If you live with anxious attachment, you may recognise moments where your emotions feel overwhelming, your thoughts race ahead into worst-case scenarios, and no amount of reasoning seems to bring relief. In those moments, self-soothing can feel completely out of reach. You might notice yourself waiting — or even relying — on someone else to help you feel steady again, often a partner.

When that reassurance isn’t available, particularly during moments of disconnection or rupture, the experience can feel deeply unsettling. People often describe it as panic, helplessness, or a sense of vulnerability that feels far bigger than the present moment — almost as though something much older has been stirred.

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone. Difficulty with self-soothing is extremely common for people with anxious attachment, and it isn’t a personal failing. There are clear developmental reasons for it. And importantly, it’s something that can be learned.

Let’s look at why self-soothing can feel so hard, why this has nothing to do with being “too much,” and how you can begin to build a steadier relationship with your own internal experience.

Why self-soothing can feel so difficult

To understand self-soothing, it helps to look at early development. Humans are born neurologically immature. As babies, we depend on caregivers not only for physical survival, but also for emotional regulation. Infants don’t calm themselves — they learn regulation through repeated experiences of being soothed by an attuned, responsive adult.

Over time, those experiences are internalised. When co-regulation is reasonably consistent, a child gradually develops the capacity to settle themselves. This is one of the foundations of secure attachment.

For many people with anxious attachment, those early experiences were less consistent. You may have received enough attunement to know how important connection was, but not enough to feel secure in it. That tends to shape two patterns.

First, you become highly attuned to connection, scanning for any signs of withdrawal, distance, or change. Second, because so much energy is going into monitoring closeness and preventing separation, there’s less opportunity to develop a strong internal sense of self-regulation.

In adulthood, moments of emotional dysregulation can then echo earlier experiences of vulnerability — a familiar surge of fear, urgency, and a strong pull toward the person who feels like safety. This isn’t an overreaction or a lack of emotional maturity. It’s your nervous system responding from a very old place.

Self-soothing is something you can learn

Even if self-regulation wasn’t well established early on, it can be developed later in life. It’s often helpful to think of self-soothing not as a single technique, but as a set of capacities you build over time.

Learning to regulate yourself isn’t really about finding the perfect tool. It’s about developing the habit of turning toward your own experience with some curiosity rather than panic or self-criticism. That shift alone begins to change the dynamic.

Start with the body, not the mind

When you’re highly activated, your nervous system is driving your thoughts. That’s why anxiety so often pulls you straight into catastrophic thinking. In those states, trying to reason your way back to calm usually doesn’t work.

Working with the body first is often far more effective.

Different approaches can help depending on how activated you are.

Movement to release excess activation

When anxiety is high, the body may be flooded with stress hormones. In those moments, stillness or purely cognitive techniques can feel ineffective because the system needs an outlet.

Movement can help here. This might look like going for a brisk walk, shaking out your arms, stretching, lifting weights, or putting on music and moving your body for a few minutes. Physical activity helps the nervous system complete the stress response and begin to settle.

Sensory grounding to orient to the present

When your thoughts are racing, bringing your attention back to your senses can help anchor you in the here and now. That might involve noticing what you can see, hear, or feel around you, holding something cold, lighting a candle, listening to music, or taking a warm shower.

These experiences gently remind your system that you’re here, now, and not in the imagined future your mind is projecting.

Breath and gentle regulation

Once activation has come down somewhat, breath can be a useful support. Slowing your exhale, breathing into the belly, humming, or placing a hand on your chest can all help signal safety to the nervous system.

The aim here isn’t to “do it right,” but to offer your system a steady, calming input.

Make regulation an ongoing practice

For many anxiously attached people, self-soothing becomes something they reach for only when things feel unbearable. But it’s often more effective when it’s woven into daily life.

Checking in with yourself throughout the day — asking what you need, noticing tension early, making small adjustments — can prevent stress from accumulating into a crisis. That might mean taking a short break, moving your body, getting some fresh air, or simply slowing down for a moment.

Over time, this kind of ongoing attunement helps shift your internal experience from I can’t cope on my own to I can respond to what’s happening inside me.

There isn’t a universal formula

While it can be tempting to look for the “best” self-soothing techniques, the most important part of this process is learning what your own nervous system responds to. What helps one person settle may do very little for another, and what works in one state may not work in another.

Approaching this with patience and experimentation makes a difference. As you learn to stay connected to yourself, rather than judging or rushing the process, self-soothing becomes less effortful and more intuitive.

Learning to self-regulate doesn’t mean anxiety will disappear. It means you’re less reliant on someone else to restore your sense of safety. Over time, that capacity becomes a stabilising internal resource — one that supports not only your relationships with others, but your relationship with yourself.