In this article, I’m sharing 10 foundational ways to start healing an anxious attachment style within your relationships. From learning how to self-soothe, to building self-worth and setting clear boundaries, this isn’t about becoming a different person — it’s about creating the internal conditions that allow you to relate from a more secure place.

1. Get your mindset right

How you approach this work matters. Healing anxious attachment isn’t something to muscle through or “fix” with enough willpower. The most sustainable progress comes from a mindset grounded in self-compassion, curiosity, and care.

So often, people with anxious attachment want to get rid of their anxiety as quickly as possible — to stop feeling so reactive, needy, or overwhelmed. That frustration is understandable. But shame is not fertile ground for growth. Trying to heal from a place of self-criticism usually just deepens the very patterns you’re trying to shift.

Instead, see if you can approach yourself with a genuine desire to understand. To get to know why your nervous system reacts the way it does, and how these patterns once made sense. There is nothing wrong with you. Every fear, coping strategy, and behaviour — even the ones you cringe at — developed for a reason.

2. Learn about your nervous system and how to self-soothe

Understanding your nervous system is essential. You can intellectually understand your attachment patterns inside and out, but when anxiety takes over, insight alone rarely helps.

Those moments call for body-based skills — learning how to work with your physiology rather than trying to override it. Self-soothing and regulation help your system feel safer so that your thoughts can settle, instead of spiralling.

For many anxiously attached people, self-regulation is underdeveloped because safety has historically come from other people — first caregivers, then partners. Building this capacity within yourself reduces how dependent your sense of wellbeing is on what’s happening in your relationship.

Learning to attune to my own nervous system was genuinely life-changing, and it remains a core pillar of how I teach healing anxious attachment.

3. Understand and heal your core wounds

Alongside nervous system work, healing anxious attachment requires tending to core wounds — most commonly unworthiness and abandonment.

The unworthiness wound usually sounds like some version of “I’m not enough,” with the blank filled in endlessly: smart enough, attractive enough, successful enough, calm enough. This belief drives patterns like people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-giving, and constantly trying to earn love.

The abandonment wound develops when connection feels unreliable or conditional. It creates hyper-sensitivity to disconnection and a deep fear of being left alone when you need support most. Even small ruptures can feel catastrophic when this wound is activated.

These wounds aren’t flaws — they’re adaptive responses. Healing them means gently updating beliefs that no longer serve you.

4. Build self-worth, self-respect, and self-trust

I don’t tend to emphasise “self-love” because for many people, it feels abstract and unattainable. Instead, I focus on building self-worth, self-respect, and self-trust.

Self-worth grows when you follow through on commitments to yourself. Self-respect develops when you honour your needs and boundaries. Self-trust forms when you prove to yourself that you can handle discomfort and uncertainty without abandoning yourself.

These qualities are built through consistent, often small actions — not affirmations or grand gestures.

5. Diversify your energy beyond the relationship

Anxiously attached people often over-invest in their romantic relationships, especially when things feel uncertain. The shakier the ground, the tighter the grip.

A big part of healing is learning to distribute your energy across other areas of life — friendships, work, hobbies, health, creativity, rest. This isn’t about pulling away emotionally, but about remembering that your life is bigger than one connection.

Doing this not only strengthens you as an individual, but often improves the relationship itself by reducing pressure and intensity.

6. Identify your needs and practise voicing them

Many anxiously attached people learned early that having needs was risky. Being easy, agreeable, and low-maintenance felt safer than being honest.

Healing involves reversing that pattern — learning what you actually need, and practising expressing it. This can feel deeply uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re used to over-giving or self-abandoning. But needs don’t make you difficult; they make you human.

7. Learn to set and respect boundaries

Boundaries are often a weak spot for anxiously attached people — both setting their own and respecting others’.

Boundaries aren’t walls; they’re guidelines that protect your energy, safety, and self-respect. Learning to identify what works for you, and what doesn’t, is essential if you want to feel secure in relationships.

As Brené Brown puts it: “Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Stand your sacred ground.”

8. Build skills for healthy conflict and repair

Conflict is unavoidable in relationships. What matters isn’t whether it happens, but how it’s handled.

Anxiously attached people often avoid conflict until emotions boil over, leading to reactions that feel disproportionate in hindsight. Learning how to address issues earlier, communicate clearly, and repair effectively creates far more safety than avoiding tension altogether.

Research consistently shows that strong relationships aren’t conflict-free — they’re repair-capable.

9. Get clear on what you want

One of the most stabilising things you can do is clarify what you’re actually looking for in a partner and relationship. Not just chemistry or someone choosing you — but shared values, emotional availability, and compatibility.

When you’re clear on your non-negotiables, you’re less likely to abandon yourself for potential or intensity that doesn’t truly meet your needs.

10. Understand what healing really means

Healing anxious attachment doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anxious again. That’s not realistic — or human.

What it does mean is that anxiety no longer runs the show. You develop enough internal stability, self-trust, and regulation that anxious thoughts and feelings don’t hijack your behaviour or decision-making.

Your anxious parts may still exist, but they’re no longer in the driver’s seat. And that shift — from fear-led to self-led — is where real freedom lives.

If you’re ready to do this work, my signature course Healing Anxious Attachment walks you through this process in depth. Thousands of people have used it to build a more secure relationship with themselves and with others.