#177: How Social Media Exacerbates Anxious Attachment
Social media can be a minefield at the best of times, but if you have an anxious attachment style, it can amplify relationship anxiety in ways that feel overwhelming. From overanalysing who your partner follows to spiralling over why they haven’t posted about you, social media can fuel insecurity, comparison, and even compulsive checking behaviours.
In today’s episode, we’re exploring why social media is such a common trigger for people with anxious attachment, the unhealthy patterns it can create, and most importantly, how to navigate it in a way that supports your wellbeing and relationship security.
What We Cover in This Episode:
Why social media fuels anxiety for anxiously attached people
The biggest relationship triggers—who your partner follows, why they won't post about you, and more
The comparison trap and how it distorts reality
Unhealthy social media behaviours that reinforce insecurity
Practical strategies to reduce social media anxiety and feel more secure
Link to Episode #165: Why Validation is So Important for Anxiously Attached People
How Social Media Exacerbates Anxious Attachment and What to Do About It
In an age where social media is pervasive, the impact it has on our mental health and relationships is profound, particularly for those who struggle with anxious attachment. Anxious attachment is characterised by a deep-seated fear of abandonment and a constant need for reassurance in relationships. When partnered with the stimulating environment of social platforms, these traits can lead to exacerbated anxieties and behaviours that are challenging to manage. Understanding the intersection between social media and anxious attachment is essential for fostering healthier relationships and a balanced mental state.
The Social Media Minefield
Social media is meticulously designed to capture and hold our attention. Its endless scroll, algorithm-driven feeds, and constant notifications create a realm that is both addictive and anxiety-inducing. For individuals with anxious attachment, who are naturally sensitive to perceived threats to their relationships, social media can act as a catalyst, amplifying feelings of insecurity, jealousy, and comparison.
A common struggle arises when comparing one's relationship to the seemingly perfect relationships displayed online. This constant comparison can lead to feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, destabilising one's self-esteem. Moreover, witnessing a partner's online interactions—such as who they follow or what they post—can trigger anxiety and lead to compulsive checking behaviours. This often manifests in hyper-vigilance and a relentless pursuit of information, as if more data could somehow mitigate the underlying fear of being abandoned or unloved.
Navigating Partner Dynamics Online
Anxiously attached individuals may find themselves particularly sensitive to how much—or how little—their partners share about them on social media. The disparity between one's own posts about the relationship and a partner’s posts (or lack thereof) can evoke feelings of invisibility or even suspicion. If one partner regularly shares relationship highlights while the other remains silent, it may lead to assumptions about their commitment or feelings, igniting unnecessary disputes rooted in misunderstanding rather than reality.
Discomfort might also emerge around the types of accounts a partner follows, especially if those accounts are flirtatious or overtly sexual. The idea that a partner could be engaging, even passively, with potentially tempting content might stir deep-seated fears and insecurities, prompting complex discussions about boundaries and respect. It's crucial to note that these feelings, while deeply personal, are entirely valid and deserve a considerate dialogue.
Establishing Personal and Relational Boundaries
Setting clear boundaries regarding social media usage is pivotal for managing the impact on one's emotional well-being and relationships. Begin by engaging in open conversations with your partner about any discomforting behaviours online. Ensure these discussions are anchored in your personal experience, avoiding blame and instead focusing on how these actions affect your emotional state. For instance, expressing discomfort about certain accounts your partner follows should be framed around how it makes you feel, rather than a direct accusation.
In addition to relational boundaries, personal boundaries are equally important. Limiting social media usage can significantly reduce anxiety. Consider strategies like removing apps from your phone during certain times, setting screen time limits, or consciously curating your feed to eliminate content that triggers negative emotions. Being mindful of the amount of time spent online and understanding its effects on your mental health allows you to reclaim control from these addictive platforms.
The Path to Greater Security
Ultimately, navigating social media's impact on anxious attachment requires a combination of personal introspection and open communication with your partner. Being in tune with your vulnerabilities and taking active steps to mitigate their overwhelming influence is a form of self-care that benefits not only you but also the health of your relationship.
Remember, it's essential to trust your feelings and validate your experiences without dismissing them as overreactions. Your discomfort is real, and it points towards needs that deserve to be addressed. By setting boundaries, engaging in empathetic dialogue, and managing your social media interactions responsibly, you pave the way towards a more secure attachment style and a healthier relational dynamic.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find yourself engaging in compulsive checking behaviors on social media in your relationships? Reflect on the impact this might have on your mental health and relationship dynamics.
How do you feel when your partner's social media activity, such as the accounts they follow or the people they interact with, conflicts with your comfort levels? Have you had a conversation about this with them?
What are your personal boundaries around social media usage, and how do they support or challenge your well-being? Are there any adjustments you feel you need to make?
Reflect on how social media comparisons have affected your self-worth and view of your relationship. What strategies can you adopt to minimize the negative impact of these comparisons?
In what ways do you seek validation through social media, both from your partner and from others? How does this relate to your patterns of attachment?
Consider a time when you felt insecure about your partner's lack of social media engagement regarding your relationship. How did you address this, and what insights did you gain?
How do you balance your desire for information and control with the need for open and honest communication in your relationships? What challenges do you encounter in this balance?
Reflect on your response to your partner's defensiveness in conversations about social media. How can you approach these discussions more effectively to ensure your needs are heard?
How might reducing your social media usage improve your relationship with your partner and your own mental health? What steps can you take to achieve this?
Explore the role of self-responsibility in managing your relationship with social media. What practical measures can you implement to ensure it remains a healthy aspect of your life?
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about the role of social media, particularly in the context of anxious attachment, and exploring some of the ways that social media and your relationship with it might be making your anxious attachment patterns and behaviors worse, or more challenging. So this is one that has been requested for quite a while now. It's a topic that I'm always getting questions about when I do q and a's on Instagram or in my DMs. I I often get questions from people around how to navigate conversations with a partner around social media usage. I think particularly things like who your partner might be following, their online behavior, also things like the extent to which your partner does or doesn't share about you on social media, and maybe comparing that to how much they've shared of a previous partner, and all of the behaviors that can spring from that insecurity. So compulsive checking, even all the way up to stalking of previous partners, the information gathering instincts that is alive in so many anxiously attached people that I've spoken about many times before on the podcast.
[00:01:42]:
Social media is the perfect forum for those behaviors to run wild, and when left unchecked, I think can be really really detrimental to our mental health, and that in turn can obviously exacerbate all of the stresses in our relationship, and it it just pours fuel on the fire of what is already a challenging dynamic to work with much of the time. And so, in today's episode, I wanna talk a little bit about why social media is the perfect storm for for all of us, let's be honest, in terms of our mental and emotional health. We know that social media is designed to be addictive and almost anxiety inducing, to sort of hijack our dopamine response, and keep us picking up our phone constantly. But certainly for people who struggle with any sort of anxiety, and particularly anxious attachment, social media is a bit of a recipe for disaster in terms of aggravating many of those insecurities and fueling all of the behaviors that go along with them. I want to talk about a few specific ones in the context of relationships, so situations that you might struggle with along the lines that I just mentioned. So what to do if you're not comfortable with a partner's online behavior, maybe who they follow, the post they like, that sort of thing, and other conversations that you might have around boundaries or negotiating online behavior with a partner. I also want to talk about setting boundaries for yourself around your relationship with social media, so that you can really protect your well-being. Because while the odds are stacked against us in many respects, and of course, it's challenging for all of us to have good boundaries around these highly addictive platforms and apps and devices, part of taking great care of yourself is knowing your weaknesses, and knowing your vulnerabilities, and actually being responsive and attuned to that, and setting yourself up for success.
[00:03:33]:
So I'm going to be sharing some tips on how you can manage your relationship with social media in a way that is conducive to well-being, rather than in a way that makes your anxiety a hundred times worse. So that is what we're going to be talking about today. Before I dive into that, a quick reminder for anyone who missed it, I have created a free resource called the Anxious Attachment Starter Kit. It's a really great little toolkit, it's got exclusive resources that you won't find anywhere else. There's a forty or so minute video where I share about my own journey with anxious attachment, and the steps that were really essential for me in moving from anxious to a more secure attachment. There's a workbook with some journal prompts and a relationship visioning exercise, you can get really clear around the kind of relationship that you want, and then there's a guided meditation track of affirmations for anxious attachment. So all of that is completely free, and you can head to the link in the show notes to download your copy of the anxious attachment toolkit, and in doing so you'll also be added to my email list which will mean you'll get a weekly newsletter from me, of course you can unsubscribe anytime. But I do send out a weekly newsletter to almost 35,000 people, and I always get really beautiful feedback from that as well, just unpacking in a little more detail the sorts of things that we talk about here on the show.
[00:04:52]:
So if you're interested in downloading that toolkit, you can head to the link in the show notes to do that. As I said, it's a really great resource for anyone who struggles with anxious attachment, and it is totally free. Okay. So let's talk about social media anxiety. Now as I said in the introduction, social media is designed to capitalize on our anxiety and exacerbate it, because anxiety makes us very vulnerable to addictive behaviors, to compulsive behaviors, to obsessive behaviors. The more dependent we are upon something, the better we are as customers, and let's be honest, that is the overarching objective of these platforms, is to make us spend as much time on the apps as possible. And so the algorithms, and the design of the apps themselves with the notifications, and the endless scroll, all of that is really really meticulously crafted to get you hooked. Right? To keep your attention, to keep you coming back for more.
[00:05:56]:
So when you combine that with anxious attachment, which knowing everything that we do about that, low self worth, tendency towards comparison, feeling insecure in relationships, feeling very hypersensitive to any potential threats to the relationship, all of these things are amplified to extreme degrees in this weird alternate universe of social media. We have an endless stream of perfect people, perfect relationships, perfect lives to compare ourselves against, which invariably leaves us feeling worse about ourselves. And if we are in a relationship, we take a very limited snapshot of what we're seeing of our partner's online behavior, and we deduce certain things from that, that they are not interested in us, or they liked this photo which must mean x y z thing, or why don't they post more about us on social media, or whatever it might be. But it really enlivens that part of us that goes digging for information, and can get really really obsessive. And the part of us that is feeling anxious and insecure, and doesn't want to have direct conversations about things, that worries a lot, but thinks that sitting back and biding our time and building our case and all of that is is the way that we're going to create safety for ourselves, that's the way we're going to guard ourselves against being hurt or disappointed or rejected. And so social media is really a firestorm of all of that. And so if you're someone who has anxious attachment, and you struggle with all of these things that I'm talking about, know that you're not alone. I suspect that most people who are anxiously attached have experienced some version of this.
[00:07:36]:
I know I certainly have, not so much these days, but go back five or six years, and I was deep in it. It was almost obsessive, and it did just feel like a way to create control for myself when I felt like I was in a relationship with someone whose behavior was confusing, and I couldn't always reach them, and a lot of things didn't add up, and it was opaque in some respects, and so going onto social media and trying to find information, and find the missing piece of the puzzle, what was the thing that I didn't know or understand, or what was being kept from me, this sense that there's a whole another world that exists on social media, and you just have to go and find the answers. Like, that is so seductive to someone with anxious attachment, who feels like information is is the armor that they need, or the safety blanket that they need in order to not get hurt. Now of course, there's a lot that we could say about that. I think that when we're in that state of frantically playing detective, of being hyper vigilant, of avoiding direct conversations with someone, even though we know that something's not right, information is not what's going to provide us safety. Really trusting ourselves and validating how we're feeling and zooming out a bit, and recognizing how detrimental the whole damn thing is. I think that's really where our safety resides, is in being self responsible and and maybe removing ourselves from relationships and dynamics that have us feeling that way, but nevertheless, it is a very seductive thing for anxiously attached people to go into that world of information gathering, compulsive checking, checking someone's whereabouts, checking the story, checking their friends' accounts, checking, checking, checking all the time from this place of, I must be missing something because all of this doesn't make sense, or I'm so afraid that someone's going to cheat on me, or I'm so afraid that I'm being lied to, and I just have this sense that something's not right, so I have to go and find that missing piece. Another really, really common struggle of people that I hear is the types of accounts that their partner follows.
[00:09:41]:
So the thirst trap accounts, the accounts that are salacious, let's say, maybe it's like OnlyFans creators, or things that feel quite overtly sexual and objectifying. And a lot of people, and usually this is women in relationship with men, a lot of women are not comfortable with their partner following these accounts, and particularly following them, but also interacting with them, so liking the post, and maybe even commenting. That feels like it crosses the line for a lot of women, and yet I'm often hearing, like, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to be upset by this. I tell my partner that I'm not happy with it, but I'm met with a lot of defensiveness and dismissal, and told that it's not a big deal, and kind of to get over it. Right? I think this feeds into a broader conversation around pornography, and, the boundaries around that in a relationship, which is a topic for another day, but probably a needed conversation to have, because again, I think it's something that bothers a lot of people and yet isn't talked about enough, and so people maybe think they just have to suck it up and and be fine with something that they're not actually fine with. But I think in this context, the types of accounts that your partner might follow, and when they do veer into that more overtly sexual kind of content, that can feel really uncomfortable for a lot of people, because it can feel like, I mean, none of us are naive about what exists on the Internet, and that there is so much content in that vein. If anyone wants it, it's right there for the taking. But I think for a lot of people, having a partner who follows and interacts with those sorts of profiles and posts, it feels like they are deliberately opting in to that being part of their feed, and that being served up to them.
[00:11:25]:
Casually, every time they open up their phone, that they might be like commuting to work, or sitting on the couch, and that's part of the feed that they have opted into or curated for themselves. And I think that's really entirely reasonable and valid if you're not comfortable with that. Again, talking about some of the particular struggles of people with anxious attachment, not that I think this is an only anxious attachment issue, I think that it's not coming from anxiety necessarily, but certainly will be amplified for people with anxious attachment. The jealousy, the comparison, the feeling threatened by outsiders to the relationship. So the idea that your partner is desiring other women, and interacting with that, and particularly when there's a real person behind an account, it feels maybe a bit too close for comfort, it feels a little threatening, and it's really easy to feel like if there's this sort of all these people with these very airbrushed perfect bodies, so to speak, to feel really threatened by that and to feel inadequate or undesirable, not attractive enough. You might be very aware of the ways in which you differ from the types of accounts and women and people that your partner might be following, and that might really exacerbate your own insecurities. And I think if you add to this any sort of tension or fracture in the sexual dynamic in your relationship, so again I have episodes about this, but it's very common in anxious avoidant relationships for avoidant partners to be sexually withdrawn as a relationship settles into more of a steady rhythm, as it becomes more settled and stable, that there can be a loss of sexual desire amongst avoidant partners, and they can withdraw a bit in that respect. If that has happened, and that's the backdrop to your relationship, and you see your partner engaging with these sorts of accounts, that's likely to be very triggering to you, because it's essentially saying you do still have sexual desire, but just not for me, and that's really the worst fear of people with anxious attachment.
[00:13:26]:
Another key trigger for anxiously attached people that I mentioned was the extent to which your partner maybe posts about you or the relationship on social media, and maybe you are someone who posts a lot about your partner and your relationship. You might share pictures of you together, or if you guys are out for a meal, you might post a photo and tag them, and all of that stuff, because that's part of what you're comfortable with, but maybe also part of the identity that you put forward is being in a relationship. So it may be really triggering for you if your partner does not reciprocate. So if they do not share the things that you have tagged them in, or they don't also post about you, and particularly so if they post about other things. So if they catch up with friends and they post about that, but they don't post about you. I know that this is something that anxiously attached people are acutely aware of. Again, the monitoring, the checking, you're likely to have like a very clear index of we've been together for eight months, and you have never once posted about me, but in that time you posted about this thing, and this thing, and this thing, and this thing, right? Again, anxiety loves information. It makes us feel armed and valid when we have this long list of information that we can point to that bolsters our argument.
[00:14:40]:
And so, if that's the kind of situation you're in, where you feel then maybe unimportant, or you feel like your partner is hiding you in some way, or you wonder why they don't want to share about the relationship, does that mean they're not committed to the relationship? If someone was committed, wouldn't they want people to know about it? All of those insecurities are likely to be going through your head. And you know, I think there are a lot of reasons why someone may not share about their relationship on social media, and if they are more avoidant, it might just be a level of intimacy or lovey dovey ness that doesn't come naturally, for want of a better term. Lovey dovey ness, very technical. But you know what I mean, like that kind of gushing, sharing for someone particularly with more dismissive avoidant patterns, that just might not be comfortable, and they might really shy away from that much in the same way as they do with public displays of affection. Sharing about their partner and their relationship on Instagram might feel like a public display of affection that they're just not comfortable with. But again, I think that can be a real friction point in particularly anxious avoidant dynamics when it comes to social media, is how much or how little each partner shares about the other and the relationship on their accounts, and all of the inferences that we can draw from that about someone's feelings. So what do we do with all of this? That's a lot of potential triggers, and given how much time most of us spend on social media every day, for a lot of people, we're talking hours and hours every single day. That is spending hours and hours in a state of anxious checking, comparison, insecurity, jealousy, all of those things that are triggering our deep unworthiness, and it it tends to reinforce.
[00:16:23]:
So the anxiety gets us there, and then being in that space, that online space, increases our anxiety, which in turn keeps us hooked. And so spending all of that time just dialing up our anxiety and reinforcing the need for all of those checking behaviors, it is the perfect storm, and it is really, really detrimental to your well-being and your relationships. So what do we do about all of that? If there are things that are uncomfortable for you, and I'm not just talking about like the paranoid checking piece, I think that's one that we have to have boundaries around for ourselves, but if there is something that is bothering you about your partner's social media usage, for example, in the vein of the types of accounts they follow, the people that they've been talking to, if you've seen them messaging people that they shouldn't be messaging, just burying that is is not healthy, and I I assume you know that, but I think often times that is part of the anxious attachment thing can be like, I don't know if I have enough evidence yet, so I'm just gonna sit on this and bide my time until I can check again, find more evidence, and then I'll I'll be able to share the thing. Right? If something's bothering you, please have a conversation about it, and get really clear. Again, if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to the episode that I did on the importance of validation for anxiously attached people. I can't remember what episode number it was, but I'll link it in the show notes. You need to be really really clear for yourself what you are okay with, and what you are not okay with. And you need to be clear enough in like how non negotiable that is for you, such that if someone pushes back and says like, well, I'm gonna keep following all of these accounts because I like them, and you're overreacting, if that's an unsatisfactory response to you, and you feel deeply uncomfortable about it, you don't have to just accept that, right? Like if it's a deal breaker for you, it's allowed to be a deal breaker for you, and you can convey that.
[00:18:27]:
You don't have to invalidate yourself by saying like, maybe I am overreacting. If you are really deeply unsettled by something and you know that it's causing you a lot of distress, that's okay, you're allowed to be. So don't let someone talk you out of something that really bothers you if you know deep down that it's causing you a lot of pain and distress and discomfort. So have the conversations, don't have them in an accusatory way, don't have them in a way that is really guarded and attacking, and you're doing that thing that so many of us do, which is like, it's not just me who finds this problematic, anyone would find this blah blah blah. Just stay rooted in your own experience. Let that be enough, because that's really all that's relevant, you don't have to appeal to outside sources to validate your position, but you can actually just say, I'm not okay with this, it makes me feel blah blah blah, I feel uncomfortable, I feel maybe disrespected, I feel inadequate, I feel really insecure when I see you interacting with that, it doesn't make me feel good. Be vulnerable, be honest, be open, and appeal to the goodness in your partner rather than blaming and attacking and inevitably eliciting their defensiveness. And then lastly, having boundaries for yourself around what you're doing on social media, how much you're using it.
[00:19:45]:
I know this part's hard, but you've really got to be self responsible here. So putting limits on your phone, I mean there are obviously native controls within iPhones and stuff where you can limit your screen time, although they're pretty easy to override, but there are all sorts of other devices and things that you can use, or like physically putting your phone away, deleting the apps for a period of time. Maybe you delete them on the weekends, or you delete them during the week, or whatever. But finding ways, and it is hard, right, because we all do it so unconsciously. I know for me it's shocking. You know, I don't do so much scrolling on Instagram, but the number of times I'll pick up my phone and just check it, open the app and close it again, and then open my emails and close it again, it is so automatic. And so, like, having physical distance or ways that really prevent you from doing those things that you do in a really habituated way so that you can break the habit if it's really detrimentally impacting your mental health, which I think for most of us it is if we're not being conscious about the way that we engage within your social media, Particularly if you're in the depths of anxious attachment, I struggle to see how social media could be, making things better rather than worse, unless you are very very clear about who you follow. And that's another piece of boundaries for yourself.
[00:21:01]:
If you follow a lot of accounts that make you feel shitty about yourself, supermodels, and people with perfect relationships, and all of that, be really mindful about what you are curating for yourself. If it doesn't make you feel good, if you consistently feel less than, or insecure, or bad about yourself, just unfollow. It's not you don't need to be dialed into that all the time, you don't need to be exposing yourself, your brain, your system to things that are triggering to you. And so I think you again need to exercise some discernment and self responsibility around what you are consuming, what you are exposing yourself to, and if it's consistently making you feel worse, then act on that and be self responsible. Okay. I'm gonna stop there. I hope that this has been helpful, I hope it's been validating for those of you who do struggle with this and who have maybe wondered whether it's just you, maybe wondered whether you're allowed to be bothered by the things that you're bothered by, as always. Validating the realness of your own experience is such an important step in healing your anxious attachment, becoming more secure, and breaking that pattern of routinely dismissing your own concerns and assuming that you must be overreacting all the time.
[00:22:12]:
And in addition to that I hope that it's given you a bit of a steer on how you can start to shift some of those things, so the conversations you might want to have, the boundaries you might want to clarify, and certainly the measures that you can take for yourself to have a healthier relationship So, hope that's been helpful. As So, hope that's been helpful. As always, grateful for those of you who leave reviews, but otherwise, I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, guys.
[00:22:50]:
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
On Attachment, attachment styles, relationships, Stephanie Rigg, anxious attachment, social media impact, partner behavior on social media, relationship insecurity, compulsive checking, online boundaries, mental health, dopamine response, social media addiction, information gathering, validation for anxious people, partner's online habits, negotiating boundaries, self-responsibility, managing anxiety, Anxious Attachment Starter Kit, relationship toolkit, affirmations for anxious attachment, social media anxiety, emotional well-being, hypersensitivity, jealousy, comparison, triggers for insecurity, self-worth issues, intimacy concerns, communication strategies.