Do you ever find yourself feeling highly anxious and distressed in relationships? You may get nervous if the other person doesn’t respond to you in a certain amount of time, or fear that the relationship may end at any time. These are common characteristics of an anxious-ambivalent attachment style. Attachment styles form in childhood and are impacted by the quality of our relationships with caregiving figures. Despite a strong desire to have meaningful relationships, having an anxious attachment style can greatly impede one’s felt sense of safety, security, and connection in relationships.
What Are Attachment Styles?
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth were pioneers in the field of attachment theory and laid the groundwork for how we understand attachment. John Bowlby was one of the first attachment theorists and proposed that infants are born with an innate need to form close attachments with caregiving figures. This is an instinctual process to ensure survival of the infant. Infants and children will display attachment seeking behaviors, like crying, clinging, or following, as a way to get their physical and emotional needs met by their caregiver. Bowlby also proposed the concept of caregivers acting as a “secure base” for their child, meaning the child feels safe to explore their environment because they know they have a trusted adult figure they can return to for safety and protection.
Mary Ainsworth, through the “strange situation” experiment, discovered different attachment styles by observing the response of infants when they were placed in a novel environment with their caregiver, separated from, and then reunited with their primary caregiver. Ainsworth observed four different types of attachment styles based on these experiments: secure, anxious-ambivalent, anxious-avoidant, and disorganized. Infants who exhibited an anxious-ambivalent attachment style were characterized by showing extreme distress when their caregiver left the room. Upon the caregiver’s return, the infant would seek close proximity to the caregiver but would have difficulty being soothed or comforted by the caregiver. These infants would sometimes display mixed emotions, like anger or resentment toward the caregiver while their caregiver tried to comfort them. The following sections of this blog will explore in more detail what anxious-ambivalent attachment looks like in childhood and adulthood. For convenience, the term “anxious attachment” will be used interchangeably with “anxious-ambivalent.”
Anxious Attachment in Infancy and Childhood
- Unpredictability and inconsistency: Children who exhibit an anxious attachment style received inconsistent and unpredictable care from their caregivers rather than consistent responses to their needs. At times, the child’s needs were met, but not in a trustworthy or consistent manner which manifests as increased anxiety, stress, and distrust in these children.“Needs” include the child’s physical as well as emotional needs.
- Emotion dysregulation: When infants and children experience emotions, they require what’s called co-regulation from their caregivers to help them navigate and move through different emotional states. Co-regulation requires presence, patience, and support on the part of the caregiver. Children with an anxious attachment style do not receive predictable and consistent co-regulation from their caregivers and therefore show difficulty with emotion regulation.
- Intense displays of emotion: These children may experience and express their emotions more intensely when they experience a perceived relational threat, such as a caregiver leaving or separating from them, even for a short period of time. These children feel unsure of when and if their caregiver will return, which is a highly distressing experience for them.
- Excessive need for reassurance: These children also exhibit reassurance-seeking behaviors, especially expressing worries about their safety and well-being. They develop beliefs that the world may not be a safe place as they do not feel secure that their caregivers will be there consistently to protect them from danger. These children may also constantly seek reassurance from their caregivers that they are loved. Anxiously attached children tend to feel more insecure and question their self-worth due to their needs being inconsistently met by their caregivers.
- Fear of rejection or abandonment: Children with an anxious attachment style fear being rejected or abandoned by their caregivers. They have difficulty trusting that their caregivers will show up for them to meet their emotional needs which may manifest in behaviors such as being overly anxious, clingy, or attention-seeking.
- Difficulty exploring their environment: Caregivers acting as a secure base is a prerequisite for children to explore their environment. When a caregiver acts as a secure base, they remain in close proximity, but give the child adequate space to explore their curiosities about their environment. The child trusts that the caregiver will be there to protect them if they encounter something threatening or dangerous in the environment. Anxiously attached children do not have a strong foundation of trust with their caregivers and therefore exhibit anxiety when in a new environment. This inhibits them from fostering curiosity and new learning from the environment.
- Clinginess or difficulty separating: Rather than exploring the environment, these children exhibit clinginess to their caregivers as a way to keep themselves safe. Anxiously attached children may exhibit high distress when separated from their caregiver. They are desperate to get their emotional needs and needs for closeness met by their caregivers and seek proximity to feel a sense of safety and security.
- Hypervigilant to changes in mood: Children who are anxiously attached tend to be hypervigilant to the moods and emotions of their caregivers, often scanning for signs that their caregiver might be upset, angry, or unresponsive. These children may consciously or unconsciously harbor the belief that it is their fault that their caregiver is upset or angry and take on the blame for their caregivers’ moods. Their relational template is one that is erratic and can change at any moment. These children compensate for this by being hypervigilant to others’ emotional states.
Anxious Attachment in Adulthood
In adulthood, the anxious-ambivalent attachment style manifests in the following ways:
- Proximity Seeking and Departure stress: Similar to children, anxiously-attached adults can feel heightened distress when their loved ones leave, even for short amounts of time. This can spark fears of being abandoned by their partner or loved ones and lead the individual to have doubts about the stability of the relationship. These adults want to be in constant contact with their loved ones and feel insecure when they do not hear from their partners. This can put stress and strain on their relationships.
- Reassurance seeking: These adults also tend to seek reassurance more often in relationships due to constant feelings of insecurity in the relationship. This may look like constantly contacting their loved ones and seeking out reassurance about the status of the relationship. These individuals also crave reassurance but may be too fearful to seek it out from their partners for fear of pushing their partner away. This leaves them in a constant state of anxiety, doubt, and uncertainty about their relationships.
- Difficulty receiving acts of care: Anxiously attached adults also have difficulty truly receiving acts of care and kindness that their partner or loved ones give to them. They may have difficulty recognizing when someone is being kind and caring because they are always on alert for how they may be hurt.These individuals have difficulty trusting that their partners truly care about them.
- Hyperfocus on relationships: These adults hyperfixate on the nuances of their interactions, constantly scanning the environment for signals about the status of their relationships. This can feel overwhelming and draining as the moods of anxiously attached adults are easily influenced by how others respond (or don’t respond) to them.
- Hypersensitivity in relationships: Similar to children, anxiously-attached adults experience hypersensitivity to emotional nuances (i.e., slight change in facial expression or tone) in others, especially if it results in disconnection, rejection, or possible abandonment. The rug could be pulled out from underneath these individuals at any time, which may lead to intense emotional distress. These individuals may constantly misperceive reactions from their partner and have a tendency to act on feelings of anger or fear at the slightest provocation of disapproval or abandonment. Others may describe these adults as hypersensitive, overreactive, or controlling.
- Shaky Sense of Self: These adults spend so much time hyperfixating on others’ actions and emotions that they lose touch with their own sense of self. Anxiously-attached adults tend to behave in ways that please others and focus on others’ needs to avoid abandonment or rejection. These tendencies lead them to lose contact and connection with themselves.
- Difficulty with vulnerability: As mentioned, adults with this attachment style focus most of their attention on the needs of others to avoid losing connection. This prevents them from gaining awareness and understanding about what they want in their relationships and further prevents them from vulnerably expressing their needs to others. They may harbor core beliefs such as “my needs don’t matter.”
- Beliefs that connection is not possible: These adults crave close and meaningful connection while harboring the belief that such connection is not possible or is not sustainable. They expect to be disappointed, let down, and hurt by others. Oftentimes, their behaviors to reestablish connection with their partners (i.e., excessive reassurance and proximity seeking), may serve to push their partners away.
Healing Anxious Attachment
Having an anxious attachment style can feel deeply painful and disconnecting but there are ways to heal from these attachment wounds and move toward more stable relationships:
- Physical grounding and relaxation techniques: Anxiously attached individuals often have trouble connecting with both their physical and emotional needs. High anxiety in relationships also makes it challenging to relax their minds and bodies. Practicing physical grounding and relaxation techniques can help them calm their bodies and learn to connect with themselves.
- Self-regulation techniques: Anxiously-attached adults also feel their emotions strongly and have a difficult time self-soothing and calming themselves when strong emotions emerge. Practicing self-regulation techniques like deep breathing, meditation, or journaling can help strengthen this skill set.
- Receiving kindness and care: Many adults with this attachment style have difficulty receiving the love and care others give to them. They may not trust these kind acts or are unable to recognize when others are acting in a caring manner toward them because they are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Learning how to spot acts of care and kindness and allow themselves to receive this care is crucial in moving toward more secure relationships.
- Therapy: Seeking professional help for attachment-related wounds can be a powerful way to understand attachment styles and childhood experiences that have led to anxiety in your current relationships. Working with a therapist can help in a variety of ways including building secure attachment with the therapist, identifying triggers for when your attachment system feels threatened, practicing self-regulation skills, and finding more effective ways to be vulnerable and get your needs met in relationships.
If you recognize any of the above patterns or tendencies, you probably know how overwhelming, distressing, and straining they can be for you despite a strong desire to foster healthy relationships. If you are struggling with an anxious attachment style and desire change, reach out for help. Our team at Integrated Care Clinic is composed of mental health professionals who specialize in helping adults strengthen the quality of their relationships.
