Anxious Attachment Style

How to rewire your attachment style?

The attachment system doesn’t care about your rational mind, It follows its own course and schedule. Understanding the Attachment system is crucial, especially for people with an anxious style. You can reshape your attachment working models, by rethinking your attitudes and beliefs about relationships from an attachment perspective – Retooling yourself with more secure relationship skills.

The secure attachment system(“Still water runs deep”) is calm and secure – having a secure base from which to derive strength and comfort. However, Activated attachment is not passionate love.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other, and honor him for what he is. – Hermann Hesse

Anxious Attachment Style

• Thrive on intimate supportive relationships that are stable and long-lasting 
• Uncertainty and emotional unavailability activate and preoccupy 
• Bad habit of interpreting calmness in the relationship as a lack of attraction
• Protest Behavior
  • Excessive attempts to reestablish contact
  • Any action that tries to reestablish contact with your partner and get their attention
  • Threatening to leave
  • Withdrawing 
  • Keeping score
  • Acting hostile
  • Manipulations 

• Activating Strategies 

  • Any thoughts or feelings that compel you to get close physically, and emotionally to your partner 
  • The purpose is to reestablish closeness with your partner 
  • Once the partner responds and reestablishes security, you can revert to your calm, normal self 
  • Examples
    • The anxious feeling that goes away only in contact with them
    • Underestimate your talents and abilities
      • Overestimating theirs 
    • Believing this is your only chance for love
    • Difficulty concentrating on other things
    • Remember only the good qualities of your partner

The key for change to a more secure attachment style is to acknowledge and accept your true relationship needs – Fully acknowledging your need for intimacy, availability, and security in a relationship. You can adopt the “Abundance Philosophy” or “Plenty of fish in the sea”, by giving several people a chance, without settling on one person very early on. This philosophy can desensitize your attachment system, and maintain your ability to evaluate potential partners more objectively. The more you meet, the greater the chances you will find the one who’s a good match.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. – Nietzsche

Inspired from Attached