10 Tips to Heal Your Anxious Attachment Style in Relationships

In this article, I’m sharing 10 tips to start healing an anxious attachment style in your relationship. From learning how to self-soothe to building self-worth and setting solid boundaries, this is your roadmap to start moving towards a secure attachment style and building healthy relationships.

1) Get your mindset right

It is so important that you approach any “healing” work with the right mindset - which to me, is one grounded in self-compassion, curiosity and care. All too often I hear from people with insecure attachment styles desperate to “fix” themselves so they can “stop being so anxious” — and while I 100% understand the frustration and the sentiment, I promise you that shame is not the fertile soil that your seeds of self-growth will flourish in.

Rather, see if you can approach yourself from a place of seeking to understand and know yourself better, so that you can demystify some of the subconscious patterns that have run the show up until now and feel a greater sense of internal peace, support and self-trust.

After all, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, and I can guarantee that all your patterns, fears and behaviours (yes, even the very embarrassing ones) make perfect sense.

2) Learn about your nervous system and how to self-soothe

Increasing your knowledge and understanding of your nervous system is an indispensable part of this process. As I’m sure you can attest to, you can read all the books in the world and have it all figured out, but in those moments where anxiety grabs the wheel, none of that “information” counts for much.

Those are the moments when we really need to know how to work with our body rather than trying to override or distract ourselves from it. To understand the dangers it’s perceiving, to feel into the discomfort, and to resource into safety from the ground up.

Unfortunately, the ability to self-regulate and self-soothe is underdeveloped in most people with anxious attachment patterns, due to a lifetime of deriving their safety solely from attachment figures (first caregivers, then partners). This is something we need to practise building up within ourselves, so that we are less at the mercy of whatever is happening in our relationship to determine whether or not we feel okay within ourselves.

It would be no exaggeration to say that understanding and attuning to the rhythms of my nervous system changed my life in profound ways, and is a fundamental pillar in the way I teach healing anxious attachment.

3) Understand & heal your core wounds of abandonment and unworthiness

Hand-in-hand with nervous system regulation work is the healing of our core wounds and negative core beliefs — which for most anxiously attached people revolve around unworthiness and a fear of abandonment.

The crux of the unworthiness wound is “I’m not [insert] enough to be worthy of love” — with that [insert] being anything from good, smart, beautiful, thin, funny, successful, confident… the list goes on. It can drive many behavioural patterns like chronic people-pleasing, approval-seeking, perfectionism, a saviour complex, and many others. We convince ourselves that if we can just do [X] or be a little more [Y], then they’ll show up for us in the way we yearn for. It’s a very painful carrot to have dangling in front of you for your entire life, that’s for sure.

The abandonment wound springs from not knowing whether or under what circumstances our attachment figure will be there for us — so we come to be deeply fearful that we’ll be alone and helpless in our hour of need. This can lead us to be very sensitive to the slightest perceived disconnection or other threat to the relationship, as we experience any rupture as a precursor to abandonment.

4) Build your sense of self-worth, self-respect & self-trust
I often say that I’m not one to preach self-love — not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because for most of the people I work with, it feels so far out of reach that it’s just not helpful advice.

Rather, I like to invite people to focus on other building blocks of self: self-worth, self-respect, and self-trust.

There are many ways to build self-worth, but I like to start with ones that are straightforward and practical — like setting a challenging goal for yourself and following through (I once challenged myself to run 100km over the course of a month and felt huge increases in confidence as a result of actually following through on the commitment). You can listen to my podcast episode, 5 Ways to Improve Your Self-Worth, here.

5) Diversify your energy across all areas of your life

Most anxiously attached folks massively over-index on their relationship, often to the detriment of other pillars of their life. This can be particularly true when a relationship is under stress or strain — the shakier the ground, the tighter we grip. Let’s be honest: it takes a huge amount of energy to obsess about your partner and your relationship all day every day, and it can be hard to actually have any motivation or interest in other areas of life (be it work, friends, health, hobbies, or family).

That’s why such a big part of your growth will come from releasing the grip on your relationship and diversifying your energy across other parts of your life. It might bring up some resistance to actively devote time to people and experiences outside your relationship, but I promise it’ll reap rewards (both for you as an individual and for your relationship if you’re in one). So, start a new hobby or business, plan a trip with friends, go out to dinner without your partner every once in a while. You might be surprised to learn how much you enjoy your own (and others’) company, and it’ll remind you that your life is pretty great whether you’re in a relationship or not.

6. Figure out what your needs are, and start voicing them

For most anxiously attached folks, the default mode is to self-abandon and defer to what our partners (and others) like, think, want, or prefer. We convince ourselves that the way to “earn” love is to be easy, low maintenance, no trouble — that to have needs is to be difficult and therefore unlovable. Yikes.

A huge part of your growth will come from figuring out what your needs, desires and preferences are, and then stepping into the (uncomfortable) space of voicing them. This will challenge you to not only take up more space, but to actually receive — which for a chronic overgiver, can be a real edge in itself.

7. Learn to set (and respect) boundaries in a healthy way

Let’s face it: anxiously attached folks tend to be pretty terrible at boundaries. Whether it’s advocating for ourselves through voicing and enforcing our own limits, or respecting the boundaries of others, anxious people tend to collapse through boundaries in favour of ever-more proximity and connection.

And while it’s not your fault that you’ve never learned how to experience boundaries in a healthy way, it is your responsibility to do that work now. Boundaries are how you keep yourself safe, resourced and respected in relationships. They’re an expression of what works for you, and what doesn’t — and a commitment to yourself to take some action to protect yourself in circumstances that repeatedly cross those lines.

My favourite quote about boundaries comes from Brené Brown, when she says “Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Stand your sacred ground.”

8. Learn tools for healthy conflict and repair

Most people with insecure attachment patterns (whether anxious or avoidant) will have some fear and anxiety around conflict, and therefore tend to be conflict-averse. For anxious folks, this tends to look like bottling things up until you get so overheated that you implode and have a big emotional reaction that might feel somewhat… disproportionate to the actual matter at hand. (Click here for my blog post on Anxious Attachment, Conflict & Communication).

But here’s the thing: when done well, conflict can actually be a beautiful doorway to deeper connection. It gives you an opportunity to mend the ruptures that are brewing in your relationship, and learn more about how to meet each other’s needs and love each other better. As relationship and couples expert John Gottman has found through his extensive research, it’s not about whether you fight — it’s about how well you repair.

9. Get clear on what you want in a partner and a relationship

This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people I work with who actually have no idea what they want in a partner and a relationship beyond the sole criterion of someone wanting them. Team, we need to raise the bar and be a little more discerning than that.

And a big part of becoming more secure in yourself and your relationships is to get clear on what you desire in a partner and in a relationship. What are your values? How do you want your relationship to feel? What are your non-negotiables and your deal-breakers? Take the time to figure this out so you aren’t so susceptible to being swayed by “chemistry” and start making excuses for someone who actually isn’t what you’re looking for.

10. Understand what “healing” actually means in this context

And last but not least… it’s so important to understand what “healing” actually entails in this context. People ask me all the time, “Is it actually possible to heal an anxious attachment style? Does that mean I won’t be anxious anymore?”

The most honest answer I can give is: yes and no.

You can absolutely shift these patterns such that you feel a deep sense of worth, self-confidence, and self-trust, which will allow you to go to relationships without such an overwhelming and desperate need to be chosen and rescued by a partner. You can stand on your own two feet, and confidently voice your needs, desires and concerns. You can learn to have difficult conversations and trust in the ability to find a mutually beneficial solution (rather than fearing that any conflict will lead to a break-up).

All of that said, there will be moments where you feel anxious and insecure. Of course. That’s part of being human. And anyone telling you there’s a magic pill to opt out of that is lying to you. But you can get to a point where your anxious parts are at the back of the bus rather than constantly in the driver’s seat, blaring loud music and steering you off a cliff.

In other words, you can get to a place where you are no longer at the mercy of your fear.

If you are someone with anxious attachment patterns and you are ready to do this work, check out my signature course Healing Anxious Attachment. Over 1250+ people have taken the program and learned a more secure way of being in themselves and their relationships.