How To Cope With An Anxious Attachment Style When You’re Triggered

Compared to the four attachment styles -- which include dismissive avoidant, fearful avoidant, and securely attached -- having an anxious preoccupied attachment style can feel like your nervous system is on high alert all the time when you’re dating or in a relationship.

Especially when you feel uneasy about the situation.

So what are some ways you might get "triggered" as an AP?

Anxious Preoccupied Attachment Style Triggers

One of the most common triggers for APs when dating is when someone you’re dating doesn’t text you back as quickly as usual, you immediately worry you did or said something wrong.

You check your phone constantly and may start to think that you’re not good enough, or that you’re not loveable. You desire that physcial and emotional closeness but feel there's a distance between you.

You may even put the person on a pedestal, and get so worried about whether they like you, you forget to ask yourself whether <u>you</u> even like them… and fail to consider important things such as:

❓Are they really a good fit for you? ❓Do you feel safe with them? ❓Do they meet your needs? (Or show potential of being able to)

Having an anxious attachment style often means that you can’t tune in and check with yourself because you become so fixated on whether the other person is wanting you.

Instead, you might:

-- anxiously check your phone every few minutes to see if they’ve text.

-- call friends and ask for their opinions and analyze the situation over and over, looking for a sign of hope in the words of others that this person really does like you.

-- have trouble sleeping, find it difficult to focus at work, and struggle to be present with your loved ones, even during important occasions such as birthdays, breakups and when someone is having a rough day.

It’s not that you don’t care about others. Quite the opposite, people with an anxious preoccupied attachment style are often very empathetic, kind and thoughtful souls.

It’s just having this attachment style means that being abandoned is one of your greatest subconscious fears.

So much so, you’re hypervigilant to any signs of someone leaving you – such as someone not returning a text as quickly as normal – and easily enter a state of high alert.

In a way, it can feel like your ability to function and survive is dependent on whether that person shows that they still care and won’t leave you.

And there’s a reason for this…

Why Anxious Attached People Get Triggered

The reason you feel your survival is being threatened is because this is a memory from childhood experiences when your survival was at risk if a parent or caregiver didn’t love and take care of you.

When you were a small, vulnerable child – you couldn’t fend for yourself. You needed love and nurturance. Your needs for food, water and safety were real – you would have died had they not been adequately met.

This is a normal fear as a child.

But if you have an anxious attachment style, chances are you experienced this fear on a deeper level because it’s likely you had one caregiver who met your needs as a child, and another caregiver who was more avoidant, hands-off or even neglected you. That's due to different parenting styles.

Or if you only had one caregiver, maybe they met your needs and provided you with emotional support only some of the time.

And these inconsistent parenting experiences leave an imprint in your subconscious mind.

So when you meet someone even 25 years later and they don’t call you back, or your friendship group excludes you from social events, or someone breaks up with you – it triggers this fear of abandonment in you in a very visceral and real way.

So it’s important to acknowledge this. To identify this within yourself when you’re triggered.

And even take things one step further by getting really honest with yourself.

❓ Is it really about this person not texting you back, especially if you’ve only gone on a few dates and don’t really know them? ❓ Or is your fear of abandonment and your desire to be chosen by this person taken over your mind?

It’s not always easy to ask yourself these questions, but in doing so, it’s an important step towards healing.

And a way to take your power back and not let your thoughts and fears consume you.

Because if you can objectively say:

“Yeah, I don’t really know this person yet. We had a nice time, but we’ve literally only spent 5 hours together. But I’ve spent 5 days obsessing over a text and whether they like me! And this isn’t the first time they have ghosted me. So it is really because they’re so great and we’re so well suited … or is it because my fears have been activated?”

… you can then get real about the situation.

And irrespective of whether the other person is amazing or is messing you around, because this isn't about them. It’s about YOU and your conditioning in relationships.

This insight can also be the motivation and catalyst for healing.

If you do realize you’re feeling overly triggered by someone’s actions and it’s occupying nearly every waking moment, you can choose to do something about it.

Because despite what you might have read or heard about attachment styles before, you can heal them.

Yours included.

How To Cope With An Anxious Attachment Style

Before we talk about healing, there are some easy, proven ways you can soothe your anxious attachment style when it gets activated.

And this is a huge part of the healing process, because people with this attachment style often struggle to self-soothe.

Instead, you may out-source your peace of mind, happiness and confidence to friends, family, lovers or anyone you’ve put on a pedestal.

This is because it’s really hard for you to tune in, listen and trust yourself when you have an anxious attachment style.

Chances are, you were never taught how as a child.

So you often value others’ opinions more than your own. Especially when it comes to how loveable and worthy you think you are.

Instead of feeding yourself with love, acceptance and support, you seek it from others. Which is a potent recipe for heartache, heartbreak and lifelong insecurity.

Here’s just a few reason why:

-- You can never really know what someone else is thinking

-- You can’t control anyone else’s feelings or actions (nor should you want to)

-- You might not know what someone else is going through, and whether their own conditioning from childhood prevents them from opening their heart to you

Point being: you should never base your worth or “lovability” on whether other people, especially those you don’t know well, are loving you in the way you’d like, expect or need.

So the first step towards self-soothing when you’re triggered is to reconnect with yourself, rather than looking for external validation.

This can feel challenging, especially if your nervous system is really activated and you can’t stop obsessing about the situation.

Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Body

Before you tackle your thoughts with more thoughts and healing techniques, one of the best pieces of advice for anxious attachment style is to get out of your head and into your body.

Or in other words: You need to find a way to get into a more regulated mental state so you can benefit from reprogramming tools and heal your anxious attachment style.

And the two best ways for this are through movement and breathwork.

Put your phone down and go for a run, go to a yoga class, go spinning, walk your dog – do anything to release some of that nervous energy so you can get your mind and body back “online.”

Breathwork is also a super powerful way to release stuck energy in the body and quiet your thoughts.

What’s more, it’ll deepen the relationship you have with yourself, which is essential if you want to heal your anxious preoccupied attachment style.

It’ll teach you how to look within, to feel your body, to connect with your breath, to calm your mind and connect with your insights.

Instead of letting someone else's behavior or your fears and thoughts control you, you’ll learn how to fight back (in the most peaceful, loving way possible!).

You’ll learn how to regulate your nervous system, body and mind so you no longer feel like someone’s rejection (whether that’s perceived or real) is a threat to your survival.

It no longer needs to throw you off balance for hours or days because you know how to return to balance within yourself, and quickly too.

Do this whenever you feel triggered, and you’ll be well on your way to healing.

If you’d like to discover how to use breathwork and get more advice for anxious attachment style, we recommend that you check out the Breathwork: Reduce Stress, Improve Performance & Regulate Your Nervous System course which is included in our All-Access Pass membership.

This course will show you a variety of powerful and proven breathwork techniques to help you regulate your mind, body and emotions – and improve your overall health, wellbeing and mental resilience when faced with life’s ups and downs.

And the best part? You can check this course out (and all of our courses for 7 entire days) and if you don’t experience a big breakthrough in your love life during this week, I’ll happily refund your money!

How to Heal Your Anxious Attachment Style Triggers

Once you’ve self-soothed through movement and/or breathwork, you’re in an optimal state to do some healing.

And not just surface level healing, like you might experience when a friend gives you a feel-good pep talk, but healing that lasts long-term – if not forever.

What I’m alluding to here are easy techniques that reprogram the subconscious mind.

**This is the key ingredient when healing your anxious attachment style, you need to work directly with the subconscious mind as this is the <u>ONLY</u> place lasting change takes place. **

And the good news is, you don’t need to be a master meditator or neuroscientist to reprogram your subconscious.

Anyone can do it. Including you.

What’s more, it only takes a few minutes a day and when done consistently over a few weeks, you’ll notice massive changes in the way you relate to others.

❌ You won’t feel so triggered when someone doesn’t text you back ✔️ You’ll learn how to question your thoughts and stories so they don’t have so much power over you ✔️You’ll naturally feel more confident, secure and worthy of love ✔️You’ll feel more loving, accepting and compassionate towards yourself ✔️Your standards in love will increase, you’ll no longer put up with bad behavior such as ghosting, breadcrumbing and confusing situationships that make you feel unsafe and unloved

… and ultimately, you’ll find the love you’ve been seeking. Not just in others, but more importantly, in yourself.

The Best Way to Learn About Healing Anxious Triggers

If you’d like to learn how to heal anxious attachment style, I invite you to become an All-Access Pass member to get access to the beginner and advanced courses we have to heal your attachment style:

-- Stop Abandonment & Rejection in A Relationship: Anxious Attachment Style Re-Programming

-- Advanced Anxious Attachment Style Course: Your Guide to Thrive in the 6 Stages of a Relationship

Plus, you’ll also get access to all of our courses, such as courses on:

-- how to get your needs met -- how to set boundaries -- how to increase your self-esteem -- learning about your partner’s attachment style (and all the attachment styles) -- how to repair relationships -- how to overcome procrastination, anxiety and depression -- how to set goals aligned with your personality needs

… and courses on basically every dating, relationship and emotional issue you might ever experience!

You’ll also get access to weekly live webinars, daily events led by our trained coaches and be part of a very supportive and judgment-free community.

The resources you get access to are so transformative that if you don’t have a big breakthrough within 7 days, we’ll refund your money.

And given that our courses are less than 2 hours in length and broken down into short modules, you can expect results even if you only have 10 minutes a day.

Over 20,000 people just like you have become members and experienced big breakthroughs in their first week – so we’re confident you’ll also have deeply insightful and healing “aha!” moments too.

To learn how to cope with and heal your attachment style – starting today – become an All-Access Pass member.

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