My anxious attachment hurts my partner. How do I stop spiraling?
Tips for breathing through – and moving out of – relational anxiety.
Q:
Recently, you shared on Instagram that you experienced an anxious attachment spiral. This is something that unfortunately happens to me more than I’d like to admit. Do you have any thoughts on how to halt the spiral and move through the anxiety? Or am I forever doomed to acting out in ways that I later feel shame about?
A:
Let’s start here: Everyone has trauma responses. Everyone moves through connections in both helpful and hurtful (and even harmful) ways. You’re not alone in this; it’s something we all need to spend more time thinking about. And the fact that you’re curious about this and want to shift your behavior is the most beautiful, powerful thing. Not everyone comes to this place.
Your asking this is also perfect timing. As you mentioned, I recently had an anxious attachment spiral so intense that even my therapist was floored by it. My anxiety was so high that I could not, for the life of me, regulate enough to convince myself not to engage in protest behaviors. And at the end of it all, I ended up with a layer of shame so thick, I thought it would suffocate me.
My experience was, in some ways, unique, because this isn’t the norm for me. My therapist and I eventually realized that my deepest childhood wound (from infancy!) was triggered in this situation, which explained my inability to get it under control.
But in a lot of ways, it also wasn’t unique: Anxious attachment is a thing. And it’s something we can all lean into from time to time.
Now that I’m back on solid ground (thank God), and unpacking this experience with both my EMDR therapist and my somatic coach, I’m learning to develop some thoughts and skills that will help the next time something like this pops up. And that’s what I want to share with you today.
That said, if anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment is causing strife in your relationships, I would love to work with you one-on-one on how to shift your patterns. Click here to learn more about my work and send a no-commitment inquiry:
Insecure attachment is a really difficult experience. While some argue that it only applies to our relationships with our caregivers in childhood, others draw the connection between our response to our caregivers’ (mis)attunement and how we behave later in our adult romantic relationships.
Personally, I think there’s something to the latter.
So if attachment theory is your thing, then this is for you.
Here’s the thing: Whether you’re anxious or avoidant (or disorganized), your attachment boils down to relational anxiety.
We tend to think of only anxiously attached people as—well—anxious. But in truth, avoidants are also anxious! Those of us with insecure attachment have fears around where relationships will go. Anxiously attached people tend to fear abandonment, while avoidantly attached people tend to fear enmeshment.
And, like with all trauma responses, we can act out. This is often because our brains are trying to create the conditions of our traumatic experience so that we can have a different experience and therefore create a new story. But (lolol the universe’s joke is on us!) often, our trauma responses simply recreate our traumatic experience.
Terrified of abandonment? Cool. How about you obsessively bid for connection with someone – reaching out repeatedly when they need space, starting arguments just to feel paid attention to – to the point that you overwhelm them and they… leave?
Oops.
It’s honestly a terrible cycle. So how do you break out of it?
Well, here are some things I wish I’d done earlier this month when I was spiraling:
REST: Relax, Evaluate, Set an Intention, and Take Action. REST is a strategy taught in dialectic behavioral therapy (DBT); in fact, it’s often the first skill that you’re taught. The idea is that the moment when you’re feeling overwhelming emotions is not the moment to make decisions or take action. So when those feelings come up, we have to start to snap ourselves out of it. REST asks you to do four things: (1) Relax. Instead of acting impulsively, take a step away from the situation. Take a breath. Have a glass of water. Pause. (2) Evaluate. What is actually happening in this situation? Don’t fall for the story that your anxiety is telling you. Take real stock of what’s happening. (3) Set an Intention. What do you need right now? What is the action that you’re going to take? Sure, it could be to do something about the situation at hand. But it could also be a tactic to move into a deeper regulated state. (4) Take Action. Now that you know what you need to do, you can go ahead and do it. REST gives us the opportunity to slow down, to give ourselves what we need to regulate, and respond instead of react. Learn more about REST here.
Quit or Insist. I love this new skill that my somatic accountability coach, Daria Garina, taught me, which he learned from Generative Somatics. It goes like this: It’s important to make direct requests. Not beating around the bush. Not hoping that your saying x will result in someone else doing y. It’s important to be direct. For example, “I need for us to have a conversation to try to resolve this conflict.” When you make a direct request, people can say yes, no, maybe, or not respond. In the case that they say no or don’t respond, then you have a choice: You can quit, which is to honor that your needs aren’t going to be met in this situation or by this person and walk away to have your needs met elsewhere. Or you can insist. Once. Insisting is repeating your direct request, with maybe a bit more context: “I really want to impress upon you the importance of our having a conversation to resolve this conflict, if we want to continue this connection.” Again, they get to say yes, no, maybe, or not respond. And if you get a no or no response, it’s time to quit. Not bid. Not beg. Quit.
Respond, Not React. The difference between responding and reacting is this: Our trauma wants us to react. It wants us to be impulsive – to do the well-worn thing that our brain wants to pull us toward. To respond is to bypass the desire to react. It means slowing down, taking time, actively choosing how we want to respond to the situation at hand. But this is really hard to do when we feel a sense of urgency: “If I don’t respond to this right now, something bad will happen.” The truth is, very few things in life are urgent. Emergencies are urgent. Conflict is not urgent, even when it feels like it is. We do not have to respond immediately; indeed, oftentimes, when we do, we are reacting, not responding. “I want you to know that I got this text, and I’m going to respond to it in a bit” – or something similar – can be a lifesaver. It gives you permission to slow down and choose a response, because you’ve diffused the sense of urgency that you (and perhaps this other person) may have.
All of these skills have a similar end goal: They allow more time for you to regulate and then think through what your next step is. Your anxiety may be telling you that you’re in life-or-death, fight-or-flight kind of danger. But you are not. And employing these skills can give you a moment to reflect on that before you take an impulsive action that you might regret later!
I’m hoping, for both of us, that we can slow down more – and act impulsively less – in 2025.
Want to work on your relationships in the new year? I have spots open! Schedule a 20-minute discovery call here, and let’s talk more about what you want to change.
Right there with you, in the healing process,
Melissa