A therapist explains how anxious attachment shows up when clients are alone or excluded, triggering fear of abandonment. Dallas Bragg describes needing explicit reassurance that someone wants him, and how solitude feels unsafe without external validation.
So for an anxiously attached person, perhaps relationships are really important and feeling connected. So if you know that you're anxious, as a therapist, if I know that my client is anxious, I might need to pay special attention to moments when they're on their own, or moments when the partner leaves, or where friends are on holidays, or the typical, it's a Saturday night, and everybody's out, and I'm dealing with FOMO. Why do you think that would be?
Me? Well, I would think if you're anxious, if you're alone, you definitely feel unsafe. I know that— I know it was very hard for me to be alone for a very long time.
Mm-hmm.
In that it felt— it did feel like FOMO, but it just felt like I need— I needed somebody to tell me they wanted me.
Mm-hmm.
And being by myself, I couldn't get that unless I went to social media and posted something to get likes, you know, something like that.
