The Anxious Attachment Style – When Fear Feels Like Love
We often mistake anxiety for passion. The longing. The urgency. The desperate need to be understood, to feel seen, to be chosen again and again. But beneath these powerful emotions lies something far deeper—a fear of abandonment that stems not from weakness or failure, but from wounds formed long before our adult relationships began.
Anxious attachment is not a flaw. It is a response—a strategy developed in early life to secure connection in environments where love felt unpredictable or conditional. As Jessica Baum describes in her book "Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love", individuals with this attachment style often grew up in homes where emotional needs were inconsistently met. One moment, a parent might be loving and responsive. The next, distracted, critical, or emotionally unavailable. This inconsistency creates a hyper-awareness in the child, a scanning of the emotional environment to determine: Is it safe to be myself right now? Am I loved? Will they leave me?
Over time, this sensitivity becomes embedded in the nervous system. As adults, anxiously attached individuals are often drawn to emotionally unavailable partners. Not because they want pain, but because their inner system has been wired to chase closeness—to feel “in love” through the pursuit, the longing, the proving. When love feels uncertain, their anxiety spikes. When it feels steady, they may even question its depth.
In relationships, this manifests as:
- Constant texting to seek reassurance
- Over-analysing tone, words, or silence
- Fear of being “too much” while simultaneously fearing being forgotten
- A tendency to prioritise the other person’s needs above their own
- A deep longing for emotional closeness, often with partners who can’t or won’t provide it
During the breakdown of a relationship, especially in the context of family separation, these tendencies intensify. Anxiously attached parents may feel a tidal wave of panic when they are no longer in daily contact with their ex-partner, especially if children are involved. The nervous system, already in survival mode, can become overwhelmed by perceived rejection or abandonment—triggering behaviour that, in another context, might seem understandable but in family court, can be dangerously misinterpreted.
Texting multiple times a day. Reaching out when boundaries have already been set. Sending long emotional messages late at night. While these are often attempts to reconnect, to feel safe, to make sense of the chaos, they can be painted as harassment or coercive control in the eyes of the law.
And here lies the painful irony: The very behaviours that helped the anxious partner maintain connection as a child—pleasing, pursuing, clinging—can now threaten their ability to parent, depending on how those behaviours are framed in court.
Jessica Baum emphasises that anxious attachment is not a permanent condition. It is a map—one that can be re-drawn through self-awareness, regulation, and healthier forms of connection. “When we begin to build secure bonds within ourselves,” she writes, “we stop outsourcing our worth to those who withhold love.”
This healing journey begins with recognising the voice of the inner child—the part of you that still aches to be chosen—and offering that part what it never consistently received: safety, consistency, and love. Not from your ex. Not from a judge. But from you.
You are not broken. Your anxiety is not the enemy. It’s your body’s way of saying, please don’t leave me alone in this. But now, as a parent, as someone going through separation, and potentially through legal proceedings, you must learn to hold yourself differently.
Because how you act under stress will not only shape your future relationships—it may also shape your child’s access to you.
This is not about suppressing your pain. It’s about learning to regulate, to observe, and to respond from a place of grounded clarity. The court won’t consider your childhood. It won’t examine your nervous system. It will look at your actions. Your texts. Your behaviour. And it will decide based on what it sees.
So as you read on, take a breath. You’re not alone. This is not a verdict—it’s an invitation. To understand yourself. To stop chasing love where it cannot be held. And to begin the process of becoming the secure base you’ve always needed—not just for your children, but for yourself.
In the chaos of separation, especially when children are involved, the deep-rooted fear of abandonment can take over. For those with an anxious attachment style, this fear often fuels a desperate need to hold on—to maintain constant contact, to seek reassurance, to prevent further loss at all costs. But when that desperation turns into control, especially through repeated messages, emotional outbursts, or attempts to pressure a former partner into responding or engaging, the intention—no matter how well-meaning—can become your greatest liability in court.
It may feel unfair. You’re not trying to harm anyone—you’re just trying to keep your child close, to maintain a sense of stability, to make sense of a painful and confusing situation. And yes, many parents fight with every ounce of their being to keep their child in their life. That drive is natural. But the court doesn't assess intention. It judges behaviour. It won’t weigh your emotional history, attachment wounds, or the childhood patterns that shaped your nervous system. It will evaluate what you said, what you did, how often you contacted your former partner, and whether those actions can be interpreted as obsessive, threatening, or coercive.
Trying to control your former partner—even under the belief that it’s to protect your child—will nearly always work against you. The court is not interested in who is hurting more. It is looking for signs of safety, stability, and respect for boundaries. And here’s the hardest truth: regardless of how your former partner behaves, you will be judged solely on your own actions. You cannot force them to be calm, cooperative, or kind. But you can choose how you respond, even in your most triggered states.
Anxiously chasing someone to regulate your emotions—to soothe the panic of separation or the pain of being unseen—is not their responsibility. It never was. As children, we needed our parents to help regulate our nervous systems. But as adults, especially as parents ourselves, that task becomes ours. It may feel cruel, especially if you never had a consistent or emotionally attuned caregiver. But the truth is, once we become aware of these patterns, it becomes our duty to break them—not just for court, but for our own freedom.
Healing begins when we stop outsourcing our emotional safety to those who trigger our deepest wounds. It is not co-parenting’s job to ease your abandonment fears. It is not your child’s job to carry your anxiety. And it is certainly not the court’s job to repair your nervous system. That is your work. And it’s powerful work—because the moment you begin to self-regulate instead of control, you become a safer, stronger presence for your child and for yourself.
High-conflict separation, especially when drawn out through the family court system, can be one of the most emotionally destabilising experiences a person can go through. If you already live with an anxious attachment style, this process may feel like confirmation of your deepest fears—of being abandoned, misunderstood, or rejected. When the future of your relationship with your child feels uncertain and you are being scrutinised at every turn, your nervous system can easily move into a chronic state of survival. Everything in you may want to act, fix, fight, or plead. But the very behaviours that once helped you feel connected in a relationship—clinging, chasing, or over-explaining—may now be working against you in both your parenting and your legal standing.
What’s often overlooked in this process is how the same emotional overwhelm that impacts you as a parent can unintentionally affect your child. Under intense stress, it’s natural to become preoccupied with your own fears—of losing your child, of not being heard, of being misrepresented. But when we become consumed by our own pain, we may become emotionally inconsistent or unavailable to our child, even if we're physically present. As Gabor Maté explains in When the Body Says No, chronic emotional stress has a way of shutting us down or causing us to become reactive. You may find yourself snapping one moment, withdrawing the next—simply because your nervous system is too overloaded to stay grounded.
In these moments, your child may start adapting in subtle, heartbreaking ways. They might stop expressing their own needs because they sense you're already overwhelmed. They might start trying to comfort you, take care of you, or avoid burdening you altogether. They may begin to feel invisible, not because you don’t love them—but because your attention is being pulled in a hundred directions, and your emotional availability is worn thin. Over time, a child in this situation may begin to internalise the message that love must be earned through self-sacrifice, silence, or caretaking—the very blueprint of anxious or disorganised attachment.
It’s a painful paradox: the same attachment wound you carry may be unintentionally passed down to your child during this vulnerable time. Your attempt to protect, control, or stabilise the situation might actually create the emotional conditions that once hurt you. Not because you’re a bad parent. But because your system is trying to survive. And when we’re in survival mode, we can’t fully attune to others.
This isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness. Once you recognise these patterns, you have the power to shift them. You are not your attachment style—you’re someone who developed a pattern in response to pain. And just as it was learned, it can be unlearned. But that work must begin with self-regulation, not seeking emotional safety through your former partner or your child. As adults, our job is not to demand others soothe our pain—but to learn how to hold ourselves through it.
Your child doesn’t need a perfect parent. They need a present one. A regulated one. And right now, even in the middle of a legal battle, you have the opportunity to begin creating emotional safety—not just for them, but for yourself. By doing so, you don’t just protect your relationship with your child—you begin to heal the cycle that once shaped you.
For those with an anxious attachment style, the uncertainty and lack of control during high-conflict separation and family court proceedings can be unbearable. In the absence of clarity or contact, the mind goes into overdrive, grasping for something—anything—that might restore a sense of stability. You may find yourself re-reading texts, affidavits, and court orders repeatedly, searching for hidden meaning or signs that something might change. You might write and re-write messages to your lawyer, sending multiple emails a day, convinced that one more clarification or correction might shift the outcome. These aren’t acts of irrationality—they are efforts to calm a nervous system in distress, to create certainty where there is none, so that you can finally breathe.
This is the nature of anxious attachment: it hijacks your thinking. It tells you that maybe if you just do something, the pain will stop. That if you can explain it better, act faster, or reach out again, the court will understand, your ex will come around, or your child will come home. But in truth, these behaviours, while intended to soothe internal chaos, can appear externally as controlling, manipulative, or unstable—especially when viewed by court professionals, family consultants, or independent children’s lawyers. And that perception, however untrue it may feel to you, can weigh heavily in legal assessments.
Every action we take from this anxious state is not just about the present—it is connected to an internal past-time perception. A part of you is protecting yourself from feeling what your body deems dangerous: abandonment, rejection, powerlessness. So instead of feeling it, the attachment system activates. You act. You chase. You fight. But these protective actions, while understandable, often lead to outcomes that deepen the very pain you are trying to avoid. You might provoke fear in your former partner. You might unintentionally confirm their claims in court. You might push professionals to see you as unstable. Worst of all, your child—caught in the middle—may be pulled further from you while the court tries to determine if you’re emotionally safe.
And yes, it is devastating to have your child taken away. It is an unnatural grief that leaves you breathless, confused, and desperate. But acting out of that desperation—no matter how justified it may feel—will not bring them back faster. In fact, it often prolongs the very separation you're trying to end. The court does not know what’s true in the beginning. It will not simply hand a child over because one parent says they are right. The court’s main priority is the child’s safety and stability, and it will wait to see who can embody that.
This is where your work begins—not in fighting harder, but in regulating yourself so that you can become the calm, stable, consistent presence your child needs. Not just to satisfy the court, but because you deserve that peace, too. You’ve lived long enough trying to earn love and safety through effort and control. This is your opportunity to create it from within.
I want to ask you to think of any time you have tried to gain reassurance, confirmation, or tried to control a partner. Has this been a way subconsciously to soothe your own nervous system? You have repeatedly asked a partner if they found you attractive, if they love you, if they are ok. You are hypervigilant on their moods and behaviour. Its ok, it’s just the old patterns playing out, and now that you are aware we can work on giving the old protectors a new assignment. All these controlling behaviours are essentially a way to sooth a heightened nervous system, it’s why the anxiously attached may try to find answers after separation, pester their lawyer and send multiple emails, knowledge and knowing brings peace where uncertainty bring anxiety. The perception of what may come is worse than the reality itself. It this behaviour that makes the anxious avoidant hard to deal with by lawyers, the same behaviour that may be too much for an avoidant partner.
Breaking the Pattern – Regulating Anxious Attachment During Family Court Stress
High-conflict separation doesn’t just break a relationship—it shakes the very foundation of your sense of security. For parents with an anxious attachment style, the family court process can feel like a never-ending cycle of rejection, uncertainty, and panic. The person you once turned to for closeness has now become distant, cold, or even hostile. The relationship system is gone, but the attachment system is still fully alive, pulling you toward behaviours that once helped you feel safe—but that now put you at legal risk.
Jessica Baum, in Anxiously Attached, describes anxious attachment as a “felt sense of disconnection” that drives us to seek closeness at all costs—even when that pursuit becomes damaging. It’s not just emotional—it’s physiological. The body enters a state of panic when there’s no contact, no response, no resolution. In the context of separation, this often manifests as relentless texting, emotional outbursts, pleading, or over-communicating with lawyers and professionals. And while these behaviours may feel like attempts to restore peace, they often backfire—making you appear unstable, controlling, or even coercive in the eyes of the court.