How to Heal From an Insecure Attachment Style
QUICK ANSWER
Healing an insecure attachment usually starts with high-quality, attachment-informed therapy that gives you what you did not get from early caregivers. If therapy is not accessible, you can begin by staying out of shaming self-talk, examining the messages you received growing up, and addressing trauma and developmental wounds held in the body.
There is no substitute for high-quality therapy, but there is also a lot you can begin on your own. Here is a starting map for healing insecure attachment. For more, explore our trust and wounds resources.
What should I look for in a therapist?
Look for a therapist who provides you with the things you did not get with your early caregivers, the very things that led to your insecurity to begin with:
- emotional validation
- reflective listening
- a non-critical, non-judgmental presence
- help accessing, naming, and expressing your emotions in a healthy way
- help understanding and calming the physical manifestations of emotional pain
- help understanding how your past developmental and other impactful life experiences are still showing up in your present
- respect for your strengths, and healthy boundaries around scheduling and logistics
- enough knowledge about attachment work to help you connect past and present, and guide you toward new communication and behaviors
What can I do if I do not have access to therapy?
You need to learn to stay out of negative communication cycles with yourself and others, because they do not work. Approach yourself from a problem-solving, non-shaming place. Here is what that looks like:
I ate a gallon of ice cream last night and today I do not feel good. I am going to work on this so I feel better. What happened is not okay, but I am not bad. I am a normal human who made a mistake. This is a learning opportunity. What happened just before I ate the ice cream? Was I tired, hurt, bored, anxious? How can I manage those feelings better next time?
This is how loving parents talk to their children. Learn to talk to yourself like this. It also helps to make a list of the messages you got from caregivers which have negatively impacted your life. Write them down. Explore how they have hurt you, and explore how they have also helped you:
I have a hard time trusting others can be there for me, but I have also learned how to be a hard worker and get the job done. How can I retain my strengths, but also learn to trust others more?
How do I address trauma?
Trauma is anything that happened to you at any time in life which exceeded your ability to emotionally cope. It created such an enormous nervous system response that you had to emotionally fall apart, dissociate, go numb, go into shock, or have some other extreme response in order to survive the moment. If you have not had the opportunity to talk about it, process the emotions, be comforted, make sense of it, and most importantly address how the nervous system response is still stuck in your body, you are undoubtedly still being affected, whether you are aware of it or not. Trauma happens in our brains and our bodies. Addressing the brain part is not enough. Read "The Body Keeps the Score" and seek Somatic Experiencing Therapy to understand more and heal.
What about developmental trauma?
Developmental trauma is all the "little" emotional wounds that took place while you were a child. They affect your psyche like a thousand papercuts affect your body. In isolation, emotional wounds are not a problem, especially when they are repaired. No parents are perfect, and we do not want them to be, because everyone needs to build resiliency to imperfection. But when a thousand emotional wounds build up over the course of your childhood, while your brain is developing and you are forming a view of yourself, and when they are not repaired along the way, they matter a lot. Children in this environment end up getting a global message of shame: "you are flawed, you are bad, you must make up for your shameful self by striving hard to be good enough." It also creates a build-up of negative emotions like grief, anger, fear, shame, and disgust.
What if my parents were great?
Did your parents provide a comfortable environment where you grew up feeling safe, secure, and with opportunity to thrive? That is genuinely wonderful, and you are going to have an easier time healing. The one catch is that sometimes children do not get enough adversity to learn to be resilient to the real world. They go into relationships, schools, or jobs with real people who sometimes do not create safety, and they do not know what to do because they have not yet learned how to deal with adversity. Often they develop anxiety problems. This can be worked on. You will need to develop skills to survive adversity and difficult people.
A note about labeling your partner a narcissist
If you read something that makes you think your partner is a narcissist, consider not taking that information at face value. In my experience, both anxious and avoidant partners can behave narcissistically when triggered or in the context of the negative cycle. Acting out insecure attachment issues is not the same as the real, diagnosable condition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Narcissism is real and exists, but be very careful about putting your partner in that box. Finding a bad guy is not solution-oriented. It breeds shame, resentment, and disconnection. When something goes wrong, see if you can move away from the idea that there is a bad guy, and instead focus on your wants and needs and finding a solution together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I really heal insecure attachment on my own?
You can make meaningful progress by changing your self-talk, exploring your history, and addressing trauma, but attachment wounds heal best in relationship. Therapy or a supportive, safe relationship provides the corrective experiences that self-help alone often cannot.
Where can I find attachment-informed help?
Visit ICEEFT.com for therapists globally trained to work from an attachment perspective and with the negative cycle. Many of them work with individuals as well as couples. You can also go deeper with the attachment theory course.
Healing starts with understanding your attachment style.