Mental health and emotional well-being are essential to a happy life. People are found feeling symptoms of anxiety and are involved in interpersonal struggles. We normally develop our relationship-building style in childhood by observing those who are around us.
If you feel like having a war inside your mind with negative thoughts, you’re suffering from attachment anxiety and need to know how to self soothe anxious attachment.
In this article, we will get into some depth about the root causes of your anxious attachment style, insecure attachmentfollowed by the means to get rid of the same.
Table of Contents
- What is anxious attachment
- What Research Says
- Attachment Theory
- Causes of insecure attachment
- Break up in relationship: Anxious attachment stages
- Inner feelings of partners
- Sexual Relationships and Anxious Attachment
- Is anxious attachment a mental illness?
- Disorganized Attachment to Secure Attachment
- Conclusion
- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
First, learn whether you are feeling anxiety. Experts reveal that ‘attachment anxiety’ differs from ‘general anxiety’. For example, you might suffer from developing healthy relationships if you feel like you have a strong fear of rejection or abandonment. People with this mental state shows that they are having attachment anxiety.
During the period of break-up of the loving souls; nervousness in attachment arises to its optimum level. The levels of anxiety in the relationship have been sufficiently been dilated upon in another article; which you can read here How Does a Pisces Man Test You.
What Research Says
According to the research, ‘’almost 20% of individuals develop anxious attachment issues’’ and become uncertain about how to self soothe restless attachment, overcome the fears and stay continued in the patterns of life.
It has been revealed that only 50 to 60% of people have a more secure attachment style. Whether attachment anxiety matter? What implications does inconsistent attachment style have on your well-being? Whether your attachment style as an adult affects the quality of bonding and relationships.
People with ‘general anxiety’ often attach anxiously to others and only show signs of anxiety in relationships. It can safely be inferred that restlessness in attachment can be the root cause of chaos in your mental state. It can also destroy your happiness; and make you dull, confused, uncertain, boring, and unattractive.
This theory was initially proposed by Sr. psychiatrist John Bowlby and later on expanded by other psychologists. The theory posits that children need safety from the time of their birth. The theory proposes that infants need security and dependence on their parents or primary care givers.
It can be simplified by quoting that whenever children get a feeling of “threat or fear”, or even they undergo some hardship or pain, they run to their primary caregivers to cry. Hence, a primary caregiver's responsibility is to nurture the child. This leads to more secure relationships which will ultimately lead to maintaining healthy relationships.
It is believed that attachment theory is vital for developing and grooming of the child. It plays a vital role in enhancing self esteem of the child for all times to come.
Therefore, while referring to the attributes of this theory, psychologists expressed that “children stand in need of a strong bond with their parents” while parents continue to remain inconsistent in parenting, which often leads to low self esteem in children for his whole life and also unhealthy relationship.
These children have no clue how to self-regulate to get rid of problems associated with apprehensive attachment. They also develop negative expectations of people. It is very unfortunate that people with anxious attachment doubt themselves whether they are worthy of being loved or not. However, the following attachment patterns are normally seen in people.
- Secure attachment
- Anxious attachment
- Avoidant attachment style
- Disorganized attachment behaviour
Patterns of insecure relationship changes according to the context of the existing affairs. For instance, if you have been ignored for some considerable time and your feelings have not been responded the way you expected; you would suffer from insecure attachment which require you to apply the lifestyle to self-sooth the anxious attachment.
Likewise avoiding conduct of parents also adds to toxicity in attachment of the children. Such conduct on the part of the parents who are very close to the children gives them feelings of distress and anxiousness.
Although, children try to self-soothe the restlessness in attachment by applying the techniques of giving temper irritabilities, or behaving like an impossible man or like a needy child; the given methods have become obsolete and ineffective.
However, let's be fair in responding to the fears in the mind of the child, which most of the time occur due to anxious conduct of parents or the negligence on the part of the parents towards their children or the emotional abuse etc.
As the parents are the most loving creatures for the children, negligence and ignorance on their part leave the children shattering their high self esteem or confidence and forcing them to find out the means to self soothe anxious attachment, which they normally don’t have the capacity to absorb. Psychologists often refer to this as “inconsistent parenting”.
The second issue is ‘early-life neglect’ or ‘emotional abuse’. Children or adolescents who have experienced emotional abuse often show anxious attachment behavior. Due to the lack of emotional attachment with the parents or guardians, children often develop restless attachment-related issues. It develops more in women compare to men.
The question is how the parents could get to know that their children are suffering from anxiety issues. There is nothing to worry about because research has revealed a list of symptoms, which show the existence of confusion in attachment in children: -
- Feeling distressed or clingy
- Look needy of self care
- Emotionally distressed due to inconsistent parenting style
- Unsatisfied, bored and anxious feeling in their lifestyle
- Parental rejection—the root cause of worried and concerned life
- No trust in their parents or guardians during stressful times to heal anxious attachment style
- Doubts that their parents will ignore them in a critical situation which give rise to insecure attachment style
- Develop severe psychological problems, depression and anxiety disorders even in intimate relationships
- Emotional neglect which lead to negative thoughts
- Staying at the edge of separation and broken relationships/friendships
- Isolated, bored to the stomach, and frustrated
Troubled attachment behavior and anxious avoidant attachment style show that one has a disorganized attachment problem, they typically demonstrate the following signs: -
More Sensitivity
Even before a real breakup, couples feel more sensitive due to concerns regarding attachments in relationships. They have the fear of getting alone by abandoning or the fear of rejection by their romantic partner which further deteriorate their romantic relationship.
Such a state of affairs results in creating more conflicts between the couple which ultimately lead to the end of a relationship.
Negatively Intense Reactions
Break-ups often happen due to some sort of issue related with restlessness in attachment. Couples often feel an emotional desire for a partner and miss their ex-partner. Psychologists believe this happens due to their negative thinking patterns and abandonment feelings.
Depressive Symptoms
This is another great contributor to the break-up of an ongoing secure relationship. Depressive symptoms generate highly negative responses which lead to deterioration of mental health.
In the present moment, it is considered that more negative responses lead to depressive symptoms which results, sometimes, into protest behavior in relationships.
Hence, a disorganized attachment style often leads to a breakup. Due to the failure in the first instance, partners fail to restore feelings of safety and love.
A strong urge to Re-attach
People suffering from the distress attachment dilemma or insecure partner feel most of the time to end their healthy and secure relationship. They think the relationship has become unnecessary and unwarranted.
However, they still wish to stay together for more time even after the breakup because relationships enable one to get support system and develop coping mechanism.
They keep searching for ways and ideas to find how to get back together. They may be given another try to improve their bond. However, they may end up in a cycle of breaking and making up.
Loss of Identity
Restless attachment results from a significant loss of identity. They experience this loss of identity and fail to accept who they are. These people are less willing to begin the healing process to self aware themselves to change. This reduces their chance of reuniting with their partners to re-create a safe relationship.
Jealousy and Rumination
The anxious attachment style leads to preoccupation with the breakup. Such people often struggle to heal anxious attachment; they remain hyper and jealous, which can lead to further anxious feeling and strengthen jealous-aggressive behaviors. For this reason, they grossly failed to become happy on any occasion.
After learning the impact of inconsistent attachment on the personal life of an individual or a family we can consider it a mean to destroy nervous system. People suffering from issues like emotional health make their lives miserable and also that of their ex-partners.
Inner feelings of partners
Here is a list of how anxious attachment styles can impact your relationships. If you are an anxious person and often triggered emotionally, this happens: -
- Your spouse or partner shows withdrawal and hates responding to you.
- Your partner may abandon you due to your cold and selfish behaviour.
- You feel jealous of your partner.
- Your partner may withhold important things from you.
- You feel insecure and may need your own life to deal with anxiously attached feelings (Oh my God! She is playing with my feelings).
- I want to run away...but where? To whom?
Many times, a question has been asked whether the worried attachment pattern in life could affect the sexual relationship or not. The answer is ‘Yes’. According to the ‘Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy’, among various sexual orientations, attachment styles play a major role in determining people’s satisfaction. This proves that your attachment style is likely to influence your sexual performance.
Let’s examine this in a bit more detail. Fear of abandonment and rejection are the backbone of anxious attachment style. Those suffering from such disorders keep their focus on acquiring the satisfaction of their partner, they get accustomed to increasing their sexual activity, which in result lost the emotional feelings for their partners.
Likewise, they also failed to develop due trust in their partners. This is known as anxious attachment disorder. This leads to orgasmic disorders and infidelity. Both partners can feel negative effects which become a sort of roller coaster in the context of their sexual relationship.
I believe you must have gone through the reasons behind the anxious attachment and also the manners in which it appears in the individuals, spouses, parenting or in other relations. Let’s move to the core of the article on how to recover from the dilemma of anxious attachment and whether self-soothing anxious attachment is possible to do or not.
We always believe that people should develop FUN relationships where one recognizes one’s self worth. This means they need uplifting and correct guidance which is basically an emotional need to foster eternal love.
Our passion for finding these real-world practical solutions in order to heal anxious attachment is never-ending.
Let’s solve together the relationship problems your inner child has to enhance your nervous system. We’re going to show you the most comprehensive list of strategies. Stick around and carefully read the upcoming guidelines. You are about to learn how to self soothe anxious attachment. This is a powerful roadmap for securing attachment from an apprehensive, fearful relationship.
It is really important to become self-aware of the nature of the problem. It affects only when it disturbs the relationship bond of parenting or spouses. Ideally, there is no medication to treat the problems of anxious attachment and anxious attachment style but if the problems subsist and it is diagnosed as anxiety disorder, then a medical officer may be consulted for this.
Normally, physicians offer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to aggravated form holders of anxious attachment.
Emotional stability needs more fun. If you are suffering from a disorganized attachment style, it’s time to consider and sucker-punch these demons away and to learn how to self regulate your life. The question, frequently asked, whether you can still develop a flourishing and soothing relationship with your loved ones after overcoming the issue of anxious attachment, whose answer is yes, but it needs proper focus to accomplish.
You are supposed to read, understand and follow the tips regardless of the hardship you are likely to face. Only then it is certain that you will succeed in overcoming the fears and eliminate negative patterns by gaining self-confidence, identity and awareness. Having discussed the above symptoms, we can come to some results on what type of life styling we need to adopt, or the steps which could prove beneficial to self soothe anxious attachment.
Let's start with the useful, actionable, and awe-inspiring self-sooth-anxious-attachment tips and techniques to apply to the life patterns to become aware of anxiety as well as the causes of anxious attachment and methods to overcome anxious attachment style.
1: Sitting with a Professional Therapist
There is no trouble in establishing a healthy relationship with a partner who suffers from anxious attachment. However, it would work perfectly, if you help him first by healing the hidden trauma under him/her. Unforgettable events from the past and hurtful comments have been proved difficult to deal with.
Those who suffer from such trauma find no way to move forward, or where to go, and start. Therefore, it has been recommended to hire a professional psychologist.
A trained and intelligent therapist will come up with strategies to reduce your level of frustration. They are also likely to help you navigate and understand the painful sentiments. They will try to bring an open picture to you to enable you to sooth your anxious feelings.
2: Create a Journal
If you are not interested in hiring a consultant or having a discussion with anyone regarding the emotions you carry. You can begin with writing a journal, which is considered the most effective tip to overcome your routine fears to start controlling your emotions and also to watch the progress you gain every day.
At the start, it seems boring but with the passage of time when you start writing down the vital facts, that leave you under trauma; you can determine what, when, where, and why this all occurred and whether that can reoccur or not.
In order to undertake this activity, you are supposed to write a daily diary to learn the disorganized behaviour and the reasons for anxious attachment. Once you are done with that, you can better control your thoughts and emotions to overcome unnecessary fears.
3: Galvanize Self-Compassion
Those who suffer from the issues of anxious attachment normally engage themselves in negative talks, be it with their own or with others around. Such false notion forces them to live an isolated life with the exclusion of close relatives which lead to unhealthy and anxious feelings in relationships.
It also happens that you start imposing and projecting false notions and negative behaviour on your partner, such projection of negative thoughts is significant in breaking the bond with the partner. Therefore, it is suggested to learn, adopt, follow and galvanize yourself with the tips and techniques given in the article to help yourself replace your negative thoughts with compassion.
4: Keep caring your Physical Well-being
Involving yourself in physical activities is another way to overcome the fears you have been facing due to past events. Developing a lifestyle according to your own needs is a great strategy to fix your anxious attachment style.
Considering the body's needs, take a deep breath. Do a favor to yourself and develop a habit to release pent up emotions along with daily walking or jogging for 30 minutes.
Furthermore, you can also start eating healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables, while eliminating junk food and meat from the dining table of your house.
All this works great and having taken these steps; it is believed that you could quickly change the patterns of your life leading to developing a fruitful relationship.
5: Practice Empathy and Do Kindness
Compassion does not mean you should give away all of your savings to people experiencing poverty to help them out. Rather it refers that after meeting your basic needs, you should do something to make others’ day happy.
For example, you can make your parents, friends, or neighbors happy by giving them gifts and presents. Likewise, you can take your spouse to her favourite beach or park to spend some time with loved ones.
You can also forgive a co-worker who treated you wrongly in the past. All these little acts of kindness will help you become a focus of others.
6: Focus on your Strengths
If you think there is no one to notice your talent, focus on your strengths and grow them more. We can quote the instance that you might feel frustrated about not being noticed as an outstanding football player if you do play. You can start doing small things that need no acknowledgement from others.
Further, self care start with learning the small local things likely to be discussed in the gatherings to become prominent amongst them i.e. who is providing the best services of grilled sandwich in the town. Knowing these facts will help you overcome your fears and will flourish your talent and confidence.
It has been learnt from studies that loving and supportive spouses can help each other in times of anxious attachment and also help to re-energize.
When you are anxious, look needier; you can help them build resilience. A loving spouse would encourage the partner to develop a healthy relationship.
It is believed that both partners must have self awareness to show unconditional support for each other and consult a couple of therapists for expert advice and also become available frequently to help with the given techniques.
However, the bottom line is to reduce your hypersensitivity to relationship threats and to bring the partner out of trauma resulting in building constructive relationship behaviour with your spouse.
Conclusion
We have discussed various models of relationships in which anxiety exists. Knowing the steps or moves to self soothe anxious attachment is crucial to developing a lifestyle against the build-in dilemma of undue attachment. However, if you practice the tips and techniques we have gathered to help those suffering from anxious attachment, the article is a must-read content.
We have mentioned many steps on a self-independent basis to become hyper vigilant to overcome anxious attachment triggers. The steps include but are not limited to consulting a therapist, changing eating and exercise behaviors, journaling, supporting your spouse, and polishing your strengths.
It is believed that after perusing the article and the steps given, one can conclusively overcome avoidant attachment and exclude himself from the aftermaths of the dilemma leading his life to the improved patterns.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
It varies from man to man, however, some of the essential techniques include finding the signs and your attachment theory, then starting to learn from those having the same secure attachment, develop yourself by practicing therapy.
Revamping your attachments may be by coping with your emotions, increasing endurance for others, spending more time in to friendly environment and taking things casually.
Yes, it occurs in many ways like you feel insecure, investing everything to keep things intact without being open to your partner, getting jealous and mistrusting your partner.
Keeping a desire to have communication or physical contact when it becomes available. If such an occasion doesn’t appear; start feeling insecurity and unimportance, and also doubting that the partner has no time for you or to be interested in someone else.
