Healing Attachment Wounds: Embracing the Love, You Were Created For
By Colleen
Do you feel stuck in painful relationship cycles, questioning your worth, or struggling with chronic anxiety? Your attachment style might hold valuable insight.
Understanding the Attachment Patterns Holding You Back
If relationships leave you feeling anxious, distant, or emotionally exhausted, you’re not alone. Our earliest experiences shape how we connect—whether through love received or love we longed for but never found. Regardless of your experience, you can step into a life of love, safety, and connection that reflects the fullness of who you are.
Let’s explore attachment styles—how they form, how they shape relationships, and why we sometimes repeat painful patterns instead of healing them. Most importantly, let’s talk about how to break free.
Anxious Attachment – Seeking Love but Fearing Loss
If you fear abandonment, crave reassurance, or overthink your partner’s feelings, you may have an anxious attachment style. Stemming from inconsistent love in childhood, this pattern can lead to:
- Tolerate neglect to avoid being alone.
- Ignoring red flags out of fear of loss.
- Mistaking emotional highs and lows for passion.
How This Looks in Relationships & Marriage:
In dating, this may appear as a constant need for reassurance, overanalyzing messages, or staying in unhealthy situations to avoid being alone. In marriage, it can manifest as seeking frequent validation, feeling insecure when a spouse needs personal space, or fearing conflict because it feels like a threat to the relationship.
Avoidant Attachment – Keeping Love at a Distance
If trust feels difficult and emotional closeness overwhelms you, avoidant attachment may be at play. This often develops when vulnerability was unsafe in childhood. As an adult, this can look like:
- Avoiding deep emotional conversations.
- Pulling away when relationships get serious.
- Choosing needy partners as an excuse to keep walls up.
In dating, someone with avoidant attachment may enjoy the chase but lose interest once emotional intimacy deepens. In marriage, this can show up as shutting down during emotional discussions, avoiding vulnerability, or prioritizing independence over connection—leading a spouse to feel distant or unimportant.
Disorganized Attachment – When Love Feels Both Safe & Scary
For some, love is both longed for and feared. If your past involved trauma or inconsistent caregiving, relationships may feel chaotic. Signs include:
- Clinging to a partner one moment, pushing them away the next.
- Struggling to trust love, even when it’s safe.
- Repeating toxic cycles that mirror past wounds.
How This Looks in Relationships & Marriage:
In dating, this might appear as alternating between deep attachment and sudden withdrawal, fearing both abandonment and closeness. In marriage, this can lead to unpredictable emotional shifts, difficulty trusting a spouse’s love, or unintentionally recreating past relational chaos—even in a stable relationship.
The Power of Self-Compassion and Healing
You’ve carried this pain long enough. Your past survival strategies were brilliant, but now, you have the power to choose a new path. Healing isn’t about perfection, it’s about creating moments of self-awareness, self-compassion, and peace. Discovering self-worth, learning to set boundaries and choosing partners and relationships that offer security and care. Healing may also mean allowing yourself to trust, practicing vulnerability, and realizing that love doesn’t take away your independence—it gives you a safe space to be yourself. No matter your attachment style, you have the power to change.
Final Encouragement – You Are Enough
Healing takes time, but each step toward self-awareness and self-worth moves you closer to the love you deserve. Your past doesn’t define you—your future is yours to create.
The love and connection you seek begins with your commitment to healing. We would love to come alongside as a coach to help you break free from unhealthy patterns and create the life you were made for. You don’t have to do this alone, start your journey today.
Healing is possible. And it starts with knowing you are worth better.
[This is part 1 in a series on Attachment. Check out my other articles which further explore each style.]
Part 2 Anxious Attachment – Seeking Love but Fearing Loss
Part 3 Avoidant Attachment – Keeping Love at a Distance
Part 4 Disorganized Attachment – When Love Feels Both Safe & Scary
