How to Heal Anxious Attachment: What Really Helps

If you have anxious attachment, you probably learned early that you had to try harder to get your needs met.

So it makes sense that you’d come looking for how to fix it… and I want to start somewhere a little different.

You are not your reaction. That’s not who you really are. There can be a lot of shame inside that experience (oh, I’m so needy), and that’s not what’s happening. It’s just your nervous system being dysregulated and overwhelmed.

The truth of who you are is that you’re amazing. You’re wise. You’re powerful. You’re just caught in a stress loop, more often than someone with secure attachment.

After more than 15,000 clinical hours, and almost three decades in my own anxious patterns, this is what I’ve seen actually help people heal anxious attachment.

Not sure if this is you? My free attachment style quiz… over 22,000 people have taken it.

The signs of anxious attachment in adults:

It usually starts with an aloof or often absent caretaker. You learned that in order to get love, you needed to be constantly vigilant. You needed to work really hard to get people to pay attention to you.

Parents do their best with what they have. And you probably had some love and some good memories too. What you learned, though, was that you had to try harder. You also might have felt criticised a lot, by either your parents, peers, or both.

So now, as an adult, you might:

• Have a strong reaction when someone pulls away or gives you space
• Take things personally and blame yourself, flipping from it’s them to it’s me
• Feel like your needs are too much… and also like no one is giving you enough support
• Be the one who always reaches out to repair, to keep the relationship intact
• Feel ashamed for wanting love so badly and for having such big emotions

Why you can’t just think your way out of it:

Most people think healing anxious attachment is a knowledge problem. If they understand their pattern enough, and their history enough, they’ll finally be in a better relationship.

They do the therapy. They watch the videos. They listen to the podcasts. And they STILL walk right back into the same pattern.

Knowledge was never the missing piece. You can’t create security while your nervous system is operating from threat.

Your nervous system state, and what it has to do with your needs:

At the base of your attachment style is your state of being. In any given moment, you are either in a secure state or an insecure state.

• Insecure state: your sympathetic nervous system is running protection and threat. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. You scan their tone and their face, you over-function, and everything you know about communication just… leaves your brain.
• Secure state: your parasympathetic nervous system is online, and safety and connection become possible. You can think clearly, talk calmly, ask for what you need and actually take in the answer.

Your state drives you more than your thoughts ever will. That is why you can know a communication technique perfectly and lose it the second your partner goes quiet.

Here’s the piece that ties it all together. Attachment is fundamentally about getting your needs met. A baby cries and someone comes. A child reaches and someone reaches back. Thousands of times over, the body learns: when I have a need, support is there. That repetition is what builds a secure state.

When your early pattern was that needs didn’t get met, or only got met sometimes, it confuses everything. Your body learns that having a need is dangerous, and the need and the threat get wired together. We have a saying in psychology… whatever fires together, wires together.

So now a simple need, like wanting a text back or a hug after a hard day, sets off the whole alarm. You can feel two things at once… my needs are too much and no one is giving me enough. And from a threat state, it’s really hard to know what you actually need, to ask for it clearly, or to let it in when it comes.

That’s why healing anxious attachment means learning to meet your needs from a secure state. When your body feels safe enough, you can feel the need, name it, ask for it and receive the answer. Changing your state is learnable, and it’s where every step below begins.

Try this: think about your whole day. How many hours are you in a stress state, and how many in a secure state? Now think about your relationships. What percentage of the time you’re relating to someone are you in that stress state? Most people I work with land somewhere between a third and almost all of it. Whatever your number is, it simply shows how much room there is to grow.

I break down the secure state and the insecure state in Part 1 of my free Attachment Essentials training, and in Part 2 I go into the six breaks in attachment that keep the alarm running.

So the healing happens in a few places at once: your nervous system, the way you take in love, the old disappointment you carry, and who you choose.

1. Resource yourself:

When I say resource, I mean whatever helps you move from your sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze or fawn) into your parasympathetic nervous system, where you feel calm enough to think again.

It could be taking a bath. Going for a walk. Swimming, or anything that moves your arms or legs back and forth. Being in nature. Talking to a good friend.

It’s also the things that help you feel wise and change your state. There is a secure you inside of you, and there are lots of ways to get in touch with her.

Practicing regulating is how stress stops being your default in relationships.

Why this helps: every time you resource yourself, you teach your body that it can come back to a secure state on its own. From there, the need underneath the alarm gets quieter and clearer, and you can actually name it.

2. Notice how you use other people to calm down:

When you’re anxious and overwhelmed, one of the main ways you manage it is through talking. Expressing yourself is a great way to move through your feelings… and it can become a pitfall if it’s your only way.

What I’d notice: is this a venting session, or are you actually trying to connect? Do you interrupt a lot? Do you go from one topic to another without pausing to let them respond?

If you need to vent, ask your partner or friend if you can vent for a specific amount of time, and set a timer. Then be curious about what’s going on in their life. I know it sounds basic… and it really matters.

(One caveat. If you’re talking more and more because you’re with someone who is really not available emotionally, the answer might be a boundary.)

Why this helps: venting from a stress state keeps your system looking to someone else to turn off the alarm. When you ask clearly for what you need, ten minutes of listening, a hug, their curiosity, you practice getting a need met from a secure state, and the connection actually lands.

3. Heal the receiving wound:

Folks with anxious attachment often have what I call a receiving wound. It keeps you from really letting in the love, the support, the care and the wisdom that’s available to you.

When you’re in your sympathetic nervous system, it’s harder to receive. It’s harder to feel safe enough to let care in.

A lot of times with anxious attachment there IS more love available to you. You’re just fixated on the pain, on where it’s not there.

So part of the practice is letting in that feeling of being held and cared for, until it becomes more of your experience day to day.

Why this helps: if your pattern was that needs didn’t get met, your body learned to brace against care, even when it’s right in front of you. Letting love in, a little at a time, shows your nervous system that needs can be met. That’s how a secure state starts to feel like home.

4. Release the disappointment from the past:

With anxious attachment there’s often a long history of feeling let down. By a parent who wasn’t emotionally available. By significant partners.

As humans, we bring the lessons of the past into the present to avoid pain. And we often recreate those experiences over and over again, trying to heal them.

When you’re anxiously attached, it can be hard to know: is this me? Is this my partner? Or is this my history? The way you get clear is to do the healing work on those old wounds.

My favorite way to heal deep wounds is EMDR, because it’s way faster than any other method I’ve found for releasing the pain from your body. When I discovered EMDR in my own healing, we got to things in one session that could have taken years.

You can read more about how attachment based EMDR works.

Why this helps: old disappointment keeps your system on alert, waiting for the next letdown. As those wounds release, your body stops treating today’s needs like yesterday’s emergencies, and it gets easier to see who is actually able to meet you.

5. Learn what secure looks like, and choose it:

If you have anxious attachment, you’re probably drawn to avoidant partners because they feel familiar. You’re used to over-functioning in relationship.

Secure people communicate when they’re upset in a grounded, clear way. They lean IN when they’re stressed. They’ll tell you they want to be with you and when they want to see you next.

Know what helps you feel secure (daily communication, physical affection, a clear time for when your partner will come back after a fight) and ask for it. You might say, I need you to come back within 24 hours. I don’t want to be chasing you.

And sometimes healing means letting go of a relationship where your needs for security aren’t being met. In my opinion, the point of being in a relationship is to be supported in life… and to make it easier, not harder.

Why this helps: choosing people who show up is how your needs get met consistently, over and over, the way they always should have been. That repetition is what rewires your default state toward secure.

I share more of the practical steps in 5 ways to help anxious attachment and in this dating checklist for someone securely attached.

You are not your reaction. That’s not who you really are.

How long does it take to heal anxious attachment?

It takes repetition. As a kid you had the same experience thousands of times, so it’s really in your nervous system.

As an adult it goes faster. It still asks you to catch the pattern, interrupt it, and choose a different state again and again. And shifting the dynamics in an existing relationship can be slow.

Signs your anxious attachment is healing:

• You still get upset, and you recover faster
• When someone gives you love, you can actually let it in
• Space doesn’t feel like an emergency
• You can tell the difference between your history and what’s happening now
• You choose people who show up, and you walk away sooner from people who don’t

If you want to understand why insight alone hasn’t changed your pattern, I teach the next step in my free training, Attachment Essentials. It also gives you access to my free community.

With love,
Sefora