#135 20 Traits of the Anxious Attachment Style (Part 1)
Navigating Anxious Attachment: Understanding the 20 Traits (Part 1)
If someone asked you to list your most defining traits or characteristics, would you immediately think of how they relate to your relationships? Many of us might be surprised by how much our attachment style shapes the way we experience the world around us. In the latest episode of "On Attachment," we took a deep dive into the anxious attachment style and explored its 20 key traits.
Tethering Our Sense of Worth to Relationships
One of the key traits of the anxious attachment style is the tendency to tether our sense of worth and well-being to the status of our relationships. If things feel off in our relationships, it can feel like our whole world is crumbling. Our identity becomes closely intertwined with the state of our connections, making it hard to separate how we feel about ourselves from how we feel about our relationships.
Struggles with Separation Anxiety and Catastrophising
Anxious attachment often leads to struggles with separation anxiety. Even a moment of physical distance or being unable to reach our partners through communication can trigger overwhelming anxiety. A missed phone call might instantly lead to worst-case scenarios, causing significant distress.
Difficulty Believing in Our Own Value
Low self-worth is another common trait of anxious attachment. We often struggle to believe that our partners truly love and value us, especially when we don't see that value within ourselves. This lack of self-worth can give rise to deep-seated fears of abandonment and can significantly impact our relationships.
Comparison and Jealousy
Those with anxious attachment often find themselves easily threatened by others and comparing themselves to others. This jealousy and constant comparison are rooted in a deep-seated fear of not being enough, and this can lead to obsessively comparing ourselves to others and feeling threatened by potential "rivals."
Struggles with Needs and Boundaries
Boundaries and needs can become muddied for those with anxious attachment. Understanding our own needs and setting boundaries can be challenging, and even when we manage to voice them, the fear of being perceived as too much or unworthy of having needs can hold us back. Maintaining these boundaries can be equally difficult, often leading to self-judgment and shame when we struggle to uphold them.
The Struggle to Leave Unfulfilling Relationships
For those with anxious attachment, the idea of walking away from a relationship, even if it isn't working, can feel foreign. Overstaying in relationships that aren't meeting our needs becomes a common trend, as the fear of separation and the desire to fix the relationship from within dominate our decision-making.
The "Savior Complex" and Emotional Fixing
Many individuals with anxious attachment tend to be drawn to partners who need "fixing." This savior complex often stems from a desire to prove our worth by helping others, but it can also lead to imbalanced dynamics in relationships and prevent us from seeing partners as equals rather than projects.
Struggling to Define Our Identity Outside of Relationships
Finally, those with anxious attachment may struggle to define their identities outside of their relationships. Our entire sense of self can become entwined with our relational roles, making the concept of being outside a relationship daunting and unfamiliar.
The Need for Reassurance and Difficulty Believing It
Seeking regular reassurance from our partners is a common trait, but even when reassured, many of us struggle to believe it. This constant craving for external validation and difficulty internalising reassurance can put a strain on relationships and make it harder for us to manage our insecurities.
Relationships and the way we form and maintain connections with others are integral to our overall well-being and sense of self. These traits of anxious attachment, while challenging, can provide valuable insights into our inner workings and offer meaningful opportunities for growth and healing. In Part 2 of this series, we'll explore the remaining 10 traits of anxious attachment and delve deeper into how we can navigate these traits to build healthier, more secure relationships.
Understanding and recognising these traits is an important first step in the journey towards creating a more secure attachment style and building fulfilling, thriving relationships. Keep an eye out for part 2, where we'll continue this exploration and delve into the remaining traits of anxious attachment.
If you’ve resonated with some or all of these traits and are seeking support and guidance on your journey towards a more secure attachment style, consider exploring resources like Healing Anxious Attachment. Recognising where we are and where we want to be is the first step towards creating more fulfilling, nurturing relationships – both with others and with ourselves.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find that your sense of worth and well-being is often tied to the status of your relationships? How does this impact your overall well-being and identity?
Reflect on times when separation anxiety has affected your relationships. How has this affected your behavior and thoughts, and what strategies have you used to manage this anxiety?
Have you struggled with believing that your partner truly loves and values you? How has this impacted your relationship dynamic and your own self-worth?
Discuss your experiences with feeling threatened by others and comparing yourself to them. How have these tendencies impacted your relationships and your self-esteem?
Share instances when you've found it challenging to identify and assert your own needs and boundaries in a relationship. How has this impacted your well-being and the dynamics of the relationship?
Have you ever found yourself staying in a relationship despite it not working? What fears or insecurities were driving this decision, and how did it impact your overall happiness?
Reflect on times when you've felt drawn to people who seemed to need "fixing." How do you think this reflects your own sense of self-worth and the role you play in relationships?
Do you feel you have a clear sense of your identity outside of a relationship? How has the lack of this sense impacted your overall happiness and well-being?
Think about your tendencies to overgive and self-sacrifice in relationships. How does this impact your own well-being and the dynamics of your relationships?
How do you feel about seeking reassurance from your partner? How do your expectations around reassurance impact your self-reliance and the dynamics of your relationships?
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Join my new course, Secure Together (& save $200 with the code SECURE)
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
In today's episode, we are talking about 20 traits of the anxious attachment style. Now, this is almost a throwback because one of the first ever episodes I did almost 2 years ago was 5 Traits of the Anxious Attachment Style. And I haven't really done anything so foundational about anxious attachment since then. Obviously, there's been a lot of other episodes about, you various aspects of the anxious attachment experience. But I thought to revisit this for anyone who is a new listener or anyone who is wondering whether anxious attachment is really them, or maybe, you know, that anxious attachment is very much your experience, but you're interested to know some of the less obvious expressions of that attachment style and pattern. So 20 traits of the anxious attachment style is, what we're gonna be talking about today.
[00:01:20]:
I've actually decided to split this across 2 episodes because I think I'll ramble on for far too long if I'm trying to cover 20 in one episode. So this is part 1 of 20 traits of the anxious attachment style, and part 2 will follow in a couple of days' time. So before we dive into today's episode, a quick reminder that Healing Anxious Attachment, which is my signature program, is relaunching in less than a week's time for the 7th round, which is pretty amazing. I first launched it 2 years ago, almost to the day, actually. And it has really grown into something greater than what I could ever have imagined, since that first launch. Over 1500 students have been through this program, and it really is not only tried and tested, but received such beautiful feedback and it's something that I've poured, you know, so much of myself into, trying to distill down everything that I've learned and everything that I have been teaching to people around anxious attachment and the journey to becoming more secure within yourself and within your relationship. So it's a very comprehensive program. I would love to see you in there.
[00:02:28]:
It's the last round that I'm going to be running before I head off on maternity leave. So if you are interested in joining when doors open next week, you can jump on the wait list. Being on the wait list means that you get exclusive access to early bird pricing and also exclusive bonuses. So it's definitely worth doing, even if you don't end up joining. Give yourself the option if you're at all interested, and you can do that via the link in the show notes. Okay. So let's dive into these first 10 of 20 traits of the anxious attachment style. Now I should say, these are, you know, I sat down to prepare for this to write this out and it's very much off the top of my head.
[00:03:08]:
So this is not an exhaustive list. It's not a textbook list. These are things that I'm pulling from not only my own experience, but obviously having worked with so many thousands of people on this and hearing so many other people's stories, I know that these traits that I'm about to share are almost universal among those with anxious attachment patterns. So, you know, in no particular order am I sharing these. It's not exhaustive. If If you don't relate to every single one, that doesn't mean anything much. I'm really just sharing these for the purposes of cultivating insight and self awareness. Okay.
[00:03:43]:
So the first one is your sense of worth and well-being is tethered to the status of your relationship. So for anxiously attached people, there can be this sense of, my identity, my sense of being okay or not in the world is directly reflective of what how I'm feeling about my relationship or what's going on there. So if things feel okay with us, then I feel okay. If things feel anything other than okay with us, I'm probably gonna be, you know, a mess. I'm gonna be really consumed by whatever I perceive to be the problems in my relationship. So there is this sense of, like, inextricable link between how I feel about life, about myself, and how I'm feeling about you and our relationship. And it can be very, very hard to separate those things because the relationship is so fundamental, so essential to our not only our identity, but our sense of safety. So that first one, your sense of worth and well-being is tethered to the status of your relationship.
[00:04:43]:
And I should say as a little footnote to that, it often means that, you know, you're particularly vulnerable or susceptible to disturbance, when things aren't perfect in your relationship. So, you know, whereas even secure people obviously are affected by what's going on in their relationship. It's not a purely anxious attachment trait to be, you know, bothered or saddened by things not feeling great in your relationship. For anxiously attached people, it's kind of any and every bump in the road feels disproportionately distressing, and it's very hard to compartmentalize or delineate between different areas of life. You know, if the relationship's bad, everything's bad. Okay. The next one is you struggle with separation anxiety and you catastrophise if you can't reach your partner. So physical proximity and connection tends to be very reassuring for anxiously attached people.
[00:05:36]:
There can be this sense of, you know, if you're right here and next to me, I can see you and I can feel you, then I know that everything's okay. But as soon as I lose that, you know, having you next to me and knowing, that that little bit of uncertainty, that little bit of distance, that little bit of unknown, all of my anxiety fills that space. And I can go very quickly into feeling insecure, and particularly so if I can't reach you. So it might be one thing if, you know, your partner goes to the shops or, you know, goes to work or whatever and you know where they are. That might be okay. That might not be so triggering for you. But if you then call them and they don't answer, and then maybe you call a second time and they don't answer, it's likely that you're gonna go very quickly to a worst case scenario of either they're hiding something from me, they're avoiding me, or something terrible has happened to them. So we can recognize that separation anxiety is a big piece for anxious attachment, and that particularly in circumstances where you are unable to reach them or you feel like you can't reach them, that's likely to very quickly activate you, send you into dysregulation, and, you know, a lot of kind of anxious thoughts and feelings and and behaviors are likely to flow from that place.
[00:06:55]:
Okay. The next one is you struggle to believe that your partner really loves and values you. So this is really sad, really, when we think about it. But anxiously attached people do tend to harbor fairly low self worth. And so I can really struggle to feel an intrinsic sense of value, a sense that, you know, I I believe that my partner loves me. I believe that my partner cares about me. I believe that they see my value. When we don't see that for ourselves, it's very hard to believe that our partner sees that in us.
[00:07:26]:
And, you know, that's why such a big piece of the healing work for anxious attachment is building up our sense of self worth so that we don't put our partners on a pedestal and put ourselves, you know, down very low relative to them, because that tends to, I think, both be fueled by the fear of abandonment, but also, in turn, add fuel to that fire. Because we think that we are, you know, lacking in value or worth, then we are much more likely to fear abandonment, because we don't see why our partner would want to be with us. And that can lead to a whole host of other behaviors, thoughts, insecurities, as you can imagine, when we don't really trust that our partner wants to be with us and and really does value us and the relationship. Okay. Number 4 is kind of related to number 3, which is you feel easily threatened by others and compare yourself to others. So here we're talking about jealousy, outside threats to the relationship, and comparison, really, really common among people with anxious attachment. And again, it's related to that same seed of low self worth, this sense of, if I don't really see my value, then I'm very easily threatened by any and every one or thing outside of the relationship that I perceive as potentially taking you away from me or competing with me in some way. So there can be an almost obsessive tendency to compare ourselves, to scrutinize, to be on the lookout for danger, so to speak.
[00:08:59]:
You know, that might be colleagues or exes or friends of your partner. You see them all as very threatening, and you, you know, go through comparisons of how you stack up relative to them. And that might feel like something that you have to do, or you might have to, you know, change yourself, improve yourself, relative to them, try and emulate them so that you feel less threatened by them. You feel like they're less likely to know, pose a threat to the relationship, to take your partner away from you, that your partner's gonna, you know, fall in love with them and leave you. So we can see those same, you know, threads of fear of abandonment and jealousy and low self worth, are all interwoven into that one as well. Okay. The next one is you have a hard time with needs and boundaries. So anxiously attached people tend to struggle with needs and boundaries almost at every step of the way.
[00:09:53]:
So knowing what their needs and boundaries are, so actually identifying that. Oftentimes, we're so divorced from our own needs, our own boundaries. We just have learned to not really have needs or boundaries, or, you know, have kind of numbed ourselves to those because we're so accustomed to, you know, going with other people's needs or boundaries, deferring to other people's needs and boundaries and comfort and happiness, that we've actually convinced ourselves that we don't have any needs or boundaries outside of our partners, for example. You know, if they're happy, I'm happy. As long as their needs are taken care of and everything seems fine, then that's all I need. Of course, that's not true, but it can feel really true, and it can mean that we have a hard time actually knowing what our needs are separate from the needs of our partner. So there's this process of, you know, figuring out what our needs and boundaries are. What am I comfortable with? What do I need? What's important to me in a relationship? The next one next step being kind of voicing those needs and boundaries to a partner, which can be really intimidating.
[00:10:58]:
Again, that fear of abandonment, fear of being too much, fear of I'm not worthy or deserving of having needs. And I'm worried that if I take up too much space or if I voice a need, then I'll be perceived as difficult, and someone will leave me. All of those things can really challenge us when it comes to actually taking that step of voicing our needs and boundaries. And then I think the third piece here is following through on advocating for those needs and boundaries, on an ongoing basis or in the face of pushback. So one of the things that I hear from people all the time is that they judge themselves very harshly, and they feel a lot of shame about not upholding their boundaries. So they might, you know, state a boundary or they might voice something, advocate for themselves. But when it comes down to it, if that that need or that boundary is in competition with their relationship or their connection, then the connection will win out and they'll kind of collapse on their boundary just to hold on to the relationship. And, you know, that process of actually holding firm on something that you say is really vitally important to you in a relationship, is, you know, a big part of the growth as well and can be very challenging for many, most, I would say, anxiously attached people.
[00:12:16]:
Okay. The next one is you have a tendency to overstay in relationships that aren't working. Now I will put my hand up and say that I have been guilty of this more than once in my life. But it is a really, really common experience with anxious attachment. Again, because the primacy of connection is so, you know, it's so paramount to you to your sense of identity, safety, you know, just feeling okay in the world, it can be such a foreign concept to walk away from a relationship, even a relationship that's, like, clearly dysfunctional, not working, where you're not happy or your needs are not being met. You know, I often sort of jokingly say that for anxiously attached people, you could spend, like, you know, months or even years telling your partner how unhappy you are. But the idea of actually leaving seems, you know, like the absolute last resort. For anxiously attached people, the urge is you know, I I complain about the relationship.
[00:13:18]:
I I lament all of the things that are missing, but I do that because I wanna change it from the inside rather than walking away. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think that willingness to work on a relationship can be a really beautiful sign of commitment, But I think it has its shadow side, which is, you know, perhaps overstaying when the right thing to do might be to walk away, when we're really not getting anywhere, when we really are not happy or fulfilled. And I think overstaying when the writing's on the wall, because we're too afraid of stepping out into the void of being separate from that relationship, I think that can be one of the big struggles of people with anxious attachment. The next one, which is number 7, for anyone who's keeping count, you have a savior complex and are drawn to people who need fixing. So many anxiously attached people have, I would say, yeah, a heightened sense of emotional attunement and are really good at, you know, being empathically connected to others and really understanding people's pain, which is such a beautiful trait. It really is. I think it's what makes anxiously attached people, great friends and great partners.
[00:14:38]:
It's probably what makes me good at my job. Being able to see people and understand them and and really tune into their feelings. The the underbelly of this, we might say the shadow side, can show up as this savior complex, this sense of, because I feel like that's a way I can show value or be valuable, you know, to support you emotionally, to see your pain, to hold your pain, that I gravitate towards people who I see as needing, saving, helping, or fixing. So can often find yourself dating someone with, you know, a lot of unresolved issues or who, you know, has a lot of pain. And again, that's not to say that, you know, you shouldn't date people like that. And I think we all have our, our stuff, our baggage that we're all working through. But I do think we need to be mindful of the extent to which we are taking someone on as a project and we are making it our mission to change them and you know, how that might be tied up with our own sense of worth this sense of, you know, they'll change for me. They've been this way in the past.
[00:15:54]:
They've always struggled with this thing, but once I, you know, am able to show them my love and care for them and support them, that's gonna be the thing that, you know, triggers their metamorphosis into something else. And I think that that can be coming from a place within us of low self worth, again, common thread, and of feeling like, you you know, if I can do that, then I will have really proved myself. And like, then I'll know that I'm valuable, that I'm worthy, and this person won't leave me because they'll be so indebted to me, for having saved them. So, you know, as I said, while there's some beautiful things in there and, you know, wanting to support someone's growth, beautiful. Wanting to support someone's healing, great. Taking it upon yourself to be someone's, like, coach or therapist or saviour? Not so great and can get us stuck in some pretty imbalanced dynamics. So the savior complex is one to look out for. Okay.
[00:16:56]:
Number 8 is you don't really know who you are outside of a relationship. So, again, we've touched on this, this sense of my whole identity is handed over to the relationship, everything that I do, everything that I like or dislike, my preferences, my hobbies, the way that I spend my time, I kind of give over all of myself to the relationship. And so the idea of being outside of a relationship, being single, or the relationship ending, is very daunting to me because I've not got a clear sense of who I am if I'm not, you know, part of this unit. And so I think a really big part of the growth for anxiously attached people for that reason is actually diversifying their time and energy away from the relationship, not to an extreme degree. Obviously, it's perfectly fine and normal to wanna, do things with your partner and have shared experiences. But when we put all of our eggs in that basket, we tend to, again, have a bit of an imbalance and it makes us really vulnerable to, you know, what our first point was, which is if anything feels like it's off in the relationship, then our whole life feels like it's crumbling because our whole life sits in that bucket of the relationship. Whereas if we've got, you know, more things propping up our life, more like legs propping up the table, then it's likely to be less vulnerable and wobbly, and we're likely to have more of a sense of resilience. Okay.
[00:18:24]:
Number 9 is you tend towards overgiving and excessive self sacrifice. So most anxiously attached people are givers. Right? And as much as we can complain, I think this is one of the ones where we have to be, like, so brutally honest with ourselves about ourselves, and I'll be the first to put my hand up. We can complain that, like, oh, I'm always the one giving or thinking about you or caring for you or supporting you. And yet we're not very good at asking for support or receiving it when it is given to us. Because I think receiving is actually a very, very vulnerable thing to do, particularly when you are accustomed to being the giver. So there can be this sense of giving and giving and giving either to make ourselves, you know, again, more valuable, more indispensable to someone. If I take care of you, if I attend to all of your needs, you know, if I do everything for you, then you won't want to live without me because I make your life so much easier.
[00:19:22]:
And if you don't want to live without me, then I'm not going to lose you. So there can be some comfort derived from that dynamic, even when we might complain about that dynamic and, you know, the lack of reciprocity that exists there. So being mindful of that, and if you notice that within yourself, again, like there's pieces to it. It's, do I need to pull back on my giving and do I need to practice like, asking and receiving, so that it feels like there's more mutuality and reciprocity in the relationship? Okay. And number 10 is you require a lot of reassurance from your partner, but you struggle to believe it. So anxiously attached people can often try and manage their fears and insecurities by seeking, you know, very regular ongoing reassurance from their partner. And while, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking reassurance from time to time, there can be a sense of, like, there'll never be enough reassurance to really soothe that wound. If you're expecting your partner to make it all okay, you know, every time you're feeling insecure, every time you're feeling anxious, you're relying on your partner to make that feeling go away, and needing them to kind of talk you off the ledge.
[00:20:37]:
I don't know about you, but in my experience, that tends to be a very, very temporary fix. And it doesn't actually get to the heart of what is causing that insecurity to come up again and again and again. So while it can be a really beautiful thing in a relationship for a partner to participate in your healing by giving that reassurance, we do have to be mindful of our expectations around that and, what we're hoping our partner's gonna be able to do for us, and what their role is in our growth and healing, in terms of convincing us that everything's okay and that they love us even though, you know, nothing's really happened. We've just got these ongoing fears that are really rampant within us. So finding the balance there between, you know, what's my work to do? What's my stuff to tend to, and what's a kind of reasonable and healthy role for my partner to play in that, is a big part of the work as well. Okay. So that was points 1 to 10. I'm gonna pause there.
[00:21:42]:
And as I said, we'll have part 2, which is points 11 to 20, traits of the anxious attachment style. I'm gonna release that in a couple of days' time. So I hope that you really enjoyed this. I hope that it's, you know, dug a little deeper than just the, you know, typical listicles that you might see around traits of the anxious attachment style, giving a little more insight into, like, what sits underneath those and what drives them. And as I said, if you resonate with some or most of these or maybe all of them, definitely jump on the wait list for healing, anxious attachment. I would love to be able to support you as you work on these things, as you do some unlearning and some relearning of new ways. So definitely jump on the wait list if you're interested. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you again in a few days' time with part 2.Thanks, guys.
[00:22:35]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie_ _rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment, anxious attachment, relationship, insecurity, self awareness, traits, anxious attachment style, guidance, knowledge, practical tools, emotional needs, boundaries, separation anxiety, jealousy, saviour complex, overgiving, self-sacrifice, reassurance, identity, worth, well-being, emotional attunement, validation, maturation, self growth, value, anxiously attached, secure relationships, healing, emotional support, relationship coach