Coping with a breakup when you’ve got anxious attachment is like pouring gasoline on a dumpster hearth. 

Breakups are traumatic sufficient, however if you happen to add to that the nervous system of an anxiously connected particular person, it’s troublesome to even perform after a breakup.

That is partly as a result of your self value is tied to issues that it shouldn’t be tied to. (If you’re not sure of your individual attachment fashion, take my specially-crafted quiz to search out out now.)

Within the aftermath of a breakup, an anxious particular person might blame themselves. (This self blame inflames their internal bias in the direction of hanging onto their ex.)

Moreover, their self worth will take an even bigger hit than a securely connected particular person. 

How do we all know this?

Nicely, think about the inner dialogue of an anxious particular person. At its core, your inside messaging tends to be: “I’m unworthy of affection and approval”.

Let’s take a fast take a look at how your anxious attachment has formed your inside dialogue:

Do the quiz: What’s my attachment fashion?

The Template of Anxious Attachment & Your View of Your self

Sacred Coronary heart College shares with us that early attachment experiences with our caregivers create a working mannequin inside us. 

On the coronary heart of those inside working “fashions” or prototypes are primarily patterns in conduct, and expectations of how others will deal with us in grownup relationships.

Consider your attachment “fashion” as a template.

Inside the anxious attachment template are two foremost messages, or unconscious thought patterns. They’re:

1. I’m not inherently loveable; and
2. I can’t anticipate others to offer me with safe love. As a substitute I fear that others will reject me.

In different phrases, when you have anxious attachment, you adopted a destructive view of your self.

Sure, that is as maladaptive because it sounds. 

It’s additionally as emotionally draining because it sounds, as a result of anxiously connected persons are extra susceptible to depressive signs as nicely, which doesn’t assist to alleviate the ache of a breakup. 

This destructive view of ourselves sadly created a predictable however devastating sample of destructive feelings inside us.

These smarter than myself are inclined to name it “destructive have an effect on”. 

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Right here’s a easy definition of destructive have an effect on:

Damaging have an effect on is a bent to really feel destructive moods and feelings reminiscent of nervousness, fear, unhappiness, melancholy, anger, guilt, envy and disgrace.

This tendency makes anxiety-ridden people extra susceptible to rumination.

What does rumination imply?

It means you retain pondering the identical destructive ideas, and feeling the identical destructive emotions time and again, to a degree the place it’s laborious to drag your self out of that.

In the event you’re going via a breakup proper now, I’m positive you resonate with these feelings.

You would possibly obsess in regards to the following issues:

• Whether or not your ex hates you or not.
• In the event you attain out to your ex and so they reject you, you would possibly then swing the pendulum to hating your ex.
• Then you definitely would possibly persuade your self that what your ex thinks doesn’t matter in any respect (and that you just don’t care about her or him.)
• You’ll obsess about whether or not they’ll come again.
• Whether or not it is best to delete and block them on all platforms.
• Whether or not it is best to contact him/her.
• What you probably did or didn’t say.
• What you probably did (or didn’t) do.
• What your ex is doing.
• What they’re pondering. 
• What your ex’s actual intentions are. 
• What the heck sort of foolish mistake that you just made on that specific day up to now (and the way you would like you didn’t).
• How your ex made so many errors.
• How your life is now in a shambles with out your ex.
• How on earth you’re ever going to maneuver on if you happen to can’t let go of ideas about your ex. 
• You’ll overthink about why you’re overthinking. And at last:
• You’ll discover it laborious to let go of the attachment to your ex.

After which in an try to “cope”, you could then change to ideas like: 

“Who cares about him anyway? He’s nothing to me!”

Really helpful: Tips on how to Cease Caring About A Man (& The whole lot & Everybody): 10 Genius Methods.

The Anxious Attachment Model Pendulum Swing

…Don’t fake the breakup doesn’t matter.

One factor you’ll finally be tempted to do if you turn out to be sick of ruminating is to dam issues out. 

It’s possible you’ll need to act such as you don’t care anyway. That’s what a whole lot of anxiously connected individuals do after they need to keep away from grief, as a result of their grief feels overwhelming.

That is what I name the anxious attachment fashion pendulum swing.

However I counsel you to note that you just’re doing this, and perceive that that is going to truly maintain you again from processing the feelings of the breakup.

And on this article I’m going that will help you course of them. 

First Issues First

First let me say I’m sorry you’re going via a breakup. I, like many others on the market, know the way laborious it’s.

However greater than that, I’m sorry you need to handle your anxious attachment on prime of the breakup.

And I wished to say, as somebody who struggled with anxious attachment for a very long time, that it’s not your fault.

Actually? 

Sure, actually.

Not the breakup, not the nervousness, not the jealousy, the melancholy nor the self sabotaging.

None of it’s your fault. Even when you realize that you just sabotaged the connection – it’s nonetheless not your fault.

I do know your inside voice typically says “however the whole lot’s my fault.”

It’s not.

This (anxious attachment) is simply your sample.

You got this sample. You didn’t create it.

The sample is right here to “serve” you, as a result of some adults didn’t serve you adequate if you have been a child.

Make sense?

If not, let me clarify slightly extra.

This ‘destructive have an effect on’ – the stress and negativity you always really feel in your relationships is one thing you developed with a purpose to over-compensate on your mother and father’ lack of reliability.

Earlier than you say I’m inserting an excessive amount of of the blame on moms, fathers, or mother and father basically…I’m not.

This isn’t about who’s in charge. That is about actuality.

Actuality is that this:

Adults couldn’t get to you on time each time to assuage your misery, make you’re feeling secure and supply on your starvation and emotional wants as a child.

Consequently, you inherited this tendency to overcompensate by maintaining your nervous system overactive (enter stress, fear, guilt, and many others.)

In the event you’re something like I used to be, you then in all probability discovered way back that there’s something slightly completely different about you.

You’ll be able to’t fairly put your finger on it, however you realize that for some motive, you’re not as relaxed as others are when in a relationship.

One thing’s simply….at all times about to go fallacious.

Additionally, you in all probability realized that you just don’t really feel as resilient beneath stress as different persons are.

Whether or not it’s the truth that you possibly can’t stay calm even if you’ve received factor going with somebody, or the truth that you possibly can’t assist self sabotaging your relationships, you simply know that you just wrestle in a means that “regular” (learn: safe) individuals don’t. 

So what we have to do after a breakup is offer you a strategy to transfer in the direction of a safe attachment system, regardless of the mess you would possibly really feel you’re in.

Sure that may sound laborious, however that’s solely if you happen to haven’t created any momentum in the appropriate course to start with. 

However first, let’s discuss slightly bit about what you possibly can anticipate to undergo post-breakup as an anxiously connected particular person.

How Anxiously Hooked up Folks Reply to A Breakup

Once you expertise a breakup, your dopamine ranges drop and your cortisol ranges rise.

That is true for everybody who goes via a breakup, whether or not they’re securely connected or insecurely connected.

Nonetheless, since securely connected people have already developed that “safe base” from which to navigate adversity early in life, they’re extra resilient beneath the stress of a breakup.

The identical isn’t true for anxiously connected individuals.

Bowlby’s principle of attachment means that the early attachment expertise of insecurely connected individuals left them with insufficient assets to manage beneath stress.

As I defined in my article on Tips on how to Let Go Of An Avoidant Companion when You’re Anxious, the considered letting go brings with it intense feelings that really feel insurmountable for an anxious particular person.

For anxiously connected people, their template causes them to over exaggerate life stressors, making them really feel rather more threatening, everlasting and irreversible. 

This sense of irreversibility goes to make you, the anxiously connected particular person, really feel like clinging onto your ex is the one doable answer.

Basically, you don’t have any internal assets to control your feelings.

And once we discuss emotion regulation, we’re speaking a few talent that anxiously connected individuals didn’t have an opportunity to develop.

Regardless that a breakup is arguably a hectic life occasion for any human, most individuals exhibit resilience, as a result of they’ve some stage of emotion regulation methods.

Nonetheless, those that are anxious have skilled what known as attachment trauma, and attributable to insufficient responsiveness out of your caregivers, this trauma was by no means resolved.

Unresolved trauma and insufficient responsiveness from mother and pop could cause us to be dysregulated emotionally.

(The anxious people amongst us primarily have free entry to all of the destructive feelings across the clock.)

This leaves us extra weak than “regular” to the destructive psychological and physiological results of hectic life occasions like a breakup. 

However all isn’t misplaced. You aren’t that small and hopeless, regardless that I do know you would possibly really feel that means. 

Therapeutic is on the horizon for you, I’ll do my finest to ensure of that. 

So within the subsequent a part of this text, I’m going to speak about your feelings throughout a breakup if you’re the dumpee in addition to if you’re the dumper. 

You’re Anxious And You Are The Dumper

As a consequence of your anxious attachment “template” inflicting you to blow issues out of proportion (ahem, expertise each emotion 10x’ed and on steroids), you would possibly break up with a lover extra typically.

Anxiously connected individuals aren’t at all times the dumpees in fact. We’re additionally the dumpers.

(Anxiously connected individuals may even have a tendency to interrupt up or threaten to go away the connection after they transfer from a purely anxious attachment sample to a disorganized attachment sample. Ie: you turn out to be anxious-avoidant for a bit.)

However simply since you broke up with somebody, doesn’t at all times imply you have been critical about it, have been you?

You’re critical in regards to the breakup for so long as you’re feeling that sabotaging is a essential means of dealing with destructive have an effect on. 

Bear in mind this:

Anxiously connected individuals discover it more durable to cope with common relationship conflicts within the first place, as a result of they’re a stressor.

So typically our response to relationship conflicts and even exterior threats to a relationship is one in every of sabotage and pushing our lover away.

As a substitute of having the ability to calmly work via your feelings and trusting that there’s an answer, you reply by quickly pulling away love and exiting the connection.

Merely put, you’d fairly threat the whole relationship than work via troublesome feelings. (As a result of your accomplice goes to reject you in the long run anyway, proper?)

Nonetheless, when you relax, you get scared that you just’re alone and also you need your ex again once more. 

Enter the on-again, off-again relationship. 

(Or if you happen to’re with a safe particular person, one in every of two issues will occur: they’ll both regulate your feelings for you and also you’ll begin to sabotage the connection much less, or they’ll simply depart you as a result of they know this relationship is poisonous.)

Nonetheless – if you happen to’re with an avoidant, you’ll enter the anxious-avoidant lure.

You’re Anxious And You’re The Dumpee

You’ll be able to in all probability think about that if you happen to’re anxiously connected and also you’re the one getting dumped, that it will ship you into an emotional demise spiral.

• Your cortisol ranges will rise.
• You’ll really feel deserted.
• You’ll really feel just like the feelings are greater than you (they’re not. To make use of an analogy, a lot of girls really feel as if the contractions of pure delivery and labour would possibly break their our bodies, however they don’t. They really work to push the infant via the delivery canal! Equally, your feelings are there that will help you transfer to safe attachment. The feelings would possibly simply really feel extraordinarily burdensome if you happen to’re anxious.)

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Anxious Folks At all times Assume The Breakup Is Coming

One of many hardest issues about getting over a breakup with an anxious attachment fashion is the truth that the breakup is maybe one thing you feared (and assumed) would occur way back, in all probability at first of the connection. 

Primarily due to the destructive feelings that include anxious attachment.

For instance, I’ll use myself 20 years in the past (anxiously connected) versus my securely connected husband on the very begin of our relationship:

I verbalized to him that I “knew” it might finish from very early on within the relationship.  

Conversely, he was positive it might by no means finish.

Now you would possibly simply say that’s as a result of he was extra into me than I used to be into him, however that isn’t solely unfaithful, it might even be grossly overestimating my precise worth.

We have been driving in his outdated banged up automotive from 1856 and our dialog went like this:

Me: “when do you suppose we’ll break up?”

Him: “why would we even break up?”

Me: “breakup is certain to occur.”

Him: “Why?”

Me: “I dunno.”

Him: “Nicely, when do you suppose we’ll break up?”

Me: “In 18 months.”

Him: “Nicely I’ll be glad to show you fallacious.”

We have been nonetheless collectively 18 years later. Now it’s been nearly 19 years on the time of writing.

And I’ve had 19 lovely years to heal my anxious attachment. Okay, the therapeutic course of was not at all times lovely. However I’m grateful for the chance to heal.

As a strategy to pay it ahead, I need to share with you some methods on do the identical.

No, you don’t should be with a safe particular person with a purpose to heal, though it helps.

You simply want just a few methods and a robust resolve to turn out to be safe.

And it’s simpler to place within the work to turn out to be safe if you lastly resolve to be performed with the nonsense that’s fixed rumination. 

It’s losing your life away. It sabotages nice issues. It creates uncalibrated and pointless stress. 

FYI, I’ve written a number of articles on heal anxious attachment and associated subjects. I’ll hyperlink all of them right here to you:

And if you happen to’re relationship an avoidant, right here’s a few related articles on that:

Do the quiz: Which of those 8 female archetypes am i?

Tips on how to Heal Anxious Attachment After A Breakup

Apparent questions first: can anxious attachment be healed?

In fact it could actually.

The perfect place to begin is by doing two issues:

1. Acknowledge your triggers. This entails noticing when the stress and nervousness is rising in your physique, and catching it earlier than it spirals into debilitating, crippling feelings that you just really feel you can’t come again from. (For some anxiously connected people, persistently noticing your stress and nervousness ranges early is so essential, it could actually even forestall melancholy and catastrophizing.)
2. Make use of what my husband and I name “anchors for safe attachment”.

   These anchors are reminiscences, film scenes, meditation tracks, affirmations or music that you just hold helpful (maybe in your cellphone.)

   You go to those each time your nervousness exhibits up. The objective is to decide on these as anchors whereby you get to make use of them to really feel secure and safe.

   So take into consideration what film scenes emulate safe attachment and security to you. Are there any? If not, seek advice from my articles linked above for examples.

   If film scenes aren’t your anchor of selection, then strive music.

   Select one thing grounded, calming and soothing.

   Like this for instance:

Or this:

Tips on how to Get Over An Ex With Anxious Attachment

As you strive in earnest to recover from your breakup, I finally I would like you to recollect one factor:

At instances it could really feel like your self is all you’ve got to get via this era.

However know which you can and will likely be sufficient for you. 

You’ll be able to at all times search outdoors assist everytime you want, however you don’t must really feel like you aren’t sufficient for your self throughout this era. 

When you’re via that grieving interval and also you’ve used my 2 methods, you’ll come out extra calibrated since you’ve received working methods that you just’ve used throughout your lowest second.

You’ll be renewed and stronger, regardless that it doesn’t really feel prefer it proper now. 

That you must make this promise to your self that you can be there for your self.

Over to You…

In the event you want a spot to vent, be at liberty to make use of my feedback part beneath. I at all times learn my weblog feedback.

Let me know the way you go together with my methods, and share with me any small success you expertise.

Each optimistic transfer is a HUGE success, regardless that in your anxious thoughts, you won’t suppose so. 

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