Own the Inner Child: Breaking Free of Anxious Attachment

“It’s like a mother: when the baby is crying,
she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms.
Your pain, your anxiety is your baby.
You have to take care of it.
You have to go back to yourself,
to recognize the suffering in you.
Embrace the suffering, and you get a relief.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s some part in all of us that yearns to belong. This is our safety, our security. It means we can relax, that others are there to hold us, cherish us, praise us, and keep guard when we cannot. It means we matter.

When we’ve experienced a single relational disconnection, we generally recover. When it becomes a pattern—when someone who is “supposed to be there” for us finds ways to disengage or disappear on a daily basis—recovery feels intangible and unattainable. We make decisions about the self, saying, “I’m not wanted. I must be flawed.”

Anxious Attachment Says: ‘You’re Not Giving Me Enough’

Those landing on the anxious side of attachment are often aware they are seeking others as a way to regulate their overwhelm. They may feel “clingy.” When living in this mode, many feel easily rejected or abandoned, becoming angry when partners fail to live up to perceived expectations. On guard, attuned to signs of others leaving, they easily fall into internal panic, exhibiting protest behaviors in often futile attempts to elicit caring responses. They may guilt or blame partners into submission, choosing to argue (and continue arguing) because it feels better than no connection at all, because preoccupation allows no other choice.

Many in this mode give up their own desires in attempts to win their partner’s approval, placing survival needs over authenticity. The “real” identity of their partner is often less relevant than the fact the partner presents as available just often enough for the preoccupied one to maintain an illusion of love. This can leave their partners feeling like disposable place-keepers, while for the anxious one, self-justification creates a paradoxical argument: “I would not put this much effort into someone who was not ‘the one.’ ”

Some have referred to this as “fantasy bonding”—in love with the idea of the person, often ignoring uncomfortable parts.

Many anxiously attached individuals recognize—in calmer moments, after the fact—they’ve been so involved with their own discomfort and dysregulation that they failed to catch unspoken emotional cues from partners that might have led to feelings of mutual connection and intimacy.

Anxious Relationship with the Self

Sometimes the panic itself becomes the enemy, and the anxious person develops strategies to hide or contain it, saying, “If others see this panic, they will leave me.” This message itself perpetuates internal conflict—self against self—amplifying pain as internal parts polarize.

While many, trapped in anxiety, function excessively in the presence of others (which can be perceived by others as demanding), when alone they may find tasks difficult to complete. Sometimes, in the absence of constant reassurance, they find their motivation dissolved. They may recognize an absence of perceived selfhood when not in the presence of another.

As familiar as the relational desperation becomes, they may find that when real intimacy is offered, they do not know how to be with it. It may fall flat. They may tell themselves they are just bored. They might distract themselves from it or sabotage it. It invokes too much shame, bringing to awareness parts of the self that they do not know how to meet.

Origins of Anxious Attachment

Many theories describe the creation of anxious attachment, citing both nature and nurture. One of the foremost frames the caregiver as someone overwhelmed by their child’s emotion. It might be a parent who appreciates or loves the baby while also feeling out of sync, helpless, as if there is no way to calm the baby. This is an unfortunate misattunement or inaccurate empathy. The baby, of course, gets more attention when crying, thus training it to use tantrums as a primary way to elicit attention and meet its security needs.

Another theory, one that could work in conjunction with the above: the caregiver who carries abandonment wounds actively (even subconsciously) creates dependence in their child, ensuring the child will need them and remain with them. The child of this parenting strategy is thus trained to remain a child, to take a dependent role in intimate relationships in order to get needs met.

Anxious Attachment in Conflict

Those on the anxious side of attachment fight in and for relationship, feeling incapable of calming until another person meets their needs for assurance. This often leads to long-term deterioration of the relationship as their partners learn to distance, placate, and resent rather than pursue seemingly endless conflict. This withdrawal by partners may perpetuate negative beliefs: “They are trying to leave me. I am not lovable. I have to make my emotion bigger to get a response.”

Open Letter from the Avoidant to the Anxiously Attached

I see your panic. I hear it in your breathing, your sighs, your many signs and gestures—the ones meant to elicit attention from me. I resent you in this mood because it means I lose a partner and gain a child. I become the parent. I become your “fix.” In your panic, my existence is no longer mine. I’m no longer free, whole, separate from you. With nobody in you to meet me, I am trapped and alone.

Your dependence becomes a weight for me to carry. It’s like a child in you with nowhere to go. Sometimes it feels like an insatiable bully, entitled, demanding I care for it. But it has no sense of time, and I could meet it for hours, resenting you each minute. And nothing changes.

I want to be loved, not needed.

Part of me also yearns to be taken care of.

Therapy for the Anxious: Bonding with the Self

In moments of interpersonal conflict, many of us switch to younger states. We disconnect from present-day resources, reacting not to partners but to parents. Even with adult partners, we return to perceptions, expectations, and strategies learned at an early age. We become the child in the empty room, feeling ourselves empty until it fills once again. Or we become the child playing in our room, safe, away from the needs or threats of others throughout the house, hoping no one comes to the door.

Invariably, in order to heal and decrease dependence on others, those on the anxious end of the spectrum will find themselves exploring ways to build an internal support structure—some part of the self that remains strong, dependable, unthreatened by intense emotion. This might be framed as “self-validation” or as an “internal parent.”

In the beginning, though, they naturally seek others—friends, partners, and therapists—to provide this support, validation, and witnessing. “This isn’t the way life is supposed to be,” they may say. “We are supposed to be able to depend on others.”

Some may recognize a resentment of the therapy work, even a shame in it. They may view self-sufficiency or self-soothing as a secondary strategy, only used when one fails to belong in the world. They may feel conflict internally and with their therapist, feeling blamed while also feeling victimized in relationship: “I’m the one who feels so devastated when people leave me. Yet you’re saying I play a part in that.”

Another Way to Frame Anxious Attachment

If we reframe “preoccupation” as the ongoing abandonment feelings of an inner child, we begin to differentiate from the part feeling the pain. This is important for the present-day adult who feels hijacked by emotions. It is also vitally important for the hurting child (or the old neural network that takes over) to have a compassionate internal witness.

If we reframe “preoccupation” as the ongoing abandonment feelings of an inner child, we begin to differentiate from the part feeling the pain. This is important for the present-day adult who feels hijacked by emotions. It is also vitally important for the hurting child (or the old neural network that takes over) to have a compassionate internal witness.

It’s hard to take ownership of the child inside, noticing that it reaches out to make demands of others—a natural next step when it finds no internal caregiver available.

There’s a message often internalized in childhood: the unspoken message from a parent saying, “I can’t handle this child! Let someone else take care of it.” It’s a message repeated internally when emotion is high, when the old state is triggered. Many in therapy eventually realize they actually hate the child in them. They hand this emotional part of the self out to others, saying to friends, families, and partners: “I can’t handle this child in me! It’s too much! You take care of it.”

It’s important to begin separating parts in this way, to speak of each in third person, to gradually hear the dialogue already occurring between them. This is differentiation, and it is a necessary component of self-soothing. We cannot witness a part when we are that part. It requires some distance. Effective witnessing requires the development of an internal “other.”

Developing internal parts is something most of us have already done many times throughout life. We’ve developed internal guards and gatekeepers—judges, parents. These are the parts that judge and contain us today.

We can also develop an internal witness—one that does not judge, is not threatened by any emotion, does not attack, pull away, pity, analyze, or try to fix. One that meets us with empathy and compassion to witness our pains and joys in the ways we always wished an other would.

An intentionally developed part is just as valid as the parts that developed automatically in life. The compassion and affirmation we can give ourselves is just as real and valid as the internal abuse we already trust. It’s all internal dialogue between parts of the self. In therapy, we are just making that dialogue more conscious and intentional.

Certain therapeutic approaches, such as Hakomi and Internal Family Systems, work precisely to create an internal environment of acceptance and unity, facilitating integration through differentiation of parts.

Some Final Points and Considerations

• Our own perceptions are less accurate when the body is in fight-or-flight mode. We easily catastrophize when activated. Mindfulness practice can increase present-moment awareness of our bodily activation level. When it gets too high, it’s okay to take a break, to step away from the argument, and to connect with resources to help your body calm. Life looks different on the other side of the nervous system.
• Another way to tell if you are activated: Can you hear someone’s “no” and not take it personally?
• It’s important to begin recognizing the elements of fantasy in your relationships. Do you want an equal partner? Are there moments you really do want to be taken care of? Most of us experience both.
• This struggle is common. It is human.
• Do you give up your own interests, ideas, ideals, and pursuits in order to keep a relationship?
• It’s okay to grieve the fantasy.

References:

1. Karen, R. (1998). Becoming attached: First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love. New York: Oxford University Press.
2. Kinnison, J. (2014). Type: Anxious-Preoccupied. Retrieved from https://jebkinnison.com/bad-boyfriends-the-book/type-anxious-preoccupied
3. Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2010). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find- and keep -love. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

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