It’s 2 am. You’re propped up against a mound of pillows on your bed, scrolling through social media. You saw a post yesterday, and it struck you hard, but you can’t remember what it was now. You know you saw it in this Facebook group.
Ah, there it is.
Immediately, your chest tightens, your heart aches. It’s physical. The tears well up in your eyes as you think about him, about the last time you saw him, when he’d told you he couldn’t put up with it anymore. That you were always pushing him and starting fights. “Why can’t we just enjoy each other without there being a problem? Just once!” he’d said as he was storming out. “I just can’t anymore. You’re…too much.”
Yes, you can be too much. You know that. You’ve been reminded of it your whole life, but—it’s not your fault. If he could just understand that it’s biological, that it’s something you’re trying to work on. If he sees how hard it is, then maybe he’ll come back.
You snap a screenshot of the explanation on your feed and send it to him. You wait. You know he’s awake. He always stays up late. You wait until the receipt says “read.”
And then you wait a little longer.
The bubble doesn’t pop up to indicate he’s typing. Maybe he didn’t get how relevant it was. Okay, that’s okay.
You start typing. You first remind him how much you love him and cherish him.
A tear slides down your cheek as you imagine his warm brown eyes and cheeky smile.
You tell him how much you miss him. Then you explain. You just need him to understand what happened. It reminded you of something that had happened in your childhood, and then you kind of just panicked. You walk him through your thought process and how you felt.
He has to understand you. You know he loves you. You know he has a heart. He’ll read this and melt.
Your stomach churns when you hit send.
You wait. He reads it almost immediately.
The bubbles pop up. “Stop texting me.”
A cry escapes your throat before the tears start falling. Your heart beats wildly in your ribcage, like a caged animal. No, this can’t be happening. He wouldn’t say that. He just doesn’t get it. But you can fix this. You didn’t explain it right. Maybe if you call him.
You call him. It rings once and goes to voicemail. You hang up and try again.
You get a text from him. For a split second, you think, finally, something. But your heart drops to your stomach when you read it, “I mean it, stop calling me. We’re done. This is over.”
You feverishly start typing. “I’m sorry. I’ve said it a thousand times. Just answer the phone, I’ll explain it.”
He doesn’t answer. It’s too late now, anyway. You’re already running out to your car. You practically yank the door off its hinges as you dial again. Tears are streaming down your face. If he saw you…if he saw how much you were hurting. He would listen.
As you turn the key in ignition, you get a thought—a faint thread of a thought—that you shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t be driving while tears blur your vision. A part of you thinks, what if I get there, and he doesn’t open the door? But the panic quickly overwrites it. If you can just get to him, everything will be fine.
When you arrive to his place, you can see his living room light is on almost as if he was expecting you. You race up the walkway and start knocking on his door. For a moment, there’s only silence that greets you. Your breathing is shallow. Almost like you can’t catch your breath.
But then he opens the door.
You breathe a sigh of relief.
The relief isn’t shared. “Damn it, what the hell are you doing here?”
You point inside. “Are you going to let me inside so we can talk about this like two adults?”
“What is wrong with you? You deserve to be in a nuthouse or something. Go home. This is insane.”
You’re not sure what’s worse—the panic or the pain.
You drive home. Alone.
Does this feel familiar to you? Have you ever been a version of her? Do you know someone who has been a version of her?
To all of us who felt that deep in our bones, you are not crazy. You are not insane. You do not deserve to be put into a nuthouse.
In fact, your response makes complete sense given the circumstances and experiences of your life. You see, as anxious attachers, we learned from an early age—whether our parents told us this specifically or it was implied by how we were treated—that we are not capable of standing up on our own. I had a father who always made me feel as if I couldn’t do anything right. One summer day, my dad told me to vacuum the pool tomorrow. Yeah, sure, whatever. At 6 in the morning, my dad banged on my door and walked into my bedroom and shouted, “What are you doing? I thought you said you were going to vacuum the pool!”
Cussing him out in my head, I dragged myself out of bed and vacuumed the pool. Granted, it was a little green. By the time I was done, the pool was a beautiful sparkling blue. I went to get in the shower. As I started undressing, my dad pounded on the door. “What are you doing? I thought you were going to vacuum the pool!”
I did. But he didn’t listen. So I had to turn off the shower, get dressed, and vacuum the pool all over again. When I was finished for the second time, he came to find me and asked me why I was putting everything away. I said, because I vacuumed the pool twice now. He yelled at me and then made me stand there while he vacuumed the pool for a third time. And no, it did not look any different.
This is how I grew up. I learned, I can’t do anything correctly myself. I need someone else to help me. Always.
No one taught me to regulate my emotions. I would just escalate until someone finally had to soothe me. For that, I was labeled a drama queen and learned, not only that I needed others to regulate my feelings, but I also needed them to tell if they were valid.
Essentially, you and I learned we are helpless. We need someone else there with us because we are not capable of doing anything right. Do we consciously think this way? Not always. But it’s embedded into our core behaviors now.
When I say, then, that her behavior in this scenario is exactly what you would expect given her anxious attachment wounds, I mean because it’s about survival. She internalized that she needed someone else to regulate her, fix her, hold her, and confirm her reality.
That last part is really key. You know those Walls of Text we like to send? That’s us asking for our person to accept our reality, our felt experience, as valid. Because we learned, from forever being invalidated and told we were overreacting to everything, that our reality, our experiences, our feelings need to be filtered through someone else’s judgment before we can trust them. We feel constantly misunderstood. Therefore, we overexplain ourselves, we pour ourselves into communicating everything, being completely transparent in the hopes someone will finally understand.
All of this culminates to a basic survival need of closeness. The identity we built from years of invalidation and minimization hinges on a relationship. That is why our partners and relationships are the center of our worlds. Why any perceived rupture feels like the world is ending. Our subconscious puts closeness on par with breathing. Can’t breathe? We’re going to panic. Feel a rupture in the relationship? That’s survival, too. We’re going to panic. And it’s going to feel like the world is ending.
Panic is meant to drive us to action. To run away from danger. To run toward shelter. To reach for an attachment figure. The hard truth is that when we break up, our exes are still our primary attachment figures. So even if they are the source of our distress, we still need to be close to them to fix the issue so stability returns. Which is why you are still reaching for him. He keeps hurting you, and you keep reaching for him.
The truth is that if you keep reaching for him, you are going to stay in pain much longer. Right now, that panic feels excruciating. You focus on him understanding you, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter. Your experience is valid. Whether he believes it or not. You need to learn to trust yourself. That you can stand up on your own two feet without anyone’s help, that you can discern your own reality regardless of what feedback you get, and that you are worthy of love.
If it were easy, we’d already be doing that, right? But it’s not as hard as we think it is. Taking the first step is the hardest part of healing, but it does get easier over time. And it’s not what you might have heard.
The first step is acknowledging yourself for who you are, without guilt or shame. It’s building self-awareness. It’s learning about yourself. Asking yourself the hard questions. Putting yourself under the microscope and asking, “Who am I?” It’s acceptance for that person. All the good, the bad, and the ugly.
You are not alone on this journey. I am here with you, and together we’ll walk through it. We’ll learn about Radical Acceptance, RAIN, coping statements, positive affirmations, and so much more. Together. Stay tuned.
If you’re interested in learning more about the role that our nervous system takes when we’re activated like this, you can check out my article The Research Burrow: Safety, Danger, and How We Experience Relational Cues. If you want to learn how to stop the spiral, check out my article here or the workbook below when you join the Gentle Hearts Club ❤️
If this resonated with you, you might be ready for the next step — not just understanding attachment, but actually working on it.
I run a small Facebook group called Anxious Hearts & Avoidant Souls: Compassion in Practice for people who are done just venting and ready to start doing. We talk about real skills — emotional regulation, reframing, accountability — and we do it without the toxic positivity or endless validation loops.
If that sounds like your kind of space, come find us here.