The Dating Behaviors That Trigger My Anxious Attachment Style

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsCommon Anxious Attachment TriggersCommunication PatternsFear of Rejection and AbandonmentUncertainty and AmbiguityEmotional TriggersPersonal Boundaries and AutonomySelf-Reflection and Self-AwarenessSeeking Support and Professional Help

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

Common Anxious Attachment Triggers

Communication Patterns

Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

Uncertainty and Ambiguity

Emotional Triggers

Personal Boundaries and Autonomy

Self-Reflection and Self-Awareness

Seeking Support and Professional Help

Close

This is a judgment-free zone, okay? We’ve all felt insecure in our relationship and stalked an ex, date, or current partner on social media. Humans are emotional beings that feel everything. But if you’re always surfing your partner’s socials for information on their whereabouts, constantly seeking reassurance (even though your partner gives you plenty of it), or repeatedly calling and texting them, you might have ananxious attachment style.

It’s why anxious attachers “may appear clingy, jealous, or over-controlling; however, to the anxiously attached person, it’s a way to cope with very uncomfortable emotions,” saysRachel Goldberg, MS, a licensed marriage and family therapist atRachel Goldberg Therapy. Anxious attachment is one of the three insecure attachment styles that spring from a fear of abandonment and rejection.

Insecure Attachment StylesAnxious attachment:Constantly seeks reassurance and validation. Struggles with people-pleasing and maintaining boundaries. Can appear needy or clingy to nonanxious attachers.Avoidant attachment:Rarely go to others in times of need. Has a strong distrust for others being able to meet their needs and a strong desire for independence.Disorganized attachment:Conflicting desire for a relationship but fear of being in one. Often feels unlovable or unworthy. Can display both anxious and avoidant behavior.

Insecure Attachment Styles

Anxious attachment:Constantly seeks reassurance and validation. Struggles with people-pleasing and maintaining boundaries. Can appear needy or clingy to nonanxious attachers.Avoidant attachment:Rarely go to others in times of need. Has a strong distrust for others being able to meet their needs and a strong desire for independence.Disorganized attachment:Conflicting desire for a relationship but fear of being in one. Often feels unlovable or unworthy. Can display both anxious and avoidant behavior.

Anxious attachment:Constantly seeks reassurance and validation. Struggles with people-pleasing and maintaining boundaries. Can appear needy or clingy to nonanxious attachers.

Avoidant attachment:Rarely go to others in times of need. Has a strong distrust for others being able to meet their needs and a strong desire for independence.

Disorganized attachment:Conflicting desire for a relationship but fear of being in one. Often feels unlovable or unworthy. Can display both anxious and avoidant behavior.

How do anxious attachers become…anxious? What triggers someone depends on the individual and can vary from person to person. Which is why it’s important to know your triggers and how to manage them. Below, we dive into the common anxious attachment triggers and what tools and tips can help you cope.

Want to know your triggers? While we can’t identify every single one, there are a few consistent ones among anxious attachers.

“Common triggers that might heighten someone’s anxious attachment style are things such as sensing a change in communication, feeling emotionally or physically distant, an external factor or person that could threaten the bond, feeling dismissed, getting in an argument and not being reassured or complimented enough,” says Goldberg.

For example, imagine texting your S.O. and they don’t respond right away. With an anxious attachment style, you’ll feel compelled to text your partner multiple times until you get a response, which can exacerbate the communication between you two, says licensed clinical social workerLaura Sgro.

Sgro adds that anxious attachers can become triggered if their partner asks for some alone time. Why? A request for space can make the anxious attacher feel physically distant. Similarly, not talking about personal things like how work is going can also trigger the anxious attached person because they feel emotionally distanced, Goldberg notes.

How an anxious attacher responds to their triggers varies. One person can be upset if their friend or family member ignores their call or sends them to voicemail. Another person might be fine if their friend ignores their message but can become angry if their partner sends them clipped and cold responses. One way or another, though, all anxiously attached people have triggers that can make things difficult for those in a relationship (platonic, romantic, or familial) with them.

When communication patterns change in a relationship, it can trigger anxious attachers.Anxiously attached peopleare hypervigilant, meaning they’re sensitive to sudden changes in communication.

“The anxious partner is interacting from this place of fear, from this place of, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve done something wrong,’ or ‘This person’s mad at me,'” says Sgro. “And resentment can build between them if they’re not actually communicating about what’s happening.”

Goldberg adds that the anxiously attached partner willbegin making assumptionsabout the changes in communication without any proof, which can further send them into a spiral of fear that something is wrong. “This may result in [them] becoming more clingy, starting arguments, or interrogating their partner who may have just been busy and wasn’t intentionally changing the way they communicate,” she says.

Anxiously attached people aren’t trying to start fights or cause problems. As Goldberg explains, they simply want to search for threats to the relationship, so they can stay a step ahead. Unfortunately, that results in miscommunication and misunderstandings, which leads anxious attachers to assume the worst and catastrophize.

How to Minimize This Trigger:

Fear of rejectionand abandonment is the core of an anxious attachment style and stems from inconsistent care from the primary caregiver in childhood. “If a child does their chores and is praised one night, but reprimanded the next for doing them incorrectly, they may start to believe that they need to constantly improve to prevent their caregiver from becoming upset,” Goldberg says. “Over time, and through many such experiences, a child becomes highly sensitive to others' perceived moods and strives to gain approval, believing that their actions determine praise—love—or criticism.”

Anxious attachment can continue into adulthood because we often subconsciously seek out relationships that mirror our relationship with our primary caregiver from our formative years, Sgro says. Even if that dynamic is not what we want, we’re comfortable in these situations. The desire to prove ourselves leads many to continue the same pattern.

Alternatively, anxious attachment can develop because of bad relationships in adulthood. “For example, if someone discovers they were cheated on, they may begin to believe it will happen again, leading to heightened vigilance and an increased need for reassurance in their next relationship,” Goldberg explains.

What Is Post Infidelity Stress Disorder?

How to Manage Your Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

Uncertainty and ambiguity can invite the anxiously attached individual to fill in the gaps with inaccurate information. “The brain doesn’t always have the best knowledge because it’s based on what we learned in childhood,” Sgro says. “So, our brain isn’t necessarily trying to be our friend. It is trying to protect us, but it doesn’t always know what our best interest is.”

The unknown may trigger thoughts and beliefs that could be wrong. As a result, says Goldberg, “anxiously attached people may instinctually go to the worst-case scenario and have black-and-white thinking when it comes to what’s happening in their relationships.”

Partners who can offer reassurance and clarity can alleviate those anxious feelings. It’s difficult because it requires vulnerability, but clear communication is the first step. “You want [to be in a relationship] with someone who can hold space for you,” says Sgro. “Who can reassure you and can communicate, ‘Hey, I’ve been feeling this way. Is this really what you’re thinking? Or can we talk about this issue?’ And get that feedback from them.”

How Anxious Attachers Can Build Trust in Their Relationships

People with anxious attachment may have been exposed to trauma, especially in childhood. This could include neglect orphysical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Alternatively, you could have become anxiously attached later in life (even if your childhood was wonderful) because you were in atoxic or unhealthy relationship, where you were constantly told negative things about yourself. One way or another, people with anxious attachments havetrouble trusting themselvesand their partners.

Both Goldberg and Sgro say this leads to a variety of emotionaltriggersthat activate anxious attachment, including:

One way or another, your past can lead to a struggle with low self-esteem or self-worth and to hiding your feelings from the person you are currently in a relationship with.

Strategies for Coping with Emotional Triggers:

Healthy Coping Skills for Uncomfortable Emotions

People with anxious attachments tend to have a problemsetting good boundaries. They put their partner first and are afraid to assert their own needs. Therefore, they’re likely to have their boundaries and autonomy violated without even realizing it. Similarly, the other partner in the relationship will get frustrated or resentful for triggering the anxiously attached person with their boundaries. Ultimately, both partners feel like they can’t get their needs met.

How to Maintain Your Sense of Self in a Relationship

Many people try to avoid anything that would make them really examine themselves. Sgro adds that people don’t want to see how much work they have to do on themselves, so they avoid introspection. However, to effectively manage triggers, it’s important to accept both the good and the bad and engage inself-reflectionand self-awareness. Otherwise, you’ll repeat the same cycles.

To identify and understand personal triggers, Goldberg recommends: “writing down on a scale of 1 to 10 how anxious you are and what event preceded it. Over time, this will help you identify both smaller triggers and the broader categories they fall under. For example, taking too long to text back can be categorized under communication expectations.” This will give you a reason to self-reflect on your triggers and may even stop the cycle of emotions taking over quickly.

Goldberg also advisesself-awarenessand self-reflection. You can journal or get help from a workbook filled with prompts that get you to think about your situation. Really, anything that gets you out of your emotional brain and into your thinking brain should help you cultivate self-reflection and self-awareness.

Furthermore, atherapist or mental health professionalcan benefit anxiously attached individuals. Sgro says that a therapist can help you develop healthy boundaries and communication.

Several therapy modalities may be especially good for anxiously attached individuals including emotional-focused therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and attachment-based therapy, says Sgro.

Types of Therapy: An A to Z List of Your Options

Final Thoughts

2 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Haak, E. A., Keller, P. S., & DeWall, C. N. (2017).Daily variations in attachment anxiety and avoidance: A density distributions approach.Journal of Research in Personality,69, 218–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.08.002The Attachment Project.Anxious attachment style in relationships: The complete guide.

2 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Haak, E. A., Keller, P. S., & DeWall, C. N. (2017).Daily variations in attachment anxiety and avoidance: A density distributions approach.Journal of Research in Personality,69, 218–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.08.002The Attachment Project.Anxious attachment style in relationships: The complete guide.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Haak, E. A., Keller, P. S., & DeWall, C. N. (2017).Daily variations in attachment anxiety and avoidance: A density distributions approach.Journal of Research in Personality,69, 218–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.08.002The Attachment Project.Anxious attachment style in relationships: The complete guide.

Haak, E. A., Keller, P. S., & DeWall, C. N. (2017).Daily variations in attachment anxiety and avoidance: A density distributions approach.Journal of Research in Personality,69, 218–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.08.002

The Attachment Project.Anxious attachment style in relationships: The complete guide.

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