What Does Anxious Attachment Feel Like in Adults?

Dec 30

Chloë Bean, LMFT is a licensed somatic trauma therapist based in Los Angeles, specializing in anxiety, burnout, trauma, and nervous system healing for high-achieving women. Her work integrates somatic therapy, EMDR, and IFS to support lasting regulation, resilience, and relational healing.

Understanding the Nervous System Roots of Relationship Anxiety

If you find yourself overthinking texts, feeling unsettled when someone pulls away, or struggling to “just relax” in relationships, you may be experiencing anxious attachment.

Anxious attachment isn’t about being needy, dramatic, or “too much.” It’s what happens when your nervous system learned—often early on—that connection was unpredictable. Your body adapted by staying alert, scanning for signs of distance, and working hard to maintain closeness.

For many high-achieving women, anxious attachment can feel especially confusing. You might look confident, capable, and grounded on the outside, yet feel dysregulated, preoccupied, or emotionally exhausted in close relationships.

This post explores what anxious attachment actually feels like in adulthood, why it develops, and how somatic therapy can help you heal it at the nervous system level.

What Is Anxious Attachment?

Anxious attachment is a relational pattern rooted in the nervous system. It often develops when early relationships were inconsistent—sometimes nurturing, sometimes unavailable, emotionally unpredictable, or overwhelming.

As a child, your system learned:

“I need to stay alert to keep connection.”

That survival strategy doesn’t disappear just because you’re now an adult. Instead, it shows up in romantic relationships, friendships, family dynamics, and even work—especially when closeness or security feels uncertain.

Anxious attachment is not a diagnosis.

It’s an adaptive response to relational stress.

What Anxious Attachment Feels Like in Adult Relationships

Anxious attachment is often less about what you think and more about what you feel in your body.

Common experiences include:

Tightness in the chest or stomach when waiting for a response
A sense of urgency to fix, clarify, or resolve relational tension
Difficulty calming down after perceived distance or conflict
Overthinking conversations, tone, or timing
Feeling emotionally dependent on reassurance, even when you value independence
A push-pull between craving closeness and fearing rejection
Shame or self-criticism for “caring too much”

Many people with anxious attachment intellectually understand what’s happening—yet still feel hijacked by emotional and bodily reactions that don’t respond to logic.

That’s because anxious attachment lives in the nervous system, not just the mind.

Why High-Achieving Women Often Struggle With Anxious Attachment

High-functioning, capable women often internalize anxious attachment differently.

Instead of appearing outwardly clingy, you may:

Over-function in relationships
Take responsibility for others’ emotions
Suppress your needs to avoid conflict or abandonment
Appear calm while feeling internally activated
Stay in confusing or emotionally unavailable dynamics longer than feels good

You might tell yourself you should be past this—especially if you’ve done insight-based therapy, read the books, or understand attachment theory.

But understanding why you feel anxious doesn’t automatically teach your body how to feel safe.

Why Exes Tend to Resurface — Especially With Anxious Attachment

One of the most common questions I hear from clients is:

“Why do exes always come back when I’m finally starting to move on?”

This question was recently explored in a feature I was quoted in for Toronto Sun, which looked at why former partners often resurface months—or even years—after a breakup.

From a nervous system perspective, this pattern makes a lot of sense.

For someone with anxious attachment, a breakup doesn’t just register as emotional loss. It can activate a deeper sense of threat tied to separation, abandonment, or unpredictability. Even when a relationship wasn’t healthy, the nervous system may still associate that person with familiarity and perceived safety.

At the same time, ex-partners often reappear when their nervous systems are dysregulated—during loneliness, stress, or moments of vulnerability.

What looks like “bad timing” is often two nervous systems seeking regulation through familiar connection. This is especially common after emotionally confusing or inconsistent relationships, where the nervous system is still trying to make sense of what happened.

Why This Hits Harder If You Have Anxious Attachment

If you’re anxiously attached, hearing from an ex can feel grounding and destabilizing at the same time.

You might notice:

A surge of hope followed by anxiety
Difficulty thinking clearly after contact
An urge to respond quickly or re-engage
Shame for “not being over it yet”
Confusion about whether reaching out is intuition or attachment activation

This doesn’t mean you want the relationship back.

It means your nervous system is responding to perceived reconnection.

A helpful reframe many clients resonate with is this:

Missing your ex is information — not instruction.

It’s a signal that something inside you is seeking safety, reassurance, or connection. The work isn’t to act on the feeling—it’s to tend to the part of you that’s activated.

Anxious Attachment Is Not a Flaw — It’s a Nervous System Pattern

There is nothing wrong with you.

Anxious attachment developed because your nervous system was trying to protect connection. It helped you survive emotionally at one point in your life.

The goal of healing isn’t to force yourself to become “secure.”

It’s to help your nervous system learn that the danger has passed.

When safety is felt—not just understood—attachment patterns begin to soften naturally.

How Somatic Therapy Helps Heal Anxious Attachment

Because anxious attachment is held in the body, healing it often involves somatic trauma therapy in Los Angeles that supports anxiety and relationship patterns, not just insight alone.

Somatic therapy focuses on:

Tracking nervous system activation
Increasing capacity to tolerate closeness and uncertainty
Slowing relational reactions before they turn into action
Helping the body experience safety in real time

In my work, I integrate body-based approaches with parts work and trauma-informed therapy to help clients:

Understand the younger parts that learned to fear disconnection
Gently unwind survival responses like hypervigilance and emotional urgency
Build internal safety and self-trust
Experience relationships with more steadiness, flexibility, and choice

Over time, anxious attachment shifts—not because you tried harder, but because your nervous system no longer needs to stay on high alert.

Healing Anxious Attachment Doesn’t Mean You Stop Caring

Many people worry that healing anxious attachment means becoming detached or emotionally closed off.

In reality, the opposite happens.

As your nervous system settles, you may notice:

Less obsession with reassurance
Clearer boundaries without guilt
More trust in your internal signals
A stronger sense of self inside relationships
Greater ease being alone and connected

You don’t lose your depth.

You gain stability.

A Gentle Invitation

If parts of this resonated, it may be a sign that your system is asking for care—not correction.

You deserve relationships that feel steady, supportive, and safe—not ones that keep your nervous system on edge.

If you’re a high-achieving woman in Los Angeles or across California seeking somatic, trauma-informed support for anxious attachment, help is available.

When you are ready, you are also welcome to reach out to see if working together feels like a good next step.

FAQ: Anxious Attachment, Relationships, and Nervous System Healing

1. What does anxious attachment feel like in adults?

Anxious attachment in adults often feels like heightened sensitivity to distance or disconnection in relationships. You may notice overthinking texts, feeling unsettled when someone pulls away, difficulty calming down after conflict, or a strong need for reassurance. These reactions are not flaws — they are nervous system responses shaped by early relational experiences.

2. Why does anxious attachment feel so intense in romantic relationships?

Romantic relationships activate the attachment system more strongly than most other connections. If you have anxious attachment, closeness and uncertainty can trigger the nervous system’s threat response, leading to urgency, fear of abandonment, or emotional overwhelm — even when the relationship itself isn’t objectively unsafe.

3. Why do I still miss my ex even if the relationship wasn’t healthy?

Missing an ex doesn’t necessarily mean you want the relationship back. For many people with anxious attachment, a breakup activates the nervous system’s fear of separation. The body often longs for familiarity and perceived safety, even when the relationship involved inconsistency, emotional unavailability, or harm.

4. 4. Why do exes tend to come back after a breakup?

Exes often resurface during times of stress, loneliness, or emotional dysregulation. From a nervous system perspective, reaching out to a former partner can be an unconscious attempt to seek comfort through familiar connection. This dynamic can feel especially intense when anxious attachment patterns are present.

5. Can anxious attachment be healed, or do I just have to manage it?

Anxious attachment can absolutely heal. With nervous system–based support, the body can learn that connection no longer requires constant vigilance. Over time, emotional reactions soften, self-trust increases, and relationships begin to feel steadier and less consuming — without losing emotional depth.

6. How does somatic therapy help with anxious attachment?

Somatic therapy helps by working directly with the nervous system rather than relying on insight alone. It supports awareness of bodily cues, regulation of stress responses, and healing of relational patterns stored in the body. This approach can be especially effective when anxious attachment doesn’t shift through talk therapy alone.

7. When should I seek therapy for anxious attachment?

Therapy can be helpful if anxious attachment is impacting your relationships, self-worth, or emotional well-being — especially if you feel stuck in repeating patterns, struggle to calm your body after relational stress, or feel overwhelmed by closeness or separation. Somatic, trauma-informed therapy offers a supportive path toward lasting change.

Chloe Bean