In this article, I want to walk you through 10 foundational ways to begin healing anxious attachment in your relationships. This isn’t about becoming someone else or suppressing parts of yourself that feel “too much.” It’s about creating the internal conditions that allow you to relate from a steadier, more secure place. 

Before we dive in — if you’re struggling with anxious attachment, consider coming along to my free training How to Heal Anxious Attachment & Finally Feel Secure in Life & Love. Register for free here.

1. Start with the right mindset

How you approach this work really matters.

Healing anxious attachment isn’t something you can force your way through or fix with enough willpower. The deepest and most sustainable change happens when you approach yourself with self-compassion, curiosity, and care.

So often, people with anxious attachment just want the anxiety gone. They’re tired of feeling reactive, needy, or overwhelmed. That frustration makes sense. But shame is not fertile ground for growth. If you try to heal from a place of self-criticism — “Why am I like this?” “What’s wrong with me?” — you’ll often reinforce the very patterns you’re trying to change.

Instead, see if you can slow down and get interested. Why does your nervous system respond the way it does? What did these strategies once protect you from? Every fear, coping mechanism, and behaviour — even the ones you cringe at — developed for a reason. There is nothing inherently wrong with you.

2. Learn your nervous system and build self-regulation

You can understand your attachment patterns intellectually and still find yourself spiralling when anxiety is activated. Insight is helpful — but in those moments, it’s rarely enough.

When your system is flooded, you need body-based tools. Learning how to regulate your nervous system and self-soothe gives you something solid to anchor into when things feel uncertain. It allows your physiology to settle so that your thoughts don’t run away with you.

For many anxiously attached people, self-regulation is underdeveloped because safety has historically come from other people — first caregivers, then partners. Building this capacity within yourself reduces how dependent your sense of wellbeing is on what’s happening in your relationship.

For me personally, learning to attune to my own nervous system was life-changing. It remains a core pillar of how I teach this work.

3. Tend to your core wounds

Alongside nervous system work, healing anxious attachment means gently tending to the deeper wounds underneath it — most commonly unworthiness and abandonment.

The unworthiness wound often sounds like, “I’m not enough.” Not attractive enough. Not successful enough. Not calm enough. That belief can drive people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-giving, and constantly trying to earn love.

The abandonment wound develops when connection feels unreliable or conditional. It creates hyper-sensitivity to disconnection and a deep fear of being left when you need support most. Even small ruptures can feel catastrophic when this wound is activated.

These wounds aren’t character flaws. They’re adaptive responses to earlier experiences. Healing them means updating the beliefs that once made sense but no longer serve you.

4. Build self-worth, self-respect, and self-trust

I don’t tend to emphasise “self-love” because for many people it feels abstract or unattainable. Instead, I focus on building self-worth, self-respect, and self-trust.

Self-worth grows when you follow through on commitments to yourself.
Self-respect develops when you honour your needs and boundaries.
Self-trust forms when you prove to yourself that you can handle discomfort and uncertainty without abandoning yourself.

These qualities are built through consistent, often small, behaviours. Not affirmations. Not grand gestures. Just daily evidence that you have your own back.

5. Diversify your energy beyond the relationship

Anxiously attached people often over-invest in their romantic relationships, especially when things feel uncertain. The shakier the ground, the tighter the grip.

Part of healing is redistributing your energy. Investing in friendships, work, creativity, hobbies, health, rest — remembering that your life is bigger than one connection. This isn’t about pulling away emotionally. It’s about expanding your world so that your entire sense of stability doesn’t rest on one person.

Counterintuitively, this often strengthens the relationship itself by reducing pressure and intensity.

6. Get clear on your needs — and practise voicing them

Many anxiously attached people learned early on that having needs was risky. Being agreeable and low-maintenance felt safer than being honest.

Healing means unlearning that pattern. It involves identifying what you genuinely need in order to feel safe and connected, and practising expressing those needs directly. This can feel deeply uncomfortable at first. But needs don’t make you difficult. They make you human.

7. Learn to set — and respect — boundaries

Boundaries are often a weak spot, both in setting your own and respecting others’.

Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re the structures that protect your energy, your safety, and your self-respect. Learning what works for you, and what doesn’t, is essential if you want to feel secure in relationships.

As Brené Brown says, “Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Stand your sacred ground.” It’s about grounded self-advocacy, not defensiveness.

8. Build skills for healthy conflict and repair

Conflict is inevitable. What matters is how it’s handled.

Anxiously attached people often avoid addressing issues until emotions boil over, and then feel ashamed of how intense their reaction was. Learning to address concerns earlier, communicate clearly, and repair after ruptures creates far more safety than avoiding tension altogether.

The strongest relationships aren’t conflict-free. They’re repair-capable.

9. Get clear on what you actually want

Clarity is stabilising.

When you know what you’re looking for — not just chemistry or someone choosing you, but shared values, emotional availability, and compatibility — you’re far less likely to abandon yourself for intensity or potential.

Being clear on your non-negotiables makes it easier to discern whether a relationship is truly aligned, rather than trying to contort yourself to make it work.

10. Redefine what healing really means

Healing anxious attachment doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anxious again. That’s not realistic — or human.

What it does mean is that anxiety no longer runs the show. You develop enough internal stability and self-trust that anxious thoughts and feelings don’t hijack your behaviour or decision-making.

Your anxious parts may still exist. But they’re no longer in the driver’s seat. And that shift — from fear-led to self-led — is where real freedom lives.

If you’re ready to go deeper, my signature course Healing Anxious Attachment walks you through this entire process in depth. Thousands of people have used it to build a more secure relationship with themselves and with others — and to experience a kind of steadiness in love that once felt out of reach.