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It feels like an oxymoron.

Why would the part of you that wants love so desperately be the exact energy that sabotages it?

This is another face of the anxious attacher I have noticed over the years of my own internal work and journey with this beautiful part of myself.

Anxious attachment energy originates from the immature feminine archetype. She is covert. Hidden beneath the appearance of someone who simply wants love.

Proudly waving the white flag: “All I want is a committed partnership.”

While secretly beneath the longing is something far more unconscious.

Somatically, the anxious attachment system is activated when it feels connection or “love” perceived to be pulling away.

Have you ever noticed how you could have an amazing time and connection with someone and the moment they leave—instead of holding the bliss of being with that person in the body in harmony, you actually begin to long for more and then begin to chase?

You actually feel empty.

Despite an incredibly fulfilling connective experience.

This is because the anxious attacher doesn’t actually have the capacity to hold love in their body.

The language their nervous system speaks is: “Love isn’t safe to hold.”

Beneath the desire for connection lives an equally powerful fear of connection.

A fear of commitment. A fear of abandonment. A fear of being fully seen.

And so, without realizing it, the anxious attacher in you attracts avoidants who mirror your own avoidance.

Anxious attachment and avoidant attachment are simply two sides of the same coin.

Let’s go through a scenario:

Imagine a woman who begins dating a man. The connection is beautiful. There is chemistry. There is presence. There is possibility.

As intimacy begins to grow, her body begins to flood.

She starts searching for reassurance.

She overthinks.

She spirals.

She reaches.

She grasps.

She unconsciously begins to make the relationship responsible for regulating the terror inside of her own body.

The anxious attachment energy begins to hijack what is being created.

The anxious attacher doesn’t consciously want to destroy the relationship.

The story the anxious attacher tells itself is that “It is just trying to get closer. Just one more time. If I just knew xyz.”

But the intensity with which anxious attachment moves is almost unbearable.

For everyone involved.

It has the ability to burn down everything in its path.

Destruction.

Feel into it…how many of you have “exploded” connections because the anxious attacher energy was just “too much” to hold?

This is the anxious attacher acting as a saboteur.

Not consciously.

Unconsciously.

Next time your anxious attachment system is activated:

Get really honest.

Do I genuinely want this connection?

Or am I so terrified of feeling my abandonment wound that I’m about to sabotage it?

The antidote is for the immature feminine to deepen her capacity to stay in her body.

To feel the intensity of her anxiety when it emerges.

To stay.

To breathe.

To remain with herself.

The degree to which she develops the capacity to feel the intensity of her anxious attachment inside of her own body—instead of shooting it toward another person—is directly correlated with her capacity to hold true intimacy.

Because what is actually happening is that her little girl needs something.

To be loved, seen, and held by her.

Because she is the one who has abandoned herself.

It is the immature feminine who leaves the little girl behind. The man is simply mirroring the abandonment already happening within.

Healing begins when she turns that anxious attachment energy back toward herself.

When she allows herself to feel the almost unbearable intensity of the anxiety moving through her own body.

It is through this practice that her body develops the capacity to hold her little girl.

To begin asking:

“What do you need?”

“How can I love you?”

“How can I stay with you?”

As she begins to do this, the immature feminine takes responsibility for the little girl she has left behind.

And from this place, she begins to speak consciously.

She learns to communicate clearly, develops what I call “embodied boundaries” and begins to move as a mature woman taking care of her little girl.

As best she can.

We are all human, and we all have attachment wounds.

I truly believe that we are just at the beginning of understanding the deeper layers of our attachment system.

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