#193: The Gifts of Anxious Attachment
When we talk about anxious attachment, the conversation often centres on challenges — the overthinking, the relationship anxiety, the patterns that feel difficult to navigate. But what if we've been missing something crucial? What if some of your most "anxious" traits are actually your greatest strengths?
As someone who works with anxiously attached individuals daily, I've witnessed incredible beauty in the way anxiously attached people move through the world. It's time we shift the narrative from what needs fixing to what deserves celebrating.
Understanding Anxious Attachment Beyond the Struggles
Anxious attachment develops when we learn early that love might be inconsistent or conditional. Whilst this can create challenges in relationships, it also cultivates remarkable capacities that often go unrecognised. These aren't compensatory behaviours or coping mechanisms — they're genuine gifts that make anxiously attached people extraordinary partners, friends, and colleagues.
Research shows that our attachment wounds and gifts are closely connected. The same sensitivity that can cause anxiety also creates profound emotional intelligence. The vigilance that feels exhausting can translate into incredible attunement to others' needs.
1. You Crave Deep, Authentic Connection
In our age of surface-level interactions and casual everything, your desire for genuine intimacy is revolutionary. You're not interested in shallow small talk or superficial encounters — you want the real deal. This craving for depth means you're more likely to:
Build meaningful, lasting relationships
Create emotional safety for others to be vulnerable
Invest in quality over quantity when it comes to connections
Refuse to settle for relationships that don't nourish your soul
While this trait can sometimes lead to disappointment in a world that often prioritizes casual over committed, it's ultimately what creates the deeply fulfilling relationships you're seeking.
2. You're Highly Emotionally Attuned
Your emotional radar is finely tuned. You can sense when something's off in a room, pick up on subtle mood changes, and deeply empathize with others' experiences. This emotional attunement manifests as:
Exceptional ability to read nonverbal cues
Natural capacity for empathy and compassion
Skill at navigating complex emotional dynamics
Talent for making others feel truly seen and understood
This is why many anxiously attached individuals thrive in helping professions — therapy, coaching, social work, healthcare. Your nervous system's sensitivity, whilst sometimes overwhelming, is also a superpower for connecting with others' humanity.
3. You're Committed to Growth and Self-Reflection
Anxiously attached people are often incredibly growth-oriented. You're willing to look within, question your patterns, and do the sometimes uncomfortable work of personal development. This commitment to growth includes:
Openness to feedback and self-reflection
Willingness to challenge limiting beliefs
Investment in therapy, coaching, and personal development
Ability to integrate new insights and make meaningful changes
Whilst this can sometimes tip into over-analysing or thinking you need to "fix" yourself, the underlying willingness to evolve is a tremendous asset for building secure relationships.
4. You're Deeply Loyal and Committed
When you're in a relationship — romantic, friendship, or family — you're all in. Your loyalty runs deep, and you're willing to work through challenges rather than giving up at the first sign of difficulty. This commitment looks like:
Dedication to working through relationship challenges
Reliability that others can count on
Willingness to invest time and energy in relationships
Persistence in pursuing meaningful connections
In our swipe-right culture where people often seek the next best thing, your commitment to showing up consistently is increasingly rare and valuable.
5. You Care Profoundly
Perhaps most beautifully, you care deeply about the people in your life. Your capacity for love is boundless, and you naturally want to support, help, and nurture others. This profound care manifests as:
Generosity with your time, energy, and resources
Natural instinct to support others through difficulties
Ability to celebrate others' successes genuinely
Willingness to go out of your way to help those you love
Honouring Your Gifts Whilst Building Security
The goal isn't to change these beautiful qualities — it's to build enough inner security that you can express them in healthy ways. When we lack self-worth or feel insecure, these gifts can sometimes lead us into unbalanced patterns:
Deep connection-seeking might become accepting less than we deserve
Emotional attunement might become people-pleasing or emotional caretaking
Loyalty might become staying in relationships that don't serve us
Profound care might become self-abandonment in service of others
Building secure attachment doesn't mean becoming less sensitive, caring, or invested. It means developing the inner foundation to love from a place of wholeness rather than need. When you feel secure in your worth, these gifts become even more powerful:
You can seek deep connection whilst maintaining healthy boundaries
You can be emotionally attuned without taking responsibility for others' feelings
You can be loyal and committed to relationships that reciprocate your investment
You can care deeply whilst also caring for yourself
You are not a problem to be solved or a project to be fixed. You are a deeply feeling, incredibly caring human being with remarkable gifts to offer the world. The sensitivity that sometimes feels like too much is also what makes you capable of profound love, genuine empathy, and meaningful connection.
The work isn't about changing who you are. It's about creating the inner security to be who you are — fully, freely, and without apology.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode we are talking about something a little different, which is the gifts of anxious attachment. I put a post on Instagram up a couple of weeks ago on the beautiful traits of anxious attachment and it really resonated with people and I received so many lovely comments of people thanking me for shining a light on some of the positive attributes of anxiously attached people. Because naturally we spend so much time talking about the things that are hard and the traits that might make relationships difficult or the low self worth, all of the things that we feel are quote unquote wrong with us as anxiously attached people. And so I thought it might be nice to shift focus to all of the things that are beautiful about folks with anxious attachment.
[00:01:13]:
The traits that I see as being absolute gifts and that make you a beautiful partner, friend, colleague, family member. Because there is truly so much goodness in anxiously attached people. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that and really own those gifts rather than always seeing ourselves as some sort of project that needs fixing or a problem that needs solving. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Quick announcement Before I do, my Secure Self Challenge kicked off two days ago. If you want to sneak in, I'll leave registration open for the next couple of days, after which I will close doors for this round until maybe end of this year or early next year is likely to be the next time I run the Challenge. So if you're interested in spending four weeks with me diving deep into building self worth in a really supportive community space, I would love to have you there. Second quick announcement is more in the vein of a favour.
[00:02:06]:
I've been working on growing my YouTube channel recently and I've been recording a lot of exclusive videos and content for YouTube. So if you're someone who enjoys watching YouTube, I would be so grateful if you could head over there and support my channel by subscribing, sharing, liking all of those things. That would be a huge help to me and hopefully you can get a lot of value out of the content that I'm creating there. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around the beautiful traits of anxious attachment and the way that I want to structure. This is sort of inspired by a quote that I really love from I believe Alexandra Solomon, who's a therapist and author, which is that our wounds and our gifts are next door neighbours. And so as I share each of these gifts of anxious attachment, I'm also going to talk about most like the underbelly side of it or what can happen when we maybe lack self worth or we are in less healthy relationship patterns. So sort of looking at the way that these traits can express when we've done the work and what can happen when we maybe don't have guardrail around that, when we lack that inner security. So I hope to sort of paint a vision for you of how you can really honour and own all these beautiful gifts that you have, rather than having them maybe lead you astray or lead you into patterns that are not serving you.
[00:03:17]:
Okay, so the first one is you crave deep, true connection. I think that in a world where there is so much casual, superficial everything, being someone who really values depth and intimacy and connection, that is a beautiful trait, that is an asset for sure. That is something that we want to honour and own. I think so many anxiously attached people make themselves wrong for that. There's this sense of like, oh, I should be more chill, I should be more open to casual sex or whatever it might be. But I think that your desire for and commitment to depth and intimacy and the fact that you don't want shallow interactions, you're not interested in superficial encounters, I think that we need more of that in this world. And so it's not something to make yourself wrong for at at all. It is something to own and honour.
[00:04:09]:
I think what we need to watch out for there around craving depth is that sometimes when we do have a deep connection with someone, it can blind us to other things. So we can be so fed by the depth of connection that that's all that matters and it becomes our whole field of vision. And we maybe lose sight of not only other things in our own life, but maybe things that aren't quite right about the relationship because the connection takes priority and deep connection feels so deep, nourishing to us that maybe we don't want to see things that might not be right there. But I think that as a starting point, our desire for and commitment to depth of connection is a beautiful trait and something to really be celebrated. Okay, the next one is you are highly emotionally attuned. So the EQ of anxiously attached people in terms of reading other people's emotional states, really deeply attuning empathy, compassion, the anxiously attached person's capacity for these things and skill at navigating complex and nuanced emotional dynamics is an incredible asset. Again, it's something that I think is increasingly rare. So if you're someone who can read the room, can sense if something's off, can know if someone's upset or something's bothering them, I think that that is absolutely a gift.
[00:05:28]:
It's not something that we need to pathologize or make ourselves wrong for. And when channelled and used with appropriate boundaries so we're not overstepping into someone else's inner world or making ourselves responsible for managing, managing everyone's moods or people pleasing, doing those sorts of things, the actual underlying ability to attune to other people, to make them feel seen, to empathise, to feel genuine compassion for what other people are going through, that is something that is so, so valuable. And I think it's why so many people with anxious attachment patterns end up in helping professions. So being therapists, being coaches, facilitators, social workers. I think that that's why is because we really do feel into the humanness of others and we have this gen desire to help and support and such a natural skill set in that area. Okay, the next one is you are so growth oriented, you're so willing to reflect and self explore and learn more and understand yourself and other people and what is driving your patterns. And that is such an asset, right? Having that willingness to look within and to question and to reflect and to integrate, that is such a valuable trait. I think the underbelly side of this is that we can maybe approach ourselves with an energy of needing to fix, thinking that there's something wrong with us.
[00:06:51]:
Like that desire to grow can almost feel like at a bottomless pit or a horizon that we're never going to reach. It's like we maybe think that if we can just keep taking in more information or keep learning more, then we'll be able to outsmart our anxiety or outsmart the things that feel hard. And so I think there is something to be said for the way that we approach all of that growth and the energy that it comes from. But at its core, I think the willingness of anxiously attached people to do that work, to look within, to reflect, to grow, is something that will stand you in such great stead in your own inner relationship and any relationships that you have, whether romantic or otherwise. Okay, the next one is you are loyal and committed. I think that again, in our modern world, loyalty and fidelity and commitment, these are really valuable and Increasingly rare, particularly in dating culture and even in relationships more broadly. I think people are pretty quick to jump ship and to feel like someone better. Something better is only a swipe away.
[00:07:56]:
This almost like fast food dating and relationship culture that apps and the Internet and social media has promulgated for anxiously attached people. There is this sense of I'm in this and I'm all in. And I think that can be a really important and beautiful trait because obviously relationships are hard. And so being willing to do the work and being in it for the long haul, being dedicated and committed and loyal is a really beautiful and again, increasingly rare trait. So that's not something to make yourself wrong for in and of itself. Again, the maybe not so healthy expression of this trait might be overstaying in relationships that are not working. It might be refusing to see the reality of a relationship that isn't meeting our needs, that isn't aligned, being loyal and committed in a really imbalanced way. So where someone isn't reciprocating that at all.
[00:08:49]:
But we struggle to not continue giving and giving and working and committing even when we're not being met in that effort. So I think that can be the underbelly side of this trait, even though the trait in and of itself, I think is a beautiful thing and a real asset. And last but not least, you care so deeply about the people that you love. And again, this is in romantic relationships, it's family friendships. You really deeply care. And what a beautiful thing that is. You are so generous with your love. You go out of your way to help people, to support people, to check up on people, people you want, to make people feel loved.
[00:09:26]:
And you really will go out of your way to do that. When someone's going through something hard, your instinct is to help and to support. And that makes you a beautiful friend, it makes you a beautiful partner, it makes you a beautiful family member and colleague. People know that you care. There's never a doubt in anyone's mind that you are there for them when they need you and that you will always be there as a shoulder to cry on or open arms, an ear for listening. And that is, is such a beautiful thing and something that you should really acknowledge about yourself and celebrate about yourself. Again, I think the only thing we need to watch for here is the tendency to invest so much in relationships that are maybe imbalanced, where you're maybe not getting that same degree of care back. And part of that can be our own difficulty in receiving, but part of it can be where we choose to invest our time and energy.
[00:10:18]:
So just being mindful of that potential for a mismatch in effort and care and attention. But fundamentally, your generosity of spirit and your capacity to care for and support the people around you is boundless and beautiful and something that you should be really proud of. Okay, so those were five beautiful traits gifts of anxiously attached people. I hope that if you're listening to this as an anxiously attached person, you're feeling really seen and feeling the love and maybe feeling encouraged and even uplifted by the recognition of all of that. Because I think we can so often fail to see all of that in ourselves. We do tend to focus on what feels hard or what we perceive as being our neg negative traits. But there is so much goodness in you. And really the work is not about being different.
[00:11:04]:
It's just creating enough security that we can love in a really healthy way. We can channel all of those gifts into relationships that feel safe and reciprocal and mutual so that we can be free to love and care generously without the fear and anxiety that can go along with it. So sending you so much love. And if you're listening to this and you're in a relationship with someone who's more anxious, I hope that this has shone a light on those things for you and you can give them some extra love and recognition of all of the goodness that they bring to your life. Okay, gonna leave it there guys. Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment.
[00:11:45]:
If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram at stephanyrigg or stephanyrigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grate. Could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
boundaries, anxious attachment, secure relationships, self worth, communication skills, setting boundaries, requests, ultimatums, deal breakers, threats, insecurity, self advocacy, core wounds, self compassion, self regulation, self care, integrity, self respect, self honouring, inner critic, non negotiables, relationship coaching, self trust, control, surrender, attachment patterns, emotional safety, unmet needs, self abandonment, personal limits