The Trouble with Anxious Attachment

Kerrie Jones • January 29, 2025

It’s difficult to indulge in any form of media without stumbling upon an article or video that exposes a psychological challenge and provides some solution to the problem. Pop psychology is on the rise due to an increase in suffering, we the “experts” are trying to do all we can to help as many people as we can, and one of the greatest causes of suffering is relationship abuse.


In my practice I specialize in recovery from narcissistic abuse and I’ve come to understand that people, largely women, who have suffered abuse aren’t victims, they’ve chosen their abuser(s), and ultimately their abuse. I know, you may be asking the question, ‘why would someone choose abuse?’, and my answer to that is they’re not making a conscious and active choice, but rather one from the subconscious.



Ages ago, people who studied the mind discovered the power of the unconscious has to take control of our lives, and in the last century, a psychologist, Carl Jung said, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”. What this means for you is you are likely being controlled by unconscious drivers that have highjacked the brain and lead you to do things you don’t truly want to do. It’s evident when you look at your life and you find yourself stuck in patterns and cycles that are taking you away from where you want to be.


In the case of relationship abuse, many women are stuck in cycles of abuse and they don’t know how to get out. They keep choosing the same man with a different name over and over again. This isn’t destiny, or the way it’s supposed to be, it’s a matter of sleepwalking, and when one awakes and becomes conscious of their unconscious motivations and choices, they become equipped to make satisfying choices and to ultimately win in life. This is the power of my work as a therapist, I help people to discover themselves and to win.


Attachment style is one of those unconscious motivations. From childhood, we were all placed into one of four attachment styles that are categorized as either secure or insecure. The insecure attachment styles are anxious, avoidant, or disorganized. Most of us in the insecure category fall into either anxious or avoidant. If you’ve done the work of discovering your attachment style, and you’ve determined you’re an anxious type, studies have shown you are more likely to enter into and remain in abusive relationships than any other attachment style.


The main characteristics of anxious attachment are preoccupation with romantic relationships, a deep belief of not being good enough for healthy love, and fear of abandonment. Typically, this looks like rushing into relationships and spending an excessive amount of time in the company of the other person or thinking about them, fantasizing about a future with this person without any evidence they can fulfill the fantasy, and engaging in performative behavior like cooking, cleaning, or buying things to prove worth. The anxiously attached is so focused on being chosen, they are unaware of their capacity to choose; being chosen is the goal, by whatever means necessary. This is what makes the anxiously attached so susceptible to abuse of all forms.


Attachment style is not a death sentence, the good news is, we can do the work to change it. It does require work, which is no walk in the park. With healthy introspection and a significant amount of trial and error, you can move from being insecurely attached, to securely attached. The purpose of secure attachment from childhood isn’t to find a secure mate, but to lead to an adulthood with security in yourself. As a child, you saw yourself as a reflection of your interactions with others. Now that you’re all grow up, you can learn to see yourself through a different lens that requires more of your own input and judgement. When you believe you’re good enough, worthy enough, and capable enough for anything, you won’t settle for anything less and you’ll naturally become more securely attached to yourself and to others. 

Why Heal?

By Kerrie Jones • October 8, 2025
Why Heal? Healing has become a buzzword in the company of words like self-care, peace, and mental health. They’re certainly a bit overused, but are nonetheless vital components of the life we all want to live. So, what is healing? Healing is wholeness. What makes us “unwhole”? Trauma. Many of us don’t believe that we’ve experienced trauma, and that’s understandable because this type of trauma is so common it doesn’t seem very traumatic. But here we’re talking about what we call “little t” trauma. Some examples are the separation or divorce of parents, emotional neglect (no one to talk to/childhood loneliness), or a parent suffering with mental health challenges (anxiety and depression are most common). When children have experiences like these, they often have parents or caregivers who are unavailable or incapable of providing for their needs, and instead of the parent taking responsibility, the kid blames themselves – that’s the trauma. When you are at fault of anything, you naturally correct or fix yourself; so, when you blame yourself for something you weren’t responsible for you overcorrect and rid yourself of attributes and qualities you actually need. There’s no way of knowing this process is taking place in childhood, the damage is done. The good news, however, is it’s reversible, and reversing the damage is called healing. There’s also no way to instinctively know what we need to heal until we begin living; life tells us where we need to heal. The easiest way to identify areas where healing is needed is when we want something, especially basic life necessities like love, and we can’t seem to achieve it, we do the same thing we did as kids, we fix ourselves. And when the fixing doesn’t work, we either settle, or we give up. We settle, because we believe the lie that this is the best we can get, and we’d rather have this than nothing, or we quit because we believe the lie that this is the best we can get, and we’d rather have nothing. There is some truth to the idea it doesn’t get better. The truth is, this is the best you can get if you don’t change, and change comes with healing. This is why you may feel stuck in certain areas of your life. You’ve fixed everything you believe needs fixing, but you haven’t healed. We can see this very thing play out currently with Cardi B who within the past year has separated from her husband Offset, had a baby, met a new man Stefon, and is currently pregnant again. In her new album she reflects on the events of the past year, and likely before. She’s gotten a new man, new clothes, and upgraded her body, but she hasn’t described any updates on her heart. Same Cardi, different man, same problems; and the same is true for us all. When we invest heavily in the superficial things that we believe will get us what we want (and we will undoubtedly start with the superficial things) yet we fail to do the real heart work, we’re deceiving ourselves. Why heal? Because it’s necessary to achieve our goals so we can live the life we truly want to live. 

Leaning Into Self-Love

By Kerrie Jones • October 8, 2025
You’re pretty amazing! Yes! You. In spite of everything you’ve been through, you’re still killing it in life; and the one thing that’s stopping you from accessing your fullest potential is you. You’ve mastered achievement, and if we’re being honest, you’ve limited yourself there as well, but where you can’t seem to win is in love. The reason is simple, you’ve never learned to love yourself. You learned instead, that the failure of the people who were entrusted with the responsibility of loving you was a reflection of you, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. All this time you’ve believed that there was something inherently unlovable about you. What you never understood, because no one ever told you, is their behavior was never a reflection of you, it was a reflection of them. They didn’t love you because they didn’t know how, and now it’s on you to break the cycle of lovelessness for you and the generations that follow you. This is your time; your time to experience love because that’s the one thing we’re all longing for. It’s the purpose of families, friendships, and romance; and you’ll never truly experience it until you learn to love yourself. I know what you’re thinking, “I already love myself”, and to some degree you do, but not for the reasons you’re giving yourself credit for. You’re thinking about all the achievements and the ways in which you take care of yourself, and quite frankly, those are all performative or surface-level at best. Meanwhile, at your core, you are lonely and deprived of real heartfelt love, even in a crowd; and that’s not love. The easiest way to detect your love for yourself is in how you show up for yourself with others. People pleasing, a lack of boundaries, an inability to say “no”, and giving without reciprocity are all symptoms of a person who lacks self-love. These behaviors indicate you are forsaking yourself while looking for someone else to love you, and they never will. The truth is you can’t tolerate real love from others and you’re stuck in a cycle of inviting people in who reflect the lovelessness of those who reared you. That sword cuts both ways, and it’s time to put it down. You want love, and it’s time for you to realize that it must come from you. The most important step in loving yourself is choosing to love yourself. No one explicitly told you that you were unlovable, you simply surmised it from their actions. (And let’s be clear, you’ve always been smart – brilliant even. Wise? That’s a newer skill that comes with setting aside a childish mindset.) As a child, you couldn’t properly understand the actions of those around you without intervention, and you’ve been carrying around false beliefs about yourself your entire life. The assumption that you’re unlovable has led you to years and years of pain. All of your choices have stemmed from this belief. By shifting your mindset to self-love, a mindset that recognizes your worth, you are unlocking the joy and fulfillment you always knew was possible, but thought only existed in the arms of another. When you stop relying on others to love you and you begin to love yourself, you guarantee yourself love, and all of your choices will align. Your love for yourself will attract love, just as your lovelessness has piled on pain.
A woman in a white dress is walking barefoot across a wooden bridge.

Spinning the Block

By Kerrie Jones • July 1, 2025
After ending a relationship with a narcissist, one of two things will happen. They’ll immediately spin the block with the hope of reconciling, or you’ll instantly become their number one enemy and there’s nothing they won’t do to destroy you. Neither of these options are personal to you, both are the result of their incredibly fragile ego that won’t allow them to “lose”. The narcissist is extremely sensitive to the thoughts and opinions of others. This is why they put on such a show with others, and will act a complete fool when they’re alone with you; on top of that, they’ve insisted that you keep what happens between the two of you private. (Side note: anyone who requires secrecy about your relationship will, or already has begun abusing you.) So, when you leave, even if it’s after they break up with you, they believe they’ve been placed in the spotlight, and narcissists hate truth-bearing light. They’ll never admit it, however, they know deep down that they’ve mistreated you, and for whatever reason, they’re terrified for others to know. The path of least resistance, in this case, is to get you back. This way they can ensure you’ll keep their little secret. They will beg, plead, and apologize to get you back; and if you’re paying attention, you’ll see that none of these efforts are sincere. They have trouble articulating what they’ve actually done wrong, and when they do, they’re blaming you for it. This is an indication that though there’s the promise of change, the intention to change is nonexistent. If you go back, it’ll be better for a little while, then boom, you’re right back to the old patterns. If you’ve found yourself in the pattern of leaving and returning, I get it. There are so many beliefs to contend with: “will I find someone else to love me?”, “I love them”, “there’s no one else for me”, “I want to keep my family together”. In addition to that, there’s all of the things they tell you will happen if you leave them, including threats of self-harm and self-sabotaging behaviors that pull at your heart strings. This is why on average women return to abusive relationships 5-7 times before leaving for good. The truth is, these women eventually find out what women who leave once already know, the narcissist is never going to change. You’ve learned to love them more than you love yourself, which is like pouring into a black hole, because they can’t return the love and care you’ve given to them; they’ll never know how. When you do leave, prepare yourself to meet the real person you’ve lived with, slept beside, and created children with. They couldn’t contain you in a relationship, now, they’ll do what they can to destroy you. The goal here is to shift that spotlight that’s been placed on them to you, and to make you look like the problem. This is why they’ll instantly find another woman (see someone will be with me, not you) and they’ll tell that woman all of the horrible things you’ve done to them. They’ll contact any of your family and friends they believe they can manipulate with tales of your issues. Before a court, they will tell the most vicious lies under oath to take away everything you have, even the kids whom they have no intention of caring for. Until you’re in the situation, you won’t be able to imagine how far they’ll go to paint you as the evil villain; and even when you’re in the situation, you may struggle with what you’re hearing about yourself. I’ve heard painful stories, from many women about the ways in which the narcissist ravaged their lives and the lives of their children all because of their ego. So, what do you do? In a nutshell, you do the very best you can do to take care of yourself. That task is a tall order because if you’ve spent significant time in a relationship with a narcissist, you don’t know what it means to take care of yourself. Self-care is a skill, that once developed will provide you with the love you didn’t know you could give to yourself. What you need right now is love. Yes, love from others can go a long way, but until you’ve learned to love yourself there’s only so much real love you can tolerate from others. You thought love was jealousy, attention, and control; these don’t come close to embodying love. Love is being seen, heard, understood, and accepted for who you are. Love is free and fun and peaceful at its core. Love let’s you be you, unapologetically. You deserve to be loved, and it begins with you. If you want support in getting back to love, it would be my pleasure to join you on your journey. Visit theothersidetherapy.com or email me at info@theothersidetherapy.com In the meantime, begin taking good care of yourself!