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Anxious Attachment: When Relationships Feel Less Safe Than Everything Else

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Many people who experience anxious attachment are surprised by how differently they function in relationships compared to other areas of life. They may feel confident with friends, capable at work, and secure within their family, yet find themselves overwhelmed by doubt, worry, or fear when it comes to a romantic partner.

What Is Anxious Attachment?

Anxious attachment describes a pattern in which a person becomes highly sensitive to signs of disconnection, rejection, or emotional distance within close relationships. This sensitivity is not a conscious choice. It is often rooted in earlier experiences where connection felt uncertain, inconsistent, or difficult to rely upon. As adults, these individuals often desire closeness deeply. Relationships matter enormously to them. However, because relationships feel so important, they can also become a source of anxiety. Small changes in communication, tone, availability, or affection may be noticed quickly and interpreted as signs that something is wrong.

One of the most confusing aspects of anxious attachment is that it frequently remains invisible outside intimate relationships. A person may have strong friendships, healthy family connections, and successful professional relationships. They may not generally see themselves as anxious at all. The reason is that romantic relationships often activate our deepest attachment needs. A friend taking a few hours to reply may not feel significant. A partner taking the same amount of time can trigger worry, uncertainty, or a sense of emotional threat. This does not mean the person is irrational. Rather, the relationship has become linked to a part of the nervous system that is highly attuned to connection and loss. In effect, a threat-monitoring system becomes attached to the relationship itself.

How Anxious Attachment Feels From the Inside

For the person experiencing it, anxious attachment can be exhausting. There may be a constant scanning for signs that everything is okay. A delayed message, a change in routine, or a shift in mood can quickly become the focus of attention.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“Are they pulling away?”

“Do they still feel the same?”

Often there is an awareness that these worries may be disproportionate, yet knowing this does not necessarily stop them. The nervous system can react long before logic has a chance to intervene. Many people describe feeling caught between a desire to relax and a powerful urge to seek reassurance.

Healing anxious attachment is not about becoming less caring or less emotionally connected. Rather, it involves learning to recognise when the nervous system has moved into threat-monitoring mode.

Prediction or Evidence Based Response

Many people find it helpful to ask:

Am I basing my response on prediction or evidence?

  • If it’s prediction, does it feel familiar?
  • Is the feeling connected to past experience rather than the current relationship?
  • If evidence, what am I responding to right now?
  • Am I reacting to what is happening in the present, or to a fear of what might happen?

Therapeutic work often involves strengthening the ability to self-soothe, tolerate uncertainty, and remain connected to one’s own experience without immediately seeking reassurance from another person.

For Partners

Living alongside someone with anxious attachment can be both rewarding and challenging. Many partners find themselves caught in a difficult position. They want to provide reassurance, yet they may notice that reassurance only brings temporary relief before the same fears return. They may begin to wonder whether they are saying the wrong thing, doing too little, or somehow failing to meet their partner’s needs. Over time, this can create feelings of frustration, helplessness, or even resentment.

Some partners describe feeling as though they are being continually assessed for signs of withdrawal, disinterest, or rejection. Ordinary behaviours, such as needing time alone, being busy with work, or feeling tired, can sometimes become interpreted as signs that something is wrong within the relationship. This can leave partners feeling misunderstood. They may know they are committed to the relationship, yet feel unable to convince their loved one of this in a lasting way. As a result, some partners begin to withdraw emotionally, not because they care less, but because they feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of constantly managing another person’s anxiety. This is often one of the most painful aspects of anxious attachment. The very behaviours that are intended to create closeness can sometimes create distance.

For partners, it can be helpful to remember that reassurance alone is rarely enough to heal anxious attachment. While consistency, warmth, and emotional availability are important, lasting change usually involves the anxious partner developing greater trust in their own ability to tolerate uncertainty and regulate difficult emotions. Healthy relationships require both compassion and boundaries.

When both people can recognise the pattern as something they are facing together, rather than something that belongs solely to one person, it often becomes easier to move out of blame and towards greater understanding and connection.

How Individual Counselling Can Help

Many people who experience anxious attachment initially come to therapy believing that the problem lies in their relationship. While relationship difficulties may certainly be present, therapy often reveals that the deeper struggle is not simply about the partner, but about the fear, uncertainty, and threat responses that become activated within close relationships. Often, anxious attachment is linked to earlier relational experiences where emotional security felt inconsistent or uncertain. Therapy can help people understand how these experiences may continue to influence present-day relationships, even when circumstances are very different.

As awareness grows, clients often begin to recognise the difference between what is happening in the present moment and what their nervous system has learned to anticipate from the past. Counselling can also help strengthen emotional regulation, develop greater self-trust, and reduce the reliance on reassurance from others as the primary source of security. Rather than constantly scanning a relationship for signs of danger, individuals can gradually learn to find a greater sense of stability within themselves. This does not mean becoming less connected or less caring. Instead, it means developing the ability to remain emotionally present within a relationship without being overwhelmed by fear.

The goal is not to remove the need for connection. It is to develop a stronger sense of safety within oneself, so that relationships become a source of closeness rather than a source of constant vigilance. With awareness, patience, and support, it becomes possible to step out of threat-monitoring mode and into a more secure way of relating, where connection can be enjoyed rather than continually feared.

Final Note

Many of the challenges we experience in relationships begin with the relationship we have with ourselves. Learning to understand our inner world can often be the first step towards creating healthier and more secure connections with others.

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

Why We Struggle to Trust Our Feelings in Relationships

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In relationships, many people become highly attuned to the emotional responses of others. They learn to monitor tone, mood, facial expressions, or possible reactions in order to maintain connection, avoid conflict, or keep emotional balance. Over time, this can create a subtle but important shift away from their own internal experience. When asked how they feel, some people instinctively answer with what their partner thinks, what their partner needs, or how their partner might react. Their attention moves outward before they have fully recognised their own response. Often, this happens so automatically that the person barely notices they are doing it.

Losing Contact with Our Own Inner Voice

For some people, particularly those who have experienced criticism, emotional unpredictability, or conflict within relationships, it can begin to feel safer to monitor the emotional environment than to remain connected to their own feelings. Rather than asking, “What am I experiencing right now?” the mind shifts towards:
“How will this affect the other person?”
“Will my feelings be accepted?”
“Do I need to defend myself?”

Over time, this can weaken trust in one’s own internal world. A person may become uncertain about whether their emotions are valid, whether their needs are reasonable, or whether they are allowed to experience something differently from their partner.

Emotional Reticence and Emotional Over Functioning

In some relationships, these patterns can become organised between two people in ways that feel familiar but exhausting. One person may become emotionally reticent, finding it difficult to identify, express, or stay connected to their feelings. Emotional experience may feel vague, distant, or uncomfortable to engage with directly. The other person may begin compensating by carrying more of the emotional awareness within the relationship. They may try to interpret feelings, maintain communication, anticipate problems, or encourage emotional openness. Although this dynamic can develop in any relationship, many couples describe having unconsciously fallen into more traditional emotional roles, where one partner becomes the emotional processor while the other withdraws from emotional engagement. Over time, this can create frustration for both people. The emotionally expressive partner may begin to feel alone, burdened, or responsible for the emotional life of the relationship. They may long for reciprocity, openness, or emotional presence. Meanwhile, the more emotionally withdrawn partner may feel criticised, overwhelmed, inadequate, or pressured to respond in ways they do not fully understand within themselves. Neither person is necessarily “wrong.” Often, both are responding to emotional patterns that developed long before the relationship itself.

When Emotional Monitoring Replaces Emotional Awareness

One difficulty with constantly monitoring another person’s emotional state is that it leaves very little room to notice our own. Instead of experiencing emotions directly, a person may begin evaluating them through the imagined response of someone else. This can create an exhausting form of inner self-surveillance where thoughts and feelings are filtered, softened, defended, or edited before they are even fully understood. At times, people can become so focused on managing the emotional atmosphere around them that they lose connection with what they genuinely think or feel.

A Small Reflective Practice

In therapy, it can sometimes help to gently pause and notice where attention is going in moments of emotional tension. A simple reflective practice might involve asking:

Am I in my own mind right now, or second guessing what my partner thinks?

Do I have my own response, or am I preparing to defend myself?

Is it possible for me to own my feelings, while allowing the other person to have their own reaction?

This is not about becoming detached or uncaring. It is not about ignoring the emotional reality of another person. Rather, it is about creating enough internal space to recognise that our own thoughts, feelings, and reactions also deserve attention.

Relearning Emotional Ownership

For some people, reconnecting with their inner experience can feel unfamiliar at first. They may notice uncertainty when asked what they feel. They may instinctively seek reassurance, approval, or confirmation before trusting their own perspective. Learning to validate our inner experience often begins very gradually. It can involve noticing emotions without immediately explaining them away, allowing feelings to exist without rushing to justify them, and recognising that disagreement does not automatically invalidate personal experience. Over time, this can help strengthen a more stable and grounded sense of self within relationships. Leaning into an internal Locus of Evaluation helps foster stability and balance individually and as a couple.

A More Balanced Emotional Connection

Healthy emotional connection does not require one person to carry the emotional responsibility for both people. Nor does it require emotional withdrawal in order to maintain independence or safety. A more balanced relationship allows room for both people to remain connected to themselves while also staying emotionally available to one another. This creates space for honesty, difference, vulnerability, and mutual understanding without either person needing to abandon their own internal experience.

A Compassionate Perspective

Many people who struggle to trust their feelings learned, at some point, that it felt safer to monitor others than to remain fully connected to themselves. These patterns are often thoughtful adaptations to earlier emotional environments. With awareness and support, it becomes possible to gradually rebuild trust in one’s own inner world. And from this place, relationships can begin to feel less like a process of emotional management, and more like a shared experience between two people who are both allowed to exist fully within themselves.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) May 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

Why We’re Drawn to Certain People: Exploring Our Inner Relationship Patterns

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Many people notice recurring patterns in their relationships. They may find themselves drawn to similar types of partners, or experiencing familiar tensions again and again, even when circumstances change. Often, these patterns are not just about the other person. They can reflect something deeper; an internal relationship between different parts of the self. In psychological terms, we all carry a range of inner capacities. Some of these are more structured, action-oriented, and focused on thinking or problem-solving. Others are more relational, intuitive, and emotionally attuned. Rather than seeing these as strictly “masculine” or “feminine,” it can be helpful to understand them as complementary aspects of our psychological makeup. Some people also find it useful to think of these as “left” and “right” aspects of the self; different, but equally important ways of experiencing and responding to life.

When One Side Becomes More Familiar

Over time, many people come to rely more heavily on one way of being. For some, this might look like a strong sense of independence, clear thinking, and self-reliance, while emotional expression or vulnerability feels less accessible. For others, emotional connection may feel natural and important, while boundaries, direction, or self-definition can feel more difficult to hold onto. These patterns usually develop for understandable reasons. Early relationships and life experiences often shape which parts of us feel safe to express, and which parts are held back or less developed. When one side becomes more familiar, other aspects of the self can quietly move into the background.

How This Can Show Up in Relationships

Close relationships tend to bring these internal dynamics gently into focus. A person who feels more comfortable relying on themselves may find themselves drawn to someone who is emotionally expressive and open. Someone who values closeness and connection may feel drawn to a partner who appears steady, grounded, or decisive. At times, this can feel balancing. At other times, it can create strain, particularly when both people are unknowingly leaning on each other to hold what feels difficult within themselves. One person may long for closeness while the other needs space. One may try to think things through, while the other seeks to feel understood. One may take on responsibility, while the other feels overwhelmed by it. These patterns are rarely random. They often reflect an attempt, at a deeper level, to create a sense of balance.

The Pull Towards What Is Less Developed

It can sometimes feel as though we are drawn to in others what is less familiar in ourselves. This does not mean that relationships are simply projections. However, they can bring us into contact with parts of ourselves that we have had less opportunity to develop or feel comfortable with. For example, someone who finds vulnerability difficult may feel both drawn to and unsettled by emotional openness in another person. Someone who feels uncertain in their independence may admire strength and clarity in others, while also feeling intimidated by it. Experiences like this can carry both a sense of connection and a sense of tension.

The Search for Wholeness in Relationships

At a deeper level, many people experience a sense of longing in relationships that can be difficult to fully explain. It can feel like a pull towards something that is not quite accessible on one’s own. This longing is often not simply about the other person, but about a movement within the self towards greater balance. When certain aspects of our inner world feel less developed or harder to access, they can create a quiet sense of incompleteness. At times, this can become most visible in the way we experience attraction. We may find ourselves strongly drawn to people who seem to embody qualities that feel distant from our usual way of being. This can create a sense of excitement, recognition, or even intensity that feels difficult to put into words. At the same time, these relationships can also bring moments of frustration or confusion, particularly when they begin to touch parts of us that feel unfamiliar or vulnerable. In this way, relationships can sometimes act as a kind of mirror. They can bring into awareness aspects of ourselves that may have remained in the background for a long time. This process is not always comfortable. It can stir old emotional patterns, challenge familiar ways of coping, and invite growth that takes time.

Moving Towards Greater Integration

Therapeutic work often involves gently helping people become more aware of these internal patterns, and supporting the development of a wider range of responses. This might involve learning to pause and reflect rather than react, becoming more familiar with emotional experience while also maintaining clarity of thought, and gradually building both connection and boundaries in a way that feels manageable. The aim is not to replace one way of being with another, but to allow more flexibility, so that different parts of the self can come forward when they are needed. Over time, this can ease the pressure placed on relationships to provide something that feels missing internally.

Mutual Influence and Growth

It can be helpful to remember that this process moves in both directions. Just as we may feel impacted by someone else, we are also part of their experience. Relationships are rarely one-sided; they involve an ongoing exchange in which both people are, in different ways, influencing and responding to each other. Because of this, qualities such as patience, clarity, and respect become especially important. Being able to communicate honestly, while also recognising the other person’s separate experience, can help create a sense of emotional safety. Allowing space for difference, without trying to control or reshape the other, can support a more genuine form of connection. Over time, this kind of environment makes it more possible for both people to grow, not through pressure or expectation, but through increased awareness and understanding.

A More Balanced Way of Relating

As a person develops a more integrated sense of themselves, relationships often begin to feel different. There can be a little more space where there was once urgency. Differences can feel easier to tolerate. Communication may become clearer, and there can be a growing sense of steadiness, even when things feel challenging. Rather than being pulled along by familiar patterns, there is often more room for choice, for understanding, and for responding in ways that feel more aligned with the present moment.

A Compassionate Perspective

Many of the patterns people struggle with in relationships are not signs of something going wrong. They are often the result of the mind adapting, in thoughtful and creative ways, to earlier experiences. What once helped to maintain safety or connection can, over time, begin to feel limiting. With awareness, patience, and the right kind of support, it becomes possible to develop a more balanced internal relationship; one that allows for both strength and sensitivity, independence and connection. From this place, relationships with others can feel less like a repetition of the past, and more like something that is being shaped, with care, in the present.

Collette O’Mahony – April 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

The Role of Childhood in Forming Adult Identities

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Many adults who begin therapy describe a subtle but persistent feeling that they have spent much of their lives being the person others needed them to be, rather than the person they naturally are. On the outside they may appear capable, responsible and well adjusted, yet internally there can be a sense of disconnection from their own feelings, preferences or needs. In psychology this experience is sometimes described as living from a false self.

Despite how the phrase may sound, a false self is not about dishonesty or pretending. It is usually a protective adaptation that develops during childhood in response to the emotional environment around us. When we understand how this process unfolds, it becomes easier to see why so many thoughtful, capable adults still struggle with authenticity later in life.

The idea of the false self was introduced by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who observed that a child’s sense of identity develops through being seen, understood and responded to by caregivers. When a child’s feelings and spontaneous expressions are welcomed, they gradually develop what Winnicott called a true self; a sense of being real, emotionally alive and able to express themselves naturally in the world.

However, not all environments allow this process to unfold easily. Children are highly sensitive to the emotional climate around them. If certain feelings lead to tension, criticism, withdrawal or unpredictability, the child often learns, without consciously realising it, to adjust their behaviour in order to maintain connection and safety. They may become especially responsible, quiet their own needs, avoid conflict or focus on keeping others comfortable. These adjustments can work remarkably well in childhood, helping the child navigate difficult emotional situations. Over time, however, these adaptive patterns can become so familiar that they begin to replace the person’s natural responses.

In adult life this can lead to a feeling of performing rather than simply being. Some people notice that they automatically prioritise other people’s needs, struggle to identify what they themselves want, or feel uneasy expressing disagreement or vulnerability. Others describe a sense of exhaustion from constantly adapting to expectations. Interestingly, these patterns can become especially noticeable in environments that resemble earlier family dynamics. Returning to the family home, interacting with certain relatives or entering hierarchical situations can sometimes trigger a quick return to old ways of responding. When this happens, it does not mean that personal growth has been lost; it simply means that the mind recognises a familiar emotional landscape and briefly reactivates an old strategy for maintaining safety.

Seen in this light, the false self is not a flaw but a sign of the mind’s remarkable adaptability. At the time it developed, it was often the best available way to preserve connection, stability or emotional protection. For this reason, the aim of therapy is not to eliminate this part of the self but to understand it and gradually reduce the need to rely on it in every situation.

Reconnecting with a more authentic sense of self tends to be a gradual and compassionate process rather than a dramatic transformation. It often begins with simply noticing the moments when we automatically adapt or override our own feelings. From there, many people begin to rediscover their internal experience, such as preferences, emotions and bodily responses, which may have been set aside for many years. As these signals become clearer, it becomes possible to experiment with expressing them in small, safe ways within supportive relationships.

Over time, these experiences help the nervous system learn something important: that authenticity does not necessarily threaten connection. In fact, when it is expressed thoughtfully and safely, authenticity often deepens relationships rather than weakening them.

In this sense, reconnecting with the authentic self is rarely about becoming someone new. More often it involves rediscovering aspects of ourselves that were always present but had to remain quiet for a time. With patience, understanding and the right support, people can learn that it is possible to remain connected to others while also remaining connected to themselves.

Collette O’Mahony 07 March 2026

If anything in this article resonates and you wish to explore more: Contact me at info@colletteomahony.com – with your name, age, issue and goals for therapy. I offer a free introduction session of 15 minutes to assess if you want to proceed. One hour online sessions are £45. Psychotherapy

Surviving Parental Trauma

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Many adults struggle in relationships, with emotions, or with their sense of self without fully understanding why. Often, the missing piece is this: they grew up with a parent who was carrying unresolved trauma. This article is for adult children of trauma-affected parents. It is not about diagnosing parents or assigning blame. Instead, it’s about understanding how growing up around unprocessed trauma can shape a child and how that child, now an adult, can begin to heal. A parent does not need to talk about their trauma for it to affect their child. Trauma lives in the nervous system, and children are exquisitely sensitive to it. They feel it in tone, in mood shifts, in emotional absences, and in reactions that seem bigger than the moment calls for. A trauma-affected parent may feel emotionally unpredictable to a child, sometimes present and loving, other times overwhelmed, withdrawn, anxious, controlling, or unreachable. Even when care and love are present, they may exist alongside fear, confusion, or emotional distance. For a child, this creates a painful contradiction: the same person who provides comfort may also be the source of distress. Over time, the child adapts.

Adaptation as Survival

Children always adapt to their environment. When a parent’s unresolved trauma dominates the emotional landscape, the child learns, often without awareness, what is required to stay connected and safe. Many adult children of trauma-affected parents learned to closely monitor moods, anticipate emotional shifts, stay quiet or helpful, take responsibility for other people’s feelings, or grow up far too quickly. These were not personality traits; they were survival strategies.

Often, these adaptations later become strengths. Empathy, responsibility, sensitivity, and attunement may be highly developed. But what once protected the child can later limit the adult, especially in relationships that require mutuality rather than vigilance.

Body Memory

Trauma is not just remembered; it is encoded in the nervous system. As adults, many people notice that being with their parent, or even thinking about them, triggers strong physical responses. Anxiety, panic, freezing, emotional shutdown, sudden anger, or overwhelming guilt can appear quickly and feel disproportionate. Some people notice that they feel much younger in these moments, as though they are transported back into the emotional world of childhood. These reactions are not signs of weakness or immaturity. They are learned survival responses. The body remembers what it had to do to stay safe long before the adult mind had language or choice.

Invisible Beliefs

Growing up around unresolved trauma often shapes quiet, deeply held beliefs about self and relationships. Many adult children carry an unspoken sense that their needs are too much, that they are responsible for other people’s emotions, or that closeness inevitably leads to danger or loss. These beliefs are rarely conscious, yet they influence boundaries, intimacy, work, and self-worth throughout adulthood. They shape how much space a person feels entitled to take, how safe they feel depending on others, and how easily they experience guilt when prioritising themselves.

Triggers

For many adult children, the parent themselves becomes a trauma trigger, not because the parent intends harm, but because the relationship is linked to years of emotional unpredictability. This can create a deep and painful inner conflict. There may be a longing for closeness alongside a strong sense of unsafety, compassion that exists next to anger or grief, or a tendency to minimize one’s own pain because the parent “had it worse.” Understanding this dynamic can be profoundly relieving. It explains why insight alone does not make these reactions disappear and why healing must involve the nervous system, not just logic or willpower.

One of the most difficult and most healing tasks for adult children is learning to hold two truths at the same time: a parent may have been deeply wounded and doing the best they could, and the child’s emotional needs were still not fully met. Acknowledging impact is not the same as blaming. Your pain does not invalidate your compassion, and your compassion does not erase your pain. Both can exist together.

Healing

Healing from parental trauma is not about fixing the parent or forcing forgiveness. It is about restoring safety, choice, and connection to oneself. This often includes learning to recognise and regulate trauma responses, developing boundaries that protect the nervous system, grieving the parent you needed but did not have, and untangling responsibility from love. Over time, it also means building relationships that feel steadier, more reciprocal, and less activating.

Healing rarely happens all at once. It unfolds gradually, in layers. What matters is not how much you understand, but how much safety you allow yourself to experience in the present.

If you grew up with a trauma-affected parent, your struggles make sense. You adapted to an environment that asked more of you than it should have. You are not broken. You are responding exactly as someone who learned to survive early and often. Healing does not require blame. It requires honesty, compassion, and the permission to care for yourself in ways you never received. You deserved safety then. You are allowed to choose it now.

For one-to-one counselling email me with your name, age and goals for therapy. I offer a free introductory session of 15 minutes. All sessions are online.

info@colletteomahony.com

Collette O’Mahony. February 2026.