Moving from Anxious to Secure Attachment

Anxious attachment can become more secure. With self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, firm boundaries, and often therapy, adults can learn to feel safe in relationships without constant reassurance.

What Is an Anxious Attachment Style?

Individuals with anxious attachment styles deeply desire close emotional connections and interpersonal approval. They often worry about abandonment or rejection.

A person with an anxious attachment style is often preoccupied with their relationship(s). They constantly worry whether their partner and other significant people in their life love them.

They tend to seek constant reassurance and validation from their partners, and may become overly dependent on them for their own emotional well-being. This can make relationships stressful for both partners.

How Anxious Attachment Develops

Anxious attachment often results from growing up with inconsistent and unstable parental love and support.

When caregivers are unpredictable or anxious, children constantly monitor their closeness and behavior. This prevents them from feeling safe to explore the world.

Research supports the role of inconsistency. One study followed a birth cohort from infancy into adulthood.

Larger swings in a mother’s sensitivity across childhood predicted weaker expectations of receiving help when distressed in early adulthood. Those weaker expectations, in turn, predicted poorer romantic relationship functioning at age 32 (Eller et al., 2022).

Self-esteem is affected too. Because the anxious individual’s self-esteem depends on the closeness and approval of significant others, any instability can lead to an undeveloped sense of self.

Insecure attachment is associated with lower relationship satisfaction for both partners in a couple (Candel & Turliuc, 2019).

Understanding one’s attachment style can be helpful in identifying patterns of behavior and working towards more secure and fulfilling relationships.

Healing is possible. Anxious individuals can heal past wounds, learn to trust others, and build a more confident sense of self. Over time, they feel more assured and loved in their relationships.

Educate Yourself on Attachment Theory  

To heal your attachment insecurities, it’s important to understand attachment theory. This is the idea that your early relationships with your caregivers shaped your social and emotional development throughout your life.

The aim is to understand the theory in the context of your life and relationships.

This way you can identify your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving when it comes to your relationships with others.

Maladaptive Beliefs Related to an Anxious Attachment Style

Early experiences and circumstances have a significant impact on the development of an anxious attachment style.

The child develops certain beliefs about the self and others that shape their adult relationships. Some of these beliefs include:

• Defectiveness: Anxious individuals tend to believe they are “broken” and unworthy of love. They become hypervigilant to signs that their partner does not love them or thinks they are not good enough.
• Abandonment: An intense fear of being abandoned and rejected leads to clinging, and sometimes to demanding, jealous, or controlling behavior. This can push a partner away, confirming the fear.
• Helplessness: Anxious individuals believe they cannot comfort or help themselves, so they expect others to be completely responsive to their needs. This often ends in disappointment, deepening their sense of unworthiness.
• Conditional Worth: Because of their underdeveloped sense of self, anxious individuals believe that their worth depends on the approval and love of others.
• Distrust: Anxious individuals distrust other people and themselves. They fear others do not love them as much as they love, and that they will eventually be rejected. They doubt they can cope alone.

Changing Maladaptive Beliefs

Although these maladaptive beliefs are coping mechanisms that served a purpose growing up, they can have a negative impact on one’s well-being and ability to form healthy relationships.

These beliefs, and related behaviors (e.g., clinginess), are subconsciously activated whenever there are certain emotional triggers.

Thoughts feel real in the moment. That does not make them true.

Weigh the evidence for and against catastrophic thoughts such as “my partner is going to abandon me because I’m unworthy.” Has your partner given you real reason?

Treat your self-doubt with the kindness you would offer a worried friend, not with harsh judgment.

Emotional Triggers for Individuals with an Anxious Attachment Style

The first step in transforming these beliefs into more helpful ones is self-awareness.

That means becoming conscious of the maladaptive beliefs you may hold about yourself and others, as well as identifying your emotional triggers.

Relationships, in general, are a great source of anxiety for anxiously attached individuals. But there are certain scenarios and behaviors that they find particularly triggering. These include:

• Their partner acting inconsistently (hot-and-cold behavior)
• Their partner not responding or taking a long time to respond
• Avoidant behaviors (e.g., being physically rejected; communication being shut down; the other person walking away)
• A friend spending more time with other people
• Experiencing emotional distress
• Feeling criticized/ rejected
• Being alone
• Perceiving a response to be cold or dismissive
• When their partner seems distant or distracted
• Someone forgetting an important event, such as a birthday or anniversary
• Their partner coming home late or being late to a reservation
• Their partner not noticing something new (e.g., a new haircut or outfit)
• A partner being warm toward an ex, a coworker, or a new friend
• Ambiguity about the relationship (e.g., not knowing whether you are exclusive)
• Arguments, especially a partner shutting down, walking away, or giving the silent treatment

To an anxious person, situations like these look like signs of rejection and abandonment, their greatest fear. That is why they trigger such intense and overwhelming emotions.

Hot-and-cold behavior can be especially unsettling. It echoes the “hot and cold” caregiving some anxiously attached people experienced as children. The swing can feel as distressing as the distance itself.

To cope with these emotions and to avoid feeling rejected, they subconsciously employ hyperactivating strategies.

Researchers define them as intense, sustained efforts to gain more attention and care from a partner who seems unavailable (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002). The aim is to keep the partner close. Unfortunately, they often backfire and push the partner further away.

Hyperactivating Strategies

Anxiously attached individuals have hyperactive attachment systems. This means their coping mechanisms in the face of distress are extreme and disproportionate.

Securely attached people seek reassurance and comfort from significant others when they are experiencing distress. This is considered a healthy and effective coping strategy.

People with an avoidant attachment style deactivate their need for intimacy and comfort, while people with an anxious attachment rely on the reassurance, approval, and validation of others. 

When anxiously attached people experience an emotional trigger, they are faced with an intense fear of abandonment that stems from traumatic or unstable childhood experiences.

To avoid this feeling (and actual abandonment), they often go to extreme measures. 

Examples of hyperactivating strategies include:

• Clinging (obsessive and suffocating behavior)
• Feeling jealous (even when it is not warranted)
• Demanding reassurance and attention
• Expecting others to soothe their emotional distress
• Having emotional outbursts (e.g., crying or becoming angry)
• Ruminating/ overthinking the relationship and their partner’s behavior
• Monitoring a partner in person or on social media
• Calling/ texting often and persistently (especially if they are awaiting a response)
• Allowing others to violate their boundaries so they will not leave/ reject them

Phones add new outlets for these strategies.

In a two-year study of 322 young adults in relationships, jealousy about a partner’s social media predicted more electronic surveillance of that partner. That surveillance, in turn, predicted lower relationship satisfaction a year later (Métellus et al., 2025).

For anxiously attached people, the fear of being rejected and abandoned is very real. They may therefore believe their responses and behaviors are justified.

They may believe the responsibility lies with their partner, friend, or family member. If these people were more caring, supportive, and loving, they would not feel this anxiety.

However, the true cause is different. It is low self-esteem, often stemming from unstable or difficult relationships in childhood or adolescence.

Therefore, feeling less anxious and more secure in relationships means healing yourself, building your self-esteem, and taking control of your emotions and behaviors.

It means stepping into your power and learning that it’s okay to be alone and that you are capable of being there for yourself.

Healing an Anxious Attachment Style

Healthy and stable relationships are integral to our well-being and boost our self-esteem and quality of life. This applies not only to relationships with other people, but also to our relationships with ourselves.

If you have an anxious attachment style, you probably spend much of your time ruminating about other people, especially your romantic partners and close friends.

• What are they thinking?
• What did they mean when they said that?
• Why are they behaving this way?

This preoccupation means you are neglecting yourself, your needs, and what you truly want.

Thus, healing an anxious attachment style requires you to work on the relationship you have with yourself. Your sense of self-worth should be independent of other people and how they feel or behave towards you.

Having a secure attachment style means:

• Communicating your needs and wishes openly and assertively
• Being able to see the world from another person’s perspective
• Reflecting on your behaviors and mental state objectively
• Trusting other people and yourself
• Having stable self-esteem
• Feeling worthy of love and respect
• Establishing and maintaining boundaries

People do move from insecure to secure attachment. Researchers call this earned security.

In one interview study, 20 adults with a history of insecure attachment, who had since become secure, described how they changed (Dansby Olufowote et al., 2020). Their accounts described two kinds of change: intrapsychic changes in how they thought and felt, and interpersonal changes in how they related to others.

Being in a relationship with a securely attached partner can also help shift your perceptions over time. Conscious effort matters too.

An attachment pattern present since childhood may not disappear completely. Even so, you can work toward feeling more secure in yourself and your relationships.

Developing a more secure attachment is entirely possible but it’s a journey that requires hard work, patience, and compassion. Here is some advice to get you started:

Make Time for Self-Care

Making time for self-care is an important step in getting to know yourself and enjoying your own company.

It means making time for what you love and taking care of your needs. This helps you feel less anxious in life and relationships.

Self-care is any deliberate action that promotes your physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It takes many forms:

• Body care: exercising regularly, maintaining a balanced diet, and practicing good hygiene.
• Reflection: journaling and practicing mindfulness.
• Support: going to therapy or seeking social support from loved ones.
• Nature: spending time outdoors.
• New hobbies: drawing, kayaking, or hiking.

Anything that leaves you recharged, nurtured, and healthy counts as self-care. It can help you transform your attachment style.

Consider Therapy

Having an insecure attachment style is more likely an indication of having experienced difficulties in childhood and adolescence.

Therefore, engaging with a therapist who can explore any unhelpful beliefs, emotional triggers, and anxious behaviors can be immensely beneficial.

They can provide guidance, support, and tools to help you explore and develop a more secure attachment style.

Several approaches can help:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): identifies negative thought patterns and behaviors, including catastrophizing minor relationship issues, and replaces them with healthier alternatives.
• Interpersonal therapy: helps improve your relationships and social functioning more broadly.
• Psychodynamic therapy: explores unconscious emotional dynamics, including how your attachment style shows up in the relationship with the therapist.
• Schema therapy: identifies and works to change deep-seated, self-defeating patterns, or “schemas,” that often begin in childhood, such as an abandonment or defectiveness schema.
• Couples therapy: gives you a structured space, with skilled facilitation, to work through difficult feelings together when the pattern affects a current relationship.

Schema therapy and attachment-based therapy are attachment-specific. Even so, any type of therapy or counseling can help, as long as the relationship with the therapist feels genuine and safe.

Therapists can even act as a surrogate attachment figure, according to the authors of one study of how adults earn secure attachment (Dansby Olufowote et al., 2020).

Find a Surrogate Attachment Figure

A securely attached role model can help you to learn how to feel more secure in relationships. It could be a friend, partner, or mentor who gives you insight into what a securely attached relationship looks and feels like.

It’s always helpful to ask yourself: how would someone with a secure attachment behave?

You can also observe and imitate their behavior. Find out how they interpret ambiguous situations, such as when their partner does not reply to a text message or arrives late to a date.

You can ask them how they manage their anxiety and difficult emotions and how they communicate problems to their significant others. 

Develop Self-Awareness

Pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in relationships.

Notice any patterns or triggers that activate your attachment insecurities. By becoming more aware of your reactions, you can begin to challenge and reframe negative beliefs and responses.

Keeping a journal for when you experience difficult emotions might be useful. Write down:

• What triggered the emotion
• What you fear might happen
• How you behaved
• How you want to cope

This will allow you to notice patterns in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Once you are aware of these automatic thoughts and behaviors, you will get better at recognizing them in the moment and actively challenging them.

In the moment, pause before you react. Take a few slow, deep breaths and remind yourself that an intense feeling is not necessarily an emergency. It may be your attachment system sounding a false alarm.

Then separate the fact from the story. The fact might be “my partner has not replied for three hours.” The anxious story is “they must be losing interest.” A more balanced reading is “there could be many reasons that have nothing to do with me.”

Learn to Trust Yourself

When you trust and rely on yourself for comfort and support, you are no longer dependent on other people.

That does not mean you cannot share your feelings with other people and seek reassurance and encouragement from them. It just means you can soothe your own distress without relying on other people to do that for you.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Kim Sage suggests a related practice.

Part of healing is learning to identify your own needs clearly. Ask what feels right. Notice how a decision feels in your body. Is it a grounded choice, or simply a reaction?

Self-acceptance matters here too. An anxious attachment style is nothing to be ashamed of.

It brings real strengths: you may be caring, empathetic, and quick to notice what a partner needs.

Dr. Sage frames it this way. Parts of this style are genuinely beautiful, such as being loving, being a good caretaker, and being mindful of other people.

This will empower you and allow you to communicate more effectively, thus improving the overall quality of your relationships.

Learning to trust in your ability to cope and be happy on your own means having effective ways to manage your anxiety.

Managing Anxiety/ Regulating Emotions

Hyperactivating strategies, like clinging, controlling, and demanding, will only serve to make your anxiety worse.

Learning to sit with your emotions and finding healthy ways to manage your anxiety will be much more effective.

Instead, when your anxiety seems caused by your partner’s behavior, turn your attention inward rather than on the other person.

You cannot control what other people say or do. You can control how you manage your feelings and behaviors.

Some helpful self-regulation activities include:

• Progressive muscle relaxation (consciously relaxing each muscle in your body)
• Breathing exercises
• Meditation/ yoga
• Going for a walk
• Watching your favorite TV show
• Exercising
• Journaling
• Other grounding exercises like holding an ice cube in your hand or drinking herbal tea
• Rationalizing (e.g., How likely is it because they are rejecting you? What other explanations might there be? What is the rational/ objective explanation?)

Practice Behavioral Experiments

To change unhelpful beliefs, you need evidence that contradicts them, and this is best done through behavioral experiments.

When doing these, it’s best to start small and work your way up, as the anxiety might be quite high at first.

Over time, the anxiety will reduce. It can be helpful to use emotion regulation strategies (e.g., body relaxation, breathing, journaling) while trying out new behaviors.

In this case, the experiments should involve testing out secure behaviors, such as:

• Spend time alone (that includes putting your phone away)
• When someone does not reply immediately, let it happen, put your phone away, and do something else that will distract and calm you
• Communicate your feelings and needs to your significant other without becoming emotional: stay calm and assertive
• When you are feeling distressed, try some of the self-regulation activities mentioned above 
• Establish and maintain boundaries (e.g., when someone does something you do not like, stand up for yourself, communicate this calmly and assertively, and walk away if necessary)

Esther Perel, a licensed marriage and family therapist, offers a useful way to think about these experiments. Couples often organize themselves so that one partner habitually asks for closeness and the other habitually asks for space, even though everyone needs both.

Perel suggests naming the pattern (“what’s your dance?”). Then deliberately practice the side you usually leave to your partner.

Setting Boundaries

Setting (and sticking to) your boundaries is an important part of healing your relationship with yourself and learning to feel more secure in relationships.

This means not allowing others to treat you poorly and demanding they respect you and your needs. It also means you respect yourself and trust yourself to know what is best for you.

If you tend to overgive, start with an audit. Where do you say yes out of guilt or fear of displeasing someone? Practice saying no, starting small. A respectful “I’m sorry, I can’t take that on right now” is already a meaningful boundary.

Communication matters as much as the boundary itself. Practice assertive communication: make calm, clear, non-blaming requests.

Say “I feel worried when I don’t hear back” rather than “You never text me back.” This lets you ask for what you need without coming across as needy or controlling.

Research shows what is at stake. In a study of 263 couples followed for a year, one pattern predicted lower satisfaction in both partners. The more anxiously attached partner pressed for change in conflict while the other partner withdrew (Lefebvre et al., 2026).

Here is some advice on establishing boundaries:

• Identify what your values are/ what is important to you in your life
• Putting everyone else’s opinions and needs aside, what do YOU need from a relationship?
• Examine your relationships: what are the unhealthy aspects?
• In your view, what does it mean to be a healthy, independent adult?
• Focus on your strengths and the things you do well
• Identify and use your protective factors (things that make stress easier to handle), such as certain relationships, social support, work, school or university, values, and problem-solving skills.
• Now, think about establishing boundaries with significant others. Do you want a relationship with them? What do you want to share and not share with them? Where are the limits?

Once you have established your boundaries, communicate them at an appropriate time. Let others know how you will respond if they do not respect them. Then stick to it.

Remember, saying no to someone else often means you are saying yes to yourself.

When you have a healthy, trusting relationship with yourself, you are much more able to have healthy relationships with other people, too. 

Take Control 

Transforming your attachment style is difficult and takes a lot of effort at first. But it gets easier. Over time, you will reap the benefits of healthier relationships.

You must take control of your journey and make it your responsibility to heal yourself and your insecurities. Placing blame on other people might feel easier, but this will only keep you stuck in unhelpful patterns of feeling and behaving. 

Sources

Candel, O.-S., & Turliuc, M. N. (2019). Insecure attachment and relationship satisfaction: A meta-analysis of actor and partner associations. Personality and Individual Differences, 147, 190–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.04.037

Dansby Olufowote, R. A., Fife, S. T., Schleiden, C., & Whiting, J. B. (2020). How can I become more secure?: A grounded theory of earning secure attachment. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 46(3), 489–506. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12409

Eller, J., Magro, S. W., Roisman, G. I., & Simpson, J. A. (2022). The predictive significance of fluctuations in early maternal sensitivity for secure base script knowledge and relationship effectiveness in adulthood. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(10), 3044–3058. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221077640

Lefebvre, A.-A., Brassard, A., Jean, M., Daspe, M.-È., Lafontaine, M.-F., & Péloquin, K. (2026). The role of communication in romantic attachment and relationship satisfaction: A dyadic longitudinal study. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 52(2), Article e70127. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.70127

Métellus, S., Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Brassard, A., & Daspe, M.-È. (2025). Attachment anxiety and relationship satisfaction in the digital era: The contribution of social media jealousy and electronic partner surveillance. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 51(4), Article e70074. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.70074

Perel, E. (n.d.). The paradox of security vs. freedom [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2SuN9BXBxs

Shaver, P. R., & Mikulincer, M. (2002). Attachment-related psychodynamics. Attachment & Human Development, 4(2), 133–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730210154171

Simpson, J. A., & Rholes, W. S. (2017). Adult attachment, stress, and romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.006