Anxious attachment doesn’t always look how you think it does.

It might look like being the fixer, the over-functioner, the one who’s “fine” until they’re not.

In this deeply affirming episode, Lauren Dry sits down with Relationship and Anxiety Therapist Valerie Rubin to explore the roots and realities of anxious attachment style, and why so many high-achieving, emotionally intelligent people miss the signs in themselves.

Whether you’re the one holding it all together or the one feeling like you’re too much, too sensitive, or somehow not enough, this conversation will help you connect the dots between your past experiences and your present patterns. You’ll also get practical insight into how to shift toward secure connection and emotional safety.

You’ll hear us explore:

• Why anxious attachment often hides behind confidence, competence, and control
• How early experiences (even ones that seemed “fine”) shape our adult relationship dynamics
• The role of hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and codependency in attachment patterns
• What it really means to self-soothe, and why nervous system regulation is essential for clarity and connection
• How to stop outsourcing your safety and start building secure, grounded relationships

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing all the emotional labor in your relationship, if fear of abandonment keeps showing up in subtle or intense ways, or if you’re simply ready to feel calmer, clearer, and more connected, this episode is for you.

Resources Mentioned:

• Learn more about Rise into Regulation™, the skillset for connection, communication, and Nervous System safety in modern marriage
• Follow Lauren on Instagram @lauren_dry
• Follow Valerie on Instagram @healwithval
• Listen to Valerie’s podcast: The Anxiety Recovery Podcast

If something in this episode hit home, please share it with someone you love, leave a review, or reach out on Instagram. I’d love to hear what lands for you.

Big love,

Lauren X

[00:00:00]

[00:00:27] Lauren Dry: Our signature program, rising To Regulation was Born. That's giving [00:00:30] so many others in modern driven relationships, back clarity and ease for good. The podcast today, we're going deep together on all things, relationships, business identity and leadership. Clarity and ease is at the heart of it all, and we're so happy to be with you so that you can have what you need in connection, [00:00:45] mind, body, and soul too.

[00:00:48] Lauren Dry: Today I would like to welcome Valerie Rubin. Valerie is a relationship and anxiety therapist who helps women heal their anxious attachment style so that they can become a match for [00:01:00] healthy, secure love.

[00:01:02] Lauren Dry: I am so passionate about attachment theory. If you haven't come across it yet, it's going to really shake your world.

[00:01:31] Deep Dive into Anxious Attachment Style

[00:01:54] Lauren Dry: Individuals with anxious attachment style are more likely to experience inflamed health [00:02:00] conditions, higher emotional reactivity, and relationship dissatisfaction. Valerie, through nervous system regulation, inner child healing and somatic therapy guides her clients outta survival mode and [00:02:15] into deep emotional safety within themselves and their relationships.

[00:02:18] Lauren Dry: Valerie's, also the host of the Anxiety Recovery Podcast, a top 15% Spotify podcast where she interviews therapists, coaches and thought leaders about emotional healing, attachment theory, [00:02:30] somatic work, and conscious relationships. I am so pleased to introduce you to Valerie. Welcome to the Connection Podcast.

[00:02:48] Lauren Dry: Me too. this is such a wonderful topic for me. We have covered, what attachment styles are, and we've touched on it on the podcast before, but I'm really excited to dive deeper into, specifically what [00:03:00] anxious attachment style is. Now we have a whole range of listeners, people who are deeply across what attachment theory is, and also people who may only be hearing about attachment theory for the first time.

[00:03:39] Valerie Rubin: Such great questions here, Lauren. So, with attachment theory, it's ultimately [00:03:45] reflects the quality of your early attachment to your caregivers. It ultimately has long-term effects on social and emotional development, and so with an anxious attachment style. How it really develops is in adulthood. It's this constant [00:04:00] need for reassurance, a deep fear of abandonment and rejection, difficulty trusting others and themselves feeling clingy.

[00:04:29] Valerie Rubin: So [00:04:30] now it is needed for someone else to help me feel safe, and then difficulty with boundaries, overthinking chronic anxiety and worrying in the relationship, low self-esteem. [00:04:45] A lot of my clients who are anxiously attached also are very hypervigilant. As soon as their partner walks in the room, they already can sense if their energy is off, if their partner is anxious, what their partner is feeling, they may struggle with being [00:05:00] vulnerable.

[00:05:06] Lauren Dry: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:10] Lauren Dry: And I would love to hear from you so something that really caught me by surprise. When I first started learning [00:05:15] about attachment theory, I had a lot of head knowledge. So what I understood about attachment theory was very top level. And I could probably walk around and diagnose who had anxious attachment style, who [00:05:30] had avoid an attachment style, who had secure attachment style, who had disorganized attachment style, who was, fearful of void, all those things.

[00:05:58] Lauren Dry: And hand [00:06:00] on heart with no, like just guile whatsoever. I sat there and I said. Oh, I've had a look into the attachment styles. I don't really identify with many of them. Maybe secure attachment. I think that's me and just [00:06:15] the look. Bless her heart on this counsellor's face. It's oh dear. Okay.

[00:06:43] Lauren Dry: So [00:06:45] I thought anxious attachment style was high present, presenting anxiety, someone who maybe doesn't leave the house or who kind of chews at their fingernails and presents as someone who. talks and looks and walks, like they [00:07:00] have anxiety. They don't look confident, and I just didn't identify as someone who was like that.

[00:07:39] Healing and Self-Soothing Techniques

[00:08:08] Lauren Dry: With the support that is found in Rise around, okay, how do I actually find rest? How do I find joy and how [00:08:15] do I get the support I need without, having to feel like I'm on all the time and doing all the work. So, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your personal journey. Why and how you discovered anxious attachment style and what is the [00:08:30] pattern?

[00:08:41] The Role of Childhood in Attachment Styles

[00:09:06] Valerie Rubin: So people who are anxiously attached. I'm sorry if you're listening to this and you're about to disagree with me, but people who are anxiously attached want to [00:09:15] blame people who are avoidant leaning. I don't really I like to say avoidant leaning at like more attached, like anxious leaning. So it takes away the shame and takes away that this is my identity when it's not.

[00:09:47] Valerie Rubin: That also has avoidant parts, what do I find attractive about this? And that was a hundred percent me. For me, my patterns were like a complete fear of vulnerability. I was [00:10:00] absolutely that girl, like you mentioned that was saying, I'm fine. I'm totally good, and for me, what happened for six years, I developed chronic pain all over my body.

[00:10:32] Valerie Rubin: The body remembers everything that we have gone through because for me, both of my parents were extremely emotionally unavailable and neglectful. My dad was a narcissist, and then my [00:10:45] mom was very inconsistent and I also had an autistic brother, so I never fully got the attention that younger me needed.

[00:11:27] Valerie Rubin: And so a lot of my clients have [00:11:30] told me, the healthy guys give me the ick. I want to run away from them because they're used to that chaos and stress in their relationships. So that was a bit about my personal journey, and for me, it was like after I dated the [00:11:45] fifth person that was straight up emotionally unavailable and avoidant and wasn't willing to look at their side of the street. I'm like, clearly there is a pattern within me. And I was just so heartbroken and done with [00:12:00] feeling like I, I'm constantly unfulfilled. And it also started all with myself there in my relationship with me.

[00:12:37] Lauren Dry: these solutions and, The support that you're trying to offer, your avoidant partner or your emotionally unavailable partner, or you know the people around you, [00:12:45] that it's not to discount that you are incredibly good at problem solving. Incredibly good at fixing, incredibly good at helping and supporting other people, but it can be very frightening to first have this realization, oh [00:13:00] no, is there something that I am doing here that is contributing to this dynamic because this whole pattern is designed to, build up a sense of worth by proving or [00:13:15] showing that you can fix people. And what I wanted to touch on, first of all that cause what you mentioned there, your history, And your early, your childhood, your caregivers.

[00:13:52] Lauren Dry: And I wanna speak into those people because what I want to reaffirm is with so much of this work. It can feel very tempting [00:14:00] to, point the finger at the generation before us. And in many instances that is absolutely called for. But there are also a huge subset of people who, have great relationships with their parents and really [00:14:15] work hard to maintain that sense of safety in those relationships.

[00:14:42] Lauren Dry: What can happen is we can [00:14:45] create these dynamics that help us to, form our identity and obtain a sense of, satisfaction, validation and attention, that may have been misdirected or missed, or may even be a hundred [00:15:00] percent true. And there's also different realities, so you can hold space and hold that duality.

[00:15:24] Lauren Dry: don't feel like you have to abandon your connections with your primary [00:15:30] caregivers on a, in an internal sense, in order to hold space for your own true reality. So I just wanted to pause there and like also bring into the conversation the people who yes. may identify with having a wonderful [00:15:45] childhood and everything's great, but still feel lost and ashamed.

[00:16:07] Lauren Dry: So we don't need to have that conscious validation at every second of every day when it comes to working on resetting what we need and [00:16:15] what we want in our own relationships. So I just wanted to bring everyone along on that journey with us, because there's such nuance there.

[00:16:23] Navigating Relationships with Anxious Attachment

[00:17:11] Valerie Rubin: And you may have internalized, oh, there's something wrong with me. I'm not [00:17:15] good enough. That is why he bought a balloon for my sister and not me.

[00:17:22] Valerie Rubin: And that's just like really huge here. yeah.

[00:17:45] Lauren Dry: And I just wanna offer that grace, that patterns, they come from. self-love and self-protection okay. There would've been something that happened, and you, your unconscious mind made a decision, okay, I'm gonna start behaving in this way, or seeking support or [00:18:00] seeking validation in this way in order to feel safe.

[00:18:32] Lauren Dry: What often I, I love this definition of trauma of. Around the fact that, two people can be in a car accident and,it can be incredibly scary. incredibly dangerous. and one person, is [00:18:45] whipped off to the hospital. they have a broken leg. They have it set in a cast, they get dropped off back at home.

[00:19:32] Lauren Dry: It's being processed as validated. You know that the term is, having an empathetic witness can be the difference between a pattern being established and sustained versus something that is tough in the moment, but then after that [00:19:45] week, it's not haunting you or not affecting the way that you show up in a protective way.

[00:20:16] Valerie Rubin: A baby does not understand that they are a separate human being other than their mother, so that's another way that attachment trauma can be caused.

[00:20:46] Lauren Dry: This is a safe place. We're here to support you and when it comes to having anxious attachment style, what I'm really curious about is, was there a point in time where you were first [00:21:00] aware of experiencing anxious attachment style? What was there a moment in time that really stands out to you?

[00:21:05] Valerie Rubin: Yes. I would say for me, two moments stood out for me. One moment was I was with a covert [00:21:15] narcissist and I remember when my therapist told me after we broke up, this is a trauma bond. and I was so like jaw dropped to the floor. I thought our relationship was. I wanna [00:21:30] say good. But then as I was debriefing with my therapist, a lot of what was happening, like the hot and cold behavior, just the subtle manipulation tactics, the gaslighting, all of these things that were happening.[00:21:45]

[00:22:06] Valerie Rubin: Like six months, no dating apps, no flirting and if you're listening to this and inside your body, you're screaming and you are like Valerie, [00:22:15] that just feels so uncomfortable to do. That's just a huge sign that you struggle with codependency, as did I and a lot of people struggle with it because they fear being alone.

[00:23:26] Valerie Rubin: And then of course, when I became a therapist, I was like, this is [00:23:30] classic trauma bond withdrawal symptoms, like your brain is going through physical pain is what it feels like in your body. So those were two defining moments for me and how I realized I had an anxious attachment style [00:23:45] and it just felt like I was gonna die.

[00:24:12] Lauren Dry: Yeah, and I think for a lot of anxious attachment style people, [00:24:15] that fear of abandonment is just such a, an over arching theme, because I think for anxious attachment style, people or anyone who feels stuck in that dance of, do I stay or do I [00:24:30] go, it's so important to understand what anxious attachment style is so that you're able to have clarity around, okay, am I gonna be making this decision out of fear about whether to stay or go, [00:24:45] or, you know, fear that I'm gonna be alone.

[00:25:07] Lauren Dry: Or if, yeah, that can be a really strong hallmark of anxious at attachments to our people.

[00:25:34] Valerie Rubin: It felt in my brain like I was going through a breakup, even though we were still together, and it was like I was experiencing labyrinth. I was obsessed. All I wanted to do was hear from him. The [00:25:45] only relief that I felt was getting a text from him, my emotional states were dependent on this man and his response, and that's what a lot of my clients say is I find that I'm giving way too much power [00:26:00] to my partner or to my ex.

[00:26:18] Valerie Rubin: If they like go on a business trip, it's triggering young parts of them that felt either emotionally or physically abandoned as a child. It's just reawakening. What's already there [00:26:30] and because like for me, my parents were extremely inconsistent. my mom would leave me in the middle of when I was crying to go take care of my dad or my brother.

[00:27:11] Valerie Rubin: Because unless you do that work, that healing of the inner [00:27:15] child, you will never be able to make that decision from clarity. Because your fear of abandonment is gonna cloud it. That's why we struggle with fantasy thinking, rumination, idealizing, this person overlooking the red [00:27:30] flags. You can know all the red flags in the book.

[00:28:10] Lauren Dry: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:28:11] Lauren Dry: would you say, you have any emotional [00:28:15] triggers that still surprise you today that are related to anxious attachment style, and how do you hold space for them?

[00:28:50] Valerie Rubin: And so even just today, for example, I did an entire brain spotting session around that. I can share more about what that is, what that looks like. But ultimately it [00:29:00] came from young parts of me that were punished, shamed, ridiculed, for making any type of developmental normal mistake. And so, of course then as an adult, it would bring up fear if I would make a mistake [00:29:15] or, make a, yeah, just a wrong thing.

[00:29:43] Valerie Rubin: I started to be able to take deeper [00:29:45] breaths and I stopped like feeling so fearful about what was happening with this marketing client of mine,

[00:29:52] Valerie Rubin: a lot of clients struggle with that.

[00:29:55] Valerie Rubin: yeah, it, it just came up and I'm grateful for that because it's a [00:30:00] gift to be able to notice these patterns within myself so that I can also teach people how to do it as well and work through these patterns.

[00:30:26] Lauren Dry: Yeah. what would you say is the hardest [00:30:30] personal boundary that you've had to use in relationships?

[00:30:57] Valerie Rubin: I felt in the fawn response to [00:31:00] please my partner, because unconsciously I believe that if I'm pleasing them, if I'm doing all these things for them, then that means they're not going to leave me. And that is totally me. And it's an unconscious way that I was really just giving myself more [00:31:15] trauma.

[00:31:34] Valerie Rubin: Because I remember when a therapist of mine was like, you just have to say no and I get that. Like logically I knew that, but my body did not feel safe. [00:31:45] To be able to do that, and so that's why I will specifically share with clients ways on how to actually break that loop of people pleasing through the body.

[00:32:04] Lauren Dry: Hmm. Yeah, so I think people who really identify with being very independent, being very good at problem solving, being very, [00:32:15] intelligent, very adaptable. they are the type of people who seem to navigate boundaries well outside of their intimate relationships, but in their intimate relationships. It's you know, I'm bending over backwards for you.

[00:33:06] Valerie Rubin: Hmm. I think that's such a great question. I think two things come up for me. One, I, the, one of the best pieces of advice [00:33:15] that my therapist ever gave me was, any big response or reaction that you're having is not coming from your true adult self. It's coming from a young inner child, part of you.

[00:33:47] Valerie Rubin: My brain just did not understand that, like he was still there. He still loved me even though he wasn't next to me. So like if your partner isn't like constantly reassuring you or sharing those words of affirmation. You start to [00:34:00] feel anxious and what if my partner doesn't love me? Do you not like me?

[00:34:27] Valerie Rubin: So that was like two big things that like [00:34:30] really shook me to my core about anxious attachment.

[00:34:58] Lauren Dry: So this can be [00:35:00] incredibly overwhelming. It can be challenging. And, what I wanna say to anyone who a lot of this information about anxious attachment style is new for, is remember the greatest block to our growth and our healing and our [00:35:15] ability to connect the greatest block, is actually something that might surprise you.

[00:35:52] Lauren Dry: that internal dialogue and sometimes this feeling of being taken by surprise or taken off guard. It's a completely normal and [00:36:00] healthy and, it comes from a loving place inside.

[00:36:24] Lauren Dry: but don't stay there. there are, there's so much on the other side. Allow that moment to be, there's a [00:36:30] mass massive difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is I, recognize that something bad happened or maybe I made a mistake. Shame is I am bad. I am the mistake. one you can work with and one, don't bother with it.

[00:36:49] Final Thoughts and Future Aspirations

[00:37:13] Valerie Rubin: What comes to my [00:37:15] mind is we always think that we just need to heal our trauma, but what we also like other advice is we also need to have disconfirming experiences. We need to have experiences with others [00:37:30] that show us, hey, we are safe now we are loved. Because you can't just heal alone. You need to heal through relationships.

[00:38:34] Lauren Dry: Hmm.

[00:38:59] Valerie Rubin: it's your [00:39:00] nervous system is now picking up on those red flags. It's saying, what the fuck is that? So now we can shift it. Now our body is gonna feel safe with healthy partners, and it's gonna feel repulsed by emotionally unavailable partners. And you don't [00:39:15] have to read a hundred page checklist.

[00:39:21] Lauren Dry: Hmm.

[00:39:38] Valerie Rubin: Because when one person can shift their anxious attachment and self-soothe, that's going to impact your [00:39:45] children, their children, who you pick as a partner. Who your children's parents are, how you are perceived in the workplace, how you relate to money, how you relate to your business. This all impacts every single area in your [00:40:00] life.

[00:40:23] Valerie Rubin: Like the brain is literally like we have neuroplasticity. Our brain is meant to change. So know that [00:40:30] you are capable of change. it will happen.

[00:41:09] Lauren Dry: Cause I know that's something that happened in my own marriage. We were very anxiously avoidant, [00:41:15] typical, But when you are able to break your own patterns, you're able to step into your own power in a new way. And for a lot of people that may be, this relationship isn't right for me anymore.

[00:41:41] Lauren Dry: So I wanna thank you so much for, for coming [00:41:45] here and sharing your wisdom and your personal life experience. And I, and what I would love to do is ask you,a question around if you had to ask my next guest speaker on [00:42:00] my podcast a question, what would you ask them?

[00:42:15] Lauren Dry: Oh, I love that. And so I would love to ask you that question.

[00:42:43] Valerie Rubin: It's been a really big growth season [00:42:45] for me currently, so I would say like resting and sometimes I can, my own struggle, I can struggle with the pressure to be on. Cause I also am so fucking passionate about my work and that's something that I continuously remind [00:43:00] myself and work on is resting. So I would say like those two things, it's like continuing to travel more, but I'm already doing that. And, yeah, just giving myself more rest.

[00:43:13] Conclusion and Where to Find Valerie

[00:43:30] Valerie Rubin: Yes. Thank you so very much, Lauren. It was so freaking awesome to be on this podcast today and dive deeper on Anxious attachment so people can find me on Instagram at Heal with Val. So HEAL with VAL [00:43:45] or you can listen to my podcast, anxiety Recovery Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, everywhere you listen to your podcasts.

[00:43:58] Lauren Dry: Beautiful. All [00:44:00] right. I can't wait to share more of that space with you, Val, and thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom with us.

[00:44:08] Lauren Dry: Big love.