A Calming Exercise for Anxiously Attached and their High Sensitivity

You can learn to calm your anxiety

An Anxiety Therapist Offers a tip for calming HSP’s and Anxiously Attached in Relationship

I remember feeling insecure as a little girl.  I remember not feeling good about myself in the dance class that I so desperately wanted when I was five.  I would stand in the back not wanting to be noticed all the while wanting to be noticed.  I was so afraid of doing it wrong and being rejected. I think I quit it.  Now when I go back to those memories, I just feel sad for that little girl who desperately needed someone to have her back, someone to cheer her on and believe in her and help her through her fears.  

I understand that I am highly sensitive which makes my which means my senses can get overstimulated or overwhelmed setting off the fight, flight or freeze response. I became quiet as a child for self protection, and I was definitely labeled shy as a little girl with a negative connotation attached to it, like it was a bad thing.  Without having anyone around who understood the high sensitivity trait, and not knowing how to cope with it, my nervous system would kick in to protect me.  I would either lash out in crying or hide..  I froze in the dance class and then quit to flee/flight. That pattern of coping became what was wired in my brain whenever I didn’t feel safe, even when I knew it didn’t feel good, and I didn’t like it.  I had no idea how to calm my nervous system to feel safe.  

What causes anxious attachment?

When we are born, we do not have the capacity to self regulate.  Everything is big and loud.  We are sensitive to our environment. If we hear a loud crash or someone scary comes near us, we feel it, and we get startled.  If someone is holding us who is stressed, and that person does not feel safe in their body, or they have unresolved trauma, we are going to feel that, too.  We need our parent or caregiver to help us regulate our nervous system.  If they can’t regulate their own, they struggle to help us regulate, too.  How we are interacted with by our parents or caregivers determines how our nervous system is going to be regulated.   

My mother did not have a mother that attuned to her emotions so she did not have a regulated nervous system.  For her to survive her own childhood, she had to shut down.  Then she has me, in addition to a stressful marriage, where she does not have the capacity to attune to my genetic trait of high sensitivity. So when my mother was stressed or upset or my father had a bad day (he also did not have a regulated nervous system due to his own childhood trauma), my nervous system was attuned to that.  I needed these people for my survival yet they didn’t feel safe.  That put my nervous system on constant alert.   I was born with the sensitivity trait, and then I had parents who were inconsistent and not in tune to my emotions and needs and could not teach me how to regulate my emotions.

Highly sensitive people are hyper vigilant to their surroundings, and when they have parents who are not in tune to their emotions and needs, that can lead to a preoccupied or anxious attachment style.  The HSP baby’s nervous system that is already sensitive and becomes hyper vigilant when their needs are not consistently responded to.  When we cry needing to be fed but our parent doesn’t respond quick enough, our nervous system sends a signal to the brain that we are threatened.  We might cry harder.  They finally come.  If this happens continuously, our nervous system gets wired with anxiety in trusting our environment so anytime we don’t feel safe, that sensation sends a signal to our brain, and we either fight, flight to freeze.  

Why does being anxiously attached matter?

Though that begins in our childhood, our attachment style shows up throughout our lives in our adult relationships.  When you’re anxiously attached, you feel sensitive if a partner doesn’t respond to a text, or a friend seems to ignore you or a boss criticizes your work.  Your body remembers that early feeling of possible rejection or abandonment, and your nervous system is alerted to protect you.  Any feeling of possible rejection feels so threatening as if we could die if that connection breaks, we have to find a way to relieve it.  

When your brain senses that threat, our bodies respond and we can feel so anxious inside, hearts racing, restlessness and feeling on edge, a tightness in your chest or a stomach hurting.  It feels like the only way to relieve that is to get the person who seems to be triggering it to respond.

Many preoccupied or anxiously attached will start “bombing” their lost connection as noted by Pia Melody in the book Love Addiction.  That can look like ruminating through thoughts of what to text or post on social media to get the person’s attention or impulsively calling or texting repeatedly.  The goal is to get that person to respond to calm the anxiety in the body.  Or we find ways of distracting ourselves with food, social media, oversleeping or shopping or whatever has worked for us in the past to avoid that empty, rejecting, disconnected feeling.  Getting relief is the only focus. 

It’s important to learn to calm your own nervous system.  When we can calm ourselves, we feel more secure. 

When your body is calm, your mind is calm.  

Here is one practice that can help calm an activated attachment style. 

1.  Place your hand over your heart so that you feel the warm touch of your hand on your chest.  

2.  Begin to breathe more slowly, more gently, more deeply, into your heart center.

3. Recall a moment, just one moment, when you felt safe, loved, and cherished by another human being. (With practice, evoking this memory can happen instantly, too).  Not the entire relationship, just one moment with a spouse or a parent or a child or even with a friend, a therapist, a teacher or even a beloved pet.

4.  As you remember this moment, let its warmth wash through your body; savor this feeling for 30 seconds.

5.  When you are ready, reflect on any shift you felt in your body from the practice.  

Remember, when your body is calm, your mind is calm.

My relationships have not been easy.  I am hypervigilant to other’s feelings that any slight feeling of rejection used to send me into a tailspin of emotion.  In addition to processing through old experiences with EMDR and Emotionally Focused Therapy and healing that little girl in the dance class, I have learned how to calm my nervous system so the rejection threats don’t trigger me as they used to.  It takes some work, but I feel so much calmer, and my relationships are so much more intimate and authentic.  

Anxiety is a normal emotional response, and it is important to acknowledge it when it arises. If anxiety is interfering with your daily life and your relationships, you may want to seek counseling.  Remember, anxiety is just your brain doing what it does and you can learn ways to change it’s path.