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How to Heal Anxious-Avoidant Attachment and Build Secure Relationships
Not Just Anxious... Not Just Avoidant... The Grandaddy of Them All
CT Dool
February 11, 2025 • Read Time: 11 minutes
In This Guide
What Is Fearful-Avoidant Attachment?
My relationships always started… intensely.
Deep, powerful feelings for this person who seemed like my soulmate, my perfect match. Yet, I’d known them for just weeks (or days).
Later on, I’d question everything. I’d create distance and ultimately sabotage the relationship.
Caught in the perpetual purgatory between fear of intimacy and fear of abandonment.
“Why do I self-sabotage my relationships?” I ask myself, again.
Welcome to fearful-avoidant attachment—a pattern that keeps you stuck in push-pull dynamics, sabotaging the very intimacy you crave.
The good news? You can change. You can heal. And this guide on how to heal fearful-avoidant attachment will show you the exact steps. As always, it’s packed with actionable tools.
It ain’t the coolest graphic, I know… but damn is it punchy and informative.
As We Change, Everything Changes
I liken healing our attachment tendencies to getting sober. Follow me here for a sec…
Before I quit drinking, my life revolved around alcohol. Everyone in my universe was a drinker. It’s simply the way life was.
Following much shedding of habits, beliefs, and people, I was sober and building a new life. My world opened up to new people and activities that didn’t require alcohol.
I knew these existed, intellectually, but hadn’t gotten the proof.
I was living in a new reality.
The same is true for secure relationships. Before, I only met and attracted anxious and avoidant partners, as a product of my being the same. Insecurity, anxiety, and jealousy—simply the way relationships were.
As I healed, I began to meet healthier, secure women. They were very different than those from before.
These women took things slower, observed patterns and evaluated more logically, and stayed grounded.
They didn’t frequently bring up “other girls”. They weren’t threatened by the normal fluctuations of closeness and distance.
I was living in a new reality.
Understanding Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
Fearful-avoidant attachment, also known as disorganized attachment, is a complex relational pattern characterized by both a deep desire for closeness and an intense fear of it.
People with this attachment style may experience push-pull dynamics in relationships, where they crave intimacy but withdraw the moment they feel vulnerable.
This can lead to self-sabotaging behaviors, emotional unavailability, and unstable connections with partners.
Signs of Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
Feeling overwhelmed by emotional closeness, then withdrawing
Fearing abandonment, yet struggling to trust others
Experiencing anxiety when someone pulls away, but also feeling trapped when they get too close
Engaging in intense but unstable relationships
Self-sabotaging relationships due to fear of getting hurt
Feeling emotionally numb or detached after deep intimacy
If these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Healing is possible, and it starts with understanding the root causes and taking intentional steps toward secure attachment.
What Causes Fearful-Avoidant Attachment?
Fearful-avoidant attachment often originates from early childhood experiences. Some common causes include:
Emotional unpredictability in caregivers – Growing up with parents or guardians who were nurturing at times but distant, neglectful, or punitive at others.
Past betrayals and broken trust – Experiencing abandonment or emotional inconsistency in childhood or past relationships.
Unresolved trauma – Growing up in chaotic or unstable environments, leading to hypervigilance and emotional walls.
Negative relationship modeling – Witnessing dysfunctional relationships where love was conditional, manipulative, or emotionally unsafe.
While you can’t change the past, you can change your emotional responses, thought patterns, and behaviors.
Healing requires awareness, intentional action, and a willingness to step into discomfort for the sake of growth.
The Mindset Shift: Integration, Not Suppression
Healing isn’t about denying your past or suppressing emotions. The key is integration—acknowledging past wounds while choosing a different path forward.
Here’s the truth:
You are safe. Your needs are valid.
You are worthy of love and care, regardless of another person’s availability or distance.
A shift in a partner’s behavior isn’t necessarily a threat. Healthy relationships have natural fluctuations.
Instead of bouncing between extremes—chasing love out of anxiety or withdrawing out of avoidance—you learn to find the middle ground: security.
Key phrase—”no longer at the center of experience”
How to Heal Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
Healing isn’t about becoming "perfectly secure" overnight—it’s about making small, intentional shifts toward stability and emotional safety. Here’s a structured approach to moving from fearful-avoidant to secure attachment:
1. Recognize and Track Your Emotional Triggers
Before you can change behaviors, you need to understand your emotional patterns. Start journaling your triggers and responses in relationships.
Ask yourself: When do I feel the urge to withdraw or sabotage? When do I feel the most anxious?
Track emotional shifts – Note when you feel distant, fearful, or overwhelmed in relationships.
Identify patterns – Do you pull away after deep intimacy? Do you overanalyze shifts in your partner’s mood?
2. Build Internal Security (Instead of Seeking External Validation)
People with fearful-avoidant attachment often look to their partner for reassurance but struggle to trust it. The goal is to cultivate self-trust and self-soothing strategies.
Affirmations: "I am safe. My needs are valid. I am worthy of love and care, regardless of someone’s availability."
Grounding practices: Breathwork, meditation, and body scans to calm the nervous system.
Healthy self-soothing: Engaging in hobbies, fitness, and personal growth rather than relying on a partner for emotional regulation.
3. Slow Down in Relationships
Fearful-avoidants often dive headfirst into deep intimacy, only to withdraw later. A secure approach involves:
Pacing emotional vulnerability – Gradually revealing parts of yourself instead of oversharing too quickly.
Avoiding fantasy relationships – When you catch yourself idealizing a partner, remind yourself of what you don’t yet know about them.
Giving space for natural connection – Letting the relationship develop over time rather than forcing intensity early on.
4. Reframe Relationship Fluctuations as Normal
One of the biggest struggles for fearful-avoidants is misinterpreting normal shifts in relationships as a sign of rejection or abandonment.
Understand that emotions fluctuate – Your partner will naturally have days where they are more affectionate and days where they need space.
Resist catastrophic thinking – If someone pulls back slightly, it doesn’t mean they’re leaving.
Communicate rather than assume – Instead of withdrawing in fear, express your concerns calmly.
5. Develop Healthy Boundaries
Setting and respecting boundaries helps create a stable relationship dynamic.
Give yourself permission to take space without guilt.
Respect others’ boundaries without assuming distance means rejection.
Avoid guilt-tripping or testing your partner as a way to feel reassured.
6. Understand How Secure Relationships Function, And Model Them
Healing is easier when you interact with people who model secure attachment. Notice how secure individuals:
Handle conflict without withdrawing or becoming aggressive
Communicate needs clearly without guilt
Allow for independence without fearing abandonment
Provide consistent emotional support
By spending time with secure individuals, you retrain your brain to see healthy relational patterns as the norm.
How to Build Secure Attachment (Actionable Steps)
1. Go Slow—Seriously
Fearful-avoidants tend to accelerate intimacy quickly, early on, to create a strong bond and avoid abandonment.
But this backfires, leading to intense, unstable relationships.
The Fix:
Resist the urge to rush emotional depth, commitment, or attachment.
Remind yourself: When you catch yourself fantasizing about a future with someone soon after meeting them, remind yourself, "I don’t fully know this person yet." List three things you still need to learn about them.
Accept the reality of dating as an adult—sometimes, one or both parties will decide the relationship isn’t a fit. This is normal, healthy, and saves much time and pain down the road.
2. Track Your Emotional Triggers
Self-awareness is key. Pay attention to the moments when you feel anxious, triggered, or ready to sabotage.
The Fix:
Journal your triggers – When do you feel anxious or detached? What’s the story you’re telling yourself?
Pause before reacting – When triggered, ask yourself: "What’s the secure response here?" Then act accordingly.
3. Build Internal Validation
If your self-worth depends on external validation (texts, affection, reassurance), you’ll stay stuck in the anxious-avoidant cycle.
The Fix:
Develop a life outside of relationships: hobbies, fitness, friendships, personal goals.
Shift focus from "Do they like me?" to "Is this person right for me?"
Practice affirmations: "I am worthy of love and care, regardless of someone else’s availability." Check out our deep-dive on self-assuredness.
4. Create Secure Foundations
Think of your past relationships—were they all chaotic? That’s because you were attracting and choosing familiar patterns of insecurity.
The Fix:
Recognize that secure relationships operate differently—they take time, they aren’t all-consuming, and they don’t rely on anxiety to fuel connection.
When dating, observe before investing—how does this person handle stress, anger, or disagreement?
Set early, guilt-free boundaries. Healthy relationships respect space and pacing.
Final Thoughts: Moving Toward Secure Attachment
Healing fearful-avoidant attachment is a process of integration, not avoidance.
It’s about recognizing past wounds without letting them control your present.
The more you practice secure behaviors—self-trust, pacing relationships, setting boundaries, and normalizing fluctuations—the more your attachment style shifts over time.
If you’re struggling with self-sabotage, intimacy fears, or emotional walls, remember: You are not broken. You are healing.
Actions You Can Take Now:
Journal to track patterns and emotional triggers. We’ve got a step-by-step guide to starting a journaling practice.
Practice the "What would a secure person do?" exercise.
Slow down relationships and set boundaries early, healthily, and without guilt.
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To your growth,
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