The Secure Love Club Podcast

Ep #15: Am I Anxiously Attached... or Just Really Into Them?

• Mimi Watt

Share episode

Have you ever met someone new and immediately felt hooked? Like one great date has your brain spiraling with “What if they’re the one?!” and then panicking when they take hours to reply? In this episode of the Secure Love Club podcast, we’re unpacking one of the most common (and confusing) experiences for anxiously attached daters: the difference between genuine excitement… and anxious attachment.

You’ll learn:
• How to tell the difference between real connection and nervous system activation
• The signs you’re anxiously attaching (and not just “really into them”)
• Why you spiral when someone pulls away or doesn’t text back
• How your early experiences shaped this pattern — and what to do about it
• Tangible tools to ground yourself and stop overfunctioning in dating

If dating tends to leave you feeling obsessed, dysregulated, or like you’re losing yourself — this episode is your permission slip to pause, regulate, and come back home to you. 🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

MIMI SOCIAL MEDIA
Connect with Mimi on Instagram here! 

Got something you'd love me to record an episode on? DM me on Instagram and let me know!

You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi Watt. Hey friends. Welcome back to the club As you are listening to this, I am currently in Europe somewhere gallivanting around Rome, Milan, Florence, bologna, one of the amazing places that I have on the itinerary, just absolutely living out my European dreams. But as this day, I am recording. I am still in Melbourne, so I'm sort of in two places at once. Weird, but I just had to say that I went on a walk this morning, my usual morning trot, and it is the most magical, crisp, beautiful morning here. And I always really cherish these moments on these mornings because life is so busy, there's so much going on. You know, we are always trying to do the next thing, achieve the next thing, work on the next goal. That to have these moments with yourself where you are out in nature, you are present, you are watching the sunrise, you're looking at the birds, you're looking at the ocean. It truly is. Such a gift. And I had this moment on my walk where I was reflecting on the call we had last night with my peacefully attached girls. We had our week five call, and at the beginning of every call I get the girls to share some wins because it's so important to focus on the positive because when you focus on the good, the good gets better, and where your focus goes, energy flows. So I always encourage you to find things that you are proud of and that you wanna celebrate. And we were going through the group and. I noticed that some of the girls were really struggling to come through with a win, and I kind of, I, you know, I held them accountable and I pushed them to find the win because I guarantee you can find one. And I know this because I have been in group spaces where I have felt so shit and like I genuinely couldn't find a win to save my life. But I was held to push myself to dig deep and really. Find some gold in my life and every time I was held accountable I could. And so with one of the girls we were, she was sharing what she thought maybe was a win, and I was like, are you kidding? That is such a win. And this is, this was about her. Uh, having a toxic ex come back into her life and feeling all of the urges to wanna run back to him, to give in to, you know, bend over backwards to get him to finally see how great she is and recognize her worth, and this time around. She hasn't been acting on those urges. She has been staying strong, noticing them and not giving into them, and she thought that maybe that wasn't a win because she was still feeling the urges to wanna go back to this person who she know knows isn't good for her. But what I said is, it's okay to feel the urge to go back to someone. You know, you've been living with these ingrained patterns for your entire adult life, and yes, now you're doing the work to break these patterns to recognize what's no longer serving you. But it doesn't mean that you are fixed or not fixed. It doesn't mean that you unlearn this stuff from a body and nervous system standpoint overnight. Not at all. But the fact that you are able to not give in to these extremely. Strong urges because if you are anxiously attached, you will know how tempting it is to run back to the person whose approval and validation you have been trying to get for so long. You know how strong those urges are. So to not give in and hold your ground and make decisions that are gonna serve your future self fucking massive win. And sometimes you just need the right person to hold up a mirror. So that you can see that reflected back to you. And this was a similar theme with a few of the girls in the call and I dropped a voice note into the group this morning that was all about trusting the process. I. And if you are taking steps to heal your anxious attachment, move away from those unhealthy dating patterns and become secure. Even if you're not in a paid program or you're not working with a coach or a therapist right now, even if the only steps you are taking is listening to this podcast, you are planting seeds that are going to grow into the person you are wanting to become. Trust that you showing up for yourself in these small ways. It's actually not small at all. And like I said to them, it's not that you go through an eight week program or a 12 week program and you are forever changed. No, you are gonna have, this stuff is gonna be landing and integrating with you for. Weeks and months after, you are learning it and it's about trusting yourself that when the moment comes when a similar situation arises and you need to make a different decision that is different to the way you used to show up, you will, you will set that boundary. You will voice that need. You will process your emotions in a healthy way. You will not run back to that person who is not good for you. And it all starts with taking these baby steps about learning about your patterns, learning about your attachment style, understanding the driving forces behind your behavior, and getting clear on what you want in the future and moving forward. So I wanted to share a bit of that pep talk that I gave to my girls with you here, because I just felt something in the air this morning that it was like the universe was speaking, it was coming through me, and it wanted me to remind all of you that I believe in you so much that you can do this. And all it takes is backing yourself just a little bit, taking baby steps, consistently, showing up for yourself and having. Compassion for yourself in the moment where you do divert into an old pattern. Because that's okay. It's going to happen. And I shared with the girls that that has happened to me. Even though I've come so far in my secure journey, I've had moments where I've slipped back into old patterns, but that's okay because I was able to catch it much sooner than I previously would have. And I was able to recognize what was going on, understand it, and take the lesson from that experience to say, okay, now I know what to look out for next time with even more. Significance with even more specificity. I know what to look out for that is not right for me, and I can make decisions to move away from it. So I hope that serves you and just take this pep talk and let it land and breathe it in.'cause this is the work. Now, let's be real for a second. Have you ever gone on a great first date? Felt all the butterflies. And then completely spiraled. The moment they took a little too long to text back. You start wondering things like, oh my God, did I say something wrong? Are they losing interest? Ah. And then you think, wait, am I really into them? Am I just anxiously attached? If that sounds like you, this episode is gonna feel a bit like a mix between a warm hug and a reality check. We are gonna unpack the difference between genuine connection and anxious activation, how to spot the signs of anxious attachment, giving you real life examples and what to do so you can stop losing yourself in the early stages of dating. This is a juicy one. Let's dive in. Let's start by being super honest. When you have an anxious attachment style, dating can feel all consuming. You go on a great first date, and suddenly your brain is in overdrive. You start thinking, when will they text me next? Oh my God, did I, did I say the right things on the date? Did they like me enough? Did I look good enough? Wait, what? Are they talking to someone else? What are they going on dates with someone else? And this intense focus can feel like love or infatuation keyword being feel. You think it feels like love or infatuation, and you think I just really like them. Like I just really like this person. And I remember going on so many first dates and thinking like instantly putting someone up on a pedestal. Because I just felt all the butterflies and all the feels on that first date, and I was instantly on Cloud nine, like my feet were not on this earth, and I just thought, oh my God, this person is just incredible. They're so amazing. The way they looked at me on that date, the way that they spoke to me, how present they were, oh, there's just something about them that is a bit bad. Boy, it's a bit mysterious. I just, oh my God. But what you are actually feeling is activation. Activation is your nervous system going into high alert. It's looking for signs of abandonment, inconsistency or rejection. So that intense butterfly feeling isn't, in fact a positive sign. It's a sign that your nervous system is dysregulated, that you are scanning for danger. You are hypervigilant looking for, again, any sign of abandonment, inconsistency, or rejection. So let's get into the signs that you might be actually anxiously attached. Number one, you attach quickly before truly knowing them. So this is when you create a whole fantasy version of the person after one to two dates, and you focus on their potential more than their actual behavior. And this is a really dangerous trap to fall into because when you have an anxious attachment, you typically have a low self-esteem and you are looking for someone to. Basically boost your self-esteem for you. And when we are anxiously attached, that means we are looking for anyone that we can direct our romantic feelings towards and put in the position of our primary attachment figure so that we can have somewhere to direct our focus. Almost like I why this visual just came to my mind, but it's like, you know, in Harry Potter, the Dementors. Yeah, I'm not saying you're a dementor, but you know how they fly up to people and they like suck the soul out of Harry. Like they suck the soul out of the people. This is sort of almost like what you're doing when you're anxiously attached and you are just focusing on the potential of someone rather than who they are. You're just like trying to suck the life force out of them because. There's a void that you are experiencing internally, and it's as though you just need them to fill you up and make you feel okay. And it's crazy, like the smallest things can happen that make you put someone up on a pedestal. I remember there was this guy who I went on a date with. This was a few years ago, and he. Had the full mystery guy vibes going on, like he was giving very limited information about him, and he had this thing going on where he was giving the most intense. Eye contact I'd ever had on a first date, and I'm not gonna lie, it was fucking hot. I was like, what is going on here? Like he would sit there and just with so much confidence, just stare. Into it was like staring into my soul, and not in a creepy way, but in a way that was so intriguing. And I was like, on a high, this whole date, we went out for lunch and I'm asking him questions, trying to like, you know, get to know him and he's giving me very short answers and he would always direct the focus back to me and just give me like, stare at me and in this way where we could. It was weird. Like we would literally just sit there staring at each other for sometimes minutes at a time without saying anything and just having this like deep hot, I dunno, like sexual eye contact. And after this date, the crazy thing is I didn't really know much about him, but I was like convinced. That I had met. The one I was like, oh my God. I remember calling my friends. I was like, you have no idea what I just experienced on this date. I just had the most intense eye contact with someone I've never had before. I was very dysregulated. I had butter butterflies, I had all the nerves going on, and I fully started fantasizing about my future with this person. I started picturing what our relationship would be like, the bonds that we would have, you know, just all the things. And I literally hardly knew anything about him. He was so secretive and closed off, which is obviously such a red flag, but I was just so hooked on the way he was looking at me and the way he was quote unquote seeing me, that it was like it was feeding this huge desire like to be seen because I wasn't able to see myself in the right light. That, yeah, I got attached really quickly and. A couple of, I think we were only seeing each other for like a month or so, and after about a month I started to notice him, you know, going cold, going distant, pulling away. And of course I was anxious as fuck'cause I knew what was going on. I'd put him on a pedestal and it turns out that he was. Still kind of going through the throes of a really hectic abandonment from this girl that he had been seeing who he had put on a pedestal and was absolutely not emotionally available and ended it. And I was devastated when I literally had known this person for a month and put them on a pedestal. So this was a massive sign that my anxious attachment still had its little claws in me. Right. I was attaching before I even. Knew this person. Sign number two, you feel dysregulated when you don't hear from them. So your stomach drops when they don't text back quickly. You feel anxious and restless until you get a response and you overthink and reread messages trying to find clues. I remember, let's actually use this same guy for this example when, so years ago when I was working at, I had a reception job. And I literally could not focus at work because I was so fixated on checking my phone every, I was gonna say every five minutes, let's be honest, like every 30 seconds, because I was just waiting for him to reply back. And part of the reason why I was so dysregulated is because he was very inconsistent. He would send me this really amazing message, or even a voice note saying all the things I wanted to hear, get me really excited, and then he would just go quiet for an entire day, like 24 hours. So I would reply really quickly with, you know, feeling all the feels. And then he would go quiet for 24 hours. And so I would go into that spiral thinking, wait, what the fuck? Like, what have I done? Did I say the wrong thing? Why isn't he replying? And I became really fixated on trying to control the situation and my attempt to control it was just checking my phone twenty four seven, rereading messages, re-listening to his voice notes, really listening to my voice notes. And trying to find clues and signs that would tell me what was going on, when really I was just dealing with someone who was emotionally unavailable and really inconsistent, which is never a nice feeling for our nervous system. So that's a big sign if you are feeling really anxious and restless until you hear back from someone. And another sign with that is when you do hear back from them, you. Instantly feel relieved like you are on Cloud nine. So you have this massive rollercoaster of emotions when you are, when they're distant, you are really, really low. And when they come back and you hear from them, you're on Cloud nine, which ties in to our third sign is you place your self-worth in their hands. So when you have their interest. You feel amazing, and when they're distant, you feel unlovable or unwanted. So you're going about your life. You meet someone new, and all of a sudden life is exciting, colors are brighter, food tastes better. You're so excited. The stress you had about work instantly just dissipates and falls away and you feel amazing because there's someone new in your life who you are subconsciously. Making a reflection of you and you think the fact that someone who you think is great, is interested in you, means you're worthy, means you're worthy of secure love, and this is resembling a lack of self-worth. Coming from you internally, so you are on this high, and then the moment they pull away or they are distant or they become inconsistent in their communication, it's like you just crash and you hit back down really hard. You, you go back down to rock bottom and the the wounds you are carrying that give you that low self-esteem. They're activated and all of a sudden you feel so unlovable, you feel unwanted, you question yourself. You think maybe something is wrong with you. Like, why can't I ever get this right? And you can start to be really self, uh, critical and judgmental. And then the moment they come back, they show their face, they send that message, you're on Cloud nine again. So we can see that it's this external factor that comes and goes, and your self-esteem comes and goes with it. So you might notice that when they're gone, you are really struggling to focus at your job. You are feeling really flat. You may even struggle to get out of bed. You don't want to go about your daily life. Like everyday tasks feel really heavy. Um, you are maybe gonna feel in a very victim mindset. You might be complaining about it to your friends or like just going round and round in circles, trying to decode everything. Or maybe you isolate yourself completely and you're not talking to friends and family because you are just so weighed down by the anxiety and the uncertainty of what's going on with this person. The next sign of anxious attachment is you try to earn love or overgive. So this is where you might send long, vulnerable messages hoping to get closeness or you ignore your own needs just to be really easygoing or chill. Okay? So you start coming, becoming a sort of chameleon. You try to. Find out what this person likes, what they're attracted to, and you sort of start to abandon your authentic self to just become what you think they want. Right. And this is, for me personally, this is something that, the way it used to show up for me, a big one was. Abandoning my authentic self when it came to what my style is and how I feel most confident and most comfortable, right? This is just one example. I used to think that in order to maintain someone's love and interest, a guy that I had to be this. Ultra feminine woman and I had to dress in typically feminine ways, so wearing dresses and heels and showing a lot of skin and wearing tight clothing because I thought that that's what guys are attracted to. And if I don't show that they, they're gonna lose interest, they're not gonna love me. They're gonna find, um, they're gonna look elsewhere and find someone else to give their attention to. So I would change who I really was. And the problem with that is that I never actually felt that confident being that person because it didn't feel like me. And that, I mean, that has a ripple effect that creates all sorts of issues in the relationship. Or my partner would do things that made me really uncomfortable and I could tell that if I was to speak up about it, he would get pissed or he would shut down. Or start to pull away and create distance, and with an anxious attachment, we associate distance with rejection and potential abandonment. So I would just ignore those feelings that I had going on. I would ignore my intuition. I would suppress my emotions that were like anxiety and sadness and not feeling seen or heard or understood by him. And I would suppress it all. I thought, okay, if I just don't do anything to rock the boat here, if I just keep it really nice and chill and make him happy, then he won't pull away. He will just stay nice and close and everything will be okay. But this is, I know you know this feeling, it's just awful because even though they're around, you are suffering in silence. You are suffering internally because your emotions don't just disappear and go away. When you try to stuff them down, they stay stored in the body and they can start to fester. And this creates a lot of physical problems. So I remember in these relationships, I would, in one of them, I got really severe acne when I've never typically had acne in my life. Um, I would feel really chronically exhausted. So the emotions that you hold onto internally, they do cause almost like physical ailments, um, in the body. So yeah, I just became a really small shell of my true self because I was suppressing my feelings and my needs. And this brings us to the last sign of anxious attachment, is that you panic at any sign of pulling away. So there's one slow reply, um, that's slower than normal. You will spiral and you start to think about the worst case scenarios. You will feel the urge to fix it or do something to win them back. So you will notice some distance and you will think, I have to do something to close this gap. I have to create closeness with this person because there's a bit of a, there's a lack of trust that this person is going to come back and that they're going to be there for you. Right, which stems back to your childhood, which is, we're gonna get into that in a moment. But your way of creating safety for yourself is not to reassure yourself that everything is okay. It's to turn externally and overexert yourself to try to bring that person back to you. So it could be that you are, um. Sending the long messages like we said, or maybe you start posting something on your Instagram story in the hopes that they will see it and get this subliminal message and have a desire to reach out to you, right? You're just in full panic mode, and so you are not thinking clearly about. What could actually be going on? Your mind is going into worst case scenarios. So you might start to think, oh my God, they're with another girl. I used to think this one. Like, they're with another girl. They're like literally having sex with someone else right now. Um, they are not into me. They're gonna break up with me. They're like plotting how they're gonna break up with me. It, it was just nuts, right? Like your, your mind just goes into all the absolute worst case scenarios. And the reason you do this is because your brain hates uncertainty. So you project these stories as a way to create certainty. Okay. Because if you can predict what's actually going on, then it means you won't get blindsided. You'll say, I knew it. I knew that's what was going on. I already knew, so you're just proving me right. Okay. As opposed to being, being blindsided. So you're panicking. There's distance, you're interpreting that distance as rejection or as they are abandoning me, something really painful is about to happen. So I need to project a story so I can be right and I can know what's going on. Sound familiar. You are definitely not alone. And if you're nodding your head, you're probably wondering, why am I like this? Why am I like this? It's so exhausting. I don't wanna be like this anymore. So let me tell you why. Anxious attachment usually forms in childhood. Okay? If love felt inconsistent or if you had to perform or people please to get attention from your parents. Your nervous system learned that love equals uncertainty. So now in dating when someone is hot and cold or gives you crumbs of attention, your brain lights up. You get hooked on the inconsistency because your inner child thinks If I can just get them to love me, it'll prove I'm worthy. This has nothing to do with being dramatic or needy. It's about survival. Wiring. There is so much information that your subconscious picks up on in a person that you don't consciously recognize until weeks or months later that tells your body, this is familiar. This is similar to what we have experienced our entire life, so let's gravitate towards this person and attach on because it's familiar. Even though on a conscious level you might be unsure, you might be feeling a bit anxious from the inconsistency that they're presenting. Your subconscious loves it because in a way it's like, I know how to handle this because we've been through this before, so let's do it again. Which is why gaining awareness around all of this stuff is so important. So you are not just going in blind and living and dating on autopilot. But here's the truth, you are not too much. You've just been trying to find safety in unsafe dynamics and that intense rush that you feel. It's not always chemistry. Sometimes it's just your nervous system being triggered. Most times it's your nervous system being triggered, right? If you feel. Highly, highly, um, activated. If you feel like there's this very intense rush of chemistry, it's a sign that your nervous system is being activated. But what if excitement didn't have to mean anxiety? What if love didn't feel like walking on eggshells? And what if you didn't have to over-function just to feel chosen? You deserve to feel calm, chosen, and secure in love, and that starts with recognizing when your anxiety is running the show. So what can you do when you notice these patterns? Here are a few tools to start moving towards security. Number one is I want you to pause and self-soothe. What this means is before you go into fix it mode and you wanna text this person or react impulsively, right? Maybe you're feeling really triggered because they said they were gonna text you and it's 12 hours later and you haven't heard from them and you want to react and send like a rage text or. Something really passive aggressive. Like let's say you had plans to see each other and you just wanna send them a text being like, Hey, you know what? Don't worry about tonight. Um, something actually came up, so I'm not gonna be able to see you when you actually do wanna see them and something didn't come up, but you're just saying this because you're trying to get a reaction out of them. Before you do this, I want you to pause and take a breath, ask yourself. What do I actually need right now? I want you to self inquire because there is a need that you have, and right now you think that the only way to get that need met is by reaching out to this person is by trying to get a reaction from them. But if you can identify what you actually need, then you can start to practice meeting that need for yourself. The next thing I want you to do is reality. Check your thoughts, okay? They haven't replied yet. Doesn't mean they hate me. They haven't texted you within the first hour of an amazing first date. Doesn't mean that you aren't good enough for them or that they didn't have a great experience with you, okay? Your mind is going to serve up really negative thoughts, again as a way to control the narrative. And when that happens, you wanna write it down. So write down your fear or write down this negative thought, have a look at it, and then ask, is this fact or feeling? Okay, so for example, the thought they hate me. Well, is that a fact? Can you prove that they hate you? No. So it's a feeling. It's just a feeling or a fear, and we wanna validate and acknowledge our fears because they're just there to protect us. Okay? They had the best of intentions, but you get to decide if you're going to lean into that fear. Or notice it and lovingly let it go. So asking yourself, is this fact or feeling? Number three is create internal safety. Your job isn't to get picked. It's to feel grounded in your worth no matter what. This is about recognizing that you get to be your own safe space in this life. You need to be the one to pick yourself, to choose yourself, and almost imagine, rather than trying to avoid yourself all the time and escape your life and you know, get someone else to make you feel good, this is about stopping going inward. And making your internal reality the most amazing place to be somewhere that you want to be. Somewhere that your inner child feels so loved and cherished. Like picture a beautiful meadow with butterflies and sunshine and rainbows, and your inner child is like frolicking through the meadow. So happy. You are so happy to be there. You are sitting in the sun. You're watching her. You're feeling so calm, so at ease. This is the feeling that we wanna create internally, that safe feeling so that you get really selective and picky about who you let into your inner world, because you don't want just anyone coming in there. You don't want some fuck it coming in and messing up this beautiful reality that you have worked hard to create. Yeah, so grounding yourself, building your self-esteem, and finding that internally. And then number four is date slowly and intentionally. Give yourself time to assess someone's consistency and emotional availability before diving all in. Okay, so don't do what I did with Mr. Eye gazing from the date I was mentioning earlier. Don't do that. And. Instantly just think they're amazing and you're gonna have this beautiful relationship and put them on the pedestal. Take a yo tam, go slow. Remind yourself that it takes time to truly get to know someone you don't know. This person's entire relationship history. You don't know their coping mechanisms or their self-sabotaging traits. You don't know how they handle conflict. You don't know their communication style, that takes time. And also consistency is something that is shown over time. Just because you've had two weeks of someone texting you 24 7 does not mean that that is sustainable, and they're gonna stay that consistent long-term. It does not mean that. So you need to take your time to see does this person follow through? Do their actions and their words align? Can I trust them? Do they do the things they say they're gonna do? Okay, so slow down and be intentional. Healing your anxious attachment doesn't mean shutting down or pretending not to care, or thinking you are above other people. It means caring for yourself first. Because when you feel safe in your body and grounded in your worth, love will stop feeling like a rollercoaster. It will feel peaceful and that peace, it's not boring. It's what you've always deserved. It's what you've always longed for. And so it might feel unfamiliar at first, but give it time. If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to leave a review, share it with a friend who you think could benefit from it, or come over on Instagram and say hello and share with me your takeaway from this episode. Maybe an aha moment, something you've learned about yourself, and don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of The Secure Love Club. Until then, you are not too much. You're just learning to give your love to someone who's ready to receive it. All right, my friends. Have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.