For most of my adult life, I thought my biggest problem in relationships was that I cared too much. I needed constant reassurance. I overanalyzed texts. I worried endlessly about being too much, or not enough, or somehow both at the same time. I often felt like I was hanging onto people who were already halfway out the door—and I blamed myself for not being “secure” enough to make them stay.
At the time, I didn’t have the language for it. But later, I would come to understand that I had what psychologists call an anxious attachment style—a way of relating that develops in early childhood, shaped by inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or unpredictable caregivers. When love feels uncertain or conditional in those formative years, our nervous systems adapt. We learn to become hyper-attuned to the emotional states of others. We learn that love can disappear without warning, so we cling. We chase. We try to earn it.
I spent years in this pattern—hoping that the next relationship, the next partner, the next version of myself would finally bring peace.
But the peace I was seeking never came from being loved “enough.” It came, eventually, from facing something I had spent decades avoiding: my trauma.
The Break That Started Everything
My healing journey didn’t begin in a therapist’s office. It began at the end of a 20-year relationship.
There’s something about the ending of a long-term partnership that can shake you at your foundation. It wasn’t just the loss of a person—it was the loss of an identity, a shared history, a future I thought I could count on. But most painfully, it forced me to confront the truth: I had abandoned myself for years in the name of keeping someone else close.
The relationship, in many ways, mirrored the emotional landscape of my childhood—one where I learned that love was something to work for, not something to receive freely. I stayed for too long. I tolerated too much. And when it ended, I felt unmoored.
That’s when I began therapy. That’s when I began to truly look inward.
The Diagnosis: Complex PTSD
I was eventually diagnosed with Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)—a form of post-traumatic stress disorder that develops from prolonged exposure to relational trauma, especially during childhood. Unlike traditional PTSD, which often stems from a single, identifiable event, C-PTSD is rooted in chronic emotional neglect, instability, or abuse. It’s the trauma of growing up in a world where your emotional needs were never consistently met—and learning to survive by suppressing them.
Suddenly, so much made sense.
My intense fear of abandonment. My difficulty trusting others. My tendency to self-blame. The constant emotional rollercoaster in my relationships. It wasn’t just that I was “too sensitive.” My nervous system had been wired for survival from a very young age.
The Therapy That Helped Me Rebuild
I began working with a therapist who specialized in trauma and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT was originally developed to treat people with extreme emotional sensitivity, and for someone like me—with a history of anxious attachment and C-PTSD—it was life-changing.
DBT gave me four essential skills:
- Mindfulness: the ability to notice what I’m feeling without judgment.
- Distress tolerance: tools for surviving emotional storms without making things worse.
- Emotion regulation: learning how to manage my feelings instead of being ruled by them.
- Interpersonal effectiveness: how to ask for what I need without falling into people-pleasing or passive-aggression.
Slowly, therapy began to peel back the layers of old survival patterns. I learned how to sit with discomfort instead of reacting impulsively. I learned to validate my feelings without demanding someone else fix them. I began reconnecting with parts of myself I had long buried—especially the scared, hurting inner child who had always just wanted to feel safe.
The Shift to Avoidance
And then something unexpected happened.
The anxious noise that once ran constantly in the background began to fade. I wasn’t obsessing over whether someone loved me. I wasn’t anxiously analyzing every conversation. I didn’t feel the need to chase people who were emotionally unavailable.
But in its place came something I hadn’t anticipated: avoidance.
Suddenly, I was pulling away. I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to depend on anyone. I was quick to set boundaries, but slower to let anyone in. I started to feel safer alone than I did in connection.
At first, I thought this was healing. After years of being emotionally raw and exposed, protecting myself felt powerful.
But I started to realize that I wasn’t just “secure” now—I had swung to the other extreme. I was becoming avoidantly attached.
Avoidant attachment is also a defense mechanism. Instead of clinging to others, we learn to rely only on ourselves. We may downplay our needs, fear intimacy, or equate vulnerability with danger. In a way, it’s still about control—controlling closeness, emotions, and risk.
And in my case, it was a logical response to trauma recovery. When you’ve spent a lifetime over-attached, learning detachment feels like a relief. But I had to ask myself: Is this true safety, or is it just a new kind of armor?
Finding the Middle: What Secure Attachment Really Looks Like
Real healing, I’m learning, is about finding the middle path.
Secure attachment isn’t about becoming completely self-sufficient, nor is it about needing constant validation from others. It’s about:
- Being able to connect and hold your own center.
- Trusting others without abandoning yourself.
- Setting boundaries without shutting down.
- Feeling safe both in closeness and in solitude.
I’m still learning how to walk this line. Some days I catch myself defaulting to emotional distance. Other days I feel that old anxious ache rise up again. But now I have the tools to respond differently. I have the awareness to pause, check in with myself, and ask: What’s really going on here?
The work is ongoing. Healing is not a destination—it’s a relationship I have with myself, every day.
And if you’re on this path too—if you’ve gone from anxious to avoidant, or you’re just beginning to untangle the roots of your attachment wounds—I want you to know: you’re not broken. You’re adapting. You’re healing. And you’re learning how to love in a way that doesn’t require you to abandon yourself.
That’s the most powerful kind of love there is.
Final Thoughts
If any of this resonated with you, you’re not alone. Our attachment styles are not fixed—they can change, especially when we do the inner work of healing trauma and learning new relational skills.
It’s not always a straight line. Sometimes it’s a pendulum swing. But every step—whether anxious, avoidant, or somewhere in between—is a movement toward greater self-understanding and emotional safety.
You are worthy of secure, grounded love—and it begins with the relationship you build with yourself.