Welcome to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience dating, love and relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach and attachment experts Stephanie Rigg. And I'm really glad you're here.

So today, we're going to be talking about five traits of the anxious attachment style. Now, if you are familiar with my work, if you've been following me on Instagram for a little while, there's a good chance, you've heard me speak about anxious attachment. And that's because it forms a really big part of my work both with private clients. You know, a lot of my private clients struggle with various expressions of anxious attachment. And a big part of our work together is working through some of those patterns. And, you know, rewiring, reprogramming to try and create greater security and confidence and clarity in relationships.

And in addition to that, my signature program healing anxious attachment is obviously about healing, anxious attachment. So that's a six week program that really takes people on the journey of understanding themselves, understanding what's going on for them, and learning how to self soothe, learning how to reprogram some of those, you know, limiting beliefs and core wounds, and learning how to experience relationships in a much healthier way. So anxious attachment is kind of my bread and butter, and will no doubt form a good portion of the things that I speak about here. As I know that a lot of people in my community and my audience are also of that ilk, and really interested to learn more about anxious attachment.

So with all of that being said, today, we're going to discuss just a bit of an overview of five common traits that many most anxiously attached people will probably be able to relate to. And this is specifically in the context of adult romantic relationships. Now, this is not an exhaustive list by any measure. And in the course, my healing anxious attachment course, we obviously go into this a lot more detail. But I've distilled this list down to some of the real headline characteristics that I think you know, if you're listening, and you go, Yep, that's me, that's me, that's me, there's a good chance that, that you exhibit some of these anxious behaviors.

So let's kick off the first one here is having high intimacy needs. So the anxiously attached individual really loves being in a relationship. And within that relationship, really desires a lot of closeness with their partner, that can comprise and typically will comprise both emotional and physical intimacy. So the anxiously attached person likes to feel really emotionally connected to their partner, they want to spend a lot of time together. So there's like a physical proximity factor. They want the relationship, you know, ideally, the relationship would move quite quickly, the anxious person is likely to be ready to go all in very quickly. And yeah, they also really like physical intimacy. So you know, physical affection, closeness, hand, holding, all of those things, really helped the anxious person to feel close and connected, and reassured and saved and safe and loved and all of those things. So, those high intimacy needs are a real Hallmark trait of the anxiously attached person, and a real pillar to them, you know, feeling safe in the relationship. I think we could compare that with a secure person who, you know, has reasonable intimacy needs, we could say they're sort of in the middle of the spectrum, you know, they really enjoy intimacy, but they probably don't attribute quite as much meaning to that as the anxious person. You know, the flipside of really having those high intimacy needs for the anxious person is that if they perceive a, you know, a withdrawal or they perceive any sort of subtle disconnection, or any dip in the level of emotional and physical intimacy in their relationship, they're likely to attach a lot of meaning to that, and that's going to trigger some of their fear systems. And that might then spin out into, you know, worry, anxiety, panic, thinking that there's something really wrong.

So that leads nicely into the second trait we're going to talk about today, which is the fear of abandonment. Now, this is really at the heart of anxious attachment, it is one of the core wounds, as we say, of the anxiously attached individual. And it really underpins a lot of the behaviors that you will see, anxiously attached individuals exhibiting in relationships, a lot of them traceable to this deep fear of being left or being abandoned. Now that fear of abandonment, can have its origins in childhood, whether that's something quite reverse, like, actually, you know, having a parent leave, or something a little more subtle, like having parents not being available, all the time to soothe and comfort the child. And so they feel lonely or lost or scared, and without that attachment figure, but really, in adult relationships, this fear of abandonment, can show up as you know, worrying that your partner is going to leave you and being really afraid that the relationship is sort of always one fight away from breakdown, and that you can't then, you know, ask for anything you don't want to, you know, express that you're upset at your partner about something, you don't want to ask for anything, you don't want to, you know, voice your needs, or set boundaries. Because there's always this like looming fear that your partner is just going to throw their hands up and say it's too much, you know, it's not worth the effort. I'm out of here. So this fear of abandonment, that is at the heart of many anxiously attached people hasn't really like a lot of tentacles that, that reach out into so many different behaviors and really shape a lot of the ways in which an anxiously attached person shows up.

So the next one that I want to talk about here is that the anxiously attached individual often struggles with uncertainty, and inconsistency. Now, uncertainty, and this is true for anxiety more broadly, but certainly is seen very acutely with people who have an anxious attachment style is that uncertainty is just a breeding ground for relationship anxiety, right? And uncertainty can look like so many different things. It might be, you know, something as minor as the period of time between your partner sent to you, like you're sending a text message and getting a response. It's like, that void of uncertainty, where you're waiting for confirmation or reassurance from them that everything's okay. Even if it's something really mundane, the anxiously attached individual, it doesn't take much for them to spiral into this worst case scenario kind of thinking. And so as soon as there's any, any question mark, any uncertainty, the anxiously attached individual will typically fill in the blanks with, like a doomsday kind of scenario, write the worst possible outcome. It's like, Oh, I haven't heard from them in two hours. You know, they're there with another woman or something, right? It's like, and there's nothing, you know, factual to support any of this. But it goes that uncertainty becomes the seed for the growth of these really catastrophic interpretations and scenarios, which are obviously really distressing for the anxiously attached person, and can lead them to then respond with behaviors that take on a level of urgency and panic to try and seek the reassurance from their partner that the worst hasn't come to pass.

Another really common one that anxiously attached people experience when there is that uncertainty is catastrophizing that you know, they're partners or that they've been killed or there's been a terrible accident or you know, something really dramatic like that. It's always like the the worst possible interpretation of the situation that's really often disproportionate to the facts. The related point here is inconsistency is a real trigger for anxiously attached people and you know, I do want to add here this isn't just an anxious attachment thing, right? I think one of the most important features of a healthy relationship and a healthy partner is someone who is consistent, who follows through whose words and actions match. You know, not someone who's hot and cold, I'm not someone who says that they'll do one thing and then doesn't or does something else. So I think that, you know, broadly, inconsistency is challenging and triggering in relationships. But I think it is especially so for the anxiously attached person, because it triggers this fear of abandonment, and it triggers this uncertainty fear. And I think the anxiously attached person is much more likely to tolerate inconsistency, because they're trying to figure it out, and trying to, you know, work out what they can do to get their partner to show up or get their partner back or to get back on this person's good side. Whereas a secure person would probably just call out the inconsistency. set a boundary, and if that didn't, you know, if the other person didn't respect that, then they cut ties and move on. Right. And avoidant person, you know, there probably wouldn't be enough effort if they were both inconsistent, for that to sort of work at all. So I think the anxious person struggles with inconsistency because they're more likely to tolerate it from that fear of being alone, they're more likely to stick around in a relationship that is a little lacking in terms of boundaries and mutuality, and, and all of those things that make a healthy relationship.

Okay, number four, is that the anxiously attached person is really prone to overthinking. Again, this relates to what we've already been speaking about. But I think most if not all, people who I speak to, who struggle with anxious attachment, will immediately launch into telling me the story with all of the details. And you know, and then I sent this text message, and then 12 minutes later, they responded with that one. And I think what that means is it you know, like, I can always tell that someone has spent so much time thinking about the relationship, and trying to map out, you know, every what every, like micro movement, what every word in a text message means, and like, it's this desperate attempt to make sense of a situation that is causing them to feel unsafe, right. And it's like, this desire to create, again, certainty, or clarity or safety, by thinking your way out of the insecurity that you feel. And so I think the, there is a layer to this, which is a real fear of vulnerability and a fear of the emotions that would come with that, you know, oh, no, I think I'm going to be rejected. So I'll just play out every scenario, like every version of the conversation, I'll rehearse ahead of time. So that if that comes to pass, when that comes to pass, because I've convinced myself that it's going to happen, at least I will have, you know, rehearsed it ahead of time, and I'll be somewhat prepared, right? I'll know what to do. It won't be as scary, it won't be as hard it won't be as humiliating, because I will have prepared myself. Right. And I think that as attractive as that might seem as a strategy. It can be really damaging. And obviously, you know, if anyone listening relates to this, you know, how much mental and emotional energy overthinking to that degree occupies? I think relatedly because anxiously attached, people spend so much time and energy thinking about their relationship, they can also become very resentful when their partner doesn't match their efforts in that respect. You know, an anxious person might spend hours a day thinking about their relationship and their even a secure partner might not because they just sort of assume that everything's fine, right? It's not that they're distant or avoidant or not invested. But they don't have this starting point of something's wrong. And so they don't really have cause to, you know, think and ruminate and hypothesize and dwell in the same way that an anxious person does. And I think this then breeds a perception among anxious people that, you know, they're always the ones giving more and thinking more and they care more and no one's ever going to care as much as I do. But it's really important to check ourselves there and go How much of that is because I'm going overboard here? And how much of that is because I'm in an unhealthy pattern of overthinking over giving, overextending myself. And maybe there's scope for me to scale that back to a more healthy medium.

Okay, last but not least, is that anxiously attached people tend to be prone to jealousy and comparison. And you may be noticing a theme here, because this relates back to the fear of abandonment, right. Jealousy is, you know, I think, again, it's important to make clear that everyone experiences jealousy at various times, and there's nothing inherently wrong with or bad about jealousy, you know, it's an adaptive trait, it's a thing that we've learned as humans to sort of protect our partnership, and to perceive a threat to the partnership, I think, where it gets tricky. And this is certainly the case for anxious people, is that we might be hypersensitive or hyper vigilant in terms of our perception of that threat. So it's almost like we have, you know, our, our sensor, or our radar is super, super sensitive. And so we're on really high alert. And that can play out by being, you know, crippled by jealousy, and really struggling to trust, really struggling to trust our partner, really struggling to see, you know, how they could ever be in a situation where there was like, you know, another woman or another man or whatever, and like that, they wouldn't go and you know, do something that they won't fall in love with them, or hook up with them, whatever, we just can convince ourselves that that's an inevitability, and then desperately try and like control. And manage that situation by like, grouping or turning into detective mode and trying to create, create a sense of, of control for what ultimately feels pretty unsafe. Related to that is, is comparison. And again, it's like, oh, I think you're gonna leave me, I've got this, like, fundamental, deep fear, that is my starting point that you're going to leave me that you're going to realize you don't love me, you're going to choose someone else. And so that can obviously lead us to be really on the lookout for any, you know, perceived competitors in our world. So if there's like a group of friends or something, and, you know, the anxious person might notice that their partner gets along really well with one of the other people in the group and convince themselves that their partner loves them, and is going to leave them and all like, you think they're more attractive than me, don't you, whatever it might be right? And feel so deeply threatened by that. And again, that can be really challenging. The one other thing that I'll say about jealousy, and I think this is a less obvious point, but I think can be true for anxiously attached people, is that anxious people themselves are prone to getting crushes, or developing feelings for other people outside of their relationship. So, you know, that might be like a colleague or a friend or whatever. But because anxiously attached, people do tend to develop feelings for people very quickly, that can also happen when they're in a relationship. And so, I think because they have that tendency within themselves, they sometimes project that onto a partner. And so if a partner's got like a colleague, or whatever the anxious person's going, like, if I were in that situation, I'd probably be, you know, sizing that person up as like a potential spouse or something, right? Because the anxious person tends to go from zero to 100. Pretty quickly, even if it's all hypothetical. They tend to like play it out, right? What would my future look like with that person? And so they just assume that their partner is the same and is doing the same thing, even when there's nothing to suggest that that's actually happening or that that's actually true. So I think that's like, another little angle on why anxiously attached people experience such a cute jealousy and how that can play out in their relationships.

So those are the five traits of anxious attachment that I wanted to talk you through today. As I said, they are five of many have, there's a long list and if you're interested in going into that a little more I encourage you to connect with me on Instagram or, or think about enrolling in the next round of my healing anxious attachment course. Because we, over six weeks we're going to this and so much other stuff in great detail. And it's really valuable and a really great way to get to know yourself a little better and not feel so alone and these behaviors and these experiences that I know can feel really isolating and can kind of feel like you're losing your mind. So trust me when I say you're not crazy, and you're not alone. But yes, those are the five traits. So to recap, at high intimacy needs fear of abandonment, struggles with uncertainty and inconsistency, prone to overthinking and prone to jealousy and comparison. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you enjoy the show and I will see you again soon.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of On attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships. You can find me on Instagram at Stephanie underscore underscore Rigg or Stephanie rigg.com. I've got loads of free content there. Plus, if you're interested, you can join the waitlist for the next round of my signature six week program. Healing anxious attachment. Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you soon