Preoccupied individuals believe that they are not worthy of love which causes insecurity in close relationships. They gain self-worth and fulfillment through being useful and serving good to others. If others are happy, they are happy.
Meaning of Anxious preoccupied attachment
If we break down the meaning of Anxious preoccupied attachment style, then “Anxious” stands for additional stress, anxiety that individuals experience when they are in close relationships.
“Preoccupied” stands for an individual’s inability to stop thinking, focusing on anything other than close relationships they are in. Their mind can often be preoccupied with thoughts, worries that are related to close relationships.
Individuals with anxious preoccupied attachment style for most part are friendly and kind people. They might be shy at first and need more time to open up to others, but generally they have personality characteristics that are pro-social and necessary for establishing close connections with others.
Personality traits of Anxious preoccupied attachment style that are great:
- They are very kind and share true care of others;
- They are honest;
- They are great listeners;
- They are responsible;
- They are orientated of resolving relationship problems;
- They are emphatic and able to fill others persons shoes;
- They always give their best effort when helping others.
People with Anxious preoccupied attachment style don’t lack relationship skills that make them insecure. They lack belief that they deserve what they have because of who they are. Their self-image is distorted and that causes a great distress in relationships.
Anxious preoccupied attachment style and romantic relationships
In romantic relationships people with Anxious preoccupied attachment style often fall in love from the first sight. They feel overwhelming desire to be close. They are ready to share their love and true care. Oftenly they obsess over their partner and can’t stop thinking about them. They may have thoughts and fantasies of how great their partner is, when they will marry, how many children they will have, what lifestyle they are going to live.
All these thoughts create an overwhelming sense of pleasure. This is where preoccupied part kicks in. People with anxious preoccupied attachment at the beginning of romantic relationships often put their whole life on hold. They may abandon their social life, friends, hobbies and are ready to 100% commit to relationship they have. They want to spend time and be in close contact with their significant other at all costs, any time.
Anxious preoccupied attachment style difficulties in relationships
Problems for person with Anxious preoccupied attachment style in romantic relationships often arise after two to three weeks of spending close time together. At that time frame there is natural need for spending time away for each partner to recharge social battery, excitement about each other. Their partner’s need for space often doesn’t match a preoccupied person’s needs of being in close proximity. This is where the anxious part kicks in.
People with Anxious preoccupied attachment style may feel that they are getting abandoned when their partner is starting to show less interest and needs time to recharge excitement back. This triggers preoccupied persons’ anxiety of being abandoned, rejected and they start to panic.
Signs of Anxious preoccupied attachment style:
- They may bombard their partner with text messages, phone calls asking where they are, how they are doing.
- They may ask when they will be back to getter because they need that close contact in order to feel reassurance that their relationship is still okay and their partner still loves them.
- They may feel anxiety, hopelessness that their relationship is in danger and their partner is losing interest, might leave them.
- They may have fantasies of jealousy and their partner becoming interested in another person.
If an Anxious preoccupied person has a supportive partner, which responds in a kind manner, worry and panic often dissapears. Anxious preoccupied person feels reassured that everything is okay and their partner still loves them. Throughout relationships distress of an Anxious preoccupied tends to come in waves and recur.
People with Anxious preoccupied attachment often don’t realize that their suffering is part of a pattern. Suffering happens deep in the unconscious mind and unless a person becomes aware of it, it recurs and causes unnecessary distress.
How Anxious preoccupied attachment affects person during close relationship:
1. Losing self-identity
Often people with Anxious preoccupied attachment admit that during a relationship they became a different person and lost part of who they were. This occurs because close relationships activate past traumas, unresolved emotions that cause distress and are part of attachment patterns. These patterns also affect how a person behaves.
For example, a person might become controlling or possessive, jealous because fear of abandonment activates these behaviors in order to cope with distress. These behaviors and distress disrupt the healthy balance of a person’s functioning. Person might feel or behave differently in relation to how he was before becoming exclusive.
2. Self-isolation
People with Anxious preoccupied attachment often abandon their passions, hobbies and become preoccupied with romantic relationships. Need of be close, spend time together, and receive love becomes a person’s priority. Person might stop going to the gym, spending time with his friends, doing fun activities he did before.
Once person becomes exclusive his window of fulfilling unmet attachment needs becomes open. This often happens in an exaggerated manner. Person with Anxious preoccupied attachment has been starved of fulfilling his needs since early childhood.
When you been starving, you need to eat a lot more. In Anxious preoccupied persons case, you need to allocate more time, resources to satisfy your emotional hunger. Often it comes at the expense of abandoning social life, hobbies a person had before.
3. Stress and mood swings
Often Anxious preoccupied attachment makes a person more susceptible to stress and mood swings. Person can become overly emotional over little things. For example, not being able to spend time together, separating over holidays. Partner not responding to texts and calls right away, partner refusing to have sex.
Person with Anxious preoccupied attachment can become sad, hopeless, worried, angry, jealous in response to these events. They activate patterns of abandonment, loss, rejection and loneliness. Unless a person becomes aware of these emotions and takes conscious effort to heal them, they tend to recur and cause great distress to a person.
4. Self-esteem
Anxious preoccupied attachment person’s self-esteem is often dependent on the success of his relationship. Once Anxious preoccupied person enters the relationship, a power dynamic shift happens. Anxious preoccupied person is always trying to chase validation from a partner through being too nice and compliant, avoiding arguments, not asserting healthy relationship boundaries.
If you had to put into words then it should sound something like “If I will be a good boy or a girl then I will be accepted and get what I want.” If Anxious preoccupied person can get what he wants then he feels good and happy but when things go south, self-doubt and fear starts to overwhelm.
Person might worry that there is something wrong with him or the relationship. He may ask his partner multiple times why he doesn’t want to do certain things. Person might feel that his relationship is falling apart and become clingy, pushy which further escales chance of rejection, failure. He might feel sadness and view him as a failure. He might fear that others might judge him based on failures, shortcomings of his relationship.