even emotionally unavailable partners can learn to be available.

Anxious-attached partners tend to focus on controlling their partner's thoughts, feelings or behaviors in order to feel safe, to feel loved, and to manage their anxiety. They may want their partner to do or say things a certain way.

There is nothing wrong with having standards and desires. For anxious-attached partners, however, they can overly-associate having things done their way with being loved and safe.

Anxious-attached partners often rely on the way their partner thinks or feels to define how they feel. For example, if their partner is in an ordinary bad mood, they may have difficulty taking a step back from their partner's experience. Instead, they become overwhelmed with anxiety. For them, their partner's bad mood is threatening to their safety, so they work overtime to change their partner's experience.

Many anxious partners are overly critical or blaming of their partner. This is their way of reaching for connection. In their subconscious minds, if they can just get their partner to see what they're doing wrong and to change, everything will be okay: they will be okay, their partner will be okay, and the relationship will have the closeness and safety they are seeking. The problem is that these behaviors contribute to negative cycles between the two of them.

Some anxious partners are overly people-pleasing. They work over-time to make their partner happy with them. This is how they are trying to feel safe and connected. Being overly-appeasing isn't connecting, however. Instead it's a way to manage the anxiety surrounding the fear of rejection and loss, and it ends up being disconnecting. It usually fuels resentment. Avoidant-attached partners can be appeasing too. For them it's usually to avoid conflict, while for anxious partners appeasing is usually to avoid physical or emotional abandonment.

Those with anxious attachment are particularly sensitive to feeling invalidated, rejected and/or criticized by their partner. This is because during their childhoods they were often invalidated, rejected and criticized. When their partner does these things, it's extremely distressing and they will usually get upset and protest in ways which aren't always healthy. Protest behaviors might include showing amplified emotions ("getting big"), getting critical and blaming, attacking their partner's character, name-calling, violence, giving the silent treatment (out of protest, which is different from avoidant silent treatment), etc.

Those with anxious attachment often have a hard time believing good things will last. For this reason, they are always on alert for signs of abandonment. In their minds, if they can anticipate abandonment, they can prevent it.

By being on alert for signs of abandonment, they often "filter for the negative," meaning they can clearly see what their partner is getting wrong for them, but have trouble seeing what their partner is getting right for them.

When they ARE able to see what their partner is getting right, they fear it won't last and have a hard time taking in the good. This sends their partner the message "no matter what good you do, it won't matter," which can launch a negative cycle.

Most of what anxious attached partners struggle with is driven by their belief that they are aren't lovable just as they are, and a fear of abandonment OR of being treated like they aren't lovable.

They come by this honestly, because they received messages starting early in life that their emotions are too much for others. Their needs for comfort and connection weren't consistently responded to. This created anxiety and anger within them, but nobody was there to help them manage these big feelings.

They didn't learn what real emotional closeness feels like, so they often gravitate to partners who seem familiar to them....partners who are emotionally unavailable because of their own wounds. Together they forge a relationship which develops its own wounds because neither of them know how to resolve conflict or truly emotionally connect.

The experience of an anxious attachment is on a spectrum. Some mildly anxious attached partners might feel secure with their partner much of the time, their feelings of anxiety aren't as intense, and they are better at managing them.

At the other extreme, anxious attachment may become a form of disorganized attachment. In this case, the feelings associated with anxious attachment will be bigger and more painful, the individual will experience increased feelings of emotional unsafety with their partner (difficulty trusting their intentions), and their relationship behaviors will be more extreme and variable.

In part 4 of this series, I'll address more specifically how those with anxious-attachment can work toward healing.