Codependent Relationship Patterns – How to Heal Anxious Attachment

Codependent relationship patterns occur when two people depend on each other to feel safe in the relationship. It occurs when they don’t have the tools to create safety and self-regulate their nervous systems.  

They are looking for emotional safety from the other. They are needing the other to behave or speak in a certain way in order to feel safe. 

Codependent patterns usually show up through attachment styles, two of the most common attachment styles being Anxious Attached and Anxious Avoidant. 

And these “styles” or “patterns” will show up in relationships when your nervous system is feeling an intense amount of anxiety. That anxiety is triggered due to different reasons depending on the style. 

Anxious Attached

Imagine you’re a tiny little baby and are just learning to crawl. For the first time, your sense of adventure pulls you to crawl into the next room. The pull of your heart to this adventure is so strong, you didn’t even realize you were leaving your mom far behind on the couch. 

As you cross the threshold into the next room, you become suddenly aware of the feeling of being alone. Of being at the edge of your comfort zone. Of venturing off and being farther away from mom than ever before. It’s exhilarating yet a bit scary for your little heart. 

You turn around and the couch is empty. 

Mom’s not there. 

Now, your mom probably just went to switch the laundry or answer the phone. But to your nervous system, it could suddenly feel like, “It’s not safe to venture off on my own and do my thing. I’ll be abandoned and left. The person won’t be waiting for me when I come back. 

That’s all it takes. It doesn’t take much. Now if your childhood involved more intense examples of abandonment or a lack of nurturing or a lack of attention, then the pattern may be even stronger. 

In the present day, with this style and the corresponding protection patterns in your neurology, it can result in the clinging “neediness” that may have your partner pull away. And it will be triggered usually when there’s conflict or an uncertainty about the relationship. That fear of being left will spring up and it will be easy to make the other person responsible for shifting their behavior in order to feel safe. 

And that is the codependency from the Anxious Attached perspective. 

Anxious Avoidant

When there’s conflict or tension in a relationship for someone with this Attachment Style, their response to the rising anxiety and intensity in their nervous system will be to need to create space between them and the other. 

This is usually the result of a childhood with an overprotective parent, a parent who never let them venture off on their own. 

For this child, it never felt possible to follow their adventurous spirit into the next room on their own. They never truly got to be with themselves and to revel in the beauty of their heart’s call without their parent clinging to their side. 

And so, in the present day for them, any feeling of the other clinging to them or needing them to change how they’re being can result in them creating the space they never got to have as a child. 

They need the other to shift their behavior to feel safe as well, just in the opposite way. 

This is the codependency from the Anxious Avoidant perspective. 

So, you might be noticing how complimentary these two patterns are. 

How They Play Off Each Other

When there’s conflict in a relationship and anxiety and tension is rising, the Anxious Attached person will be afraid of being abandoned and will cling and want to resolve the tension with the other person to get back to a place of nurturing and peace with the other. 

They are more prone to be nervous or anxious if they don’t get a reply to their text or phone call in a certain amount of time. 

And if they don’t know how to regulate their own nervous system and create safety from within, they will often demand that the other change their behavior to help them regulate and feel that safety. They will often feel “too much” or like they can[t express their needs. 

And their needs are deeply important. Your needs are very important. It’s the expectation that the other meet them that creates the codependency. When you’re first able to regulate your own nervous system and can express your need or desire from that place, you’re then able to allow the other person to tell you if they can meet that need or not, without being attached to them meeting that need. Then, you can decide from there. 

This is usually the hardest thing for someone with this style. 

So, as the Anxious Attached individual clings to the Anxious Avoidant, the Anxious Avoidant pushes them away to create space. This makes them cling more. Which then makes them need more space. 

Neither person feels safe. And often feels the other person needs to change in order to feel safe. 

Neither person is wrong, bad, or worse than the other. And what they both have in common is a disregulated nervous system that they’ve forgotten how to regulate on their own. 

In this post, I’ll be focusing mainly on how to heal Anxious Attachment because it’s my personal experience. 

How To Heal Anxious Attachment

I struggled with Anxious Attachment for years and it wreaked havoc on my relationships. I had partners over the years who tried to meet my needs but my nervous system would become so disregulated that I wouldn’t feel safe no matter what they tried. 

In the last 2 years, I realized that there is some healing of codependency that can only happen in relationship and some that can only happen when single. 

What to Do While Single

And I finally committed to doing the healing that could only happen when single. I needed to begin to retrain and remind my nervous system how to self-regulate. 

When intensity, anxiety, and fear of abandonment arose in my nervous system, instead of reaching out to friends to have them talk me down, or reaching for food to numb, or distracting myself with work, I began to be there for myself. 

I realized that the solution wasn’t going to be through the mind. I had read all the books, done years of therapy, and became very aware of the pattern. That all helped. But it didn’t create a big shift. 

I realized there was nothing left to do but to actually BE with the uncomfortable sensations with my body. To give my body an experience of ME being there for ME. And to be really gentle with myself about the process that was happening inside me. 

And so I would go for really long walks. I would leave my wallet at home so I couldn’t buy food to numb and I would walk 1-2 hours from my home, breathing into the intensity in my body. I would take long deep breaths into my lower belly, to calm my nervous system from sympathetic into parasympathetic. I would stomp my feet to move the energy. If no one was around, I would make a scream or a growl. I would shake, clench, and release, my arms.

My mind would be thinking through worst case scenarios, scared, and pulling out the phone to call somebody. But I would resist the temptation. And I would let my mind run it’s loops while bringing my awareness back to the intensity of the body.

And eventually, my nervous system would calm. And the intensity would subside. And I had an experience of being there for myself and regulating my nervous system without the help of anyone else! 

It was amazing. And I really committed to this practice for 6-7 months. It was tough and intense at times. 

But the result is that, for the first time in my life, I truly felt like I was the center of my world. That I was the creator of my own safety. 

I wasn’t giving my power or center away to others to create my safety. I was creating it for myself. I was finding my safety through my creative impulse. Through the life I was creating for myself.  I was no longer using others to orient myself or feel like I was “doing it right.” And I was remembering how to regulate myself. 

Which has led to a whole new experience of dating. This work when you’re single is the work that sets the foundation to allow you to do the healing that can only happen IN relationship. 

What to Do While In Relationship

When you remember your innate ability to regulate your own nervous system, you’ll be amazed at a couple things.

#1: the type of people and relationships, romantic and otherwise you attract into your life and their capacity to regulate and care for themselves. This is a result of you shifting your energetic vibration by releasing the heavy weight of the wounding and trauma you’d been holding through shaking, moving, and releasing the trauma from your body while simultaneously holding yourself in gentleness. 

#2: your newfound ability to let others be in their process, experiencing whatever they have to experience without making it mean anything about you or having it take you off your center. Needs for space won’t feel so daunting suddenly as you’ve remembered how to enjoy space with yourself. 

This creates the possibility for secure attachment. Two people who are genuinely and healthily attached to each other, creating connection and closeness while also secure in themselves. It’s interdependence instead of codependency. 

And, in my experience, the old codependent patterns still arise. But when you do the work when you’re single, you’ll be better able equipped to navigate them with the other AND you’ll have attracted someone with whom you can communicate with about them and navigate them with.

Because there are some aspects of codependency that can only be healed in relationship. By creating a new experience with another.

First, create the foundation and possibility for that by remembering how to regulate your own nervous system. And the “solution” to that isn’t sexy. It isn’t what the mind likely wants. The mind likes 5 step plans and strategies. It wants to read another book or take another course. 

But what I’m inviting you into is 1 step: practice being with yourself when it’s the most uncomfortable. Slowly, using deep slow lower belly breaths, begin to build your capacity to be with the intensity of the sensations in your body until you remember that you are actually safe. 

And that you need nobody else to do anything to be safe. 

Then you get to ask for what you need and desire from an internally safe place, okay if the person in front of you can’t offer that. 

And with the nervous system tools to navigate that conversation. 

And one more tidbit is that, often, when the other is asking for space, a lot of the time , the Anxious Attached person needs space too. It’s just hard for them to realize that. So give yourself a moment to tune back into your needs and ask how you can utilize this space to nurture yourself. A lot of the time, I bet you’ll find that you need the sspace more than you realized. 

I hope this helped! I know Anxious Attachment can be really hard. And I hope my story helped you see that there is a way through. And it’s a gentle, patient path of being with yourself. And in the moments you can’t, reach out for support. Lean on your friends, your coach, etc. 

Just don’t lean on them for the answers. Lean on them to remind you of your power to regulate yourself. And to hold you in that possibility until you remember it for yourself. 

With lots of love, 

Orion

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