Therapy for anxious attachment in California.
One of you needs more reassurance, more contact, more closeness — and gets anxious when it's not there. The other needs more space, more autonomy, more time alone — and feels suffocated when there isn't enough of it. Both responses are legitimate. Both make sense given how each of you learned love. The dance between them is exhausting.
Anxious-avoidant dynamics aren't character flaws. They're attachment patterns laid down early, activated again and again by the very person you love most. The shape of the cycle is predictable — pursuit, withdrawal, escalation, distance, reach, retreat — and recognizing it is the first relief.
I work with couples caught in this cycle who are tired of fighting about it and ready to do something different. The work isn't about one of you becoming more like the other. It's about both of you developing secure-functioning capacities so the cycle has somewhere else to go.
You don't have to keep living like this.
- Anxiety floods you when your partner pulls away — and you reach harder, which makes it worse.
- You feel needy and ashamed of it, and you can't stop checking for reassurance.
- You feel pursued, suffocated, or resentful of how much your partner needs — and you don't know how to say so without making it worse.
- You're stuck in the same fight on repeat, with the roles reliably reversed depending on the topic.
- You dread the cycle starting and can already feel it before either of you has spoken.
How I work with anxious attachment.
Attachment work starts by naming the pattern out loud — without pathologizing either side. Neither anxious nor avoidant is wrong. Both are protective. Both made sense at some point. We give the cycle language so it stops being a mystery operating between you.
From there we work on slowing down activation. What does each of your nervous systems need when the threat alarm goes off? What helps you regulate before reaching for your partner — and what helps your partner stay present when withdrawal is the old reflex? This is body-first work, not insight alone.
Over time we build secure-functioning capacities together — repair after rupture, reaching from steadiness rather than panic, staying close from choice rather than collapse. The cycle doesn't fully disappear, but it loses its grip. You start to recognize it earlier and exit it sooner.
Common questions.
Where this connects.
Asking for help takes courage.
Book a free 20-minute consultation to see if working together feels right.