How do you approach your relationships? Are you open about your boundaries, or do you keep them to yourself? Do you feel the urge to be clingy, or do you crave distance?
The way we interact with partners, family, friends, coworkers, and even our pets can be attributed to something known as an attachment style. Attachment theory was developed in the 1970s by John Bowlby, a British psychologist and psychoanalyst. His theory suggests the way infants bond with their caregivers influences their social development. In the 1980s, Bowlby’s attachment theory was expanded by psychologists Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver to include adult romantic relationships.
According to this theory, feeling persistently anxious about your relationships could indicate an anxious (or anxious-preoccupied) attachment style. We’ll discuss what this means, how it is tied to relationship OCD—a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and how you can cope with anxiety to improve your relationships.
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What is an attachment style?
There are four main categories of adult attachment styles: secure, anxious, disorganized, and avoidant. A secure attachment makes you feel more stable and safe in your relationships. If you have an insecure attachment, you may have difficulty trusting others or be unable to maintain long-term relationships. It’s also possible to have multiple attachment styles, with one that’s more dominant over the others.
There’s also the chance that your attachment style can change over time. “Maybe you felt really secure growing up with your family, and then maybe you had a couple of really painful, distressing relationships, and now feel less secure and safe when it comes to being in a relationship,” Tracie Zinman-Ibrahim, LMFT, CST, Chief Compliance Officer at NOCD.
What is an anxious attachment style?
So, what exactly is an anxious attachment style? “An anxious attachment style is one that feels less safe and secure,” says Zinman-Ibrahim. “People who have an anxious attachment often didn’t have an upbringing where they could feel secure and trustworthy in how their caregiver would show up for them when their needs needed to be met, when they were struggling, or just when they weren’t feeling well.”
If you have an anxious attachment style, you might:
- Feel clingy
- Be afraid of being emotionally vulnerable or intimate
- Fear abandonment
- Have low self-esteem
- Have trouble being alone
- Be unable to accept criticism
- Lack boundaries
- Get anxious when separated from your partner
- Struggle to get over a breakup
- Overly obsess about or fixate on someone
- Intentionally sabotage relationships by starting fights or cheating
People who have an anxious attachment often didn’t have an upbringing where they could feel secure and trustworthy in how their caregiver would show up for them when their needs needed to be met, when they were struggling, or just when they weren’t feeling well.
What triggers an anxious attachment style?
Certain situations can cause your attachment style to “flare up” and make you feel more anxious about your relationship. These potential triggers can include:
- When your needs aren’t being met in your relationship
- Feeling abandoned in your relationship
- Being rejected
- A sudden change in communication
- Feeling dismissed
- Not feeling like you’re your partner’s highest priority
Having an anxious attachment can impact your ability to maintain a balanced relationship with your partner. “When you have an anxious attachment, you’re often overanalyzing what’s happening in the relationship, overreacting to situations that aren’t that serious, and blowing them out of proportion to make them seem more serious than they are,” explains Zinman-Ibrahim.
Is it Relationship OCD?
There’s a strong connection between OCD and anxious attachment styles. According to Zinman-Ibrahim, one OCD subtype, in particular, relationship OCD, can share similar symptoms to anxious attachment.
Relationship OCD (ROCD) hones in on your relationships—both romantic and non-romantic. It can cause intrusive thoughts, such as concerns that you’re not with “the one” or that your best friend doesn’t actually like you. You may perform compulsions in return, which are repetitive physical or mental behaviors to get rid of fear and anxiety. These compulsions can be anything from a constant need for reassurance that your partner loves you or being overly honest with your friends—known as confessing—even when you know it could hurt their feelings.
However, Zinman-Ibrahim notes that just because you have ROCD doesn’t automatically mean you have an anxious attachment. “Maybe you always felt secure in a relationship, but now you’re getting obsessional doubts and needing constant reassurance or confessing,” she says. “It’s not a core problem for relationship OCD like it is for anxious attachment, where you’re not feeling secure in your relationship or can’t form healthy relationships.”
She adds that not feeling secure in your relationship, not being able to form healthy relationships, or having poor boundaries could occur while having Relationship OCD—but these characteristics would be more aligned with your OCD than an anxious attachment style. “If you come into the world and you have an anxious attachment style and you have Relationship OCD, then they’re going to look very similar, but they’re treated differently,” she says.
How to cope with an anxious attachment style
You would never get diagnosed with any attachment style, so if a therapist ever tries to diagnose you with one, run the other way. Attachment styles are simply a theory and are not any type of mental health disorder.
But, if you want to learn how to fix an anxious attachment style to improve your relationships, Zinman-Ibrahim advises against doing it on your own. “First of all, you have to know that you have it,” she says. “Then you would have to understand how to navigate it, which is a pretty complex situation. I don’t know how somebody would do that without therapy.”
That’s why therapy is recommended for managing an anxious attachment style. Here are therapies that can teach you how to create and maintain healthy relationships:
- Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT): This talk therapy can help you resolve any deep-rooted issues affecting your relationships. “You can use DBT to learn coping skills and how to manage your own emotions,” says Zinman-Ibrahim.
- Family systems therapy: This is another talk therapy that aims to resolve any distress or conflict in your family. Because your attachment style develops in adolescence, working with a therapist specializing in family systems may benefit anxious attachment.
- Couples therapy: If your anxious attachment style is causing a strain in your relationship, consider seeking couples counseling. A licensed therapist can work through any issues between you and your partner(s) that may occur due to your fear and insecurity.
Getting help for Relationship OCD
If you have an anxious attachment in conjunction with relationship OCD or just ROCD by itself, getting mental health treatment is necessary to help you address the cycle of obsessions and compulsions.
The gold standard treatment for all OCD subtypes is exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. “With ERP, we systematically identify what the underlying fears are, and then slowly begin to do little exercises that help us shape those fears and teach our brain that the things it’s been freaking out about are not worth it,” says Zinman-Ibrahim. ERP comprises two parts: exposure and response prevention techniques.
A licensed therapist specializing in ERP will guide you through exercises that intentionally expose you to your triggers—such as a picture of a happy couple, a break-up text, or the thought of your partner being away from you for an entire day. Zinman-Ibrahim provides one example of an exposure exercise, imaginal exposure, which involves “imagining whatever it is you’re worrying about, such as your partner leaving you, and sitting with the discomfort of that possibility.”
The most important aspect of this specialized therapy is the response prevention techniques, which involve “identifying where you’re compulsing and learning how to resist those compulsions so that your symptoms can start to come down and you can start to get some relief,” explains Zinman-Ibrahim.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is another talk therapy Zinman-Ibrahim recommends for managing relationship OCD. ACT helps you process your emotions through acceptance and mindfulness exercises, in order to expand your psychological flexibility. This therapy focuses on “figuring out what we want to do with ourselves based on our values, not our fears,” she says. “Would you rather spend all day researching what the perfect relationship is, or would you rather spend that same amount of energy doing something you enjoy?”
No one seeks to have strained relationships with the people they love. If you’re feeling anxious about your relationships due to having anxious attachment style, relationship OCD, or both, there’s help available.
